01? The needs of the people - enough food and clothing to know honor and disgrace
The previous article wrote about the shameless Opium War brought about by the British Empire and the poisoning of the Qing Empire. This article continues the previous article and summarizes the folklore of the Qing Empire.
Daqing is in the era of alternating the old and the new, the great voyage makes the world really become a ball, communicating the whole world, and the closure of the Great Qing makes the Qing full of backward and twilight atmosphere, and when these foreigners come, a gentle kick, it is a rush to fall, completely reduced to the fish on the foreigner's board.
An engineer named William Barclay Parson, who went deep into China because he lived in the Qing Dynasty and presided over the construction of the Cantonese-Han Railway, wrote books on the social sentiments of the late Qing Dynasty.
Landscape scenery
He studied the poor, powerful, and gentlemen of the Qing Dynasty, and his observations of the Qing Dynasty ranged from commercial cities to barren townships. He also used his photographic talents to document these events. All the problems of the Great Qing Dynasty can be found in his book and inspired.
The well-fed part of life describes the living conditions of some villages.
The needs of the people are very low, simple and simple. They don't have an eager desire to improve their lives, or even realize that life can be changed. Hunan, where the land is fertile, can produce grain and then transport the surplus agricultural products to the market to sell in order to pay back the money for clothing. Struggling day after day on the land, there is not much to rejoice in. The lives of ordinary people seem to be the survival instinct of animals, and there is not much difference.
In fact, it is no wonder that the development of land transportation is the foundation of people's mobility, the popularization of education is the starting point of ambition and ideals, and if it is in the era of change, food and clothing, people will naturally go out to see. And the simplicity of life is probably not a surplus. Although he has several truths, you ask a person who can't even eat enough food to pursue self-improvement, which is simply inferior to the beast. Enough food and clothing to know honor and disgrace, and barn to be honest and know etiquette is what it means.
Modern transport
The family is the highest morality of society
The family is the highest morality of society. Parson's observations revealed:
The society of the Qing Dynasty was based on the family as the highest organizational unit, and the concept of the family was not limited to wives and children, but the group consciousness of the family. That is to say, the most important value of the Qing people is to be loyal to the family, to fully respect and obey; second, to be loyal to the county and province where the family is located; and finally, to the state. As a result, the Qing people as a whole lacked national pride and the patriotic spirit of generous death.
This passage, to tell the truth, is that the author really does not understand the homeland and the world and the feelings of China since ancient times. Chinese Qi family rule of the country and the world began with self-cultivation. And then it is as for "worrying about the world before the world, and enjoying the world after the world." Be strict with yourself until you benefit all sentient beings. The civil service system of successive dynasties and dynasties, and the ancient sages of all dynasties and dynasties, have taken "repairing Qi Zhiping" as their highest standard of life. And whenever the country is in trouble, how many people have sacrificed their lives for the country. Although the author who wrote this passage saw the unit of the family, he did not understand the Chinese homeland. In the dynastic era, it was all the world of one surname, and the royal family shouldered the world, so there was a family and a world. As small as the common people, they all have their own accounts. Who doesn't have to take care of their family before they can do more? Don't most families today do this? Integrate personal development with the great cause of the motherland. It was only in dynastic times that they were for a family (the royal family), and now they are for the fundamental interests of the broadest masses of the people in the country. Can we arbitrarily attack the loyal subjects of ancient times from the perspective of the present as not being loyal? That's what the heart says. So in this passage, the author is really very wrong. The biggest mistake is that it is not the use of historical materialist views, which are full of the superiority of the modern critique of the previous generation.
Ancient Chinese family unit
03 Money banks and free currency exchange
Money banks and currency free exchange aspects. In this regard, it shows that the Qing Dynasty is not completely ignorant of the ancients, after all, a foreigner can exchange his own currency in Hunan, which can also be regarded as civilization and progress.
Coins
Although he exaggerates the Qing Dynasty, it is not, when people's armies invade your territory, these economies are often attached to it. Before reading the "Law of Blood Reward", I know that many Qing Dynasty ships hung foreign flags to avoid the extortion of bandits, servants, and hooligans. The exchange of foreign currency by local money banks is only an extension of foreign gunboats. What they see is civilization and progress, but what I see is a great shame, after all, the introduction of autonomy and forced opening are completely different things.
A hundred years of history that I can't bear to read. This is still the beginning of this book, ah, history is really heavy.
Parson said a lot, a batch of refutations still need time, today's time is limited, put aside for the time being.
bibliography
Zheng Xiyuan, eds., translated by Li Fanghui, Hu Shuyuan, and Zheng Xiyuan, Memories of Empire, Observations of the Late Qing Dynasty, The New York Times[M], Beijing: Contemporary China Publishing House, 2018.11