Recommended Book 丨Dai Chuzhou: The Precursor of China's Modern Reform - Reading Liu Xiaoping's "Wei Yuan" has a feeling

Qing Dynasty thinker Wei Yuan.

The precursor of China's modern reforms

——Reading Liu Xiaoping's "Wei Yuan" has a feeling

Text/Dai Chuzhou

Liu Xiaoping, honorary chairman of Zhangjiajie Municipal Federation of Literature and Literature, is a member of the Chinese Writers Association, a director of the Chinese Poetry Society, the honorary vice president of the Hunan Poetry Society, and the vice president of the Hunan Provincial Prose Literature Society. Liu Xiaoping has published many literary works in dozens of newspapers and periodicals, such as "People's Literature", "Ethnic Literature", "People's Daily", "Guangming Daily", "Literary Journal", and "Poetry Journal"; published fifteen literary works such as "The Cottage of Love", "Autumn Poetry", "Strange Mountains and Rivers Zhangjiajie", "Zhangjiajie Love Stories", "All the Way Scenery", "Fables of Cities and Villages", "Wei Yuan", "Labin", and other literary works; he has published "Deyue Lou", "The Taste of Love", "Bandits", "Xuefeng Anecdotes" and other short and medium stories. His prose works have been selected into dozens of anthologies and the second volume of the newly compiled nine-year compulsory junior high school language textbook. His poetic works have been honored by Han Zuo, former president of the Chinese Poetry Society and former editor-in-chief of People's Literature, as "Fables of The City and the Countryside". Recently, he has won more than 20 national literary awards, was named one of the top ten powerful poets in China in 2018, and won the second national Tujia Literature Award in 2019. In August 2019, the China Writers Association and several other units hosted a seminar on Liu Xiaoping's prose work "All the Way to the Landscape", which was attended by more than 20 well-known literary critics in China, including Wu Yiqin, Shi Yining and Xu Ke, secretaries of the Secretariat of the China Writers Association and critics. Liu Xiaoping has participated in the Tenth National Congress of the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles and the Ninth Congress of the China Writers Association, and is the winner of the first "Virtue and Art Shuangxin" artist in Hunan Province.

I have known my literary friend Liu Xiaoping for 30 years and know his way of dealing with the world. I think Liu Xiaoping is generous and willing to disseminate the excellent literary works he has created; he is approachable and helps the members of the Zhangjiajie Writers Association to create literature.

As early as the middle school era, when talking about modern Chinese history, the history teacher once said: Wei Jiayuan, a town in Simenmen, Longhui County, Hunan Province, was the first person in modern China to "open his eyes and see the world", and he was Wei Yuan, a famous progressive thinker, politician, and writer of the Qing Dynasty. Liu Xiaoping was proud to be a fellow countryman with Wei Yuan, and his enthusiasm for studying Chinese history began with the study of Wei Yuan. Later, Liu Xiaoping read Wei Yuan's poems and biographies, and visited the places of interest and historical sites where Wei Yuan went. After years of hard work, Liu Xiaoping wrote a book about Wei Yuan's life and deeds, "Wei Yuan", which was published by the Writers Publishing House, with a total of 44 chapters and more than 180,000 words. Although the writing of "Wei Yuan" is limited to the commentary of historical figures, there are many shining points in the literary and ideological nature of the book, especially the context of the development of Wei Yuan's thought before the reform of the Chinese Opium War, which is still a model for the application of the world. Looking at Wei Yuan's life, he changed from a theoretician to a scribe, from a staff member to a pro-people official, from a Hongru who interpreted the scriptures and poems to a doer who prepared grain and salt coupons, and from a scholar who worried about the country and the people to a pioneer who looked at the world, showing that he was an outstanding patriot. With appropriate narrative and vivid tone, the book describes the essence of Wei Yuan's thought and life course, which has both the thickness of enlightenment ideas and the readability of the storyline. After reading the historical documentary novel "Wei Yuan" written by the well-known writer Liu Xiaoping, I think that the book has three aspects of ideological value:

The first is to expound the idea of economic reform that has been applied to the world and changed the law to become stronger. Liu Xiaoping wrote in the chapter "Practical Use of the Classics" that after Wei Yuan was selected as a gongsheng in the eighteenth year of Jiaqing in the Qing Dynasty (1813), he entered the Kyoto GuoziJian. Wei Yuan squarely faced up to social contradictions, advocated the study of modern literature and scriptures, discussed current politics, and implemented changes in the law. In 1825, Wei Yuan was hired by He Changling, the envoy of Jiangsu Province, to edit the book "Imperial Dynasty Classics and Texts"; later, he assisted Tao Shu, the inspector of Jiangsu, in planning economic reforms such as the sea transport of grain and the implementation of the salt ticket system, and participated in business activities. In 1845, after Wei Yuan passed the examination for the Middle Age, he successively served as Dongtaizhi County, XinghuaZhi County and Gaoyouzhi Prefecture in Jiangsu Province, during which he attached great importance to the construction of water conservancy. Wei Yuan, a representative figure of the Jingshi school, is famous in academic circles for his practical application of the classics, and he uses the "theory of changing the old age" to argue the necessity of eliminating maladministration and changing the system with the times, and puts forward the viewpoint of historical evolution. These ideas of historical change not only had progressive significance at that time, but also influenced the later penghu reform method.

The second is to clarify the solemn and just stand of opposing the aggression of capitalist countries against China. In the chapter "The Inside Story of Smoking Bans", Liu Xiaoping writes that Wei Yuan, an aide to Lin Zexu, who was then the inspector of Jiangsu, absorbed the ideas of the Legalists and forbade the Chinese people from smoking opium with cool laws. Wei Yuan was a hardline fighter against the opium import trade and against the British invaders. After the outbreak of the Opium War, Wei Yuan actively participated in the anti-British struggle and personally interrogated the British prisoner Antude in the front-line Ningbo military camp in Zhejiang. The following year, Wei Yuan went to Dinghai and entered the shogunate of Yuqian, the governor of Liangjiang, to participate in military aircraft and plan defense. Later, due to the fall of Zhenhai, he abandoned his official position and went into hiding, and engaged in writing. The following year, he wrote a 14-volume book, "Sacred Martial Records", which used martial arts in the early Qing Dynasty to inspire patriots to revitalize their armed forces. In order to resist foreign invaders, Wei Yuan advocated "defending as a battle." He put forward the "strategy of self-defense" and adopted the strategy of enticing the enemy to go deep and annihilate the incoming enemy. Wei Yuan had a certain understanding of the power of the masses and believed that "the righteous people can be used." He was inspired by the people's fierce attack on the British invaders in Sanyuanli and other places in Guangzhou, and praised Chinese the people to defend national independence with the verse "Unity of Heart with the Enemy, Calling the City of Russia and Hearing 100,000 Divisions".

The third is to promote the open idea of "mastering the art of mastering the art of mastering the art of the master to control the yi". In the chapter "The Truth of War", Liu Xiaoping wrote that Wei Yuan compiled in 1852 a hundred-volume "Chronicle of the Sea Kingdom" based on the "Chronicle of the Four Continents" compiled by Lin Zexu, the minister of Qincha, and the "Great Constitutional Map" printed by the Yingyi Company, which was divided into six major parts, including the geographical location, historical evolution, political system, economy and culture, science and technology, and weapons manufacturing of various countries in the world. "Atlas of the Sea Country" is the first detailed work of world history compiled by Chinese experts, with a total of more than 880,000 words. Wei Yuan first put forward in his book "Chart of the Sea Kingdom" that "the mastery of the division is to control the yi" and "the yi to control the yi" as a way to resist the aggression of the capitalist countries: advocating learning from Western science and technology, the government set up factories to establish military industries, the production of ships and guns used by the army; allowing merchants and people to freely set up industrial enterprises and imitate civilian industrial products. Wei Yuan opened the ideological trend of understanding world knowledge and explored the xingli path of "great power and royal insult". In 1858, Wang Maoyin, a soldier in the imperial court, first asked the emperor and ministers to study the "Chart of the Sea Country" and make it play a guiding role. The figures of the Western-style school drew ideological nourishment from Wei Yuan's writings, and took "strengthening the army and enriching the country" as the fundamental guiding ideology of the western affairs movement. Its classification ideology is "shiyi long skill to control yi" and "middle school as the body, Western learning as the use". The idea of "mastering the art of mastering the art of mastering the art of mastering the art of controlling the yi" not only guided the movement of foreign affairs, but also had a profound impact on China's modernization and modernization. (The author is a second-level researcher of the Party History Research Office of Zhangjiajie Municipal Party Committee)