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Statues of Qin Hui and his wife, Lady Wang, at Yue Fei Temple in Hangzhou, China. While the Song dynasty politician did facilitate the execution of a military hero, Yue Fei, some historians consider he wasn’t as bad as history makes him out to be. Photo: Wikipedia
Opinion
Reflections
by Wee Kek Koon
Reflections
by Wee Kek Koon

Qin Hui, Chinese historical figure featured in Zhang Yimou’s Full River Red, is hated for causing a hero’s death – but maybe he wasn’t so bad

  • Song dynasty politician Qin Hui, who has a key role in new Zhang Yimou film Full River Red, is reviled in China for aiding heroic general Yue Fei’s execution
  • Statues of Qin were erected so people could show their scorn for him; later scholars felt he’d been unfairly ‘cancelled’, but rehabilitation remains far off
Wee Kek Koon
Wee Kek Koon
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I recently watched the movie Full River Red (2023), directed by Zhang Yimou, expecting it to be a biopic about Yue Fei (1103–1142), the Chinese military hero who valiantly defended the Southern Song dynasty against the Jurchen invaders.

The movie title (Man Jiang Hong in Mandarin) is a direct reference to the famous patriotic poem, traditionally attributed to Yue Fei, of which many in the Greater China region can recite by heart a line or two, if not all of it.

The film turned out to be a mystery-comedy set a few years after Yue Fei’s death, with his nemesis, Qin Hui, playing a key role.

Qin Hui (1091–1155) is best known in Chinese history as the prime minister who was in favour of making peace with the Jurchen nation, in contrast to the frontier general Yue Fei, whose ultimate goal was to recover all the lands north of the Yangtze River, which had been conquered by the Jurchen.

Chinese actor Jackson Yee in a still from Full River Red. Photo: Huanxi Media
The final outcome of their political rivalry was Yue Fei’s execution by Emperor Gaozong of the Southern Song, who had his own reasons for wanting Yue Fei out of the way and concluding a peace treaty with the enemy state.

As the key facilitator of Yue Fei’s unjust death, however, Qin Hui bore the brunt of the blame.

A Qing dynasty illustration of Chinese military hero Yue Fei. Photo: Wikipedia
In the centuries since, Qin Hui has been vilified as the ultimate Chinese villain whose machinations resulted in the murder of a beloved hero, and the definitive “traitor to the Han Chinese race” (Han jian) for colluding with the Jurchen to campaign for a peace treaty in their favour.
Qin Hui has been so reviled by generations of Chinese that statues depicting him and his wife kneeling with hands tied behind their backs were put up in various locations in China for people to vent their hate, the most well-known of which are still kneeling at Yue Fei’s tomb in Hangzhou.
The popular Chinese snack youtiao, savoury deep-fried dough sticks, is known in some Chinese regions as “oil-fried Hui” (eg yew jar guay in southern Fujian, where guay is the Hokkien-Minnan pronunciation of hui). Qin Hui dies a new death every time someone deep-fries a dough stick and takes a bite out of it.
Chinese deep-fried dough sticks being prepared at a Hong Kong congee restaurant. Photo: K.Y. Cheng
Dough sticks are known in some parts of China as “oil-fried Hui”. Photo: Shutterstock

In 2017, China’s State Administration for Industry and Commerce prohibited the use of the words “Qin Hui” in company and brand names.

While Qin Hui had questionable morals and motives, history is not a bad telenovela with cartoon-like heroes and villains. Like most people past and present, Qin Hui was a complex individual. When he was a young official in government, he was stridently pro-war and opposed to making peace with the Jurchen.

Together with most of the Song’s imperial family and officials, Qin Hui was captured by the Jurchen army in 1127. He sojourned in Jurchen-held territories for three years before he made his way to the new Song capital, which had moved south to present-day Hangzhou.

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Something must have happened to him in those three years because, after he rejoined the government of the Southern Song, he became an unapologetic advocate for peace with the Jurchen.

Despite his perceived villainy, he was not without his defenders in history. Some historians and commentators in the Ming and Qing period defended his dovish stance, arguing that he brought peace and prosperity to the Southern Song, which lasted for another 124 years after his death.

The great 20th-century scholar Hu Shih went as far as to say that history had wronged Qin Hui.

Still, having been universally “cancelled” for close to nine centuries, Qin Hui is not about to get rehabilitated so easily or so soon.

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