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Zhao Erxun
Late Qing bannerman and provincial governor-general who, after 1914, headed the Qing History Office and directed the Draft History of Qing.
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 Hao Cishan · Director of the Qing History Office
Zhao Erxun, styled Cishan, was a Han-martial bannerman of the Plain Blue Banner who earned his jinshi in 1874. In the last decades of the Qing he served as a senior provincial official, including Military Governor of Shengjing and Governor-General of Huguang and of Sichuan, and in 1911 became Governor-General of the Three Northeastern Provinces. In 1914 Yuan Shikai appointed him Director of the Qing History Office, where he led a team of about a hundred scholars. The manuscript was hastily completed in 1927, the year he died, and was printed the next year as the Draft History of Qing, its title signalling an unfinished text; the work bears his name as chief compiler.
Life and times
Dates 1844–1927 CE