One

Those of us who have always had a complex emotional barrier to the Qing Dynasty. I remember when I was very young, the history teacher had tears in his eyes when he talked about "Ten Days in Yangzhou" and "Three Massacres in Jiading", which was the beginning of the Qing Dynasty; And when it comes to "burning the Old Summer Palace" and "Wuxu Change", there are tears, which is the end of the Qing Dynasty. When the elderly teacher cried, the children cried. The history of the Qing Dynasty is the only subject in primary school that is soaked in tears. The resentment planted since childhood is difficult to dissolve.

The tears of the old and the tears of the children are mixed together, giving this historical mood a most mundane force. My classmates in primary school were all Han Chinese, not Manchu, so it was easy to acquire a common language in the classroom. As if the Han people are rightfully the masters of China, why should you Manchus come to rob it? It's okay to snatch it up, but it gets worse and worse, and in the end it almost gets carved up by foreigners. So, in the flash of tears, we understood what a traitor is, what is a traitor, what is national righteousness, and what is integrity. We also seem to know that the key to China's lag behind the world powers is the Qing Dynasty, and how necessary and relieving it is for the enlighteners of the Xinhai Revolution to rekindle the hatred of the Han people against the Qing and put forward the slogan of "expelling the Tartars and restoring China". The Qing Dynasty was finally overthrown, but it is still an unjust existence in the hearts of many Chinese.

As I got older, I became wary of this emotion. Because countless facts have proved that in our China, many emotional social judgment norms, although they have been passed down for a long time, contain great injustice. We lack the enlightenment of human values in the general sense, so most of these emotional social judgment norms are gradually derived from feudal orthodoxy, with a lot of blindness. First of all, the orthodoxy of surnames, Liu Han, Li Tang, Zhao Song, Zhu Ming, ......, the heirs who appear in the succession series of the same surname, even if they are faint kings, cowards, perverts, misers, and mentally disordered, are all legal and reasonable, and if people with foreign surnames are coveted, even if there are a thousand and ten thousand truths, it is untenable, and the truth and falsehood, good and evil, loyalty and treachery are all divided from this. Expanding from the orthodoxy of surnames to the orthodoxy of the nation, it is the orthodoxy of the nation. This concept is much more complex than the orthodoxy of surnames, as evidenced by the fact that the generals of the Xinhai Revolution were at odds with the orthodoxy of feudal surnames, but they also needed to loudly promote national orthodoxy. National orthodoxy involves many famous figures and events that almost all Chinese are familiar with, and is a troublesome issue that will continue to be debated in the future. Looking at all ancient Chinese history, the emperors of the Qing Dynasty were generally relatively good, and the Kangxi Emperor was arguably one of the best emperors in Chinese history, and he made me, a modern Han Chinese, as proud as Li Shimin, Emperor Taizong of Tang.

Since we have talked about Tang Taizong, we can't help but point out that according to the research of modern historians, he is more likely to be after the Xianbei than the Han people.

If we say that the two most outstanding emperors in Chinese history who quickly created the "rule of Zhenguan" and the "prosperous era of Kang Yongqian" in the midst of great social disasters were not of the Han nationality, and if we are willing to think about Genghis Khan, the emperor of the Yuan Dynasty who is still amazed by historians all over the world and established great martial arts, then our view of Chinese history will certainly be much broader and more liberal than the history class in primary school.

Of course, the Han nationality is very great, and of course there is no reason for the Han nationality to be slaughtered and bullied by foreigners, and when its own nation is in danger, of course, it must stand up and carry out a fearless struggle, and of course the shameless people who do not hesitate to sell the interests of the nation for their own personal interests will be permanently spurned. The problem is that we cannot equate the Han nationality with China because of this, and bet the justice, light, and hope of Chinese history on the side of the Han people. Like other ethnic groups, the Han Chinese have a great deal of filth, stupidity, and ugliness, and their rulers have often repeatedly pushed the whole of Chinese history into a dead end. In such a situation, it is possible for history to make a choice to transcend Han Chinese orthodoxy, and this choice is not necessarily a regression.

Li Xiangjun, the famous prostitute of Qinhuai in "Peach Blossom Fan", has a low status and a noble character, and maintains a great national integrity in the turbulent season when the Qing soldiers are marching south and the Ming Dynasty is stormy! However, she never expected that when she and her lover Hou Chaozong did not hesitate to go to the soup and fire and run for their lives to fight against the Qing Dynasty and Fuming, it was precisely the small court of the Southern Ming Dynasty that was still promiscuous and indulgent, and practiced them. The Hongguang regime, which seemed to be both the Ming Dynasty and the last representative of the Han nationality in the local area at that time, did not want her and her sisters to be loyal to the country and serve the country at all, but only their most pitiful hue as a woman. Li Xiangjun really wanted to shed blood for Daming with her lover, but what disgusted her was that it was Daming's bureaucrats who forced her to get married, and her blood was splashed with paper fans and dyed into "peach blossoms". "The peach blossom fan is sent to the Southern Dynasty", such a court will let it go, sigh, integrity, ethics, struggle, and running have all become absurd and self-deprecating. Kong Shangren, the author of "The Peach Blossom Fan", is a descendant of Confucius, and even he has a deep suspicion of the blind orthodoxy of the historical transition period. He transformed this suspicion into silence and desolation at the bottom of his pen.

For Li Xiangjun and Hou Chaozong, I have seen enough everything at the end of the Ming Dynasty, what will happen to the Qing Dynasty, I don't want to see it. Literary works always have to end, but history is still moving forward, in fact, the Qing Dynasty is still very visible.

For this reason, I would like to write about the summer resort in Chengde. The historical materials of the Qing Dynasty are bundled together, leave these to the historians, and we only need to go around this summer villa lightly to take a peek at it. This kind of peeking is actually a peek at oneself, peeking at the historical emotions and national emotions that have been buried in one's heart since childhood, how much can be preserved, and how many need to be corrected.

Two

The summer resort of Chengde is the royal garden of the Qing Dynasty, also known as the Rehe Palace, the Chengde Palace, although it is famous in the annals of history, but it has been a forbidden garden for a long time, and it is located outside the plug, there are not many people who have patronized it all the time, until this few years it was stirred up a little lively by tourists. I didn't know what I could get there, but this summer CCTV organized a gathering of China's leading TV writers and directors in Chengde, and asked me to give them some lectures, and they picked them up. The residence was behind the summer resort, and at the twilight of the day, I walked out of the door of the residence alone, staring at the dark mountains in front of me. After checking the map, this mountain range is the last barrier to the northern part of the summer resort, like the back of a lap chair. On this lap chair, rested a tired dynasty. Strangely, the entire territory of China has belonged to this dynasty, so why put this resting Luo Circle chair outside the Great Wall? What did the emperors of the Qing Dynasty think when they sat south on this chair? The moon had risen, and the mountain wall in front of me seemed even more majestic. The Forbidden City in Beijing mixes several different dynasties together, and no one's image can be seen really, but here, far away, quietly, purely, quietly, quietly, evaded the royal spirit of the Central Plains, and hid an uncomplicated Qing Dynasty. It really had a great temptation for me, so I hurriedly finished a few lectures and buried myself in the villa.

The villa is very large, and I originally thought that the Summer Palace in Beijing was already staggeringly large, it was even twice as large as the Summer Palace, and it was said that there was no problem in fitting eight or nine Beihai Parks. I can't think of any other classical garden in China that can match it. There is also a circle of temples called "Outer Eight Temples" outside the villa, which is not to mention for the time being, just to say that inside the villa, in addition to the first half of the palace with layers of palaces, it is mainly an open lake area, a plain area and a mountainous area. Especially in the mountainous area, it accounts for about eighty percent of the entire mountain resort, which makes people who are used to other gardens very unaccustomed. The garden is used for leisure, not to mention the royal garden, most of them pursue convenience and comfort, and some will pile up a few hills to decorate it, how can there be like here, just circle into a large area of real mountains to entertain? This pattern contains an aesthetic concept and a concept of life that we need to look up and think down.

There are many couplets and steles in the villa, and most of the words on them were written by the emperors themselves, and they certainly could not have imagined that many years later we strangers would break into their private gardens and read these texts, which were written for their heirs to see. There are a lot of things that the imperial court has shown to others, and there are a large number of official articles engraved and widely issued, and the words written here, although sometimes chewing on the words, are generally said to be the words of the children and grandchildren, which are more authentic and credible. I walked on the moss and vines, identifying and interpreting all the words I could find, even the stone tablets hidden in the mountains and woods. Along the way, it can finally be safely said that the construction of the villa is completely due to the spiritual strength of a generation of politicians.

First of all, Kangxi, the four words "Summer Resort" hanging on the noon gate of the main palace of the villa were written by him, these four Chinese characters were written very well, and the calmness and serenity of a victor were revealed between the skimming, and it is conceivable that his steps when he first stepped into the villa were also like this. He must have done so, for he had walked a long and successful long way into the lodge, and he had come here to catch his breath, as he should.

The hardships of his life were self-inflicted. His parents had already laid a very complete Chinese country for him, he ascended the throne at the age of eight, pro-government at the age of fourteen, a young child, and enjoyed his achievements, what can he do in front of such a vast territory and such a prosperous fortune? His childish eyes were still looking at two behemoths suspiciously, one was Ao Bai, the most powerful auxiliary minister in the imperial court, and the other was Wu Sangui, who was proud of himself as a traitor and led the Qing soldiers into the customs and supported the troops to respect himself in the south. In all fairness, for such an important political force that has a close relationship with his ancestors and fathers, even a generation of virtuous and respected heroes may not be able to make up their minds to do it, but Kangxi challenged them and himself, and at the age of sixteen, he simply removed the Aobai group, and began to wage war against Wu Sangui at the age of twenty, and spent eight years of war to achieve a complete victory. He is equivalent to taking care of the country again, making himself from an inheritor to an entrepreneur. He matured, and there was almost no rival in front of him, but he still often rode a horse, wandering among the mountains, forests and grasslands of northern China, where his ancestors had risen, and he was looking for a place to support his life and career.

Each time he had to pass through the Great Wall, which had fallen into disrepair for many years and had fallen into disrepair. He thought a lot about this city wall, which was deeply cared for by the emperors of the past dynasties. His ancestors broke the Great Wall and came in, and he could definitely enter without Wu Sangui, so what is the use of the Great Wall? A dignified court, does it rely on these bricks to defend? But if there is no Great Wall, where are our defenses? The results of his deliberations can be seen in one of his edicts of 1691. In May of that year, Cai Yuan, the chief military officer of Gubeikou, proposed to the imperial court that the Great Wall in the area under his jurisdiction "collapsed a lot, please build it", Kangxi completely disagreed, and his edict was:

Since the Qin Dynasty built the Great Wall, the Han, Tang and Song dynasties have also often repaired it. At the end of the Ming Dynasty, my Taizu commanded the army to drive straight in, and all roads collapsed, and nothing could be done. It can be seen that the only way to defend the country is to cultivate virtue and secure the people. If the people are happy, the state will be good, and the border will be self-consolidated, and the so-called "united as one" is also. For example, in the area of Gubei and Xifengkou, I have patrolled and damaged a lot, and if I want to repair it now, how can I harm the people? And the Great Wall stretches for thousands of miles, how can it be defended by raising troops?

It makes a lot of sense. I have always dared not compliment the "Great Wall complex" buried in the heart of our nation, and after reading Kangxi's words, I simply found a distant soulmate. Because Kangxi said this, the Qing Dynasty became a dynasty in ancient China that basically did not build the Great Wall, and I also feel very happy about this. Of course, repairing the Great Wall in the sense of protecting cultural relics today is another matter entirely, as long as the Great Wall is not forever regarded as the highest symbol of Chinese civilization.

Kangxi hopes to build an invisible Great Wall. "Cultivating virtue and reassuring the people" Yunyun said too grandiose and empty, in fact, he has a hard hand and a soft hand. Every autumn, the emperor personally leads more than 10,000 princes and ministers, officers and soldiers at all levels to carry out a large-scale "hunting", which is actually a kind of military exercise with great momentum, which can not only enable the princes and ministers to maintain a brave and strong demeanor of life, but also play a deterrent role on the northern border by the way. Since the "Mulan Enclosure" is located in a remote area outside the Great Wall, it is a little far away from Beijing, so many important members of the imperial court go to the autumn hunt, of course, to build some large and small palaces, and the Rehe Palace is the largest of them; The soft hand is to establish a kind of friendly relations with the various ethnic minorities in the northern frontier, their leaders do not have to travel long distances to Beijing, they also have the opportunity and place to socialize with the Qing court, and also prepare their own religious sites for them, which also requires the Rehe Palace and the surrounding temple complex. In short, both soft and hard hands finally converged in this palace and this villa, saying that it is a summer retreat and a rest, but the meaning is far more than that. Transforming complex political purposes and military significance into a quiet and leisurely garden and a temple surrounded by incense cannot but be said to be Kangxi's great ability. However, in front of us are the authentic gardens and temples, the authentic rest and prayer, the military and the political, dissolved so verdant, kind and kind, that if it were not for the reminders of those stone tablets, we would not even be able to find traces of doubt.

The summer resort is the "Great Wall" of Kangxi, which is more clever than the Great Wall of Qin Shi Huang, which winds for thousands of miles?

Kangxi almost every year after the beginning of autumn to participate in a twenty-day autumn hunt in the "Mulan Enclosure", and participated in forty-eight times in his life. Every time you hunt, the scene is spectacular. First, Kangxi selected the hunting area that rotated year by year (the rotation was for ecological protection), and then more than 170 large tents were set up as the "inner city", more than 250 large tents were set up as the "outer city", and guards were set up outside the city. At dawn the next day, the officers and soldiers of the Eight Banners gathered under the unified supervision of the emperor, and under the chorus of tens of thousands of officers and soldiers, Kangxi first marched forward, led the bow to shoot, and every time there was a cheer, and then the ministers and soldiers at all levels also followed Kangxi to shoot and hunt. Kangxi is strong, skilled in riding, wise and brave when hunting, and the kung fu on the bow and arrow makes the princes and ministers sincerely impressed, so he himself has a lot of hunting. At night, the campfire was everywhere, the smell of meat wafted, people laughed and neighed, and Kangxi had to return to the tent to review the music documents sent by galloping every day. Kangxi has taken the lead in many famous battles in his life, but in his later years, he is most proud of his hunting achievements, because this is purely a verification of his personal vitality. In 1719, when Kangxi returned to the summer resort after hunting in the "Mulan Enclosure", he excitedly told the imperial guards:

Since I was a child, I have captured 153 tigers, 12 bears, 25 leopards, 20 lynxes, 14 elk, 96 wolves, 133 wild boars, hundreds of deer and other beasts in the paddock. I have 318 rabbits in one day, and ordinary people can't match the number of this day.

He said this account very proudly, and we were very happy to read it. Physical strength and mental strength are often linked, it must be known that there are many emperors in Chinese history who are weak and sick, even if they are "inward", how can they face such a huge country.

Because of his strength, he had enough energy to deal with the very complicated affairs of Tibet and Mongolia, and to solve major problems such as the control of the Yellow River and the Huai River, and the dredging of water transportation. Because of his strength, he was also willing to study diligently, and as a result, not only was his martial arts first-class, but his "Neixiu" was also very good, and he became one of the most learned and scholarly emperors of China, which has always shocked me, and I am sure that it also shook a large group of Han intellectuals who were watching from the sidelines.

Who would have thought that this Qing Dynasty emperor would love and be proficient in Han traditional culture more than the emperors of the Ming Dynasty! He has made a lot of efforts in all scriptures, histories, children, collections, poems, books, and music and rhythms, among which he has studied Zhu Xi's philosophy the most. He personally criticized the "Compendium of Zizhi Tongjian", conducted academic discussions with a number of famous physicists, and ordered them to compile "Zhuzi Daquan" and "The Essence of Sexual Reason" and other works. He ordered to visit the rare books scattered among the people to sort them out, and organized manpower on a large scale to edit and publish the voluminous volumes of "Ancient and Modern Books Collection", "Kangxi Dictionary", "Peiwenyun Mansion", and "Daqing Huidian", and the cultural spirit spread all over the world. To this day, we cannot study ancient Chinese culture without these extremely important reference books. He sent people to compile a national map, "The Imperial Opinion Panorama," through the actual survey of the land of the whole country. Under the cultural atmosphere he advocated, a large number of humanistic scientists who can be called first-rate masters in the entire history of Chinese culture have emerged, and in this regard, few dynasties can compare with the Kangxi Dynasty.

The above is only what we call "Chinese Studies", and what may surprise modern readers even more is his "Western Studies". Because even in modern times, in our impression, although Chinese studies and Western studies can communicate, there are not many people who dive into the same person after all, especially for some officials. However, as early as 300 years ago, the Kangxi Emperor actually studied Euclidean geometry in the Forbidden City in Beijing and the Chengde Summer Resort, often practiced arithmetic, and studied the French mathematician Barty's "Practical and Theoretical Geometry", and compared its differences with Euclidean geometry. His teachers were a group of Western missionaries who came to China at that time, but later he was faster than the missionaries, personally reviewing and translating Western mathematical works into Chinese and Manchu, and teaching Western mathematics to ministers whenever he had the opportunity. Based on mathematics, Kangxi went on to learn Western astronomy, calendar, physics, medicine, and chemistry, and compared them with China's original knowledge in this area, learning from each other's strengths. On the question of natural science, the Chinese bureaucracy and foreign missionaries often contradicted each other, and Kangxi did not favor the Chinese bureaucracy or make subjective assumptions, but relied on his own anger to study, truly understood Western doctrine, and made fair judgments almost every time. He appointed a foreigner to serve as the deputy of the Qintianjian and ordered the Ministry of Rites to select a group of students to study natural sciences in the Qintianjian, and after completing their studies, they were selected as doctoral officials. Western natural science works such as "The Diagram of Qi Testing", "The Chronicle of the Instrument", "The Map of the North and South Stars of the Equator", "The Theory of Poor Science", "The Diagram of Kunyu", and so on, have been translated one by one, and some Western natural science works that have been translated into Chinese, such as the first six volumes of "Principles of Geometry", he ordered people to translate them into Manchu.

All this is not exclusive to the "national studies" he is obsessed with, not to the fact that he shoots 38 hares a day, and not to the fact that he has a series of major political, military, and economic behaviors! I don't think Kangxi brought fundamental hope to China, and his regime did a lot of bad things, such as the notorious "literary prison" and the like, but I just want to say that among the Chinese emperors, this emperor from an ethnic minority has extraordinary vitality and his personality is relatively sound. Sometimes, the vitality and personality of an individual will leave a heavy mark on history. Compared with him, many emperors of the Ming Dynasty lived too undecently, and Lu Xun said that they were "scoundrels", which is indeed a bit similar. What makes people especially angry is that Zhu Yijun, the Wanli Emperor (Shenzong) of the Ming Dynasty, has reigned for 48 years and has been in power for 38 years, and he has spent 25 years hiding in the deep palace without seeing the faces of outsiders, completely ignoring state affairs, and even the first assistant of the cabinet can't see him, and he doesn't know what he's doing. I didn't see him play anything, and there seems to be no suspicion of lust, and historians can only infer that he lay on a couch and smoked opium for more than 20 years! The gold and silver he amassed were like mountains and seas, but when the Qing army rose up and the court was helpless, he asked him for money, and he refused to take it out, and finally took out a small fraction of what was useless, and it turned out to be silver that had become black and moldy because the cellar had been stored for too long, and it was so corroded that it could not see the light of day! This is completely a psychopath who has lost any personality support, but he is centralized in one body, how can the Ming Dynasty not collapse? After his death, he had his son Zhu Changluo (Guangzong), grandsons Zhu Youxiao (Xizong) and Zhu Youzhen (Sizong) succeeded to the throne, but the Ming Dynasty had been defeated in his hands, and his children and grandchildren were very pitiful; Kangxi, on the contrary, released his life from the deep palace and swayed it in the wilderness, hunting grounds and various fields of knowledge, and the summer resort was an important outlet for his way of life, so it was also a "auspicious house" for the fate of Chinese history at that time.

Three

The contrast between Kangxi and the late Ming emperor, the contrast between the summer resort and the Wanli Deep Palace, of course, the Han intellectuals at that time also felt it, and their mood was more complicated.

At first, most Han intellectuals resisted the Qing Dynasty and restored the Ming Dynasty, and even after the martial artists turned around, a group of weak literati would rather die. There were also some well-known renegades among the literati, but they also often suffered from deep psychological contradictions and mental anguish. I think that's the power of culture. All military strife is superficial, and it is only when it comes to shaking up a cultural ecosystem that it really becomes serious. The ultimate meaning of a nation, a country, or a race is not military, regional, or political, but cultural. At that time, several major anti-Qing incidents in the Jiangnan area were caused by the dispute of "cutting hair", that is, the Han people have always tied their hair and the Qing people forced them to cut their hair, even to the point of "keeping their heads without leaving their hair, and keeping their hair without leaving their heads". The style of hair seems to be a small matter, but it is related to the cultural ecology, and as a result, the question of whether to "ruin my clothes" has become the highest flashpoint of the "Yixia Protest". Among them, it is the cultural people who can connect things with the entire cultural system the most, and the ones who understand the difference between civilization and barbarism the most, and connect the "Tartars" with barbarism. The hair of the common people has finally been shaved off, and many literati are still desperately persevering. Liu Zongzhou, a famous university scholar, lived in Hangzhou, and went on a hunger strike after the Qing soldiers entered Hangzhou, and died 20 days later; His protégé, Huang Zongxi, another famous university scholar, threw himself into the ranks of armed resistance against the Qing Dynasty, and after the defeat, he returned to his hometown in Yuyao to write about his mother's writings; Another famous university scholar, Gu Yanwu, went one step further than Huang Zongxi, and after the failure of the armed resistance against the Qing Dynasty, he traveled to many places across the country to try to restore his sight, and finally died in Shaanxi...... These generations of grandmasters are so tough, and of course their protégés and admirers have many followers.

However, when things arrived at Kangxi, some subtle changes had taken place. The literati are still like the vultures in Zhu Qi's pen, looking at the imperial court with the cold eyes of "heaven and earth are cold", but the imperial court strangely exudes an irrepressible enthusiasm for Han culture. At first, everyone thought it was a strategy to win people's hearts, but from Kangxi's point of view, it didn't seem to be exactly. When the war against Wu Sangui was not over, he could not wait to order officials at all levels to recommend scholars with "excellent learning and excellent literary words" to the imperial court for the purpose of "respecting Confucianism and respecting Taoism". A total of 143 people were sponsored and recruited this time, and 50 were later admitted. Among them, Fu Shan, Li Hao and others were recommended, but they would rather die than take the exam. Fu Shan was recommended and then forcibly carried into Beijing, he saw the word "Daqingmen" and rolled to the ground, two tears flowed, so Kangxi not only did not blame but exempted him from the exam, appointed him as a "Zhongshu Sheren". After he returned to his hometown, he was not allowed to be called "Zhongshusheren", but at this time, it was probably impossible to talk about how much hatred he still had for Kangxi himself.

The same is true of Li Hao, who refused to take the exam after being recommended, and after being carried to the provincial capital, he went on a hunger strike, and others had to give up. This happened in the seventeenth year of Kangxi, Kangxi himself was twenty-six years old, but he didn't expect that twenty-five years later, Kangxi, who was in his fifties, still remembered this tough scholar and summoned him when he toured the west. He didn't answer the call, but after all, he couldn't help it, so he sent his son Li Shenyan as a representative to answer the call, and sent his two books "Four Books Reflexive Record" and "Two Songs" to Kangxi. This incident has a certain symbolism, indicating that the most resistant Han intellectuals have also begun to reconcile with Kangxi.

Compared with Li Hao, Huang Zongxi is a big man, Kangxi is even more polite, and he asked Huang Zongxi to go out of the mountain many times but failed to do so, so he ordered the local governor to go to Huang Zongxi's house, copy the book written by Huang Zongxi carefully, and send it to the palace for his own reading. This time, Huang Zongxi couldn't help but be moved. Like Li Hao, it was inconvenient for him to come forward after all, and his son acted as an agent, Huang Zongxi let his son Huang Baijia enter the Royal History Bureau to help complete the task of repairing the "History of the Ming Dynasty" handed over by Kangxi. You see, even Huang Zongxi and Li Hao, who were not with the Qing court, also felt that their son's generation could live a good life under Kangxi. This is not an apostasy, nor a compromise, but a beginning of identification in the sense of cultural ecology. Since Kangxi identified with Han culture so sincerely, why couldn't the Han literati identify with him at all? Politics and military affairs are nothing more than the appearance of culture.

Didn't Huang Zongxi let his son participate in the "History of the Ming Dynasty" ordered by Kangxi? The compilation of the "History of the Ming Dynasty" shook the Han intellectuals a lot. Kangxi appointed the great historians Xu Yuanwen, Wan Sitong, Zhang Yushu, Wang Hongxu and others to be responsible for this matter, and asked them to compile it truthfully according to the "Ming Shilu", saying that "he may be good at writing, and he should study Shi Zhizhi and write practical things alone", and he also asked everyone to carefully study the lessons of the late Ming Dynasty and take them as a warning. If the Han intellectuals want to oppose the Qing Dynasty and restore the Ming Dynasty, and the Qing monarch actually personally led the Han historians to calmly study the Ming Dynasty, and this kind of research is higher than the thinking level of the anti-Qing and Ming restorationists, then the confrontation cannot but be gradually resolved. The History of the Ming Dynasty later became one of the better written in the entire 24th History, a fact that is still recognized to this day.

Of course, there are still a few literati who insist on refusing to agree. For example, in the Kangxi era, there was a scholar named Lu Liuliang in Zhejiang, who repeatedly emphasized in his books and lectures that the essence of Confucius's thought was "respecting the king and destroying the emperor", and this mention was seen by a scholar named Zeng Jing in Hunan after his death, and he was very excited, and rushed to Zhejiang to find Lu Liuliang's son and several students, and planned to oppose the Qing Dynasty. At this time, Kangxi had already passed away, and it was already the Yongzheng period, and there was not a single soldier under this group of literati, what could they do? They heard that Yue Zhongqi, the governor of Sichuan and Shaanxi, was a descendant of Yue Fei, and thought that he would definitely be able to inherit Yue Fei's will to fight against the foreign Yi, so they sent someone to bring him a letter of rebellion, and asked him to cause trouble. This thing is already a bit of a joke, Yue Fei's resistance to Jin has been separated by a whole Yuan Dynasty and a whole Ming Dynasty by that time, and the Qing Dynasty has passed eighty or ninety years. Yue Zhongqi was a Qing Dynasty official, and he never dreamed of opposing the Qing Dynasty, so he dealt with it falsely after receiving the letter, but reported it to Emperor Yongzheng as a matter of course. Yongzheng ordered the arrest of this rebel group, and personally read the letters and writings, and felt that there were many ideas in them that needed to be written to debate with the Han intellectuals, and that there was a Kangxi generation, and the court had enough facts and courage to prove that the Qing rulers were not bad, so why should they fight against the Qing court? So the emperor personally compiled a "Record of the Mystery of the Great Righteous Jue" and distributed it to various places, and specially exempted the perpetrators Zeng Jing and others from the death penalty, and asked them to go to Jiangsu and Zhejiang to preach.

Yongzheng's "Mystery of Great Righteousness" is written quite sincerely. His gist is: Yes, we are Yi people, we are "foreign" people, but this is just a place of origin, the mandate of heaven wants us to raise the Chinese natives, why should the raised people look at Hua and Yi separately? The Shun you respect is a person from Dongyi, and King Wen is a person from Xiyi, is this detrimental to their sanctity? A person like Lu Liuliang, who wrote books and spoke up, even concealed and slandered the martial arts and great virtues of Emperor Kangxi in the previous dynasty, and he really disregarded the people's livelihood and national fortunes and only vented his personal anger. If the people who write books and say only think that the monarch born in the Central Plains does not need to cultivate virtue and benevolence to enjoy the fame, and the foreign monarch will not be praised even if he works hard, the foreign monarch's good heart will also be slack, and the people of the Central Plains will not suffer?

Yongzheng's words carried obvious grievances, and they were unfair to his father Kangxi, and there were really some touching places. But his overall thinking ability is obviously not as good as Kangxi's, and he keeps saying that he is a "foreign" person and a "Yi person", although the "foreign" he says only refers to foreign races, and only refers to a few ethnic minorities outside the Central Plains, which is different from the foreign country we speak of today, but in any case, it is not good to complicate things in some premise concepts. His son Qianlong saw this problem, and after ascending the throne, he took back all the "Records of the Great Righteous Jue", listed it as a banned book, killed Zeng Jing and others who were pardoned by Yongzheng, and began to build a literary prison. During the Kangxi and Yongzheng periods, there were also ugly literary prisons, but it was Qianlong who came particularly powerfully, he did not allow Han intellectuals to regard the Qing court as "Yiren", and even did not allow the words "虏" and "hu" to appear in ordinary writing, and if they accidentally wrote it, they were likely to be beheaded. He wants to erase this opposition with violence, and then be a good emperor with all his heart. Except for the sensitive points of the Huayi Division, he was more tolerant and measured in other places, and listened to the sharp opinions and suggestions of loyal ministers and wise men, so in the early stage of his reign, he did a lot of good things, and the fortunes of the country could be called prosperous. In this way, even a small number of Han intellectuals who had different ideas did not dare to think about anything, and they really did not have any thoughts later. In fact, such people are hard to find, and both Yongzheng and Qianlong have overdone the article. Truly first-class university scholars no longer wanted to do anything to oppose the Qing Dynasty and restore the Ming Dynasty in the Qianlong era. Qianlong, relying on the intellectual advantage of a large number of talents, relying on Kangxi and Yongzheng to lay a rich foundation for him, and also relying on his own strategic talent, became the most blessed emperor in Chinese history. Chengde Summer Resort, he came the most, and stayed for a long time in total, so his traces can be seen everywhere. Qianlong also often participated in the "Mulan Autumn Ceremony", and the prey he personally shot was also extremely considerable, but his main mind was on the frontier campaign, and there were many inscriptions recording the results of this kind of campaign in the summer resort and the surrounding Outer Eight Temples. This kind of conquest did not conflict with the interests of the Han people, but promoted China's national prestige, and even the Han intellectuals were proud of it, and even regarded Qianlong as the sage of China. But when I looked at the inscriptions, I had a strong feeling: some wars are forced to fight, and it is possible to fight, but the necessity of most border wars is deeply doubtful. Do you need to play that big? Do you need to repeat it so many times? Do you need to be so aggressive with your neighbors? Does it need to be killed so brutally?

Qianlong, who was very happy with his achievements, engraved his so-called "Ten Perfect Martial Arts" in the summer resort and tasted it happily, which made the mountain villa reverberate with some hot and ominous atmosphere. After the confrontation between the Manchu and Han cultures was largely over, there was a sense of complacency in the Chinese Empire. The scenic spots in the south of the Yangtze River and the north of the country gather here, the only proud son of heaven is stationed here, and then order the compilation of a comprehensive overview of all the classics of the "Siku Quanshu" is stored here, and almost nothing is missing. Qianlong continued to write poems, saying that the artistic conception in the summer resort had far exceeded the depictions in the poems of the Tang and Song dynasties, and he waited until the time came to become a "forest man" and spend the rest of his life here. On the same stone tablet in Songyun Gorge in the villa, Qianlong carved six imperial poems in his life to express this self-satisfied feeling.

Yes, Qianlong was indeed not a wreck, but it must be known that this was the eighteenth century (Qianlong died in the last year of the eighteenth century), and the nineteenth century was already coming, and the world had changed a lot! Qianlong fought so many battles, how much should it cost? How far did the big corrupt officials and Kun he reuse have ruined the national strength? In fact, the tragedy of the Qing Dynasty, and even the entire history of China, was brewed in Qianlong, the emperor who seemed to be in his heyday, in a summer resort with pleasant mountains and rivers. But at this time, the summer resort was still completely immersed in the dream of the Chinese Empire, and the cultural conscience of the whole country was also intoxicated or dumb on the edge of this dream.

On September 14, 1793, a British delegation came to the summer resort, where Qianlong welcomed him with a feast, and entertained him with a large-scale singing, dancing and fireworks show in the Wanshu Garden of the villa. The purpose of the British side was to hope that Qianlong would agree to send envoys to Beijing and set up a foreign bank in Beijing, that China would open Tianjin, Ningbo, and Zhoushan as trade ports, that some places would be allocated near Guangzhou for British merchants to live in, and that British goods would be exempted from tax and reduced taxes when they circulated on the inland rivers from Guangzhou to Macao. Originally, this was a negotiable matter, but for Qianlong, who lived in a summer resort and liked to show off his Chinese prestige by force all his life, there was no possibility of negotiation. He wrote a letter to the King of England, the title of which was "Edict to the King of England", in which he rejected all requests, saying, "The Celestial Empire has all its land and territory in the Empire, and the territory is clear, even if the islands and sandbanks are boundary, they must be demarcated and divided, each with its own exclusive property", "There has never been a foreigner to open a goods store in Beijing", "This is not in line with the system of the Celestial Empire, and it is absolutely not feasible!" Perhaps some people still think that these words are full of patriotic awe-inspiring righteousness, and are not the same as the traitorous treaties signed by the Qing court in the future, but I really dare not agree with this.

Originally, Kangxi had opened the sea ban as early as 1684, and set up four customs offices in Guangdong, Fujian, Zhejiang, and Jiangsu to welcome foreign businessmen, but after more than 70 years, Qianlong closed other customs offices and only allowed foreign businessmen to trade in Guangzhou, and foreign businessmen also had many ridiculous restrictions in Guangzhou, such as not being allowed to learn to speak Chinese, buying Chinese books, not allowing sedan chairs, and not allowing women to be brought, and so on. With our eyes closed, we can imagine the psychology of these restrictions imposed by the imperial court on foreigners. Kangxi learned Western natural science from missionaries and had a good relationship, while Qianlong banned Catholicism. Being arrogant, ignoring the outside world, and being full of the consciousness of the Celestial Empire, this has an inevitable logical connection with being humiliated and beaten in the future. Qianlong's loud words of reprimanding foreign emperors in the summer resort will not be pleasant to hear even the old man of history. This garden has been mixed with some kind of bad omen.

Four

When I was perusing the stele where Qianlong wrote six poems in Songyun Gorge, I read another poem by his son Jiaqing on the west side of the stele. After Jiaqing ascended the throne, he passed by here, and after reading his father's triumphant poems, he couldn't help but sigh: My father's poems are really profound, but I, as a son, really feel that the burden on my shoulders is too heavy! Jiaqing is relatively cowardly and generous, and he doesn't know what to do in front of the burden left by his father. He faced internal and external troubles all his life, and finally died in the summer resort for no apparent reason.

Emperor Daoguang was in his forties when he succeeded to the throne of Jiaqing, and he had no talent, only hard and simple, and the pants he wore were patched. This is not a good story for a head of state. The ministers of the court and the central government competed to imitate each other, wearing shabby clothes to go to the court, and at a glance, this court no longer had much energy. His father died in the summer resort, and the timid Daoguang was reluctant to go there, leaving it empty for decades. He sometimes thought that he should go hunting like his ancestors, and asked if he could get to the "Mulan Enclosure" without passing through the summer resort, and replied that there was no other way, so he would not go hunting. A poor emperor like him seemed to have no fate with the mountain village and hunting, and the Opium War had broken out, and his sad eyes could only keep looking at the south.

The summer resort was closed until September 1860, when he suddenly received an order that Emperor Xianfeng was coming and cleaning it quickly. Xianfeng brought a lot of silver taels with him this time, and it turned out that he had come to flee, and the British and French forces were threatening Beijing. Xianfeng didn't leave this time, he walked east and west, and was glad that his ancestors left such a good place for him to hide. Here he ratified several more humiliating treaties, but he did not leave until his death on August 22, 1861, where he lived for nearly a year.

As soon as Xianfeng died, the summer resort was lively for several days, and various political forces were engaged in a bright and dark contest around the body. A plan of action for what historians call the "Xinyou Coup" was drawn up in a few rooms in the villa, and then Xianfeng's coffin was shipped to Beijing, and the little emperor who had just succeeded to the throne also set off. The gates of the summer resort were closed again, and in the middle of this mighty procession soon stood a twenty-seven-year-old young woman who would rule China for decades.

She is Cixi, she never came back after leaving the villa, and soon issued an order, saying that the Rehe summer resort has not been used for decades, and most of the palaces have collapsed, but Emperor Xianfeng went to repair it slightly, and now Xianfeng has passed away, and everyone has left, "All the projects of Rehe will be stopped." ”

This order echoes Kangxi's edict not to build the Great Wall. Kangxi's "Great Wall" has finally collapsed, the barren grass is miserable, the crows are flying back, the old walls are mottled, the moldy moss is everywhere, and the gate is tightly closed. It's not enough to lock up those palace houses, but also to lock up so many lush mountains and so many crystal waters. In Kangxi's view, this is the Qing Dynasty in his mind, but the Qing Dynasty discarded it, so he became a dynasty that lost his soul. Cixi built a summer palace in Beijing to confront the summer resort, and the gardens in the north of the Saiwai Shuobei will no longer have the ability and interest to fight, it seems to belong to another era. Kangxi failed, along with his garden, at the hands of a woman who had not read any books and had not established any merits. The majestic wind of Rehe has long been blown away, and the Qing Dynasty has been full of yin and bad deeds since then.

When the new century came, a large group of Han intellectuals issued a devastating denunciation against the regime, national hatred was rekindled in the bottom of their hearts, and the deeds of those who resisted the Qing Dynasty 300 years ago were rediscovered and propagated. The summer resort, at this time is a symbol of evil, honestly hide in the distance, try not to be discovered.

Five

After the fall of the Qing Dynasty, the society was shaken, the world was busy, and people did not have the heart to taste the bitterness and bitterness of this historical change, so they hurried away. It was not until June 1, 1927, when Mr. Wang Guowei, a scholar, threw himself into the water at the Summer Palace and died, that people with good intentions across the country pondered.

The cause of Mr. Wang Guowei's death is different, we don't care about it, we only know that this master of Han culture dragged a pigtail of the Qing Dynasty and committed suicide in the royal garden of the Qing Dynasty. After this world changes, there is no more shame." He would not have been ignorant of the astonishing bloody case in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties over whether the Han people should tie their hair or keep braids, he would not have been unaware of the generosity of scholars such as Liu Zongzhou, Huang Zongxi, and Gu Yanwu, and he would not have been unaware that according to the course of world history, great changes in society were inevitable, but he still died. I agree with Mr. Chen Yinke's statement that Mr. Wang Guowei did not die of political struggles, personnel entanglements, or mere loyalty to the Qing court, but of a culture:

When the value of a culture declines, the people who have been transformed by this culture will feel pain, and the greater the degree of expression of this culture, the greater the suffering they will suffer. It has reached a very deep level, and it is not out of suicide that there is no way to seek peace of mind for oneself and to do it righteously.

("Mr. Wang Guantang's Elegy and Preface")

Mr. Wang Guowei really couldn't separate the culture he died for from the Qing court. In his bookshelf, "Ancient and Modern Book Collection", "Kangxi Dictionary", "Siku Quanshu", "Dream of Red Mansions", "Peach Blossom Fan", "Palace of Eternal Life", Qianjia School, Nalan Xingde, etc., all connect the two together, so for him, the well-dressed manners and ecological mentality are also mixed with each other. We remember that under Kangxi, the high-level intellectuals of the Han nationality began to have a certain cultural identity with the imperial court after a violent psychological struggle, but what we did not expect was that when Kangxi's political and military careers had been ruined, the cultural identity had not yet dissipated. For this reason, Mr. Wang Guowei, who is very talented and erudite, wants to sacrifice it with his life. He did not find hope in his psychological struggles, and died a regrettable and inevitable death. Intellectuals are always unusual, they always have to show long-term cultural resilience after political and military toss-ups, culture has become life, and there is no other way to embrace culture only by life; This was the case after the end of the Ming Dynasty, and it was also the case after the end of the Qing Dynasty. However, the end of the Qing Dynasty was the end of the entire Chinese feudal system, so Mr. Wang Guowei should pay tribute to the entire traditional Chinese culture. The Qing Dynasty was just his foothold.

This is the first time Mr. Wang Guowei has been to the Summer Palace, and he borrowed five yuan from a colleague before going. The ticket to the Summer Palace is six corners, and there are still four yuan and four corners left in his pocket after his death, and he can't go to Chengde, and he can't open the closed door of the villa.

Today, I face the clear water of the summer resort, but I can't help but think of Mr. Wang Guowei's face and figure. I sighed softly, a dynasty that has been stormy for hundreds of years always begins with the heroic posture of a group of strong men, and the last period is often some polite and sad souls.