As a matter of fact, the reason why the Qingliu people of the Great Qian Dynasty resolutely opposed the visit of foreign ministers was because foreigners refused to bow their heads, and this was incompatible with the sacred theory that the emperor of the Celestial Dynasty was the "co-lord of the world" and the ancient system of "paying tribute"!

In the sixth year of Tongzhi's reign, when discussing the issue of amending the treaty, Premier Yamen solicited the opinions of several major feudal officials on this issue. The vast majority of people advocated that the question should be avoided until the emperor came of age. Li Shaoquan, the governor of Zhili, believed that contact with Prince Jing was enough to reach the heavens, and that direct visits would not lead to other gains for foreign diplomatic envoys. As for the etiquette of the emperor's coming-of-age audience, he argued that foreign ministers should be allowed to follow the etiquette of meeting their own lords. His teacher, Zeng Bohan, believed that Emperor Ningxu had regarded Russia as an equal state, not a subordinate vassal, so the imperial court could also regard foreign ministers as envoys of countries with equal status, so that they could be exempted from the customs of Middle-earth. Tsang's suggestion was undoubtedly met with fierce opposition from conservative officials, who insisted that "the laws of the ancestors are immutable" and that "the customs of foreign countries must not be changed from the ritual system of the Middle Summer."

It was not until the twelfth year of Tongzhi that the 18-year-old Emperor Tongzhi officially took over the government, and the ministers of Britain, France, Russia, the United States, and Germany jointly submitted a note to the Prime Minister Yamen, requesting to meet Emperor Tongzhi and submit his credentials.

There is no way to delay, and the reason for refusal no longer exists. Prime Minister Yamen can only hold talks with the ministers of the five countries. During the negotiations, the two sides quarreled over the issue of the pilgrimage of handing over the credentials in person, and the cadres insisted: "It is not feasible for him to say that the treaty has a courtesy that hinders the national system; It is also not feasible to hinder the Middle Earth state. He said that the treaty allowed preferential treatment; then tell me to treat each other in Middle-earth. It can be better than the rites. It cannot be superior to the etiquette. He is the only one who bows down. Those who hinder the national body cannot do it, and they can also be discussed; Then it is said that only the bow and worship is the most important thing about the Middle Earth national body, which is first agreed, and then it can be calmly proposed. "The ministers of various countries insisted: The "Treaty of Tianjin" had already stipulated in the matter of the audience, and the Daqian court had promised the emperor to fulfill it after he took office; Envoy visits have been a common practice in Western countries, and there are detailed records in the Chinese translation of the "Public Law of All Nations". There is no difficulty in understanding; The rites of worship should be in accordance with the manner prevailing in each country, and all countries should be equal, not vassals, and should not be forced to bow down.

After three months of back and forth, the debate finally came to an end and the two sides agreed:

1. The ministers of the five countries do not bow down when they meet the monarch, and as a concession, the ministers change the three-bow salute to the sovereign of their own country to five bows.

2. No grand audience ceremony will be held, and only those who bring their own national credentials and are stationed in the country for the first time are allowed to participate in the audience. Presentation of credentials. You can't ask for an audience at any time in the future.

On June 29, the twelfth year of Tongzhi, the ministers of Britain, France, Russia, the United States, and the Netherlands and the ambassador of Japan. A total of envoys from six countries met with Emperor Tongzhi in the west of the Ziguang Pavilion. The envoys of the Western countries finally got their wish and stood in front of the emperor of the Celestial Empire for the first time as representatives of equal countries, at this time, a full 80 years have passed since the time of Magourny's envoy!

In the eyes of foreigners, the envoys of the six countries met with the Great Qiandi Emperor with equal etiquette, but the understanding of the Qianguo people at that time closely linked this matter with the "collapse of etiquette", and the sense of humiliation of being forced to make changes converged, which eventually led to the "Records of the National Dynasty", which should have recorded in detail the major events of the imperial court, and the "Living Notes", which detailed the important activities of the emperor every day, were unwilling to describe this matter in detail. Even the court officials who love to keep a diary have deliberately brushed aside the most important audience etiquette. Behind this brushstroke, it can be said that there is a certain unspeakable humiliation.

Just one question of whether to kneel or not, it is like the sky is falling, not only has it been argued for many years, but also because of this issue and foreigners have lost a lot of real interests, in the future generations, it may be difficult to imagine, but in this era, it is a real existence!

As the elite of the Great Qian Empire, scholars and doctors who believed in Confucian moral theories believed that with a Ming monarch, there would be good people. The king is the plate, and the people are the water; The disk is round, the water is round, the disk is square, and the water is square. From this theory, it can be inferred that during the reign of the Ming monarch, the flowers of virtue bloomed everywhere. Sometimes, illiterate coolies would tell foreigners that they would not close their doors at night during the "Yao Shun" period, because there were no thieves; If something is lost on the road, the first person who finds it will stay there until a second person comes, and he will not go away, so that he will wait until the owner arrives, and the wall will be returned to Zhao. There is a common saying: the world is declining, people's hearts are not ancient, and the present is not as good as the past. This tendency to favor the past and the present is not limited to the empire and its subjects, but is true all over the world, but the degree to which the people of the Celestial Empire are convinced of this is "unparalleled" by other peoples. All the virtues of antiquity are recorded in ancient texts, and everything that is present today is nothing more than inheritance. The orthodox Celestial Dynasty people regarded the "Four Books and Five Classics"; Just as devout Christians view the Hebrew Bible, Confucian scholars do not believe that the Four Books and the Five Classics need to be supplemented. The ancient classics have created this great nation and the political system of the thousand-year-old empire, and no matter what other nature this system has, its tenacious persistence is an indisputable fact. Self-preservation is the first principle of the nation, and although it is not unique to a way of ruling that has remained intact over such a long period of time, the admiration for it is very similar to their admiration for the "Four Books and Five Classics". The Imperial Government cannot be blown down under any circumstances, it is a cube, and once it is overturned, it will only change its face, and its appearance and connotation will remain the same as before. This process is repeated, and the Celestial Empire is a church; The outcome of the evolution of the government is to be expected. Any suggestion for improvement is nothing less than a complete leftist heresy. Thus, the indisputable superiority of the ancients rested on a solid foundation of the obvious disadvantages of later generations.

There is another common phenomenon in the Empire: millions of people are ready to die for a certain faith, but they do not understand that belief and do not bind their lives according to the specific tenets of that faith. Once the customs and language are fixed, they are like plaster casts, which can shatter them. But you can't change it. At least in theory. But in reality, any theory is resilient and flexible. No custom is permanent. As long as there are certain conditions, there can be changes. For example, it was the rulers of the Great Qian Dynasty who introduced a new haircut style for all the Celestial Empires, short hair, that is, shaved their hair very short with only a thin layer, and the Bo people in the north, who dominated the empire, were very proud of their short hairstyle more than their clothes, because it was their ancestors who rebelled against oppression. A symbol of the seizure of the world. However, in the south of the Great Qian Empire, many places still have nostalgia for the previous dynasty, and they came with long hair. In the southern provinces of the empire, men and women alike wore long hair that could be dragged to the ground, and they valued their hair more than the Bo tribe, even more than their own clothing. The men, like women, wore their hair in a high bun and protected it with a beautiful crown, and they wore a magnificent garment with wide robes and large sleeves. Admire your looks and pass the day. To the surprise of foreigners.

In a country with ancient traditions, people have always assumed that a fait accompli is true. A long-established habit, people just follow it and don't care about anything else. They believe that these are handed down by the ancients, and naturally have their own excellent truths; Moreover, they think that "everybody" does what they do, and they do it too. In the Empire, the machine drove the gears, not the gears drove the machines. Since people do this all the time, just go with the flow.

The attitude of the people of the Celestial Empire towards the West is procrastination. On the one hand, they are not very willing to accept new things, and on the other hand, they have no desire at all, and they do not even want to give up old things. Although the old customs, the old superstitions, and the old beliefs are now outdated, people still cling to the remnants. At the beginning of the attempt to introduce the telegraph, the admiral of a certain province also said that the locals were so hostile to the new invention that they could not set up a telephone line. However, as soon as the war with Japan began, the wires were erected in a completely different context, and the provincial government immediately set up a number of official telegraph bureaus, which were highly recommended. In addition, Feng Shui became an almost insurmountable obstacle to the construction of railways within the empire. However, once the Imperial Cabinet built the railroad in order to rebuild the imperial gardens, the theory of feng shui gave way, and the theory of feng shui was also derived, and the theory that the railway is beneficial to feng shui ("the iron dragon travels the world, leads to the gold of Kyushu"), people welcomed the railway with great dignity and enjoyed the convenience and benefits it bringed.

It can be said that the emotions of the people living in this ancient country, if any, are to be satisfied by "rites"; The responsibilities of the people of the Celestial Empire are also fulfilled by courtesy; The virtues and deficiencies of the people of the Celestial Empire are also derived by reference to etiquette; The natural relationship between people is basically maintained by the rites, which for the Celestial Empire are the embodiment of morality, politics and religion, and have a variety of connections with the family, society and religion. The teachings of the Four Books and other scriptures, especially the Book of Filial Piety, are crucial. "Filial piety comes first, but we must look at the motive rather than the behavior, otherwise there will be no filial piety in the world." The people of the Celestial Empire were specially taught that the root cause of all moral corruption was a lack of filial piety. Violation of etiquette is a lack of filial piety. Disloyalty to the monarch is a lack of filial piety. Failing to fulfill one's duties as an official is a lack of filial piety. If you don't treat your friends sincerely, you lack filial piety. Killing the enemy is not brave, it is a lack of filial piety (from the "Book of Rites?"). Sacrifice": "Abode should not be, not filial piety; The king is disloyal, not filial piety; Officials are disrespectful, not filial piety; Friends don't believe, it's not filial piety; There is no courage in the battle array, and it is not filial piety. ”）。 The people of the Celestial Empire believed that the stubborn diseases of parents could be cured by eating (without knowing it) a piece of meat from their children. "There are three unfilial pieties, and no queen is great." For this reason, every son should marry and start a family as early as possible. It is extremely common for a person from the Celestial Empire to be a grandfather at the age of thirty-six. And everyone wants to have a boy, which leads to the confinement system, and all kinds of misfortunes come with it. When a boy is born, he is happy, and when he gives birth to a girl, he is depressed. This led to what is known as the mass infanticidation of the Celestial Empire. This kind of crime is more serious in the south of the empire than in the north. The teachings of the Celestial Empire did not say anything for their daughter, everything was on the side of their son. As a result of the accidental gender difference, the baby boy became a god in the family, and likewise, the baby girl became a terrible burden.

The structure of the Celestial Empire's society, which was established according to the patriarchal model, had serious drawbacks. It represses the natural nature of the human heart, while others may be domesticated to the extreme. As a result, as long as the older ones are alive, the younger ones are almost completely subordinate. People's hearts are imprisoned by the weight of iron. hindered development. It also hinders healthy upward change. The principle of filial piety in the Celestial Empire is believed. Filial piety is mainly about passing on the lineage, which has led to a series of drawbacks. It forces people to have children, whether they are able to support them or not. It has also led to early marriages, leaving millions of people in excessive poverty and struggling to survive. It is also the root cause of polygamy and concubinage, which inevitably leads to disaster. The true religion of the people of the Celestial Empire is embodied and summarized in ancestor worship. If the true meaning of ancestor worship is properly understood, it is the heaviest bondage that people have ever been forced to endure. A foreigner who has lived in Qianguo for many years pointed out in his article: "Hundreds of millions of people from the Celestial Empire are alive. The most annoying subservience to countless generations of dead people. Today's generation is bound by many generations of the past...... If countless generations that have passed away are still regarded as gods by the people of the Celestial Empire, how can the Celestial Empire really take a step forward? We believe that the real root of the practice of filial piety in the Celestial Empire is half fear and half self-love...... If the sacrifice is neglected, the gods will be angry. If the gods are angry, they will take revenge. The safest thing is to worship them. This seems to be a compression of the various theories of the Celestial Empire that worship the dead...... Every son does his duty to his father, and he demands the same from his son. That's what raising children is for...... Ancestor worship is the most perfect and ultimate expression of filial piety, along with polytheism, agnosticism, and atheism. It turns the dead into gods, and the gods are the dead......"

Foreigners who came to the Celestial Empire believed that among the ancient books of Middle-earth. There is simply nothing that would make people's hearts and minds low. This most important feature is often pointed out. This is also the biggest difference from various documentary works of ancient India, ancient Greece, and ancient Rome. A foreign scholar said: "No nation in ancient or modern times can possess such a sacred document as the Qianguo people. There is not a single description of debauchery, not a single word out of place. Every sentence and commentary in the Four Books and Five Classics can be read aloud in any English home. Moreover, in every non-Christian nation, idolatry has always been associated with human sacrifice and the embodiment of sin, accompanied by debauchery rituals and indulgences. And in Qianguo, there is no sign of that at all. "The imperial examinations, which require the writing of scriptures and texts, have brought a remarkable degree of unity of mind and a strong impetus to the needs of every candidate to regard the stability of the government as a prerequisite for personal success. Undoubtedly, this is an important factor in why the Qianguo people have continued to this day...... All the gods in the Qianguo are dead, and perhaps we can further affirm from the worship of ancestors that in a sense, all the dead in the Qianguo are gods...... In Qianguo, Confucianism is the foundation, and all Qianguo people are Confucians...... In the god world of the Qianguo people, there is no fixed hierarchy of authority. This extreme chaos, if it appears in the human world, is tantamount to a long period of anarchy. …… It is often said that among all the civilized nations today, there is no nation that is as superstitious and credulous as the Qianguo people, and this is an out-and-out truth. Wealthy merchants and learned scholars were never ashamed to let others see that they spent two days a month dedicating themselves to the worship of foxes, weasels, hedgehogs, snakes, and rats, and wrote 'Great Immortals' on their tablets, believing that they had an important impact on the fate of man...... The people of Qianguo bargained vigorously when they did business, and they also wanted to get some favor for the gods they prayed to. He may have bought good luck by donating money to repair the temple, but he is likely to donate 250 wen and write 1,000 wen...... At the end of each year, the god of the stove has to return to heaven to report the behavior of every family, but people first smear some sticky dilute sugar on his mouth to prevent him from complaining, which is a typical example of the Qianguo people showing that man will conquer the sky. In the same way, give a boy a girl's name and make the brainless demons think that he is really a girl, so that he can live out the rest of his life in peace...... They do have objects of worship, to be exact, many idols mixed together to worship, but have no faith; They have innumerable and all kinds of immature idolatry, which they will laugh at, but they will not dare to ignore it...... Confusing ethics with external rituals makes it a form of authoritarian politics. In such a system of social life, it is tyranny that maintains order, women are slaves, and children are subjects in their relations with their elders. ”

Just like now, after Lin Yiqing returns to Qianguo, he must go to his "hometown" Fuzhou to "recognize his ancestors and return to his ancestors" in order to truly integrate into the Qianguo society.

The current society of Qianguo, like many places with charming scenery in Qianguo, is beautiful and picturesque from a distance, but if you look closer, you will always find dilapidated and hateful, and the air is filled with unpleasant smells. (To be continued......)

PS: The main force is very righteous, last week I drove a large number of shareholders from 5000 points all the way down, but halfway found that a group of new shareholders were left behind, recalling Zhang Yimou's movie "No One Less", gritted his teeth and then drove back for 2 days to pick them up, and now you can rest assured to go to 4000 points.

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