At the beginning of the last century, China was in the historical stage of century-long changes and turmoil, the Qing government was faint and corrupt, Empress Dowager Cixi was bowing to the government, and the great powers were plotting to divide the dragon. Among them, Germany relied on the "Jiao'ao Lease Treaty" signed with the Qing government to carry out colonial construction in Shandong, and its railway construction was in full swing, regardless of the property losses caused to the local residents. Germany bought farmland at low prices, forced peasants to move their graves and houses, blocked waterways for the construction of railways, and flooded the fields with water, causing endless harm. With this as a background, Shandong Haojie Sun Bing composed an earth-shattering act of resistance. At the same time, the novel combines the modern revolutionary movement and the implementation of torture such as sandalwood punishment, and vividly expresses the cruelty and inhumanity of the feudal monarchy and power struggle.
The novel is roughly divided into three parts. Phoenix head, pig belly and leopard tail.
In the opening chapter, FengTou explains the personality characteristics and identity background of the whole characters clearly through the self-statements of the four protagonists, and outlines the cause of the matter.
Mei Nianglang: Mei Niang is the daughter of Sun Bing, because she was born with a pair of big feet, she married Zhao Xiaojia, who slaughtered dogs and slaughtered cattle, And Zhao Xiaojia had a big waist and round waist, but she was a complete dementia. Mei Niang accidentally met qianding, a county commander who avoided the rain, in the dog meat shop, and since then, she has fallen in love with this powerful and powerful Qian Laoye, who also understands astronomical geography. Old Master Qian's wife is the granddaughter of Zeng Guofan, and she knows that the beautiful lady who is different from Yunni has to endure unrequited love, and even if she is burned by fire, she has not been able to find the opportunity to show her sincerity to Old Master Qian. Hearing that the imperial court was arresting her own father, she broke into the yamen in order to intercede with a basket with a dog leg on her back to sun bing, taking the opportunity to express her admiration to Old Master Qian, and the two turned the clouds and rain in the study and became veritable concubines.
Zhao Jia's wild words: Zhao Jia is a famous handmaiden of the Beijing Punishment Department. The guild has an honorific title for such a handmaiden, called Grandma. Zhao Jia fled to Beijing at a young age to join his relatives, followed his master Yu Grandma to learn the skill of killing and executing, and became famous for the emperor's execution of small eunuchs who stole palace utensils. The execution of the little insect was exactly the "Yan Wang Latch", the homemade helmet was tied with a rope that penetrated on both sides, And Grandma Yu and Zhao Jia held one side at a time, slowly exerting force in front of the emperor and the empress, and the little eunuch cried out incessantly, his eyes bursting, and he was incontinent. The criminal law process lasted for several hours, and finally the grandmother was afraid of the smell and the emperor hurriedly executed the eunuch, and after the execution was completed, she was praised by the empress. Later, he became acquainted with Yuan Shikai, executed Qian Xiongfei, the golden gun guard, and was received by the emperor and Cixi, and rewarded him with a string of sandalwood bracelets and a dragon chair made by the emperor. Since then, he has returned to his hometown, left the capital, and came to Zhao Xiaojia's home. Zhao Jia came here decades ago, bought this house with the gold and silver from the execution of the little bug, and married his wife, gave birth to Xiao Jia, and died of illness a few years later. Before that, the wife had arranged a marriage for Xiao Jia, and it was the slut who married the beautiful woman. Zhao Jia had just arrived at home and received an invitation from Qian County, but Zhao Jia was still arrogant and bluntly said that he wanted Qian to come and ask him personally. Old Master Qian was coerced by Yuan Shikai and was forced to come to Zhao Jia and take advantage of Zhao Jia's kung fu on the palanquin to knock out one of Zhao Jia's golden teeth.
Xiao Jia's stupid words: Xiao Jia once heard his mother say the story of "tiger whiskers". Legend has it that a man who had previously received a tiger whisker, wrapped it in a cloth, and put it on his body could see what kind of animal the world had transformed into. Accidentally, Xiao Jia heard in the mouth of the visitor that he had a way to get the tiger's whiskers, so he exchanged the dog leg for this secret. The visitor then said that There was a tiger skin on the bed of The Elder Qian, and he only needed to ask the beautiful lady to pluck one from it. Xiao Jia is born with dementia and believes it to be true. Go back in the evening and ask the beautiful lady to make him a tiger whisker. Mei Niang turned over and turned to Xiao Jia, which was a stinky scolding, but could not resist Xiao Jia's request, and the next day she really brought Xiao Jia a tiger whisker. Xiao Jia saw with tiger whiskers that his father was a cold-blooded black panther.
Qian Ding hates: Qian Ding was a Guangxu Yan Wei Ke Jinshi, who was on the same list as Liu Guangdi, one of the six gentlemen of Wu Shu, and later married the granddaughter of Zeng Guofan. He previously served as an official in the remote and backward place of Fuping, Sichuan, and was later transferred to the wealthy Shandong Gaomi. Although his wife is a lady of everyone, elegant and dignified, in fact, Qian Ding is not satisfied with his feelings, and he longs to get a confidant with a red face who has nothing to say. Since the last time I hid from the rain, I had the heart to make friends with the beautiful woman, but I have not found the opportunity. Later, Mei Niang borrowed Sun Bing's matter to get close, and the two of them naturally became logical, and the whole county knew that Qian Ding was Mei Niang's father. At the behest of Yuan Shikai, he went to ask Zhao Jia to execute him, and he looked down on Zhao Jia, the executioner who had killed countless people and destroyed his humanity, but when Zhao Jia "complained" to Yuan Shikai, he knelt down in a hurry and performed the three kneeling and nine prostrations. Since then, the two have formed an irreconcilable contradiction.
The pork belly section contains 9 sub-chapters that describe the acquaintance of Qian Ding and Sun Bing. It also led to Sun Bing's heroic feats of resisting aggression, laying the groundwork for the final torture of sandalwood. These 9 chapters are Fighting Whiskers, Bi Foot, Lamentation, Altar, Masterpiece, Covenant, Golden Gun, Crack, and Broken City.
Sun Bing is the head of a drama class, singing cat cavity. Because of the need to sing a good beard. Because he heard that the beard of the old man who was catching fast and praising the money was the first in the world during the meal, he was not convinced and was arrested and taken to the county court. Old Master Qian compared himself to him and invited the gentry to come and watch. The beards of the two men plunged into the cold water and each one was straight and unrolled, and the beautiful woman was asked to come forward to watch and say who won and who lost. After watching it carefully, Mei Niang had to say that Qian Da Lao Sheng, she not only wanted his father to be saved, but also because the aroma and charm of Qian Lao Ye attracted her heart. Old Master Qian forgave Sun Bing's innocence and gave him some silver two. One night, a few days later, a man dressed in black with a black veil wrapped around his chin stopped the drunken Sun Bing and pulled off his beard. After waking up, Sun Bing lost his beard, stopped singing, and opened a small tea house in The Fly Family Village to make a living by selling tea. Since then, he has married and had children and lived a stable life.
One day, when the tea house was discussing the construction of a railway in Germany, a man ran in and told Sun Bing that his wife and children were being bullied by the Germans on the street, and a group of people rushed up to the germans without saying a word, knocking the Germans to the ground, thus causing a terrible disaster. During the day he hid in the woods, and at night he sneaked into his home in the dead of night. On this day, the Qing soldiers, under the coercion of the German soldiers, went to the fly family village, killed Sun Bing's wife and children separately, and burned the fly family village, standing in the woods, Sun Bing saw the tragic image with his own eyes. Everyone came to the county Ling's house to present Qian Ding with an umbrella for the people of Ten Thousand People, and asked for explanations for the more than twenty people of the Fly Family Village who died.
Old Master Qian is a conscientious official with the people in mind. He rushed to the provincial capital with his retinue thousands of miles away to ask his superiors for explanations. However, his superiors threatened him to arrest Sun Bing as soon as possible, otherwise the Wusha hat would not be protected. After returning, Sun Bing was depressed, did not think about eating, and saw that he would not be able to bear it. Mrs. Qian could only invite the beautiful lady to come, and after a verbal confrontation with the beautiful woman, she could only acquiesce to them to save her husband's life. Sure enough, after the beautiful lady came, Chanding's health gradually improved.
Sun Bing did not report any hope for the Qing government, and the villagers pooled money for him to let him go to the Boxers to learn the real skills and come back to avenge. A month later, Sun Bing returned to the village with sun wukong, the master brother of the Boxers, and the second brother of the pig eight precepts. After practicing the Divine Fist and agreeing on a time for revenge, he opened the altar to sacrifice the flag, rushed into the railway shack under construction in Germany to seek revenge on the Germans, and kidnapped three German soldiers in addition to killing a number of German soldiers.
Zhao Jia came to Tianjin on the orders of Yuan Shikai. At this time, after the execution of the six gentlemen of Wu Shu, he became a veritable first handmaiden in the capital. Yuan Shikai's golden gun guard Qian Xiongfei plotted to assassinate Yuan, but tiangong was helpless and did not make a good deal, and the bullet jammed when he shot at Yuan. Yuan Shikai asked Zhao Jia to come and execute Qian Xiongfei. This execution Yuan asked the three armies to watch, Ling Chi Qian Xiongfei. Ling Chi refers to cutting off 500 pieces of meat from a prisoner without dying halfway through. The execution lasted for several hours, and the scene was horrific, and several soldiers watching fainted. Since then, Yuan Shikai has enshrined Zhao Jia as a distinguished guest on the seat.
Old Master Qian learned that Sun Bing had ZhanShan as his king. A man and a horse approached Sun Bing to demand the release of three German hostages. And told Sun Bing that the Germans had exchanged the demands of the beautiful woman for control. After the two agreed on a time and place, Mr. Qian found the German officer Drok and went to rescue the hostages. The next day, Sun Bing took one hundred and eighty peasants to the agreed time and place and handed them three sows with German military hats, and the Germans were ashamed and angry. Both sides returned to lead the army to encircle the city occupied by Sun Bing, who knew a little about the art of war and inflicted heavy losses on the Germans. The Germans ordered the bombardment with artillery shells, in order not to let innocent people die. Old Master Qian single-handedly found Sun Bing and sued him for his interests. Sun Bing agreed to exchange him for the safety of others. As soon as Mr. Qian pressed Sun Bing and the hostages out, the city was fiercely bombarded by the German army and fell apart, and Mr. Qian stepped forward to jam Delock's neck, but was subdued by the Germans. Pig tripe is over.
The leopard tail is still the confession of the protagonist, and through the confession, the end of the matter is also revealed. It is divided into five chapters, such as Zhao Jia Daobai, Mei Niang's Story, Sun Bing's Drama, Xiao Jia's Song, and Zhixian's Singing, which correspond to the inner activities of the protagonist characters, and also inherit from the four monologues in the opening chapter, and the cruel punishment of sandalwood punishment is also to appear.
Yuan Shikai came to Shandong on the orders of the imperial court to hang and kill the Boxers. Yuan invited Zhao Jia to ask what kind of punishment could last for 5 days, but it was extremely cruel and could shock the people. Six days later, the opening ceremony of the German railways, the Germans believe that Sun Bing's death on this day will have extraordinary significance. Zhao Jia combined his previous experience to tell Yuan about the execution process and cruelty of sandalwood punishment, and with the consent of the Germans, Yuan ordered Qian Ding to be responsible for providing all material preparations.
In the early years, Sun Bing was an ordinary person, good at drinking some wine, visiting the kiln, teaching morality, and being a man. The biggest achievement is the reform and development of the "cat cavity" and the major achievements in music art. The cat cavity, also known as the "Mao Cavity", evolved from the founder Chang Mao weeping and mourning. Sun Bing combined the essence of various local operas to apply it, making the cat cavity the most popular opera in the local area. The essence of the cat cavity lies in the rhyme of the words, and every few words are added to the cat call "meow", which makes the listener feel sad.
Zhao Jia spent a day preparing tools, setting up an oil pot, carving the best sandalwood wood into two exquisite wooden awls, and frying them in the oil pan overnight. And the beautiful lady also ran away from home to find a way to save her father. When he met Zhu Ba, an apprentice of Sun Bing's early years, Zhu Ba, after hearing that his master Sun Bing was going to be executed by sandalwood, he had the idea of rescuing his master. The little beggars volunteered to take the place of Sun Bing to be punished, and they would be written and passed down through the ages in opera. Xiao Shanzi has the same height and face plate as Sun Bing, and is the best candidate to replace Sun Bing. After hearing that Sun Bing had been knocked out two teeth by Delock, Xiao Shanzi picked up the bricks on the ground and broke his own teeth, but he knocked out three.
In the night, the crowd packed up properly. Neiying lit a fire and set fire to the county kitchen, and the group took advantage of the chaos to climb over the county court's wall and came to the prison. Replacing Sun Bing with Xiao Shanzi, Yuan Shikai reacted and also brought people over. Seeing that the prisoners in the prison were still preparing to reflexively go back to direct the firefighting, this was Sun Bing's sudden voice, everyone scattered and fled for their lives, Mei Niang was hidden by Lady Qian to avoid a disaster, Zhu Ba was not so lucky, and was shot and killed by random guns when he backed Sun Bing. For a time, Yuan Shikai and the Germans could not tell which was the real Sun Bing. Xiao Shanzi learned from Sun Bing's appearance and said: If you don't change your name, if you don't change your surname, I am the Heavenly Soldier Heavenly General Yue Grand Marshal. Yuan Shikai angrily let the two be tortured together. At night, the two talked in the moonlight and met to serve their sentences together.
The next day, tens of thousands of people in the city were in the middle of the road, and everyone came to worship Sun Bing. Zhao Jia and his son Zhao Xiaojia put the real Sun Bing on the pine wood board, and used the sandalwood awl to bind it from Sun Bing's tail bone, so that Xiao Jia slowly tapped the tail of the awl, and soon the tip of the cone leaked out from Sun Bing's shoulder blade. Zhao Jia considered that his family loved to sing with his voice to give him a decent face, so he did not come out of his throat. The execution process was very smooth, and Sun Bing did not have major bleeding except for a small amount of bleeding. Xiao Shanzi in the stands was already incontinent, his legs were bent, and he was beheaded on the spot by Yuan Shikai's order. The crowd under the stand handed over the letter of ten thousand people under the leadership of Shan Laoju and asked for forgiveness of Sun Bing, but no one came out to pick up the book, and the old man fell to the ground and fainted after kneeling for several hours.
The beauties in the crowd rushed up and were put down by the servants. Mei Niang had to come to the tent temporarily set up by her father-in-law Zhao Jia. The next day, Sun Bing spat out blood, his face was pale and colorless, Zhao Jia experienced cooking ginseng soup, and Mei Niang fed it into Sun Bing's mouth spoon by spoon, and Sun Bing was able to survive.
From somewhere, a drama team with a flowered face stood on the hillside opposite the stands. Old Master Qian was afraid that the drama team would kidnap Sun Bing, so he went forward to inquire. The drama team replied that they had come to perform on the orders of the grandfather, and Old Master Qian was afraid that they would be implicated in the orders and hurriedly coaxed them down, and the drama team sang it with self-care under the leadership of the class master. Sun Bing weakly echoed the voice, and suddenly the German soldiers rushed to the stands, and before Old Master Qian could explain the situation and ask them not to shoot, the German soldiers had already knocked him unconscious. At the sound of an order, the German soldiers' guns were filled with smoke, and the drama team was all killed.
On the third day, Sun Bing's body was full of maggots, black blood was flowing, and he was about to lose his breath. Zhao Jia finally had nothing to do and asked Old Master Qian to come up with an idea. Old Master Qian knew that Sun Bing wanted to die, but for the sake of the beautiful woman, in order for Sun Bing to become the legend of Gaomi County, he lived one more day, and he had one more legend, and hurriedly called someone to invite Dr. Langzhong. After the doctor finished prescribing the medicine, Mr. Qian asked Mei Niang to pour the medicine into Sun Bing, and installed a mosquito net around it to block the flies, and Sun Bing came back to life.
On the night of the fourth day, Sun Bing cried out incessantly, singing and cursing incessantly, resounding throughout the stands, and he wanted to die.
Lady Qian knew her husband's heart, she knew that her husband would also be harassed by Yuan Shikai after Sun Bing's death, and she also knew what kind of action her husband would take as the parent official of the people and a person with a conscience.
Qian Ding realized that Sun Bing would become a legend, and he would appear in future operas, he was a hero, and he was just a coward. What he needed to do now was to fulfill Sun Bing, and he must not let the German devils, Yuan Shikai and Zhao Jia's plan to let him live for five days to warn the world to succeed.
He dispersed the servants around the stands, and took advantage of Zhao Xiaojia to inject Sun Bing's heart with a knife while he was pouring medicine on Sun Bing. But Zhao Xiaojia helped Sun Bing block this knife, Zhao Xiaojia spat out blood, and the clothes wrapped around his heart gradually became red. Zhao Jia saw that he was running to find Qian Ding desperately, he threw down Qian Ding's hands and tightly pinched Qian Ding's neck, just when Qian saw the lady standing on the opposite hill, Zhao Jia's hand suddenly lost strength, accompanied by a strange expression on his face. Zhao Jia had a dagger inserted behind him, and Mei Niang stood next to him. When Chanding reached out to call for the beautiful lady, the beautiful lady jumped off the stand. Qian Ding pulled out the dagger inserted in Zhao Jia's body and stabbed it at Sun Bing's heart, and Sun Bing's mouth murmured: The play is finally over.
On that day, it was not Qian Ding who killed Sun Bing's beard, but Qian Ding's retinue, Liu Guangdi's son Liu Po.
End of story.
The narrative time and space of "Sandalwood Punishment" is placed in the historical moment of 1900, which is turbulent and internal and external troubles, and takes the heaviest events in modern history such as the Penghu Reform Law, the Boxer Rebellion, the invasion of the Eight-Nation Alliance, and the German colonization of Shandong as the background of the story, taking Sun Bing's resistance to Germany as the clue, taking the cat's cavity drama as the soundtrack, taking the six major punishments as the plot, and taking the carnival language as the rhythm, telling a wonderful story that can be sung and wept, and the love and hate are intertwined, accusing the cruelty and viciousness of the ruling clique in the late Qing Dynasty, and revealing the arrogance and domineering of the Western powers. It recounts the bitter remembrance of the tragic fate of the nation and the country in the late Qing Dynasty.
With "Punishment" as the main line, "Sandalwood Punishment" shows many thrilling events in the political decline of the Chinese dynasty, including the Penghu Rebellion, the Boxer Rebellion, and the robbery of foreign colonists. The novel revolves around the implementation of sandalwood punishment, vividly expresses the cruelty and inhumanity of the feudal royal power and power struggle, highlights the historical mechanism of the action of authoritarian power on the individual, and reflects the black soil and dark laws on which the authoritarian power depends for survival. The way in which the author intervenes in recent history is unique compared to the writing of the voice. In the fragmented modernity of writing, which is deconstructed, it is insisted that folk writing is in the same vein.
In addition to the eerie temple life, this book also depicts another vibrant folk life form. Folk traditions mean that the primitive vitality of human beings closely embraces the process of life itself, and thus bursts out of love and hatred for life, the pursuit of the desire for life, which cannot be regulated by any moral preaching, cannot be restrained by any political regulations, and even some abstract concepts such as civilization, progress, and beauty cannot be implied.