Portrait of Sima Qian
The first thing to say here is that history really happened. For example, your birth, this is an absolutely true historical fact. Although he has passed many years, the authenticity of this historical event cannot be doubted. Similarly, in Sima Qian's time, the events that had occurred before him, whether or not they were recorded, were absolutely true.
Second, history cannot be reproduced. Like last night, you went out to dinner with a group of people. None of you will deny the veracity of this historical event. But there is absolutely no way you can go back in time, and the fact that you ate together last night will never be reproduced. It's gone!
Hancheng Taishi Ancestral Hall
Third, even though historical events are no longer reproducible, it does not mean that historical events are unrecognizable. For example, you went out to dinner last night, although it is over and can no longer be reproduced. But we can still know it through a variety of channels, such as the memories of several of you, the hotel's consumption records, monitoring along the way, and so on.
Statue of Tai Shi Gong
The fourth point, I want to tell you, is that if we want to understand the historical events that have occurred in the past, we need to have historical data as a basis. For example, your birth needs to be recorded through the specific records of the year, or the memories of your parents and others. These are historical sources. Historical data is not the same as history. Therefore, there will be a certain deviation between people's understanding of history and history itself.
Specific to the events recorded by Sima Qian, such as the Hongmen Feast, they must not be copied. Based on the historical materials he had, Sima Qian recorded the scene of the Hongmen Feast for us in the "Records of History". Today, if we want to know the Hongmen Feast, we can only know the Hongmen Feast through Sima Qian's records. Note that there are already multiple subjective and objective relationships in this, the historical facts of the Hongmen Banquet and the historical materials related to the Hongmen Banquet, the historical materials related to the Hongmen Banquet and the records of Sima Qian, the records of Sima Qian, and our interpretations. After experiencing so many subjective and objective relations, people's understanding of the Hongmen Feast must have a certain deviation from the original historical truth.
And we are engaged in historical research, one of the important tasks is to find the cause of deviations, try to correct these deviations through other channels and ways.
In short, history is a very abstract theoretical discipline, in order to learn history, not just read some posts on the Internet, you need to go through systematic learning.