What is history: it is the echo of the past to the future, the reflection of the future on the past. - Hugo
Based on the following literature, can you imagine that these portraits are linked to a person?
"The sky is strange, radiant, the eyes are hanging, the long zhun Yue li, the ears are loud and loud, and the heavens are strange." Slightly longer, dignified demeanor, grand ambition, sincere words, to the point. (Records of the Ancestors of the Qing Dynasty)
"The figure is slightly taller than ordinary people, the posture is beautiful, slightly fatter than us, but it is not up to the level of Chinese so-called 'rich state'." The face is also slightly wider, with acne marks, a wide forehead, a nose and eyes smaller than ordinary Chinese people, a beautiful mouth, a gentle demeanor, and all appearances and demeanors, like a monarch, which is eye-catching at first sight. (Li Ming, "China's Recent Life Report")
"He was about fifty years old, of medium stature, with an awe-inspiring appearance, a pair of large black eyes, a bulging nose, slightly crooked, a black beard hanging down, almost no beard, and a pedestal on his face." (Izbrandt, Notes on the Mission of the Russian Mission)
"The body is not long enough to be a middle man, the eyes are floating, the deep eyes are small and colorless, the cheekbones are slightly exposed, and the cheeks are barren and pointed... Impatient, angry. (Min Dingzhong's Diary of Old Feng Yanxing)
"Sit cross-legged to the west, with a broad forehead, a slight killing, a white cheek, male and female eyes, and a clear spirit." (Jin Changye's "Diary of old Jiazhai Yanxing")
Yes, they are depictions of the appearance of the Kangxi Emperor by scribes of different periods and nationalities and backgrounds. The statement from the Records of the Ancestors of the Qing Dynasty is naturally a praise, so how could the missionaries and envoys from France, the Netherlands, and Korea come up with such a far-different image description without considering the feelings of the Kangxi Emperor? What kind of image did the Kangxi Emperor, who ruled the Qing Dynasty for 61 years, have in the eyes of foreigners?
Portrait of the Kangxi Emperor
The Missionary's "Philosopher King"
According to Mr. Bai Xinliang's discussion and collection, during the Kangxi Dynasty, there were no less than three hundred Western missionaries to China, and they exchanged many letters with China during their time in China, and only the "Brief Collection of Letters of jesuits in China" included 152 letters sent from their own country, and the missionaries who came to China also announced some memoirs and texts introducing China after returning to China, such as "Recent Affairs of Our Country", "Tatar Chronicles", "Thirteen Years of the Qing Court: Memoirs of Ma Guoxian in China", "Reports on Recent Events in China", "Diary of Zhang Cheng", "Diary of Xu Risheng" and so on. In the meantime, the most direct comment on the Kangxi Emperor was Bai Jin's "Kangxi Emperor", in which he wrote in this pamphlet dedicated to King Louis XIV of France in 1697:
"He was extremely talented, sensitive in thought, knowledgeable and discerning. He has a strong will to withstand the test of complex accidents, and has outstanding talents in formulating, directing, and completing majestic plans. His hobbies and preferences were elegant and very commensurate with his imperial status. He was fair, did justice, advocated virtue, loved the people like a son, had the precious quality of keeping the truth, and had amazing self-control to suppress lust. Such noble qualities are too numerous for him to mention. What is even more surprising is that such a day-to-day king can be so diligent in the study of science and so intoxicated with his penchant for art. ”
In 1689, min Ming, when introducing the Kangxi Emperor to the French sinologist Leibniz, said: "[His] thirst for common sense is unbelievable... Can understand Euclidean geometry, trigonometric accounting, and can express geographical phenomena numerically. Badomin, who translated the Complete Records of the KYD Body based on the human anatomy of the Frenchman Dionis, praised the Kangxi Emperor's scientific energy, saying that he "loved science and wanted to gain foreign common sense... One of the most peculiar figures of many centuries of talent, who has no restraint on his common sense, has never been more devoted to science and art than he was. ”
The full text of the Complete Record of the KJD Body, which integrates the most advanced Western medical human anatomy works of the time.
The "greedy for money and good goods" of the emperor, or the lord of the Taiping Success?
Unlike the Western world, which paid unreserved respect to the Kangxi Emperor, in the eyes of the Korean scholar class at the doorstep, the emperors of the Qing Dynasty were always a mean and violent "demon" image. For example, the description of the appearance of the Kangxi Emperor by the Korean envoy Min Dingzhong quoted in the opening paragraph in the eighth year of the Kangxi Dynasty (1669) vividly describes the fifteen-year-old young emperor as a sharp-billed monkey-cheeked, moody little old man. Li Hongdi, the deputy envoy of the winter solstice in the thirty-fourth year of Kangxi (1695), had an impression of Kangxi: "The emperor was absurd and promiscuous, and did not pro-government affairs. The ministers who use things are greedy and corrupt, and bribe the public. In the fifty-first year of the Kangxi Dynasty (1711), Xie En's envoys Park Bi-sung and Min Zhenyuan reported to the King of Joseon: "The emperor is greedy for money and good goods, and the officials are bribed, and those who run the house of the merchants are given the rank." The people are not happy, and the complaints are full of complaints. Those who came and went to the museum all retorted. ”
Admittedly, these criticisms from others are not necessarily another kind of portrait of the Kangxi era, but excessive distortions to maintain the image in the mindset often leave the witnesses at a loss. In the fifty-second year of the Kangxi Dynasty (1712), the Korean scholar Kim Chang-ye came to Beijing with his brother Kim Chang-ji, who was sent to Yenching, and left many of his own doubts and reflections on traditional concepts in his "Diary of the Old Jiazhai Yanxing". For example, he believes that the emperor's attention to activities such as Mulan Qiu foxes is not for the purpose of leisure and entertainment, but "in the 70 years of entering China, the food and drink in the residence have become more and more luxurious, losing their true colors, so that they can travel day and night to learn their driving, and do not set up their residence to warn their comfort, which is far-reaching." In the face of the saying that "The old Emperor wen left the palace in Changchun Garden fifteen places, stored the beauties of Beijing and fourteen provinces, the palace system and clothes and food utensils were all from its local customs, and the emperor indulged in them", Kim Changye, who saw Changchun Garden with his own eyes, was even more deceived: "Changchun Garden has more than two hundred steps from the north and south, more than 100 steps from the east to the west, is it not allowed to leave the palace in fifteen places?" Outside the Changchun Garden, where "the system is simple and the village is no different", this foreigner who is well versed in Confucianism sighed: "With the frugality of Kangxi, the scale of keeping the Khan lenient and simple, suppressing trade to persuade farmers, saving money to love the people, he enjoys fifty years of peace, it is advisable!" ”
So, is Changchun Garden really "institutional simplicity" as Jin Changye said? Bai Jin, who often went in and out of Changchun Garden, said in this place that the emperor's "favorite garden": "Apart from the two large pools and several rivers he ordered to be excavated, there is nothing in it that makes people feel that it is commensurate with the luxury and grandeur of a rich and powerful monarch." Everything there is really clean. Its architecture, its courtyard, its arrangement, are much inferior to the villas of some of the marquises on the outskirts of Paris. The Impression of Changchun Garden by Cheng Ting, a Salt Merchant of Yangzhou who had participated in the Kangxi Emperor's 60th birthday celebration in the 52nd year of the Kangxi Emperor, was: "The walls are not as high as the height of the walls, the green in the garden is sluggish, and the red is full of glory." Tufu Pingtuo, not yet Qifeng strange stone also. Xuan Yao Yasu, not a algae painting carver also. ”
From this, it can be seen that what Kim said is still credible.
Why is there a world of difference in evaluation?
So, from the perspective of the other, why do observers from the East and the West have such a disparity in evaluation?
The first is influenced by the subjective factors of the "social collective imagination" of the environment in which it is located. The "social collective imagination" is a concept that comes from the field of comparative literature and can also be called "cliché". In her article "Desire for the Other: The Image of China in Western Literature", Professor Jiang Zhiqin pointed out that the cliché about foreign nationalities "is the crystallization of the imagination of the whole society." And "once it is formed, it will merge into the depths of the collective unconscious of the nation, subtly influencing the perception of the people of the people of the foreign country." The basis for the evaluation of Kangxi by Western missionaries and Korean envoys is precisely the existing "cliché" of their own people to the ruling class of the Qing Dynasty.
Probably since the 13th century, with marco polonia. The popularity of Polo's travels in the West, as well as the positive evaluations brought back by missionaries who had been to the East about the Chinese emperor's "benevolence, justice, diligence, wisdom and virtue", the Western world gradually formed a unique cliché for China and its rulers, which not only painted a beautiful and magical picture of China full of gold and silver treasures for Westerners, but also inspired people to "govern the country and the people with knowledge, love, and violence" under the guidance of Confucianism. Infinite yearning. It was in this context that the Kangxi Emperor, who had a great interest in Western culture, soon became the most perfect "philosopher king" in the Western world in the 17th century.
Unlike Western missionaries who sang a textual tribute to the Kangxi Emperor, Korea, which was subject to the Central Plains regime as a vassal, always harbored an infinite attachment to the Ming Dynasty and adherence to Confucian culture, mixed with ethnic hatred for the two invasions of the Qing Empire in the Imperial Taiji era. Therefore, the cliché of the Manchurian ethnic group formed by its scholar class is naturally an image mark that regards itself as "Little China" and despises the Manchus as "Yidi", and thus habitually demonizes the image of the rulers of the Qing Dynasty.
Second, out of order of clans and curiosity about unknown categories, there was a distance between the Kangxi Emperor's treatment of the Korean Blue Bird envoys and Western missionaries. As a blue bird envoy who came from the tribute of the vassal state, all the etiquette standards must be bound by the relevant norms, and from the perspective of the imperial court, the subordinate is the subordinate after all. The missionaries, on the other hand, although they also served in the Qin Heavenly Prison or the court, active in the fields of communication, art and even medicine, but they were also the disseminators of civilization, and many of them served as emperors or physicians, so they received "family treatment" outside the monarchy system.
Third, the expectations placed on the Kangxi Emperor were different. As far as the Korean monarchs are concerned, they are convinced that "Hu has no fortune for a hundred years", and they can only hope that the confusion of the rulers will lead to internal strife in our country, so that the objective practice obtained can only be accepted by the Korean monarchs and subjects as long as they conform to the color of the cliché. As for the missionaries, "spreading the gospel, promoting science, and expanding their national influence" was the motivation for them to travel far and wide, and correspondingly, they needed to adopt an attitude of concurrence with the Kangxi Emperor and even the rulers of Europe in exchange for the greatest practical benefits.
As for what kind of person the Kangxi Emperor really was, he once commented on himself: "There is no spirit in the life of The Kangxi Emperor, and there is no extraordinary in his longevity. "I think it should be the truth.