Author | Li Zero, a famous archaeologist and professor of the Department of Chinese of Peking University, this article is from the transcript of Mr. Li Zero's speech in the "Contemporary Academic Open Lecture Hall".
Li Zero: Good afternoon, the title of my speech today is "Speaking of Chinese Nobles." Just now Professor Yin Jinan said that my original title was "Speaking of Hereditary Civilians", and the two were actually the same content, that is, the topic was changed.
People like to show off their origins more than before
Li Zero: I will return to the truth, we have all read Lu Xun's "A Q Zheng Biography", what does Ah Q mean, that is, Ah Gui. Poor people often use rich and expensive to name their children, such as Hai Dafu and Chen Yonggui, which are often given names by peasant children. Chen Sheng was a representative figure who had earlier said a sentence when he was working in the fields: "On the ridge of quitting farming, I hate it for a long time." Rich and noble, no forgetting. The others thought he was talking nonsense, and he responded, "How do you little sparrows know the ambition of the birds?" "In fact, great wealth and great wealth are indeed the highest ideal of all poor people. What is aristocratic, sometimes very general, such as the family, rich and powerful, there is a model, everyone's impression can not be said to be wrong, but it is not an accurate definition.
Let's start with this "fan". The world now exudes conservative sentiment everywhere, and China is no exception, taking regret medicine for everything. Originally, I thought that after the great cultural revolution, the theory of descent could be put to rest. Wrong, now everyone likes to show off their origins more than before. It's just the other way around, the landlords and capitalists are good, the Kuomintang army, police, constitutionalism, and special good, the Beiyang warlords are good, the Manchu Qing left behind is better, and no matter how bad it is, it must be a royal dining room to cook for the emperor. That's not the average person. Everyone is keen on searching for roots, and from generation to generation, they are moving forward, and they especially want to find a relative who has nothing to do with the party, has nothing to do with the suffering, and is either rich or noble anyway.
Now the Popular Republic of China model, said that the republic of the republic of hooligans are more than the current model. So what is "van"? Fan is Style, and Style not only looks at your work but also looks at your appearance. Now what is not a performance, Fan is your dress, speech and demeanor, you can see your identity as soon as you stand.
I remember in 1981, there was a small advertisement posted everywhere in the Xi'an store, and the Shanxi dialect called this advertisement Lubu (sound), and Lubu said: "Our store has newly arrived at stone glasses, pre-order please hurry." "At that time, the old man in Shanxi was wearing a kind of glasses, that is, the two discs of the brown flat plate, black paste and panda yes. Then I put a melon skin hat on my head, and then I saw Puyi's photo, not the kind he wore a dragon robe or a suit, but the kind he wore a robe and a horse coat. It was found that the emperor and the old man were dressed the same.
A few years ago, a kind of national costume was invented, that is, the buttoned Aya luo satin, with a fu character shou character in the middle, and the flowers were clustered, and some people said that this kind of clothing has two major advantages. One can replace the wool suit, and the other can also distinguish it from the suit. That is, it will not scare foreigners, but also highlights Chinese characteristics. In fact, the wool suit is the Zhongshan suit, and the Zhongshan suit is the model of the Republic of China. Mr. Ji Xianlin often wears a Zhongshan suit and refuses to change it when he goes abroad. Mr. Wang Shixiang wears a Chinese-style uniform, which may be called a former national uniform. I also have one that is really good, with a row of buttons under the neckline, or just a large nylon button, a take off your clothes and pull it. In fact, this kind of clothing should be said to be a kind of Cultural Revolution Style, which was not available in the early days, and is not available now.
Where did the nobility come from
Li Zero: Everyone is very concerned about where the nobles come from, and we will also trace the roots. Not only the original rich but also the original expensive. The characteristic of nobility is noble blood. Why is he noble, then you have to ask his father, but there is still a father in front of his father, and if you keep asking the question to the bottom of the matter, it is like a kind of saying in an ancient Chinese book, pretending to be a fool of god's will. He said that his oldest grandmother ate a kind of rice, or stole an egg or stepped on the footprints of a giant, and became pregnant.
The nobles are hereditary and genealogical. Not only is wealth hereditary, but identity is also hereditary. Passed down from generation to generation. One thing that is clearest when reading history is that the first people in the world to become rich are some people who are superior, and such people may be the earliest nobles. Archaeologists say that the Liangzhu site is still a Neolithic era, when the material was poor but people were already polarized. The place where the people live and where the dead are buried are all in the low places, the flood is coming, you don't want to be a fish turtle, you hurry up to get on the tree or get on the boat, now here is a forest full of bamboo. The nobles, on the other hand, lived in a high place and were surrounded by a large and thick wall that could prevent both thieves and floods. They are indeed people, living on a high place, not to mention, the big platform where they live, the orchard area is completely unimaginable that the ground is artificial, and they have to walk for half a day by car. After these nobles died, they were buried on the altars, and one altar after another was like pyramids. In the past, when I watched the exhibition in Beijing, I was concerned about Liangzhu jade, but now what really shocks me is actually these platforms piled up with earth. If you do your math of his earthworks, it's also comparable to the pyramids.
One of the characteristics of the nobility is that it is very bloody, and we know that there are so-called thoroughbred horses in horse breeding, and thoroughbred horses are registered. This nobleman, too, placed great emphasis on the purity and purity of blood. The European nobility had a clan insignia on the door, armor and swords on the walls, and horses in the stables; the Japanese nobles did the same; the Chinese nobles were full of gold and jade, and this gold was not gold but bronze. The Shang Dynasty bronze ware has a family emblem on it, and it is very clear which one of the vessels is divided. There is an inscription in the Western Zhou Bronze Ware called Ce Ming Jin Wen, and when the Ce Ming is rewarded, the letter of appointment of the Son of Heaven will be repeated again, your grandfather and your father have great merit, and now I will appoint you, so that you can inherit his errands and continue to be the official they have been. At the end of the day, there is a cliché that is, to bless future generations forever, and these are related to the continuation of his incense.
The nobility was very particular about surnames. There is a surname that is the surname next to the female character, like what Ji surname Jiang surname. If you want to intermarry, you must have a surname next to the female character, because ordinary people do not have such a surname. What is worth noting? Since the Eastern Zhou Dynasty, there is a characteristic of inscriptions with the same surname, and as soon as they come up, they report to their homes, saying that I am the grandson of so-and-so's son, so-and-so. Whoever said this was actually a generation away from the very prominent ancestors mentioned in his inscription. What does this mean, it shows that no matter how powerful the nobility can be passed down for many generations, the clan must be divided, the wealth must be scattered, and the blood relationship must be diluted. At first, it can also be said that blood is thicker than water, and later the water is more and more dismantled, just like water-injected pork.
The Eastern Zhou Dynasty was very far from the era of Wenwu Zhou Gong, and there were many fallen princes and grandsons in society. For example, Confucius's ancestor was sima of the Song dynasty, and then traced upwards that he was a descendant of Shang Tang, older than ZhouDu, but in the country of Lu he was a fourth-generation immigrant, his father was a petty official, a township cadre, and his mother was a local native, surnamed Yan. Both of them considered themselves to be descendants of Xiao Yiguo, whose tomb was in Zaozhuang, Shandong. Confucius was poor when he was young, and did a lot of lowly work, but liked to talk about aristocratic politics and aristocratic morality. Confucius traveled around the world, called eunuchs in ancient times, and now called running officials. During the Eastern Zhou Dynasty, such people went around looking for jobs and writing job advertisements saying that the nobles at that time wanted to learn without learning, to be moral and immoral, to occupy the pit and not to, so they should choose the best and the best. People with ability can not only become high officials, but also should become high officials. Therefore, at that time, there was the propaganda of the so-called Cloth Qingxiang, like Yi Yin and Fu said that these people.
Even the legend of Yao Shun Zen Rang suddenly caught fire. Zen Rang actually said that the matter of selecting a successor can only be specified by the leader, and if you want to understand things, you have to resign and let the leader chase after you. You can't always tell the boss when you apply for a job in the company, my requirements are not high, you give me the seat, I will definitely be able to run the company well. During the Warring States period, Zen made it turn from fantasy to reality, and there is a very famous example, "Qi Ren Fa Yan". King Yan imitated Dayu's old vassal Zizhi who ceded the throne to his father, and Mencius was furious, believing that his reputation was chaotic and not in line with the "king's way", and persuaded King Xuan of Qi to send troops of the five capitals to invade the yan kingdom, and the yan king died, and the son was stacked into meat paste.
At that time, everyone thought that the system was very bad and should be reformed, but the ideas of reform were different, for example, Wu Qi and Shang Martin were on the surface contrary to Confucius's position, but in fact, they were on the same path, and they were not satisfied with the political system at that time. The difference is that Confucius said that the Eastern Zhou Dynasty did not follow the rules of the Zhou Gong, so let's go back to the time of the Zhou Gong. Wu Qishang martingale did not believe this, saying that since the officials were upside down, the best way should be to strengthen military power, and not to honor Zhou Tianzi, but on the one hand to respect the princes of their own countries, on the other hand, to level the small nobles of various countries. Let the princes become the only nobles in the country. Just like pruning a fruit tree, all the extra branches are cut off for him. They still have the courage to quickly cut the chaos and make rules for future generations. Of course, it will spoil the vested interest groups, and people will certainly not do it. Therefore, their fate was very tragic, Wu Qi was killed by random arrows, and Shang Martin was divided into corpses by five horses. This kind of reform also existed in Eighteenth-Century Europe, but it was more than 2,000 years later than we are.
Qin Shi Huang used the Shang Martingale method to promote the twentieth rank knighthood system, and there was a large army under the twentieth rank knighthood system, which is called the Labor Reform Brigade today, and there were also ranks. With this system, people do not care about their origins, as long as you plant well, kill more enemies, you can climb up one level at a time. The killing that should be killed, the punishment that should be punished, from now on, no one is an aristocrat except the relatives of the emperor and the state. The high-ranking official Houlu has a high status, that is called a high-ranking official, not an aristocrat.
The Theory of the Yin Zhou System is more like an outline for the founding of the country
Li Zero: The most important point of China's ultra-modernity is that China's official culture is developed, and the civilian official system is perfect, especially there is a set of official selection system, from civilians to high-ranking officials, there are through trains, which is not available in the West.
Wang Guowei's "Theory of the Yin Zhou System" is a very famous article. This article is mainly about how Shang Zhou is different, but it is more like a founding outline. Not only does it talk about scholarship, but it also promotes political ideas. He said that the most ideal system of mankind is the system of Zhou Gong, and the so-called "System of Zhou Gong" is actually not the system of Zhou Gong as Confucius said, but the system handed down from generation to generation from Qin to Qing. The hereditary system of imperial power plus elected officials is indispensable. The emperor must not be elected, and the officials must be elected. If we choose leaders like the West, in his view, the world will be in chaos.
Wang Guowei was a great scholar, but his cultural stance was conservative. What has been the Chinese nobility since Qin Shi Huang? The Chinese history books flourished in one surname, and the hereditary nobles below Qin Shi Huang were all broken by the dynasty. For example, the Surname of the Han Dynasty is Liu, the Surname of the Tang Dynasty is Li, the Surname of the Song Dynasty is Zhao, and the Surname of the Ming Dynasty is Zhu. The Qin Dynasty was the shortest, only about ten years. The Han Dynasty was the longest, with more than four hundred years. The average dynasty is only one or two hundred years, or two or three hundred years.
Qin Shi Huang's original surname was Zhao, and he was an aristocrat in the original sense
Li Zero: Qin Shi Huang was known as the First Emperor, the Emperor was the Third Emperor, and the Emperor was the Fifth Emperor, and he put all the noble titles together, and he was the last nobleman in the original sense. Shi Huang is surnamed Ying, but we can't call it Yingzheng, TV dramas are all wrong. The surname is the surname with the female word next to it, the man has a surname but cannot add it before the name, and the woman has the surname in front of the name. Everyone thought that Qin Shi Huang was from Shaanxi, but his ancestral court was in Qufu. The surname of Yin moved west, and the first to enter Shanxi was Zhao, and the latter into Shaanxi and Gansu was Qin, and Qin Zhao was of the same ethnic group. Zhao originally lived under Huoshan, the town of Zhao in Hongdong County. The Tianshui Zhao clan, the Handan Zhao clan, and the Taiyuan Zhao clan all originated from Zhao Cheng. The Northern Han Dynasty Jian has an article called "Zhao Zhengshu", which can prove that Qin Shi Huang is called Zhao Zheng. This kind of surname has only been called a surname since the Han Dynasty. We can only call it Zhao Zheng, not Ying Zheng.
The inter-dynastic nobility for thousands of years only had the surname Kong
Li Zero: There are no cross-dynastic aristocrats in China, there is only one, that is, the surname Kong. Confucius was the King of Su, a king without a throne, and Chinese readers regarded him as a master of all generations, but he was only a spiritual nobleman.
Under the nobility there were commoners. People are divided into three, six, nine and so on, and they have never been equal. The rulers said that since there was no equality, of course, the score was high and low, and the important thing was that the elderly and the young were inferior and orderly. This order Confucius called Li, Qin Shi Huang called The Fa.
Everyone knows that India has four major castes, monks, warriors, commoners, and dalits. Identity is fixed, which one is born, which one is the generation.
China is different from India, and our four-people order is that of soldiers, farmers, workers, and merchants. The warrior was first a samurai and then a scribe, and the scribe was a reader, and everything was inferior, but the reading was high. Reading high is not how high the reading itself is, but reading books to become officials, except for the emperor, they are the successful people and people at that time. The status of agriculture is also above that of industry and commerce, and many readers come from the countryside, and there is a flow of upper and lower levels. Monks and Taoist monks are not engaged in production, are on the margins of society, and have no special status. The advantages of traditional China are that they are highly secular, there is no pope, only the emperor; there are no minor nobles, only the relatives of the emperor and the state, who give them food and let them be a king who does not care about political affairs. Power is highly concentrated, the country is unified, ethnic pluralism, religious pluralism, there is mobility among the classes, and there is culture in the lower classes.
During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, we sang "Workers, peasants, soldiers, and businessmen come together to save the dead.", and the workers, peasants, soldiers, and businessmen were all ordinary people to the officials.
A reader is not a human being at all
Li Zero: Of course, people who read books are very important, but scholars are not monks, Confucianism is not religion, and Confucius is not a pope. In the Western tradition, monks and warriors have the highest status, and monks originate from witches and gods, who set up religions with Shinto, monopolizing divinity and knowledge. Western universities come from temples. Of course, such people are superiors. The world's great religions were originally doctrines for the salvation of the suffering, such as Christianity, which was the socialist movement in ancient Rome, but then it became a taste, became a trade, became spiritual opium and a tool of brainwashing. Who is most likely to be religious? Lonely people are the most likely to be religious, and women are more likely to be religious than men. The medieval church in Europe is more powerful than the monarch, God is a virtual leader, omnipresent, always leading you, Tan Si tong has a poem: "All beings are extremely wise, only in the void." ”
A samurai is a soldier who fights a war. Their military leader is now called Warlord. Adults have big knives, you have a life, you disobey, kill! Of course, it is very powerful, and this is also a kind of person. Secular rule in the West depends on the samurai, whose leader is the king of King's Landing. The secularization of the United States is mostly such strongmen. Iran had a previous king, Pahlavi, whose father was named Reza Khan, who was originally a Cossack soldier who started as a warlord. So don't think that there are many generations of a king, he has two generations. But no matter how powerful the warlords are, their territory is limited, their life expectancy is limited, and the places they can control are under their control, and the places they can't control are under the control of God. The Western medieval monarchy was not strong enough, and religion was the only great unity. Secular monarchs are Christians, and all except secular affairs are under the control of the Pope. The whole world is under the control of the Pope, so their monastic status is higher than that of the mainland.
Chinese scholars, farmers, industrialists and merchants are nominally students of Confucius, Confucius is offered in the Temple of Literature, every county has it, Confucius is also a virtual leader, Confucius is the teacher of all teachers, but not God. There are no monks in the Temple of Literature, Confucians oppose monasticism, the parents of the readers are not far away, and when they die, they have to worry about the system, they are not monks, and China has no spirit. To say that only one of the spiritual aristocrats is the Confucius family, but the Confucius family does not care about studying politics, the career is under the control of the government, Confucius is not the pope, he is only spiritually leading these readers. Religion cannot be called a religion without the masses, and Confucianism is not a religion.
One of the things that is very special about China is that the Chinese literati doctor is a very special kind of person. Today's readers like to praise the readers, saying that the common people are mobs, unlike them who have knowledge, reason, elegant taste, social care, and regard the world as their own responsibility, which is the conscience of mankind.
In fact, readers are not a kind of person at all, and it is difficult to position them by relying on such beautiful words.
Chinese readers can't stop thinking of becoming an official
Li Zero: Headed by the Four People's Soldiers, what is the reading? The answer is to be an official. Chinese readers have a noble title of "Literati Doctor", how can this word be translated in English? Scholars？ Officials？ It is that he is also an official and a scholar, an ambiguous word. Scholars are all bureaucrats in the reserve, rubbing their fists, just like our Young Pioneers said, "Always be prepared", being an official is the ultimate goal, and when you can't do it or come down, you can't hide and exalt yourself.
The ideal of Chinese scholars is that "the scholar is the most official and the most learned of the bureaucracy." But when you are an official, you are an official, and when you are not an official, you are still a common person. A "History of Rulin" is really well written, ultra-modern. Chinese readers cannot stop the idea of becoming an official, and it is a very small minority to be an official and a high official, and others can only enter into foreign history. Chinese readers are a class that can go up and down, you don't just look up with your eyes. Many of them come from humble backgrounds, from the grassroots. The field is unfavorable, and there is everything to do. Those who are staff members, those who are masters (that is, the child king), those who practice medicine in the lanes, sell fortunes in the rivers and lakes, and even those who go up the mountain and fall into the grass. It is not right for you to exalt him too high, and it is not right to be degraded too low, or read the "History of Ru Linwai".
A story comes in and a story goes out, and the structure of "The History of Rulin" is like this. There are also many characters, most of whom are satirical objects, and the tall figures are only at the beginning and the end. At the beginning, wang guan, who herded cattle and sold paintings in the village and refused to be officials; at the end, there were four strange people in the city, one each of whom was playing chess and painting, entertaining themselves and becoming officials in dung.
Elite culture and popular culture are not distinct
Li Zero: In the past, I thought that the big hidden city was China's humanistic fantasy. But at the time of Qianjia, Wenzhou had seven sons of Shijing. These seven men were blacksmiths, fishmongers, silversmiths, pawns, vegetable vendors, hairdressers, and teahouse runners, but they were famous for their poetry. When you study China, don't think that the rural cities are full of illiteracy, in fact, what big traditions, small traditions, elite culture and mass culture are not so clear in China. Some of the painters and calligraphers were aristocrats, yes. For example, Song Huizong, the Bada Shanren. But many of them can't be reconciled, and the authors are generally literati doctors, but their own advertised identities are either farmers or trees or nameless fishermen, and no one takes the big official as a ya number. Qi Baishi has a poem: "Remember the former dynasty enjoyed Taiping, and the cloth was honored to move the secretary of state." Now that it has fallen into Chang'an City, it is fortunate to have Mei Lang's name. "Qi Baishi is a cloth cloth, originally a carved carpenter, calling himself Lu Banmenxia. He is a realistic version of the crown. I have been to the home of Wang Mian in Zhuji County, Zhejiang Province, and the real Wang Mian is different from the Wang Mian in the novel, and the novel is idealized.
Many people who study art history think that craftsmanship is synonymous with tackiness. Professor Redhou pays special attention to calligraphy when he talks about art history, and we generally don't start with words when we talk about art history, but his "All Things" is about words. He said that Chinese art is characterized by factory art, ten years of grinding a sword. Everything is a sharpened sword, but what is not a sharpened sword? I am afraid that even the most free so-called literati paintings are actually repeated. Xu Beihong's horse and Qi Baishi's shrimp are not the same.
What is the relationship between art history, art and craftsmanship, what is the relationship between literati and craftsmen, how to define literati painting, and how much of an art history is the contribution of literati, these are all questions. The old man of Shiraishi is named after the painting, but the poetry calligraphy prints him and says that the poem is the first, the second is printed, the word is third, and the painting is fourth. Deliberately put the painting at the end.
Chinese murals, climbing high and low are all done by craftsmen; carving seals with Qingtian stone and Shoushan stone, this matter was also a matter of craftsmen in the past, like Wu Qiuyan and Zhao Mengfu, their seals were written by themselves and then let the craftsmen carve, because the copper seal literati could not do it, even if they carved seals with ivory or bull horns, it was not easy to carve. In the past, lithographs were said to have been invented by Wang Guan, which was not true. The Nanjing Municipal Museum has a seal with a yin pattern, and the two words on it are "hidden". It was excavated from a Song tomb in Nanjing in 1960. During the Song Dynasty, in jiangsu and Zhejiang, some people used this kind of stone carving to sell small plays, and the literati were inspired by them and imitated it, so that there was the so-called seal carving. However, these were not the strengths of the literati. The strength of the literati is to paint inscriptions and write poems. Literati can write, so what calligraphy and painting are of the same origin, pen and ink are different. Do these laymen understand?
But not even this is the case. Western scribes were often slaves, and the mainland bamboo books and Dunhuang scrolls were written so beautifully, but they were not the works of any calligrapher. Writing and copying books, from the Qin and Han dynasties to the Ming and Qing dynasties, was mainly a scribe, that is, the so-called sword and pen official, a petty official like a criminal master. Their housekeeping skills are writing.
Literati can write, mainly related to examinations and officialdom. Even a calligrapher like Wang Xi is not a calligrapher as it is understood today. Writing is their daily routine, and no one writes a note and takes it to the exhibition. People in the past wrote every day, of course, well, even Mr. Bookkeeper wrote better than he does now. Shen Congwen said: "When a calligrapher goes out, the calligraphy dies." "Makes a lot of sense.
END
∞ Source: President of the Art of War Yang Tianlin ∞
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