In Shi Nai'an's "Water Margin", Wu Song's debut is Jingyang Gang Fighting Tiger, Wu Song returned home to visit his brother, passing through Jingyang Gang, to the restaurant to drink eighteen bowls, drunk and want to hurry. The restaurant told him that there was a tiger on the hill that had hurt people and advised him not to do it. Unbelieving, Takematsu encounters a large white-fronted insect in Okagami. Wu Song rose up with the strength of his life to beat the tiger to death with two fists, and Jingyang Gang fighting the tiger was a song that has been sung for thousands of years, and the ancients have not been seen before, and those who have not come after have been seen. Later, I couldn't look back. But behind Wu Song's fight against the tiger is a strange disaster in ancient China, the tiger disaster.
The Chinese tiger culture has a long history, and it has long been one of China's totems. Because the image of the tiger is majestic, it has been used since ancient times to symbolize the bravery and strength of soldiers, such as tiger generals, tiger ministers, tiger soldiers and so on. In ancient times, a tiger was carved with gold on the soldier's rune, called the tiger symbol. In various fields of traditional culture, it has become an indispensable part of Chinese civilization, but the Chinese people have very complicated feelings for tigers, love and hate, play for tigers, raise tigers for trouble, and talk about tiger discoloration. The frequent occurrence of tiger plagues is the nightmare of the people of the times, since the Spring and Autumn Warring States, that is, the history is endless.
Chinese has a long history of fighting tigers, and it has appeared in the records of oracle bones and animal bones about three or four thousand years ago. In ancient society, the distance between man and tiger was very close, and there was inevitably a conflict between man and tiger in order to survive. For example, "Wu Wang Hunting, Poultry and Tiger Twenty Two" is about the hunting of King Wu of Zhou, during the Spring and Autumn Period Confucius passed by the foot of Mount Tai, saw the tiger hurt people with thousands of emotions, said the ancient famous saying: harsh government is fiercer than the tiger also.
After the Qin and Han Dynasties, the scope of agricultural development was further expanded, coupled with the continuous war, fighting tigers was not only the hobby of the emperor, but also the capital for the generals to show their strength, such as Li Guang, the flying general of the Western Han Dynasty, there are records of shooting stones and fighting tigers, Song Sushi "Jiangchengzi Mizhou Hunting" Words: "In order to repay the city with Taishou, personally shoot tigers, and see Sun Lang, it is said that Sun Quan's entertainment method is the three kingdoms."
During the Tang and Song dynasties, with the progress of society and culture, the conflict between man and tiger increased unabated, and some legendary novels were also filled with shots of tigers eating people and people beating tigers. Some folk hunters have summed up a set of tiger fighting methods due to long-term hunting, and even used it as a profession. The more famous is the story of "Wu Song fighting the tiger", in history, Hangzhou did have Wu Song, but there is no record of him fighting the tiger in the formal historical materials, on the contrary, there are many folk tales. The story of Wu Song reflects from the side that the tiger plague was serious at that time, and the people were eager to see the emergence of tiger fighting heroes.
During the Ming and Qing dynasties, the population swelled rapidly, land resources were seriously strained, mountain and forest resources were also destroyed on a large scale, and the tiger plague reached an unprecedented peak. Taking the southeast region as an example, during the Ming and Qing dynasties, there were 514 tiger infestations in this area, which was 85 times the number of tiger infestations in the previous millennium, and almost once a year. What is even more frightening is that the frequency of human-tiger conflicts has become more and more intense almost with the passage of time. What is even more unexpected is that Shanghai was once a tiger-infested place. For example, in the second year of orthodoxy (1437), there was a white-fronted tiger near Wusong in Baoshan, injuring 65 people, which can be said to be the most injured by a single tiger, and the tiger disease was so serious that the people and the government had to try their best to hunt and kill the tiger.
What is obviously different from the previous tiger fighting operations in the Ming Dynasty is that from the Qianlong period onwards, the government began to hunt tigers on a large scale in an organized manner, not only recruiting officers and soldiers, sending soldiers to fight tigers, but also recruiting hunters to fight tigers, and of course, superstitious measures such as exercising moral administration and praying for tigers and driving tigers away.
The rampant tiger plague in the Ming and Qing dynasties shows that the living environment of the tiger has been greatly damaged by man, and the contradiction between man and tiger has reached the point of confrontation, either the tiger eats man, or the man kills the tiger, and in the recent hundred years, the emergence of modern weapons such as shotguns and various campaigns to eliminate pests have caused a devastating blow to the tiger population, especially the South China tiger. At this time, people have realized the importance of harmony of all things, chosen reconciliation, and taken positive actions to protect this precious species, protect the existing tiger population, so that the tragedy of the South China tiger will no longer be staged, that is, to protect the biological chain of nature and protect the natural environment on which human beings live and develop.