<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36,37,38,39,40,41,42,43,44,45,46,47,48,49,50,51,52,54,56"> Preface: </h1>
The archway, also known as the archway, is one of the representatives of traditional Chinese architecture, and its main role is to praise merit and show the spirit. A monumental building that honors merit, kodi, virtue, loyalty and filial piety for feudal society, and has a sacrificial function.
Huizhou has had many arches since ancient times, and according to statistics, there have been more than a thousand arches in the history of Huizhou, and there are still more than 100 arches. Shexian County, where the former Capital City of Huizhou is located, is known as the "Hometown of Chinese Arches".
The most famous of the Huizhou Arches is the Tangyu Arch Group. On the East Avenue of Tangyu Village, 7.5 kilometers west of Shexian County, there are seven arches in an orderly manner, three built in the Ming Dynasty and four built in the Qing Dynasty, which are the famous Tangyu Arches. These archways, which are not far apart and echo each other, are winding and distributed on the entrance road of Tangyu Village, which is quite imposing. It records the glory and merit of the Bao family, and embodies the general situation of the ethics and morality of 'loyalty, filial piety, festival, and righteousness'. When the Qianlong Emperor went down to Jiangnan, he greatly praised the Bao family, the owner of the archway, calling it "the unparalleled village of filial piety in the world, the first township in Jiangnan".
Wander around the archway, listen to the historical stories, the traditional virtues displayed in it have a certain positive energy, have the positive significance of promoting Chinese civilization, and indeed have places worth learning. For example, the "Yazhen QuanXiaoFang" built by Bao Wenling's wife Jiang Shi, and the "Jiejin Three Winter Fang" built by Jingbiao Bao Wenyuan's step-wife Wu Shi, these two arches representing the "festival" in the Four Virtues, are established to commend the two men and women who, after the death of their husbands, have spent their lives dedicated to cultivating their children and grandchildren, and are still of educational significance to men and women who are excessively pursuing freedom and divorcing at every turn.
However, looking at the cold mottled patterns and words on these two tall stone arches, it is clear that you can see a chilling breath. A "zhen" character and a "festival" character clearly tell us that these two arches are more important to praise the Jiang clan and the Wu clan for their lifetime widowhood after the death of their husbands and maintain their chastity, otherwise there are more women who strive to raise their heirs, and there are more than they do, why can they get this honor, while others do not?
Fortunately, the owners of "Yazhen Quanxiaofang" and "Jiejin Sandongfang" only observed the festival, not the martyrdom.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="67" > martyrdom in the early Ming Dynasty</h1>
The so-called martyrdom, the original meaning refers to the loss of war or the destruction of the country because of the unwillingness to surrender and sacrifice their lives, showing a noble character. In the Ming and Qing dynasties, the meaning of the word underwent great changes, after the death of the husband or fiancé, voluntarily acted as a martyr to accompany his funeral, also known as martyrdom, the so-called martyrs, festival women at that time, that is, this is a disguised martyrdom.
At the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, the cruel system of martyrdom, which was almost extinct in the Central Plains after the Han Dynasty, resurfaced and spread among the court and princes and ministers, mainly targeting women such as wives and concubines of the deceased. Not counting the hundreds of concubines who were lost due to the martyrdom of The Five Dynasties from Hongwu to Jingtai, the martyrdom of the princes and ministers of the Ming Dynasty and the people, almost all of them were named martyrdom, and the wives and concubines of the kings and Xun Qijia were martyred, and many of them would receive gifts.
In the twelfth year of Yongle (1414), Zhu Dongxue, the king of Yingjing, died, and Princess Guo was martyred. In October of the first year of Xuande (1426), Zhu Qiongfeng, the King of Tang Jing, died, and gao shi of Ruzhou County had been elected as a princess, but had not yet been crowned. After Gao heard of Zhu Qiong's death, he was martyred and posthumously honored as a princess of Tang. In September of the sixth year of Xuande (1431), Zhu Youyu, the king of Shujing, died, and the princesses Li and The Huang clan were martyred, and afterwards the Huang clan was given the title of lady of the Shu Jing King.
In October of the third year of the reign (1438), Zhu Zhanxi, the Prince of Wei Gong, died, and Wei Fan was stripped of his sonlessness, and Princess Yang was martyred and given the title of Zhenlie. In May of the fourth year of the reign (1439), Zhu Youyi, the King of ZhouXian, died, and Princess Gong of the Gong clan and the lateral shi, Ou, Chen, Han, Zhang, and Li clans were martyred. When Emperor Mingying heard the obituary, he sent a lieutenant to offer sacrifices, and ordered that Princess Gong be posthumously honored as Zhenlie and the sixth lady as Zhenshun. The following month, Zhu Zhanyong, the King of Yuejing, died, was childless, and Princess Wu was martyred and given the title of Zhenhui. In July of the fifth year of Jingtai (1454), Zhu Zhanxun, the King of Zhao Hui, succeeded concubine Shao shi to be martyred and was given the title of Zhenshun.
This wind also spread to the level of the county king. For example, in the first month of the fourth year of the orthodox reign, Zhu Pan, the king of Xinfeng of Ning Province, died, and Princess Liu of the Liu clan martyred herself and was given the title of Zhenlie. In May of the twelfth year of the reign (1447), Zhu Zitan, the King of Heyin of the Zhou Dynasty, died, and Princess Gong of the Gong clan was martyred and given the title of Zhen su.
At the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, the wives and concubines of the chancellor were also martyred. In July of the nineteenth year of Yongle (1421), Hui'an Bo Jinyu died, and the concubine Tian Shi was martyred and posthumously presented to Shuren. In February of the twenty-second year of Yongle (1424), Ying Cheng's uncle Sun Ying died, and his wife Li Shi was martyred and posthumously honored as a lady. In February of the fourth year of Xuande (1429), Ma Ju, the governor of the Chinese army ZuoDu, died, and the concubine Chen Shi was martyred and posthumously given to Shuren. In the same month, Ji Jie, the governor of the Left Army and the Right Army, died, and the concubine Wang Shi was martyred and posthumously presented to Shuren. In February of the ninth year of Xuande (1434), Zheng Xiang, the Marquis of Wu'an, died, and his concubine Zhang Shi was martyred and posthumously presented to Shuren.
To sum up, it can be seen that even in the early Ming Dynasty, when martyrdom was legalized, martyrdom outside the court was mainly based on the martyrdom of disguised people who were martyred by wives and concubines for their husbands, that is, the so-called martyrdom. Among these many martyrdom and martyrdom events, there were voluntary ones, such as the reason for the martyrdom of Princess Guo of Ying, that Zhu Dong was childless, that Ying Fan was sealed, and that she felt that she was old and helpless, and she was heartbroken to commit suicide the year after her husband's death. Therefore, Guo Shi is not so much a martyrdom as a martyrdom. But more perhaps, I am afraid, it is forced.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="79" > the root cause of women's martyrdom</h1>
At present, many people blame the resurgence of martyrdom in the early Ming Dynasty on the Ming Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang, but Ah Yue consulted the information and found that in the entire Hongwu period, martyrdom only happened once, that is, after the death of The Qin King Zhu Zhuxue in the twenty-eighth year of Hongwu (1395), he forced his princess Wang Shi to be martyred for political reasons. The Yongle Dynasty also did not occur much, but the martyrdom and martyrdom of Emperor Jianwen, Emperor Xuanzong of Ming, and Emperor Yingzong of Ming, who had received education from Cheng Zhu Lixue since childhood, occurred more frequently.
What the? You said that you did not see the record of the martyrdom of the Jianwen Dynasty. Don't forget that the burial of Xiaoling was done in his hands, and it was completely inconsistent with the "funeral rituals, no use of gold and jade" mentioned in the Ming Taizu's testament, so this pot Jianwen Emperor did not carry anyone. As for Emperor Xuanzong and Emperor Yingzong, three of the five court martyrdoms in the early Ming Dynasty occurred at their hands, and the blood stains of their martyrdom were much more than those of the previous dynasty.
On the sixteenth day of the first month of the eighth year of Tianshun (1464), Emperor Mingyingzong died, leaving a testament the day before his death announcing the abolition of the martyrdom system. In July of the tenth year of Chenghua, Zhu Hao, the King of Liao, reported that he had to be buried by the late son Zhu Enjun's successor Feng and Cao. Emperor Mingxianzong Zhu Jianshen replied that "the first emperor was a guest, and Gu Ordered the harem to be martyred, which can be the law of all generations", and refused Zhu Haoyu's request, and the martyrdom system of the Ming dynasty was abolished.
However, in the folk, the disguised martyrdom of martyrdom has become more and more intense, so it is unfair to regard Ming Taizu as the culprit of the recurrence of this vice of martyrdom, otherwise why would the people do this when two consecutive generations of emperors announced the abolition of martyrdom?
In Ah Yue's view, the reason why the martyrdom in the early Ming Dynasty will be rekindled in embers, and the reason why martyrdom in the Ming and Qing dynasties will be popular, is mainly for two reasons: first, the influence of Liaojinyuan customs on the culture of the Central Plains; second, it is the malicious misinterpretation of "starvation and death, and large loss of discipline".
The birth of martyrdom is related to the concept of chastity in ancient Chinese women's ethics. In the Song Dynasty and before, in the traditional cultural genes of China, the concept of chastity for women was not strong, it was not advocated as a national ideology, the social atmosphere was relatively open, and it was common for women to remarry. During the reign of Emperor Zhenzong of Song, there was even a strange incident in which Xiang Minzhong and Zhang Qixian, two great chancellors, were dismissed from the left because they competed to marry a widow. When a country is in charge, the members of the dynasty will make such a mess, and the people can imagine it. Therefore, in the pre-Qin era when martyrdom was popular, the main objects of martyrdom were men such as cronies, slaves, and prisoners of war of deceased nobles, not women.
During this period, there were occasional female martyrdoms, but mostly voluntarily.
However, after less than a hundred years of rule by the Yuan Dynasty, the traditional culture's concept of female chastity has undergone earth-shaking changes and has become extremely conservative, and "starvation is small, and loss of discipline is big" has become a simple view of female chastity. It was during the reign of the Yuan Dynasty that the theories of extreme support for this view became increasingly prosperous.
Therefore, the social ethics of female martyrdom were formed, and the customs and theories of the rulers of the Yuan Dynasty all bore an unshirkable responsibility. Coupled with the Ming Dynasty government's praise for women's observance of festivals and martyrdom, this trend has intensified. In order to gain fame, the main government officials are promoting the growth of this atmosphere for the sake of their own achievements. Countless women have been forced into widowhood or even starved to death.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="95" > the Qing Dynasty, the peak of female martyrdom</h1>
It is not that there are no scholars who have objected to the requirement that women observe the festival, or even martyrdom. The Ming Dynasty anti-Wu hero and literary scholar Gui Youguang once directly denounced the concept of chastity, believing that it was a serious misconduct against etiquette for a woman to observe the festival and die without marrying, and that a woman who was not married should follow her father and should not be from her unmarried husband, and if there was a change in the man, the woman could naturally remarry. However, under the general trend of emphasizing the concept of female chastity in the whole society, these cries are like the praying arms of the car, and they cannot turn over much waves.
After the active advocacy of the Ming Dynasty, into the Qing Dynasty, the society's chastity for women was almost a religious ritual, not only did the husband die to keep the festival, martyrdom became the heavenly principle, even the unmarried husband had to die, and the occasional man flirted with him also had to die. Chastity has become the sword of Damocles hanging over the woman's head, and if the wind blows, it must be killed in the whole festival, otherwise the light will be closed in the ancestral hall, and the heavy will be soaked in the pig cage.
The Government also praised women for their observance. The Regulations on the Work of the Ministry of Rites formulated by the Qing Dynasty, the "Rules and Regulations of the Ministry of Rites", were specially defined in detail to facilitate the identification of whether the chaste and martyr women reported by the people were compliant. "From the age of thirty to the age of fifty, or before the age of fifty and the death of the deceased, her observance of the festival has been for several decades, and the filial piety and the whole poor and pitiful", and the "unmarried virgin" who keeps the virginity for her husband, is called the festival woman. "Death by Kou Shoujie", "Death due to rape and shame because of flirtation", and "Festival women are forced by relatives to marry the deceased, the daughter of the child is not yet married, and the husband is flirting to cause the deceased", called the martyr' daughter.
Every year, the local gentry, the patriarch, and the chief of the armor shall raise up the women and martyrs to the government, and the government will give them praise after examination. To this end, from the capital to the capital, the central and provincial capitals, down to the prefectures and counties, there are ancestral halls for filial piety women in the Jingbiao Festival, the JieXiao Ancestral Hall, and there is a towering Zhenjie Arch outside the temple. All the virtuous and martyred women who have been honored, who have been inscribed in the place before they die, enter the shrine after death, and every spring and autumn, the government will preside over the sacrifice. And the government issued thirty-two "fang silver", which was built by the family. Those whose deeds are particularly prominent, the emperor will also "give the imperial poetry medal plaque satin horse".
The Zhengshi will also list some of the chastity and martyrs among them, highlighting and flaunting them, and the "History of the Ming Dynasty" and the "Draft History of the Qing Dynasty" each have three biographies called "Biographies of The Daughters of Lie", which introduce the deeds of many chaste martyrs at great length.
For example, Guangxu's "Xuancheng County Chronicle" uses a huge volume of six volumes and 329 pages to record 7,314 local chaste martyrs, a small number of brief deeds, and most of them only have the words "xxx wife x clan". These six volumes have a unified title of the volume, the Column Women.
Officially, as a guardian of the science of science, the literati will naturally actively promote it. In the Qing Dynasty's women's teaching books, a large number of contents promoting chastity were added. For example, during the Kangxi and Qianlong dynasties, Lan Dingyuan's "Women's Studies", Chen Hongmo's "Rules for Teaching Women's Testaments", Li Wanfang's "Records of Female Studies" and Wang Xiang's "Female Fan Jielu" and so on.
In this way, the admiration for festival women and martyrs was pushed to the extreme, and the wind became more and more intense, so that thousands of women were either voluntarily or forced to be martyred.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="108" > brutal martyrdom details</h1>
As the saying goes, "it is better to die than to live", and it is quite cruel to let a living life die for the so-called chastity. Moreover, female martyrdom is through claustrophobic in a room, no food, no drink, live starvation, this kind of chronic way of death, it is creepy to think.
Harry was furious that his five-year-old daughter had eaten a piece of pastry given to her by a male servant, and starved her to death for seven days and seven nights, and the starvation of her daughter to death, although it was a fiction of political enemies to smear him, undoubtedly reflected the existence of this phenomenon at that time.
The "History of Rulin" describes the plot of the women's martyrdom in detail. The book mentions forty-eight times that after the death of the son-in-law of Wang Yuhui, a well-known old Xiucai in Huizhou, his third daughter cried and cried about hunger strike.
After learning of his daughter's thoughts, he first advised his daughter-in-law's relatives who did not want their daughter-in-law to be martyred: "I think about it carefully, and if my little daughter wants to be martyred, it is up to him to do it." Since ancient times, 'the heart is hard to stay'. Then he encouraged his daughter: "My son, since you are like this, this is a matter of leaving a name in the history of Qingqing, do I stop you?" You're just doing that. I'll go home today and call your mother to say goodbye to you. ”
With the encouragement and support of Wang Yuhui, the third daughter of the Wang family began a hunger strike and martyrdom despite the persuasion of her mother and mother-in-law who accompanied her. After freshening up every day, he sat in the house with his mother, and did not eat tea or dinner at all. Hungry for six days, she could not get out of bed, and her mother saw the pain in her heart and fell ill. Even so, it did not stop her determination to be martyred.
At this time, what was Wang Yuhui doing? At home, he still read and wrote as usual, and at the same time he was carrying the message of his daughter's martyrdom. Three days after his wife was sent back, he finally waited for the news he wanted. That is to say, in order to be martyred, his third daughter starved herself alive for eight days before starving herself to death.
Wang Yuhui's wife was shocked to hear the news of her daughter's death and immediately cried to death. Wang Yuhui blamed his wife and said, "Your old man is really a nerd!" The third daughter has now become a fairy, how can you cry to him? He died a good death, but I am afraid that I will not die like him in the future! Inuyasha laughed and said, "It's good to die!" Good to die! Laughing, he walked out the door.
See no, martyrdom is a "good topic" that the old show talents who have meritorious names are envious, and it is conceivable that the society supported women's martyrdom at that time.
After the death of Wang Yuhui's third daughter, the local people of course had to solemnly commemorate and warmly praise, local officials had to apply to the imperial court to pay tribute to the martyrs, and literati doctors had to hold various memorial and commemorative activities. Wang Yuhui, as the father who gave birth to such a remarkable daughter and "gave birth to The Color of Lunji", naturally had to be invited to be a guest every time, just like the guests at today's Heroic Model Lecture, decorating the façade.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="124" > Ayue said</h1>
The reactions of the "Outer History of Ru Lin" to the various people before and after the martyrdom of Wang Yuhui's third daughter can be described as three points. It is precisely because the birth of a woman on the Day of Martyrdom not only makes the deceased's mother's family and in-laws flourish, but also makes the local reputation famous and enables local officials to obtain extra points for evaluation, so during the Ming and Qing dynasties, from the official to the people, they all created a strong cultural atmosphere of learning to imitate virgin women.
Under the pressure of the words "starvation is small, and the loss of discipline is big", men enjoy the affair of three wives and four concubines, looking for flowers and asking for willows, but at the same time, they ask the women around them to observe the festival and eat the blood steamed bread of the chaste and martyr women. Under the paralysis of the whole social trend, women will not only consciously make festivals and martyrdom moves, but also act as accomplices for men to persecute women, requiring women around them to observe festivals and martyrdom.
In Ah Yue's view, it is completely wrong to frame the phrase "starvation is small, and the loss of control is big" on women, which is completely wrong and does not conform to its original intention. In the feudal era, it was a patriarchal society, it was difficult for women to participate in social activities such as politics, and it was more of a man's responsibility to defend the country, so this "festival" should probably be borne more by men. Men themselves can't keep the festival, but they push women as victims to the fire pit. What festival did they die? It is nothing more than the feudal poison of "good women do not do things for the second husband".
Even if the "festival" of "starvation is small, and loss of temperance is great" should be applied equally to both sexes: since a woman is to observe the festival for her dead husband and cannot marry again; if a man's wife dies, as a husband, she should also observe the festival for her deceased wife and should not remarry. But what about reality?
Etiquette kills people, but that's it.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="132" > related articles:</h1>
Abolition of Martyrdom Before The Death of Emperor Ming Yingzong: Is It Unbearable to Be Buried, or Is It Unwilling to Be Buried by a Concubine? 》
Zhu Youyi, King of Zhou Xian: The First Person of the Ariake Generation to Oppose Martyrdom