Huang Jie | Jiangsu Institute of Administration
【Introduction】On April 6, 2022, a Henan enterprise bid for a commercial land in Zhengzhou for 452 million yuan, and the ultimate beneficiary of the enterprise was Shi Yongxin, the abbot of the Shaolin Temple in Songshan. The Shaolin Temple has been silent for many years and "re-emerges from the rivers and lakes". As of 2022, the number of trademarks applied for by Shaolin Temple has reached 706. This is very different from the Shaolin Temple that people have in mind, which represents Buddhism and chivalry and symbolizes a certain "jianghu" culture. In fact, not only the Shaolin Temple, many people sigh, the "jianghu" is also far away. However, as a special cultural phenomenon, the "ancient and modern" and "life and death" of "jianghu" are still symbolic concepts for us to understand Chinese culture.
Whether it is "jianghu is not fighting and killing, jianghu is human and sophisticated", or "forgetting each other in the jianghu", these widely circulated lines in a sense reflect the unique interpersonal concepts, order concepts and behavioral characteristics of Chinese. This article points out that "jianghu" is the "escapist social space" in Chinese culture, which has at least four meanings: one is the jianghu in natural geography; the other is the jianghu of the literati and doctors, which is vaguely opposite to the temple; the third is the nomadic jianghu, which is a free space outside the patriarchal society; the fourth is the modern jianghu, which is the collective name of circles, gangs and their attachment phenomena and marginalized groups at the time of social transformation. In the author's view, there is a problem of excessive interpretation of "native China" in previous studies, but there is insufficient understanding of the dialectical relationship and "mobility characteristics" of the Chinese people's "water and soil", "residence and tourism", and "agriculture and commerce". In fact, the "jianghu" that is outside the patriarchal society and has a "parallel structure" relationship with the patriarchal society has injected a rare active gene into the local society, which has enriched the three-dimensional structure of traditional China. Some Chinese people at home and abroad have some spiritual residing because of the "rivers and lakes", and the national mentality has also been subtly adjusted, which shows that it still has a certain inspirational effect. Through the "jianghu", we can not only understand the pluralistic narrative of Chinese culture, but also more appropriately understand the transformation story of Chinese society. However, the abuses and various spillover effects accumulated today should also be further sorted out and examined.
This article was originally published in Xuehai, No. 4, 2021, originally titled "Jianghu: Another Imagination of Native China", the article has been abridged, please refer to the original text for those who need it. It only represents the views of the author and is for the reference of all the kings.
"Jianghu": Another imagination of native China
Chinese culture is broad and profound, but also vague. Many very important concepts, which are still used to this day, are often semantically ambiguous and specious; they seem simple and clear, and they are really explored, and a few sentences are not clear; and they are branches and branches, involving many; words are close and far-reaching, often deep in meaning, and even implicit in many major propositions. "Jianghu" is one of them.
▍Zhuangzi's "Jianghu"
Throughout the ages, there have been the rivers and lakes of literati and doctors ("hidden rivers and lakes"), the rivers and lakes of green forests and good men ("smiling proud of the rivers and lakes"), the rivers and lakes of businessmen ("running rivers and lakes"), and the rivers and lakes imagined by ordinary people ("legends of the rivers and lakes"). The jianghu can be either a hermitage ("returning to the hidden rivers and lakes") or a noisy world ("re-emerging from the jianghu"),either a civil society corresponding to the "temple" or the official government gate ("breaking into the jianghu"), or a secret society ("jianghu underworld"), or an invisible society or a virtual society ("jianghu status"),the jianghu can be either an illusory existence ("fantasy jianghu") or a social reality ("the world's jianghu"),a person can be half a temple and half a jianghu. It can also be in the temple heart in the jianghu, or in the jianghu heart to the temple; even the temple can be the jianghu, and the jianghu can also be the temple. In short, as long as it is combined with specific content in a specific context, the Chinese of the jianghu can naturally understand. If the so-called "hood door" that jianghu people often hang on their lips refers to the key weaknesses inherent in themselves or others that are insurmountable, and are a vital influencing factor of a person's spiritual temperament and even personality fate; then "jianghu" is the spiritual "hood door" that Chinese lingers. As a deep-rooted and branched Oriental romanticism, "Jianghu" is rooted in the rich cultural soil of traditional China, and with the continuous changes of Chinese civilization, it embodies its own unique aesthetic connotations, and exists in various forms in the present, deeply embedded in the spiritual world, moral system and emotional genes of Chinese. Just as Ang Lee, director of the movie "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", said: The "jianghu" in Chinese culture is the most difficult to convey to Westerners. It can be said that the current Chinese body, more or less, with a little trace of the jianghu.
What exactly is a jianghu? How did the Chinese culture of "great winds and great tides" (Liang Qichao) produce this peculiar phenomenon? In turn, to what extent have the rivers and lakes influenced and shaped Chinese culture? Or is it another secret place that is not known in native China, or another possibility?
"Ci Hai" "Jianghu" strip cloud: "1. In the old days, it referred to the hermit's dwelling place. Nanshi Hermitage: "Or hide above the rivers and lakes." '2. Refers to all parts of the quad. Such as: walk the rivers and lakes. Du Mu's poem "Sending Nostalgia": "The lost rivers and lakes carry the wine line." The "Jianghu" article of the Hanyu Da Dictionary reads: "1. Rivers, lakes and seas; 2. Refers to all parts of the four directions; 3. refers to the folk; 4. refers to the residence of hermits in the old days; 5. By extension, retires; 6. In the old times, it refers to those who wandered in all directions and made a living by selling art, selling medicines, divination, etc." It also refers to the profession in which such a person engages; 7.
The above two explanations are slightly thin compared with the complex and changeable meaning of "jianghu".
The earliest occurrence of "jianghu" in Chinese is the "Zhuangzi", which uses "jianghu" in seven places (two of which are repeated), in order as follows: "Now that there are five stones of urns, why not worry about floating in the rivers and lakes with a big bottle, and worry about its fall and have nothing to tolerate?" ("The Inner Chapter: The First Getaway") "The spring is dry, the fish phase is on the land, the wet with each other, and the foam with each other, it is better to forget each other in the rivers and lakes." ("The Inner Chapter, The Sixth Great Master", see also "Outer Chapter, Heavenly Fortune Fourteenth") "Fish are forgotten about the rivers and lakes, and people are forgetting about Taoism." ("The Inner Chapter, The Great Grandmaster Sixth") "The husband raises birds with birds, the deep forest that should be inhabited, the altar land of the swim, and the floating rivers and lakes." (Outer Chapter, Zhile Eighteenth, see Outer Chapter, Dasheng Nineteenth) "Fufeng Fox Wen Leopard, perched in the mountains and forests, crouched in a cave, jingye; nocturnal day dwelling, abstinence; although hunger and thirst loomed, Yu Danxu neglected the rivers and lakes and sought food, dingye; but also free from the danger of recklessness." (Outer Chapter: Yamaki 20)
The "jianghu" in the above-mentioned "Zhuangzi" is close to the meaning, basically referring to the rivers, lakes and seas in nature, of course, it should also convey a certain sentiment of the author; but the Taoist thought of "communicating with the spirit of heaven and earth alone, and not proud of all things" and the Zhuangzi doctrine of "clamping down on the nine streams and encompassing hundreds of generations" are not known whether the concept of "jianghu" at this time is not known. Zhang Yuanshan, a scholar who studied Zhuangzi, identified Zhuangzi as the etymology of "jianghu", which belongs to only one family. It is a strange fact that except for Zhuangzi, there is no longer "jianghu" in all the pre-Qin texts. There are several possibilities for this: first, other classics containing the phrase "jianghu" have been obliterated and have not been preserved; second, the phrase and meaning of "jianghu" in "Zhuangzi" are original to Zhuangzi but have not been widely accepted; third, the phrase "jianghu" itself has no special meaning and has not attracted more attention from the people at the time.
Scholar Wan Fang believes that "jianghu" should be a synthetic phrase, and the morphemes are derived from "three rivers" (including "jiujiang"), "five lakes" and "four seas", all of which are general references, and it is natural to combine "three rivers and five lakes" and "five lakes and four seas" and other phrases that refer to all parts of the four sides. In general, the combination of three morphemes of "river", "lake" and "sea" produces more concise synonyms such as "jianghu", "jianghai" and "lake". According to Wanfang's point of view, "jianghu", "jianghai", "lake and sea" were all synonymous at that time, with similar meanings and often used interchangeably, but there were some subtle differences. Wan Fang specifically pointed out: "'Jianghai' is a phrase used more frequently in pre-Qin texts; interestingly, it also appears mainly in Taoist texts, or in discourses far from temple politics, just like 'jianghu'. ”
Wanfang's views are self-contained, but there is also an element of subjective speculation. One thing is certain, that is, in the pre-Qin, at least in Zhuangzi, "jianghu" should not have become a proper noun, let alone a specific or special meaning that later generations have. However, it should also be admitted that the "rivers and lakes" at this time have begun to distinguish them from the "rivers and lakes" in nature, or that it has been able to find clues to the "rivers and lakes" in later generations.
Zhuangzi is a taoist conglomerate and an outlier in Chinese culture. Lu Xun, in the Outline of the History of Chinese Literature, said that "his writings are wang yang and open, the manners are all square, and the works of the sons of the late Zhou Dynasty are not able to be the first." His uninhibited opposition and heretical personality, the reckless atmosphere of sending love to the landscape and returning to farming, the independence of the world, the spirit of non-cooperation and criticism of social reality, which is refreshing, always soothes the hearts of the uneasy, trance, frustrated and even traumatized, and deeply affects the spiritual world and aesthetic purpose of the Chinese. - From this point of view, it is no accident that "jianghu" first appeared in Zhuangzi.
▍ "Escape": The imagery of rivers and lakes in natural landscapes
China is a big country of water resources, facing the high mountains and deserts in the west, facing the sea in the east, with the Yangtze River and the Yellow River running through the east and west, and countless large and small tributaries are connected to it and network the entire territory, and there is a deep and unique freshwater civilization and large river civilization. In ancient times, China had many water systems and rivers. According to legend, the "Classic of Mountains and Seas", which was written in the late Warring States period, has more than 300 waterways; the ancient myths and legends that have been handed down to this day, many of which are related to flood damage and water control; the Liangzhu civilization water conservancy system in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River, which dates back more than 5,000 years, is the earliest existing large-scale water conservancy project in China and the earliest flood dam system in the world. Ge Jianxiong believes that river civilization is the highest form of water culture, "whether it is China or foreign countries, what really plays an important role in human beings, especially ancient civilization, relies on large rivers and rivers." The rivers not only provide the basic conditions for human production and survival, but they also bring together the scattered civilizations into a whole, and rely on the special conditions possessed by these rivers to elevate them to an unprecedented height." The Chinese civilization has undoubtedly carried forward this river civilization and bred a water culture with rich connotations and a long-term artistic conception.
"Landscape is the metaphysical scale of observing history" and the key to understanding ancient Chinese civilization. Chinese is a nation with a special love for the nature of landscapes, and Li Zehou even believes that "Chinese landscape paintings are like Western crosses" that are immersed in the nature of landscapes. Sending love to the landscape and hiding in the rivers and lakes has always been a big dream of Chinese literati. The knower enjoys the water, the benevolent leshan. A mature farming civilization based on crop growth and experience in the day has established a set of values and belief systems for the "unity of heaven and man" and the cycle of all things. Therefore, natural landscapes have always played a very important role in chinese culture as an idea or image, imperceptibly and deeply influential. In the "pre-automobile" era, waterways were the most important mode of travel, ancient rivers were roughly equivalent to today's railways or highways, and many phenomena of human livelihood and civilization were also centered around rivers. In ancient times, rivers may have more transportation, economic and even social significance, that is, in addition to natural attributes, rivers also have obvious economic, cultural and social attributes. "The water gods and sea gods related to this, like the mountain gods, are universal phenomena that have existed for a long time in human beings, and are a religious need based on the system of daily life." The ancients' understanding and emotions of rivers, lakes and seas were also far different from those of today's people. For the vast majority of ancients who have never gone out of the countryside and never seen the sea in their lives, the great rivers lead to the vast expanse of the sea, and the great rivers are the sea, representing the distant and strange unknown world. If the countryside is the hometown, it is here, it is the familiar static life that begins again and again; then the rivers and lakes are the other, the long journey and the foreign land, the flow and escape.
Historian Wei Bin has carefully studied the "formation process of mountain cultural landscapes and their spatial relationships" during the Six Dynasties period for many years, and has authored "The History of the Six Dynasties in the Mountains", which has made pioneering contributions in related fields. He believes that the basic characteristic of the mountain world is a certain degree of escape, a cultural community that tries to escape from state power. This is the original intention of the mountain house. That is, a parallel cultural space that tends to be independent began to emerge in the power environment after the demise of the unified empire. This phenomenon occurred at about the same time as the East and the West, but the cultural influences were quite different. In the West, mountain monasteries still exist primarily as a phenomenon of faith. In China, the mountain forest cultural space represented by mountain temples and mountain pavilions has overflowed the category of faith and gradually internalized into the inner world of the intellectual elite, becoming a unique spiritual and cultural phenomenon. "Cultural escapees create transcendent landscapes, and social escapees create chivalrous rivers and lakes and mountains, both of which are contents that stretch in Chinese history." ...... The existence of these two phenomena is actually related to the power system of the County System of the Chinese Empire, which is a companion of the Empire."
Mountains and forests, like the rivers and lakes, are highly symbolic in Chinese culture. Between the mountains and forests of history and the rivers and lakes, there are many frustrated politicians, down-and-out literati, deposed officials, mischievous behavior, and all kinds of people who indulge in landscapes and rivers. People flee from Vanity Fair, from the local society, from the fly camp dog hook heart or sword fighting, the landscape gives them a great spiritual sustenance and free spiritual space. Qian Mu distinguishes Chinese culture into urban culture, township culture, mountain and forest culture, and jianghu culture in "Modern Chinese Academic Theory and Balance and Brief Discussion on Chinese Sociology (II)". He said: "In ancient China, there were rangers, rich in mobility, and the characters in the mountains and forests were rich and quiet; those who were mobile in the mountains and forests were called rivers and lakes. "China is mainly a static society, and the jianghu is a static lower dynamic,...... Qian also correctly pointed out the important trend of "jianghu forces invading the city" in modern times. In short, the socialized landscape is the river and lake, and it can also be said that the river and lake are the personified landscape, which is endowed with human emotions and spirituality. Landscapes and worldly grievances are intertwined, becoming a Chinese-style human sentiment. As an "escapist social space", the rivers and lakes are obviously more complicated than the mountains and forests. There is both a side of birth and a side of entering the world; there is both the ethereal and ethereal spirit of the unity of heaven and man, the pleasure of fighting and righteousness, and the worldly fireworks of "daily use". With its multiple forms and different aspects of "escape", the jianghu impacts the local society that has been changing for generations.
▍ "local society" bound by land?
"Native China" seems to be an unpublished theory at present. However, in modern times, from the "state of etiquette" of the heavenly dynasty to the "native China", the important switching of identity perspective actually contains an extremely complex mental process. From Zhang Xiao's "building a country with agriculture" and Liang Qichao's "village state", to Qian Mu's "large-scale agricultural country", and even from the rural reconstruction of Yanyang Chu and Liang Shuming,...... In the 1930s and 1940s, under the impetus of the "Chinese Social School" of Yenching University, there was an era of "native China" represented by Fei Xiaotong. Behind this is the deep anxiety of the ancient farming nation that has lasted for thousands of years in the face of the impact of industrial civilization in modern times, and it is under the reference of new coordinates, adapting to drastic changes, and even "re-understanding itself with an academic movement with clear goals and subject consciousness" to understand the world and finally complete the difficult exploration of modernization and transformation.
Fei Xiaotong's theory of vernacular society deeply influenced generations and later became the mainstream discourse and ideological standard in Chinese social anthropology; and the discovery and attachment to "township" and "soil" also ran through Fei Xiaotong's life. He deliberately translated the English name of "Native China" into "From the Soil"; later combined three relatively independent Chinese reports formed by field research during the Kui Pavilion period, "Lucun Farmland", "Yicun Handicraft Industry", and "Yucun Agriculture and Commerce", and compiled them into an English book, named "Earthbound China". Both of these works were completed in the 1940s, when the mountains and rivers were broken, the flames were continuous, and the country was faced with a major choice of where to go, and Fei Xiaotong, as a sociologist, was in his prime, and his reputation rose, and he also went to the United States for a year of study and investigation. Based on years of meticulous observation of grass-roots society, his thinking gradually matured and formed the so-called "cultural consciousness".
In "Native China", Fei Xiaotong begins by talking about the "unchanging generations" of local society, and makes a vivid summary of the image of "native China": "From the grassroots level, Chinese society is vernacular. ...... Under the restrictions of locality, the local society has become a society born and died in Sri Lanka. Normal life is always the hometown. Until his later years, Fei Xiaotong explicitly admitted that he "got the same idea in rural surveys." His book "Native China" emphasizes the "cycle" that Kim pointed out: "Man is united with the land, born in Sri Lanka, and dies in Sri Lanka." Land production circulates endlessly throughout the seasons." It is also this cycle that "constructs the characteristics of local social people." The characteristics of this kind of local social people are prominently manifested in the internal rules of etiquette and the external pattern of difference, as well as the two maintenance forces of hierarchy and human feelings.
Fei Xiaotong's contribution lies in the fact that, with the vision of a brilliant social anthropologist, through field research and personal observation, he discovered a living and real Chinese grassroots society and the secret order that is often overlooked in this society outside of the high China in books and through the bland and trivial daily life. As Wang Mingming and others said, "'Native China' is Fei Xiaotong's attempt to analyze the social structure of China, and he tries to summarize and enlighten field research in theory to construct a unique local ethics system in Chinese society." In Fei Xiaotong's own words, "the local China mentioned here is not a sketch of a specific Chinese society, but a special system contained in a specific Chinese grassroots traditional society, which dominates all aspects of social life" and "explains the characteristics of local society with Chinese facts."
In 1936, Fei Xiaotong's Yan DatongMen Qu Tongzu completed the book "Chinese Feudal Society", which absorbed the essence of the Yanjing School from the idea to the analysis method of historical materials. Qu Tongzu said that his research is also "not purely a study of history, so I do not attempt to arrange the history of China's feudal society chronologically, as if it were the narrative of a historian." On the contrary, it is only the presentation of various facts as empirical evidence of various social phenomena. My research is not only a part of the study of social phenomena, so I not only focus on the discussion of the economic system or the political system, but on all social phenomena as the object, one by one." Fei Xiaotong's local society consisted of scholars, civilians, workers, and merchants at the bottom of the feudal hierarchy (also known as the "Four Peoples Society"). Qu Tongzu also said: "The scholar is a class between the Shu people and the Qing Doctor", although he is not a clan nobleman, he can be recommended as an official, so the hope of being promoted to a scholar among the four people is undoubtedly the most respected. Although the people have the opportunity to move up and down the society, "in order to enable the commoners to carry out their own business, the nobles must meet their various needs and live a hedonistic life, the scholars, peasants, industrialists and merchants not only have a professional division of labor, but must also keep their ancestral inheritance for generations, and are not allowed to change." At the same time, the living quarters are also extremely fixed, and no migration is allowed. In this way, not only can we prevent the four people from mixing and mixing, but also from seeing different ideas... This is extremely important... Once this chain is broken, the people can move freely and feudal relations cannot exist." There is no doubt that the narratives of "Native China" and "Chinese Feudal Society" are similar, "but Qu Tongzu only talks about the feudal era, while Fei Xiaotong regards it as the consistent ideal of traditional society."
"To hydrolyze the social history and to understand the vision and thinking of civilization with water" requires a vision and imagination that transcends the local society, and the rivers and lakes that are Chinese in mind provide the possibility of achieving this transcendence. As a culture of "life" and "travel" derived from "water", jianghu has developed from a simple geographical term into an important integrated concept with timeless connotations, which itself reflects the complexity of civilization evolution. It undoubtedly provides a good perspective for thinking about "the importance of water in the humanistic world created by people", understanding "the relationship between things and people, including water", appreciating the particularity and multi-faceted nature of traditional local society, and even understanding the charm and essence of Chinese culture to a certain extent. Only in the overall framework of local society, in the opposition and interaction of "water and soil", "life and ripening", "residence and tourism", and "agriculture and commerce", can this complex concept be more accurately understood and grasped.
▍ Homeless, parallel order and loop architecture
In addition to the traditional local society, the jianghu has created a very oriental fluid space. This liquidity space not only exists implicitly for a long time, but also continues to function. After the Song Dynasty, the door valve aristocracy completely withdrew from the stage of history, and the common people's society began, and this mobile space became the world of the nomads dramatically. Vagrants are companions of the rivers and lakes, people who have broken away from the patriarchal order and mostly wander back and forth between the city and the countryside. Corresponding to this is "clan legal person", "clan legal person" can also be regarded as another way of saying local social people. The "clan legal person" follows the rules and relocates, and the social relations are limited to a small and limited space; the wanderer can be called a "disordered person", leaving the patriarchy and land on which they depend for survival, forming ideological feelings and personality characteristics that are different from those of the "clan law person". Before the advent of modern industrial and commercial cities, for most of history, the countryside was the foundation of the empire. For most urban residents, the city is only a temporary place to live, and the Chinese style of returning to the hometown reflects the essence of this rural leading city in the agricultural society. The countryside is the cornerstone of the empire and the root of the family, with the most stable ethical structure and the most complete inheritance and education system, and is the ancestral home of the patriarchs.
The biggest feature of homeless people is mobility. Before the Song Dynasty, "there were vagrants, but they could not form groups." In the Spring and Autumn Warring States, there were diners, doormen (doormen), rangers, etc., han had "liuyong", Tang had "wild goose households", although the generations of nomads did not become a climate, but their spiritual blood was still spread to future generations. "Since the Zhou Dynasty, China has 'built a country based on agriculture' and 'based on agriculture', and for a long time has also taken the well field system as the ideal paradigm of society, and has designed a set of political and management systems with this as the center." 'Leaving the land' means escaping from the traditional paradigm system, whose fluid, fluid, and impermanent nature makes these vagrants often destructive. It is also the most difficult class to manage in the ancient legal system. Proceeding from the concept of agrarian society, these jianghu characters who have left their homeland, wandered uncertainly, or used transportation and circulation as their profession are all obedient, suspicious, and abducted. As the saying goes: 'The car and boat shop has teeth, and the innocence should also be killed', which is also true. This kind of role fits the original meaning of the word "jianghu" in Zhuangzi's 'it is better to forget about the jianghu', and constitutes a rich character genealogy in traditional Chinese society. "The transportation nodes and new social living spaces formed by water transport, the frequent commercial and interpersonal exchanges, and the urgent need to establish a system of mutual trust and self-organization outside the patriarchal law. This kind of gathering of a large number of strangers in the north and south of the sky, the scene of "raw and cooked" and "living and swimming", the flowing, turbulent, mysterious and unpredictable life state that is as uncertain as water and wanders in all directions, there is no doubt that it does not belong to the local society that has been kept in place and repeatedly, and the rivers and lakes have been given a richer connotation. It is precisely because of this that the rivers and lakes and the people on the rivers and lakes are really drifting away from the so-called local society.
The greatest imagination of the vagrants who escaped from the patriarchal society, that is, the Jianghu people, is still a new patriarchal structure that establishes a quasi-blood relationship through the form of blood alliances and so on. The supply of ancient Chinese systems is insufficient, and the grass-roots society is basically maintained by the hidden society and the informal system, which escapes the mobility space of the traditional local society, and does not necessarily have a completely unified organizational form and fixed legal norms, but it has a variety of characters, a variety of informal groups, relatively stable rules and moral principles, and strange language, which together constitute a mysterious world that is parallel to the mainstream society, and can also be said to be a jianghu society. This parallel system, embedded in the traditional Chinese network of blood, geography, academic relationship and karma, has been passed down from generation to generation, and has become a special way of regulating and distributing interests and the basic form of interpersonal identification and interaction. The two systems coexist for a long time, and even in the same person, there are often two faces and two sets of discourse systems, and the separation of thought and action becomes the norm.
Dynastic changes and the cycle of chaos run through the ancient Chinese society, and a small chaos in 50 years and a major chaos in 200 years are the basic laws. The aristocratic class as a group died prematurely. "The Banner of the Great King of The City", "The Heroes of the Four Seas Rise from the Micro Clan". Since the Qin Dynasty, there have been more than 30 people who have changed their surnames to become emperors, mainly ethnic minorities (or ethnic minority blood) and nomadic people (or low-level civilians). The low-level commoners were added to the dragon robe overnight, the imperial relatives and nobles were "cliff-like" reduced to commoners and exiled, and the change of dynasties achieved a certain vertical flow of social classes in this extreme way. The popular folk literary and artistic works after the Song Dynasty are full of this kind of story of breaking into the rivers and lakes and "making a trace of Thailand", which caters to the real psychological needs of the people with flat heads, and also allows the folk rivers and lakes to enter the temple inside and outside the temple. Such a situation is unimaginable in Western society.
Parallel systems and circular structures are one of the important factors in the formation of internal involvement in traditional Chinese society step by step losing the momentum of progress, and are also two basic facts that should be paid special attention to when observing Chinese social phenomena. They are often ignored by the correct history and obscured by the lush and complicated historical situation, but they give Chinese culture a unique temperament and endowment. Compared with the rapid progress of modern Western society, ancient Chinese society has never been able to get out of the strange circle of idle internal friction, and along with this, the jianghu culture has continued to this day, the consciousness of the nomads is entangled, strangers in the modern sense are difficult to find traces, and the road to modern "society" and "transformation" is tortuous and bumpy.
▍Simple conclusions and after-arguments
In general, after thousands of years of evolution, the so-called "jianghu" of the Chinese has at least four meanings, and on the whole, the extension is constantly expanding and the meaning is constantly enriched, which basically constitutes a diachronic relationship.
One is the rivers and lakes in physical geography. Later, it was gradually given the meaning of vastness, remoteness and flow. Jianghu was once the general name or general name of many waterways in ancient times, and was also considered to be the Yangtze River and Dongting Lake, and later referred to the three rivers and five lakes in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River. Before the Three Kingdoms, these places were backward "Eastern Yi and Southern Barbarians", full of smoke and miasma, and formed a geographical relative relationship with the Central Plains Capital City where Tianzi was located, and was long regarded as a foreign land.
The second is the jianghu of the literati doctor. After the Spring and Autumn Period, the word "jianghu" gradually abstracted, deriving the meaning of a secluded place, which became a special term in Chinese culture, and also became the ideal life of some literati and doctors, the so-called heart in the temple in the jianghu. This jianghu is vaguely opposed to the temple, but it is not anti-temple, it is not anti-mainstream society, and it may return to mainstream society at any time.
The third is the jianghu of the nomads. Outside the patriarchal system, it is active on the fringes of local society, opposite the temple, and is composed of a unique and huge folk "parallel system" composed of three religions and nine streams.
The fourth is the modern jianghu. The modern jianghu formed by internal pressure and external shocks is not the same as the jianghu of any period in history, and the combination and variation of the literati and the wandering jianghu, combined with various currents of thought and social turmoil in modern times, can now almost express all the networks, circles, gangs, interest groups, thick black plots, field ecology, attachment phenomena, and various marginal groups, and at the same time have become the spiritual dependence, value norms and lifestyles of some people. To some extent, it can be said that the Chinese "society" in the academic sense is a "jianghu" composed of human feelings, faces, relationships, various explicit and invisible power forms and their cyclical interaction.
To understand the "jianghu", it is especially avoided to discuss things from a one-sided and static point of view, but needs to be discussed in a long and grand background. In short, it is a miracle that China, from a regional Central Plains dynasty, through internal strife, imperial succession and conquest by foreign enemies, gradually absorbed and subdued the surrounding heterogeneous civilizations, and developed into a super-large civilization on the East Asian continent with unique characteristics and influence during the Qing Dynasty. Although the clues of China's civilization have not been interrupted for thousands of years, annihilation, fusion, and even fracture and reconstruction have occurred from time to time, and the form of civilization cannot be said to be unrecognizable, and major changes have also taken place. The infiltration of natural landscapes into culture cannot be ignored, and the leisure of self-pleasure is even considered to be the highest spiritual realm of Chinese culture. Among them, the parallel system and circular architecture have created a unique traditional social ecology, and there has been no obvious distinction between the rivers and lakes and temples. For a long time, people have lacked sufficient understanding of the dialectical relationship between the Chinese nation's "water and soil", "life and ripeness", "residence and tourism", "agriculture and commerce" and its "fluid character and tradition", and have also lacked in-depth research on the huge hidden society with complete functions since the Spring and Autumn Period. Some noun concepts such as "jianghu" that have been used to this day have specific meanings in successive dynasties and dynasties, and their connotations and extensions have been derived, and they also need to be carefully verified. At the same time, the recent transformation of European civilization has faced similar dilemmas in Middle-earth, such as population explosion and "disorderation", a certain degree of chaos caused by the influx of strangers into the city, etc., but due to differences in religion, natural endowments and cultural traditions, there are intriguing social consequences.
Originating from the unique water culture of the East, "it is a cultural concept formed by the high combination of geography and social space and the baptism of time", and it can also be said that it is a commercial public interaction field other than patriarchy and not regulated by the legal system in traditional local society. Jianghu has evolved from an ancient concept of physical geography to a cultural concept and even a special noun with profound and extensive meaning and influence today. It is not only a kind of escape space, but also a paradise for homeless people, and it has also become a certain image and totem of national psychology; it is not only a metaphor for civilization, but also a concern for reality, and it is also a paradox of history. We have to admit that the Jianghu culture has injected a rare active gene into the local society, showing another side of agricultural civilization and another possibility, and enriching the three-dimensional structure of traditional China. Some Chinese people at home and abroad have a sense of spiritual contentment as a result, and the national mentality has also been subtly adjusted, which cannot be denied that it still has a positive inspirational effect. However, according to the modern point of view, the jianghu is after all a chaotic pre-social form that has not been fully developed and "formatted", a mysterious cluster phenomenon with quite oriental ancient charm, and because of the modern political and economic turmoil, all kinds of sediments are everywhere and even confluence, forming a pan-quake syndrome and anti-modernization trend, accumulated in the present, the abuses have been reached, and it needs special attention and reflection; and the various spillover effects brought about by this ancient word are also worthy of further combing and examination.
This article was originally published in Xuehai, No. 4, 2021, originally titled ""Jianghu": Another Imagination of Native China", the article has been abridged, if you need it, please refer to the original text. Welcome to share personally, media reprint please contact the copyright owner.
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