The long river of history is running endlessly, there are calm waves, there are also waves, let Xiaobian take you into history and understand history.
Europe has always had a strong aristocratic culture, such as the British royal family, which is still very active, which is a typical representative of modern aristocracy, and the historical China, not only did not leave nobility, but even the aristocratic culture was swept into the historical garbage.
Were there aristocrats in Chinese history? Of course, there are, for example, the clan aristocrats of the pre-Qin period, such as Confucius, Guan Zhong, Sun Zhen, etc., but all the pre-Qin figures who have left their names in history are almost all of aristocratic origin.
After Qin Shi Huang unified the Six Kingdoms, in addition to the establishment of a unified dynasty, another major achievement was to replace aristocratic politics with bureaucratic politics, and there was no "nobility" in Chinese history. Why is the "nobility" here in quotation marks, because during the Wei and Jin Dynasties, the Mengmen clan rose and rose to a new aristocratic class, and the rise and demise of the Mengmen clan is also the main content of this article.
Wild grass flowers by the Suzaku Bridge, the sunset at the mouth of Wuyi Lane.
In the old days, Wang Xie Tang Qianyan flew into the homes of ordinary people.
--Tang Liu Yuxi, "Wuyi Lane"
Since elementary school, we have been reciting this poem "Wuyi Lane", especially this sentence "In the old days, Wang Xie Tang Qianyan flew into the homes of ordinary people" was widely circulated.
Wuyi Lane is located on the south bank of the Wende Bridge on the Qinhuai River in Qinhuai District, Nanjing, in the core area of the Confucius Temple Qinhuai Scenery Belt, and was the location of the barracks of Wu Guoshu's troops defending Stone City during the Three Kingdoms period. The residences of the two rich families of Wang Xie of the Jin Dynasty are located here, because the children of both clans like to wear black clothes to show their status, so they are named Wuyi Lane.
The giants of ancient culture who are remembered by modern people have either experienced ups and downs that ordinary people cannot experience, or have enjoyed a rich material life that ordinary people cannot enjoy, while Wang Xizhi, Wang Xianzhi, Xie Lingyun and others who came out of Wuyi Lane belong to the latter.
Wang Xizhi's "Orchid Pavilion Collection"
Because their families are well-off, they don't have to worry about eating enough, they have a lot of time to cultivate interests and realize themselves. If you want to ask why the "Wang and Xie" families are so prominent, you have to start from the Door Valve family in the Wei and Jin Dynasties.
The rise of door valves
When it comes to door valves, many people will think of "domineering, powerful, rich, and inherited from generation to generation", yes, these descriptions are very accurate. The interpretation of "valve" in the Xinhua dictionary is: in ancient times, it referred to a powerful family. The door valve is a combination of the door and the valve reading, referring to the famous door family that has been an official for generations, also known as the door, the crown, the family, the clan, the scholar, the shi family, the family, the giant room, etc.
In the pre-Qin period, organizations similar to door valves had already appeared, and there was a statement in Mencius Leaving Lou Shang that "it is not difficult to govern, and it is not to sin against the giant chamber".
How did the door valve rise up and become bigger? There are many reasons, but on the whole, it is mainly due to the background of the world's disputes and the system of electing and appointing officials in the later period.
For example, the Wang Xie family in Wuyi Lane, at the end of the Western Jin Dynasty, during the Yongjia Rebellion, many families moved south of the Yangtze River to avoid chaos, Sima Rui, with the support of the Wang family, established the Eastern Jin Dynasty in Jiankang, which made the position of the Wang family important in the dynasty; in the "Battle of Shuishui", the Xie family headed by Xie An made great contributions to the victory of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, which laid the foundation for the Status of the Xie Clan of Chen County as the Eastern Jin Dynasty and the Southern Dynasty.
In the Eastern Han Dynasty, officials were elected to use the system of inspection and conscription, and this system had a lot of room for operation; some landlords and rich rooms were combined with Confucian etiquette, and by "practicing through the Ming Dynasty," they could become officials for generations, and powerful landlords controlled the political departments at all levels in an intricate manner, and the feudal hierarchical relations were becoming more and more solidified, and a number of "generations of officials" began to appear.
By the late Eastern Han Dynasty, after two hundred years of operation, these families were deeply rooted in their respective territories, forming a fixed interest group, and those who were officials in the dynasty must come from a certain magnate, and the students of the cold door only had the opportunity to be selected to be selected as officials in the DPRK, and it was described by a popular word to describe it as "class solidification". Therefore, at that time, there was a saying: "There is no cold door in the upper product, and there is no scholar in the lower product", which can be described appropriately.
The fourth and third dukes, Yuan Benchu
At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, the world was in chaos, the masses rose up, and there were many political powers. Various powerful landlords also took the opportunity to expand their power.
Cao Pi claimed the title of empress dowager, adopted the advice of Shang Shu Ling Chen Qun, and created the Jiupin Zhongzheng system, according to the Tongdian Records: "When Emperor Wen of Wei was the king of Wei, the three parties stood up, the scholars were spread and moved, the scholars were mixed, and there was nothing to check in detail. In the first year of Yankang, the official Shangshu Chen Qun was selected by the Heavenly Dynasty, and did not exhaust talents, but established the method of the Nine Pin Officials. States and counties are placed in the right place to determine their choice. The wise and discerning people of the prefecture and county are chosen to distinguish between the characters and the superior."
To a certain extent, the Nine Pins Zhongzheng system inherits the inspection and lifting system of the two Han Dynasties, and the specific operation refers to the selection of one person by each state and county, and the selection of The Great Zhongzheng must be an official who serves in the central government and has a high moral reputation, and the big Zhongzheng produces the small Zhongzheng, and the "Zhongzheng" here is the official name of the character evaluation talent. After the emergence of Zhongzheng, the talents in various places are divided into nine grades for evaluation, and finally pushed to the officials.
At the beginning of the establishment of the Jiupin Zhongzheng system, the criteria for judging characters were equal emphasis on family lineage, morality, and talent. However, due to the fact that the "big zhongzheng" in various places is controlled by the door valve clan, later this system has slowly changed its flavor, and the selection criteria mainly depend on the origin, and the door valve forces have further increased in this way.
Door valves are versatile
Yingchuan, a famous place in history. It has a profound cultural heritage, and is also the birthplace of many surnames in China, and there are countless talents in Yingchuan in history. Here, many famous and prestigious families have been bred.
According to the statistics of Japanese scholars Tsuruma Kazuyuki, there were a total of 95 cases of famous Hao clans in the Kanto region of the Han Dynasty, of which Yonkawa Prefecture had as many as 13 cases, which was the county with the highest concentration of Hao clans. Chu, Guo, Chen and so on are widely known. For example, Cao Cao's powerful assistant Xun Yu was the famous family of Yingchuan, Chen Qun was from the Yingchuan Chen clan, and Guo Jia, who was recommended by Xun Yu to Cao Cao, was a descendant of the Yingchuan Guo clan, and the relationship between the family clans can be seen from this.
"Tiger Howling Dragon Yin" Xun Yu
Due to the monopoly of most of the economic, educational and other social resources, there will inevitably be many stupid children in the door valve. However, in the stage of low productivity, they highly concentrated the world's resources and passed them on from generation to generation, and the rich material resources also helped the disciples of the door valve to enter the stage of self-realization in advance, and during that period, many artistic achievements came from the children of the door valve.
During the Southern and Northern Dynasties of the Wei and Jin Dynasties, there was a group of people who once led the social fashion, and today we call them "Qing Light Family", of which the most famous of them are the "Seven Sages of the Bamboo Forest": Ji Kang, Ruan Yuan, Ruan Xian, Shan Tao, Xiang Xiu, Wang Rong, Liu Ling. Most of today's evaluations of him are wild and uninhibited, eclectic, in addition to clear talk, there are also sightseeing, drinking, talent, and some deviant and shocking words and deeds. It seems that these people are people who despise the powerful and love the landscape, but we look at the essence through the phenomenon, and things are not so simple.
Seven Sages of the Bamboo Forest
As mentioned earlier, only the children of the door valve are qualified to realize themselves, and ordinary people can't even eat enough in their stomachs. Therefore, the "Seven Sages of the Bamboo Forest" are not ordinary people.
Shantao successively served as Shangshu Official,侍中,吏部尚書、太子少傅、左仆射,尉少傅、左仆射,etc., and was in charge of the selection of officials for a long time; Wang Rong was born in the famous Langya Wang clan, hereditary father's title, and was amazed as soon as he appeared, and later served as a high-ranking official such as Assassin Shi, Shangshu of the Official, Prince Taifu, Zhongshu Ling, and Shangshu Zuo Shu; several others also held important positions and had prominent families.
Although you know that the door valve is "arrogant", but how "luxurious" you are, it is difficult for you to imagine, to put it bluntly, half of the world at that time was the emperor's, and the other half was the door valve. The power of the court is monstrous and has long been outside the laws of the state, "the wise do not produce the world, and the use of the law is not as good as that of the magnates."
The spiritual leader of the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Forest, a music expert, and a health enthusiast, Ji Kang
For example, Shantao, one of the "Seven Sages of the Bamboo Forest" just mentioned, was reported in 267 AD for the crime of encroaching on public land, but Sima Yan, the emperor of Jinwu, laughed at this and did not add to him. The court and the court used marriage, teacher-student relationship to further consolidate each other's ties, and enlarged the interest group, "Yingchuan Haojie's surname is a marriage, the official friend party", not only that, by the Eastern Jin Dynasty, the Door Valve Clan no longer intermarried with the Shu Clan, and its marriage relationship has always been maintained between the Gate Valve Clan. For example, during the Southern Qi Dynasty, Wang Yuan of the Shi clan married his daughter to the rich man Of Fuyang, but because the Manchu clan was a Shu clan, it was unanimously opposed by the Shi clan class, and Shen Yue took the lead in writing a letter requesting that Wang Yuan be dismissed from his post and investigated.
The weakening and demise of the door valve
The Mengmen clan arose in the Eastern Han Dynasty, flourished in the Wei and Jin Dynasties, weakened in the Southern and Northern Dynasties, and died out in the Sui Dynasty.
The reasons for the weakness of the door valve are manifold, and we can simply summarize the reasons for internal and external.
In terms of internal factors, the children of the Door Valve family were born to open their mouths and stretch out their hands with their clothes, and they could occupy a high position without much learning, which slowly promoted the mediocre and idle life style of the Door Valve clan.
The "Yan Family Training and Mian Xue" said: Many scholars and masters are "ashamed of being involved in agricultural businessmen, ashamed of their work tricks, shooting can not be worn, the pen is only memorized, full of food and drunkenness, suddenly nothing happens, so as to spend the day, so that all year round; or because of the family's legacy, get a first and a half level, they are self-sufficient, and they forget to study." That is to say, the door valve clan relies on the door, does not think of making progress, does not go through the affairs of the world, and is pretentious. When the abilities of these people slowly deteriorate, it is not far from their demise.
Flowing water, Wei Jin wind flow
In terms of external factors, it is mainly the concentration of imperial power and the implementation of the imperial examination system under the state of great unification that make the door valve constantly restricted, so that it gradually loses the soil for continuous expansion.
In February of the ninth year of the kai emperor (589), after the chen dynasty was destroyed, the country that had been divided for hundreds of years was reunited, and the further expansion and concentration of imperial power was inevitable, and the door valve politics at this time became the biggest stumbling block.
In order to break the door valve politics, Emperor Wen of Sui played a "combination fist", one was to adopt the examination system in the selection and employment of officials, replacing the nine-pin Zhongzheng system, changing the situation of monopoly of official positions in Mendi, and Han men Shizi began to have a rising channel; second, the official system adopted a three-province and six-ministry system to further strengthen the centralization of power. Under the suppression of multiple policies, the door valve politics gradually declined until the end.
It is inevitable that every dynasty will have a family of families, who will either have outstanding military achievements or make contributions to the country. However, during the Wei and Jin Dynasties, the degree to which the door valve controlled social resources has made it difficult for the cold door to produce noble sons, such a society and system are abnormal, and abnormal things cannot last long after all.
The product of this special background of the door valve is also turned into memory in the vast wheel of history, as described in the poem at the beginning of the article, "in the old days, Wang XieTang Qianyan flew into the homes of ordinary people", and the canopy on the banks of the Qinhuai River in the old days was now full of tourists.
Well, today's sharing ends here, and we'll see you next time