I have talked so much about going off topic before, mainly to expose the true face of some admirers of the Republic of China, referred to as "national fans". and the absurdity of those elegant "Republic of China styles" in the eyes of ordinary people. Otherwise, no matter how I depict the daily life of the Republican era, there will always be people who put forward the "new views" of these "historical inventors" to "prove" that what I have written is nonsense, and accuse me of whitewashing history for the Communist Party.

Let's get back to business, if you want to travel to the Republic of China era, where will you travel to the Republic of China era?

-- The Republic of China was an era of alternation between the old and the new, and from the coast to the inland, there were great differences in social outlook between different regions of China.

When the ten-mile ocean field of Shanghai Beach has been lit up with gorgeous and colorful neon lights; The serf estates in Lhasa, Tibet, were still in the darkness of medieval ignorance. The British once disassembled a small car, carried it on pack horses, and transported it to Lhasa over the mountains and mountains. As a result, after assembling the car in Lhasa, I found that there was no driver here, and secondly, there was no gasoline, and there was no road for a car to run in Zuihou......

In view of the above-mentioned vastly different differences, when we specifically describe the life of the Republic of China, we can only select some more representative areas as samples, so as to reflect the social outlook of the entire Republic of China era from the small.

It must be made clear that those modern people who have traveled to the Republic of China, except for a few people who want to carry out the red revolution, should not be willing to go to the middle and lower poor peasants or pull rickshaws if they have a choice. And if you want to live a more decent life in the Republic of China era, then it seems that you have to be a local owner and old wealth in the countryside, and in the city, you have to be a petty bourgeoisie, or simply become an official and follow the official career......

Here, we first discuss the life of the landlords in the Republic of China era.

In the hearts of many people of the older generation, the most classic image of the landlord of the Republic of China is probably none other than Huang Shiren in "The White-Haired Girl" - they occupy a large amount of land by skillful grabbing, and use the land they control to brutally exploit the peasants, get nothing for nothing, embezzle the wealth created by the peasants, and live a shameless life.

Unlike the modern agricultural capitalists who run large farms, the traditional Chinese landlords seem to have no need to care about breeding good seeds, renting agricultural machinery, purchasing fertilizers and pesticides, or building irrigation and water conservancy projects, but leaving everything to the peasants themselves.

In normal times, these landlords sat at home and just enjoyed themselves, and if they had something, they could also conscript tenant farmers to serve without compensation. When the autumn harvest came, the housekeeper took a group of dogs to the fields to collect rent from house to house. In the unlikely event that the annual situation is bad and the rent cannot be collected, the peasants are forced to sell their sons and daughters to pay off their debts, or they can be allowed to reduce their rents a little as appropriate, which is basically the same as the major shareholders in modern companies who are waiting for dividends.

In this way, the life of the landlord should be very relaxed and leisurely.

…… This one...... How so? Such a leisurely and prosperous landlord life may still be possible in the peaceful years of the Qing Dynasty. But in the era of the Republic of China...... Belch...... It can only be said that it is in line with the old saying: "The landlord's family has no surplus grain!" ”

In short, the landlords in the Republic of China era were not very easy to be.

First of all, the Republic of China era was an era of frequent wars, and warlords and bandits were rampant all over the country. From the beginning of the Baolu Movement in 1911 to the eve of the Anti-Japanese War, Sichuan has been fighting the Sichuan Army Civil War intermittently; Although Hebei Province (then called Zhili) was located in Gyeonggi, it also became the main battlefield of the Zhiwan War, the Zhifeng War, the Second Zhifeng War, and Chiang Kai-shek's Second Northern Expedition. …,

As the hardest hit area of the civil war, Henan Province was always looted over and over again by various Beiyang warlords and rogues throughout the Republic of China era - the Bailang Uprising, the Zhensong Army, the giant bandit "Old Foreigner", the Red Gun Society, Feng Yuxiang's National Army, the Northern Expedition, and Chiang Kai-shek's Central Plains War in 1930...... There are 400,000 bandits running around the province of Zuihou, and they are almost broken.

In the midst of such frequent wars, not to mention that the bones of the Shengdou small people have filled the ravines, and even the lives of the landlords and gentry are not guaranteed.

You must know that for most of the half months of the Republic of China era, China was a lawless and chaotic shijie. The soldiers and horses of those warlords are more or less disciplined in the big cities, and when they go to the countryside, they are completely like bandits.

In the Qing Dynasty, the landlords and gentry who owned vast fields in those places often had "fame" such as lifting people, showing talents, and donating officials (officials bought with money, mostly for false positions), and many people also had children, nephews or relatives who served as officials in the imperial court, thus weaving a huge network of relationships.

Even in the turbulent Taiping Heavenly Kingdom era, in addition to the Taiping Army and the Twist Army as anti-thieves, the Hunan Army, the Huai Army, and the Chu Army, which were under the name of the imperial court, usually had some scruples about them, so they did not dare to plunder too much. No matter how domineering the soldiers are, as long as they are not determined to rebel, otherwise they will be somewhat afraid of these landlords and gentry who have intertwined connections.

But the problem is that in the era of the Republic of China, all these talismans and privileges have been lost. The soldiers and warlords of the Republic of China era will never take the fame and identity of the Qing Dynasty in their eyes again. Extort when you should extort, slaughter when you should slaughter, and you will not be polite at all - the death of a person in the countryside in those years is really no different from the death of an ant.

In Yang Bailao's eyes, Huang Shiren is undoubtedly the existence that dominates life and death; But in front of the warlord with soldiers and horses, Huang Shiren is also a fart.

Although the landlords are also trying to defend their rights and interests by following the upper echelons of the new era, such as running for parliament. But after all, the early period of the Republic of China was an era of "having a gun is the king of grass", even if you have a friendship with some high-ranking official in Beijing, it may not be useful in the local area.

It is also a way to think of forming a good alliance with local warlords, after all, the county officials are not as good as the current management. But the problem is that most of the warlords have risen and fallen, and this "current management" has been replaced too often. The gentry had just spent a lot of money on investment, and the warlords had already been electrified...... So it was in vain.

Second, in Hebei, Shandong, Henan, and Sichuan, which were war-torn places in the early years of the Republic of China, even in the years when there was no war, the taxes that the warlords apportioned to the landlords in order to support the huge army and maintain a luxurious life were far heavier than in the late Qing Dynasty.

For example, at the end of the Qing Dynasty, Sichuan Province only needed to support 12,000 people in one town (equivalent to a division) of the new army, plus about the same number of old green battalion troops, and financial subsidies of about 2.5 million taels of silver to Yunnan, Guizhou, and Gansu.

But by 1935, the total strength of the Sichuan army that the Sichuan people needed to support had swelled to 340 regiments and about 840,000 people! The annual expenses are naturally several times more than ten times higher. In some places, agricultural taxes were actually "pre-levied" after the 100th anniversary of the Republic of China (2012)! Coupled with the destruction of the local economy caused by the Sichuan army's melee, even in a country of abundance like Sichuan, the landlords and gentry also complained of misery.

Although the situation of "pre-levied" taxation in the rural areas of the northern provinces is not as absurd as that of Sichuan, due to poor natural conditions, frequent famines, limited wealth among the people, and the tragic damage caused by wars, the actual proportion of the burden is even heavier.

Of course, the landlords could also try to raise the rent and pass on these burdens to the peasants. But there is only so much to be produced on the land, and even if the peasants are not left with a grain of grain, there is a limit to the amount of grain that can be scavenged. However, the warlords' ability to invent exorbitant taxes has never been limited, and it is not uncommon for them to come up with sixty or seventy additional taxes at once—such as donations for green seedlings, cigarettes, sanitation, green mountains, roads, entertainment, population taxes, lantern taxes, and so on. As the saying goes, "Since ancient times, there has been no tax on, and now there is only fart and no donation"! …,

Moreover, in addition to these exorbitant taxes, the warlords also liked to extort money from the landlords in various names, which often led to the bankruptcy of people.

For example, in the early years of the Republic of China, Shaanxi Province implemented the braid-cutting order while wantonly apportioning the "Guangfu money". As a result, the squires led the villagers to besiege the government, known as the "Braided Exemption" (I want to continue to keep the braids, so I don't pay the money). When the old and young people of the former Qing Dynasty heard about it, they all thought that "people think of the Holy Clear"!

Therefore, in North China and Shandong during the Republic of China, although the landlords and gentry in many counties had already received more than 70% of the actual land rent, they still took advantage of the danger of people in the famine year, fell into the ground, used usury to exploit the peasants, and forced the tenant farmers to only regard grain bran as a staple food, and when the famine years came, they had to go out to flee the famine, and even went to the northeast to "break into the eastern part of the country". However, under the rampant expropriation of the warlords and the wanton rampage of bandits, except for a very small number of the top large landowners, most of the small and medium-sized landlords still had a bad life.

According to a 1930 village survey, there was no way to escape taxes without additional income from industry and commerce. Then the landlord's family must have at least 200 acres of good land, so that they can eat white flour buns every meal and eat meat every New Year's holiday.

The landlords and rich peasants below this standard did not dare to eat much of their own wheat, even if it was ground into white flour, and had to sell it to pay taxes and exchange it for necessities such as matches, salt, and cloth, leaving only coarse grains such as stick noodles and sorghum flour to feed themselves.

It is only after the wheat harvest in the early summer of each year that these families can eat a few meals of noodles made of white flour, which in their eyes is a great luxury, and those who can eat it until August are extremely rare, let alone eat it for a year.

As for the poorer peasants, it would be an eye-opener to be able to drink two bowls of sweet potato porridge mixed with leaves every day.

In our modern villages, banquets are often set up, and although the dishes are not very exquisite, they are also full of chicken, duck, fish, and meat, as well as cigarettes and good wine. In North China during the Republic of China, according to the memoirs of General Feng Yuxiang, there were festive funerals in the countryside, but most of the banquets for hospitality were "cabbage and tofu pickled seats", only vegetarian dishes - cabbage, vermicelli, bean sprouts, tofu puffs, etc. The rice is steamed with a lot of fine sand, and if you are not careful, your teeth will be knocked out (it feels a lot like ancient Egyptian food). General Feng Yuxiang has lived in Qingyuan County, Hebei Province for more than ten years, and has only eaten meat banquet once, but even the so-called meat banquet is only two or three extremely thin slices of pork in each bowl.

At that time, General Feng Yuxiang, who was a small rich family, only had green onions, radishes, and pickles as side dishes, and he was never willing to use oil to make a dish of stir-fried dishes, let alone meat dishes. Even poorer families are reluctant to eat pickles, so they only make some salty water rice temporarily.

Third, in the north of the Republic of China, terrible famines have been breaking out one after another.

For example, from 1920 to 1921, there was a great famine in the four provinces and regions of North China, killing more than 10 million people and killing 30 million ~ 50 million people.

From 1928 to 1930, the eight northern provinces suffered another successive drought, and locusts, wind, snow, hail, water, and plague were combined for thousands of miles, and there was no harvest. The disaster lasted for three years, causing countless people to flee the wasteland, and at least 10 million people died of starvation in the wasteland.

Shaanxi originally had a population of 13 million, but in the past three years of famine, more than 3 million people have died of starvation and epidemics, and more than 6 million people have been displaced, accounting for 70% of the province's population. According to some foreign journalists, the bodies of hungry people often disappear before they are buried, and in some villages, human flesh is even sold publicly.

In 1942, a great famine broke out in the Central Plains, and the four major disasters of "flood, drought and locust soup" hit the Central Plains in turn, with a population of 10 million, 3 million people starved to death, and another 3 million people went west to Tongguan as displaced people, and the population was instantly reduced by two-thirds. …,

Under such circumstances, the poor peasants would certainly be dead. The life of the landlords was also bleak. Even if there is some food and money in the house, they must first use it to recruit their families, buy weapons, raise the courtyard walls, build earthen forts, defend against the raids of bandits and homeless people, and bribe the warlord troops who come to fight the autumn wind. It's not easy to survive, let alone have any luxuries.

Even before the birth of our party, the peasants in the countryside were fighting against rent and making trouble all day long, and they were in arrears in every possible way, and it was basically an impossible task to collect all the rents. Especially when the harvest is very poor, people often flee with grain and abandon the field, so that the landlord's family can not receive anything.

As a result, the landlord's family had to raise a group of thugs to force the tenant farmers to pay rent, so there was a lot of extra expenses.

What's worse is that the loyalty of these thugs is sometimes very suspicious, if the owner's family is too weak or harsh, they will even join the bandits to kill the landlord's whole family, and then divide the property themselves and enjoy the happiness of being a small landlord - so the landlord of the Republic of China must be able to fight, just like the village cadres today.

In view of the above circumstances, like the copycat version of the Grand View Garden in "Dream of Red Mansions" in the TV series, the mansion is deep, the maids are crowded, and the luxurious landlord life is clothed and fed. At least in northern China, where wars and disasters are frequent, it is difficult to sustain itself by collecting rent from the fields alone.

Those who were able to live a luxurious life in the countryside were either additional income from non-agricultural industries such as factories, trading houses, mines, opium, etc., or they were top landowners with at least tens of thousands of acres of land.

However, once someone's territory is so large, if they don't have a good army in their hands, then they can't look at the field at all. And those who have tens of thousands of acres of land and pull up a large number of soldiers and horses are usually already warlords rather than landlords. Once defeated by other warlords, Zuihou can't expect to be able to keep these hard-won lands.

Therefore, once you cross into the landlord family in the north, you want to learn kung fu masters to fight with people all day long, but you never worry about the lack of opponents, basically every year there are homeless people and bandits come to visit the door, and the landlords and tyrants often pull up a team to practice attacking each other. In those years, almost every landlord who was able to keep his family business was beaten. If you are particularly capable of fighting and have the ability to pull up a group of brothers, then even if you want to become a warlord like "Fan Ha'er" (the prototype of the TV series "Fool Commander"), there is a certain hope.

However, if you are not interested in such things as fighting and killing, and just want to live a more modern life, then it is very difficult - according to a 1930 statistics, among the more than 2,000 households in 11 villages in Qingyuan County, Hebei Province, there are only 7 bicycles, 6 flashlights, 2 hot water bottles, and no radio. Electric lights are a no-brainer, because there is generally no electricity and no running water in the countryside. If you still have to get your own generator, it seems that only the families of those big warlords can get these many money. For example, Yuan Shikai in the late Qing Dynasty built a villa when he retired to his hometown, which not only had electricity supply, but also pulled telegraph lines, and even had a private telegraph room.

Even ordinary metal products were quite expensive at the time – until 1949, China was a purely agrarian country, producing only 150,000 tonnes of steel, just enough to build the bird's nest in the Olympic Village in Beijing. Therefore, ordinary people in the countryside rarely see iron and steel products in their homes, and agricultural tools are often only wrapped with a layer of iron in the most critical parts, and the wheels of the wheelbarrow are wooden, and the horse-drawn carriages of the rich have iron-clad wheels. The bucket at home is made of wood, and the water scoop is a big gourd cut in half. Buying a kitchen knife can help a farmer empty the savings they have saved for a year. …,

Compared with the Qing Dynasty, the only obvious sign of "modernization" in the northern countryside during the Republic of China was the more widespread use of kerosene lamps, and rural lighting has been basically replaced by kerosene - here I have to admire the sales ability of Mobil. You know, marketing kerosene lamps in rural North China at that time was almost as dangerous as doing a small commodity business in modern Somalia.

However, compared with the previous Qing Dynasty, the living conditions of ordinary peasants, far from being more modernized, deteriorated greatly - in order to pass on the excesses of the warlords' taxes, the landlords generally raised the rent for farming to 60 to 70 percent, and if they only collected 50 percent of the rent, it would be considered a great favor. After paying the rent, the tenant farmers usually have enough surplus food to make ends meet, so they have to borrow from usury, thus falling into the spiral trap of "borrowing new debts to pay off old debts", so that the debts become higher and higher, and eventually the family is ruined.

Even homesteaders with small plots of land, after suffering heavy tax exploitation, have difficulty avoiding the trap of usury and embark on the road to bankruptcy. Moreover, according to the general rule, the smaller the plot of land, the more difficult it is to keep - in the event of drought and locust plague, the warlords will naturally force you to sell the land and pay taxes, while the landlords will take the opportunity to force you to buy it at a low price; In the event of heavy rain, a few very conscientious landlords will often emerge, organize dogs to dig up the embankment and flood your field, let the flood wash away the boundary markers, and then spend a few small money to go to the yamen for some activities, so your land will become their ancestral business. Next, if you don't want to be beaten to death by those dogs, it's better to pack up your package and run away as soon as possible!

In short, the landlord during the Republic of China was certainly not good to be, but the peasants during the Republic of China could not be a farmer

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