In order to save the crumbling country, Tan Sitong was not afraid of life and death, and finally ended up in a broken vegetable market, which is sad and sad.
However, what is surprising is that from his failed change of law and imprisonment to the beheading of the public, his powerful father Tan Jixun was silent throughout the whole process and never interceded for his son.
Why doesn't Tan Jixun intercede for his son? It all starts with the thoughts of the two men.
Sword and guts, the enlightenment of new ideas
At the end of the Qing Dynasty, the eight strands were taken from the scholars, and countless readers painstakingly studied the eight strands of literature in order to obtain meritorious names, and their ideas were imprisoned by feudal and old-fashioned dogmas.
However, Tan Si studied and worshiped under Ouyang Zhonghu's door in his childhood,
Influenced by this, Tan Sitong studied Wang Fuzhi's works, received the enlightenment of patriotic ideas, coupled with erudite extensive reading, read a lot of Western books, and he was very disgusted with the traditional Eight Strands.
In 1884, disgusted by the imperial examination, he ran away from home and embarked on the road of traveling through the great rivers and mountains of the motherland.
He traveled through several provinces, studied nature, observed humanities, made friends with celebrities, traveled thousands of miles like reading thousands of books, and this journey further strengthened his inner thoughts.
Eight strands are not advisable, feudal dogma is not advisable, the country has decayed, only change can save the country, even so, but Tan Sitong is still just sleeping and studying, and has not begun to change the law to save the country.
The signing of the Treaty of Maguan and the beginning of the restoration and reform of the law
It was not until 1894, when the Sino-Japanese War was defeated and the "Maguan Treaty" was signed, which lost power and humiliated the country, that Tan Sitong, who was deeply baptized by the patriotic ideology of serving the country and the people, finally could not hold back.
He knew that if the decadent dogma of the Qing Dynasty was not changed and new ideas were not put forward, the state would cease to exist and the nation would cease to exist.
So he painstakingly studied, integrated what he had learned all his life, and absorbed advanced Western ideas, and he wrote "Renxue", which attacked the feudal and decadent dogma.
Later, he served as a teacher at the Shiwu Academy, spreading the ideas of restoration.
By creating the Restoration Society, founding the newspaper of the Restoration Faction, and so on, what he had learned in his life was brought into play, his idea of changing the law and saving the country spread rapidly, and the strength of the Restoration gradually grew.
In this way, Tan Sitong worked hard to realize his lifelong ambitions, and the appearance of an edict made him see the dawn of victory.
The Ming Dynasty is the edict, the Hundred Days Restoration
On June 11, 1898, Guangxu issued the "Ming Ding Guo is the Edict", which was to determine the future national policy.
As a disseminator of restoration ideas and a pioneer of the new coup law, Tan Sitong was summoned by the Guangxu Emperor and asked him to participate in the reform.
Tan Si and the other reformists gladly agreed, and began to change the law, with the support of the Guangxu Emperor, Tan Si and the others gave it a go, and the restoration and reform method was quickly implemented.
The law has been implemented, the country has changed, everything seems to be developing in a good direction, and Tan Si and others are full of energy.
What they didn't expect, however, was that disaster would come so quickly.
In just the past three months and more than a hundred days, the restoration and reform of the law has ushered in a devastating blow, and on September 21, 1898, Cixi launched a coup d'état, imprisoned the Guangxu Emperor, hunted down the reformists, and prevented the restoration and reform of the law.
Subsequently, Tan Si and his others were betrayed and imprisoned.
In the end, the six main members of the restoration faction represented by Tan Sitong were arrested and imprisoned, and the restoration and reform law of only more than 100 days was officially broken.
The crowd rescued him, but his father was indifferent.
As the backbone of the reformist faction, the aspirants who changed the law to save the country, from the failure of the change of law to the arrest and imprisonment and beheading to show the public, there have always been many people who have come to the rescue of this aspirant who has changed the law for the country.
Before he was arrested and imprisoned, Liang Qichao, Kang Youwei and many others persuaded him to flee and avoid the limelight, but he refused to flee on the grounds that "changing the law to shed blood" (Liang Qichao fled to Japan, Kang Youwei fled to Hong Kong).
After he was arrested and imprisoned, the knights who admired him proposed to rob the court and exchange it for him, and the proposal to die for him was rejected by him one by one.
Zhang Zhidong, Rong Lu and other ministers also participated in the mediation attempt to save several people, but in the end they did not succeed.
However, what is surprising is that from beginning to end, Tan Sitong's father, Tan Jixun, has never said a word of intercession for his son.
Why?
Sons and fathers, new ideas collide with old crap
To answer this question, we must not only look at the surface, but also analyze it from its essence.
On the surface, it seems that the father Tan Jixun is ruthless and unjust, indifferent in the face of his son being beheaded, and it is Tan Jixun who is cowardly and incompetent, who does not dare to resist and does not dare to save his son.
But from the essential analysis, we can conclude that Tan Jixuan's silence is an inevitable result.
Because in essence, this is not a father who does not save his dying son, this is a collision of new ideas in the new era and the feudal dross of the old society.
Tan Sitong's education from an early age was a brand-new patriotic love for the people, introducing new ideas, changing laws to survive, and extremely disgusted with feudal scum such as feudal monarchy and official power, and he was the representative of new ideas.
His father, Tan Jixun, was different, he studied the Eight Strands of Literature and learned feudal thought from an early age, he was a supporter of feudal dogma, and he was a typical representative of feudal thought.
It is not difficult to explain why Tan Jixun did not speak out for his son Tan Sitong during the whole process.
Because the monarch is a subject, the change of law is a great rebellion, and so on, feudal ideas have bound him, and in his view, the change of his son Tan Sitong is rebellion, which violates the "loyalty to the king and patriotism" in his heart.
So all this is actually a collision between new ideas and old ideas, feudal dogma wants people to submit, new ideas teach people to rebel, and the two are like water and fire.
Zhang Zhidong was influenced by the Western affairs movement, came into contact with Western ideas, and his personality was more open, he saw the spirit of change and resistance of Tan Si and others, so he would try his best to circumvent and save Tan Si and others.
Tan Jixun was influenced by feudal dogma, he was more old-fashioned, more firmly believed in the loyalty and patriotism in his heart, so when his son rebelled against the imperial court, his heart was on the side of the imperial court, or he supported feudal ideas.
In his heart, he believed in the feudal dogma of the king as the subject and the father as the son, and the new ideas and the law of restoration and change of the son were rebelling, rebelling against the country, and rebelling against his father.
This is the fundamental reason why Tan Jixun is indifferent to his son's arrest and imprisonment.
brief summary
His son was arrested and imprisoned, and Tan Jixuan was silent, ostensibly cowardly and incompetent, ruthless and cold-blooded and unwilling to save his son.
But in essence, this is a collision of ideas, a collision of the new era and the old society.
The end result is silent, when Tan Si spills the wet market with blood, which means that the new ideas collide with the old ideas, and the new ideas fail.
But the failure of this collision is meaningful, as he is a pioneer in rebelling against feudal dogma, and he and his transformation are beacons guiding people forward in the dark of night.
He was the driving force for people to resist feudalism, and it was precisely because of his influence that Huang Jue launched the Wuchang Uprising and developed the New Culture Movement.
Tan Sitong died, but he lives in our hearts, and the restoration and reform method failed, but the spirit of restoration lives on!