Ministers › Remonstrators
Yuan Chang
Zhejiang official and Zongli Yamen minister who memorialised against attacking the legations in 1900 and was beheaded with Xu Jingcheng
At dawn in a palace courtyard, a large drum hangs in a small roofed frame beside a red pillar, with a bound bundle of scrolls on a low stand in front; a stone balustrade leads toward a large hall in the mist, and a row of tiny people stands far away.
Also known as Zi Shuangqiu · Shi Zhongjie
Yuan Chang, courtesy name Shuangqiu, styled Chongli, came from Tonglu in Zhejiang and passed the metropolitan examination in 1876. He served in the Board of Revenue and as a secretary of the Zongli Yamen, and in the early 1890s was posted to Anhui as circuit intendant at Wuhu, where he founded an academy, reorganised taxes and improved waterworks. He later returned to Beijing as director of the Court of Sacrificial Worship and a minister of the Zongli Yamen. In 1900 he sent up memorial after memorial arguing that the Boxers must not be indulged and the legations must not be attacked, and on 28 July he and Xu Jingcheng were beheaded together. The court later cleared his name and gave him the posthumous name Zhongjie, and he was honoured with his fellow Zhejiang natives Xu Jingcheng and Xu Yongyi in the Shrine of the Three Loyal Ministers by West Lake in Hangzhou.
Life and times
Dates 1846 CE–1900 CE