Ministers › Provincial Governors
Lin Zexu
Qing official from Fujian who, as imperial commissioner in Canton, seized and destroyed British opium at Humen in 1839, was exiled to Ili and later governed Yunnan and Guizhou
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 Yuan Fu · Shao Mu
- Roles
- Provincial Governors
Lin Zexu, courtesy name Shaomu, came from Houguan in Fujian and passed the metropolitan examination in 1811. He served as a provincial judge and treasurer, director-general of the Yellow River conservancy and governor of Jiangsu, and in 1837 became governor-general of Hubei and Hunan, where he enforced the ban on opium. Sent to Canton as imperial commissioner in 1838, he made British merchants surrender more than twenty thousand chests of opium the next year and had it destroyed in public on the shore at Humen. After war with Britain broke out he was dismissed, and in 1841 he was exiled to Ili, where he surveyed land and irrigation in Xinjiang. Recalled, he governed Shaanxi and then Yunnan and Guizhou. Sent to Guangxi as imperial commissioner in 1850, he died on the way at Puning and was named Wenzhong. His translated world geography, the Sizhou zhi, became the basis of Wei Yuan's Illustrated Treatise on the Maritime Kingdoms (Haiguo tuzhi).
Life and times
Dates 1785 CE–1850 CE