Current Events
Clear Zhang Qigan
Talking about current affairs,
Subdivision of Chinese and English characters.
Iron ship smoke sold in JinhaiYue,
The train bridge crosses the taihang clouds.
Zhao LingHufu turned his thoughts on the effect,
Meng De's new book is burning.
Intended to sacrifice the sword to save the misdeeds,
The Nine-Fold Difficulty reached the Holy Ming King.
The poem was copied by Bai Majun on his fourth day of the National Day holiday. The author is Zhang Qigan, a native of Nancheng, Dongguan, during the Qing Dynasty. Dongguan is still a land with a relatively deep historical and cultural heritage. There is a garden in Dongguan Nancheng Shuilianshan Forest Park, which has a cultural corridor, one of which is called "PinShi Gallery", and the calligraphy and painting with the seven laws written on it hangs in this PinShi Gallery.
Zhang Qigan was a scholar of Guangxu for twenty years, and once served as a zhi county in Shanxi, where he was a clean and honest official. It was only after the fall of the Qing Dynasty that he was full of contradictions in his heart, unwilling to serve the government of the Republic of China, and called himself a remnant of the former dynasty.
After reading Zhang Qigan's poem, we can know that this poem was written when the Qing Dynasty was not yet destroyed. The world is changing and new ideas are surging up, and nothing can stop the pace of history's progress. Although the poet Zhang Qigan was ideologically stuck in the Confucian system of loyalty to the king and keeping etiquette, he still clearly felt the violent impact of new ideas and new things on the feudal society of the Qing Dynasty.
The first line of the poem tells the reform-minded members of the government about various current affairs. Lenovo did have reformers, conservatives and so on in the Qing court at that time. There are many opinions, talking about the pros and cons.
In terms of cultural exchanges between China and the West, Morrison, a missionary to China, edited the world's first dictionary of Chinese-English translations. This lays a cultural foundation for the exchange and learning of chinese and Western aspects, which is of great significance. The word "Hebi Huaying" in the next sentence of the first link means this bilingual dictionary.
With bilingual exchanges and even more comparative learning of foreign languages and Chinese, many enlightened intellectuals went abroad to study advanced Western technology and progressive ideas in order to revitalize China. Zhang Qigan's poem is titled "Current Affairs", and the first sentence of the previous sentence "Talking about current affairs and guests are talking about them" begins with a grappling title.
The guests here can be ministers of the Qing Dynasty, democrats who want reform, ordinary people in the streets and alleys, and of course the poets themselves. This is a backward poem, and the normal word order would have been "guests talking about current affairs." "Which of the current events at the end of the Qing Dynasty is not related to the rise and fall of the whole country and the survival of the nation?
Zhang Qigan entered the army and the first in 1892. Six years later, the Hundred Days Restoration of the Six Gentlemen of Wushu failed, and Tan Si and his people were righteous in Beijing Caishikou. I smiled at the sky with my horizontal knife, leaving two kunluns of liver and gallbladder. Although they were based on the feudal rule system, they realized after all the various shortcomings of that era, so Tan Sitong's righteousness and these two poems appeared extremely tragic and generous. Current events like this happened constantly in the late Qing Dynasty.
In addition, in the face of changes in the world and the needs of forms at home and abroad, the Qing government launched a foreign affairs campaign, began to manufacture its own ordnance, imported British and German ships, and formed the Beiyang Marine Division.
Zhang Qigan wrote in the jaw link of "Current Affairs": The iron ship smokes the Jinhai moon, and the train bridge crosses the Taihang Cloud. This joint embeds the new things of the times, iron ships and trains, so that the whole text is full of the atmosphere of the progress of the times and the connection between modern civilization, making this poem very different from some poems written by other literati that still use the old things as ancient images, which is shocking and new.
The iron ships written in this league are a series of warships imported by the Qing government from abroad. As a matter of current affairs, the "iron ship smoke sold in Tianjin and Haiyue" reflects that in the Sino-Japanese War, these warships were mostly sunk in the process of resisting foreign insults, so that they were wiped out on the sea. How many Chinese heroes on the battleship at that time were martyred! This war is a disgrace to Chinese history, and the "Train Bridge Crossing the Taihang Cloud" of the Lower League embodies one of the things that makes Zhonghua'er proud in Chinese history.
Zhan Tianyou, the outstanding chief railway engineer, took the lead in designing and building the Beijing-Zhang Railway, which is more than 200 kilometers long, which is the first railway built independently by Chinese. The construction of this railway marked a new period in the development of modern industrial civilization. Zhan Tianyou is an engineering expert with talents in railway engineering. The Qing government planned to build a bridge over the Luan River in Tangshan to facilitate the connection of the main railway line from north China to the northeast.
The Qing government hired British, German and Japanese railway engineering experts to build the bridge, but the results were unsuccessful. Later, after some analysis, Zhan Tianyou summed up the reasons for the failure of foreign experts, explored the local geology in detail, studied the terrain on both sides of the Luan River, and finally determined his own construction plan, and successfully built the Luan River Railway Bridge. This current event is a major event that the sons and daughters of China are proud of and proud of.
Therefore, when Zhang Qigan wrote about "the train bridge crossing the Taihang Cloud", his heart was also very moved. But for the weakness and incompetence of the Qing government at that time, as an official, he was also very emotional in his heart. This is reflected in the neck link of "Current Events".
Zhao Ling's hufu turned over and thought, and Meng De's new book was burning. Shanglian quoted King Wuling of Zhao, one of the Seven Heroes of the Warring States, adopting the policy of "Riding and Shooting in Hu Costumes", and carried out a series of reforms to the economy, military, politics, and culture of the Zhao State, which greatly improved the comprehensive national strength of the Zhao State and promoted the integration of the northern nationalities. Thinking of the successful reform of Zhao Yong, the king of Zhao Wuling in history, how could the poet who was a loyal official of the Qing Dynasty not be moved? I'm afraid that Zhang Qigan can only admire Zhao Yong's success in his heart, and if he wants to emulate it, he can only dream. Because some officials of the Qing government also adopted some innovations, they always ended in failure.
Meng De here is the name of Cao Cao, the King of Wei during the Three Kingdoms period. Cao Cao spent his life fighting in the north and marching south, Na Xian strategized, experienced countless large and small battles, and finally unified a large area of the north. It is said that he once wrote his own way of using soldiers according to the thirteen articles of Sun Tzu's Art of War based on his actual combat experience, which is quite innovative in military theory. His book of soldiers is called the New Book of Meng De.
In the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Zhang Song told Yang Xiu that the book was written by the anonymous clan during the Warring States period, and the children in Shu would recite it, and really memorized the book after saying it. This surprised Yang Xiu and recommended this matter and Zhang Song's talent to Cao Cao. Cao Cao thought that his book was a coincidence with the writings of his predecessors, and he was ashamed to burn this book.
Poets cite the allusion of Meng Dexin's book as a metaphor for the many reform experiences and lessons summarized by predecessors, which are very common, but the Qing government cannot learn from them, just like Cao Cao burned his own military books with a fire.
Through the reflection of the neck link on the ancient people's policy of governance, the poet also has his own idea: to offer a sword to save the evil. The poet felt the impact on the honor and disgrace of the Qing Empire from what he saw and heard, and when he saw the shortcomings of the Qing government, he intended to make some suggestions to the authorities.
The poet was mixed up in the officialdom, and he obviously felt a lot of pressure: the nine difficulties reached the Holy Ming Jun. This is also the limitation of his thinking. I always wanted to pin the illusion of reform on the emperor, but in fact, it was very difficult for myself to reach the emperor's hands. Moreover, this emperor may not be wise. This poem is a helpless cry in the poet's heart, expressing the lament of a generation of widows who are powerless to do anything about the building.