Rui Hai was a famous Chinese official during of the Ming Dynasty. His name has come down in history as a model of honesty and integrity in office and he reemerged as an important historical character during the Cultural Revolution. Hai Rui developed a reputation for diligence and fairness. This won him many friends from the peasant classes, but also many enemies within the bureaucracy.
Background
Rui Hai was born on January 23, 1514 in Qiongshan, Hainan, China. Unfortunately, when Hai Rui was small, his father, a stipendiary student at a government school, died, leaving him to grow up in poverty with his widowed mother, who instilled a strong sense of Confucian morality in her son.
Education
Hai Rui took the Imperial examination but was unsuccessful, and his official career only began in 1553, when he was 39, with a humble position as clerk of education in Fujian.
Career
Rui Hai gained a reputation for his uncompromising adherence to upright morality, scrupulous honesty, poverty, and fairness. He was called to the capital Beijing and promoted to the junior position of secretary of ministry of Revenue. In 1565, he submitted a memorial strongly criticizing the Jiajing Emperor for the neglect of his duties and bringing disaster to the country, for which he was sentenced to death in 1566. He was released after the Emperor died in early 1567.
Hai Rui was reappointed under the Longqing Emperor but soon forced to resign in 1570 after complaints were made over his overzealous handling of land-tenure issues. He then spent 15 years in retirement in Hainan before being finally brought back to the Empire's "auxiliary capital" of Nanjing, in 1585, to serve under the Wanli Emperor. Hai Rui was promoted to censor-in-chief of Nanjing in 1586, but died in office a year later.