For a while, "Boxer" became a pejorative term. Even attacking each other on the Internet, they like to call others "Boxers".
Historical inventors made up jokes from all kinds of corners to satirize the ignorance, ignorance, and blind xenophobia of the Boxer Rebellion in the late Qing Dynasty. Call them "fools", "rabble", "superstitions", a group of people who have been "brainwashed" and used. Some big Vs even worked tirelessly with the mission of attacking the Boxer Rebellion.
Indeed, we materialists admit that the Boxers were indeed not brilliant, including the Taiping Rebellion, and that all peasant uprisings in history, from Chen Sheng and Wu Guang to Zhang Jiao, to Huang Chao, to Zhang Xianzhong and Li Zicheng, were not brilliant, and this is called the "historical limitation of the peasant class."
Many people attacked the Boxers, mainly attacking them for "rejecting civilization with backwardness," cutting off railways, cutting off power lines, smashing foreign goods, and attacking Western missionaries who were "civilized and civilized."
But you have to consider - why were they born? The Boxers did have problems with feudal superstition and blind xenophobia, but there was a reason for everything, and why did the well-behaved and gentle Chinese people not want to lose their lives, but also to fight with foreigners?
Our history textbooks say this: "... The simple and spontaneous mass patriotic movement shattered the dreams of the great powers to divide up China, exposed the traitorous surrender of the Qing government to the Chinese people, and in the face of the aggression of the eight-nation coalition, the Boxers put up heroic resistance, but finally failed under the stranglehold of Chinese and foreign reactionary forces, in a sense, a general outbreak of various contradictions that have emerged in Chinese society since the 40s of the 19th century. ”
To put it more thoroughly, the Monument to the People's Heroes is engraved with the words: "Dating back to 1,840 years, since then, the people's heroes who died in successive struggles have been immortalized in order to oppose internal and external enemies and fight for national independence and the people's freedom and happiness!" ”
Why is it "a general outbreak of various contradictions in Chinese society since the 40s of the 19th century"? Because since 1840, the Qing government has been defeated again and again in the face of the great powers, constantly making concessions, signing various unequal treaties, and after the Treaty of Beijing in 1860, Western missionaries began to go deep into the Chinese mainland, set up churches everywhere, and spread the Christian faith. Unlike Buddhism and Taoism, Christian missionaries like to go deep into the grassroots and take root in the countryside, and wherever people live, they must build churches, take the initiative to preach, and expand step by step.
To build churches, preach doctrine, and develop congregations, it is necessary to compete with local people and peasants for land and various rights. Most of the locations of churches are cleverly seized by missionaries, and local officials dare not offend foreigners, blindly protecting shortcomings, and double standards, so that missionaries have no fear and bully people in the local area. And many adventurers, hooligans, robbers, and outlaws in Western countries also use the name of "missionary" to go deep into Chinese mainland and run amok.
China's local lawbreakers, scoundrels and hooligans saw the weakness and incompetence of local officials in the Qing Dynasty in the face of foreign missionaries, compromised and retreated, so they joined Christianity one after another, and as long as they joined the religion, they gained privileges, worked for the tiger, and intensified their oppression of the Chinese people, which made social contradictions continue to intensify.
Despite his extreme hatred of the Boxer Rebellion, Yuan Shikai still had to say that "the people's education in (Shandong) Province is incompatible, and the origin is actually held hostage by local prefecture and county officials, who are usually held hostage by missionary foreigners... Often inhibit good people... And the parishioners can use the power of officials to bully them, and it is difficult for good citizens to appeal. There is a reason for accumulating grudges into hatreds. ”
At that time, after the "parishioners" absorbed by Christianity in China joined the religion, they were no longer under the jurisdiction of local governments and no longer paid taxes to local governments; Missionaries colluded with local "parishioners" and bandits to seize land, interfere in justice, lend money and collect debts, forming a powerful religious force in the local area and strongly interfering in local economic, political, and clan issues. The magistrates did not dare to care, did not dare to ask, and let it go. If you think about it, how can ordinary people not be angry when they ignore justice, bully men and women, run amok in China, and can still have "supranational treatment"?
At that time, "teaching plans" were frequent and conflicts were constant, and the local government only listened to the statements of the "parishioners" and did not seek justice for ordinary people, which would exacerbate the contradictions. For example, in the "Laishui County Lesson Plan", the local villagers in Laishui County traditionally celebrated the New Year during the Spring Festival, and the Christian "parishioners" rushed to the color shed to insult the local people and miscellaneous New Year's color shed. Under such circumstances, the local government made the local people apologize, asked them to "feast on the parishioners", and even forced the villagers to kneel before the banquet to admit their mistakes, and finally had to "compensate 10,000 taels of silver." After that, the parishioners became even more lawless, and even murdered people and did everything, and finally, the party Yan Laofu was angry and joined the Boxer Rebellion and killed more than 30 of the parishioners involved.
Brutal? Atrocious! Ignorant? Ignorance! Civilized? Uncivilized! Responding to violence with violence is simply legal illiteracy! But what else can he do? He was just a farmer, driven into a desperate situation, and he could only think of this way of revenge.
The direct cause of the Boxer Rebellion was that in early October 1899, in Jiangjiazhuang, Guan County, Shandong Plain, there was a conflict between the parishioners and the local people, and the Boxers attacked the local church. Jiang Kai of Zhixian County sent troops to suppress it. Zhu Honglan led hundreds of people to fight the Qing army and defeat it. To this day, there is still a proverb circulating in the plain countryside: "The Boxers rose up on the plain, and it spread everywhere in less than three months." In essence, they are peasants, there is no modern theory, there is no modern organization, every time they finish fighting with foreigners, they still want to go home and farm; Empress Dowager Cixi once wanted to reward the Boxer leaders with 100,000 taels of silver, but they flatly refused, "a certain class has their own capital axe, wants to repay the service, and is not subject to the grace of the state." They are - "patriots who bring their own dry food" ah.
Real photo of Boxer
They have simple to simple and crude patriotic ideas, they said: "Most hate the peace treaty, mislead the country and the people; Upward and downward effects, the people's grievances are not extended." The Boxer leader Yu Dongcheng issued a proclamation that read: "If foreigners of the same generation plunder the land, grain and clothing of their countrymen through trade and missionary purposes, they not only slander our holy religion, but also poison us with opium and insult us with adultery. Since the Daoguang, seize our land and defraud us of money; Eat away at our children like food, and build our debts like mountains; burn our palaces and destroy our subjects; Occupied Shanghai, ravaged Taiwan, forced the opening of Jiaozhou, and now wants to carve up China. ”
They were not smart, uncivilized, not advanced in organization, without scientific theoretical guidance, and many outlaws mixed into their ranks, and they did not know how to clean up the ranks and distinguish between comrades and enemies. "The worshippers are dressed up as false righteousness and boxing clubs, seeking revenge and killing people everywhere, especially in the western city of Beijing" "In the area of Zhibei, Catholics often follow the color of boxing bandits and rob in all directions." If there are those who are captured, claiming to be Boxers, the magistrate will immediately release them. (Gengzi Chronicles)
Because they had failed, and it was a humiliating defeat, all their hats were buttoned on their heads, and they were brutally slaughtered on their own soil, and the British journalist Simpson recorded what he witnessed: "The French infantry encountered Chinese regiment on the road, and its internal boxers and soldiers combined forces to kill the captured Boxers and civilians, and fled in a hurry. The French men pressed their machine guns into an alley, and they bombarded the trap for about ten or fifteen minutes until there was no one left."
In the name of arresting the Boxers and searching for ordnance, foreign soldiers from all over the world "formed groups of three or five, armed with cross-foreign guns and armed with sharp blades, kicked in doors in various streets and alleys." The bedroom is in the secret room, everywhere, rummaging through the cabinets, searching everywhere. All silver money clocks and watches that are soft and valuable, and they are plundered, are called disturbing the city. If you obstruct it at the slightest, you will be killed."
In that year, after the disaster of Gengzi, the Qing government and the eight-nation coalition army slaughtered the Boxers together, killing innocent old and weak women and children together as Boxers; Today, the "inventors of history" and "keyboard politicians" who hold high ground in morality and call them "rabble". Pathetic, pitiful.
There is a saying in the classic novel "Water Margin" called "forced to go up Liangshan", the focus is on the word "forced", Chaoli is just doing Lizheng, Lu Ti is under good jurisdiction and is doing Ti Zheng, Wudu is good in front of the capital, Lin Jiaotou is doing a good job of teaching, grassroots civil servants are doing a good job, why do they have to go to Liangshan? Then you have to ask Ximen Daguanren, Jiang Men Shen, Zhang Dujian, Huang Tongjuan, Gao Taiwei, Liang Zhongshu, these country sages, powerful people, and bigwigs whether they will give a way to live. If not given, then what can be done? Waiting to die?
There is a very wonderful line in the Japanese movie "Seven Samurai": "What do you think of peasants, do you think they are bodhisattvas?" What a joke! The peasants are the most cunning, they want rice and do not give rice, they want wheat and say no, in fact, they all have it, they have everything, lift the floor and see, not in the underground in the storage room, you will definitely find a lot of things, rice, salt, beans, wine ... Go deep into the valley to see hidden rice paddies. Superficially loyal but the most able to lie, no matter what they will lie! As soon as a war is fought, it is necessary to kill the remnants and strong weapons, listen, the so-called peasants are the most miserly, the most cunning, cowardly, bad-hearted, and imbecile, and they are murderous ghosts. ”
"But... Who made them like this? It's you, it's you samurai, you all die! Burning villages for war, ravaging fields, working arbitrarily, humiliating women, killing rebels, what should you tell the peasants, what should they do? ”
It is true that the Boxers had no culture, no knowledge, no civilization, no progress, they engaged in superstition, dug railways, cut power lines, drank paper ashes, thought that they were blessed by the gods, could not enter the sword, they could not fight wars, they encountered foreigners and collapsed, they did not contribute much at all, in the struggle against aggression, they also made no distinction between good and evil, indiscriminately killed innocents, ignorant they were also used by the Qing government, and finally betrayed by the cowardly and incompetent Qing government.
But so what? What more do you want from them? They are just a group of ordinary Chinese farmers who want to farm well at home, do business at home, support their families well, and pass on their families, and some people don't even give them this bit of peace, ask, what should they do? What can we do to fight for our own interests and seek justice for ourselves in a civilized and polite manner?
Today, "inventors of history" and public intellectuals stigmatize the Boxers and discredit all the efforts of the Chinese peasants against aggression and oppression. However, Wadesi, the enemy of the Boxers and commander of the Eight-Nation Alliance, said of the Boxers:
"We cannot see the Chinese people as weakened or morally degraded. In fact, they still have infinite anger. Chinese has always had a heroic and good fighting spirit, and has not completely lost it"
"Neither Europe, the United States, nor Japan have the brain power and military power to rule a quarter of the creatures in the world... Therefore, the division is actually the next policy. ”
Gentlemen, we are modern people in the 21st century, we have received a scientific and systematic modern education, we know mathematics, physics, chemistry, Marxism-Leninism and materialism, we know what civilization is, what tolerance is, what is human nature, we have seen advanced, efficient, and commanding social organizations, we still have developed productive forces, and we have a strong motherland to protect us.
Therefore, we can talk high and evaluate the Taiping Rebellion and the Boxer Rebellion from the commanding height of history; In fact, most of our modern people in the 21st century are really smarter than them, smarter than them, braver, kinder than them, and more capable of saving China?
Brother, can you afford to take an axe, swing a scythe, understand slogans and instructions, face bullying and oppression, guns and bayonets, can you move your legs? Do you have the ability to speak tolerate, benevolence, human rights, and kindness to robbers? Why not eat minced meat!
Brother, the wind is strong in high places, be careful of the cold.
(Thanks to the original author Zhihu Shenpeng for the wonderful article!) ）