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Hong Chengchou
Ming governor-general captured at Songshan who went over to the Qing and directed its campaigns in the south, later listed among the officials who served two dynasties
A walled hilltop city with a tall brick gate tower stands above a pine-covered cliff, its wall running along the ridge, while a long wooden bridge crosses a wide river below and plains, islets and layered mountains stretch into the distance, with no person in view.
Also known as Zi Yanyan · Hao Hengjiu
Hong Chengchou came from Nan'an in Fujian and gained his jinshi in 1616. Under the Chongzhen emperor he served as governor of Yansui and supreme commander of the three Shaanxi frontiers, fighting the peasant rebels of the northwest, and in 1639 he was transferred to command Jizhou and Liaodong. When Songshan fell in the second month of 1642 after a six-month siege he was captured, and after persuasion by Fan Wencheng and others he submitted to the Qing. He entered the passes with the Qing army in 1644, governed the newly conquered Jiangnan from Jiangning the following year, and from 1653 directed military affairs in Huguang, Guangdong, Guangxi, Yunnan and Guizhou against the Southern Ming Yongli court. He was later relieved of his posts and died in Beijing in the fourth year of Kangxi, receiving the posthumous name Wenxiang. Under Qianlong the Qing court placed him in the first rank of its Biographies of Twice-Serving Ministers.
Life and times
Dates 1593 CE–1665 CE