directory:
1. "Sitting in the World: Zhang Hongjie's Interpretation of Chinese Emperors" Zhang Hongjie ★★★★
2. "The Seventh Day" Yu Hua ★★★ ☆
3. "Architecture Can Be Fun Too: Europe, From Ancient Greece to the Renaissance" Michios ★★★★
4. "Re-walking: Looking for southwest United Congress on highways, rivers and post roads" Yang Xiao ★★★★ ☆
The busy April has finally passed, reading materials, writing plans, and repeatedly revising, hanging a heart all day long. Either there is no idea, or it is submitted and waiting for approval. Exhausted when I returned home, the slight pain from sitting for a long time relied on a fascia gun to relieve it. Busy is not nothing, but part of the solution to the problem of insomnia, sleep time is longer than ever, the reality of the sleepiness in the dream tangled repeatedly, helpless can only warn themselves, try to stop internal friction, everything wake up and then say.
The epidemic was serious again, and it took a lot of time to pay attention to the epidemic in Shanghai, during which negative energy was continuously received, which aggravated anxiety. Force yourself to uninstall Weibo and look less at your phone. In the middle of the year, the outbreak of the epidemic in Hefei was caused by an old man who heard that Shanghai takeaway could "earn 10,000 a day" and wanted to deliver takeaway food to Shanghai, because there was no pass, he stayed overnight at the station and returned through Hangzhou after changing his card. It was deliberately concealed, resulting in an infection of five members of the family. Overnight, doing nucleic acid, grabbing supplies, rumors abound. Fortunately, in addition to sealing and controlling some areas, other places have completed three rounds of nucleic acids as usual. Through the circle of friends, it is known that this full staff nucleic acid is the first time that many people have done nucleic acid. The shanghai epidemic was quite disappointed and lost its voice in April.
After reading four books in April, 423 "World Book Day" only bought a few sets of children's books, watching the price of paper books rise higher and higher, often hundreds, it is no longer the time for me to "drink one cup of milk tea less and buy more books". Next, the bookshelf will enter the circular stage, keep the total amount unchanged, and get rid of the disliked, non-collectible, and re-enter the new book. Reading e-books will be the primary way to screen books.
Sitting in the World: Zhang Hongjie's Interpretation of Chinese Emperors
The whole book describes the nine emperors of Jiaqing, Guangxu, Hong Xiuquan, Zhu Yuanzhang, Zhengde, Chongzhen Descendants, Yongli, Yang Guang, and Wang Mang, except for Guangxu, Zhu Yuanzhang, and Yang Guang, all of whom are relatively unfamiliar to me, and the only knowledge is based on a few sentences in history textbooks. After the day became the "family world", the selection of emperors was very limited, and there were very few emperors with governance skills, great strategy, healthy bodies and the appearance of emperors. Except for the founding emperors, most of them were "born in the deep palace and grew up in the hands of women", unaware of human suffering, and their abilities were not worthy of ambition.
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For example, in the opening chapter jiaqing, in the face of the "hungry prosperity" left by Qianlong, even if he was running day and night to work, he was unable to return to heaven. His calm character was a plus for him to become emperor, and it was also a weakness that he did not dare to reform vigorously. In the face of the top-down trend of corruption, he could only hope for the ancestral system, did not dare to risk reform, and was powerless to turn the tide, unable to stop the decline of the Qing Dynasty.
Another example is Guangxu, whose weak body has been suppressed for a long time, and wants to prove himself, thinking that he can save the Qing Dynasty with the "Penghu Reform Law", but reality has given a heavy blow, and Cixi has been completely disappointed and put under house arrest until he is dead. Compared with Empress Dowager Cixi, who was too powerful, the Guangxu Emperor's patriotism was undoubtedly more fierce and simple, and there were fewer personal calculations in the reformists' every move. Politics, however, tends to punish the pure idealists and encourage the selfish, ugly realists. ”
There is also Hong Xiuquan, who has the limitations of a peasant in the book, Zhu Yuanzhang, who has suffered childhood trauma, yongli who was forced to become the emperor and finally fell into a foreign land, and Yang Guang, who has great ideals and does not care about life and death... It makes people feel sorry, helpless, or hateful. Zhang Hongjie said that "sitting in the world is very tired", "the emperor is a high-risk occupation, the average life expectancy is 39 years, the abnormal mortality rate is 44%", he looks at the emperor with a compassionate heart, in his lyrical text, these emperors come alive, let us see the other side of them in addition to power. Well worth a read.
A partial excerpt has been made to reflect on the current environment.
For most Chinese, the essence of politics is to maintain stability, stability is above all else, saving trouble is better than everything else, and "quiet and inaction" is the highest political pursuit. If society can be bound to a fixed track, so that the world can operate unchanged from generation to generation in accordance with the principles of etiquette prescribed by the saints, it will be the most ideal political state of a dynasty. The reality is that even if it is full of holes, more is never better than less, and delay and inaction are the best ways to ensure that the crisis does not break out. Not to carry out revolution and to avoid disturbing the people is an important principle of traditional politics.
Liu Zuochen, a native of Shan County, Shandong Province, founded the Bagua Sect in the early years of the Kangxi Dynasty. The biggest feature of this sect is that it is particularly good at accumulating wealth. Its organizational system is actually a huge system of collecting money, and its principle is much the same as that of pyramid schemes: branches in various places, like landlords collecting rent, regularly collect "membership fees" from believers, saying that they are "based on the amount of money to be born in the future", saying that these money is "the cost of taking gold and sands to the western heavens". These contributions are exploited layer by layer and handed over layer by layer. Whoever develops the downline more, who draws more heads. Of course, the biggest drawer is Liu Zuochen, and all the money will eventually be collected layer by layer to the Liu family in Shandong. (Online reference says MLM originated in the United States after World War II.) This is the earliest record of the MLM model that I have read so far. In connection with the recent TST pyramid scheme incident of Zhang Ting and his wife, this model has been tried and tested for hundreds of years. ）
"The Seventh Day"
Yu Hua has read a lot of books, and in the past two years, he has often seen him in various interviews and documentaries. Published in 2018, the novel uses magic realism to tell the story of what the protagonist Yang Fei saw and heard in the seven days after his death and his memories of his life experiences. This tells the story of forced demolition, police attacks, abandoned babies, car accidents, unjust death, kidney selling, concealment, petitioning, nibbling on the elderly, onlookers, ant tribes, suicide, poisonous food, sex scandals, etc., all kinds of absurdity, all kinds of deaths. This book has a general reputation in Douban, and I personally feel that it is not as bad as in everyone's evaluation, but everyone has too high expectations for its book seven years later. Putting aside Yu Hua's previous aura, this book is still worth reading.
Architecture Can Be Fun Too: Europe, From Ancient Greece to the Renaissance
This book uses lively language, comic strips, and historical stories to quickly understand the development history of European architecture as a whole, including why the ancestors of Western architecture were in ancient Greece, whether the Roman gladiatorial arena was a tool for maintaining the stability of the empire, how the Gothic cathedral became the embodiment of darkness, and so on. This book is suitable for European architecture enthusiasts, beginners, and the general reader who likes the history and culture of architecture.
Since I was interested in ancient architecture, I read almost all about ancient Chinese architecture and had no understanding of Western architecture. The author of this book is a young architect after the 90s, using light and lively language and comic strips to roughly sort out the development history of European architecture, including the source of Western architectural forms - ancient hope architecture, ancient Roman architecture, medieval architecture and Renaissance architecture. To understand architecture, you must understand the history behind it. The image language is very well used, simple and easy to understand, and it is very suitable for getting started.
▲ Illustrations in the book
Retracement: Finding the Southwest United Congress on Roads, Rivers and Post Roads
Starting from reading "Qingliu of the Republic of China" and "Returning from the South to the North" a few years ago, I was quite interested in the "Southwest United Congress", and then I read Wang Zengqi's "My Days at the Southwest United Congress", watched the movie "No Questions Asked about the West and East", the documentary "Southwest United Congress", "After 90", "Mr. "Sir". The book remained unread until "But There Are Books" 2, when I saw the author's story and began reading this thick book.
Southwest United University was formed during the war by the merger of Peking University, Tsinghua University and Nankai University. Although it has only existed for eight years, it has given birth to 172 academicians, 8 "two bombs and one star" founders and 2 Nobel Prize winners. It was the era of masters, Chen Yinke, Shen Congwen, Feng Youlan, Zhu Ziqing, Wen Yiduo, Qian Mu, Qian Zhongshu, Jin Yuelin, Hua Luogeng, Zhu Guangqian, Fei Xiaotong, Pan Guangdan... There are also talents in Southwest United University, Yang Zhenning, Li Zhengdao, Deng Jiaoxian, Wang Zengqi, Mu Dan, Xu Yuanchong...
In 1938, the predecessor of the Southwest United University, "Changsha Temporary University", moved to Yunnan, and in the chaos of the war, a "Xiangqiandian Tour Group" was formed, and it crossed three provinces on foot through the hinterland of the southwest to reach Yunnan. In 2018, Yang Xiao re-embarked on this 1600-kilometer road. The content of the whole book is composed of literature citations + documentaries, and the author traces the footprints of the "Xiangqian Dian Tour Group" all the way, citing the records of the time to record what he saw, heard and thought on the road.
At that time, the "Xiangqian dian tour group" of more than 200 people, only recruited boys, girls by water by boat arrived, although it was also quite difficult, but it was still much faster than hiking. The "Xiangqian Dian Tour Group" did not carry luggage, but had a special car to transport luggage, and even equipped with a husband and ingredients. So what's the point of hiking? This is not only a migration, but also an outdoor classroom, the students set up a collection group, a photography team, and a special person responsible for recording (unfortunately, the manuscript was lost later), observing the China, the nation, and the people of china along the way. Perhaps, in the end, the purpose of this transformation in the book is to make these young people believe from the bottom of their hearts when they face those students who choose to throw in the pen: participating in hiking and continuing to study are also patriotic performances, and this eventually becomes the cornerstone of the spirit of Southwest United University." This passage may explain its significance.
The author's solo travel is not alone, "walking alone on the Xiangqian Dian Road, the diaries and memories of these students, together with all the people who left words on the road at that time, constitute my community, you know that reality has been completely different, but imagination and nostalgia have not diminished the interest of travel. "The author is not completely on foot, sometimes he will hitchhike, ride a hitchhiker, take a van, take a minibus, and spend more time walking and thinking. The author was at a turning point in his life, emerging from the system, witnessing the decline of the print media, and reflecting on his social career and daily life along the way, which was very resonant. Probably people of similar age think about the problem similarly.