In the history of Chinese literature, each dynasty and each generation has its own iconic literary genre. Among them, the earliest can be traced back to the "Book of Poetry" of the pre-Qin Dynasty, the Popular "Fu" in the Han Dynasty, and the Tang poetry and Song Poetry yuanqu are china's literary treasures. In the Ming and Qing dynasties, although poetry also prevailed, in these two dynasties, a long vernacular style of literary genre - novels appeared.
Many of the ancient novels that are now respected, and even the four famous works of our country are from this era. One of them is popular romance novels like Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which are mainly the wars and cultures of ancient history. The other is the folk popular novel, of which the most popular period of folk popular fiction is the end of the Qing Dynasty.
At that time, many literary writers of the late Qing Dynasty had very rich experience. Some were even county-level and provincial-level officials, and some poor Confucians were dissatisfied with the social system at that time and wrote some satirical words. Now it seems that they have become valuable materials for understanding the social situation and the lives of ordinary people at that time.
And what I want to introduce today is a popular novella that reflects the harm of the Qing officials at that time, "The Travels of the Old Remnant" and its author Liu Hu.
Old Stump Travelogue
Many readers who have not read "The Journey of the Old Remnant" will not understand. People want politics to be clear and free of corruption. When he was wronged, he called on the Great Master of qingtian to preside over justice, so why did he say that the qing officials would still harm people?
In fact, the ancient imperial examination system has undergone hundreds of years of evolution and development, and in the Qing Dynasty, it is different from when the imperial examination system was just used, and the imperial examination system in the Tang Dynasty could indeed select very good officials, because at that time, the examination system needed to have generalists. From governing the country and securing the state to attacking and defending, from adjusting people's livelihood to convicting cases in prison, officials in the Tang Dynasty at least had to take the same shot.
Portrait of Liu Osprey
However, in the Qing Dynasty, this was not the case, because of the use of the Ming Dynasty's eight shares to take the examination scope, many mediocre people who read dead books were elected as one parent official, and even some official positions were bought by donating officials, which could not fully guarantee the ability of officials to govern and enforce the law.
Moreover, being a clean and honest official is only a constraint on mentality and code of conduct, and officials do not act, or even act indiscriminately. This not only did not help the people solve the actual people's livelihood difficulties, but caused a lot of suffering and even unjust, false and wrong cases.
"The Travels of the Old Disabled" is a criticism of this current situation of only focusing on the construction of officials' spirit and behavior, and ignoring the ability of officials. He criticized the social corruption of the late Qing Dynasty, exposed many of the crimes of the so-called good officials and officials, and pointed the spearhead of criticism directly at the official system and the pillar of rule at that time.
The plot of novels often has a great relationship with the author's era and his own experience, and the experience of Liu Hu, the author of "The Journey of the Old Remnant", is also like this, and the reason why he wrote a novel criticizing these incompetent and faint Qing officials actually had a lot to do with the fact that he was ostracized by some old Confucians in his business at the end of the Qing Dynasty.
Bureaucrats at the end of the Qing Dynasty
Liu Hu, a well-known generalist in the late Qing Dynasty, can be said to be experienced. He is well versed in many disciplines. He can even be said to be an expert in archaeology, literature, arithmetic, medical science, hydrology, etc. He was also a very famous philosopher, bibliophile, and musician in the late Qing Dynasty.
The most famous is that in the late Qing Dynasty, Liu Hu participated in the cause of industrial salvation. He was able to identify Oracle and had also opened a coal mine in Shanxi. Of course, writing "The Journey of the Old Remnant" is a stroke that really makes him famous in history.
Liu Hu was born in 1857 and died in 1909 from a bureaucratic family. When he was young, he had no intention of obtaining a meritorious name, and later served as an aide in the Governor of Shandong and the Governor of The River, governing the Yellow River Project.
In April of the fifteenth year of the Qing Dynasty, Liu Hu entered Shandong with his men and others, traveled through many areas of Shandong and drew the "Map of the Yellow River in the Three Provinces of Yuzhilu" and sent it to the emperor for imperial inspection and left this map in the imperial palace. Moreover, he has also edited water conservancy academic monographs such as "Five Theories on Governing the River" and "The Second Theory on the Continuation of the River".
In March of the following year, he began to manage river affairs in Jinan, and served as the governor of the lower reaches of the Yellow River at that time. At that time, the flood situation in Shandong was very serious, and when the time came, more than 200 villages around the Yellow River were always flooded. Liu Built levees in lijin and Putai counties at that time to ensure the harvest of crops in the surrounding villages.
Flooding of the Yellow River
After the defeat of the Sino-Japanese War, the foreign affairs movement also went bankrupt. The Meiji Restoration of Japan, which studied in the Qing Dynasty, also embarked on the road of restoration, and Kang Youwei and other insightful people such as Tan Si encouraged officials to change the law and innovate, and Liu Hu at this time was also among them.
Of course, When Tan Sitong was killed, Liu Hu was not implicated. He has always tried to find ways to help the Qing government at that time change the law and strive to become stronger, and ran on the road of changing the law with the idea of "governing the country is more important than supporting the people, and the government is not before establishing the foundation". In "Holding the Crippled and Guarding the Lack of Fasting", it is mentioned that Liu Hu encountered some difficulties in Shanxi, which allowed him to learn a very big lesson.
So when he was in Henan, his business was relatively smooth. It was precisely because of his low-key behavior that the imperial court quickly approved the approval of the opening of a coal mine in Jiaozuo, and was guaranteed by the Italian minister. Not only participated in the revision of the operating regulations of Jiaozuo Coal Mine, but also participated in the actual management of the coal mine. It has contributed to the salvation of the country by industry.
Jiaozuo Coal Mine
However, all this seemed to be "done by businessmen" in the Chinese at that time, which was quite unthinkable. This shows that the social atmosphere at that time was still conservative and there was an old idea of "scholars, peasants, industrialists, and merchants, and businessmen at the end".
Therefore, when Liu Hu wrote "The Journey of the Old Disabled", he also carried the sorrow of the fate of the failure of China's industry to save the country and the pain of the enthusiasm of the rich country being ruthlessly extinguished. The protagonist of the novel, Lao Yan, is actually the embodiment of Liu Hu himself, and the book is full of disappointments in the entire bureaucratic system.
Although Liu Hu hated the bureaucracy of the Qing court, he was still too conservative in his political thinking and did not observe the political situation at that time. For him in that era, being able to think of industrial rejuvenation was already a very advanced and insightful move. The so-called non-consequential hero, although Liu Hu failed on the road to business, he was still able to understand the suffering of the people.
At the time of the Gengzi Incident, the Eight-Power Alliance entered Beijing. At that time, the country's north-south traffic was blocked, and Beijing was in a difficult situation of famine in the city because of the lack of food. In order to be able to help the victims, Liu Hu raised a large amount of money to enter Beijing at that time, bought all the grain and grain warehouses that the Russian troops were going to set fire to, and then released grain in the form of grain relief or flat grain relief for the disaster victims.
The Eight-Power Coalition invaded China
Liu Yan's relative Luo Zhenyu recorded in the "Fifty Days of Dreams": "When the coalition army entered the capital, the two palaces were fortunate, and the people were hungry and hungry. Jun nai entered the country with money and negotiated relief. Suitable Taicang was the stronghold of the Russian army, and the Europeans did not eat rice, so the King asked the Russian army to get it as cheaply as possible. To the people, the people depend on peace. The reason why Jun Pingsheng benefited others was really this. ”
It can be seen that in fact, Liu Yan did not really want to sell grain privately at that time, but sincerely rescued the disaster and protected the people.
This act caused Liu Hu to lose all the property he left behind when he was doing business, and not only that, but later the imperial court not only did not praise him, but said that Liu Hu colluded with foreigners to steal and sell imperial grain, and was distributed to Xinjiang by the imperial court.
The archives of the Qing government at that time recorded that in the nineteen days from June to July in the thirty-fourth year of Guangxu, the Qing government attached great importance to the grain theft case, and the central organs involved in the trial of the case, from Empress Dowager Cixi to the Military Aircraft Department, were all in the hands of the Qing government.
At that time, Liu Hu was in Nanjing, arrested by the Governor of Liangjiang, and then escorted to Hankou by boat, and finally arrived in Urumqi via Henan and Shaanxi with the special escort sent by the Governor of Huguang. Liu Hu suffered a lot along the way and was infected with diseases. Eventually, he fell ill and died in Urumqi (then called Dihua) the following year.
Liu Hu
Mr. Lu Xun once mentioned in his "History of Chinese Novels" that Liu Hu once wrote to the imperial court to build a railway, advocating the opening of a coal mining industry in Shanxi to save the country, and later became known as a "Traitor" because of the release of grain for disaster relief. It can be seen that it is pertinent to describe the entire life course of Liu Hu.
At the end of the article, the author should lament that people always decide their actions in the current way of thinking and the social environment in which they live. At the end of the Qing Dynasty, the government was incompetent and the officials were harsh and decaying. No one really saw why China at that time was bullied by foreign powers, and no one recognized the change of the trend of the times.
Although the Qing government was the end of the entire Absolute Monarchy in China, it still could not get rid of the basic peasant-oriented way of thinking after the Agricultural Revolution. At that time, the world was actually in the embryonic stage of capital, and the industrial revolution was in full swing and rapid development.
From the point of view of political economy, productivity determines production efficiency. In the Western countries after the Industrial Revolution, the increase in productivity was simply unimaginable to China during the Qing Dynasty. Relying solely on businessmen to carry out industry to save the country is simply a toddler in Handan. Nor can it change the stereotyped way of thinking that all Chinese have been sealed for hundreds of years.
The people at the end of the Qing Dynasty
Therefore, although Liu Yan's industrial salvation of the country is more than enough, it is insufficient. Moreover, the "traitor" is actually not true from all aspects of the records. Liu Yan's practice of buying grain from the Eight-Nation Alliance for disaster relief was actually to Chinese to avoid natural and man-made disasters, and the "Traitors" officially assessed by the Qing Dynasty were not essential traitors.
Old Remnant Travels Illustrated Collector's Edition ¥35.8 Purchase
The argument of the harm of the cool officials criticized in "The Journey of the Old Remnant" is actually a bit like the way of thinking of the Liangshan heroes in "Water Margin". The one hundred single and eight generals who were forced to go to Liangshan were actually not like Fang La's sincere rebellion against the imperial court, but disposed of corrupt officials on behalf of the Song court by falling grass for the sake of Kou, so Song Jiang provoked the banner of "for the Heavenly Path" on Liangshan at that time.
For The Way of Heaven, that is, to admit that Heaven is right. The same is true of Liu Hu, who does not think that the Qing government has a problem from the root, but feels that it is the problem of those officials of the Qing Dynasty. From the center of the novel's contradictions, the wrong direction of criticism is chosen.
Of course, the times create heroes, and Liu Yan, as a hero in the management of the Yellow River and an industrialist who relies on disaster victims, his merits are naturally remarkable. In the context of the times at that time, Liu Hu's destination was also the destination of that backward era.
In the front there is Cao Xueqin, and then there is Liu Tieyun - Zhou Ruchang
If you want to see through the late Qing Dynasty society and feudal system, and taste Liu Yan's life, you must not miss the novel "The Journey of the Old Remnant". Interested friends can click on the product card above to purchase.