"The Book of Confession to Zheng Jing" is not only a declaration urging Zheng Jing to surrender as soon as possible, but also the first time that simplified Chinese characters appeared in this era. The whole text of the pen is written in simplified Chinese characters www.biquge.info creating a new history of Chinese characters. The bold use of simplified Chinese in such an important document is the result of Zhou Shixiang's careful consideration, and the purpose is to promote simplified Chinese characters.

When he was in Guangdong, Zhou Shixiang carried out a literacy campaign in the army, and the military envoys at all levels not only served as "political commissars", but also played the role of teachers. However, the results of the "literacy campaign" were not good, and in a few years, the whole army had only trained 40,000 or 50,000 non-commissioned officers who had mastered the number of 1,000 words. On the one hand, the reason for the low efficiency was that the Taiping army was always in battle and did not have enough time to teach soldiers; On the other hand, because traditional Chinese characters are too difficult to learn, soldiers have considerable resistance to learning them. In the words of the blind man Lee, he would rather not read and write after death than suffer sins during his lifetime.

Traditional Chinese characters are indeed difficult to learn, which Zhou Shixiang deeply understands. Compared with the simplified characters he had learned in his previous life, there were too many strokes in traditional Chinese characters that it was difficult to memorize. If you start learning traditional Chinese characters from the beginning of your life, it will be easy to master as you get older. However, the main targets of the literacy campaign launched in the army are all adult people who are illiterate and illiterate, and it is difficult for some strong people to let them put down their swords and guns and learn traditional Chinese characters one by one.

Simplified Chinese characters with fewer strokes can undoubtedly make the soldiers more acceptable, in the past, it took more than ten or twenty or thirty strokes to write a word, but now Liao Liao can write a few strokes, only in terms of teaching, it must be more advanced than traditional Chinese characters. And simplifying Chinese characters is not the whim of Zhou Shixiang, but has a long history, since the day of the emergence of Chinese characters, successive dynasties have constantly tried to simplify the font, from the oracle bone inscription, Jin Wen to the seal script, and then to the official script, regular script, etc. Regular script gradually increased in the Sui and Tang dynasties, and was quite common among the people, and was called "vulgar characters". For thousands of years, Chinese characters have been in constant change, and many times the simplified and the complex complement each other, and there are actually many simplified characters that are familiar to Zhou Shi in the current Ming Dynasty script. What he needs to do now is to speed up this simplification process and formalize it, so as to increase literacy and universal education.

Compared with simplified characters, traditional Chinese characters are definitely stronger, but no matter how you look at them, traditional Chinese characters seem to be a tool, a tool that is mastered by a certain class. This class is considered by Zhou Shixiang to be the gentry class. The more cumbersome the font, the harder it is to learn. Scholars who start learning since childhood will definitely be able to master it slowly, while ordinary people will learn it like a book in the sky, and most of them are difficult to master.

Song Xianggong, a scholar of Guangdong University and the governor of Liangguang, once set up a character learning class according to the simplified character list given by Zhou Shixiang, and selected 100 soldiers who could not read big characters and divided them into two groups, one group learned traditional Chinese characters, and one group learned simplified Chinese characters, and the final result was that only 8 people in the group who could learn traditional Chinese characters were qualified, while 43 people in the group of simplified characters were qualified.

The same time, the same gentleman, the same teaching method, but the results are very different.

Song Xianggong asserted at that time that the simplified Chinese character list given by Zhou Shixiang would allow thousands of people in the Ming Dynasty to get rid of Zhou's "illiterate" identity, and if the simplified Chinese characters could be officially implemented throughout the country, and popularized in all provinces, prefectures, counties, and villages, it would not be long before all the people of the world would become "scholars".

Can write, can read, in Zhou Shixiang's previous life, every Chinese can, not a thing at all. In those days, illiteracy was a joke. In this era, "knowledgeable and reasonable" is the privilege of a very small number of people, and it is something that many people cannot do in a lifetime.

The decrees of the imperial court and the official government must be known to the people, and the people must be able to read and write. Otherwise, the illiterate people would still be able to be toyed with by the gentry who mastered the "written word".

The implementation of simplified Chinese characters is a major event that is beneficial to the present and the future, and it is a major event related to the Ming Dynasty, whether the Han people can have long-term peace and stability, and lead the world, and it is also a major event that Zhou Shixiang can implement and achieve.

Steam engines, ironclad ships, tanks, cannons, machine guns, these are all good things, but how to make them, Zhou Shixiang can't do it, he can only provide ideas and ideas for the craftsmen of this era. But how to write simple and fluent words, he can, and can do it right away.

The essence of writing is the medium of communication, and the simpler the medium, the better, and simplicity is conducive to promotion. Everything derived from the essence of words is, in the final analysis, nothing more than a trick of literati and doctors.

Of course, the literati liked calligraphy, and this Zhou Shixiang had no intention of interfering, but he would never allow any more calligraphy to appear in the official documents of the imperial court, just correct the font. For example, the so-called calligraphy of cursive script, which makes people look at what is written and what is written, should be swept into the garbage heap as soon as possible, so that future generations will not follow suit.

The Book of Confessions to Zheng is the first time that simplified Chinese characters have officially appeared on an official occasion. Along with the "Book of Confessions to Zheng", there was also a simplified and traditional comparison table compiled by Zhou Shixiang himself.

The "Book of Confessions to Zheng" is also different from the previous documents, it is written in the vernacular.

The full text is as follows:

"The surname is Zheng Jing, the eldest son of Zhu Chenggong:

You've reached the point where you're at the end of your rope. The main force of the naval division of Jinxia has surrendered to the imperial court under the leadership of Zheng Mingjun, the Duke of Dinghai, Zheng Zhangxu, the Marquis of Jianping, and Feng Xifan, which means that you no longer have the ability to defend Jinxia against the imperial army. Zheng Xi, the prince of Fujian, has been served by the imperial court, and is now recruiting a large army for the imperial court, which shows that most people in Jinxia are centripetal to the Ming Dynasty and their hearts are to the imperial court. No matter how stubborn you are, there is absolutely no hope. Do you still want to escape Jinxia and go overseas? Do you think your subordinates are willing to do this? Whether I'm Zhou Shixiang or you Zheng Jing, they are all courtiers of the Ming Dynasty, and they are the sons of the Han family who have been rooted in the Ming Dynasty for generations, are you willing to wander overseas, not only can you not return to your homeland, but you can't even come back to your children and grandchildren? Can you bear to let the soldiers who have followed your father for more than ten years become homeless?

Zheng Jing, return to the imperial court. You don't have many troops in your hands anymore, and neither the land division nor the water division can compete with the imperial army. You can force all the young men of Jinxia into your army, but how can these people fight? For more than a month, under our layers of encirclement and heavy blows, your territory has greatly shrunk. You only have such a small place as Jinxia, and it is not an exaggeration to say that it is the size of a palm. With so many people huddled together, I just won't send troops to fight you, as long as your food routes are cut off by land and sea, it won't be long before your Jinxia will run out of food. When the time comes, not only your soldiers will be hungry, but the people of Jinxia will also be hungry, so why bother to make them cry out after you? Zheng Jing, you must not forget that all the people of Jinxia, whether military or civilian, from the day they came to this land, they came to follow your father to continue to resist the Qing Dynasty, not to follow you against the imperial court!

Zheng Jing, you have to make a choice immediately, because I believe that it won't take many days, I'm afraid that without any action from my army, the soldiers and civilians of Jinxia will turn against you themselves. When your Father was there, he called you a rebel and refused to forgive you, and that led you to a dead end. I can understand that, so I'm going to give you a chance, a chance to make a makeover, to start over. You should learn from your uncle Zheng Xi, learn from Zheng Mingjun and Zheng Zhangxu, and immediately order the whole army to lay down their arms and stop resisting, and I, Zhou Shixiang, can guarantee the safety of you, your family, and the officers and soldiers under your command. Only in this way is the only life you can sleep, you think about it, if you think it is good, do it. If you don't think this is okay, then I don't mind competing with you to see if your Jinxia Projectile Land can really resist the hundreds of thousands of troops of the imperial court.

Zhou Shixiang, King of Qi of the Ming Dynasty. ”

In the "Confession to Zheng Jingshu", the vernacular used by Zhou Shixiang is obviously very vulgar compared to the "elegant" official documents of the past. But Zhou Shixiang thinks that whether it is an official document or a letter, it should be in the vernacular, so that people can understand it in layman's terms, if people look at the clouds and mountains and can't understand it, then it has no meaning at all.

This is also Zhou Shixiang's self-confidence, he does not need to package himself as the nobility of the King of Qi through elegance and refinement, nor does he need to prove his level through gorgeous words. He will not use it in general, and he will not allow anyone to use it again in the future.

Zheng Jing received the "Confession to Zheng Jingshu", looking at those unfamiliar but familiar fonts, he didn't understand it for a long time.

Chen Yonghua "translated" the content of the "Confession to Zheng Jingshu" through the "translation" of the simplified and traditional Chinese font table.

Zheng Jing was silent, and the feeling that this declaration gave him could only be described in five words—full of absurdity.