As 2022 approached, 91-year-old Mr. Xu Qiuyun said this to young people: The world is like the past, and there will always be many unpredictable storms to come. Always be prepared, face your own storm, do not chaos, do not panic.
Mr. Xu Qiuyun continues to think about the connotation and extension of the Chinese nation, analyzes how China should live in the tide of being and change in the world civilization, and hopes that China can correctly understand its own characteristics and integrate into globalization.
The more unpredictable the times, the more we need a big historical perspective to think about those "big problems." Before New Year's Day, the illustrated version of "Speaking of China" was reprinted. In this classic work on Chinese history, Mr. Xu Shuyun focuses on the classic question of "what is China and who we really are", from the four key aspects of political power, economy, society and culture, how the broad people of China formed a solid community, and outlined the face of Chinese history for readers.
This issue focuses
To this day, Russia and Eastern Europe generally refer to "China" as "Khitan". The Song state in the south is another "peach blossom stone", and even after the fall of the Liao state, the Western Liao, which migrated to Central Asia, is also a "peach blossom stone".
Liao (Jin) and Western Xia, wartime peace with Song Dynasty China. The relationship between these two countries and the Song state was different from that of the Xiongnu, Turks and China in the past. They did not aim to invade China and acquire land, their main demand was for China to give them silk and silver money.
However, in the face of the vigorous modern civilization of the West, this stable Chinese cultural system can no longer have the ability to accept, digest and adapt.
The era of the Song, Liao, Jin and Western Xia
Xu Qiuyun
Traditional Chinese dynastic narratives use the Song Dynasty only as China's dynasties, while placing the Liao, Jin, and Western Xia outside china's historical circle. If we only take the Song as the whole of Chinese history, it is actually incomplete. The territory of the Song dynasty did not cover the entire territory of the Han and Tang dynasties. In addition to the Liao and Jin dynasties in the north and northeast, and the Western Xia in the northwest, there were actually The Tubo and Tibetan Nanzhao, which were once very powerful in the Tang Dynasty. If China is represented only by song, then the situation in which song is located is a system of nations, not a unified world. Ever since the Japanese sinologist Naito Hunan proposed the topic of the Tang and Song dynasties, scholars of Chinese history have been constantly discussing its specific significance. These discussions tend to take little into account the fact that song is no longer a comprehensive China. Few people will also pay attention to the impact of the Islamic forces that emerged in Central Asia during the transformation of the Tang and Song dynasties on the situation and cultural landscape of the East Asian nations.
The history of the two sides of the Taiwan Strait, for this period, still takes the Song and Liao Jinyuan as a unit. However, the problems often dealt with were nothing more than Huization, Sinicization, and the war and conquest between the North and the South; several northern units were not often considered part of the historical subject. Here, we examine these units together as a major part of East Asia.
01
The transformation of the Tang and Song dynasties involved not only the sovereignty issue at the national level, but also the evolution of culture and the appearance of cultures in different regions. To talk about this great change, we cannot just regard the five dynasties of the Tang Dynasty as a transitional period. The changes in the Tang Dynasty began with the Anshi Rebellion. Let us borrow the "Hall of Eternal Life" as a metaphor: "Kaiyuan, Tianbao" from the extreme to the great chaos, Tang Ming Emperor and Yang Guifei from "Tailiu", "Furong", a fall into "soul pinning horse song", "sword pavilion smelling bell", between The Russians, the joy of "small feast", but by the "Yuyang drum" disrupted everything.
The scope of the Anshi Rebellion was from Shuofang in the west to Yanshan in the east. The rebels in Hebei were all kinds of Hu and Han soldiers, and the army sent by the Tang Dynasty was not a mixture of Hu and Han methods? Early generals, such as Ge Shuhan, Gao Xianzhi, and Feng Changqing, and later generals, such as Gugu Huai'en, were hu people of different races. Li Guangbi, who is equally famous as Guo Ziyi, is also a Hu person, and the Hedong army he leads is not a mixed army of Hu and Han? Foreign aid from the Tang Dynasty, the Uighur and Tubo armies, helped the Tang Dynasty regain many cities. The condition promised by the Tang Dynasty was to return the land to China, and the children would be brought by them. In the past few decades, the wars between Guanlong and Hebei have been continuous, the cities have been destroyed, the people have been scattered, and the Central Plains have been in a slump ever since. The cultural and economic center of China, so it completely turned to the south. The demographic composition of this region also changed quite radically - various Hu people in the northeast, northwest and north left their genes and mixed with the local Han people to form the later ethnic groups in northern China.
Map of the Tang Dynasty Fanzhen, quoted from The Splendid World Empire: The Sui and Tang Dynasties, p. 134
After the Anshi Rebellion, the town of Hebei became independent. In the Fifth Dynasty, Shi Jingyao ceded Yanyun Sixteen Prefectures, a land that was not restored to Han territory until the Ming Dynasty. From the time of An Shi to the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, there were five or six hundred years, which was originally part of the Central Plains, but became the base of the northern regime. The Khitan and Jurchen successively used Hebei as the southern soil, plus the northern grasslands, to build a huge state. In the northwest, Tangut (the Turkic and Mongol term for the Western Xia or Dangxiang clan) had accepted the Xianbei from the northeast in the late Southern and Northern Dynasties, formed another force in the place of the first song of the Yellow River today, and finally became independent of the Western Xia. The Liao founded by the Khitans, the Jin founded by the Jurchens, and the Xia founded by the Tanguts were all called "peach blossom stones" in the mouths of the Central Asians. To this day, Russia and Eastern Europe generally refer to "China" as "Khitan". The Song kingdom in the south is another "peach blossom stone", and even after the fall of the Liao state, the Western Liao, which migrated to Central Asia, is also a "peach blossom stone". Therefore, although the countries of East Asia are divided from each other, from the perspective of Central Asia, this large area is not represented by the word "China" alone.
Yanyun Sixteen Prefectures, quoted in The Rush of Chinese Thought and Religion: The Song Dynasty, p. 36
Those who fought against the East Asian countries were the Uighurs and Tubo since the Tang Dynasty. After the Tang Dynasty, the great Islamic empires that emerged in Arabia occupied most of Central Asia, and the Uighurs finally Islamized, and Eurasia became a triangular relationship: the countries of East Asia (peach blossom stone), the Tubo where Tibetan Buddhism was based, and the Islamized Central Asian region (the influence of Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism, northern Buddhism, etc., has been replaced by Islam). The traditional "Silk Road" of China's trade with the west, in addition to the route that entered southern Xinjiang through the Hexi Corridor in the past, the more important line of communication was a major road that passed through the southwest of the Mongolian plateau and entered southern and northern Siberia. Silk and porcelain produced in southern China can pass through this route on the one hand, from Liao and Western Xia to Central Asia, and on the other hand, by sea, through the South China Sea islands, India's cutting-edge Ceylon, and then into the Red Sea and Persian Gulf.
In terms of East-West trade, the West only knew that these goods came from the East Asian continent, and they did not care whether it was a few Chinas or a few "peach blossom stones". In their minds, the largest country in the East was the vast Liao State, that is, the Khitan Dynasty, whose territory stretched from the coast in the east to the Jinshan Mountains in the west, and controlled most of the northern route. In the middle, there is another southerly branch line, passing through the black water of Western Xia and entering and leaving northern Xinjiang. These two countries, therefore, became synonymous with the vast area of the "East", replacing the "Han" and "Tang" of the past.
02
Liao (Jin) and Western Xia, wartime peace with Song Dynasty China. We must understand that the relationship between these two countries and the Song State is different from that of the Xiongnu, Turks and China in the past. They did not aim to invade China and acquire land, their main demand was for China to give them silk and silver money. These silk veils, presumably also became commodities, were transported to the West for profit. Therefore, the Song Dynasty did not often take war and defense as options for the northern enemies, but paid the old coins to buy peace. Between the Song and Liao, there was also the transshipment of spices from the South China Sea, and the various spices produced in the South China Sea Zhudao were transported through the Liao State to the West - the Liao State obtained transit profits. Japan and Koryo did not play an important role in the east-west trade arena at that time, but they also had goods exchanges with China.
For example, the Song Dynasty itself did not produce enough copper and often had to buy copper pounds from Japan. Goryeo also often undertook transit trade between Japan and the Song. As for the relationship between the Song and the Uighurs and Tubo, Hexi and Longyou had an important transshipment role. The Song Dynasty had no place to raise horses and had to go through the Western Road to buy horses from the steppe. For Song, there were not enough war horses, but peaceful trade was profitable for both sides. From these perspectives, my discussion angle is quite different from the traditional view of pure Han nationalism and orthodoxy.
The situation in Tibet is different from that of the northern countries. In the late Tang Dynasty, Tubo was strong and prosperous, precisely at the time of the decline of the Tang Dynasty. The conflict between the Tang and the Tang Dynasty was an important border defense issue in the late Tang Dynasty, and the two countries were at wartime and peaceful. Tubo once plundered a large number of Han Chinese and drove them into The Han Dynasty to replenish the population shortage, and today's Tibetan population already has considerable Han Chinese genes. Tibet's territory extended westward to present-day Afghanistan and Pakistan, and it was the great power of Central and Inner Asia at that time. Later, due to the confrontation of the Islamist group, Tibet gradually lost its territory west of the Himalayas. With the power of Tibetan Buddhism, Tubo's influence shifted to Southeast Asia and southwestern China— such as the Nanzhao, which founded the state in Yunnan. Between Tubo and Song, because of these middle belts as an insulating role, there was no sharp conflict.
Song thought it was Orthodox in China, but seeing that its neighbors were stronger than itself, and even the Western Xia, which had a population of only a few million, was not something that Song could resist because of its strong soldiers. At the time of the founding of the country, Song Taizu was worried that the generals would support the army and respect themselves, and like himself, they could replace the throne at any time, so they drank wine and released the military power, and the Song room lifted the crisis of the usurpation of the throne by the warriors. As a result, the Song Dynasty emphasized literature over military force, and its armament was weak. As mentioned above, the surrounding areas of the Song Dynasty, where horses could be raised, already belonged to the Khitan or Western Xia, and in that era, without horses, it was impossible to have a strong military force. Although he considered himself orthodox, Song finally could not help but bow to his neighbors and exchange his annual currency for peace. If we really want to talk about economic value, it is actually worth spending some money a year in exchange for peace, saving the cost of raising troops and fighting. However, China has lost its dignity and has no initiative in self-defense, which is a dilemma that the Song Dynasty has had to face since the founding of the Country. For two or three hundred years, it has never been possible to get rid of this spell.
In terms of cultural superiority, both the Liao and Western Xia have accepted Chinese culture to a considerable extent. Although there are differences in lifestyle between north and south - for example, the north uses milk and cheese, and the south only drinks tea; in other aspects, especially in daily craftsmanship, from archaeological data, the level of holdings of these two northern Hu countries is not lower than that of China, whether it is porcelain, metallurgy, weaving, architecture, etc., have reached the same level of precision as the Song Dynasty at that time. The steel swords of western Xia are extremely sharp, and the east is the most. The medical and arithmetic of the two northern countries, because they accepted the Eastern and Western traditions that had been synthesized in the Tang Dynasty, and had been quite popular among the people, their level was no less than that of the Song people. The education received by the intellectuals of the Liao and Western Xia is also a traditional Chinese classic. Judging from their writings, the level is not low. Liao and Western Xia each created their own written scripts, borrowing Chinese characters to write Pinyin characters. Liao (Khitan) also has two kinds of characters, large characters and small characters, each with a specific purpose.
Baoshan No. 2 Liao tomb mural "Su Hui Ji Jin tu". The tomb owner of the tomb is a Khitan nobleman of the Liao Dynasty, but the subject matter and style of these murals show the artistic color of the Han Dynasty of the Tang Dynasty
Compared with the north and the south, the urbanization of the Song state is higher than that of the northern countries. After all, the two northern countries were still half pastoral and half farming and urban dwellings; while the Song Dynasty was completely intensive farming, with the market economy and regional trade, forming a dense exchange network of commodity economy.
In terms of political system, the liao government structure was binary—the Khitan nobles and other Khitan nomadic groups occupied the pastoral land in the north; the Han people, who originally belonged to the south of China, lived in cities and villages, making a living from agriculture and commerce. Therefore, the ruling system of the Liao state was divided into two parts: the north court managed the Hu people, and the south court managed the Han people. Moreover, some of the towns inhabited by the Han Chinese were divided into the domains of certain nobles—for example, empresses, princes, and imperial relatives might all receive some caiyi to support their daily lives. The state is a fighting body, the Hu people are the main body of military service, and the Han people are just auxiliary servants - in the military, the hu and Han status is completely different. The two-tier system arranged in this way naturally caused great uneasiness and dissatisfaction among the Han people in the northern region. Some Han Chinese near the north-south border were organized as local armed forces and defended themselves from the strongholds. Some of them are institutionalized civilian self-defense organizations, and some are continuations of the former DPRK border troops. These local armed forces, when the Jin and Yuan occupied the north, there were still a number of local warlords who existed as "marshals of the Han Army" and maintained a semi-independent status.
Compared with the Liao state, the Western Xia had fewer people, and because of this, there was a greater gap between the social status of the Hu people who occupied a dominant position and the Han residents in their country. The inequality of ethnic groups within the Western Xia was more serious than that of the Liao State. Such ethnic differences finally gave birth to the ethnic consciousness of the Han people in the north.
03
The Han people in the north developed an ethnic consciousness, and the embarrassing position of the Song people in establishing the country also made the Song people rethink the differences between hu and Han. Datang's open-mindedness was originally far away from the near future, and those who came did not refuse. Under the pattern of the Heavenly Khan increasing the emperor, there was no serious class difference between hu and Han. The Tang Dynasty accepted a variety of foreign ideas and beliefs, Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism, Buddhism, etc. coexisted with China's original Taoism and Confucianism, and China did not need to particularly flaunt its local cultural characteristics. Therefore, these foreign beliefs and ideas could be mixed and reorganized quite freely in the Tang Dynasty to form a new system. Buddhism is the best example, the Tang Dynasty Buddhism was Chineseized, and Eastern Buddhism was actually different from the original Buddhism in India, and also different from the Buddhism of the Southern And Central Asians.
After the Anshi Rebellion, the Tang Dynasty was in chaos for a long time, and various Hu people used the Central Plains as a battlefield to seize China's children and jinbao. In addition to the mourning and humiliation, the Han people began to rethink their own cultural values, and Han Yu and Li Aosui proposed reflection on Chinese culture after the Middle and Tang Dynasties. From the early Tang Dynasty to the prosperous Tang Dynasty, the research and promotion of Confucianism did not show outstanding results. The "original Tao" proposed by Han Yu is to re-affirm the local cultural heritage, and to reduce the ultimate concern of Confucianism to a "Dao" character, the content of which is Confucian benevolence, righteousness, etiquette, and wisdom. From the standpoint of Confucianism, Han Yue held high the banner of excluding foreign traditions, regarded foreign religions such as Buddhism as Yidi culture, and advocated reconfirming the distinction between Huayi and the distinction between inside and outside.
Episode "Qing Ping Le"
This indigenization trend sown in the late Tang Dynasty blossomed in the Song Dynasty and led to a new interpretation of Confucian theory. The Song Dynasty replaced the Confucian tradition below the Han Dynasty. The beginning of Song Studies also started from cosmology and epistemology in the early days, which used many Taoist components. However, in the important stage of the development of science in the Northern Song Dynasty, it was gradually moving in the direction of "inner saint" self-cultivation, and did not pay much attention to the part of the "outer king" Ji Shi, nor did it pay much attention to cosmology and epistemology. There were many schools of science in the Northern Song Dynasty, criticizing each other, like water and fire; between them, there was not much compatible and comprehensive work. After the change of Jingkang, the country was destroyed and only half of the country remained. Song Dynasty scholars pondered bitterly and began to notice the order of the world. Zhu Zizhi's study pays special attention to human ethics and places all human affairs within the norms of ethics. During Zhu Zi's lifetime, Zhu Xue did not become a prominent scholar, but following the needs of the times, Zhu Xue soon became the orthodoxy of Confucianism.
Confucianism organized by scholars of the two Song Dynasties can be said to be a set of strict ideological systems crystallized at this time since the Han Dynasty, which is a large-scale and cultural inheritance of the Han Dynasty. Crystallization – Just as carbon crystallizes into a diamond, it is incomparably solid, but it loses its elasticity from then on. Confucianism, tempered by the two Song Dynasties, made the ideological composition of Chinese culture have a clear and can be followed pattern; however, it has also bound Chinese culture and lost the ability to absorb foreign components. The Song dynasty of Confucianism has both the needs of its time and its long-term influence. Whether it is a merit or a fault will be a subject of constant debate.
Parallel to the development of Confucianism was the social status of Confucianism in the Song Dynasty. Since the founding of the Song Dynasty, the social status of the martial people in the past has been depressed, and the emphasis on literature and light on military force has been emphasized, and the positions in the government have all been held by literati. Soon after the founding of the People's Republic of China, most of these civilian personnel were born in the imperial family. In the Tang Dynasty, the examination system was lax, and it was common to talk about and quote, but in fact, it did not seriously assess the knowledge and ability of the juzi. The imperial examination system of the Song Dynasty was a very strict plan, not only determining how to assess the understanding of the classics, but also many measures to prevent cheating. Today, we are accustomed to Taiwan's university joint examination and the mainland's college entrance examination, and we will understand that under this examination system, it is easy to achieve high scores by memorizing rather than playing. Generation after generation, after the tempering of the exam, students often lose the spirit of automatic and spontaneous learning. Born in the Song Dynasty, there was considerable security in the government, and once he ascended the dragon gate, fame and fortune were both reaped, which of course had great attraction for Confucianism. This way, after several generations of development, will give birth to a community of readers and occupy a certain position in society.
Since the scope of knowledge of the examination needs to be determined according to the theory recognized by the official at that time, the children who take the examination are naturally contaminated by this set of theories and it is difficult to have their own opinions. The Northern Song Dynasty king An Shi changed the law, and there was a certain interpretation of Confucian classics, as long as the "New Deal" existed, this set of official learning constrained the thinking of a generation. Wang Anshi's authority over "new learning" did not last long. However, the authority of Confucianism itself has since become an unshakable force in Chinese thought. Since Dong Zhongshu in the Han Dynasty, there has been a desire to set Confucianism in a statue, but this wish was not fulfilled until the Song Dynasty. For Chinese culture as a whole, the rigidity caused by this crystallization is rather a disaster than a contribution.
The stability of Confucianism's social status and his ideal of ruling the country contributed to the formation of the "family" to a considerable extent. The families after the Song Dynasty are different from the Hao clans of the Han Dynasty, and also different from the large clans of the Tang Dynasty, those are all community communities composed of a core family leading many affiliated populations, the Song Dynasty family is basically a blood organization, perhaps only three or five generations of direct relatives, these dozens to nearly a hundred people of kinship groups, constitute a mutual help and coexistence of living communities. From the beginning of the Song Dynasty, kinship groups owned family property as a specific benefit for the care of relatives, such as righteous learning, old-age care, and so on. Readers became a social group, and they could continue their status with kinship, thus forming a superior position as the head of the "Four Peoples". In each county-level locality, the Confucian family is often called a cultivating heirloom, and several families can be combined to become the main stabilizing force at the local level, which is also the most common interest group in the locality. This change determined the basic model of Chinese society after the Middle Ages, so that it did not change fundamentally until modern times.
04
In the study of Chinese history, the so-called Transformation of the Tang and Song Dynasties is an important topic. This major transformation was the interaction of many aspects and various conditions, and it was only after five generations of long-term evolution that the pattern of pre-modern China was formed. Looking back, the certainty of the "Han Chinese" is not significant within the state system under heaven. In the Song Dynasty, there were several political systems around the country at the same time, although they were not exactly the same as the typical system of nations, but after all, there was a boundary between them. With the "other," the talents within the Chinese headquarters affirm that the "I" themselves are the so-called "Han Chinese." "China" is also among the nations, defined as a region dominated by Han Chinese and Confucians, with Buddhism and Taoism as its own culture. In contrast to the development of other regions outside East Asia, the Catholic Church in Europe in this era was above the institutions of the nations, and the Islamic cultural regions, although there were different sects, each governing in its own field, also had a universal political system. China's development has its similarities with the development of these two places, that is, the universal value of Confucianism can surpass "China", but "China" has finally lost the characteristics of "the country under the heavens" that embraces all kinds of rivers and all things.
Relatively speaking, after the religious revolution and the rise of the modern nation-state in Europe in recent times, the universal church has since disintegrated, leaving only the Vatican Church in the form. The Islamic world, through the onslaught of European imperialism, has been dominated by its various sects and has lost its universal character in essence. Chinese Confucianism, on the other hand, has no church or obvious organization. Confucianism is placed within the system of political power, and dynasties can be changed, but confucian authority and the social system it has created are long-standing and difficult to change. This is the paradox of Chinese history: stability – even ultra-high stability – but difficult to adapt to the new environment caused by external forces.
The existence of the Song Dynasty was actually a turning point in Chinese history: the solid foundation of the two Han Dynasties, the grand scale of the Sui and Tang Dynasties, transformed into a stable structure of Chinese culture. Since then, China has twice faced the complete conquest of foreign nationalities and has been able to stand up again. However, in the face of the vigorous modern Western civilization, this stable Chinese cultural system can no longer have the ability to accept, digest and adapt.
Speaking of China (Illustrated Edition)