Zhou Yumin: Secret Party and Nationalism

In his book Saving History from the Nation-State: A Study of Nationalist Discourse and Modern Chinese History, Duzanchi devoted a chapter to the relationship between nationalism and Secret Associations in China. He argues: "Not only does the secret society party's racism differ from the revolutionary social Darwinist racial discourse. And in some ways, racism is imposed or imposed on these secret parties. This process of imposition is itself an integral part of the great discourse of modern nationalist passions. [1] (P107) Such a bold assertion from a macroscopic point of view of the relationship between the revolutionaries and the party in the late Qing Dynasty is indeed thought-provoking.

However, Duzanchi also had some noteworthy problems in emphasizing the influence of modern nationalist discourse on the Secret Society. When this "modern nationalist passionate discourse" spread in the late Qing Dynasty, what really changed the discursive structure of the people of the time about the Secret Society? Have traditional discourses lost their place and become insignificant? Is the vast amount of knowledge we know about the history of the Qing Dynasty from Sun Yat-sen, Tao Chengzhang, and other revolutionaries in the late Qing Dynasty a kind of historical truth? These issues not only involve the study of party history itself, but also the issue of historical methods and concepts, which deserve in-depth discussion.

One

The first texts duzanchi analyzed were Tao Chengzhang's Statutes of the Longhua Society and the Examination of the Origin of the Church. However, it should be pointed out that the first to include the Secret Society Party in the "Modern Nationalist Passion Discourse" was not Tao Chengzhang, but Ou Yujia.

The establishment of a new type of nation-state through the self-reliance of the provinces was a current of thought that surged in the early 20th century. In "New Guangdong", Ou Yujia regarded the "united secret society" as one of the three major strategies of "Guangdong self-reliance". He analyzed the distribution of secret societies in China more comprehensively and concluded:

Private meetings are flooded in the Chinese headquarters, overflowing overseas, holding their enthusiasm for reviving the Han, not making good use of them, and will not meet each other, but attack and kill each other, which is enough for the benefit of the fishermen. If there is a person who has the hope of the people, and if there is a good union, it is close to the strong headquarters, and far away from the foreign insult, what is the difficulty? At the beginning of the French Revolution, his people were not high-class masters, but they originated from the private ears of the people. The prodigal son of Japan, will he be loyal and righteous? Only the leader of the Restoration, who can exercise and think that it is just right, so he becomes a chivalrous warrior. However, this secret society is also said to be one of the keys to self-reliance. [2] (P300)

Judging from the content of the article, Ou Yujia's understanding of the secret associations in the late Qing Dynasty was more comprehensive and in-depth than that of Tao Chengzhang. "South of Fujian and Guangdong, the names are Sanhe and Sandian, and the seven provinces of Yangzijiang are called the Brotherhood of Elders, among which there is a famous Guan Emperor Society, which is also attached; although the rules are different, the purpose is the same." ...... The people of the coastal provinces, who live in exile in the foreign countries, keep more of their legacy and expand their legacy. He also specifically pointed out the huge force of the Qinglian Sect in the southwest. For the secret associations north of the Yangtze River, in addition to the Brotherhood of Elders, Ou Yujia also pointed out that there were Qing Gang, Big Knife Society, Small Knife Society, White Lotus Sect, Zai Li Sect, Guangren Sect and other names, and he also noticed horse thieves in the northeast and Islam in the northwest. He believes that among the many private meetings, only the Green Gang has no anti-Qing purpose. [2] (P296~303) Apparently, Ou Yujia examined secret associations in various places from the perspective of how to use the forces of secret association in the process of provincial independence. Judging by the object of the text, he is dealing with radical intellectuals rather than general secret associates.

Under the premise of determining that the Manchu-Han contradiction was the basic ethnic contradiction of the Qing Dynasty, Ou Yujia questioned the Legend of Xilu within Hongmen:

When I examine this matter, the official letter does not contain it, and whether there is or not, but the reason for seeking seems to be difficult to understand. Cover Manchuria to destroy China, harm our Han people, I Han people hate it to the bone, hope that there are those who can attack, Guo Xifan is strong, should help to destroy Manchuria, that is, can not help, but also willing to serve the enemy? If they are willing to serve the enemy, they will be deceived and killed, and they themselves deserve it, what does it have to do with our Han nationality? Why avenge one man? I do not intend this to be due to false rumors, or other trusts. Otherwise, it is not in harmony with righteousness to repay the great vengeance of all the Han chinese people in China, and it is even more difficult to believe in the feelings of justice because of the fact that one of the people who was deceived because of his service in Manchuria. This is a superior character, so there can be no doubt about it also. However, Mr. Chen Jinnan is really a deep and stoic congregation from Haojie, who can sprinkle a kind of cloth and be born in the whole country, but his name, I am afraid that the Old Man of the Ming Dynasty may not be the real name. [2] (P296-297)

First of all, we look at the discourse power of nationalism from ou yujia's questioning of the legend of Siru. In the Book of The Heaven and Earth Society, the texts of the Legend of Xilu are similar (Note: The various versions of the existing "Tale of Xilu" are found in Luo Ergang's "Records of the Heaven and Earth Society", Zhongzheng Bookstore, 1943 edition; the Qing History Materials Series "Heaven and Earth Society" (I), the 1980 edition of the Chinese Min University Press; Geng Yuliang, Chen Renhua, et al., "Compilation of Guangxi Hui Party Materials", Guangxi People's Publishing House, 1989 edition; Xiao Yishan's "Historical Materials of Modern Secret Society", pp. 178-185, reprinted by Yuelu Book Society in 1986. The gist of it is: During the Kangxi Dynasty, There was a Violation of the Boundary by Xilufan and disturbed the Central Plains. The Qing army went to war and was repeatedly defeated. The emperor then issued a list of texts, whether military or civilian, etc. and monks, there are those who can be equal, that is, bounty marquises. The 128 monks of the Shaolin Temple in Fujian unveiled the imperial list, without the need for a soldier from the imperial court, only to ask Zheng Junda to relieve the grain. Three months later, the monks returned to the dynasty in victory. The Kangxi Emperor was overjoyed and asked for a bounty to be crowned marquis, but the monks pushed back, asking for a robe, and returned to the monastery to practice. Soon, there were traitors who played Kangxi, and the shaolin temple monks were few and far between, and if they had different intentions, it was inevitable that they would be a problem for the imperial court. Duan Jun then killed Zheng Junda and sent soldiers to burn the Shaolin Temple. The monks desperately broke through, and finally only five people fled to the clouds, and when they saw an incense burner and a ingot, and the words "anti-Qing and restoration" at the bottom, they inserted grass as incense and swore an oath to heaven. Then he defected to Wan Yunlong of Changlin Temple, worshiping him as the eldest brother, and Zhu Hongzhu also came after Emperor Chen Jinnan and Emperor Mingshenzong, so he raised a banner and rebelled. After the uprising failed and Wan Yunlong was killed in battle, the five people followed Chen Jinnan's plan, divided into provinces, developed organizations, and waited for the opportunity to launch an uprising, anti-Qing and restoration, for the five ancestors of Hongmen. The Heaven and Earth Society then spread everywhere.

For the Silu story, historians have spent considerable effort to investigate the background of the times, geographical location and many other aspects in order to discover the mystery of the origin of the Heaven and Earth Society. But for the "discourse" of the text itself, there is no in-depth analysis. This is a primitive text of a time when modern nationalist discourse had not yet invaded the realm of secret chinese associations, and only after examining the discourse used in this original text can we see the process of discourse transformation, otherwise Duzanchi's argument can only be a hypothesis.

The Silu story unfolds a complex discursive structure. From Xilufan (some texts use "XiluGuo"[3] (P178, P180)) to the Shaolin Temple monks unveiling the expedition, the central versions of the discourse are different, roughly divided into two types: the Xilufan rebellion and the Xiluguo invasion. For example, the earlier Yao Da Lamb's Book (found in the sixteenth year of Jiaqing): "During the Kangxi Period, there was a rebellion in Xilufan"; "Anti-Qing Restoration of Ming Genmiao No. 1": "Xilufan rebelled during the Kangxi Period". Other versions are different, such as the "Xilu Narrative": "Since the noon year of Kangxi Jia, the king of Xilu ordered the general Peng Longtian to lead troops into China"; "Xilu Preface": "In the noon year of Kangxi Jia, the state of Xilu violated the borders, disturbed the Central Plains, and the people wandered and harmed the living beings". One is "rebellion" and "rebellion", and the other is "breaking into China" and "violating the boundaries", and the subtext of discourse is very different. The premise of rebellion and rebellion is to recognize the Emperor of the Qing Dynasty as a monarch and to quell the chaos out of the righteousness of the monarch; and "breaking into China" and "violating the boundary" are defined as wars between the two countries, and the expedition is out of national righteousness. The discursive differences between the two texts show the process of "rationalization" of the narrative structure. Recognizing the monarchy of the Qing Dynasty and serving the monarch in suppressing rebellion, the relationship between the monks and the Qing court was included in the category of the righteousness of the monarchs; then the "anti-Qing restoration" and the transfer of loyalty to the Ming were on the same footing as the Xilufan rebellion. Such a narrative structure obviously has an inherent logical contradiction. Changed to Xilu's invasion, so that the monks went out of the national righteousness, they extracted the original text of the monks' righteousness to the Qing Dynasty, and there is no longer any contradiction with the following content. Therefore, I believe that the text of the Siru State of Violating boundaries must come from after the sirufan trespassing text. (Note: However, we can be sure that various texts of the "Siru State Violation" appeared before the middle of the 19th century and have nothing to do with the later so-called "nation-state" discourse.) In 1866, Streeger wrote The Study of the Heaven and Earth Society, which used one of these texts. See Xue Clarified Translation, reprinted by Hebei People's Publishing House in 1990. From the evolution of the Xilu story itself, "Xilu" has a process of changing from "Xi Chuang" to "Xi Yu" and "Xi Lu", and "Xi Chuang" refers to Li Zicheng. See He Zhiqing, "Research on the Origin of the Heaven and Earth Society", pp. 84-87, Social Science Literature Publishing House, 1996. The account of the Qing court's inability to resist the Silu state also contains doubts about the Qing Dynasty's ability to perform the state's function of defending against foreign aggression.

The core of the plot of "Burning the Shaolin Temple" is the ungratefulness of the Qing Dynasty, which provides a moral basis for the monks to turn to "anti-Qing and restore the Ming". The shaolin monks who had meritorious deeds in suppressing rebellion or resisting enemies, but were hunted down and killed by the Qing court, not only highlighted the violence of the Qing court, but also contained serious moral accusations. Under the text of "Xilu State Violates the Boundary", in ancient China, there was a saying that "Shamen does not worship the king", monks are not constrained by the morality of loyalty to the king, there is no conflict of moral principles, and for the ungratefulness of the Qing court, the monks revolted to take revenge, which can be described as "rebellion is justified". The author of the text did not introduce the Manchu-Han contradiction as the basis for his "rebellion justification", as Ou Yujia had hoped. In order to emphasize this point, Schleger's text even stated through the mouth of the abbot of the Shaolin Temple the motives of the outstanding monks to go to war: "To quell the chaos in the West, one is to save the people from water and fire, and the other is to maintain the imperial dynasty, then our reputation will surely spread throughout the world, immortal throughout the ages, and our merits are not small!" [4] (P53) Later, Wan Yunlong, a monk of Changlin Temple, asked the five monks about the reason for the uprising, and the five monks replied: "The Qing Emperor has no way, and will take revenge on my Shaolin Temple and burn him to death. ”[3](P184)

The monks revolted against the Qing Dynasty and restored the Ming Dynasty, and the focus of their discourse was to emphasize that "anti-Qing and restoration" was Providence. The monks are taking revenge, so why do they want to restore the Qing Dynasty? The text still does not adopt the words that Ou Yujia expected to repay the deep hatred of the Han people, but speaks of divine revelation. This divine revelation is manifested in the fact that after the Shaolin Temple was destroyed by fire, the Buddha's magic helped to rescue 18 people from fleeing; the five monks found an incense burner engraved with "anti-Qing and restoration" at sea (Note: According to the "Xilu Narrative", when the five monks were righteous, in order to confirm providence, they took the bowl as a basket, and prayed on the same day: "Throw on the stone, if you can reverse the day of the Qing restoration, the bowl will not be broken." "The fruit of the bowl is not broken, and the monks rejoice," thinking that there was retribution for this vengeance. See Xiao Yishan, "Historical Materials of Modern Secret Society", p. 179. Finally, the little lord Zhu Hongzhu appeared, confirming the providence. The plot of the Five Patriarchs' Righteousness and Support for the Lord of the Ming Dynasty leads to the moral code of "loyalty and righteousness".

Looking at the narrative structure of the Xilu story, the section on the Shaolin Temple monks' expedition to Xilu emphasizes that the monks have grace in the Qing court; the section burning the Shaolin Temple emphasizes the ungratefulness of the Qing court; and the section on the uprising of the monks emphasizes the providence and loyalty and righteousness of the anti-Qing restoration. The whole text adopts a broad Confucian discourse system, with the moral concept of loyalty and the concept of mandate of heaven as its two centers.

The concept of loyalty and righteousness and the concept of the Mandate of Heaven can be corroborated from many popular or classical ancient sources, and does not need to be repeated here. What I am interested in is that in Ou Yujia's view, the Manchu-Han ethnic contradictions themselves can be the reason for opposing the Qing, so why should they be explained in the legend of the Heaven and Earth Society through a set of words that the Qing court is ungrateful and anti-Qing and restoration is providence, which we see as very complicated today?

At the time of the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the Manchus and Han Dynasties launched a national conflict of blood and fire. After the Qing Dynasty settled in Beijing, it took a series of measures to suppress and guard against the anti-Qing consciousness and actions of the Han people; the remnants of the Ming Dynasty in the south resisted for a long time, all of which formed the realistic basis of "anti-Qing and restoration". However, after the remnants of the Southern Ming Dynasty were eliminated and the Qing Dynasty established national rule, ethnic contradictions tended to ease, and the maintenance and development of the anti-Manchu consciousness of the Han nationality needed theoretical support. In the view of Ou Yujia and others who accepted the modern concept of nationality, the situation that ethnic differences are self-reliant reasons for rebellion was not a sufficient reason among the Han Chinese in the 17th or 18th centuries, on the contrary, starting from the traditional Confucian concept, in the case of the Qing Dynasty's monarchy having been determined, anti-Manchu itself was precisely a problem that needed to be argued. Problems arising from the traditional Confucian discourse system can only be demonstrated and dissolved by the Confucian discourse system.

In Confucianism, fame is at the heart of ethical and moral codes. Filial piety is the ethical code for the son to handle the relationship between father and son, and loyalty is the ethical code for the son to handle the relationship between the king and the subject. According to this criterion, the throne of the Qing Dynasty was determined, and the subjects could only be loyal. According to this deduction, anti-fullness is a great act of rebellion. In view of this theoretical difficulty, Lü Liuliang proposed that the "Yixia Discernment" is a higher ethical standard than the "righteousness of the monarch", which is anti-Manchu. However, this proposition of his does not have a solid foundation in Confucianism (Note: Although Confucius had the consciousness of Yixia's discernment ("Micro-tube Zhong, I was sent to the left!"), it did not mean to put this above the righteousness of the monarch. ), did not have a wide influence among the upper class scholars.

On the contrary, in traditional Chinese thought, the Mandate of Heaven has always been a mystical concept of superiority over the righteousness of kings and subjects. In the Yin Shang era, the king wanted to "ke jing the Mandate of Heaven"[5]; the reason why the Zhou people replaced Yin Shang was also attributed to the Mandate of Heaven: "Hao Tian has a destiny, and the second queen (referring to King Wen and King Wu) receives it"[6] ("Zhou Song Hao Tian has a destiny"), "God has been ordained, Hou Yu Zhou". [6] (Daya King Wen) Thus, the Mandate of Heaven became an important basis for the legitimacy of dynastic rule.

In Confucianism, the Mandate of Heaven is the highest moral code. "Only the sky is great, only Yao is it." [7] The king's title of "Son of Heaven" stipulates that he must obey the "Father's Heavenly ,...... The ethical code of the Son's Tao"[8]. "Cultivating nature and cultivating one's life" to achieve the realm of the unity of heaven and man is also the destination of Confucian moral cultivation. [9] In Confucianism, the Mandate of Heaven is not an illusory, unknowable mysterious thing, Confucius called himself "Fifty and Know the Mandate of Heaven", Mencius advocated "doing things through self-cultivation" to "do heaven", all of which are understood and grasped through moral cultivation. By extension, if a king rules without way, without benevolence or righteousness, then he can be overthrown. The destruction of Xia Jie by Shang Tang and the king of Wu were all affirmed by Confucianism. (Note: Mencius said: "I have heard of a husband and wife, but I have not heard of a murderer.") Thus, in the view of the pre-Qin Confucians, as long as the monarch was morally corrupt, people could depose him or even send him to the guillotine. Song Ru tried to dispel this concept, after all, it is difficult to justify itself, and it is inevitable that it will be blamed for future generations. For example, wang Tingzhen, a Qing dynasty, once accused Song Ru of saying:

If you think that you are a saint, you will be the best of the people, and the future generations will take it, and Tang Wu will do the opposite to the qi, why do you act perversely? With the subject of the king, the universal righteousness of the world, not to the point of no way, do not dare to cross the line, and what is the service of King Wen? I can't figure it out. Even if su shi discusses that the king of Wu is not a saint, and the confusion of the servant is also. If a man commits a crime against a king, he will be a great evil, and he will not be a saint! He also heard that Song Ru "if the Mandate of Heaven is not extinguished one day, he is a monarch, and if he is not extinguished for a day, he is a single husband", and the confusion of servants is even worse. What is the destiny of the husband, the human heart is only. The separation of people's hearts is not a day's reason. Now that it is a day to break it, what is the result of this day? And do not know the humanity, but also know the Heavenly Dao? (Note: Wang Tingzhen: Preface to the Record of The Examination Letter, in Gu Jiegang, ed., Cui Dongbi Testament, p. 923, Shanghai Ancient Books Publishing House, 1983.) Wang Tingzhen went on to say that as his knowledge grew, he had an answer to this question, that is, "the world of feudalism, the world of non-counties and counties." Cheng Tang, Wen, Wu Fei Jie, and Shu Zhi Chen. Mencius and Qi Xuan's Yunjunchen are especially divided into the name of Zhengshuo, rather than the ministers of the later dynasties who established the lord of the dynasty, and the name of the emperor is entrusted, and the second is also the one who is in the crowd. This experience of Wang Tingzhen is quite in line with the essence of the historical method, but it is not the argument of Song Ru itself. )

From this, it can be seen that the knowledge of the Heavenly Dao (Mandate of Heaven) by humanity and the legitimacy of the monarch's status are the basic viewpoints of Confucianism for more than two thousand years, which are deeply rooted in the hearts of the people. Attacking those in power for immorality has always been the basic means of trying to replace them. (Note: Lü Liuliang also attacked the Yongzheng Emperor's loss of morality.) Yongzheng refuted Lü Liuliang's huayi debate in the "Mystery of the Great Righteousness" and quoted the scriptures and was righteous and stern; but when defending himself morally, he had to reconcile with his opponents with factual reasoning, and he was on the defensive, and suddenly lost the imperial atmosphere of the king. Yongzheng did do something stupid, but it exposed the state of mind of a Chinese emperor in the Confucian context when he was morally accused. The "Xilu Story" of the Tiandihui seems to be a fictional set of Plot of the Qing Soldiers "Burning the Shaolin Temple", and its true connotation is to describe how the Qing court was "ungrateful" and deviated from human morality through the image, so as to elicit the basis of the Mandate of Heaven for "anti-Qing and restoration". The discourse system of the Confucian concept of mandate of heaven prescribes this narrative structure of the "Silu story", and this narrative structure naturally conveys this Confucian concept to people. This was considered "reasonable" by the story writers of the early Qing Dynasty, but it was questioned by Ou Yujia in the early 20th century, who asked the question not because of the plot of the "Xilu Story", but because of its unreasonableness, from which we can appreciate the changes in the human world and the transformation of the discourse system at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century.

Two

In analyzing the propaganda and elaboration of the purpose of the Hongmenhui Party by the revolutionaries in the late Qing Dynasty, we must certainly see the influence of the modern nationalist trend in the West, but the nationalist trend of the late Qing Dynasty is not entirely foreign, and it is mixed with a rich Chinese historical heritage. The convergence of modern nationalism with traditional Chinese national concepts is itself an objective historical process of the development and flow of Chinese nationalism. If we further ask, why did the ancestors of the HongmenHui Party impose such a false story on the Qing court? We naturally conclude that, in postmodernist terms, this is just a Confucian discursive structural expression of anti-Manchu consciousness.

Mr. Lu Simian has long pointed out that the nationalist view of history is different from the history and influence of China and Europe. "Borrowing history to inspire the heart of loving the country and the nation is also harmful to using it too much." ...... This is the case in Europe, in the history of the countries in the second half of the 19th century, and germany is particularly serious. Asia's emerging Japan, this drawback is also quite serious. Chinese had this drawback, which originated after the Song Dynasty. Since the Song Dynasty, China has gradually deepened the oppression of foreign nationalities, so nationalism has gradually flourished, which is the proper meaning of the topic. However, emotion and reason must complement each other, focus on feelings, and obliterate reason, which is bad. [10] (P17) This is a world-minded view put forward by a Chinese historian in the first half of the 20th century, who not only profoundly pointed out the profound influence of nationalism on historiography, but also pointed out that the origins of Chinese nationalism did not come from Europe, but from the deepening of foreign oppression after the Song Dynasty.

Duzanchi spent considerable time studying how Tao Chengzhang, Sun Yat-sen, and others used the concepts of modern nationalism and democratic revolution to transform the history of the Hui Party (a contribution of his, of course), but may have overlooked another aspect of the problem, that is, the influence of traditional Chinese nationalism on them. Their text itself is also a dialogue between tradition and modernity, a continuation of tradition in modernity, and a projection of tradition in modernity.

Let's first analyze Tao Chengzhang's "Statutes of the Longhua Society". This text first seeks the theoretical basis for revolution and nationalism from the Confucian doctrine, and refutes the foolishness of Song Confucianism. Then, the example of foreign nation-states is used to illustrate the rationality of national revolutions, and then to link the Western democratic system with the ancient Chinese political ideal of selecting the best and the best and the world for the public. This line of thought reflects the process of linking and transforming traditional national concepts and Confucian concepts with modern nationalities and democracy. Tao Chengzhang did not avoid the inherent contradiction between Confucianism after the Song Dynasty on the issue of the righteousness of the monarch and the distinction between Huayi, but from Confucius's evaluation of Guan Zhong, he drew the conclusion that the expulsion of barbarians was itself in line with "benevolent" virtue. The distinction between Huayi and Yi is higher than the righteousness of kings and subjects, and in the era of Lü Liuliang, it was necessary to repeatedly argue and not to pass, and when it came to Tao Chengzhang, it had become a natural thing because of the "traffic of various countries". The projection of modern Western nationalist ideas into the minds of Chinese traditional knowledge elements must be digested and reflected by their existing cultural knowledge structures. Analyzing this text, we see that before the modern discourse power establishes its authority, there is a process of digestion and tolerance of the traditional discourse power. Therefore, The various wonderful uses of Tao Chengzhang that Duzanchi said that Tao Chengzhang tried to "separate the real primitive Chinese culture from state power" such as making it "a treasure house of democracy and revolution", "making the Chinese nation stand shoulder to shoulder with the most powerful country in the world", "linking revolutionaries with secret parties", and even having the possibility of pre-ruling out "pro-Manchu sentiment", etc., are very far-fetched to read. Because he sees some of the mindsets formed by historical and cultural traditions as a carefully planned structure in the new discourse system. The relationship between the righteousness of the monarch and the distinction between Huayi and Huayi is a real question that Confucianism must answer in the face of the manchu and Han ethnic contradictions. Tao Chengzhang Zhang Dahuayi's discernment emphasizes that Confucius was originally a sage of the Han nationality, which was influenced by modern nationalism and was also the meaning of the problem of cracking the traditional ethical conflict. As for the grafting of the political ideals of the ancient Chinese sages with Western democracy, it is not Tao Chengzhang's invention, but a manifestation of the "Western Learning In the Source" trend of thought since the middle of the 19th century (Note: For various theories on the "Western Learning In the Source", see The Third Chapter of Ma Feng's "Cultural Thought And Modern China", Guangming Daily Publishing House, 2004 edition. This is precisely one of the various forms of traditional nationalism that Mr. Lu Simian calls the Chinese type.

Duzanchi noticed that Tao Chengzhang's Examination of the Origins of the Church adopted a textual strategy very different from that of the Statutes of the Longhua Society, adopting "the development of a purely racial state subject, which is not combined with the Confucian concept of tianxia, but is rooted in the evolutionary theory of Darwinism in modern society." (Note: Duzanchi, Saving History from the Nation-State, p. 120.) Duzanchi asserted that Tao stated in his conclusion that his purpose in writing this article was to tell comrades that "the Secret Society Party is more rational and politically conscious than the Church, and therefore the Republican Revolution should form an alliance with the Secret Society Party." Judging from Tao Wen's conclusion, Tao Shi did not have this intention. Indeed, in Examination of the Origins of the Church, we can clearly feel Tao's domineering domineering of racist discourse in his narrative of the evolution of Chinese history. However, in parsing this text, Duzanchi may have been too convinced that a discourse would distort the facts in the process of establishing its power, and therefore neglected the analysis of the facts to which the discourse refers. For example, his accusation that Tao Chengzhang called the party "the main republic of the political system" is an example.

After its establishment, a discourse system has its own specific vocabulary, and even if these words have existed in ancient times, they have their own specific meanings within their discourse system. Therefore, when historical events are incorporated into the new discourse system, they often lose their truth due to word variations. However, in the process of the formation of the discourse system, the meaning of many new words is not as certain as later, and the facts they refer to need to be carefully analyzed by experts, and cannot be interpreted with stereotyped discourse meanings. Tao Chengzhang's use of the word "republic" is probably like this. (Note: The meaning of the word "republic" was not clear to the ancients.) In 841 BC, the people revolted, and King Li of Zhou fled and implemented a republic, which is said to be the meaning of the Duke of Zhou and the summoning of public administration; the other is said to be the regent of the Republican King. Sun Yat-sen proposed the "republic of the five nationalities" during the Xinhai Revolution, which refers to the meaning of unity and joint management of the country, and unity and unity are the original meaning of "republic". Tao Chengzhang's statement that the party is "still republican" does not advocate a republican political system, but refers to a state of party organization. This needs to be seen in correspondence with his analysis of the teachings.

The [Sect] is still autocratic, with the archbishop being the most honored and the bishop second,...... All the powers of the sects are unified, and although they are thousands of miles apart, they can be controlled remotely. ...... [The party] is the main republican, the allies are treated as one, and there are many things that are secret, so the party is the easiest to expand, and the promotion of its staff is also easy, so the establishment of the branch is also easy. For this reason, the insurgents are often in constant contact. However, the mountains and churches are divided, and although there is traffic, there is no moderation, so those who receive it are often widowed. [11] (P109, Tao Chengzhang, "Examination of the Origin of the Church")

Obviously, the power of the sect's organization is concentrated in the archbishop, which is the special meaning of Tao Chengzhang's word "autocracy" here; the party and the mountain hall are lined up, do not control each other, and act in alliance when things happen, and the special meaning of the word "republic" here has nothing to do with the existence of various hierarchies within the mountain hall. If we confuse the "republic" here with the "democratic republic" and think that Tao Chengzhang imposed the "democratic republic" on the party, it is a misreading of the literature. There is no such thing as the "burden of discourse" that Duzanchi calls the Secret Society's party.

Similarly, Duzanchi's understanding of the term "equality" used by Tao Chengzhang is obviously too modern. In Du Zanqi's view, "equality" should have no hierarchy, while in Tao Chengzhang's view, "equality" is equality under a virtual family relationship: "The purpose of membership, taking the law Liu Guanzhang, both revere righteousness and strive for egalitarianism, so they are called brothers to each other." Liu Guanzhang's description of brotherhood does not negate the distinction between the three men's ranks, which is completely different from the modern concept of equality. When modern discourse first became popular, what foreign students with new terms said may be another name for old things. If we deconstruct these words in modernity and add meanings that they did not otherwise have, we may confuse the facts.

Three

The discourse system will naturally affect people's thinking and understanding of social reality and historical problems, and in the process of transformation of the discourse system, it will also prompt people to reconstruct history according to the new discourse system. This kind of reconstruction is not only from the simple needs of the discourse system, but often from the needs of social reality.

In "New Guangdong", Ou Yujia presented a magnificent picture of the distribution of secret societies in China, and raised the question of nationalism about the history of secret associations, which became the beginning of the later revolutionaries to reconstruct the history of secret societies. His nationalist questioning of the Heaven and Earth Society stemmed both from his nationalist discourse system and from his motives for using secret associations. Although Ou Yujia was a disciple of Kang Youwei, at the turn of the last century, he was once the fiercest revolutionary in the royalist party. When he was a teenager, he was in his hometown of Guangdong Guishan to "secretly meet with Yizhong Party Tour" and "famous toilet membership". [12] (P30, P111) In the summer of 1899, he and Liang Qichao and other "thirteen Taibao" formed a coalition on Enoshima in Japan, advocating a coalition with Sun Yat-sen's faction and advocating revolution in the Qinghui Bao. After arriving in the Americas, he also "contacted the members of the Zhigongtang as a member of the Heaven and Earth, calling the Kang Party a royalist, but in fact it was a revolution, and the purpose of Hongmen's anti-Qing and restoration of the Ming Dynasty was the same destination, and they should cooperate with each other to save the country together." [12] (P111) Why the revolution and the anti-Qing restoration of the Ming Dynasty ended in the same way, Ou Yujia did not have a conclusive argument. After the publication of the "New Guangdong" article, Kang Youwei was greatly angered and wanted to dismiss him from the division. Let alone a lost dog, Ou Yujia re-lined the door wall, attacked Sun Yat-sen, and was despised by the revolutionary party. From 1908 to 1909, the royalist party cajoled and spread the news that Ou Yujia had "plotted chaos through business", plotted the independence of the two provinces, and plotted revolutionary acts. [13] (P381) It seems that Ou Yujia did not abandon the political propositions and implementation strategies he put forward in the article "New Guangdong".

Ou Yujia questioned the nationalism of the "Xilu Story" of the Heaven and Earth Society, and then put forward zheng chenggong's founding of the society: "Zheng Chenggong took it as his mission to revive the Ming Dynasty and destroy Manchuria, and during his reign of twenty years, he did not rise to the army to conquer Fujian and Zhejiang, so far he was not happy, he also cared about the people left and right, there was no great talent, it was difficult to compete with the Manchu Qing by force, the heirs were not material, Taiwan was also difficult to rely on for a long time, and he had to avenge the Ninth Dynasty, but the heavens and the earth would be open." [2] (P296) By Tao Chengzhang, the history of the origin of the Heaven and Earth Society was reconstructed on the basis of a nationalist view of history:

The ancestors of my Chinese originally moved in from the West, and the horns stood among the barbarians and the barbarians, and they were unique in their own accord, so the idea of self-defense was most consolidated in the hearts of the people. All the ancient heroes whom I Chinese worship, such as the Three Emperors, Five Emperors, Three Kings, Five Lords, etc., will be like Ying Long, Zhu Rong, Gao Tao, Zhou Gong, Guan Zhong, etc., all of whom will be the leaders who exorcise the xenomorphs. [11] (P100-101)

He strung together the history of the Three Emperors and Five Emperors as for the Ming and Qing dynasties with a nationalist thread of self-defense, and thus explained the reasons for the rise of the Heaven and Earth Society:

In the chaos of the Ming Dynasty, Manchuria took advantage of it, and then suffered the tragedy of the subjugation of the country, the zhishi benevolent people could not bear the destruction of the Central Plains, and formed a secret group in order to restore the motherland, and the Hongmen Association was also set up. What is Hongmen? Because of the Ming Taizu era name Hongwu, it was named; referring to heaven as the father and the earth as the mother, it was also known as the Heaven and Earth Society. The initiator is Zheng Chenggong, and the person who follows and repairs it is Chen Jinnanye. (Note: The Xinhai Revolution, Information Series (III), p. 101.) The basis for Zheng Chenggong's founding of zheng chenggong has not yet been found, which may come from folk legends, and may also be related to the worship of Zheng chenggong in the Fujian-Guangzhou region. At the end of the Qing Dynasty, the anti-Manchu intellectuals explicitly advocated that the Han people should worship Zheng Chenggong, and it was Liu Yazi (Yalu), who said in the article "Zheng Chenggong": "I only worship zheng chenggong, who can make the ancestor of Ou Quan and Lan Kui patrol make concessions, and he can make the Han race of Manchu remnant slaves strive to be the first." (Jiangsu, No. 4, pp. 70-71)

Tao Chengzhang used Zheng Chenggong of Ou Yujia to say (Note: Tao Chengzhang obviously studied the "New Guangdong" article, for example, Tao believes that An Qing Daoyou evolved from the XuZhai religion in addition to the etiquette, "The New Guangdong is falsely used as An Qing, thinking that it is a rise to protect the Qing court, which is a big mistake. (Jiangsu, No. 4, p. 103)), and Chen Jinnan "followed and revised it", and further proposed that the tiandihui alias "Hongmen" was from the Ming Taizu "Hongwu" era name. These views became the basic views commonly adopted by revolutionaries in the late Qing Dynasty.

A question naturally arises here, in the process of Ou Yujia, Tao Chengzhang, and even Sun Yat-sen interpreting the text of the Silu story in nationalist discourse, what is the position of historical truth in their minds? Is their exposition entirely as Duzanchi put it ("wholeheartedly absorbing and transforming what suits his worldview, and discarding the rest that is not quite fit for his worldview")? There is no doubt that in the process of understanding and grasping history, people will "lose their memory" in large quantities, that is, forget and ignore many historical details, and form a pulse of historical phenomena that seem to have no relationship according to a specific discourse system, and reproduce history in people's consciousness. The reasons for this forgetting and neglect are quite complex, perhaps for the self-interest of individuals or groups, possibly by discursive systems, or by other objective factors (e.g., the destruction of documents, physical objects, or the inaccessibility of authors). What I need to point out here is that in historical literature there is sometimes a kind of "neglect" that is considered to be common sense or that has been argued by previous generations, and that the text may no longer state it as a matter of course. When we study the text, if we are unaware of this habit of ignoring common sense, we suspect that the text has chosen what it needs out of a multitude of historical evidence, which naturally implies a moral accusation. In fact, in historical research, common sense may be the most easily overlooked kind of knowledge.

In the case of Ou Yujia's "New Guangdong" mentioned in this article, it questions the problems existing in The Story of Xilu as untrustworthy, and this doubt has already been argued by Tao Chengzhang, and there is no need to argue further. Looking at Tao Wen in isolation, there seems to be a deliberate omission, but it is very natural to put it in the process of understanding the history of the secret party by the revolutionaries in the early 20th century. At the end of the Qing Dynasty, Ou Yujia, Tao Chengzhang and others said that the purpose of the Heaven and Earth Society to oppose the Qing Dynasty and restore the Ming Dynasty was such a common sense. (Note: Mr. Lü Simian has repeatedly said that there are cases of "common things not books" in Chinese historical records (see Lu Simian's "Lü Shishi History and History", page 20, East China Normal University Press, 2002), which is an important reason why common sense has been greatly forgotten. Of course, the common sense I am referring to here is not necessarily the truth of history, but it also includes the fact that collective memory identifies with it, which is not necessarily the history of what really happened, but a fact in people's ideas. For example, the Han nationality is a "descendant of Yan Huang", which is not necessarily a historical truth, but a fact that the Han people identify with. When a person claims to be a "descendant of Yan Huang", he does not need to make an argument; if the times have passed, if someone does not know the common sense of "Yan Huang Descendant" today, there will certainly be reason to suspect that this person is making up nonsense. )

As we all know, due to this common sense in the Qing Dynasty, the literature is very scarce, but there is still some evidence. The Book of Heaven and Earth is a very important document that records the common sense within the Party, and its purpose of anti-Qing and restoration is not only reflected in the story of Xilu, but also expressed in a large number of poems, recipes, secret words and rituals. Since scholars have already written extensively in this regard, I do not need to repeat them here. [14] In fact, this secret knowledge within the Heaven and Earth Society has long been circulated in society. Hong Xiuquan once said to Han Shanwen: "Although I have not joined the triad, I often hear that its purpose is to 'oppose the Qing Dynasty and restore the Ming Dynasty'. This kind of proposition was indeed good when the Society was first founded during the Kangxi Dynasty, but now that two hundred years have passed, we can still say that it is anti-Qing, but it can no longer be restored. In any case, if we can restore the Han mountains and rivers, when the new dynasty is opened. [15] (vol. 6, p872) Hong Xiuquan does not mention the Silu story, but does make the core knowledge of the Xilu story, the Tiandihui, founded during the Kangxi Dynasty, in order to clearly explain the anti-Qing and restoration of the Ming Dynasty. From the tone of Hong Xiuquan's narrative, we can judge that he has taken this knowledge as a kind of common sense. In Hong Xiuquan's conception, there is no doubt that the Heaven and Earth Society is an anti-Manchu organization of the Han people. At the beginning of the Taiping Rebellion led by Hong Xiuquan, the Qing government was unclear about the origin of Hong Xiuquan, and Sai Shang'a and Zou Minghe speculated in the recital that "the Hong character is a fake Hongwu character, thinking that it is the cause of incitement" (Note: "Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Literature and Historical Materials", page 315, China Social Science Press, 1982 edition. Sun Yat-sen later said: "Hongmen was not given this title by Hong Xiuquan, but by Zhu Hongwu or by Zhu Hongzhu (someone during the Kangxi Dynasty worshiped Zhu Hongzhu's uprising), and it is not certain." (The Collected Works of Sun Yat-sen, p. 618, People's Publishing House, 1956)) This speculation is also based on common knowledge about the Heaven and Earth Society. It is difficult to say that this kind of common sense was imposed on the Heaven and Earth Society by the later revolutionaries.

Duzanchi attaches great importance to the example of Yu Dongchen. Because Yu Dongchen, as the leader of the Brotherhood of Elders, called himself the Righteous People of the Great Qing Dynasty and put forward the slogan of "supporting the Qing Dynasty and destroying the foreign countries". This seems to be a clear example of how the Hongmenhui Party was not originally an anti-Manchu organization. In fact, the loss of the HongmenHui Party's own anti-Qing purpose was not a phenomenon that only appeared during the Xinhai Revolution, as early as the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom period, the Taiping Army criticized the Hongmenhui Party's behavior with the "common sense" of Hongmen: "The Chars are strong, most of them are triad parties. The blood of the Sihong Gate is actually to work together to destroy the Qing, and those who have not heard of the alliance of righteousness and worship and the enemy in the north are also!" [15] (Vol. 1, P160, P167) Let's imagine, if the HongmenHui Party had no purpose of opposing the Fullness, what was the significance of this condemnation of the Taiping Army? In 1904, Liu Daoyi and others met with Ma Fuyi, the leader of the Hongjiang Society, and Ma Fuyi began to look down on these scholars, but Liu Daoyi asked Ma: "Did Brother Ma follow the hongmen's will and take on the responsibility of destroying the Qing Dynasty and restoring the Ming Dynasty?" Or do you open up the mountains, worship the platform, collect some party members, get some money, put a straw sign on your head, and sell people's heads?" [16] (P246) Ma Fuyi, knowing that he was in a wrong, agreed to cooperate with the revolutionaries. Liu Daoyi is not a Hongmen person, and his so-called "Hongmen Testament" is a kind of common sense, which has a certain degree of moral binding force for some Hongmen people. Ma Fuyi's father also had a considerable position in the Brotherhood of Elders, and in his childhood, he "often heard his father say: When the Qing Dynasty entered the customs, the number of Han Chinese killed was no less than several million, just to say yangzhou, shut up the city and kill it for ten days before sealing the sword." The "Hongmen Testament", the education of his fathers, and the catalyst of the revolutionaries enabled Ma Fuyi to embark on the road of anti-Qing rebellion. Just think, if there is no "Hongmen Testament", how can Liu Daoyi justly criticize Ma Fuyi and make Ma Fuyi obey the orders of the revolutionary party?

The process of reconstructing history by discourse is not entirely a fiction of history, but a process in which people re-understand and grasp history under a new discursive framework. But in some postmodern historians, it is argued that discourse obscures the truth of history. Duzanchi notes, "There is also a constructivist view that there is no historical connection between the ideology of the Secret Society and the ideology of the revolutionaries, and that the latter merely constructs a set of symbols for the former." What do you think of this view? In this way, words engulf history. [1] (P136-137) Duzanchi, though not in this extreme view, is not far from this in his ambiguous language. As far as the history of the Secret Society Party is concerned, the revolutionary party majorities of the late Qing Dynasty did not undergo rigorous historical training, so in the eyes of historians, they did have many problems in the examination, application, and even specific narrative of historical materials. However, their understanding of the history of the Hongmenhui Party is not, as Duzanchi and others have said, entirely a construction of nationalist discourse.

The revolutionaries of the late Qing Dynasty did not regard the origin of the Heaven and Earth Society as a kind of historical common sense, so in Ou Yujia, Tao Chengzhang, and even Sun Yat-sen, their different histories were perfunctorily presented. Ou Yujia proposed that Zheng Chenggong found the association, and Tao Chengzhang attached the history according to the story of Xilu (Note: The Xinhai Revolution, Data Series (III), p. 107. Tao Chengzhang tried to resolve the contradiction between the Story of Xilu and the account of Zheng Chenggong, so he proposed that after the fall of Taiwan, the anti-Qing Zhishi fled to become monks, and used the Hongmen Seabed to show the Shaolin Temple monks, so that the five ancestors helped Qing Pingyu (Tao believed that Xilu referred to Tibet) and was killed by the Qing court. Tao's discourse is mostly subjective speculation. Sun Yat-sen believed that it was founded by anti-Qing zhishi in the early Qing Dynasty. [17] (P618) Although historians have studied this issue for a long time, there are still many opinions, so it is difficult to say that the revolutionaries in the late Qing Dynasty were fabricating the history of the Tiandihui with nationalist discourse. Sun Yat-sen said in his later years that during the Kangxi Dynasty, a part of the Remnants of the Ming Dynasty united to form a party to preserve nationalism in the lower classes, which was a well-thought-out judgment. If we do not confuse the nationalism that Sun Yat-sen speaks of here with modern nationalism, then we can say that there is some truth to Sun Yat-sen's reasoning. His appraisal of the gradual demise of the party's national ideology since Qianlong is also generally in line with the basic situation of the Hongmenhui party.

On the contrary, in breaking the nationalist discourse construction of the history of the Hongmenhui Party, Duzanchi himself made a clear mistake, that is, ignoring the evolution of the Hongmenhui Party's purpose. Based on a study by some historians of the state of the Society in the mid-19th century, Duzanchi argues that:

The social composition of the Secret Society party is so complex and diverse that it is difficult to expect a unified ideology to be found among them. Since the turn of the century, however, efforts to add a certain primitive ideology to these parties have influenced many treatises on this subject. ...... Through various attempts to establish its ideology for the Secret Congregation, we can really see the flow of meaning and the fickle nature of its ideology. [1] (P110)

In fact, when Sun Yat-sen talked about the fading of national consciousness in the HongmenHui Party after Qianlong, the ambiguity of the party's purpose was already the proper meaning of the topic. Luo Ergang, Sakai Tadao, and others emphasized the different aspects of the concept of "loyalty" of the hui party, which is precisely the manifestation of this flow of meaning, but it is not necessarily the original purpose of the Hongmen kai party's concept of loyalty and righteousness. Hongmen emphasizes that "loyalty is great, righteousness is the first", and its premise is to oppose the Qing Dynasty and restore the Ming Dynasty, and loyalty is loyalty to the Ming Lord of the homeland, that is, "jointly supporting the Ming Lord to ascend the throne"; righteousness is brotherhood and righteousness, and it is necessary to "take care of each other with brothers and sisters, and support each other in tribulations". [3] (P177) Therefore, "working together to help the Lord" is the core of loyalty and righteousness. After the Hongmenhui Party's anti-Qing and restoration consciousness faded, loyalty and righteousness lost its original meaning. From Hong Xiuquan in the mid-19th century to Liu Daoyi in the early 20th century, they all accused the Hongmenhui Party of forgetting or abandoning its ancestral precepts, and in the view of postmodern scholars who deconstructed history, it was completely an outsider's imposition of the Hongmenhui Party, which had no unified purpose. The example of Yu Dongchen, in the words of Hong Xiuquan and Liu Daoyi, can be said to be Yu Dongchen's forgetting or betraying of the purpose of Hongmen, and Du Zanqi can be used to say that Hongmen originally had no unified purpose. When postmodernism is vigorously deconstructing the discourse power of modern nationalism, we can already feel the discourse power of some kind of postmodernism that is forming. Deconstruction is also a kind of reconstruction, and the history that is deconstructed is not necessarily a historical truth.

History, as a reflection of human ideas, is constantly changing its architecture as human concepts develop. The structure from myths and legends, imperial lineages to modern nationalism and even historical materialism is a process of deepening human understanding of history. When the historical and cultural environment undergoes major changes, human concepts of history will be reconstructed and the structural process of each historical concept will be constantly reconstructed. As far as the development of Chinese historiography is concerned, from myths and legends to the "Twenty-Four Histories" is a major leap in the concept of history, and taking legends as a history of faith is a major misunderstanding. The structure of the modern nationalist view of history is only one aspect of the deconstruction of traditional historiography by modern historiography. The skeptical school, which had a major impact on the historiography of the Republic of China era, is also a kind of deconstruction of ancient history. Proving that ancient history is a legend rather than a history of faith is a major contribution of the skeptical school, but the method of "preferring to believe in nothing and not believing in what it has" is inevitably criticized by people. When we deconstruct the historical view of modern nationalism, we should remember the lessons of the development of modern historiography.

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Source: Journal of Shanghai Normal University, Zheshe Edition