In the early qing dynasty, the country was closed to the outside world, so that the world did not know the foreign customs, although there are records, it is mostly hearsay. For example, during the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty, the records of Ryukyu and Japan are enough to be jaw-dropping.
The description of Ryukyu is roughly as follows:
The small country of Ryukyu, located in the east of Fujian Province (Fujian), closest to China, its national strength is very weak, and the people mostly live on the sea industry, or fish, or go out to sea, and are not good at farming. The southern merchant ships, which never traded in Ryukyu, were nothing more than poor and lacked indoctrination. However, the king of Ryukyu tried his best to please his neighbors, who knew that Ryukyu was barren and it was not uncommon to invade it, which saved the lifeblood of the small Ryukyu country.
The Ryukyu King, especially loyal to the Qing Dynasty, regarded him as the ancestor of the Heavenly Dynasty, and paid tribute every three years (three years), and the tribute was nothing more than some inferior products such as sulfur and leather paper. Whenever the envoys paid tribute, Ryukyu merchants took the opportunity to go ashore to trade, and most of the goods sold were utensils or musical instruments made of conch and shells, and the handiwork was also exquisite, and they could be worn with them after buying. Because of its cheap price, it will soon sell out.
In addition to conch shellfish, Ryukyu merchants also sold paper fans and cigarette tubes, but the handiwork was very poor, and those with a little vision could not look at them at all, and only those who coveted cheap money would buy these things. Because the goods sold by Ryukyu merchants are very easy to identify, they are called "Ryukyu goods". If you mock a person for being sloppy or searching for miserliness, you will scold him as a Ryukyu to show your lowliness.
Mencius said: "The benevolent are happy, and the big things are small; the wise people are afraid of the sky, because the small things are big." The optimist protects the world, and the fearful one protects his country. "The little king of Ryukyu is a person who fears the sky."
If the description of the Ryukyu Kingdom is not so despised, it is greatly despised for the Japanese state.
The description of Japan is roughly as follows:
Japan, the ancient Uchiha, is the most wild, bullying, does not pay tribute, and the night lang is arrogant, seeing himself as a maritime power, but regards China as a small state. Its state affairs are ruled by a general, and the monarch is reduced to a second-rate commodity, and everything must depend on the general's face. The elite soldiers in the Japanese state are the generals, the generals are weak, and they have no real power, so it is useless to kill them, and the general imitates cao Cao of the Eastern Han Dynasty to blackmail the princes of Tianzi, leaving the king's life as a puppet.
The Japanese state admires the learning of Huang Laozhi and Confucianism, but it also prevails in severe punishment, torture is like cattle feathers, and committing small mistakes is also a capital crime. The death penalty is divided into three classes, one of which is "irrigation", in which the prisoner is imprisoned on all fours, and the water pipe is constantly filled with water, until the sewage is full of belly, bulging like a mound, and then beating the body with a wooden stick, so that the water in the abdomen seeps into the limbs. Then continue to pour water, and so on, until the prisoner swells and dies.
The second is the "hanging intestine", the person responsible for the use of the prisoner first pulled out a section of the prisoner's large intestine, tied it with a thin rope, and tied the other end to the bent bamboo, suddenly released his hand, the bamboo was straightened, and the coiled intestine was pulled out like a blood rope. In this way, the prisoner cannot die quickly, and after suffering in pain for a long time, he gradually loses his breath.
The third is "live roasting", similar to the cannon branding of the Shang Dynasty, which bundles prisoners to iron pillars, piles firewood around them, and lights them to slow roast. Wait until the skin and flesh crack, then hang the prisoner's head down and feet up, hang upside down on the iron pillar, and continue to bake slowly until the whole body is scorched.
These three kinds of criminal law are shocking to people's hearts, so the Japanese people have a tendency to not pick up the road, and they dare not break the law because they are afraid of torture. According to Japanese businessmen, atlantics came to Japan decades ago to spread Catholic doctrine to the islanders. However, the general hated the foreign religion and "roasted it alive" in the name of the foreign priests' demonism and deception. Thereafter, whenever a foreign ship docked, the samurai who guarded the island would ask if there were any foreigners on board. As soon as they were discovered, they were immediately burned to ashes along with the people and boats, and they were never tolerated. Therefore, for many years, Westerners did not dare to set foot in Japan.
A port for Japan's trade with various countries, it is located on the island of Nagasaki. The skin color of men and women on the island is white, especially the women, who are as white as jade people, and many southern merchants who go to Nagasaki Island to trade are nostalgic for the beauty of the island, happy and unwilling to return. Nagasaki has a large data street, which has been inhabited by Chinese merchants for generations and is a paradise on earth.
According to legend, Qin Shi Huang sent Xu Fu to float the sea to seek immortality, Xu Fu arrived in Japan, not only established himself as king, but also brought 3,000 virgins and boys into marriage, breeding and breeding, so the world most people think that the Japanese monarch is a descendant of Xu Fu. At that time, Qin Shi Huang burned books to pit Confucianism, only the books taken by Xu Fu survived, and it is said that the entire copy of the "Thirteen Classics" was in Japan. However, after the Westerners arrived in Japan to preach, the general no longer trusted the foreign classics, regarded the Thirteen Classics as a demon book, and ordered them all to be burned. The book of the poor Three Emperors, the Five Emperors, the Duke of Zhou, and the Sage of Kong was destroyed in the island country and lamented for the Chinese students.
Well, the account of Ryukyu and Japan during the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty is roughly like this, when people's vision was too narrow to see the overseas world, and their insights were mostly hearsay, but more or less there were real and appropriate points, which seemed a bit absurd today, but at that time it was recognized by most people