The Chinese nation is the only nation in the world whose civilization has never been interrupted! China was once defeated, but Chinese civilization has never been destroyed!
Why does the history of Chinese civilization that stands in the East for 5,000 years continue? Every Chinese should read this article well!
At this moment, I am sitting in the quiet Tsinghua Garden and writing this article, just because I am worried that people today and in the future often do not see some very important things in the history books.
Some of our history books are always talking about which emperor and his brother engaged in what conspiracies, which concubines fell in love with, and always talked about these inexplicable things.
Big things are not said.
First, what are the criteria for cultural maturity?
First, there must be text.
Second, there must be a city-style way of living, the city can be smaller, but there must be a way to live.
Third, there must be bronzes. The so-called bronze is that there must be metal smelting, the smelting melting point of bronze is very low, and the earliest human beings can smelt bronze is the initial metal smelting.
Second, which four civilizations are the four major civilizations?
The four major civilizations are Babylonian, Egyptian, Indian and Chinese.
1. Who is the first place?
The first place is the place where life is not going well now – Iraq.
That place was called the Babylonian civilization in ancient times. If the bigger one is called the Two Rivers Civilization (Euphrates and Tigris), the Two Rivers Civilization is called the Mesopotamian Civilization in the West.
That is the place where human beings first discovered civilization, and it is also the place where civilization first matured. When its civilization was highly mature, Chinese civilization only began to dawn.
2. Who is the second place?
Second place is Egypt on the Banks of the Nile.
3. The third and fourth place competition
The third place should be India, and the fourth place should be China.
However, due to the fact that there have been few archaeological discoveries in India in the past six or seventy years, and there are many archaeological achievements in China, some people have internationally said that Chinese civilization has become the third.
However, a very important cultural site that really has the potential to push China's rank forward is the Hongshan culture in Chifeng City, Inner Mongolia, which is relatively early, but it still needs to be recognized internationally.
4. How did Greek civilization not count?
You may ask, how did a Greek civilization that had a great influence on the later world not be counted?
Because scholars around the world have studied this civilization, this civilization is about the encounter between the first Babylonian civilization and the second Egyptian civilization in the Mediterranean, although it was later created, it is not original, so it cannot be counted as one of the four major civilizations.
5. What about Persian civilization?
There was also a civilization, which is now Iran, which was called Persia at that time.
The Persian civilization was also very early, but after research, it was the encounter between the first Babylonian civilization and the third Indian civilization on land. Because they all lack originality, they don't count.
6. Only the Chinese civilization remains relatively complete to this day
Whether China is the third or fourth place in these four ancient civilizations, one thing is certain, that is, it has developed uninterruptedly to this day, and there is only one civilization that has not perished, that is, Chinese civilization.
One thing is very strange, the original site of civilization, why is there always frequent terrorism, always disasters and artillery fire? This is a completely rebellious state.
The relatively complete civilization that has survived to this day is indeed only the Chinese civilization.
(1) Babylonian civilization
Iraq is rarely able to see the legacy of the Babylonian civilization, although it is ancient, but it has no archives, it will always be a battlefield, and it will always be a battlefield for thousands of years.
Therefore, they themselves can't figure out what the ancient things are, and even their cultural education situation is very poor.
(2) Egyptian civilization
In Egypt it was a different story – today I don't even know what hieroglyphics are.
More seriously, there is no place in Egypt where the descendants of the pharaohs can be found, and in Alexandria we can now meet almost all whites, which is the result of a mixture of European aggression. In their capital, Cairo, they encountered sporadic Arabs, which were also the result of the mixed race after the war.
Where are the descendants of the pharaohs? Where are the descendants of the Pyramid Age? Bloodlines are no longer found.
We found a pharaoh village on the west bank south of the Nile, but they were particularly weak both physically and intellectually because of the marriage of thousands of years of close relatives, and they are now also Muslims, and the descendants of the pharaohs are gone.
(3) Indian civilization
What about India? On the surface, India seems to be all there, and there are all remnants, but unfortunately, their countless interruptions, countless demises, and even this process has not been recorded.
Their history is not clear, but one thing is known, the Buddhism sung in the Tang Dynasty Western Records was in the 13th century, and now that Buddhism has disappeared in India.
Now their Buddhism is backwards.
(4) Chinese civilization
Therefore, it is difficult to imagine that there are still some children in a place who can normally recite the words of the old people 2500 years ago, such as "the threesome will have my teacher", "The old and the new", "There are friends from afar", and so on.
But this really happened in the hot land of China, so this is a great civilization that has not been interrupted since it entered civilization 4200 years ago.
Third, inflammation and yellow are actually the opposite
4,200 years ago, China conducted a civilization "warm-up race" for 700 to 800 years. There are six great kings who have led us through these 700 to 800 years of preparation.
The first was Emperor Yan, the second was the Yellow Emperor, the third was called Xuan You, and the next three were Yao, Shun, and Yu. These six great kings have made full preparations for our 4200 years of civilization.
They are strictly speaking legendary figures, and we may not have very clear information, but in general they are like this:
1. Emperor Yan
Emperor Yan was an agricultural scientist, Shennong.
First of all, He taught us Chinese farming, which is important. Before Emperor Yan, we were picking wild fruits to eat and beat wild beasts, which was completely passive.
Second, Yandi found fire, which enabled us to eat cooked food, we were able to work at night, and we could use fire to guard against wild beasts.
Third, Emperor Yan personally tasted herbs and invented Chinese herbal medicine, avoiding one of the reasons why the Chinese nation was likely to completely perish at the earliest, that is, to prevent infectious diseases.
So, why was such a great man later defeated by the Yellow Emperor?
2. The Yellow Emperor
The Yellow Emperor may have thought so—
The Yellow Emperor felt that although Emperor Yan had done a good job, the situation of the enemy between the tribes at that time was too serious. The enemy is a barbaric force, it is said that they will fight when they come, so we have to arm ourselves, we have to smelt metal, we want to forge weapons, we have to ride on warhorses, we want to patrol our peripheries, we want to start a war to eliminate those barbaric forces.
But Emperor Yan felt that I was living quietly and quietly—what was wrong with the old peasant's life?
So the Yellow Emperor and the Yan Emperor fought, and as a result, the Yellow Emperor defeated the Yan Emperor and lost, and the place where he fought was now Hebei Province.
When these two elderly people stood facing each other in blood, they did not know that thousands of years later, the largest group of people in the world would describe themselves as the descendants of Yan Huang. If they had known, they might not have fought.
The Yellow Emperor later took over the civilization of the Yan Emperor, so we called it the Descendants of Yan Huang.
3. Xuan You and Yao, Shun, Yu
But the Yellow Emperor also had one person who could not beat him, and that was Xuan You.
Xuan You was in charge of the area of present-day Shandong, eastern Henan, and northern Anhui, and the area was also very large.
The Yellow Emperor could not defeat him, because he also had metal smelting, and he was also making weapons.
The Yellow Emperor is like us ordinary people, for those who can't beat him, he says to his tribe that he is a monster. Because the script was invented during the Yellow Emperor's period, he gave him the two most ugly characters in Chinese characters, called Xuan You.
Later, due to natural reasons, Xuanyu was defeated, and the Yellow Emperor won again.
Xuan You's descendants could only continue to flee, some belonged to the Yellow Emperor, some continued to migrate south, and the Yellow Emperor's troops continued to pursue.
Where did it go? Near Guizhou, the current Miao people are the descendants of Xuan You.
Yao, Shun, and Yu were the heirs of the Yellow Emperor, who inherited from generation to generation, completed this preparation, and then entered the more important 4200 years of the Chinese nation, and reached the threshold of our entry into civilization.
Fourth, the wisest people of all mankind were born together
In the 5th century BC, a major event occurred together with other civilizations in the world—the wisest people in all mankind were born together.
1. Axis Star Era
Let's make a schedule:
Confucius was 14 years younger than Shakyamuni;
10 years after the death of Confucius, Socrates of ancient Greece was born;
Aristotle, the wisest philosopher of ancient Greece, was 12 years older than Mencius and 15 years older than Zhuangzi;
Archimedes and Han Feizi are only 7 years apart.
This seat can still be continuously lined up, what impression does it make for everyone? It's that the smart people all came out at that time - isn't the difference 10 or 14 years old the same period?
Everyone stepped into the threshold of civilization before and after, and then the quantity changed to the qualitative change. Intelligence exploded, human beings matured together, and intelligent people all came together.
That era was called the Axis Star Age by the Frankish School of Germany, and it was at that time that the Axis Star of human intelligence was at that time.
At this critical moment, Chinese civilization was not absent, and although ancient Greece was not original, it performed particularly well at that time.
2. Division of labor
Therefore, when the ancient Greek philosophers were thinking on the Greek seashore, the Indian philosophers were meditating on the banks of the Ganges, and the Chinese philosophers were walking on the banks of the Yellow River.
And there is also a division of labor in their mission: Greek philosophers mainly consider the relationship between man and matter, Indian philosophers mainly consider the relationship between man and God, and Chinese philosophers mainly consider the relationship between man and man.
Chinese philosophers don't care which of the hundreds of sons and hundreds of families, they don't think much about things, they don't think much about ghosts and gods, folk beliefs are full of ghosts and gods, but if you look at the hundreds of sons, these two ends don't think much.
He only thinks about the relationship between people and people.
Indian philosophers think about the relationship between man and God, a god who is not superstitious, but, according to our current science, the "transcendental world," that is, another high-level abstract world beyond our empirical world.
Don't think they are superstitious, this is exactly what Chinese philosophy lacks. So Xuanzang wanted to come back from India.
Western philosophy thinks about the relationship between man and matter, not mainly considering complete material interests, but mainly considering the affairs of man and the objective world. So now, their natural sciences are particularly developed.
3) Civilization needs to be defended by the administrative power of the state
Although this group of people thinks by the sea, and another group of people strolls by the river, but no matter how advanced their thinking is, if there is no blessing of administrative resources and the protection of state power, their thoughts will drift with the wind.
Confucius was so calculated that if no one listened to his speech, even if the student listened to it and wrote it down, the student's notes would be burned quickly. So how can it be passed on?
There are so many smart people in the world, why are there only a few of them left? This must be blessed with administrative power — the power of the state must resist barbarism and defend civilization.
V. The Age of Empires
Around the 5th century BC, after the explosion of human intelligence, it immediately entered the era of empire.
1. Two empires coexisted: the Roman Empire in the Western Hemisphere and the Qin and Han Empires in the Eastern Hemisphere
The Kingdom of Babylon, the Kingdom of Persia, the Peacock Dynasty of India, one empire after another rose up and perished, and finally there were two major empires on the earth, coexisting side by side for a long time, that is, the Roman Empire in the western hemisphere and the Qin and Han Empires in the eastern hemisphere.
The Qin Dynasty was too short, the Han Dynasty was relatively long, and the Qin and Han Empires suppressed the weight of the earth.
2. Common enemy: the barbarians of the north
The two empires encountered a common enemy called the Northern Barbarians.
The barbaric power of China was called the Huns. To deal with the Xiongnu, the Qin and Han Empires had two methods, Qin Shi Huang built the Great Wall, and Emperor Wu of Han fought wars.
Emperor Wu of Han had been fighting wars for more than 50 years during his reign, and had trained great generals such as Wei Qing and Huo Fuyi to fight with them. As a result of the fight, the Xiongnu were defeated and ran away, and the Han Dynasty was also very tired.
While we were fighting the Huns here, the Roman Empire also encountered the barbarians of the north. In 476 AD, the Western Roman Empire was crushed and destroyed by the northern barbarians.
So who is this northern barbarian? It was the Xiongnu who had been beaten away by Emperor Wu of Han and ran to the west. They united with the local barbarians and, after generations of efforts, dismantled the Roman Empire.
One of the two great empires on earth perished, and Europe entered the Middle Ages, slowly for a thousand years!
6. Qin and Han civilization
China's Qin and Han civilizations also encountered great trouble, and although the Xiongnu fought away, there were still many barbarians in the north.
1. The rule of the Xianbei people
At that time, China was occupied by an ethnic minority called the Xianbei people.
The Han Chinese in China can cultivate land, but the Xianbei will not, so they cannot rule the Han. So they believe that by abolishing farmland, restoring pastures, and returning to nomadic civilization, then rule can be achieved (they are familiar with nomadic civilizations).
There are two strategies here, one is the strategy of the hawks, killing all the Han Chinese, and the strategy of the doves is not to kill them all, and let the Han people become slaves to work there.
2. Empress Feng and Emperor Xiaowen
What is worthy of the eternal good fortune of the descendants of Yan Huang is that there are actually two extremely excellent characters in the Xianbei Clan.
One is a woman, she is actually related to the Han ethnicity, in Xianbei became the empress, called Empress Feng, we call her "civilized empress".
The other was her grandson, a Tuoba clan in the Xianbei clan, his name was Tuoba Hong, and this person was called Emperor Xiaowen of the Northern Wei Dynasty in the history books of the Han people.
Emperor Xiaowen was only 33 years old when he died, and he was a very young king. Under his grandmother's leadership (who did not last long after her death), he did several important things in eight or nine years.
"We are militaryly victorious, but culturally we are students of Han culture."
1. Abolish the Xianbei language, and all officials learn han Chinese;
2. It is forbidden to wear fresh and humble clothing anymore, and it is necessary to wear Hanfu;
3. Move the capital from their original capital (now Datong, Shanxi) to Luoyang, Henan, to the center of agricultural civilization, and implement the laws of agricultural civilization such as the "Juntian Law";
Fourth, the nobles of the Xianbei tribe tried to intermarry with the Han people, resulting in blood ties.
3. The great achievements of Emperor Xiaowen
Let us not underestimate that these provisions have produced a huge result, which is unimaginable.
First of all, not only was the Chinese civilization not wiped out (almost destroyed, the Roman civilization was actually wiped out at that time), but it was even stronger.
Why is it stronger?
Our sons are good and good, and one of the problems is that it is too Sven.
Can they accomplish a great cause of civilization alone? No way.
Because they lack vitality, lack strong strength.
They can throw away their humble language, they can throw away their humble clothes, what they can't lose is the majestic wind on horseback, and what they can't lose is the arrogance of the sky and the wilderness.
Once this point is added to our Confucianism and to our sons and hundreds of families, China will immediately become incomparably stronger.
Can you understand that?
Therefore, some of us do not understand, thinking that the doctrine of the Hundred Sons and Hundred Schools alone can establish a great society, but in fact, this is not enough, there must be the masculinity of the ethnic minorities in the north, and the wild join, and the Chinese civilization will be balanced.
Second, this Xiaowen Emperor felt that he had no culture, so he worshiped Han culture as a teacher, and also worshiped other cultures as a teacher.
So he went to The Indian culture as a teacher, because Buddhism was introduced at that time. In Buddhism, there are remnants of Greek civilization left over from Alexander's crusade; he also worships Greek culture as a teacher, Indian culture and Persian culture are very close, he worships Persian culture as a teacher; he worships Babylonian culture as a teacher.
Important cultures from all over the world have been invited in to become teachers of Chinese civilization.
If you don't believe it, you can go to the Yungang Grottoes in Datong, Shanxi To have a look, you will wonder when you go in, how do you feel that it is a Roman colonnade?
That was the remnant of Greek civilization.
Those Buddha statues are of Indian civilization.
Why are they all high nose bridges and deep eye sockets? This is the remnant of a Greek sculptor.
After several twists and turns, the Greek sculptors, through the remnants of the Gadro culture and so on, as well as the Persian culture, and the Babylonian culture, were all there, and the Yungang Grottoes alone became the great gathering of world civilization.
Let me make you an analogy, these civilizations are very proud, they have nothing to do with each other, just like the professors in our universities are very proud, when they meet each other, politely nod their heads and ignore each other, but they did not expect that a young office director came, treating each professor as his teacher, and attentively asked them to drink tea and eat, and pulled them together for a meeting, and as a result, these professors had a good relationship and were integrated.
This young office director was emperor Xiaowen of our Northern Wei dynasty, and civilizations were integrated.
How remarkable!
First, Chinese civilization has suddenly moved towards a sound balance and an ambitious and powerful one.
Second, the excellent factors of Chinese civilization and other civilizations have been fused, so that the two problems of the Hundred Sons and Hundred Families have been overcome.
The Hundred Sons and Hundred Families are also too closed, and they don't know that there are other cultures in the world.
We are now always talking about Chinese studies and culture, and the problem is that these two are these two, one is Sven who has no executive power, and the second is that we do not understand the closure of other civilizations.
However, in the 5th century AD, by the time of Emperor Xiaowen of Northern Wei, these two problems had been overcome.
After these two faults were overcome, the third advantage came out again- didn't he advocate intermarriage?
The idea of intermarriage created a new generation of strong, well-educated and talented rulers.
Therefore, a great dynasty is coming soon, and this dynasty is called the Tang Dynasty.
A great dynasty
China thus moved towards the Tang Dynasty, and a remarkable era began.
And everyone should pay attention to the fact that the Sui Emperor before the Tang Dynasty and the Tang Taizong of the Tang Dynasty, one-half of their blood relations are Xianbei blood. When wu Zetian's husband, Emperor Gaozong of Tang, was three-quarters of him of the Xianbei clan.
So a small nation, because of its wise decision-making, imported its bloodline into a great nation and created a great dynasty.
Therefore, we should show a kind of respect for Emperor Xiaowen of Northern Wei, who died at the age of 33.
Because he not only avoided a very likely demise of the Chinese nation, but also made up for all the major defects of Chinese culture at one time.
After the 5th century AD, there was a great change, when the Roman Empire had fallen and entered the Dark Middle Ages.
Thanks to the efforts of Emperor Xiaowen and others, China entered the great Tang Dynasty after more than a hundred years, and the Tang Dynasty in the 7th century AD is still very exciting.
At that time, after the fall of the Roman Empire, the population of the city was less than 50,000. At that time, Europe, with a population of 10,000, was already a decent city.
In Chang'an City, the capital of the Tang Dynasty at that time, the population was one million not counting outside the city.
Seventy diplomatic missions, more than thirty thousand foreign students, the city ate Arabic pasta, roman medicine, and used Byzantine gold coins and Persian silver coins.
Religions around the world have dojos there. Prices are very cheap, criminal cases are extremely few, and people's happiness rates are extremely high.
I once went to a place in southern Egypt called Thebes, and an English-speaking docent was explaining, and he said that our Thebes was probably the most important city in the ancient world.
As soon as she finished speaking, she quickly added a sentence in English, except for Chang'an in the Tang Dynasty, of course. Of course, she must talk about chang'an in the Tang Dynasty, and there is no common sense without talking about it. Because the Tang Dynasty was too great, too brilliant.
Some say there are three real cultural centers in human history – Chang'an in the 7th century, Paris in the 19th century, and New York today.
What is a Cultural Center? That is, the creators of culture all over the world are concentrated there, and the cultural achievements are released there, which is called the cultural center.
But another shortcoming of 19th-century Paris, now New York, and 7th-century Chang'an is the lack of poetry.
Chang'an is full of poetry, and at night it is a curfew - the curfew is not for war but to manage order, and the doors of the 108 workshops are closed, and people can only move inside the workshops.
So the afternoon is very important, there are many, many bars, these bars are Central Asia, according to the current is Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan those countries of the beautiful girls, called Hu Ji to open.
In the evening, Li Bai and Wang Wei rode white horses to the Orchid Hotel to drink, which has a large number of accounts, and they also have a large number of poems to describe this scene.
If you are more open and can't stand the curfew, then you can go east to Luoyang, which is also very prosperous and does not require a curfew.
If you're a little more romantic, then you continue east to Yangzhou, and there's no limit. Therefore, their dream is to go to Yangzhou.
At that time, in addition to these cities, Chengdu was already prosperous.
This is the Tang Dynasty, the Tang Dynasty from the 7th century to the 8th century AD, the Chinese civilization played very well and wonderfully, and because of the Silk Road and the exchanges with Japan, it has become an unshakable center of world culture, which is recognized by the whole world.
Were the Song Dynasty and the Yuan Dynasty good dynasties?
1, the Song Dynasty is actually very good
In the Song Dynasty, there are many reasons why you can't see well, you can't fight wars and fight people, and the two emperors have been robbed by others, which is very humiliating, right?
You see Song Jiang can't survive, Wu Song can't live, Lin Chong can't survive, Lin Chong can't survive, they can only go to Liangshan.
It seems that no one can fight a war, so they can only rely on one family to take charge of the so-called national defense, and the men do not know where to go, and it is the women who will guard the national defense.
So who is their commander? The old lady who called the hundred-year-old marshal, She Old Lady Jun. A hundred years old, how ridiculous do you think this country is?
The emperor was robbed, the hero went to Liangshan, the national defense was run by the ladies of a family, and the commander-in-chief was an old lady. Many of these are the products of novels and plays, and you should not fully believe them.
It's funny to see, because fiction and drama sometimes don't fully talk about history, and we can't ask for art with the truth of history.
Therefore, Wu Han said that those of us who are engaged in history like to see such a thing as Yangmen female general the most, because it has not happened, so it looks particularly relaxed.
In recent years, the concept of human history has shifted from the flourishing style of the imperial court to the ecological style of the whole people.
All we believed in the past was the prosperity of the imperial court, how this brother killed the younger brother, this conspiracy, this prime minister, it was completely the prosperity of the imperial court. In fact, this is not important, what is important is the national ecological style.
The Song Dynasty was not very good if it was from the perspective of the prosperity of the imperial court. But according to the national ecological style, it is very good, and the main evidence is a map of the Qingming River.
The Qingming Upper River Map is a manifestation of a commercial scene in the Northern Song Dynasty.
According to our concept of modern economists, the GDP of the Song Dynasty was twice that of the Tang Dynasty, and all walks of life were very developed, you can see the Qingming River Map, from the perspective of the national ecology, the Song Dynasty is very good.
In the era of cold weapons, agricultural civilization really could not defeat the nomadic civilization. Hundreds of thousands of horse teams marched south, and it was difficult for you to resist the soldiers you had captured in the farmland, and it was difficult to resist no matter how many Yue Fei were.
So whose troops finally wiped out the Song Dynasty? It was Genghis Khan's troops.
Who in the world could stand genghis Khan's troops? No one can afford it!
He has occupied half of Asia, half of Europe, and while it is time to cross the Mediterranean to occupy Africa, we can now read the diary of the African emperor, saying that Genghis Khan is coming, and we must hurry up and prepare the ceremony of surrender!
In fact, at that time, it was not Genghis Khan himself but his descendants.
2, the Yuan Dynasty is actually very good
When the Mongol troops came, the Yuan Dynasty was not very good, right?
Some Han textbooks always say that the Yuan Dynasty is not good, saying that the status of the Han people in the Yuan Dynasty is very low, and the time is very short, only 90 years. In fact, this is the narrow thinking of Han historians.
Today we use contemporary world thinking to consider that the Yuan Dynasty is very good. Let's cite a few pieces of evidence to prove it:
First, we all know that europe finally woke up, and when they woke up, there was a book that excited them, and their navigators tried desperately to open up new territories according to this book.
Columbus had a book on the wheel platform, Magellan had a book on the wheelstand, and da Gama had that book on the wheel, called Marco Polo's Travels.
Marco Polo, the traveler, was the Venetian of Europe, and Venice was the most beautiful in Europe, but Marco Polo told the Europeans that my hometown is not beautiful, and that the most beautiful and noble place in the world is in China.
He went to Hangzhou and went to Beijing to many places, saying that the most beautiful place was in China, rich, civilized, and polite, and as a result, the navigators went crazy to China.
Which dynasty is the "Marco Polo's Travels", which has excited the whole of Europe? The Yuan Dynasty, of course.
So the Yuan Dynasty is not as bad as some of our history teachers say now, the Yuan Dynasty is actually very exciting.
You can see from Marco Polo's description, it's wonderful, and that's number one.
Second, we think that the good part of the Yuan Dynasty is that the Mongol army was strong, and it was it that settled the territory of the Chinese Empire.
Our current Foreign Ministry spokesperson says that the central government has exercised effective rule in Xinjiang since the Yuan Dynasty, and that the central government has exercised effective rule in Tibet since the Yuan Dynasty. Because when Princess Wencheng married in the Tang Dynasty, it was not effective rule.
Not only Xinjiang and Tibet, but also Guangxi, Guizhou and Yunnan have also exercised effective rule since the Yuan Dynasty.
It was the Mongolian horse team that settled the borders of Greater China in general, which was the second credit of the Yuan Dynasty.
The third credit of the Yuan Dynasty was the particular prosperity of art.
What dynasty paintings are the Fuchun Mountain Jutu? Yuan Dynasty. When is the best product of blue and white porcelain? Yuan Dynasty.
Everyone remembers that this was only a short dynasty of less than a hundred years, but everything was produced.
At that time, it seemed that Chinese culture had everything, and unfortunately there was a lack of a project - drama.
What do you mean? Confucius did not see the play, Mencius did not see the play, Qu Yuan, who had such a high artistic achievement, did not see the play, this is just that, even Li Bai and Du Fu have not seen the play, China is so strange!
2500 years ago, Greek tragedy was very prosperous, Indian Sanskrit opera was very prosperous, China has not had drama, why is there no drama in China?
But in the Yuan Dynasty, these problems were all solved.
The Yuan Dynasty stopped the examination system for many years, and as a result, the people who originally wanted to take the exam went to the wandering acrobatic classes and drama groups without food, and said I will write something for you, right?
Among these people, there are Han Qing, including Wang Shifu, who wrote "The Tale of the West Chamber", Ji Junxiang, who wrote "The Orphan of Zhao", and Ma Zhiyuan, a large group of people.
As a result, the drama produced by the Yuan Dynasty made Chinese drama quickly catch up with ancient Greek tragedies and ancient Indian Sanskrit dramas, so that all the problems of Chinese culture were solved.
The rulers of the Yuan Dynasty did not have a high degree of Han Chinese, and they were very happy to watch the drama, so the result was a great prosperity of drama. Later, Kun opera and Peking opera could not catch up with yuan miscellaneous opera in literature, could not catch up with Guan Hanqing, could not catch up with Xi Xiangji, could not catch up with the Orphans of Zhao, and could not catch up.
So the Yuan Dynasty is remarkable, and these problems have been solved in just 90 years.
IX. Cultural Despotism and the Prohibition of the Sea
Unfortunately, the Ming Dynasty and the Qing Dynasty were not good, and the Ming Dynasty and the Qing Dynasty had several problems.
The first is that the glory time is too long, and we have developed a complacency of conservative not openness.
Second, Zhu Yuanzhang came out of the grassroots, and he practiced cultural absolutism.
Cultural absolutism is the prison of words, you have a word that is not right, the whole family kills the head, and sometimes there are nine ethnic groups, whether this word is written well or not, it all depends on how people explain it.
Zhu Yuanzhang had a birthday, people said birthday birth, he said are you sarcastic about me, I have been a monk, is the harmonic sound of the monks of the Tang monks, killed him.
The national strength of the Ming Dynasty began to be very strong, but under this kind of thinking, it caused a serious backwardness in cultural thinking and cultural creativity, coupled with our closure - the result was that from the Ming Dynasty to the Qing Dynasty, it began to weaken.
Another reason for this is the sudden and rapid development of Europe.
At the time of the Renaissance, europe was like this, they went through a thousand years of slumber, and the night was too long, so they felt the dawn particularly deeply.
And China's Tang Dynasty and Song Dynasty history is too brilliant, so we have no feeling for the dawn, but instead go to mediocrity.
This is the problem of the Ming Dynasty and the Qing Dynasty. What makes us a little sad now is our emperor of the Ming Dynasty and the Qing Dynasty, who only cares about the great wall frontier in the north.
In fact, there are three forms of civilization in the world, one called agricultural civilization, one called nomadic civilization (Genghis Khan called it nomadic civilization), and the other called marine civilization.
China is mainly an agrarian civilization, nomadic civilization we deal with them, building the Great Wall, fighting wars are nomadic civilization, and later the relationship is not afraid, to the Qing Dynasty there is no need to build the Great Wall.
But for maritime civilization, we have always been frogs at the bottom of the well.
During the Ming Dynasty, Zheng He went to the West, but when he came back, he was crazy, and we don't even know where Mr. Zheng He died, and we don't know where his tomb is.
This was the closed era of the sea ban, a lesson we still endure to this day.
The sea is armed, but we don't know; the sea is divided, and we don't know how many problems we have now in the East China Sea and the South China Sea are related to the Ming Dynasty and the Qing Dynasty.
We often see a chapter in the history books, in the Ming Dynasty, we have heroes like Qi Jiguang.
Wokou do need to fight because there are a lot of pirates. But the Wokou problem was seriously expanded, and many of the people who were doing overseas trade at that time regarded him as a Wokou.
Overseas trade needed to protect itself with arms under the circumstances at that time, and the emperors of the Ming Dynasty felt that how could you have your own arms? So I beat them up like Kou.
Now, through historical research, we find that we thought that the Wokou at that time were Japanese—and at that time, we thought that the short people were all Japanese.
In fact, the supreme leader of all the Wokou was an Anhui man named Wang Zhi in China, who left a last word when he died, telling the imperial court that it meant to open the sea ban and encourage trade.
"If the sea ban is opened, Kou will become a merchant; if it is not opened, the merchant will also become a businessman." This is Wang Zhi's last words.
Wang Zhi also said, "If you recognize me, all the islands in the East China Sea can be included in the Chinese territory, and I am in charge." ”
However, we killed him anyway.
So this is a very big historical misunderstanding.
It is our closure, our conservatism, our mistakes — our cultural absolutism has made the two long dynasties of the Ming dynasty and the Qing Dynasty completely incomparable with the original, and incomparable with the original in Chinese history.
Culturally, through the Ming and Qing dynasties, how many people can we compare with our previous cultures-that is, how many people can compare with Confucius Mencius Qu Yuan Su Dongpo and Li Bai Du Fu?
Rarely, maybe only two people.
In the centuries of the Ming and Qing dynasties, only two people could be compared with those outstanding figures in the early days, one was the philosopher Wang Yangming of the Ming Dynasty, and the other was the novelist Cao Xueqin of the Qing Dynasty, who could compare with these people in front of them, and the others could not compare with those who were inferior, because of cultural absolutism.
The situation in Europe after waking up was completely different, and the result was the tragedy of Chinese culture in the 19th century.
What tragedy?
The first is that every battle comes from the sea, not from the Great Wall; second, every battle we have lost, and we have lost every battle.
At first we were defeated at the hands of Britain and the United States, England and France, far away. But in the end, it was defeated at the hands of one of our original little apprentices, Japan, the Battle of Jiawu.
At this point, the self-confidence of Chinese culture collapsed. Now, more than a hundred years have passed since China signed a treaty that stipulates that China will pay 450 million taels of silver to the great powers.
This treaty is the most humiliating, because the number of people in China at that time was exactly 450 million, and even our great-grandfathers were suffering from this humiliation.
He was probably just a very ordinary common man who had never seen silver, but he also had to lose one or two to foreign invaders in his blood and sweat.
We can still see books written by some scholars in England, Germany, and France at that time, saying, "If such a large amount of reparations falls on the head of any rich nation, whoever is called to pay compensation will also be impoverished!" Ten thousand disasters is how many years can not turn over, never turn over ah! ”
This is what the philosophers of Conscience said after the treaty was signed.
Now that more than a hundred years have passed, today, we can tell our great-grandfather's spirit in heaven that we are not doomed, and our foreign exchange reserves are still the first in the world.
10. Once brilliant
Thinking of this, I can't help but burst into tears, our Chinese nation is really weathered by wind and frost... After all, Chinese civilization has come.
Why did all of a sudden this hundred years come again? This is a kind of majestic support 4200 years ago!
In times of calamity, this nation must have a sense of imminent danger; in times of calamity, this nation has a historical glory that is mobilized.
So he came back to God and became a civilization that was still alive and well up to now.
From 4200 years ago, the 21st century BC to the 5th century BC we entered a great explosion of intelligence, Confucius they and the world's smartest people think together;
Then we entered the imperial period, and we became one of the two great empires on earth;
By the end of the 5th century AD, our Chinese empire was reborn and established the great Tang Dynasty, and then established the Song Dynasty, which is remarkable, and the Yuan Dynasty is not bad.
But I didn't expect people to wake up, and as soon as people woke up, they compared us to each other, and by the 19th century, we were forced to be very embarrassed, and when we were forced to be the most embarrassed, an advantage of Chinese civilization in the past was awakened, so it was not bad until now.
There seems to be a mysterious force in this, such as why are smart people born together? Why do they have such a division of labor? We don't even know why.
There are two other things that we do not understand at all: when the Eight-Power Alliance occupied Beijing and the Chinese nation was about to perish, an official who defended Beijing at the juncture was named Wang Yirong, who discovered the oracle bone, which was exactly the oracle bone he found.
He committed suicide on the day the Eight-Nation Alliance entered, and there was still a fragment of the Oracle on the desk, and the Oracle told us Chinese, we once had a great Shang Dynasty, more than four thousand years ago.
Then on those two days, the two days when the Eight-Nation Alliance entered the north, Dunhuang discovered the Tibetan scripture cave and told everyone that China had a Tang Dynasty.
Allow me to make an analogy between these two things, namely, a samurai who was defeated by someone, covered in blood, lying on the ground and dying, when he suddenly heard the song of his childhood, and he stood up again with a stick.
This childhood song is the oracle bone of that time, the discovery of the glorious evidence of the Tang Dynasty at that time, and he stood up again.
This is a great hero who has endured a long time and is the only one who will not die and will never be defeated!
His name is called the Chinese nation!
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