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THE BULL-HEADED PREMIER                   103  demanded the
recall to power of the dismissed censors and the cashier- ing of
Leeding and Huiching, known as the power behind Wang Anshih.
When Chang Chien went up to the premier's office to press ^iis
case, he found Wang Anshih in a curious state of mind. The
latter listened to him without saying a word, but was laughing
behind a fan held before his face.  "I do not doubt," said the
censor, "that you are laughing at me for my stupidity. But you
should be aware that there are many more people in the country
who are laughing at you."  Another important censor to fall at
the same time was Cheng Hao, the elder of the two "Cheng
brothers", great neo-Confucianist philosophers of the Sung
dynasty. Cheng Hao had co-operated with Wang intimately in the
early days of the reforms. Now he also went 40 the premier's
office to fight the case out with