Source: Website of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and the State Supervision Commission
In the program "China in the Classics", Song Yingxing and Yuan Longping staged a "handshake" spanning more than three hundred years in the rice field. More than three hundred years later, people not only read "Tiangong Kaiwu", but also strive to continue to write a more magnificent and brilliant "Tiangong Kaiwu" in the scientific practice of inheriting the past and opening up the future.
Illustration of "Heavenly Works".
"People cannot be born for a long time and the grains are born, and the grains cannot be born by themselves."
Recently, the second issue of "China in the Classics" continued the "Classic Covenant" with the audience, focusing on China's first encyclopedia on agricultural and handicraft production technology, "Tiangong Kaiwu". In the program, Yuan Longping and Song Yingxing, who are separated by more than 300 years, find the common dream of scientists through a seed: to be truth-seeking and pragmatic, to benefit the people, and also let the audience see that in addition to the "four great inventions" of ancient China, there are inexhaustible rich treasures.
One
The forty-third year of the Wanli Calendar (1615 AD) is a memorable year for the Fengxin Song family in Jiangxi.
This year, as soon as the township examination was issued, Fengxin County Ya quickly sent a good report: Among the more than 10,000 candidates in the province, 29-year-old Song Yingxing ranked third, and his brother Song Yingsheng ranked sixth.
In the whole of Fengxin County, only the Song family brothers were among the best, and they were among the best. Soon, they became inspirational models, and for a time they became famous, known as "Fengxin Er song", and truly became "other people's children".
Song Yingxing has been astute since childhood, and it is rumored that he has a talent that he never forgets. When they were young, Song Yingxing and Song Yingsheng studied in a private school run by their uncle at home. According to the private school, seven texts of the shengwen must be recited every morning. One day, Song Yingxing got up late, and when he arrived at the private school, Song Yingsheng had already memorized seven raw texts. When the teacher questioned him, Song Yingxing recited it. The teacher was surprised and asked him how he did it, and Song Yingxing knelt down and said, "When my brother memorized the text, I just woke up, and I remembered it all after listening to it once." ”
As Song Yingxing grew older, he was already proficient in subsets of the history of the classics. In addition to Confucian classics, he also likes to dabble in books on astronomy and geography, agricultural technology and other majors, and cultivates an interest in science, technology, philosophy, history, literature and art, etc., and is evaluated by the clan as "talented and knowledgeable". In 1603, The Inspector of Jiangxi, Xia Conscience, published Li Shizhen's Compendium of Materia Medica in Nanchang Province. When he first finished reading the Compendium of Materia Medica, Song Yingxing's heart was extremely shocked, and later he quoted its contents many times in the process of writing.
However, until 1630 AD, a full fifteen years after the township trial became famous, the Song brothers experienced six imperial examinations and still had no connection with the name.
The growth of age and experience also made Song Yingxing begin to adjust his life direction. It happened that in the second year, his brother Song Yingsheng was selected by the officials to be the Tongxiang County Order, which also fulfilled his father's expectations, so Song Yingxing gave up the idea of taking the exam and was at ease to cultivate and read at home.
Four years later, after being elected by the officials, Song Yingxing was appointed as the teacher of the County School of Fengyi County, the capital of Yuan Prefecture. This is a civilian instructor with an annual salary of only 36 stone meters, and he has been working for four years. However, it is also this barely enough errand that allows him to not have to run for his livelihood all day, and can take some energy to invest in interest.
Song Yingxing has a wide range of interests, likes to make friends, and cares about everything. For more than ten years, whenever I went to the Beijing Normal Division to take the test, it took nearly half a year on the road. These six land and water, long-distance journeys, along the way through Jiangxi, Hubei, Anhui, Jiangsu and other provinces of many places, can be called the boutique tourism routes of the time. However, Song Yingxing is not a clumsy disciple who indulges in landscapes and rivers, he pays attention to the national economy and people's livelihood: "For the sake of the fang, what is the matter, what is not to be seen or heard." "It means that there are tens of thousands of miles to and from, and there are no things and objects that I don't want to know.
Along the way, Song Yingxing visited the southern paddy fields and northern drylands, inspected the production site and handicraft workshops, watched, listened, asked, and recorded, recording and depicting what he saw and heard anytime and anywhere. Every time he returned, his bag was full of notes, and it can be said that his six test trips were also six scientific expeditions.
In his days in Fengxin Village, he traveled throughout the fields and villages, visiting all kinds of craftsmen and artists in threshing fields and handicraft workshops, as well as shops, kiln factories, construction sites, and so on. Although he lost his status and status as a prominent official, he was given a lot of time to study and practice.
Falling off the list is not falling behind. Reading thousands of books, traveling thousands of miles, asking thousands of things, and worshiping thousands of teachers enabled Song Yingxing to grasp and accumulate a large amount of first-hand information, with a broad vision, rich experience, and deep thinking. He spent several years to write "Tiangong Kaiwu", and in the systematic summary of various production technologies in ancient times, he built a relatively complete technical system.
Two
Tiangong Kaiwu, known as China's first encyclopedia on agricultural and handicraft production technology, sorts out more than 130 production techniques and tools.
The name of "Heavenly Works and Opening Things" comes from two classics. Tiangong, from the Book of Shang: "Tiangong, man replaces it". Heavenly work is the energy of nature, the duty of nature. Kaiwu is from the I Ching: "Opening things into business", developing all things and achieving all things. "Heavenly work to open things" means that people should use nature, use wisdom and technology, and develop all things.
In the four characters, man and nature are in harmony, and manpower and natural forces are coordinated, which is the traditional philosophical thought, but also the essence of the idea of heavenly work, and is the technical concept inherited from ancient times Chinese.
The book is divided into three volumes and eighteen chapters. Each article is named after a sentence that fits the content found in ancient books. For example, "Nai Grain" is taken from the "Shang Shu Yi Ji" in "The people are grains, and all the nations are beggars", which means that with food to eat, the people will settle down and the country will be governed; "Tao Yuan" is taken from "Xunzi Sexual Evil" in "Fu Tao people are born of tiles... "Pottery is born of pottery", which means to combine clay and burn pottery.
Judging from the content, the whole book begins with "Nai Grain" and ends with "Pearl Jade", which embodies the inner concept of "expensive grain and low gold jade". Specifically, the first volume mainly records the cultivation and processing methods of grain bean and hemp, the textile and dyeing technology of silk and cotton ramie, and the process of salt and sugar making. The contents of the middle volume include the production of bricks and ceramics, the construction of cars and ships, the casting and forging of metals, the mining and firing of non-metallic minerals such as coal and lime, as well as the methods of oil pressing and papermaking. The next volume deals with the mining and smelting of metals, the manufacture of weapons, the production of pigments and koji, and the collection and processing of pearls and jade.
The contents described in the book are all screened by Song Yingxing, and when talking about the manufacture of a certain product, the areas where the technology of producing the product is most developed are often discussed, such as Jingdezhen ceramics in Jiangxi, sugar cane in Fujian, silkworm farming in Jiaxing and Huzhou in Zhejiang, rice in Jiangxi, silk weaving in Suzhou and Hangzhou, paper in Fujian and Jiangxi, iron smelting in Zunhua and Foshan, copper smelting in Yunnan, ink making in Dezhou, and sea salt in the Lianghuai salt field, etc., making the said production technology mostly advanced technology at that time. It can be said that looking at all parts of the motherland, the magnificent industrial and agricultural production scenes in the vast Shenzhou in the seventeenth century are all viewed in "Heavenly Works and Things".
The 123 accompanying pictures in the book are vividly detailed. In all, more than 270 working people appeared: peasants who ploughed the fields, craftsmen who weaved brocade, boatmen who sailed the rivers and seas, and soldiers in exercises and battles. So many pictures are used to show the production of labor and labor, so that when we see these pictures now, it seems that we can really understand the level of craftsmanship at that time.
In 1840, the French sinologist Ru Lian translated the "Tiangong Kaiwu Qingqing" into French, mentioning that China uses bark, bamboo grass and various mixed raw materials to make pulp and paper, which has aroused the great attention of industrialists in France, Britain, Germany and other countries. In Balzac's "Human Comedy", "Disillusionment", the protagonist David Sexia is described as trying to change the raw materials of papermaking inspired by Chinese papermaking. In the text, Saixia said: "Due to the relationship between raw materials, Chinese paper was better than our paper at the beginning. Father Grozier had a Chinese book devoted to papermaking techniques, with many illustrations illustrating the entire manufacturing process; he showed us the large number of bamboo poles piled up in the paper mill, with very detailed drawings. ”
Balzac wrote a vivid description of the Europeans' search for new papermaking materials in "Heavenly Works".
Three
For thousands of years, Chinese scientists have been continuing and inheriting the common scientific dream of the Chinese nation, that is, developing science, benefiting the people's livelihood, benefiting mankind, and promoting civilization.
The period in which Song Yingxing lived was a time when the state was in decline and precarious in the late Ming Dynasty. Revitalizing the country has become the unshirkable responsibility of every scholar. It can be said that in addition to being a scientific and technological work, "Tiangong Kaiwu" can also reflect Song Yingxing's idea of salvation.
In the preface to "Tiangong Kaiwu", Song Yingxing wrote clearly:
"This book is enterprising in merit and has nothing to do with it"!
Not for the sake of fame and fortune, but out of concern for the national economy and people's livelihood, out of the importance of social production and the development of commodity economy, and attention to the application of agriculture and handicraft technology, this is a book written for the people for society. Song Yingxing dedicated the book to literate farmers, workers, and businessmen to help them gain technical knowledge and economic benefits.
In the book, Song Yingxing points out that only by relying on production can wealth be increased. In the eyes of many people, only silver is wealth, but they do not know that wealth is created by people through labor by taking advantage of the conditions provided by nature. What is missing today, he said, is the grain in the field, the wood in the mountains, the mulberry trees on the edge of the village, the fish in the pond, and so on. Only when materials are abundant can the sources of wealth be enriched and trade be replenished.
He attaches great importance to the commodity economy, once taking salt as an example, pointing out that salt is a necessity for people to eat, and salt tax is one of the sources of national revenue, so the production and marketing of salt is related to the national economy and people's livelihood. During the apocalypse, the government raised its taxes so much that many salt merchants went bankrupt, with the result that the source of salt taxes was greatly reduced. From this, he drew the conclusion that "business poverty is in political turmoil", advocated reforming the salt administration, and opposed the government's method of exhausting the tax revenue.
In addition, in "Heavenly Works", he discusses the military with a whole "Good Soldier", involving bows and arrows, crossbows and other cold weapons, as well as gunpowder and firearms production techniques, including artillery, mines, bird hammers and ten thousand enemies (a kind of rotating rockets). He hopes that these contents will be seen by the ming rulers to protect the homeland, which reflects a scientist's deep concern for the fate of the motherland.
Later, Song Yingxing's friend Chen Hongxu, who was then the governor of Jinzhou in Zhending Province, led the Jinzhou army and people to repel the enemy's siege, relying on the firearms introduced in the book, "Ten Thousand Enemies". Theoretical knowledge is put into practice and transformed into combat effectiveness, how fast and how effective it is.
When writing "Heavenly Works and Things", Song Yingxing's life was embarrassing. In his words: "Hurt the poor also!" If you want to buy strange research, you lack the capital of Luo Xia; you want to attract the same people, and the business is slightly fake, and there is a lack of Chen Si's museum. Is it not right to write it with its lonely and ugly sights and ears, and to hide it in all directions? "There is no money to buy reference materials, there is no condition to invite people in the same way to brainstorm, can only be so and so, can you not be sad?"
In the era when there was no printing press, printing books was a matter of burning money. The people targeted by "Tiangong Kaiwu" are mainly lower-class working people; the problems it solves are also specific technical problems in the daily production and life of working people. The cultural attainment of working people is limited, and the demand for books is also limited. The lack of consumer groups means that there is no profit, and booksellers naturally do not pay silver to print for him.
However, this poor student, knowing that his painstaking work may not be bought by others, still insists on going his own way.
Without investor and publisher sponsorship, he intends to print it himself. Saving money was not enough, so he asked Tu Shaoxuan, the eldest brother and friend of the county commander, for help. It can be said that Song Yingxing was able to overcome various difficulties to complete this scientific and technological work and publish it, which was completely supported by extraordinary faith.
After the first book was printed, Song Yingxing had tears in his eyes. Half a life's hard work was not in vain, he wrote in the article "Talking about Heaven": "I hope that this jane will be passed on to future generations, and dare to seek knowledge from the present." ”
He set his sights on the future, hoping that future generations would understand his good intentions.
It is gratifying that in Song Yingxing's hometown, a memorial hall was built for him in the 1980s, and it is now a famous science popularization base and patriotic education base in Jiangxi Province. Song Yingxing's goal of "benefiting people" in scientific and technological research work, and the scientific attitude of attaching importance to field investigation and practical experience of laborers, will always be remembered by future generations. (Tian Xin)