Written by | Zhao Libo
In December 8, when the cold wind blew through Saga's Weiyang Palace, the 54-year-old Wang Mang officially announced that he would replace Liu Han. Suddenly, all the courtiers and the people were creeping at the feet of this man of great fame. Although the sideburns had already produced white hair, Wang Mang was full of energy and strong. It was like climbing to the top of a mountain, and he played the highest peak of his life step by step. Suddenly, as if holding the sun and the moon in his hands and stepping on the ground, the Great Han's jiangshan was draped in the color of Wang Mang, and he successfully realized the emperor who was pushed by the people to the throne of God for the first time in history.
"December Shuo, with the rooster chirping as the time, the color of the dress with the yellow ... To inherit the Emperor God's command also. [1] In the Edict of Dengji, Wang Mang recited aloud: "The Former Zhou Dynasty became the regent of the king, and eventually brought the king back to the throne." Now that I am compelled by the Mandate of Heaven to do as I wish, the taste in my heart at this time is difficult to say. [2] At that time, Wang Mang's status and reputation reached the peak of his life, and for a while, all the people admired him; Wang Mang's moral aura shrouded in this post-Western Han era, which was full of freshness.
Portrait of Wang Mang
An idealist who admires the Zhou Li and is obsessed with the patterns recorded in the ancient scriptures and cannot extricate himself.
Retro and advanced, in Wang Mang's view, are not contradictory, and all his wisdom is to follow the magnificent and peaceful era described in the ancient scriptures, Yao, Shun, Tang, and King Wen of Zhou, these bodies make Wang Mang feel deep awe in front of the sacred ancient scriptures, and believe that he is their true successor to the mantle, so he does not hesitate to exchange the good name he has gained throughout his life for a "world of great unity".
Confucianism flowed deeply into his blood and mind, and Wang Mang won the praise of "diligent study and knowledge, and was obeyed like a Confucian student", and was the most respected "teacher" in the world. In particular, the influence of "Zhou Li" on him is throughout his life. This ancient era was the most beautiful datong world in Wang Mang's view, "there is no two cities, no prison lawsuits, no thieves, no hungry people, no leftovers, and men and women have different paths." This ancient world made him pursue it like a father chasing the sun. [3] After years of "disguise", Wang Mang finally sowed the seeds buried in his heart for decades on his own country. He decided to follow in the footsteps of sages such as Yao Shun Yu Tang and Zhou Gong and implement all the designs recorded in the scriptures into his own imperial business. He restored the well field system, hoping that everyone would have land, and collected salt, wine, iron smelting, and minting money to prevent them from being manipulated by merchants and extorting the people. After defining the official according to the Zhou Li records, in short, everything must return to the ancient era that made him worship day and night. In just a few months, Wang Mang could not wait to throw out his top-level design, promulgating a decree implementing Wang Tian's slave policy, and prohibiting slave trading, which in a way was also a correction and improvement of the slave system in western Zhou. He believes that "the nature of heaven and earth is precious", and emphasizes that "now the name is changed to Tianxia Tian, Wang Tian, slaves and slaves are known as private, and they are not allowed to buy or sell." [4] This rather humane edict temporarily reaped the sincere tears of many people at the bottom.
The main content of Wang Mang's transformation method
In addition, it is stipulated that the new dynasty will implement a floating wage, and if the harvest is good, the emperor will enjoy the full living treatment, and if there is a natural disaster, or if there is a maladministration in the treatment, the living expenses will be deducted according to the proportion. At the same time, he intensified the punishment of corrupt officials, and issued an edict to check the land property of all officials, confiscated four-fifths of the corruption found, and established a whistle-blowing system. In the outer surrounding areas, Wang Mang was quite strong, and in just a few years, he achieved the situation of "northernizing the Xiongnu, east to overseas, southern Huai Huangzhi, and Qiang chiefs willing to sacrifice land and become subjects". [5] He further "changed the siyi kings to princes", and without obvious resistance, he changed the name of the Xiongnu to surrender to slaves, and changed Goguryeo to lower Goguryeo, the country of barbarians, and the name must also be low, so as to conform to the ancient etiquette system. Suddenly, Wang Mang was fierce, pointing out the country and the mountains, and became the most successful strong figure to restrain the Xiongnu after Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty.
Territory of wang mang.com
As early as the fifth year of the first century of the Yuan Dynasty (the fifth year of the Common Era), Wang Mang used the land sacrificed by the Qiang chieftains to place Xihai County, "and those who move to the world to punish those who violate the prohibition are punished." [6] In the first year of the reign, Xi Qiang "resented the recklessness of seizing its land as Xihai County, counterattacked Xihai Taishou Chengyong, and ran away forever." Wang Mang was furious and after executing Cheng Yong, he quickly sent a large army to attack the Western Qiang, and the following year received a successful report that "Dou Guan and others broke the Western Qiang". [7] These feats undoubtedly increased the prestige of Wang Mang's New Deal, and he began to concentrate all his energy on the retro plan with great enthusiasm.
Wang Mang is sincerely retro, because he regards the ancient society described in the Confucian classics as an achievable goal. If Wang Mang's retro is only to usurp power, then after he becomes the new emperor, he can change his course, and the substantive reforms he implemented are all after he became emperor. Many of the successful founding emperors did not have any political blueprints before coming to power, or although they made promises, they became realistic after coming to power. However, after Wang Mang came to power, he stubbornly implemented his retro reforms with greater enthusiasm and pushed himself to a dead end. ”【8】
Currency under Wang Mang's reforms
Under all his visions, monetary reform was particularly important. From the second year of Juzhi (7 AD), when he announced the first monetary reform, to the fourth year of the emperor, more than ten years after the fall of the new dynasty, he issued four edicts to reform the currency. Although this matter became the biggest controversy in all his reforms, it became a glorious page in the history of Chinese currency, and the number of issues, the variety, and the ease and speed of its issuance overwhelmed the people of the world. And he also explained why he did this: "Don't think that you are admiring it when you go to the sword, don't think it is profitable except for the sword money, accept the heart of heaven, and be happy with the will of the people." In response, Ban Gu believes that Wang Mang's monetary reform caused "the unemployment of farmers and merchants, the waste of food and goods, and the wept of the people on the city road." [9] Later scholars described Wang Mang's monetary reform as "adding another great chaos to the great chaos, forcing the unemployment of peasant merchants, the abolition of trade, and the innumerable number of people who were punished for buying and selling slaves and minting private money." [10] Most scholars basically start from the perspective of reform and social failure, and lash out at this. It is believed that In order to plunder the people's wealth, Wang Mang's reform exchanged small for large, replaced the heavy with light, and issued a depreciated currency. [11] These statements are all reasonable, but from another dialectical point of view, Wang Mang's idea of imaginary money in economic reform is advanced and scientific, and to some extent it can be seen that it is "crossing" color, that is, avant-garde boldness.
A creative, forward-thinking figure does have a "crossing" color on his body.
Under the frequent and large retro design of his life, Wang Mang's body appeared a lot of forward-looking that still seems to be ahead of the curve, and he was ridiculed by today's people as a "crosser". Wang Mang presided over a large number of scientific experiments during his lifetime, and since then his reputation has been negative for a long time, and his scientific activities have not only failed to praise his advanced nature, but have been recorded as evidence. At that time, Wang Mang deliberately issued an edict to recruit "people with extraordinary abilities under the world", allowing these people to study rituals, ancient books, classics and other works together, including astronomy, art of war, music, medicine, etc., and speak freely and express their own opinions.
Wang Mang summoned Ru Sheng
In a series of scientific experiments presided over by Wang Mang, there were three times of great scientific value.
The first was a human dissection experiment conducted in the third year of Xin Mang Tianfeng (16 AD), "so that the Taiyi, Shang Fang and Qiao Tu co-stripped it, measured the five internal organs, guided their veins with a bamboo feast, and knew what was always there, and the cloud could cure the disease." "This is the first recorded anatomical human experiment in Chinese history. The autopsy was performed 1500 years before Leonardo da Vinci of the European Renaissance and later Vesalius.
The second was in the third year of emperor Xinmangdi (22 AD) in the experiment of "boiling grass and wood for cheese", which was also described as evidence of Wang Mang's indictment of laboring and hurting the people's wealth. Because of the "cannibalism of the Kanto people" at that time, Wang Mang wanted to open up a new food source, according to Ban Gu's original words, "Mang sent more doctors, and the gurudwara divided the people to cook grass and wood for cheese." Cheese is inedible and heavy. Ban Gu believes that this experiment is a ridiculous move to hurt the people and money, but different scholars have proposed that this time is most likely an unsuccessful "tofu" experiment [12]
The third test was a flight experiment in the sixth year of the New Mang Tianfeng (19 AD). Regarding this historical data, Wang Mang's purpose is very clear, that is, to create a flying machine that simulates birds, "taking the big bird as two wings, wearing hair on the head and body, leading the ring button, and flying hundreds of feet." [13] It is said that in 18 AD, Wang Mang recruited craftsmen to design an offensive flying machine according to his ideas in order to attack the Xiongnu. It can be seen that in the relatively backward period of Han Dynasty science and technology, Wang Mang's behavior was indeed ahead of the curve and bold, and he could be regarded as a scientific inventor in China.
Wang Mang invented the "bronze caliper"
In addition, he also worked with these "strange people and strangers" to develop a thing called "Wei Dou", which is said to be able to restrain the rebel forces, so he asked people to use five-colored medicinal stones and copper alloys to cast a "Wei Dou" that was two feet and five inches long and resembled a Beidou, and from then on this thing was inseparable from Wang Mang, and every time he traveled, there was a person who was specially responsible for carrying Wei Dou to walk in front of his car. At that time, the time of heaven was also extremely unfavorable to Wang Mang, and this period around the beginning of the Common Era was one of the most serious stages of natural disasters in Chinese history, which was seen in the historical records of drought, locusts, plagues, diversion of the Yellow River and other major natural disasters, and the scope of the disaster area was large, and the long duration of wang Mang's reforms was severely frustrated. Such a catastrophe, even under the conditions of sufficient national reserves and stable social order, will cause huge losses, not to mention that in such a turbulent era of drastic changes, and when the national treasury has long been exhausted, these have contributed to his failure.
Wang Mang
"Before coming to power, Wang Mang was the most virtuous and moral model of the Han Dynasty, for which he paid a huge price, scattering his family property, forcing his son to die, and letting his family live a hard life, and being humble and courteous at all times." Although he was a complete failure, when he was exhausted and there was no doubt that he would die, there would be more than a thousand people who voluntarily died with him, which may give him a little comfort and reveal a little true information to future generations. (Ge Jianxiong, "Reading", No. 10, 1997)
Wang Mang's posthumous evaluation fluctuated several times, and Ban Gu fully defined it as a "chaotic courtier and thief", and then completely inherited this, including most of the tomes of the Zizhi Tongjian, and both Li Yan and Wang Fuzhi of the Ming and Qing dynasties participated in the debate over the evaluation of Wang Mang. In 1928, Hu Shi first praised Wang Mang as "a utopian and selfless ruler, and attributed his failure to thinking and policy too far ahead." [14] Zhai Bozan believed that "Wang Mang was one of the most courageous and intelligent statesmen in Chinese history." Wang Mang's reform of the system "must improve the social and economic system that was full of contradictions at that time." (Outline of Chinese History)
New Morning Mural
He Ziquan said: "Wang Mang is a reformist, and in terms of policy, he is for his own interests, while at the same time taking care of the interests of the general people. Compared with the dark rulers at that time, Wang Mang was certainly more progressive. (Wang Mang, Guangming Daily, March 10, 1951)
Ge Chengyong believed that "Wang Mang, as a reformer," was "a unique and insightful figure in the ruling clique at that time." "We take the actual conditions of society in the last years of the Western Han Dynasty. To measure Wang Mang's reform measures, we cannot but admit that most of them are progressive and to the point. ("The Tragedy of Wang Mang", Journal of Northwest University, No. 1, 1981) Scholar Han Yude also believes that "Wang Mang is a great scholar and politician who has read the ancient scriptures and insisted on governing the country with the scriptures." ("Several Issues in Wang Mang's Research", Qilu Academic Journal, No. 1, 1983)
Wang Mang's film and television image
Historian Huang Renyu pointed out that from a series of edicts issued after Wang Mang ascended the throne, it can be seen that Wang Mang's policy was fundamentally divorced from the actual environment at that time, and there was a lack of appropriate employment arrangements. In The Great History of China, he commented on Wang Mang with a slight sarcasm: "He believed in Chinese classics and really thought that the pyramids could be upside down. Lü Simian criticized mainstream views such as the Book of Han with sympathetic brushstrokes, comprehensively defending Wang Mang: "Whatever Mang mang does, the Han people know to erase it with counterfeit characters." [15] Since then, modern historians have been fiercely involved in the evaluation of Wang Mang, and Hu Jiqiao denounced Wang Mang in his History of Chinese Economic Thought: "He is by no means a progressive thinker, nor is he a reformist. Since then, Guo Moruo and Xie Tianyou have also joined the criticism team of Wang Mang. Even the evaluation of Wang Mang has attracted widespread attention from Western scholars: "In fact, Wang Mang is obviously a capable and ambitious person, and when necessary, he is also cruel and ruthless. He has the talent to attract others to follow him, and his interests are unusually broad. His feelings for his relatives may have been entirely sincere, and in the early days he could not have harbored the intention of usurping the throne. [16] When the storm of history swept across the desolate land, when the crisp reading replaced the conquests of the past, the controversial ancients were analyzed from many angles, the relevant texts were studied more pragmatically, and the relevant figures were more objectively analyzed, perhaps this would be the greatest significance of this author's writing.
exegesis:
[1] The Book of Han, The Biography of Wang Mang.
[2] The Book of Han, The Biography of Wang Mang.
[3] The Book of Han, The Biography of Wang Mang.
[4] Book of Han, vol. 99.
[5] History of Ethnic Relations Between the Two Han Dynasties, Sichuan Nationalities Publishing House.
[6] Book of Han, vol. 12, "The Chronicle of the Ping Emperor".
[7] The Book of Han, vol. 99, on the Biography of Wang Mang.
[8] "Reading", Ge Jianxiong's article, No. 10, 1997.
[9] The Book of Han, vol. 99, "The Biography of Wang Mang".
[10] Fan Wenlan and Cai Meibiao, General History of China, People's Publishing House
[11] Zhu Yongjia, "Shang Martingale Transformation Law and Wang Mang's Reform"
[12] "Wang Mang's Scientific Experiments and the Invention of Tofu"
[13] The Book of Han, vol. 99, "The Biography of Wang Mang"
【14】Proceedings of the North China Branch of the Royal Asian Society, No. 59 (1928)
[15] History of the Qin and Han Dynasties, Shanghai Estimation Publishing House, 1983, pp. 197-198
[16] The Cambridge History of the Qin and Han Dynasties in China, China Social Sciences Press, 1992, p. 241