In the movie "Deer Ding", Wang Jing very bluntly asked Chen Jinnan to say: "Anti-Qing and Restoration of Ming is just a slogan, just like Amitabha Buddha", directly stating that the original purpose of the Heaven and Earth Society was to rob money and women, not to reverse the Qing Restoration.
There are several legends of the Heaven and Earth Society, but they are all related to the anti-Qing restoration. But this is really just the slogan of "Amitabha Buddha", and the biggest purpose of the Heaven and Earth Society as an organization of displaced people is to find money for their brothers to spend. The biggest advantage of joining the Heaven and Earth Society in the middle of the Qing Dynasty was that they could grab money or not be robbed by the brothers of the Heaven and Earth Society. At that time, the underground economy was far less developed than during the Republic of China period, and the Heaven and Earth Association, as the bearer of the southern community, had to embark on the route of two robberies and one theft.
According to the organized crime records of the Jiaqing period, 25 of the 43 Tiandihui organizations listed in Guangdong take robbery as the main source of funding, 6 have robbery plans, but mainly rely on mutual assistance, and the purpose of the existence of 4 Tiandihui organizations is that the small partners fight in groups and call people to facilitate the small partners to fight and shout people, and 6 Tiandihui organizations do not know what they are doing (may be that they feel that there are many NB forces). Only one of the 43 branches was more self-motivated, and they wanted to sit in the Mountains by themselves instead of inviting the Zhu family back. The officialdom of the Qing Dynasty at that time summed them up as "not rebellious, and cannot rebel", and was very dismissive of the Heaven and Earth Society.
At that time, these heaven and earth associations that made a living by robbery not only did not engage in "patriotic" businesses such as robbing foreign firms (at that time, the commercial houses engaged in import and export business were called foreign firms), but on the contrary, robbery activities resembled locusts. Every year, when the crops in Liangguang, Fujian and other places are ripe, the members of these heaven and earth associations will destroy the crops of the peasant households in droves. Because of their large number of people, ordinary farmers cannot afford to offend, and as long as they give them one-tenth of the transaction as protection fees.
▲ This is very much in line with the image of the Heaven and Earth Society in the middle of the Qing Dynasty
In the criminal archives of the middle of the Qing Dynasty, the good men of the Heaven and Earth Society did very well in buying and selling, and the good men of the NB would only break into the homes of ordinary rich families to grab money and grab things, but all powerful landlords in the countryside did not dare to rob. More heaven and earth will be good men who only dare to rob the poor, and livestock and clothes will rob everything. In the late Qing Dynasty, under the "nourishment" of opium, human trafficking, smuggling, gambling and other illegal economies, the Tiandihui became more and more powerful, becoming the master of the underground society in the coastal provinces, and even expanding its power overseas.
At the end of the Qing Dynasty, the good men of the Heaven and Earth Society also rebelled against the Qing Dynasty, but they never regained their sights, and they joined with many anti-Qing forces and served as human resources warehouses for these forces. During the Taiping Rebellion, the concept of the Heaven and Earth Society, such as "Hong Family Brothers, Ten Thousand Surnames and One Sect", was skillfully used by Hong Xiuquan and others. At the beginning of the Taiping Rebellion, a large number of members of the Heaven and Earth Society in Liangguang and Hunan joined the Taiping Army, and absorbing members of the Heaven and Earth Society in Jiangsu and Zhejiang in the later period of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was also a good way for Li Xiucheng to replenish his troops. The Tiandihui itself also launched the Wan Xi Tiyi, Lin Shuangwen Uprising, Zhu Yigui Uprising, Shanghai Knife Society Uprising, Minnan Knife Society Uprising, Shengping Heavenly Kingdom Uprising, Dahong Kingdom Uprising, Dacheng State Uprising, etc., in an attempt to establish its own political power.
Compared with the God Worship Society, the League, and other organizations, the Heaven and Earth Society had no clear program and no unified organizational leadership, so it served as a warehouse for the human and financial resources of these organizations, and was abandoned by the revolutionaries like a night pot after the Xinhai Revolution. The Heaven and Earth Society is an organization of displaced people, the members are mixed, and their actions are always in black and white, and Wang Jing's summary of them is actually very good.