Text: Zhao Jinbin (Reading History Special Writer)
In the world of the Tao, it will be based on health and welfare. If the people benefit from it, the source of wealth will benefit the officials; if the officials monopolize their interests, the sources of wealth will be blocked and the people will be damaged. Shamelessness is the root of the demise of dynasties. ——Gu Yanwu
Thousands of years of Chinese history contain dynastic China and cultural China, all dynasties can not escape the rise and fall of succession, short decades, long is hundreds of years, and cultural China through thousands of years, through hundreds of lifetimes, endless melons, condensed into the world's Chinese civilization.
In the feudal society of China's thousands of years of agricultural civilization, even if there are donkeys and horses as legs, the wilderness and the roads are rough and difficult, and the common people regard it as fearful of the road, and it is not the normal life of the scholars. At home, a thousand days is good, it is difficult to go out, and the circulation of sayings such as poor family and rich road condenses the hardships of travel. There are many works in Chinese poetry and literature that give farewell to the past and nostalgia for the homeland, which is precisely the reflection of the concept of the relocation of the ancestors.
Of course, there are exceptions, people are familiar with Tao Yuanming under the eastern fence of picking chrysanthemums, Li Taibai who travels all over the mountains and rivers, Kui Daoyuan who intends to be in rivers and canals and has a clear writing, Xu Xiake, who travels to the mountains and the wind god is superb, and is also familiar with the exile of a cadre of people who have learned a lot, including Xin Jiaxuan, Liu Zihou, and Su Dongpo. The reason why they linger in the landscape all their lives is probably that their ideals and ambitions are related to all kinds of unsatisfactory ambitions in real life. The common feature of Chinese feudal scholars and masters is that once their ideals are struck, they will place political frustration and resentment on the ancients or landscapes. The country's unfortunate poets are fortunate and endowed with vicissitudes.
However, there is another journey in the world, which is neither a flat boat due to the frustration of the journey, nor a drunken forest spring because of the troubles of the world; neither a simple, isolated scientific investigation, nor can it bring about real wealth, status, and any benefits--on the contrary, it is often accompanied by unimaginable dangers and hardships, and it is often accompanied by unimaginable dangers and hardships, and it is painstakingly studied academically, pursuing the belief that the articles are used through the world, and they have gone through hardships and dangers, but they have no remorse; they are happy and happy, putting life and death aside, and their great personality. The articles that are proudly immortal have always stood in the cultural history of Chinese civilization.
This is a veritable cultural journey in history. There are many famous historians in China's past, but there are not many who can stand in this rank. Sima Qian is a veritable one, and then there is Gu Yanwu.
The feudal examination has been passing for thousands of years, and the dream of the reader Guangzong Yaozu runs through. When Emperor Taizong of Tang saw the new Keju entering from the gate of the imperial palace, he sighed with a sentence of "the heroes of the world have entered the middle of my body" and the heavenly transformation of "Toward Tian Shelang, Twilight Ascending the Heavenly Son's Hall", which revealed the true meaning of the historical role of the imperial examination system. Success in the imperial examination can achieve the right and left arm of the imperial power, and defeat in the imperial examination can refine the cultural master. Wu Cheng'en, Cao Xueqin, Xu Wei, and Gu Yanwu were nonetheless.
Gu Yanwu, who was born in Shuxiangmendi and read poetry books, was admitted to the official school in Kunshan County at the age of 14 and obtained the qualification of Xiucai. After becoming a show talent, he repeatedly failed to succeed and was tortured for 13 years. It was these 13 years that made Gu Yanwu suddenly realize that he could no longer drill this dead end, and thus germinated his idea of "learning through the scriptures to the world" to open up a new path. Later, in an article entitled "On the Students", he pointed out that the examination system and the eight strands of the text made the readers "spend useful years in the field house", which was "corrupting the talents of the world". "Feeling the many dangers of the four kingdoms, the widowhood of shame and life." There is only "the birth of the world, and the use of the materials of the world to produce also."
The change of dynasties in the Ming Dynasty and the Qing Dynasty, the world is in chaos, the people are panicked, and there is a great potential for the world to perish. Han scholars and doctors are quite respectful, and Gu Yanwu is an outstanding representative. He resolutely decided to join the anti-Qing and anti-Qing forces, and together with his friends, he fought in Nanjing, Zhenjiang, Changshu and other places. In the defense of Kunshan, Gu Yanwu and his friends Guizhuang, Wu Qixun and others directly participated in the battle. The city of Kunshan was destroyed, Wu Qixun died heroically, Gu Yanwu's two younger brothers were also killed, Gu Yanwu's biological mother He Shi was cut off by the Qing army with her right arm cut off, and her mother Wang Died of hunger strike, leaving Gu Yanwu to live forever. Witnessing such a deep hatred of the country and the family, and seeing that he was powerless to return to heaven, he secretly resolved not to submit to the Qing Dynasty, to run in all directions to resist the Qing Dynasty, to be an indomitable resistance, to exile himself in a lonely journey, and after more than ten years of traveling to resist the Qing Dynasty and resisting the difficulties and obstacles, he finally did not regret it, which was also the fundamental reason why he repeatedly refused the Qing Dynasty to call him an official.
It is really "a body to repay the country and die." The sideburns are no longer green. ”
The fall of the Ming Dynasty gave birth to a number of outstanding thinkers, Huang Zongxi, Wang Fuzhi, Gu Yanwu and known as the three great masters of the late Ming and early Qing dynasties. Having experienced great social upheavals, they painfully summed up history, especially the history of the Ming Dynasty, and came to a sobering conclusion that the evil stemmed from the feudal monarchical system.
When Gu Yan wuyi stepped on a donkey to walk the world without hesitation, he tried to rule the country with culture, sighing all the way up and down, and carefully studied all the way. He lamented that the people of Ming's style of study were empty, and he talked about his heart, but he did not know the shortcomings of attacking and defending the scriptures and the Nongsang River, and he was determined to practice what he preached for the rejuvenation of the nation and for the development of scholarship, "born without a cone, often with the heart of the four seas"; "the heavens and the earth have liver and gallbladder, and the rivers and mountains read the sideburns"; "looking at the sunset on horseback, greeting the dawn at the ferry".
Gu Yanwu is not an aimless traveler, he is a scholar who takes the world as his own responsibility, and it is precisely through the actual investigation in the "four seas" that he wants to explore the reasons for the rise and fall of history. He pays particular attention to places related to history, especially to the great social changes in front of him. When you go out, you must carry books with a mule. When he arrived at the dangerous place, he would ask the retired servant for details here. Some of them are different from what they usually hear, and they check and correct the books in the nearby street market. Sometimes walking directly through the plains and wilderness, there is nothing worth noticing, just on horseback silently reading the commentaries of various classic works.
For more than ten years, he was alone, inspecting the national economy and people's livelihood, and traveled through Shandong, Shanxi, Henan, Hebei, Shaanxi and even the northwest, "tortuous 20,000 to 30,000 miles, and more than 10,000 volumes of books he read." "Reading the Nine Classics begins with the Examination Texts, and the Examination Texts Begin with the Zhiyin", devotes himself to academic research and pays attention to the study of the application of the Scriptures.
He was "extremely energetic, had no hobbies, had been young to old, and had not wasted a day's worth of books." Gu Yanwu, who had gray hair, went deep into the northwest plateau of the secluded people, staggered mountains and valleys, and vast loess soil, and carried the books with a horse mule and walked alone. At the age of more than sixty, he comprehensively sorted out the historical materials on economic and geographical aspects that he had painstakingly compiled from the age of twenty-seven in Shanxi, with the titles of "The Book of The Disease of the Tianxia County" and "The Chronicle of Zhaoyu", which were classified into more than forty volumes. For more than twenty years, he assiduously studied the monograph "Five Books of Phonology" of ancient phonology, and after repeated and serious revisions over the years, it was close to completion, and began to write the most important work of his life, "Rizhilu".
The book is a large-scale academic notebook written by Gu Shi over the years and with gold and jade, and is Gu Yanwu's work of "having knowledge of the ancients, taking notes at any time, and becoming a book over time". With the purpose of enlightenment and salvation, it includes all the academic and political ideas of the author, which are all over the world and the connotation of warning the world, and new insights have emerged one after another, and they have not been published before. Gu likened writing this book to "mining copper in the mountains." He is very confident in the value of this book, saying that "the aspirations and karma of life are in it." The influence of this book is far-reaching, indeed as Pan Qian commented in the "Preface to the Records of The Chronicle of The Day", "Mr. Li is not a person of the first life, and this book is not the book of the first life.". This representative work of Gu Yanwu has a great impact on future generations.
Gu Shi advocated the application of the scriptures, opposed empty talk, paid attention to the extensive search for evidence, and proposed for the practical school, "gentlemen for learning, to the ming dao, to save the world." It is only poetry, and the so-called carving insect seal carving, what is the benefit? Qian Mu said that it was pragmatic rather than empty talk, and that "being able to effectively play its advantages and disadvantages in all aspects of political affairs can be described as a combination of internal saints and foreign kings." Gu Yanwu stressed that to do learning, we must first establish a personality: "Etiquette, righteousness, and shame are called the four dimensions." In the Rizhilu, he even more clearly declared that the purpose of his writing was: "The intention is to clean up the chaos, the Fagu is used to restore, the Enlightenment is heard to learn, and the one is to rule the Queen" (Anthology, vol. 6), and emphasizes that "the gentleman is to learn, to learn from the Ming Dao, to save the world" (Anthology, vol. 4). Under the guidance of the classic idea of "saving the world through the Ming Dao", Gu Yanwu advocated "benefiting the people and enriching the people". He believes that "the great trouble that falls today is greater than poverty" (Anthology, vol. 1), and therefore believes that "the world of the Tao" will "be based on good life" (Rizhilu, vol. 2), and he hopes to gradually change the poverty of the people and achieve "five years and moderate prosperity, ten years and great wealth" (Rizhilu, vol. 2).
He did not deny "wealth" and "profit", saying: "The ancient people have not tried to hide their wealth." ...... If the people benefit from it, the source of wealth will benefit the officials; if the officials monopolize their interests, the sources of wealth will be blocked and the people will be damaged. He believes that the question is not whether to say money and profit, but whether to benefit the people or to harm the people, whether to "benefit the people" or "the officials monopolize their interests." He believes that since the middle of the Wanli Calendar, because "those who are superior to others" only seek "profit", they have caused a situation in which "the people's livelihood is poorer, and the national plan is more and more embarrassing". Therefore, he advocated the implementation of the policy of "hiding rich from the people", believing that "those who are good for the country will hide from the people" . He also pointed out that only in this way is the practice of truly knowing its "end" (Rizhilu, vol. XII).
Gu Yanwu proceeded from the idea of "saving the world with the Ming Dao", and also germinated a bold doubt about the monarchy. In the "Jun" article of the "Rizhilu", he argued that "Jun" was not a special title for a feudal emperor, and then went on to oppose "rule alone" and advocate "rule by all", the so-called "king of man is to the world, and cannot rule alone." The punishment of the rule of the alone is complicated, and the punishment of the rule of the many" (vol. 6), emphasizing "those who send the world with the power of the world" (vol. IX). His skepticism of monarchy and his advocacy of "rule by the masses" had the color of the early democratic Enlightenment ideas against feudal autocracy. What is even more prominent is that he put forward the loud slogan of "the world rises and falls, and the pirate has the responsibility".
Book XIII of the Rizhilu, "The Beginning": "He who protects the world, the lowly of the puppet, and the one who has the responsibility are ear-to-ear." The rise and fall of the world that Gu Yanwu refers to does not refer to the rise and fall of a family and a dynasty with one surname, but to the survival of the vast number of Chinese people and the continuation of the entire Chinese national culture. Therefore, his slogan of "the rise and fall of the world, the responsibility of the man" has become a slogan of far-reaching significance and influence, and has become a spiritual force that has inspired countless heroes and benevolent people of the Chinese nation to forge ahead for hundreds of years. In Gu Yanwu's life, it is indeed to "take the world as its own responsibility" and run around the north and south of the great river, even in the midst of illness, he is still calling for "born Haojie, will have a responsibility." ...... Today, the People of Zhengsi are in ruins and have opened up peace for all the worlds, and this is the responsibility of my generation" ("Anthology", vol. 3), which fully expresses his noble sentiment of "the rise and fall of the world, and the responsibility of the puppeteer". Suddenly, he expressed his high love for the whole country and the nation.
After settling in the northwest, Gu Yanwu was more than seventy years old, and his long-term life of exile and uncertainty made his body weaken day by day. In August 1681, Gu Yanwu came from Huayin, Shaanxi to Quwo, Shanxi, and unfortunately contracted an illness. During his illness, he still "remembered the country's livelihood" and people's livelihood. He wrote a letter to a friend who was an official in the DPRK, truthfully introducing the living hardships of the local people, proposing that the taxes in the Shaanxi area be changed to silver money in kind, and that the collected grain be deposited in the official warehouse and given to the people who were short of grain when they were young and yellow. In his letter, he also wrote such an inspirational and self-exhortatory remark: "Born haojie, he will have a responsibility." ...... Today, the People of Zhengsi (referring to the people) are destroyed and create peace for all the worlds, and this is the responsibility of my generation. Ren thought it was his duty, and after he died, he died. ”
Gu Yanwu combed through history, believing that shamelessness has no bottom line in the hearts of the people and is the root cause of the demise of successive dynasties, and he is convinced that improving society is the natural duty of scholars, and he strongly advocates teaching people to erect a very strong will to resist the evil society, at the very least, so that individuals will not assimilate with the customs, and further, they must use their personal efforts to transform society. Read the whole article and be deeply impressed. All his life, he said and acted according to this standard, and this ideal was carried out down-to-earth throughout, and his personality and learning were almost perfect.
He once said in the poem "In the Rain to the Historian of The King's Mountain under Huaxia": "Laughing at yourself and drifting away from the old guest, riding alone on the Horse Kansai." ”
What an admirable and down-to-earth historiographer's hard journey, and what kind of perseverance and belief support of family and country feelings should be needed! The ancestor of "Qingxue Kaishan" was refined in this way!
Before his death, Gu Yanwu compared himself to a Jingwei bird in a poem titled "Jingwei". This not only expresses his determination to adhere to the integrity and not to submit to the Qing Dynasty, but also declares his persistent ambition to strive for the salvation of the country and the world: "All things are uneven, Er he is empty and self-suffering, and he will grow an inch of body and hold the wood to the end of the ancient world." I wish to calm the East Sea, my body will not change, the sea has no peace, and my heart will not be desperate. alack! Jun is not seen, the West Mountain is full of wood, and the magpie swallows go to their own place. ”
Indeed, he is like the Jingwei Bird Who Reclaims the Sea straight to death, in order to explore the way of the country and the people, he diligently pursues, "after death."
Gu Yanwu has been dead for more than 400 years, and 400 years is only a blink of an eye for history. Nowadays, the land he has painstakingly walked on for which he dedicated himself has already entered the era of comfortable travel that he cannot imagine, but Gu Yanwu's figure always comes to mind in my mind, which is the real cultural journey!
Decades of personal journey, most of his life of purgatory-like cultural hardships, in the face of his solemn words, in addition to respect and pride, we should also be ashamed of ourselves for talking about "culture" and "history".