China has a history of 5,000 years and has a long history. The ancients left countless rich treasures and cultural relics to their descendants. However, in modern times, these precious heritages have been robbed, smashed, burned, and destroyed by the Western powers. For the traditional Chinese civilization, it is undoubtedly a disaster of blood and tears.
To say that among the treasures left by these ancients, the most precious is not antique jade, gold and silver jewelry, but our historical documents and classical books. They are the true recorders and inheritors of Chinese historical civilization.
The reason why China has become the only surviving world of the four major ancient civilizations depends on these ancient literary and historical materials. Because they are well preserved, there are no faults in the history of our country. Just like Chinese characters, born in the hands of Chinese ancestors in the ancient period, one of the oldest scripts in the world, our people are still using them today. Compared with other contemporary texts, such as hieroglyphs, although they have been excavated and discovered today, they are no longer recognizable and no one can use them.
It can be seen that for a country's historical heritage, the most precious thing is these ancient historical archives that have been handed down from ancient times to the present. Although our country is the oldest preserved country in the world, it has not always been safe. In modern times, these ancient historical archives have almost been destroyed by our own people.
In 1912, when the Xinhai Revolution broke out and the Qing Dynasty collapsed, these ancient historical archives were hidden in the Cabinet Treasury of the Qing Dynasty. In the era of war, it is not easy to preserve so many precious historical books. At the beginning, the Beiyang government planned to build a history museum to store these ancient books.
During the renovation of the museum, all the books in these cabinets were moved out and temporarily placed in the door openings of the facades and the end gates outside the noon gate. The Beiyang government also sent special scholars to classify these ancient books so that they could be finally put into museums.
However, due to the extreme shortage of money by the Beiyang government, the museum's project was halfway through construction and stopped. Even the salaries of workers at the time and the salaries of government officials could not be paid, in order to solve the immediate fiscal deficit. The Beiyang government actually set its sights on the mountains of ancient books, which they packed into 10,000 sacks and sold them to the paper shops that bought waste paper at a price of 4,000 silver dollars each.
This is undoubtedly throwing these precious ancient books into the fire pit, but anyone with a little cultural common sense cannot do this. Fortunately, there would be people who still had conscience, and after a famous scholar Luo Zhenyu knew about it, in order to protect these ancient books, he bought them from the waste paper shop at his own expense at the price of 4500 silver dollars each.
However, after all, it is difficult for one person to support such a huge number of ancient books. Later, Luo Zhenyu's family wealth was scattered because he bought ancient books. Reluctantly, he sold it to Li Shengduo, a special collector merchant, who bought it and gave some of it to his relatives and friends.
After several changes of hands, these ancient books were gradually lost and scattered among the people, and a large part of the waste paper shops at that time had been destroyed. Today, of the 10,000 bags of these ancient books that have survived in the world, only 300 bags are left, which is really shocking.
Other antiques have been lost, and they can still be imitated according to the records and descriptions of the ancients, or wait for them to appear again and be found again. And these ancient books are lost forever, even if they spend billions of dollars, they can't buy them back, leaving them in vain.
We usually say that we must love the traditional culture of the motherland, and where is this love embodied? It is to protect these historical relics, especially ancient books, rather than thinking of selling them as waste for money.
In modern times, we have made a big mistake, and now, we need every Chinese person to go all out to prevent these precious historical relics of China from disappearing into the long river of time.