Guo Songtao (郭嵩焘), also spelled Ziyun Xian ,is a native of Xiangyin City, Hunan Province. Daoguang twenty-seven years into the priesthood and the first. From the fourth year of Xianfeng to the sixth year of Xianfeng, he assisted Zeng Guofan and assisted him in founding the "Xiang Army". In the first year of Tongzhi, he was awarded the Susong Grain Storage Road, and was later promoted to the position of Lianghuai Salt Transport Envoy.
In the second year of Tongzhi, he served as the inspector of Guangdong and became a major member of the party, and Tongzhi returned to his hometown after five years of dismissal and lectured in Changsha. In the first year of Guangxu, on the recommendation of Wen Xiang, the minister of military aircraft, he was reinstated as an envoy to Fujian and entered the prime minister's yamen as an errand boy.
Guo Songtao was one of the few people in the Manchu Qing court at that time who faced the Western powers squarely, advocated trade with the West to develop the economy, and took the initiative to contact and learn the relevant knowledge of Western society. During his tenure as governor of Guangdong, he used international law to extradite the leader of the Taiping Army from Hong Kong. It is precisely because of his attitude towards the West that he has risen and fallen in the court.
However, these are not the most important resumes of Guo Songtao. In the second year of Guangxu, he became the first envoy of the Central Plains Imperial Dynasty to be stationed abroad since the Qing Dynasty, which was the first time in the world at that time. (Su Wu's like that doesn't count, that is, being detained and imprisoned)
Guo Songtao statue
For more than two thousand years, we have always regarded ourselves as the "Heavenly Dynasty and the Kingdom of Heaven", and only the "Barbarians" have always sent people to pay tribute to the Heavenly Dynasty. Although the Heavenly Dynasty also sent envoys from time to time, they were all rewards for the submission of the Emperor of the Heavenly Dynasty to the subordinate Fan State. Or that the "barbarians" do not surrender, and they are not even qualified to welcome the envoys of the Heavenly Dynasty.
Envoys were also only able to occur to the "barbarians", who, in order to show their loyalty to the Heavenly Dynasty, often sent "dignitaries" to the Heavenly Dynasty as hostages or sent people to Beijing to await the hadith. What qualifications do the "barbarians" have to ask the Heavenly Dynasty to send "hostages"?
Over time, the "Heavenly Kingdom" believed that if the foreign countries could not be condescending, it would be humiliating and humiliating. We can often see this plot in Korean costume TV series.
Although in the second year of Guangxu, the Manchu Qing had already experienced two defeats in the Opium War, and the foreign affairs movement promoted by the imperial court for self-improvement had been running for more than ten years. However, the conceited Manchu Qing dynasty still refused to face up to its own problems, but continued to regard Western countries as uncivilized "barbarians."
For its own failure, the Manchu Qing court did not consider itself inferior to the West. They felt that the Great Qing was still much stronger than the Western countries in terms of national structure and theory, but these Western countries had mastered some "strange tricks and tricks" that the "Heavenly Dynasty and the Heavenly Kingdom" had not yet understood.
The Manchu Qing court believed that once these "strange tricks" were learned through the foreign affairs movement, the Qing Dynasty would inevitably usher in the pilgrimage of all nations again. Based on this concept, the Manchu Qing court has always been very reluctant to exchange envoys with Western countries and establish modern diplomatic relations.
Explanation: Britain is very "axis" on the issue of exchanging envoys, and has been looking for various opportunities to ask for mutual envoys. During the Second Opium War, the British again had a stalemate with the Manchus over this issue. Czarist Russia took the opportunity to fool the Manchu Qing into mediating, tricking the Manchu Qing into signing a number of unequal treaties and ceding a large amount of territory. Later, in shanghai to negotiate the amendment, the British also rejected Xianfeng's exemption from tariffs in exchange for not being a envoy in Beijing.
In 1876, the British used the "Majiali Incident" to force the Manchu Qing court to sign the Sino-British Yantai Treaty, which was not a problem for the Manchu qing government. What makes the imperial court difficult is the following:
When the case was closed, there was a letter from the Chinese imperial court lamenting the Dian case, and the minister Ke Qi, who was sent by Qin, should immediately set off for England. All ministers with the title of Chin and their entourage should be informed of the Minister of Wei in advance so that they can report to their respective countries. The manuscript of the book of the state of the country should also be sent to the minister of Wei for reading by the Prime Minister Yamen.
Britain demanded that the Qing government officially send envoys to England on behalf of the Qing government to apologize and stay as a Qing envoy. Now understand why Guo Songtao was suddenly revived by the imperial court, to put it bluntly, others are unwilling to go and pull him out to carry the pot.
Guo Songtao himself was actually reluctant to go, because after he was officially appointed, he had not yet sent an envoy, and the ridicule in society was already incessant, and someone specially wrote a couplet to mock him:
Out of its kind, out of its own place, it is not tolerated in the world of Yao Shun; if you can't do anything, you can do things to ghosts, why go to the country of your parents.
There were also officials in the court who openly scolded Guo Songtao as a "traitor" or a "traitor" or a "courtier." If it were not for the fact that the king's life was difficult to violate, and he himself still had the heart to be loyal to the country and the king, I think he would definitely "rather die than obey." However, at this time, the imperial court still understood Guo Songtao's difficulties, and Empress Dowager Cixi summoned Guo Songtao several times to encourage him.
In the winter of the second year of Guangxu (1876), in the midst of ridicule and slander, Guo Songtao led his deputy envoy Liu Xihong and more than thirty other attachés to Britain and set up an embassy in London.
After arriving in Britain, Guo Songtao began his work in a foreign country in accordance with the regulations of the Prime Minister Yamen. Collect and organize intelligence and send it back to prime minister Yamen. To this end, Guo Songtao visited many cities in the United Kingdom, and also visited many facilities such as schools, churches, libraries, factories, museums and so on.
At first, Guo Songtao was shocked by Western industrial technology. When he saw more than a hundred kinds of machines on the farmland, he couldn't help but marvel: "One machine and forty people's strength, and the speed of the gods is multiplied." "When he saw the latest technology such as telephones, telegraphs, and phonographs, it was difficult to understand their mysteries. The "clairvoyance" and "tailwind ear" that were thought to be the gods and immortals in the legend were turned into reality by a "barbarian" state.
Guo Songtao sent these observations back to China, although it caused a lot of ridicule and reprimand in China. However, the imperial court understood that this was Guo Songtao's work, and the imperial court did now admit that foreigners still had some skills in "strange tricks". So these sounds are suppressed within a certain range.
However, while Guo Songtao was shocked, he began to ponder a question, why did the "barbarians" do better in these aspects than the "Heavenly Dynasty and the Kingdom"? In order to find out, he was more proactive in understanding and examining Western society.
Soon Guo Songtao had his own answer, first of all, he found that the foreigners were not unreasonable fools as the Chinese people thought at that time, and they were not weaker than the Heavenly Dynasty people in terms of intelligence. He then found that the Western state system was more creative and made society more dynamic.
In Guo Songtao's view, the parliamentary system and the administrative openness system could effectively solve the two major problems of the Manchu Qing court – corruption and inefficiency.
In the end, Guo Songtao came to the conclusion that these Westerners were not barbarians, and they could be teachers of the Heavenly Dynasty. In order to let the whole court know the real gap between the East and the West now, and no longer deceive themselves and rest on their laurels, Guo Songtao compiled his own news, sees, and thoughts into a book and sent it back to China for publication -- "Making the Western Chronicle".
But this publication has plunged him into the abyss.
Unlike the recent industrial technology of the West that has been reported to China, Guo Songtao mentioned an issue that the imperial court did not want to touch, the problem of the national system. In the eyes of the imperial court and the court's teachings to its subjects, the Manchu Qing dynasty's current state system is the best.
However, Guo Songtao blamed the Failure of the Manchu Qing on the Western countries on the state system, and did not want to shake the foundation of Manchu rule. Therefore, this time, the imperial court no longer defended Guo Songtao.
For a moment, the crowd was fierce. Those heroes who were worried about the king and the country accused and slandered Guo Songtao one after another, saying that he "sincerely did not know what kind of lungs and livers" he was, and even more said that Guo Songtao "had a second heart for Britain" and was a complete "second minister" and "traitor."
The candidates who were preparing for the township examination in Changsha not only burned down the Yuquan Shanlin Temple, which Guo Songtao had funded to repair, but also threatened to destroy his former residence. His friend Liu Kunyi also questioned him: "Why did he return to Hunan?" Why should he be in the hereafter?", which is almost the same as his old partner Zeng Guofan, who is about to be expelled from Xiang.
Explanation: Zeng Guofan was considered to be partial to foreigners in the Tianjin teaching case, and people criticized zeng Guofan as a traitor. Officials from Hunan, Both Korea and China were ashamed of him, and the plaque of the "Hunan Guild Hall" inscribed by him was also taken off and destroyed.
Liu Xihong, the deputy envoy of the conservative faction who accompanied Guo Songtao, also took the opportunity to fall into the well and impeach Guo Songtao for three major crimes to the imperial court:
1. The Yujiatun Fort is clothed with foreigners' clothes, even if it freezes to death, it should not be worn.
2. Seeing that the lord of Brazil stood up without authorization, how can he pay tribute to the small lord?
3. Birkin Palace listens to music and repeatedly reads music lists, imitating the actions of foreigners.
What is this sin? It can only be said that starvation is small, and loss of temperance is big. Or to say that treating Yangyi as equals is actually an act of contempt for the Heavenly Dynasty itself. Domestic courtiers responded one after another, believing that Guo Songtao "had a reprehensible heart", for example, He Jinshou, the editor of the Hanlin Academy, impeached him for "having two hearts for Britain and wanting to be a subject to Britain".
Guo Songtao visited the Chinese Pavilion at the French World Expo At that time, the French news was accompanied by a picture
Under the "excitement of the crowd", the imperial court first ordered that the printing of the "Envoy to the West Jicheng" be taken back and destroyed, and in August of the fourth year of Guangxu (1878), guo Songtao was transferred back, and in the fifth year of Guangxu (1879), Guo Songtao and his successor minister Zeng Jize returned to China after completing the handover affairs, saying that he was ill and returned home.
In the days that followed, Guo Songtao spent his days laughing and scolding local officials and literati. On the first day of the first lunar month of the ninth year of Guangxu, the 65-year-old Guo Songtao wrote in a chronicle poem: "Everything changes with the clouds in front of you, and the mirror fades and borrows wine and temperature." The world is full of feelings, and the rise and fall are repeatedly discussed with whom? ”
In the seventeenth year of Guangxu, Guo Songtao died of illness. Li Hongzhang once asked the National History Museum to establish a biography for Guo Songtao and asked for a title, but he was not approved by the imperial court. The Qing court decreed: "Guo Songtao went on a mission to foreign countries, and the books he wrote were quite controversial by the outside world, so he was not posthumously given a title." ”
After Guo Songtao left his post, the Great Qing seemed to be back in place, the foreign affairs movement was also thriving, and the prosperity of the Wanbang Dynasty seemed to be just around the corner. However, three years after Guo Songtao's death, the Qing Dynasty was defeated by Japan in the Sino-Japanese War, and ten years later, the Gengzi Kingdom was in trouble, and the Beijing Division fell again, and the "Heavenly Dynasty Kingdom" also completely became a historical term.