Lín Zéxú 林則徐 (1785–1850), zì Yuánfǔ 元撫 / Shàomù 少穆 / Shílín 石麟, native of Hóuguān 侯官 (Fúzhōu, Fújiàn). Late-Jiāqìng jìnshì (Jiāqìng 16 = 1811) and one of the most consequential Qīng statesmen of the Dàoguāng era. After serving in Hànlín, the Censorate, and various provincial posts, Lín rose to Governor-General of Húguǎng (1837), and was sent in 1839 as Imperial Commissioner (qīnchāi dàchén 欽差大臣) to Guǎngzhōu to suppress the opium trade — the 1839 confrontation with British opium-traders led directly to the First Opium War (1839–42). After the war Lín was demoted and exiled to Yīlí 伊犁, later partially rehabilitated and serving as Governor-General of Yúnguì (1846). He died in 1850 en route to a new commission to suppress the Tàipíng Rebellion. CBDB id 54819.
Lín had a long-standing connection to the Fújiàn medical-literati circle of his youth: his father had been a member of the “zhēn lǜ huì” 真率會 literary gathering with 陳念祖 (Chén Niànzǔ / Chén Xiūyuán), the leading Fújiàn medical pedagogue, and Lín wrote prefaces to several of Chén’s medical works — most famously the preface to the Jīnguì yào lüè qiǎn zhù (KR3ef090, 1830) and to the Shì zài yì 實在易. These prefaces, written during Lín’s provincial-official phase before his anti-opium prominence, are valuable witnesses both to Chén’s stature in late-Jiāqìng Fújiàn and to the medical interests of one of the most consequential nineteenth-century Chinese statesmen.