Lü Liuliang

Who was Lü Liuliang?

Lü Liuliang was a Han Chinese from Tongxiang in Zhejiang province. He was born under the Ming Dynasty but died under the Manchu-led Qing.

Poet and author of many books, Lü took active part in the anti-Manchu military movement that followed the fall of the Ming in 1644. After the failure of the Ming loyalist movement, he became a hermit and a physician. He refused to serve the new dynasty because he argued that upholding the difference between "Hua" and "barbarians" was more important than respecting the righteous bond between minister and sovereign.

Lü Liuliang wrote a famous anti-Qing poem. "The light breeze, however delicate, does not blow on me; the bright moon has never stopped casting its light on folks." In this poem, the "light breeze" contains the character for "Qing", and "bright moon" the character for "Ming."