The Paper's reporter Fan Jialai intern Zhang Wanzhi
Inner rolls, hit workers... In the eyes of Jiang Peng, an associate professor of history at Fudan University, these popular words can long trace their origins from Chinese history.
In the book "A Brief History of 50,000 Years of China", the complete history of China from the first Homo sapiens to the Land of China to the 20th century is described. "Five thousand years of Chinese civilization", in the common sense of most people, the beginning of Chinese history dates back to five thousand years ago. Jiang Peng believes that five thousand years ago, it was the period when Chinese civilization broke through from prehistoric culture and entered the period of creating the historical track of the early country, and to restore the real historical appearance, the time span needs to be longer and more far-reaching.
Jiang Peng, Associate Professor of the Department of History, Fudan University.
"A Brief History of China in 50,000 Years" invites history professors and historians from Fudan University, Beijing Normal University, Nanjing University and other universities to write the history of each dynasty, re-examine history from the perspective of contemporary people, and sort out the ins and outs of China over the past 50,000 years.
On October 25, Jiang Peng, associate professor and editor-in-chief of the Department of History of Fudan University, came to Shanghai Book City to share with readers the stories of Chinese history in his eyes.
A Brief History of China in 50,000 Years.
From "five thousand years" to "fifty thousand years", it is not just storytelling
From "five thousand years" to "fifty thousand years", many readers expressed confusion and doubted that "fifty thousand years" was just a gimmick. In this regard, Jiang Peng, associate professor of the Department of History of Fudan University, the editor-in-chief of the series, said that the rapid development of molecular biology research in the past three or four decades, as well as the improvement of genetic testing technology, have confirmed information about human origin and the migration of primitive populations to the world. The Yuanmou people mentioned in the previous textbooks 1.7 million years ago and the Lantian people 700,000 years ago are the earliest ancient humans that appeared in China, belonging to modern Homo erectus, not late Homo sapiens, and are not homologous to modern people.
Moreover, with regard to Chinese history, Lu Simian's "A Brief History of China" and Qian Mu's "Outline of National History" were in front of zhuyu, so why should we write such a general history of China? On this issue, Jiang Peng said that Qian Mu's "Outline of National History" was created in the context of the anti-Japanese resistance, and the position was to call for national unity and national self-confidence. With the lifting of the national crisis, this general history has long been out of touch with the current background of the times and cannot meet the needs of current readers.
The scene of the press conference of "A Brief History of China in 50,000 Years".
Jiang Peng said that the planning of "A Brief History of 50,000 Years of China" began in 2018, and "change" was a particularly important word in those years. Pay attention to "changes" and "problems", so "Fifty Thousand Years" is not in chronological order, but chooses an important threshold in China's history. Regarding the writing perspective of this general history of China, Jiang Peng said, "There is no independent and objective history, it is the position that determines the viewpoint, and the viewpoint determines the facts. My position is contemporary. Historical topics such as "Emperor Wudi of the Han Dynasty: The Creator of China's First 'State-Owned Enterprise'" and "Wanli Aid korea: The Korean War more than 300 years ago" are contrasted with ancient and modern times, with novel ideas and in line with the times.
Standing at the crossroads of history, young people under the "change" are generally anxious. Overtime has become the norm, "funeral culture" has become popular, and young white-collar workers in big cities have laughed at themselves and looked for recognition with words such as "social animals" and "996". In this regard, Jiang Peng hopes that by recounting the general trend of history and the choices made by the ancients under the general trend of history, young people can read history at the same time, they can also suddenly get points, and find a fit with daily life, which may help young people to reconcile with their own lives.
For example, the establishment of the Qin and Han Empires established and consolidated China's two-thousand-year-long imperial power system. Young people in a modern rule-of-law society inevitably wonder, triggering thinking such as "why did the Qin Dynasty collapse at its most powerful time" and even "why Chinese history cannot jump out of the strange circle of dynastic change". The book puts forward the view of the dual legitimacy of imperial power, that is, the emperor's private rights, above the law. The mistakes of imperial power are unsupervised and uncorrected, and only external destruction is the only channel for change.
Jiang Peng borrowed the analogy of "beating workers", "In the imperial era, except for the emperor, they were all 'hit workers'. The so-called 'decrees' were used only to bind all the 'workers' under the emperor alone. In a society that is gradually modernizing, paying attention to rules, and replacing the "human system" with the "legal system", the significance of the "legal society" has been highlighted in historical comparisons.
Kangxi Rong costume visual China figure
Today's "hot spots" are another form of historical repetition
Modernization and individual liberation are the trend of social development, and legal society is the direction of development, however, in Jiang Peng's view, from the patriarchal clan system and the feudal system with blood as the cornerstone in the ancient era to the material production mode based on agriculture, the emotions of Chinese have long been established under the traditional family concept system, and the concept of emphasizing human feelings rather than rules has been amplified into the corners of society.
"In today's China, you can find the imperial power ideas of the 18th century, and you can also find the postmodern ideas of the 21st century." Jiang Peng said. Rural areas are based on large families, and family concepts affect the choices of each family member; while residents of large cities mostly use small nuclear families as units to ensure that the core interests of the core small families are maximized. In the process of modernization and development, the way of life of the Chinese people is changing. Cities have risen to "save" people from their families, but Chinese it is difficult to cut off the relationship with families. For example, the phenomenon of "forced marriage" is common today. When the previous generation still hopes that their children will marry and continue the family and pass on the generations, the children may have become "unmarried families", not only questioning the significance of the existence of the extended family to the individual, but also questioning the nuclear small family, but also often feeling embarrassed in the face of the parents' requirements. The confrontation between tradition and modernity is caused by the inertia of history and culture.
Today's "hot spots" may be just another form of historical repetition. Recently, the term "inner volume" has changed from the anthropological term "out of the circle" to a network hot word, used to describe "white-hot competition" - individuals at the cost of huge mental internal friction, to gain a small amount of competitive advantage and squeeze the living space of others. Jiang Peng believes that the inner volume is a kind of internal friction, which is related to population expansion and resource bottlenecks. The introduction of crops such as sweet potatoes in the Ming Dynasty increased grain and population explosions; of the 9.6 million square kilometers, 90% of the population lived in the area south of the 400 mm precipitation line. As the population grew and there was not enough land, they worked intensively; they expanded their borders, did trade, and did navigation. In Jiang Peng's view, these are all phenomena caused by "inner volumes". As a populous country, China's biggest problem is internal circulation.
As an editor, Jiang Peng hopes that by reading this book, the Chinese people can see china's development process clearly through the appearance of history; he also hopes that primary and secondary school students can learn more about history in addition to their busy schoolwork. In his eyes, taking history as a mirror, we can understand the gains and losses, and this sentence is still outdated today.
Editor-in-Charge: Liang Jia
Proofreader: Shi Gong