For Ninguta, I believe that many people should not be unfamiliar, because this term has appeared in many Qing Palace dramas, such as "The Biography of Zhen Huan" and "Yanxi Raiders". In the Qing Palace drama, it is a place where criminals are exiled, that is, a concentration camp for prisoners, and this is indeed the case in actual history.
In fact, Ninggu Pagoda can also be regarded as a unique name of the Manchu Qing, and it should be known that there was no tower in the place of exile in the early days. So why doesn't a good prison call it, but a tower? In fact, this tower is not a real tower as we understand it, but a place name, this name is actually just a Manchu transliteration, which is recorded in detail in the "Ninguta Chronicle", that is, Manchuria calls six Ninggu, one is a tower, and Ningguta means six.
Because of its border area and the fact that it was the land of Longxing in the Manchu Qing Dynasty, Ninguta was once a military stronghold of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, and it was one of the material and soldier reserves on the front line, which may also explain a practical reason why it was considered to be used to exile prisoners - prisoners were often well stocked and hardy. However, it is worth mentioning that during the Kangxi Dynasty, Ninguta slowly lost its strategic position, and the place has since become a complete place of exile.
As an exiled area, Ninguta is undoubtedly a place where people suffer, but places of this nature should be very common in China's ancient feudal dynasties, so why do some people say that it is "hell on earth", which makes people talk about it?
Although it is only an ancient place name with the change of history, it may be difficult for us to intuitively feel the sense of crisis that it once gave people, but we can indirectly feel its horror through some factors related to it.
First, let's take a look at the road to Ninguta. Ningguta is geographically located in the north, roughly located in the area of mujiang city in today's Heilongjiang Province, seven or eight thousand miles away from beijing, which in ancient times when the transportation was not convenient, it was simply Huangquan Road by relying only on a pair of legs.
At that time, the prisoners exiled to Ninguta were all shackled step by step, and they struggled to advance under the oppression of officials. On this road, hunger and cold are the norm, and we must be vigilant to prevent the invasion of beasts. In short, prisoners had to face a double blow of body and mind, which led to many people dying directly on the road at that time.
Second, when you are full of joy and think that you can get through the difficulties and start to live again, you don't know that the disaster has just arrived, because the next thing to face is the extremely harsh environment of Ninguta. Ningguta is a very cold place, in this environment, Ninguta has been frozen for many years, coupled with the Fact-Xiaoice River period of the Qing Dynasty, the temperature is much colder than now, sub-zero temperatures were very common at that time, for prisoners who have nothing and are only in prison clothes, surviving here will only be particularly difficult.
In the Qing Dynasty notebook "Miscellaneous Records of Yantang Observations and Stories", it is even more said that this place is : "If the world is not restored, China will not reach its place." In fact, compared with other dynasties to the south of Lingnan, I personally believe that the survival rate here is lower, Lingnan is at most a barren land, more insects and rats, other aspects can be much stronger than Ningguta.
Third, the environment of Ninguta itself is already unacceptable enough, but in such an environment, the prisoner also has to bear a huge amount of labor. At that time, their labor was mainly based on the extremely intense labor of opening up wasteland, repairing imperial tombs, and carrying materials, and when necessary, they had to act as a source of soldiers, and under the long-term high-intensity labor, even some young and middle-aged people would not be able to eat, let alone some old and weak women and children. Zheng Chenggong's father, Zheng Zhilong, was once assigned to Ningguta, and the Manchu Qing hated Zheng Chenggong very much, but did not execute him, but sent him here, which can only mean that it is more painful here.
And this is only the surface, in fact, after being exiled here, these prisoners will have an identity, that is, slaves. Whose slaves are they? Not only the generals, but also the armored men—that is, ordinary soldiers. In fact, this is also a way for the Manchu Qing to stabilize the military at that time, as mentioned earlier, Ninguta was once a military town, such a place naturally had soldiers, and even if it gradually lost its strategic significance, these armored people were still here, and these slaves were also considered to have given them some welfare benefits.
Since they are slaves, don't think about how good it is, the soldiers are grumpy, and becoming their slaves is destined to be mostly fierce. However, there were exceptions, a group of talented and learned Han Chinese were still very valued at that time, and they got along with local military officials in harmony - because they understood advanced technology and civilization, which had a great effect on local development.
From the above, we can see the whole process of the prisoner being assigned to Ninguta, and we can know the terrible point of Ninguta more specifically. What kind of people would be subjected to such severe exiles? And why are they punished in this way?
In fact, the distribution of this group of people also reflects the extreme cruelty of the cultural oppression of the Qing Dynasty. At that time, the people who were assigned Ninguta were convicted of various crimes, so there were all kinds of people. But one of the most common subjects that many people can't expect is the literati. The Qing Dynasty was a dynasty in which feudal despotism reached its peak, and this despotism was all-encompassing, and ideas were naturally included.
And because the Manchu Qing were a minority regime, in order to maintain their rule, this kind of ideological control was even stricter for the Han people - which led to a considerable proliferation of literary prisons, and a large number of southern literati were implicated and punished, and then this group of literati was exiled to Ninguta by the Manchu rulers. For the southern literati, this is undoubtedly the most desperate place - after all, the cold place of Ningguta is not something that people who have lived in the south for a long time can bear, and as a former noble literati, most of them are delicate and weak, unable to bear hardships, not to mention high-intensity labor, so being exiled at that time was equivalent to a death sentence.
A life hidden in cruelty
However, although these literati suffered the most terrible disaster of their lives here, some optimistic and capable literati who survived, after calming down, calmly accepted all this and started a new life of their own. We also said earlier that there is a group of valued literati living in harmony with the locals, and I am referring to them here.
This place of Ningguta, as the nightmare of exiled prisoners in the Qing Dynasty, the lives of prisoners here are indeed not false like ants, but behind the nightmare is a new life. The existence of the literati objectively brought civilization and science to this previously deserted area. With the truth and knowledge they learned, they disseminated advanced Han Chinese ideas and advanced technologies (such as farming methods and farming tools) here.
In particular, the Han Chinese Yang Yue, after being reused by General Ningguta, even took his family to start a college to teach local Han culture, which should also be one of the reasons why the local people now have a particularly strong sense of belonging to Han culture. And yang Yue and these literati saw the customs and customs here and all this did, and finally recorded it in words, which became the main reason why we can now understand ninggu pagoda more than three hundred years ago. That is to say, the civilization around Ninguta was actually created by this group of literati who were punished, although this process is accompanied by a certain historical cruelty, but if we look at it from the overall situation of future generations, there is no doubt that it has a certain progressive significance.
bibliography:
Ninguta Chronicle
Miscellaneous Records of Observations and Stories in the Research Hall
Draft History of the Qing Dynasty