Author: Wang Di
He is currently a Distinguished Professor at the University of Macau
He was a professor of history at Texas A&M University
Co-editor of the English academic quarterly journal "Frontiers of Chinese History" (FHC), etc
Watching history is like watching a movie, we will see panoramas, medium scenes, but more realistic scenes may come from close-ups and details.
Only by putting history under the microscope and listening to the voices of ordinary people can we see a more vivid and flesh-and-blood history and feel the fireworks and temperature of Chinese society.
Different from the kind of history we usually talk about focusing on big people and events from the macro level, it penetrates into all aspects of Chinese society from a microscopic perspective, paying attention to the history created by ordinary people.
Let's first look at these two perspectives that cut into history: macro and micro.
The selection of different protagonists can actually be seen as different ways of observing history, that is, we talk about observing the macro perspective and micro perspective of history.
Let's start with what a macro perspective is.
One of the best examples is the history textbooks we used to learn in school, and history textbooks were compiled from a macro perspective.
Looking at the catalog of history textbooks, we can see a series of major events such as Qin Shi Huang's unification of the world, the Opium War, the founding of the People's Republic of China, etc., focusing on big issues such as politics, economy, war, and state policy, or big figures related to emperors, courts, and feudal officials.
For example, the familiar "Twenty-five History" and the "Zizhi Tongjian" adhere to the concept of heroic history, recording the emperors and generals, and have little to do with ordinary people. Most of the various history books or courses that are now best-selling also have this perspective.
From a macro perspective, the significance of history is to serve the governance of the country, and in these "major events" that have a decisive impact on the trend of history, lessons and development laws are summed up for rulers to learn from, that is, Sima Qian's "changes through ancient and modern times when studying heaven and man".
Of course, big history is important, so do we only need to understand big history?
We're going to talk about another kind of history that does the opposite: microhistory.
The significance of microhistory to history is like looking at cells under a microscope, focusing not on macro events and elite culture, but on the daily lives of ordinary people.
It has two main characteristics, one is to focus on ordinary people, and the other is to have stories and details. If you write about a minister, such as Zeng Guofan or Li Hongzhang, no matter how detailed it is, it cannot be called a microhistory, because it studies the upper echelons.
Many people may ask, what is the point of the history of ordinary people? Everyone will feel that microhistory does not have the thrilling power and significance of big history, and a decision by the emperor can affect the course of a country for a hundred years, what can ordinary people do? Can ordinary people make history?
What can a small person, a small family, tell us? How helpful is it for us to understand Chinese history? I believe that the experiences of ordinary people can reflect the changes of the entire era, and we can truly feel the turning point of the big era from the "small history" of flesh and blood.
Without a microscopic perspective, our history is an unbalanced history, an incomplete history.
Here I want to introduce a small person.
Her story appears from time to time throughout the book, throughout our multiple themes throughout the book. We will see all aspects of Chinese society through an ordinary peasant family during the Republic of China.
This sample of the character comes from the undergraduate thesis of Yang Shuyin, a sociology student at Yenching University in 1944. Yang Shuyin went to Chengdu in the summer of 1943 to do a social work internship and collect information for her graduation thesis. Here, she met Du's second sister-in-law, who is in her 40s, the protagonist of the story. (All references to Shiyang Farm in this book are from Yang Shuyin's "A Rural Handicraft Family: A Field Study of the Du Family in Shiyang Farm", which will not be noted in the future.) ）
Du's second sister-in-law's family lives in a place called Shiyang Farm, and "farm" means market, so Shiyang Farm is a street full of shops. The Du family is engaged in the traditional handicraft textile industry, making a living by processing raw silk and selling silk. How can such an ordinary farmer become a window into Chinese society?
Let me give you an example. Du's second sister-in-law was born around 1900, and in the more than 40 years from 1900 to 1944, many major events that changed Chinese history occurred at the macro level, such as the Boxer Rebellion, the Xinhai Revolution, the warlord chaos, the Northern Expedition, the Anti-Japanese War and so on.
After delving into Du's second sister-in-law's life, we will find that these events have hardly had a direct and decisive impact on her life. In the following chapters, we will see the process of a female individual making her family's economic situation better and better through her own efforts, and she herself changes from a silk weaver to a small individual boss.
Is the experience of Second Sister-in-law Du and her family part of China's great history? Is there a connection between their individual lives and the fate of their country?
On the surface, it seems to be unrelated, but it is actually closely related. Sichuan's silk weaving industry has been continuously hit by foreign goods in modern times and is gradually declining, but the outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War has made it difficult for foreign goods to enter the mainland, creating very good business opportunities for silk weavers like the Du family. Thus, the great destiny of the nation is wonderfully linked to the individual and the family.
This is just one aspect of the Du family's story, and in this book we will extend from different aspects of the daily life of this peasant family to various themes, and delve into the rich and colorful history of the Chinese people.
If we combine macro and micro perspectives to explore history, what interesting phenomena will we find?
Sometimes, seemingly unrelated events can influence each other, and this is where the micro and macro combine to explore the wonders of history. For example, some historians have linked the 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora on the Indonesian island of Java to the decline of the Qing Dynasty.
In history, 1815 was during the Jiaqing period of the Qing Dynasty, and the volcanic eruption in Indonesia had a huge impact on the global climate, and the global temperature plummeted. This effect was felt the following year, when in 1816, the "year without summer", famine swept the world, and many parts of China's Yunnan Province actually snowed in the middle of summer in July, and the crops were not harvested, and the great famine swept through.
In the context of food scarcity, opium poppy was introduced and popularized from Myanmar and other places in Yunnan. As opium cultivation became more widespread, large amounts of arable land were squeezed out, followed by a series of natural disasters and even unrest. These individual events are like a butterfly effect, ultimately driving the bigger picture. We know that opium was an important driver of the collapse of the Qing government and the chaos that followed China.
Although I still have considerable doubts about such causation, this line of thinking is very interesting. This tells us that some seemingly unrelated individual events have hidden, internal logical connections that may affect later historical processes.
When most people only pay attention to macro history, if we find a unique way to observe through the perspective of micro and macro, can we have an additional layer of interpretation and cognition of history than others?
But what we need to understand is that the study of microscopic perspective is quite difficult.
The difficulties are mainly due to the collection and interpretation of information. Microhistory was born in the 70s of the 20th century. In medieval Europe, the church had a lot of power and had to manage everything, and some interrogations would last for several years, leaving a wealth of historical data. In Italy, in particular, the Inquisition left a large number of interrogation records. But in China, it's hard to find similar records. China's history has always been written by the elite, and little attention is paid to the recording and preservation of information on the lower classes and ordinary people.
Macro and micro, big history and small history, there is no question of which is more important, only by organically combining them can we see the full picture of history.
Since 1980, Wang Di has been regarded by more and more people as "the first person in Chinese microhistory" because he continues to establish a biography for Chinese society and ordinary people from a micro perspective. And "Doing Well: Chinese People and Society from the Perspective of Microhistory" is not only the culmination of his more than 40 years of microhistorical research, but also has three major characteristics that must be mentioned:
● Macro insight + micro consideration, a "history of anti-cannibalism":
In "Doing Well", Wang Di not only macroscopicly analyzes many aspects of ancient Chinese politics, culture, society, beliefs, folk and so on, but also different from the "no man's land" in the social history of Dajihua, through the rich details of real events such as "how a village is established, how the market is launched, and why the big locust tree in Hongdong, Shanxi Province came from", he restores real people who cannot be left in history, but have flesh and blood.
●Economic and Political Science + Sociology + Folklore + Anthropology, a microscopic social history of China with a comprehensive perspective:
Although this book is a masterpiece of microhistory, it comprehensively uses the analytical paradigms of various disciplines, especially from the perspective of anthropology and folklore, which are less referenced in social history.
Southern Weekend once praised: "This book has its own academic intentions, but I prefer to read it as a social, economic, political or even daily history of the teahouse."
●Easy to read and more thought-provoking:
The biggest impression of this book is that there are countless interesting things that people can't help but endure, and it is also thought-provoking and sighing.
People can feel the "true breath" of the ancient people, and can find their own sense of existence in historical details such as "after power interferes in people's daily lives, people respond", and reflect on how to show the dignity and answer of "doing nothing" in the current situation of "being done nothing".