Ministers › Provincial Governors
Cen Chunxuan
Qing governor-general from Xilin, son of Cen Yuying, who escorted Cixi's flight in 1900 and later joined the campaigns against Yuan Shikai
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 Yun Jie · Yi Zhai
- Roles
- Provincial Governors
Cen Chunxuan, courtesy name Yunjie, came from Xilin in Guangxi and was a son of the Yunnan-Guizhou governor-general Cen Yuying; a provincial graduate, he rose to financial commissioner of Guangdong and then of Gansu. When the allied armies closed on Beijing in 1900 he led troops to Huailai to meet the fleeing court and escorted Empress Dowager Cixi west, which won him the governorships of Shaanxi and Shanxi and, from 1903, the post of governor-general at Canton, where he impeached officials in large numbers. Called to Beijing as minister of posts and communications in 1907, he joined Qu Hongji against Prince Qing and Yuan Shikai, lost the struggle and was dismissed; contemporaries paired Cen in the south with Yuan in the north. Under the Republic he was chosen commander of the anti-Yuan forces in 1913, served as deputy head of the Military Affairs Council during the 1916 campaign against Yuan's monarchy, and in 1918 chaired the constitutional-protection government in Canton. He retired to Shanghai after 1920 and died there in 1933.
Life and times
Dates 1861 CE–1933 CE