Read "Yangtze River Civilization" with Feng Tianyu and explore the historical role of Yangtze River civilization

"The Yangtze River Basin is flourishing in humanities, the great rivers are going east, the waves are exhausted, and the characters of the ancient winds and currents are creating a more magnificent modern civilization at present." Look at today's world, the Yangtze River is shining in the East. ”

—— "Praise of the Yangtze River" Feng Tianyu

Feng Tianyu, a senior professor of humanities and social sciences at Wuhan University, has long been engaged in the research of Chinese cultural history and local cultural history in Hubei. As a Scholar of Hubei, Feng Tianyu attaches great importance to highlighting regionality in cultural research, and for decades, he has devoted himself to the study of the History of Shouyi and Zhang Zhidong in Wuchang, Xinhai, and has written influential works such as "History of Xinhai Shouyi" and "Commentary on Zhang Zhidong".

Even in recent years, feng Tianyu has been plagued by diseases, Feng Tianyu still "takes the protection of culture as his vocation", and works tirelessly on the sickbed to concentrate on his studies. His new work "Yangtze River Civilization", co-authored with his disciples Ma Zhiliang and Ding Yuan, full of home and country feelings and hometown complexes, after more than three years of compilation, with the support of citic architectural design and research institute, was officially published in September 2021, which is another major scientific research achievement of the Yangtze River Civilization Archaeology Institute of Wuhan University.

At the end of 2021, around the new book "Yangtze River Civilization", the hubei daily reporter and the three authors launched a dialogue, hoping to start from the development process of the Yangtze River civilization, get a glimpse of the natural prosperity and humanistic gathering of the Yangtze River Basin, and redefine the historical role of the Yangtze River civilization.

Analyze the nature and humanities of the entire Yangtze River Basin

Reporter: What kind of book is "Yangtze River Civilization"? What are the biggest features?

Feng Tianyu: "Yangtze River Civilization" collects more than 100 pictures and charts of the Yangtze River Basin, combines a large number of historical materials and data, and introduces the nature and humanities of the Yangtze River Basin in an all-round way with a peaceful attitude and pictures and texts, and counts the development process and characteristics of other major river civilizations in the world, and compares and analyzes with the Yangtze River civilization. Since ancient times, the Chinese nation's understanding and investigation of the Yangtze River Basin has also been gradually formed, this book tries to break the regional barrier on the basis of the research of predecessors, re-establish the overall understanding of the Yangtze River civilization from the height of Chinese civilization, explain in detail the civilization pattern of the Yangtze River and the Yellow River, and define the historical role of the Yangtze River civilization.

Ding Yuan: "Yangtze River Civilization" is narrated from multiple dimensions of time, space, nature and culture, and at the same time is concise, easy to read, rich and authoritative, and is a cultural reader launched for the public, a book that is familiar with the branches and cores of Yangtze River civilization. Under the unified concept of Yangtze River civilization, these precious historical and cultural relics are more systematic, so "Yangtze River Civilization" is also a book that analyzes the natural conditions and humanistic paths of the entire Yangtze River Basin, which has reference significance for the future cultural and economic development of the Yangtze River region.

Reporter: You mentioned in the book that the 30 degree north latitude line is the "occurrence line of human civilization", why did the two sides of the 30 degree north latitude line become the cradle of ancient civilization? Compared with other large river basins, what are the unique advantages of the Yangtze River Basin?

Feng Tianyu: It is an indisputable fact that temperate-subtropical zones have become the first places of civilization, and the area near the 30 degrees north latitude line in the south of the northern temperate zone has become the most conducive to the development of civilization due to its abundant hydrothermal conditions. Here were four major civilizations, namely ancient Egypt, ancient Babylon, ancient India and China. The four civilizations were born near rivers that provided a sustainable guarantee for agricultural production, and had their own mother rivers: the Nile, Euphrates and Tigris, the Indus and Ganges, as well as the Yangtze and slightly northerly Yellow Rivers.

The Yangtze River Basin is located in the East Asian continent, the western towering Hengduan Mountains, the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, the warm and humid southeast monsoon from the Pacific Ocean in its east, forming a rare rainfall area near the 30 degrees north latitude line, making it have abundant fresh water and rich thermal energy, so the Yangtze River Basin is the most potential area for the development of China and even the world economy and culture.

In terms of the relationship between the great rivers and the continuation of civilization, the Yangtze River basin is also superior to the Nile, The Two rivers and the Indus River. The two river basins are connected in all directions, and it has long become a civilizational arena for the various ethnic groups in the ancient Middle East, with several ups and downs, and finally unable to stop the interruption of civilization. The East Asian region where the Yangtze River Basin is located, the terrain is relatively closed, due to the inconvenience of transportation within the basin, the activity areas of the residents of the upper reaches (Bashu), the middle reaches (Jingchu) and the downstream (Wuyue) are relatively fixed, and the early cultures have developed relatively independently for a period of time, and finally integrated into the ocean of Chinese culture, becoming the common ancestor of the Chinese nation. In the historical process since then, the Yangtze River has repeatedly defended Chinese civilization and made it endless.

The Yangtze River civilization of the "Starry Sky Bucket"

Reporter: Why did the academic circles recommend that "the Yellow River Basin is the birthplace of Chinese culture"? What is the development trajectory of the two major river basin cultures of the Yangtze River and the Yellow River?

Ma Zhiliang: The original single promotion of the Yellow River civilization is not unrelated to the focus of the investigation in the initial stage of modern Chinese archaeology. Archaeology of modern significance was unfolded in China in the early 20th century, and the first batch of field archaeology was carried out in the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River, the excavation of Neolithic cultural sites such as Yangshao, Longshan, Dawenkou, and other ancient cities of Shang and Zhou, as well as the ancient cities of Shang zhou such as Anyang Yin Ruins, which corroborated with the accounts of the pre-Xia and Xia-Shang dynasties in the Yellow River Basin, and further strengthened the understanding that "the Yellow River Basin is the birthplace of Chinese culture" in the minds of the Chinese people.

In the mid-20th century, archaeological work advanced to the Yangtze River Basin, and a number of major archaeological discoveries proved that the Neolithic culture in the Yangtze River Basin was not later and lower than that in the Yellow River Basin. In the 1970s, Yuyao, Zhejiang Province, discovered the Hemudu culture, which was artificially domesticated to rice for 7000 to 8000 years. In the 1990s, the Jade Toad Rock in Daoxian County, Hunan Province, also unearthed artificially domesticated rice that was more than 10,000 years old, earlier than the time of millet cultivation in the Yellow River Basin. It can be seen that the early civilization of the Yangtze River Basin is also a core component of Chinese civilization, and the Yangtze River is also the mother river of Chinese civilization.

The cultures of the two great river basins developed in parallel at first. According to archaeological discoveries in the Yangtze River Basin for more than half a century, the cultures of various regions of the Yangtze River Basin from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age have also constructed an independent and complete development sequence. However, around 4,000 years ago, the early cultures of the upper, middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River Basin all fell into a trough, and the reason for this stagnation period is still a mystery. Around 3800 years ago, the Central Plains, where the Yellow River Basin is located, formed a more developed form of civilization and became the core and leader of the overall process of Chinese civilization.

Reporter: Compared with the Yellow River Basin civilization, how did the Yangtze River civilization sprout, and what are the differences in the development process?

Feng Tianyu: The evolution of culture is closely related to the prerequisites provided by the natural environment, but when human beings intervene in the use and transformation of nature, human subjective initiative plays an increasingly important role in the development of civilization. Therefore, the development of culture is advancing in the interaction between nature and humanity. The ancestors of the Yangtze River Basin, relying on their favorable natural conditions and giving full play to their own wisdom and wisdom, have created various sections of civilization since the Neolithic Age, such as the early agricultural civilizations in the lower Reaches of Jiangsu and Zhejiang - Hemudu Culture and Liangzhu Culture, the Qujialing Culture and Shijiahe Culture in the Middle Reaches of jianghan Region, and the Daxi Culture in the upper reaches of the west to the upper reaches of Chuandong Region. Its cultural occurrence is not later than the Yellow River Basin, and the level is also high, and in terms of the time of domestication of crops, the Yangtze River Basin seems to be slightly earlier than the Yellow River Basin.

The cultures of the two major river basins originated independently and had different patterns, and then developed in parallel and took on different faces. From the Neolithic to the Bronze Age, both major river basin cultures had a complete sequence of independent development. In general, the Yangtze River Basin is divided into upper, middle and lower reaches, which develop independently, and evolve along the sequence of Sanxingdui culture phases 1-4, Pengtoushan culture - Chengbeixi culture - Daxi culture - Qujialing culture - Shijiahe culture, Hemudu culture, Majiabang culture - Songze culture - Liangzhu culture.

Reporter: What civilizations have been bred in the vast Yangtze River Basin? In the magnificent Yangtze River civilization, what kind of development process has the Jingchu culture experienced?

Ding Yuan: The Yangtze River Basin is vast, and its upper, middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River have very different natural conditions, so the historical development process of the Yangtze River is also very different, so it has formed a cultural area with its own characteristics. According to the upper, middle and lower reaches, the three major cultural zones of Bashu, Jingchu and Wuyue are divided into three major cultural zones, which are created by the Cubans and Ancient Shu people in the upstream, the ancient Chu people in the middle reaches, and the ancient Wu people and Yue people in the downstream. According to the classification of natural, social and humanistic factors, it can be divided into seven cultural areas, such as Qiangzang, Dianqian, Bashu, Jingchu, Huxiang, Ganwan and Wuyue, and these distinctive regional cultures have contributed to the construction of a pluralistic and integrated pattern of "harmony and difference" in the Yangtze River Basin and even the entire Chinese culture.

The distribution range of the Jingchu culture is roughly in the present-day Two Lakes and parts of Henan, Anhui and Jiangxi. Located in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, the Jianghan Plain is fertile for thousands of miles, and thousands of large and small lakes such as Dongting Lake, Poyang Lake and Honghu Lake are dotted with dots, and the reputation of "the land of fish and rice" has a long history.

The origin of Jingchu culture can be traced back to Zhu Rong and Sanmiao in the era of ancient legends. From the analysis of cultural morphology, it has the distinctive characteristics of the hybridization of the Chinese culture in the Central Plains and the barbarian culture in the south.

At the end of the Shang Dynasty and the beginning of the Zhou Dynasty, the descendants of the Zhurong tribe and the chief of the Jing people surnamed Jing established a state in the Jingshan area and established the capital Danyang (present-day Zigui, Hubei). His great-grandson Xiong Xuan was sealed in the land of Chu Barbarians during the reign of King Cheng of Zhou, and "Chu" was established as the name of the country, from which Jingchu culture got its name. The Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period were the heyday of Chu culture. Magnificent philosophies, exquisite literature, exquisite craftsmanship and unique folklore are in harmony with other regional cultures.

Since the Qin and Han dynasties, the Jingchu culture has been integrated and renewed in the cultural exchanges of the unification of the world, and flourished at the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty. Jingchu is at the military juncture of the north and the south, the geographical division of the administrative system, the migration of immigrants from the north, and the mutual penetration of Confucianism and Taoism, jingchu culture shows a trend of multicultural integration.

With the completion of the southward shift of China's economic and cultural center of gravity in the Song Dynasty, the jingchu culture accelerated its development, and the further integration of Confucianism and Taoism produced the science of science, and the Huxiang school became a famous school of science. By the beginning of the Southern Song Dynasty, Zhang Yu was in charge of the teaching affairs of Yuezang Academy, and the number of scholars reached thousands, which made the Huxiang School form a scale. The Huxiang culture, which was originally a branch of the Jingchu culture, began to flourish, and its style of learning that was applied to the generations was passed down from generation to generation among the Hunan scholars, and in the late Qing Dynasty, a number of Zhongxing ministers such as Zeng Guofan and Zuo Zongtang were born, and after that, there were also reformers such as Tan Sitong and Chen Tianhua, and a large number of revolutionaries were produced. Jingchu culture (including Huxiang culture) has played an important role in the social and cultural transformation of modern China.

The "Yangtze River View" in the Changing Times

Reporter: The Yangtze River has a wide runoff and an open river basin, and as a natural graben, it has been dangerous in ancient times. So how did the ancients understand the Yangtze River? What stages has the understanding of the source of the Yangtze River gone through?

Feng Tianyu: People's understanding of the ecological status of the Yangtze River has a development process from one-sided to comprehensive, from shallow to deep. The ancients were limited by their vision and measurement methods, and their understanding of the main trunk and source of the Yangtze River has always been controversial, and it is probably gradually cleared up in accordance with social development and the improvement of the level of productivity.

In the Xia and Shang periods three or four thousand years ago, around the Jianghan Plain at the confluence of Jianghan and Han, early civilization was more prosperous, and the ancestors of Jingchu drove boats through the lakes and river networks of Yunmengze, feeling the "vastness of Han", resulting in confusion about who was the main stream of the river and Han. As the longest tributary of the Yangtze River, Hanshui is one of the birthplaces of Chinese civilization, and has been known as "Tianhan" and "Yunhan" since ancient times. The three parts of China's earliest poetry collection,"Shijing", "Poetry Classic", have poems involving the Han River Basin, such as "Shijing Daya Jianghan" has "Jianghan floating, Wufu Taojianghan Soup, Wufu Huanhuan: "Shijing · Xiaoya April" has "Tao Tao Jiang Han, the Chronicle of the Southern Kingdom"; "Shi Jing • Guofeng • Zhou Nan Han Guang" has "Han Zhi Guang, can not swim and think" and so on.

In the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, The earliest Chinese geography book "Yugong" has the saying of "Minshan Guiding the River", and later there is a continuation: "The Fujiang River originated from the Minshan Mountains, and its source can be indiscriminately coveted." "The ancients had a preliminary understanding of the main stream of the Yangtze River, and many later generations thought that the Yangtze River originated in Minshan.

In the Song Dynasty, due to the government's policy of contraction in the southwest region, the Song people's understanding of the main tributaries of the Yangtze River above the Dadu River was often inferior to that of the Han and Tang Dynasties. It was not until the fifth year of the Ming Dynasty (1577 AD) that Zhang Huang pointed out for the first time in his emperor's magnum opus, the 3 million-word "Book Compilation", that the Min River was not the source of the Yangtze River, but that the Jinsha River was the source of the Yangtze River. However, unfortunately, the "Map of the General Trend of China's Geography of Haiyue Rivers" in volume 30 of the same book still has the thesis that "although the river originates from Minshan Mountain", the viewpoint is not unified.

Decades later, Xu Xiake, a geographer in the late Ming Dynasty, followed the Jinsha River up to Lijiang, Yunnan, and after field investigation, found that the Jinsha River was longer than the Min River, and clearly pointed out that the Min River was a tributary of the Yangtze River, and the Jinsha River was the main stream of the Yangtze River. However, because Xu Xiake did not have an official status, his statement was not generally recognized by the society at that time. It was not until the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, with the gradual introduction of advanced Western cartographic technology, that the Kangxi Emperor officially affirmed Xu Xiake's statement, and the Jinsha River was designated as the source of the Yangtze River.

However, up to this point, the so-called understanding of the source of the Yangtze River by the ancients is still stuck in the judgment of the main road in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River, and the work of really going deep into the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and investigating the source of the Yangtze River was started from the Kangxi period.

The Kangxi Emperor sent special envoys to inspect the source of the Yangtze River on many occasions, and in the last years of the Kangxi Dynasty, he also organized scholars to use modern measurement techniques for the first time to produce the "Imperial Public Opinion Overview Map", drawing the general direction of the upper reaches of the Tongtian River above the Jinsha River. By the Qianlong period, Qi Zhaonan wrote the "Outline of Waterways", which described the source of the river in more detail, believing that Buqu was the source of zheng and Dangqu and Tuotuo River were tributaries. At the end of the Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China, there were still scientific expeditions deep into the Jiangyuan area, but due to complex geographical conditions and harsh climatic environments, and lack of more advanced and effective measurement methods, there was no breakthrough in the understanding of the source of the Yangtze River.

Reporter: In China's recent modernization, what role does the Yangtze River play?

Ding Yuan: The Yangtze River comes from the snowy mountains, rushes east, and pours into the sea. However, in the complicated wave of globalization in modern times, it has evolved into a "cultural route" that promotes the transformation of modern Chinese culture from east to west.

After the Opium War, the gates of the country were forced to open, and the Western powers went up the Yangtze River and forcibly entered China's closed interior. Tempted by huge interests, they pushed the trade ports along the yangtze river from Shanghai to the west to Chongqing in the upper reaches, thus integrating the Yangtze River Basin into the capitalist world market, and relying on the second open ports along the river to build a closely linked modern route of the Yangtze River.

This modern route, which has a profound impact on China's history, not only facilitates the economic expansion of Western capital to Chinese mainland, but also greatly strengthens the connection between cities along the river, expands the economic interaction between the ports along the river and the hinterland, and spreads the Western cultural and institutional concepts from east to west, broadens the horizons of the inland people, and enables modern Chinese culture to continuously advance west along the Yangtze River. As a result, this modern route of the Yangtze River opened by the Western powers to grab huge commercial profits has in fact become a "cultural route" to spread modern culture, profoundly changing the social outlook of the inland areas along the river and even more distantly.

Reporter: Entering a new stage of the development of Yangtze River civilization, how should we protect the Yangtze River?

Ma Zhiliang: As the mother river that nourishes and repeatedly protects the Chinese civilization, the Yangtze River Basin is not only the most important east-west axis of China's land space development, but also the most important carrier of ecological security, in order to protect the mother river and maintain the lasting vitality of Chinese civilization, we must establish a new concept of "development in protection", stipulate and strictly abide by the red line of ecological protection, strengthen the implementation of major ecological environmental projects, strengthen the construction of green ecological corridors along the Yangtze River, and ensure the ecological security of the Yangtze River Basin and even the entire Chinese nation.

At present, China has put the restoration of the ecological environment of the Yangtze River in an overwhelming position, jointly grasping great protection and not engaging in large-scale development. In the past 5 years, the concept of "ecological priority, green development" has been understood and accepted by the vast number of cadres and masses along the Yangtze River, jointly grasp the great protection, do not engage in large-scale development has become the forward direction of the development of the Yangtze River Economic Belt, the water ecological environment in the Yangtze River Basin has improved, but the overall situation is still very grim, high-risk industries along the river water pollution still exist, the damage to the water ecosystem is still serious, and the water ecological security is still difficult to guarantee. Provinces and cities still need to further strengthen cooperation, continue to improve the legal and regulatory system and planning system for the protection of the water ecological environment, continue to improve the water ecological protection system and the collaborative protection mechanism, and accelerate the construction of a water ecological testing and monitoring system. The construction of ecological civilization in the Yangtze River Basin has a long way to go, and we must unswervingly promote the new path of "ecological priority and green development" in accordance with the water control policy in the new era, and lead the Chinese civilization to move forward healthily.

(Source: Hubei Daily)

【Editor: Zhang Jing】

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