Feng Zikai manga "High Counter". Courtesy of Wang Zhenzhong
Since 1996, I have published three collections of essays, "Oblique Pulse and Water", "Sunrise and Composition", and "Mountains Outside the Mountains". The second of these, the main articles, originated from the "Sunrise and Writing" column opened in the monthly magazine "Reading" after 1998, plus academic essays published in magazines such as Vientiane and Searching for Roots in the same period.
The small book collected this time is named "From the White Mountains of Huangshan to the Sea of East Asia". As shown in the subtitle "Ming and Qing Jiangnan Culture and extraterritorial world", its content is roughly divided into two parts: one is about the cultural phenomenon of Jiangnan society in the Ming and Qing dynasties, and the other is the imitation and pursuit of the extraterritorial world.
Huizhou is located between the Huangshan Mountains and Baiyue Mountains, and "Huangshan Baiyue" also refers to Huizhou in southern Anhui, which is one of the areas that I have long been concerned about for more than thirty years. In the book, I first outline the revival trajectory of human geography writing in the late Ming Dynasty, and focus on the social construction of the marginal mountainous areas of Anhui and Zhejiang, trace the circulation of historical disasters, excavate the relevant memories of the years, listen to the century echoes of the Bell Ringing in Huangshan Mountain, pay attention to the bittersweet scenes in the waves, analyze the evolution of "Huizhou Chaofeng" in many legends in Jiangnan, and lament the vicissitudes of the wind and rain in the flood of Gengzi in the late Gengzi...
One
Exactly 30 years ago, Mr. Tan Qijun wrote an article in the Fudan Journal, calling for strengthening the study of historical and human geography. He pointed out that Chinese "the record and study of human geographical phenomena can be traced back at least to the Yugong, which was written more than two thousand years ago, and in the 'domain divisions' and 'customs' contained at the end of Sima Qian's "History of Cargo Colonization" and Ban Gu's "Hanshu Geography", there are extremely vivid and specific accounts of the production and living conditions of the people from the Warring States to the Western Han Dynasty, the rise and fall of various industries of agriculture, commerce, industry and mining, and the differences in customs and customs." However, the post-Han canonical geography ignored accounts of human geography, and the literature on human geography phenomena was not changed until the Ming Dynasty. In this regard, Mr. Tan particularly pointed out that in the Ming Dynasty, Qiu Jun's "University Yanyi Supplement", Zhang Huang's "Book Compilation", Xie Zhaochun's "Five Miscellaneous Groups" and Wang Shisheng's "Guangzhixuan" are all quite outstanding treatises in this regard. At his initiative, all of the above books have been valued by the historical geography community, and some have published special research treatises.
From the perspective of historical geography, the most systematic and valuable in "Song Window Dream Language" is "Shang Jia Ji". In my opinion, both the layout and the wording of the Shang Jia Ji are deliberately imitating the "Chronicle of History and Cargo Colonization". In fact, in the Ming Dynasty, the "Biography of Cargo Colonization" was sought after by many people, and some Hui merchants even regarded "Cargo Colonization" as a must-read textbook in order to draw useful business experience from it. In terms of writing, the "Chronicle of The Chronicle of Cargo Breeding" systematically summarizes the economic characteristics and interconnections of the regions of "Shanxi", "Shandong", "Jiangnan" and "North of Longmen Jieshi", and profoundly reveals the historical origins and environmental factors that form regional differences. The "Shang Jia Ji" also pays attention to the observation and research of regional division, regional characteristics and human-land relations, and integrates economic, cultural and custom factors to investigate. In addition, Zhang Han's (1510-1593) Song window dream language was written in 1593 (the twenty-first year of the Ming Wanli calendar), Wang Shisheng's (1546-1598) "Guangzhixuan" was prefaced from Wanli Dingyou, that is, in 1597 (wanli twenty-five years), and Xie Zhaochun's (1567-1624) "Five Miscellaneous Groups" was published in 1616 (wanli forty-four years). Both the author's life era and the age of the book are based on Zhang Han's "Song Window Dream Language", so in a sense, the systematic description of human geography phenomena in the Shang Jia Ji marks the comprehensive revival of the relevant traditions of the "History of History, Cargo Colonization" and "Hanshu Geographical History" in the Ming Dynasty.
Two
In the study of economic history and human geography of the Ming and Qing dynasties, Huishang and Huizhou customs have always been an important issue that has attracted attention. Zhang Han pointed out in the "Shang Jia Ji": "The son of Shang Jia is willing to eat, beautifully dresses, adorns himself with a ride, weaves land scales, flies dust to the sky, and sweats like rain." Qiao Qiaojie borrowed funds to support her husband, and ran away with dedication, Yan Ji and Zhao Nu pin silk bamboo, zheng ziqin, long gong li jie, and fought for grace and grace... From An, Tai to Xuan, Hui, its people look up to the opportunity, sheben to the end, sing the hub, to tour the capital of the emperor, and hold its odd win, Hugh, Sheyou, so the Jia people have been in the world several times. Liangjia near the market profit several times, times times, the lowest incompetent people tithes. "Xiuning and Shexian are the two most important counties in Huizhou and the two earliest counties in commercial development. Xie Xie, the compiler of Wanli's "Shezhi", had carefully studied the "History of Cargo Colonization", and he contrasted the reality of Shexian with it, and listed a separate article in Fang Zhi in the "Cargo Breeding Biography", analyzing the differences between the two in detail. Many of these materials were later used by Gu Yanwu and Huang Binhong and others.
Since the middle of the Ming Dynasty, in the operation of salt, timber, pawn, cloth and other trades in Jiangnan, there have been quite a number of emblem merchants active in it. At that time, some of the rich hui merchants had a wealth of millions of taels of silver. By the Qing Dynasty, as high as tens of millions, they were at the top of China's wealth rankings. These Hui merchants were outsiders to Jiangnan, and they were similar to the "Hu people" of the Six Dynasties era and the hui merchants of the Tang, Song and Yuan dynasties. Therefore, it is obvious that the jiangnan folklore replaces the previous "Hu people" and Hui merchants with "Huizhou Chaofeng".
In the 16th century southeast cultural market, huishang became an ally of the bull's ear. Around the wanli period, the Western Han jade medals in the Jiangnan area were bought at high prices by the rich people in Huizhou, although the literati doctors at that time were extremely ironic, they believed that this was "Handan cai people married as a widow", and even harshly referred to as the official seal fell into the toilet. However, this also reflects from one side the process of Huizhou Dynasty's heavy investment and frequent "treasure hunting" and large-scale "treasure hunting" in various parts of Jiangnan. In addition to the literati and elegant play, since the middle of the Ming Dynasty, Huizhou pawn merchants have the closest relationship with the daily life of ordinary people (especially the lower classes). This is because: in Jiangnan, where "no emblem is not a town", the folk are known as "no emblem is not a pawn" or "no pawn and no emblem", which means that the pawn shops in Jiangnan are mostly opened by Huizhou people, even if they are not pawn shops opened by Huizhou people, most of the staff are Huizhou people. Huizhou pilgrimage in the narrow sense refers to the staff in The pawnshop in Huizhou. In Jiangnan, although the Huizhou Dynasty in the pawnshop has always been criticized. But on the other hand, it is said here that "pawns are the backdoor of the poor". Locals come and go to pawn shops, believing that they are "uncles' houses". For example, in Shanghai, people nickname the big pawnshop "big uncle", the small pawnshop is "little uncle", and the pawnshop also calls its customers "nephew". All this shows that the pawn industry is extremely closely related to the daily people's livelihood, and it is indispensable for many people. In the traditional era, ordinary people struggled to get up and down the poverty line, and when they were young and yellow, they always had to go in and out of pawn shops to temporarily survive the difficulties with pawns. Over time, many people will compare their poverty with the wealth of Huishang merchants, and then think that their sufferings are all contributed to by the heavy profit exploitation of Huishang merchants - this is the reason for the emergence of rumors such as "the wealth of the Pine People, mostly moved by Huishang merchants", and it is also the background of the large number of stories of "Huizhou Dynasty to take treasures".
Three
In the Ming Dynasty, She and Xiu were famous for their wealth, so the burden of conscription in the two counties was second to none even in Huizhou.
In traditional times, servitude was an indispensable role in the functioning of administration. For example, all tax collectors and the arrest of suspects are required to serve as officials. It is precisely because of the importance of the servant that on many occasions, the servant caves in the middle of the cave and puts his hands up and down. They run rampant in the townships, fish and flesh people. In particular, when these officials went to the countryside, they often stripped their skin and sucked the marrow, breaking their homes, resulting in countless human tragedies. "A little Zhu on the hall, a thousand drops of folk blood", reflects the incomparably cruel facts.
In view of this, in the Ming and Qing dynasties, many people of insight took various measures with painstaking thoughts and efforts to limit the functions and powers of officials. In the Qing Dynasty, there were some new changes in the administrative operation of the county level, such as the self-appointed containers in the collection of money and grain, as well as the example of rolling orders and paper soap. The so-called self-appointed counter refers to the measures taken in the early Qing Dynasty to strictly prevent lawless officials from abusing their powers and arbitrarily levying or repeating taxes. After that, all the prefectures and counties, after collecting all kinds of money and grain, set up a silver cabinet, and added a plutonium and a government seal letter, and the silver money paid by the households was put into the cabinet by themselves, and the officials and servants were not allowed to fake their hands. In addition, paper soap and wood soap have also become more common practices. In the Huizhou documents, more than one piece of "paper soap" has been found:
The long box on the upper right of this print reads "Paper Soap Substitute Difference", and in the lower left is painted a Qing Dynasty messenger wearing a warm hat, holding a card of "Specially Urging Arrears" in his right hand, and carrying a long string of ropes or shackles in his left hand, which has the words "No need for wine and rice, specially urge players, such as resisting the extension, signing to get the comparison". Such an image means to pay tribute to the debtors of the matter first and then to the soldiers. "No need for wine and rice", of course, compared to the real poor soldiers going to the countryside. The text on the soap on the right is densely written with the government's reminder notice. This "paper soap substitute difference" document, with the real name written on it and the official seal on it, should be a physical object formed in the actual implementation process.
The "paper soap generation difference" in the law enforcement of the Qing Dynasty official government is a rather idealized system design, which hopes that small matters will be mediated by the townships, and the large ones will use "paper soap substitute differences", which can not only reduce the number of poor servants and disturb the people, but also a warning for lawbreakers to pay tribute first and then soldiers. Judging from its original intention, this is a convenient measure for the people, and it is often regarded as a moral policy for the official side. However, on the one hand, in the real life at that time, the suspected lawbreakers could be described as various, among them, there were many "good people" who followed the rules, but there was no shortage of "diao people" who drilled mountains and holes. Therefore, whether it is "paper soap generation difference" or "wood soap generation", its actual effect is still not ideal. On the other hand, the servants are always looking for opportunities to disturb the people. According to the ideal design, paper soap is used to restrain oneself, and the two are made to, and the merits are directly judged by the officials, rather than pretending to be the servants. However, the plaintiff and the defendant often regard it as water and fire, and the enemy sees each other, which is extremely red-eyed, which is bound to lead to disputes. In this context, the plaintiff is likely to collude with the officials, tear up the clothes and destroy the tickets, and make the matter bigger, so as to provoke the government and make the situation unmanageable. This created sufficient and favorable conditions for the formal intervention of the servants. It seems that although the idealized institutional design seems to be perfect, the social reality actually faced in the process of implementation is quite complex.
Four
Frequent commercial activities and social mobility have led to the formation of a large number of contract documents in Huizhou.
The Dunhuang and Huizhou documents are two important discoveries of Chinese history and culture in the 20th century. The Dunhuang documents were discovered in 1900, and about half a century later, the Huizhou documents were discovered on a large scale for the first time. The former refers to the multilingual ancient scripts and a small number of printed copies from the 5th to the 11th centuries produced by Dunhuang in Gansu Province, which are more than 50,000 pieces of original materials, and at present, in addition to Domestic, there are also many collections in Britain, France, Russia and Japan. The Huizhou documents refer to the documents left over from the history of the Huizhou region in southern Anhui Province, dating from the Southern Song Dynasty to around 1949. After the end of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the famous scholar Fang Hao bought a small number of rare Huizhou documents in Nanjing for the first time. Between 1956 and 1958, under the influence of the collector Zheng Zhenduo, Huizhou documents were discovered on a large scale for the first time in southern Anhui. Since the 1980s, with the deepening of China's reform and opening up, the study of commercial history has received unprecedented attention, and the Huizhou documents have been discovered on a large scale, and such new discoveries are still endless to this day. According to incomplete statistics, the total number of known Huizhou documents has reached 1 million (volumes). Except for a small number of overseas remains, most of these materials are preserved in the hands of public and private collectors in China. The "Dunhuang Studies" and "Hui Studies", which are based on the Dunhuang and Huizhou Documents, have continued to be each other and have become two emerging disciplines in the 20th century. At present, the only person known to have a close relationship with both the Dunhuang and Huizhou documents is probably Xu Chengyao. The love for Huizhou literature has made Xu Chengyao, who is good at ancient and elegant, become a bright business card of Huizhou and a master of Huizhou cultural research in the traditional era.
In the article "The Social Construction of marginal mountainous areas", the author pointed out that there are still some people in the historical circles who have a deep-rooted misunderstanding of the understanding of Huizhou documents. In their impression, the Huizhou documents are just some land contracts, and the vast majority of them are through market transactions, lacking systematic context, which greatly reduces their academic value. In fact, this assumption is completely ignorant of the current situation of the collection, collation and research of Huizhou documents so far, and their illusion is still stuck in the 1950s and 1960s. In fact, Huizhou documents are the largest group of folk documents known in China so far, not only in large numbers, but also known for their diverse types, rich content, and long duration. Although in recent decades, folk documents have emerged one after another in various places, it can be asserted that no regional document quality can be compared with Huizhou documents. Just like the batch of documents that Huang Zhongxin found in the twenty-five enclaves of Shexian County, many of the newly discovered Huizhou documents have a good systematic context. Moreover, the more important point is that unlike other regions, the rich literature has made Huizhou have an excellent "historical environment", and the new discoveries of any kind of document can often quickly find the corresponding coordinates in the overall historical environment, thus exerting its unique research value. Therefore, instead of relying on conjecture and criticizing the existing documents and historical materials, it is better to face the objective reality and clearly understand the strengths and limitations of historians. In my opinion, through field investigation is to increase perceptual understanding, to find valuable historical clues between doubts and letters, and to truly understand the folk historical documents at hand, which is our purpose.
Five
Although Huizhou is located in the remote Anhui Nanshan Township, "the mountains limit the water separation", and the geography is quite isolated. However, with the far-reaching generation of Huishang merchants and the transfer of local specialties and foreign commodities, crowd interaction, cultural collisions and social mobility are extremely frequent. Just like the exquisite old house of the Hui sect, although the high-walled deep house is dark, the world in front of the hall is still permeated with the light outside the house, and the potted plants carefully cared for in the "Four Waters Return hall" are also freely breathing and tuna between the junction of this heaven and earth, thus rejuvenating...
In the Ming and Qing dynasties, countless Hui people aspired to do business and seek far-reaching financial profits, and they went down from the Xin'an River to the east, sailed fast, and entered the Yangtze River Delta several times. From there, it gradually merged into the vast East China Sea and galloped through the East Asian world. For more than 30 years, my personal academic research has also taken "Huixue" as the starting point and gradually extended to the study of extraterritorial literature and east Asian maritime history.
The most important document that reflects nagasaki trade that has been seen so far is the "Sleeve Sea Compilation" written by the emblem merchant Wang Peng in the 29th year of Qianlong (1764) at the Nagasaki Tangguan, which was frequently quoted by the first general history of Japan in the Chinese, Weng Guangping's "Azuma Mirror Supplement", but also successively included in the "Shōyō Series" and the "Small Square Pot Zhai Yu Di Cong Banknote". By the middle of the 19th century, the book had been acquired by the Russian mission in Beijing, for which Zvetkov had written a Russian translation of Chinese Notes on Nagasaki. In addition, in 1941, the Dutch sinologist Gao Luopei also translated the book "Sleeve Sea Compilation" into Japanese, accompanied by a Japanese introduction and notes, and published it in Tokyo. These different texts, waka shadow and moon furniture, incense sent with the wind, and the distant reflection between the long sky and the distant water, have become classics at home and abroad to understand how the Chinese of the 18th century knew Japan.
In the 16th century, the marketing network of Huizhou ink merchants was widely distributed throughout Jiangnan. In addition to the import of emblem ink goods into Japan, the Edo period also had the frequent interaction of Chinese and Japanese ink-making technology, which was an important part of the exchange of folk material culture. Matsui Motoyasu, a famous Japanese ink merchant in the Edo period, seriously studied Chinese ink making methods from the beginning of his father's generation. In the fourth year of YuanWen (1739 AD, the fourth year of the Qianlong Dynasty), after official permission, Matsui Motoyasu personally went to Nagasaki, the "window of the locked country" at that time, to meet with several Qing Dynasty merchants engaged in Sino-Japanese trade, and to explore China in detail. He also exchanged views with Cao Sugong and Wuyuan ink merchants surnamed Zhan who traded in the Suzhou area through Chinese merchants who came to Nagasaki to trade. In the second year of Kuanbao (1742 AD, the seventh year of the Qianlong Dynasty), Matsui Motoyasu published the "Ancient Plum Garden Ink Spectrum", which is obviously a model of the Ming Dynasty's "Fang's Ink Spectrum" and "Cheng's Ink Garden", among which the pattern of Hui Ink is specifically recorded. Through foreign documents such as "Ancient Plum Garden Ink Spectrum", we have a better understanding of the overseas circulation of emblem ink and the cultural exchanges related to it.
In 1997, as an inter-university exchange scholar dispatched by Fudan University, I visited Japan for the first time. In the meantime, in a series of historical books published by the Cabinet Bunko, a copy of the Tang Tumen Book was found, which was included in the "Audiovisual Grass" of Miyazaki, a shogunate official of the Edo period (1603-1867). Although the year of Miyazaki's birth and death is unknown, he was active in the 1840s and 1850s. This book is a collection of overseas documents compiled by Miyazaki Based on what he has seen and heard. A previous source in the Tang Tumen Book is titled "Lan Woman (Wenzheng Twelve Years Nagasaki to the Portrait of the Woman and Praise, Published)", "Lan Woman" refers to the wife of a Dutch merchant, "Wenzheng Twelve Years" is equivalent to the ninth year of The Qing Daoguang (1829 AD). In the Edo period, Japan implemented a closed policy, Nagasaki was the only "window to lock the country", only Allowing Chinese and Dutch merchant ships to come to Japan to trade, so the two materials were listed in one place, which should be historical materials related to Nagasaki trade - according to this, the Tang Tumen Book should be a list of personal names carried by Chinese merchants who came to Nagasaki, and its contents reflected the name and address of the Suzhou wholesaler related to the merchant. Judging from the names, place names, and shop names filled in in the "Tang Tumen Book", the trades engaged in by these merchants mainly involved dyeing shops, cloth shops, silversmith shops, felt shops, sack shops, sugar stacks, medicine shops, pawn shops, money houses, and utensil shops. It can be seen that the shops opened in the streets and alleys of Suzhou are the most engaged in cloth, sugar and medicine, which are completely consistent with the trade activities of Suzhou and Nagasaki in Japan in the Qing Dynasty.
In 1997, shortly after I arrived in Japan, my university organized a trip to Okinawa, which was an unforgettable trip of a lifetime — the customs and customs of the former Ryukyu country and the close relationship with the Fujian coast made me very interested. For nearly a year in Japan, in addition to Okinawa, I traveled alone to Nagasaki, where the landscape was a success, and wandered alone through the streets of Nagasaki. At that time, although he was in a foreign country, he always felt a sense of déjà vu. Similar to Okinawa, Nagasaki was also inextricably linked to the Fujian coast in many ways as the "window of the country" in Japan's Edo period. "The sea is connected to Qiongpu, and the sunrise is far away", and the articles in this book, such as "Long Sky and Distant Water Qiongpu Moon", are based on the academic basis of Chinese history research, and look at the frequent exchanges between China and Japan in history from a distance.
For example, regarding the life of Chinese in the Nagasaki Tang Pavilion in the Edo period, the most vivid Chinese description is the first Ton dynasty textbook such as "Qiongpu Good Story" and "Essentials for Translators", and the most intuitive images are all kinds of TangGuan diagrams. At present, there are two kinds of information collections published on the Nagasaki Tangguan Map: one is the "Nagasaki Tangguan Map Integration" published in 2003, and the other is the "Tangguan Tulanguan Map Scroll" published in 2005.
In the Middle Ages, Prince Shengde sent Ono Meizi to sui, and submitted a letter of state calling himself the "Son of the Sun"—a deliberate self-respect gesture by Japan in the face of the western neighboring powers in the early 7th century. Today, with the help of these Tangguan maps from the Edo period, we can look at history from afar, and there are many clear discoveries.
In recent times, the situation in East Asia has been turbulent, and if we combine the relevant historical materials of China and Japan, we can see that the belief in the earth gods in Fuzhou, along with the monks and sailors of Dongdu, has been interpreted in the context of East Asian trade and the clash of Eastern and Western civilizations... Chinese, to be precise, the Fuzhou people who were engaged in east-west trade, had an indissoluble relationship with the belief in the Suwa Shrine in Nagasaki in their early years. This example highlights the intricate interrelationships of transnational trade, migration networks, folk beliefs, and clashes of civilizations in East Asian waters, and at the same time implies many extremely rich connotations in people-to-people cultural exchanges.
In recent decades, exploring and understanding the historical process of Chinese society with a regional orientation has become a common practice in the field of Chinese history research. Since then, the development of cultural history, especially the "downward vision" of social history and historical anthropology, has promoted the evolution of contemporary historiography. The approach of regional social history also provides a new perspective for the study of foreign Chinese nationalities. With the publication of a large number of foreign documents, in the East Asian perspective, the main body of economic and cultural exchanges between countries is no longer the general "Japanese", "Chinese" or "Koreans", but reduced to the exchange between specific groups, and political history, trade history, and cultural history in a broad sense can be expected to turn to the study of social history. This provides a new regional perspective for the study of foreign Chinese historical materials, which makes the relevant research more in-depth. In this context, various types of images, foreign Chinese anthologies, notes, and language textbooks have become important sources of historical materials. Flipping through these materials, from the perspective of global history, we can look at the ancient and modern aspects of China and foreign countries, which makes people often have a sense of encountering good scenery and having a broad mind - Nagasaki Tangguan Map, Tang Tongshi related historical materials and Nagasaki ukiyo-e paintings, etc., which have added many clues to China's regional studies and cultural exchanges between China and foreign countries, and deserve more attention.
In my opinion, the prosperity and ruin of history are like mountains and rivers, looking at thousands of mountains and competing in the distance, and listening to the birds singing. My generation searched from afar, questioning and seeking truth, not only needing to look closely and carefully, but also to look at the distance. It is necessary to look at China and foreign countries in a broader field of vision, but also to trace the source, focus on the Huangshan Baiyue in the depths of the water clouds, and carefully examine the wilderness and fertile soil in the south of the jiangnan at a closer distance. (Wang Zhenzhong)
Source: Xinhua Daily Telegraph