In 1840 (the twentieth year of Daoguang), the British sent an expeditionary force to invade China under the pretext of Lin Zexu's gun smoke. In June of the same year, the Opium War began, which ended in China's failed land-cutting indemnities. Subsequently, China's first unequal treaty, the Treaty of Nanking, was signed, and since then it has been on the road to signing an unequal treaty. The Treaty of Tianjin, the Treaty of Beijing, the Treaty of Xinugu, and so on, were just as numerous in compensation for land cession, and concessions were emerging in an endless stream.
Every time they lost, in the end, even Japan could not fight, and the status of Chinese became unprecedentedly low. All this is because the Qing Dynasty was too backward, and people at that time did not understand what had happened to the outside world. Not to mention the weapons, the foreign guns and cannons used in the West, the Qing soldiers are still stuck in a hundred years ago. There are many reasons for its backwardness, the eight strands of the closed country and the examination system, and the suppression of science and technology must also be one. As a result, the Chinese people can't see new things abroad and miss the opportunity for technological revolution.
The Eight Strands of Literature are even more restrictive of the development of talents, the West is propagating bourgeois democratic ideas, and the Chinese literati are under the influence of Confucianism. The West is watching the Tiangong Kaiwu carry out the agricultural revolution, Japan is watching the Meiji Restoration of the Haiguo Tuzhi, and the Qing Dynasty is good, turning around and banning both. The chance to become a great power was snuffed out little by little by themselves, as well as by this scientist. If he had not been killed by Kangxi, the Qing Dynasty would have had a chance to become stronger, at least to resist when the great powers invaded.
This person was Dai Zi, a firearms maker in the early years of the Qing Dynasty, who could write poetry, painting, astronomical algorithms, martial arts tactics, and develop weapons. Born in a family of officials, Dai Zi was very intelligent from an early age, there was no book he did not read, and he liked mechanical manufacturing in his youth. Very early on, he made a variety of firearms, one of which could hit a target a hundred steps away, and he invented the Lianzhu Fire Hammer. This weapon can store 28 rounds of projectiles and gunpowder, and can be fired by pulling the trigger and pulling the flintlock bolt.
The rifle is simple and fast, and can significantly increase the rate of fire of the gun, in short, it is a simple version of the machine gun. This kind of Qing Dynasty at that time can be said to be very advanced, if he can continue to study, the future is unlimited. His achievements are far more than this, in the twenty-fifth year of the Kangxi Dynasty (1686), the Dutch offered a shell gun, and Dai Zi successfully copied 10 of them. Kangxi was overjoyed when he got the imitation shotgun and gave it back to the Dutch emissaries for a show.
Then, imitating the Flang machine, it took only five days. His death was also due to firearms, and in the twenty-sixth year of the Kangxi Dynasty (1687), the Belgian missionary Nan Huairen showed kangxi the cupolas invented by their country, boasting that only the Belgians could build them. As a result, Dai Zi took eight days to complete, and Belgium took a year, which shows his talent in firearms manufacturing. When Kangxi took people to see it, the firepower of the sky cannon was so powerful that it was given the name of Wei Yuanda, which later played a major role in the Gardan rebellion.
Talented and just right, Nan Huairen remembered the hatred in his heart, and with Zhang Xianzhong's adopted son, dai Zi put a hat for smuggling with the East. It is also ridiculous to say that a foreigner put a hat of an adulterous foreigner on Chinese, but Kangxi believed it. This Southern Huairen died in the Qing Dynasty, and was highly respected, and Kangxi personally wrote a tribute to him. Dai Zi was exiled to Shengjing, where he lived a difficult life for thirty years, earning a living by buying calligraphy and paintings. In the end, he died in poverty and illness, and his invention naturally could not be promoted, and it is a pity that such a genius ended up like him.
References: Draft History of the Qing Dynasty, Art Biography IV, Biography of Dai Zi, Miscellaneous Records of Xiaoting