The Compendium of the General History of China, edited by Fan Wenlan in the Yan'an period, because of the Han nationality-centric theory of the Song and Ming rulers and the misinterpretation of the modern Western concept of the nation-state, confused the ethnic conflicts in Chinese history with the aggression and counter-aggression struggles in the Western colonial era. Where the tribes of northern Xinjiang go south, it is generally called invasion of China, and vice versa.
All college students in the United States are required to take American history, and everyone knows how the Mayflower arrived in the East with hundreds of Puritans and went through the process that made the United States rich, powerful, democratic, free, and world leader today. Some of us envy the patriotism and sincerity of Americans, but we do not know that it is the cumulative effect of history education that one-sidedly emphasizes the American spirit.
1. Who are the Chinese
Triple Identity: Nationality, Ethnicity, Culture.
In the modern world, nationality is limited to territory, but it is no longer limited to indigenous peoples. The increasing frequency of population movements has forced many countries to recognize the acquisition of their own citizenship, that is, their own nationals, and the right of citizenship is granted only to those who have resided in the country continuously for a certain number of years, and some are linked to assets, so-called investment immigration, and some recognize dual nationals.
Similarly, there are few countries of a single race or ethnicity in the modern world. China is inhabited by 56 or more ethnic groups (there are still ethnic groups that have no national identity, such as the Kucong people). Ethnicity is no longer confined to the same genetic group, and the composition of the nation is more complex, and there are few that meet Stalin's definition (common language, common territory, common economic life, common mental qualities expressed in a common culture). Otherwise, the definition of the "Chinese nation" will be problematic.
Therefore, who is Chinese, like who is American, French, ** people, etc., in the modern world, the main characterization is a cultural issue. Cultural identity is complex.
2. The cultural identity of the Chinese
The main ethnic group in China is the Han nationality, accounting for more than 90 percent of the Chinese population. But the Han nationality itself was formed by history. It is no longer the ancient Huaxia people. As early as the beginning of the Spring and Autumn Period, about 3,000 years ago, the Chu people living in the Jianghan Valley had already denied that they were the Huaxia ethnic group of "China" at that time. But the Huaxia people of the Loess Plateau were not the same race earlier.
At the end of the Qing Dynasty, Zhang Taiyan wrote "Preface to the Caste", the first part mainly examines the history of the formation of the ancient Huaxia people, and the second part mainly examines the history of the assimilation of the Hu and Han surnames in the Middle Ages. In the first part, he proposed (1) the ethnic origin of the Chinese people, (2) the ethnic structure of the Chinese people, and (3) the differentiation and reorganization of the surnames of the early Chinese people. Using Chinese and foreign documents, he believes that the Chinese people, like other ancient nations in the world, are a "historical nation" formed over thousands or even tens of thousands of years. The argument may not be correct, and the idea is worth referring to.
In the early thirties of the last century, Fu Sinian wrote "The Theory of Yixia and the West", which applied the empirical method of German Ranke historiography to clean up a theory from the contradictory statements in ancient Chinese documents, thinking that the ancient Chinese people were actually the result of the continuous conflict and conquest and assimilation of the two major ethnic groups of Dongyi and Xixia. The tribes of the Loess Plateau relied on force to conquer the eastern Zhuyi tribes, and constantly absorbed and transformed advanced cultures such as Qilu to form a dominant culture in the north, and formed a dual opposition between the north and the south with the southern culture formed after Sun Wu. It can be seen from this that only by respecting history can we explain the origin and evolution of the Chinese nation.
The Chinese nation is a multi-ethnic complex. The same is true of the Han Chinese. The ancient Huaxia people continued to assimilate with the "four descendants". The royal family of the Qin Dynasty, which unified the six countries, was originally from Xirong. The rulers of Chu and Han were not of Zhou, Qin, and Miao descent. During the Han and Wei dynasties, a large number of foreign ethnic groups moved south, and the so-called Xiongnu Xianbei and Qiang tribes of the five chaotic Chinese dynasties were in the Sui and Tang dynasties in the north, and there was no trace of them. However, the Northern Xiongnu, who were expelled from the north by Dou Xian and others of the Eastern Han Dynasty in the first century, fled to the west and suddenly appeared in Europe in the fifth century, led by King Attila to sweep through Western Europe, and then retreated into Eastern Europe. The Southern Xiongnu had established the Han Dynasty, and later changed to the former Zhao, and then declined in the chaos, among which Helian Bobo built the Xia Kingdom in Gan and Qing, and the Qianqiang were both strong and shrinking. In its heyday, Xianbei dominated Northeast Asia to Central Asia, and the Northern Dynasty it established was shaped by the Sui and Tang dynasties because of the division of Hu and Han, which promoted the formation of the Han nationality and the Sui and Tang dynasties. At this time, the Han nationality was actually the product of the assimilation of the northern and southern ethnic groups. After the Khitan, Jurchen, Mongolian, and Manchurian dynasties, the northern Han people continued to mix with these ethnic groups, and the southern Han people also continued to absorb the Baiyue ethnic groups, and finally became the Han people of the Ming and Qing dynasties. Nowadays, among the various ethnic groups in China, only the Yi, Miao, Yao and other ethnic groups in the southwest, central and south, can be traced back to the Middle Ages, and most of the others are distinguished from the Tang Dynasty to the Yuan Dynasty.
Therefore, ethnic differences are more reflected in cultural diversity.
3. A multicultural unified nation
The Xinhai Revolution proclaimed the republic of the five ethnic groups and established China**, which was widely recognized by all ethnic groups within the territory of the former Qing Empire. The Chinese nation is universally recognized.
Since a nation is formed in history, it is of course that the nations of the modern world are only defined in a strict sense in modern times. Many regions of the world have ancient civilizations, and perhaps with the exception of China, there is no ancient civilization that has not been interrupted, or has not changed. Some modern civilizations, such as the United States and Australia, are entirely products of the modern world. Even like the Chinese civilization, there are discontinuities in continuity, and there are differences in unification.
Based on the research of previous scholars, the following insights can be used as a reference for cultural identity: (1) Since the beginning of China, all ethnic groups in the territory of China belong to the Chinese nation. (2) Multi-ethnic Chinese culture is a complex of multiple cultures. (3) All cultures contain both material and spiritual structures, and the intersection of the two reflects the psychological structure. (4) Therefore, culture is not only the materialization of the spirit, but also the materialized spirit, for example, the temple of religion is a thing, and the monks and Taoists are also tangible, but they all belong to the manifestation of the materialization of the spirit of a particular belief, and the same is true of the art form and the spirit it reflects. For example, the Zen dojo of Buddhism can be described as the materialization of the traditional scholars' identification with Buddhism, while the Lamaist monasteries are the materialized form of Buddhist tantra reformed by the Tibetan and Mongolian ethnic groups. (5) The 56 ethnic groups that make up the Chinese nation have their own cultural characteristics, but they all belong to the separate reflection of the unified whole (Zhou Gucheng especially emphasized this point). Even like the Han people, they also have cultural diversity. The only bonds that are assembled are the form of government and writing, such as dialects, folk customs, beliefs, as well as clothing, food, housing and transportation (the exception of transportation, which can be said to be food, drink, housing and clothing). (6) Therefore, it can only be recognized that the cultural diversity of all regions and ethnic groups is the brilliance of Chinese culture, and the so-called "Mani (jewelry) sees the light and sees the different colors", it cannot be said that cultural identity can only identify with a single, artificial conceptual form, such as the culture as a conceptual form emphasized. (7) Cultural differences reflect the relativity of culture. Since all the cultural forms within China's borders have long been the same law and script, they are of course a unified whole with their own system relative to other nations. In the past, the so-called comparison of Chinese and Western cultures or Eastern and Western cultures not only denied that Chinese culture is pluralistic and integrated, and advocated the so-called Han-centric theory (internally Han nationalism), but also denied that Han culture also has time and space differences between east, west, north and south, and even replaced Chinese culture with capital culture. (8) Chinese culture has never been a closed system, and it is the enduring mystery of Chinese culture to seek common ground while reserving differences, and to spit out the old and embrace the new externally. Neo-Confucianism does the opposite, "self-centered" and wants to be centered on Zhu Xi's style of science, which is by no means culturally identity-oriented.
4. History of China
If the territory of the modern nation-state is formed as the criterion, then we can only agree with Tan Qixiang's definition, and China's territory should be based on the late Kangxi period. Because by the middle of the Kangxi Dynasty of the Qing Dynasty (around 1700), the effective rule of the empire had reached Manchu and Mongolia in the north, and the Zhun Department in the west, Hainan and Taiwan islands in the south and east, not to mention the old countries in the four borders. At that time, the territory of the empire was about 12 million square kilometers.
In the late Qing Dynasty, the Qing Dynasty also successively set up provinces in Xinjiang and Taiwan. However, the frontier crisis caused by the aggression of the great powers intensified at the same time, with Japan forcibly ceding Taiwan and Peng, Tsarist Russia encroaching on Mongolia's territory, and Britain, France, Germany, and Italy also competing to forcibly occupy Chinese territory. Until, the Soviet Russian Stalin regime, in disregard of Lenin's oath to abolish the unequal treaty with China, created a foreign state, and also occupied the Chinese territory that had no treaty to rely on. As a result, after the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, Taiwan was recovered, and China's territory was like begonia leaves after being encroached, with only 9.6 million square kilometers.
In discussing the history of China, we must undoubtedly determine the boundaries of historical China, and we must not be limited to the first territory. For example, Outer Mongolia, from the Northern Dynasties to the Liao, Jin and Yuan, was within the territory of the Chinese dynasty at that time, and was the ruling base of the Yuan Empire
The Compendium of the General History of China, edited by Fan Wenlan in the Yan'an period, because of the Han nationality-centric theory of the Song and Ming rulers and the misinterpretation of the modern Western concept of the nation-state, confused the ethnic conflicts in Chinese history with the aggression and counter-aggression struggles in the Western colonial era. Where the tribes of northern Xinjiang go south, it is generally called invasion of China, and vice versa.
In that year, Sun Yat-sen, Huang Xing, and others formed an alliance in Japan, and the 16-character program recorded Zhu Yuanzhang's Northern Expedition in the early Ming Dynasty, "expelling the Tartars and restoring China", which is understandable. Because in order to arouse the hatred of the Han people, they compared the Manchu Qing to the Meng Yuan. However, Japan's invasion of China and the creation of a puppet Manchurian and puppet Mongolian regime were precisely something that Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang regime would never agree with. Fan Bian may have tried to urge Chiang to resist Japan, but denounced both the Mongol Yuan and the Manchu Qing as "alien" dynasties established by invading "China", isn't it Han-centric and fragmented history?In the same work, "Modern History of China", Zeng Guofan, Li Hongzhang and others were denounced as "traitors", regardless of their suppression of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, subjectively opposing Hong Yang's advocacy of worshipping God and "using razor to change Xia".
Fan Wenlan's two works are based on the history of the dynasties, and the other treatise is based on Stalin's theory of the Chinese revolution, and Stalin's Great Russian nationalist complex is precisely the starting point of his "historical materialism" to reverse history.
It should be pointed out that in the early days of the founding of our republic, the "Concise Course on the History of the Communist Party of the United States (CPB)" edited by Stalin was once the textbook of the "foundation of Marxism-Leninism" in the whole country, so that after two years of indoctrination, students of the history department were even more familiar with the history of the Soviet Union than the history of China. At that time, he called for the emancipation of the mind, but did not clearly point out that it was necessary to criticize Stalin's view of history that was generally instilled in Chinese cadres and students in this textbook, which was perhaps a big mistake of him.
Looking back at the history of China, it can be seen that (1) the spatial scope of Chinese history is not limited to the territory of **. (2) Historical China should include the common history of all ethnic groups in China up to the Kangxi Dynasty of the Qing Dynasty, including the national history and dynastic history of non-Chinese and non-Han ethnic groups. (3) That is, after Qin Shi Huang unified the six countries, most of the history of China was dominated by non-Han border peoples, for example, Beijing became the capital for nearly a thousand years, of which except for the Ming Yongle 200 years, the masters all belonged to the Khitan, Jurchen, Mongolian, and Manchurian ethnic groups. Considered orthodox by historians, no one traveled to or from the two Song dynasties, except for prisoners of war, envoys, and merchants. Chinese culture is not the same as the culture of the capital, which can be seen here.
5. History of China
From the foregoing, we can see that the history of China is the entire history of China. The so-called "all" refers to all the history of the various regions and ethnic groups living in China's territory before the foreign invaders forced China to conclude various unequal treaties, including the process of China's exchanges with other countries and ethnic groups in the past dynasties.
The history of dynasties is not a substitute for Chinese history. Before the Qing Dynasty, each dynasty changed its country name, such as the Tang Dynasty, the Great Song Dynasty, the Great Yuan, the Great Ming Dynasty, the Great Qing Dynasty, etc. But dynasties had their own territories, and it was common for several dynasties to coexist in the same era. The two Song dynasties coexisted at the same time, including the Liao, Jin, Western Xia, Dali and Mongol dynasties. Their history, of course, also belongs to the history of China.
Chinese history cannot be abbreviated as "national history". Within China, even in the era of "great unification", there were often other countries. What's more, in the ** era, countries coexist, which country do you say characterizes "China"?Even if it is **, it has not really been unified. Now that it has been 56 years since the establishment of the Republic, not only has the great cause of reunification not been completed, but it has also been forced to admit the status quo of the late Qing Dynasty's border being divided, can the territory of Mobei, which was included in the territory of the Liao, Jin, Yuan, and Qing dynasties, be excluded from historical China?
Rather. Ten. The European missionaries who entered China in the 6th and 7th centuries introduced to the Western world the history and current situation of the empire of East Asia, whose name was changed from the Ming to the Qing Dynasty, and they all adopted the concept of "China" or "Chinese Empire", that is, it was more in line with the historical reality. Therefore, it is better to use "Chinese history" to summarize our history from ancient to present. Needless to say, I agree with Professor Tan Qixiang that the spatial definition of "China" should be based on the territory of the Qing Dynasty in the 18th century.
6. China's Tradition of Historical Compilation
Everyone knows that our nation attaches the utmost importance to history. The oracle bone inscriptions and Zhongding Yi inscriptions have been continuously unearthed, indicating that in the Yin and Zhou dynasties, it was a national event to record and preserve history. Since 841 B.C. (the first year of the Western Zhou Republic), we have continuous chronicles. At the end of the second century B.C., Sima Qian wrote the Records of the Historians, a general history of China and the known world for 3,000 years.
Since then, Chinese historical works have emerged one after another. From the first century to the beginning of the twentieth century, every dynasty, large or small, had a special historian who wrote the history of its predecessors and its own dynasty. By the eighteenth century, there were twenty-two "official histories" approved by the Qing Dynasty. ** It was increased to twenty-four histories. It is a big history based on biographies and institutional accounts.
At the same time, the chronicle "Spring and Autumn", which is said to have been written by Confucius in his later years, was also imitated by many public and private historians in the Middle Ages. One of the most famous masterpieces is the Zizhi Tongjian, edited by Sima Guang in the 11th century.
Of course, the Middle Ages also gave rise to other forms of historical writing. In the eighteenth century, there were 17 kinds listed by the History Department of the Qing Dynasty's "Siku Quanshu General Catalogue". In fact, the so-called scriptures in traditional China are all compilations of historical documents in the form of narratives. Since the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, scholars and scribes have been good at narrating, speaking, and discussing history, and later they have also developed to examine and prove history. Leaving behind many scattered notes, or privately written "wild histories", often preserves the historical truth more than official works such as revised histories.
Such a tradition must arouse the alarm of those in power. Qin Shi Huang burned books, and the focus was on destroying the historical records of the countries other than the "Records of Qin". Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty ** Sima Qian, the reason is that he dared to truthfully record the conspiracy and superstition of the emperor's father and son. The emperor of the Eastern Han Dynasty changed his strategy and ordered historians to write histories in the court, which became a tradition from then on. Of course, I don't relax the ** of the historian. At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, a prime minister insisted on killing Cai Yong, who was willing to write the history of the Han Dynasty like Sima Qian, on the grounds that Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty did not kill Sima Qian and let him leave a "slanderous book".
From the Three Kingdoms to the Northern and Southern Dynasties, China was in turmoil for 400 years. At that time, if there were soldiers, they had the power, but no matter what clan was in power, as long as it was slightly stable, they would control the revision of history and strictly prevent the historians from going out of line. Gao Huan's father and son in Northern Qi are obvious examples. It was also during this period that both the Northern and Southern Dynasties formed a history museum system, turning the compilation of modern history into a first-class act monitored by the monarch. Although the popularity of paper has made it easier to write history, the space for speech created by power struggles has also made it more difficult to control private writings.
However, the Sui and Tang dynasties were unified, and the official control of historical compilation became more powerful. Tang Taizong attached great importance to reinterpreting history according to his intentions, and personally edited the Book of Jin to defend his coup d'état to seize the throne. At the same time, through the large-scale compilation of the "History of the Five Dynasties", the history museum system was improved, making it almost impossible for folk historians to write modern history, especially the history of the current dynasty.
For more information about China's historical compilation tradition, its colorful forms and contradictory processes, please refer to the Selected Writings of Chinese History, edited by Professor Zhou Yutong. The bibliography and the author's biography in the middle, my original intention was to string them together, which is a popular history of Chinese historiography.
7. Chinese should know Chinese history
History belongs to the humanities. Every discipline has its own history. But the discipline of history, though not all-encompassing, is the common ground of all disciplines dealing with the human past, and is far broader than the humanities, society, nature, or crafts. Therefore, although the division of disciplines within history is becoming more and more specialized and detailed, all historians agree that general is the premise of specialization, and that breadth and profundity should complement each other.
There was a time when the scope of history, intervened by power, became narrower and narrower. For example, history is the history of class struggle, which means the victory of some classes over others, and its backbone is revolution, including slave revolts, peasant uprisings, bourgeois revolutions, and most thoroughly the so-called proletarian revolution. The so-called, because Stalin *** said that the Chinese revolution was a peasant revolution led by a proletarian party. Therefore, the history of the class struggle is again said to be the history of the peasant war, and its essence is political revolution. And what about politics before this?There is a very simple answer, which is "dog eats dog".
The history of mankind in general, and Chinese history in particular, has been reduced to such a dry dogma that it has become a "red line" running through history textbooksFor a long time, Chinese history was not popular with middle school students. Even the humanities departments of literature, philosophy, journalism, and the arts are reluctant to offer courses in general history of China and foreign countries, perhaps because it is not interesting to repeat those dogmas.
What about the effect?Hugh said that others, even the so-called highly educated intellectual elite, do not know what China's past was like, and even do not know that the "late Qing Dynasty and early Republic of China" is not "the late Ming and early Qing Dynasty". Our ** involves Chinese and foreign historical events and figures, and frequent mistakes have become commonplace. Of course, this does not mean that the Chinese are not interested in the history of the past and the present, and the film and television works fabricated with so-called historical themes are often unfading, which is counterproof. However, although there are many historical treatises, they are rarely attractive to people to read, so the so-called ancient works in the form of fake and real "jokes" are popular. In the past, officials and people often regarded "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" as the true history of the Three Kingdoms. Nowadays, people believe that the pseudo-history of the emperor and the queen mother is a fact. Qin Shi Huang became a "hero" who cherished the stabbing guests, Sima Qian continued to grow a beard after being castrated by Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, Kangxi's grandmother called herself "I Xiaozhuang" before she died, the cruel ** tyrant Yongzheng became a wise monarch, and Qianlong, who ate and drank and had fun, led to the corruption of the whole country, became a model for private interviews with the people, and some even admired Heshen so much that they threw themselves on the ground. The list goes on. Chinese history has been ruined to such an extent, where can we start with "taking history as a mirror".
Lenin once said, "To forget the past is to betray it." "I don't think history plays that big of a role. However, history cannot be turned into a mirror, and it cannot be arbitrarily distorted by modern scientific and technological means to justify the status quo, or used as a fake and shoddy commodity to cheat money. The Japanese rightists are quite aware of history, and the prime minister and congressmen have ignored the condemnation of visiting the Yasukuni Shrine, which enshrines Class-A war criminals, so that few young Japanese students today know that their fathers and ancestors inflicted such terrible disasters on the people of various Asian countries. All college students in the United States are required to take American history, and everyone knows how the Mayflower arrived in the East with hundreds of Puritans and went through the process that made the United States rich, powerful, democratic, free, and world leader today. Some of us envy the patriotism and sincerity of Americans, but we do not know that it is the cumulative effect of history education that one-sidedly emphasizes the American spirit. We criticize the Taiwan authorities for "de-Sinicization", but we avoid criticizing our indifference to China's true history and allowing the mass media to propagate false history, which also has the effect of "de-Sinicization".
I often say that studying history is useless, because it is not in line with the Marxist materialist view of history. But I also disagree with the Cartesian notion of separating modernity and tradition (see Schwartz). Modern neo-Confucianism's fantasy of using the Tao of Confucius and Mencius to save the world from moral degradation is anti-historical. And the "** faction asserts that the blue civilization is superior to the yellow civilization, and preaches a complete anti-tradition, which is also anti-historical.
Chinese history shows that China has the oldest ancient civilization in the world, China has always been at the forefront of world civilization in the Middle Ages, and China has become a "fatty" for foreign powers to devour in the modern world. Confucianism has long since fallen apart, but it has finally survived the blow of the Qin and Han dynasties' "tranquility technique", because it considers itself weak, catering to the power orientation, and absorbing the scholarship of Taoism, law and ink schools to supplement itself. As a result, although the Han Dynasty scriptures have been reborn, they still use the image of Confucius as an idol on the outside, just as St. Paul's newly created doctrine of God is still named after Jesus**. Later, medieval scriptures continued to cater to the changed power orientation, and indiscriminately incorporated new teachings such as Buddhism and Taoism into their own scriptures and historical expressions, so that successive generations of grandmasters were fake Confucius.
After the May Fourth Movement, Mr. Zhou Yutong once synthesized the views of Zhang Taiyan and Liang Qichao in the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China, and pointed out that the history of Chinese classics is the history of the development of fake Confucius. In the 80s of the last century, I re-examined the "History of the Holy Name" and pointed out that there was no consistent way of Confucius and Mencius, from the art of Confucius in the Western Han Dynasty, to the way of Confucius in the Han and Jin dynasties, and then to the way of Confucius and Mencius in the Tang and Song dynasties, and the way of Confucius and Mencius that was not affirmed by the imperial examination system until a hundred years after Zhu Xi's death.
Symbolic history is not the same as true history. From childhood to adulthood, and even to old age, not only do we change our faces, but so do our behaviors, our thinking, and our mindsets. The old ** often causes us to recall the past, whether the memories are full of flavors or not, but everyone knows that it is impossible to go back to those disappeared years. But by recalling and contemplating the course of life, we can discover how we have gone from naivety to maturity, or from naivety to sophistication, or even to still being stupid, repeatedly stumbling in similar potholes. Therefore, history does not repeat itself, but looking back at history, it may make us smarter. Suppose there is a science that can make individuals, nations, and people in the world wiser, and that is history.
8. Suggest history study to college students
China has not yet achieved universal access to higher education. Of the 1.3 billion people, only 1 in 1,000 are enrolled in universities. Therefore, Chinese college students are rare, and they often think very highly of themselves, but they know that they are proud of themselves, but they do not know that the sky is high and the earth is thick.
In fact, the academic division of labor is getting more and more detailed, the higher the academic qualifications, and the narrower the knowledge. Shanghai citizens have a proverb, "poor as a professor, stupid as a doctor". The latter sentence is obviously influenced by the fallacy that "the more you read, the more stupid you are", but we must admit that this is a satire on the current situation of specialization and narrowing of the division of labor in the academic world. Chen Jingrun is a case in point.
Comparatively speaking, humanities scholars have a broader horizon, while historians, especially "well-versed", have a broader horizon. The history of Chinese historiography shows that since the Qin Emperor and the Han Dynasty, historians have often been hated by successive rulers, especially when they valued history over politics. Han Yu said that "those who do not have a disaster for history, but will be punished by heaven", although he was criticized by Liu Zongyuan, but after a thousand years, the Cultural Revolution still regarded "bourgeois" historiography as a reason, and it can be seen that the fate of historians is always negative.
I was skeptical of the judgment that "800 million people are politicians", and of course I also decided that historical research is the business of a few. But I think that Chinese, especially the elite class with a university degree or above, must learn some history, and the first step is to learn some Chinese history.
The reason is simple: you are a human being, and of course you should know the origin of the difference between man and beast, and even animals and plants;You are a modern person, of course, you should know the history of the global village and the ins and outs of the so-called globalizationYou are a modern Chinese, of course, you should know how the ancestors of today's China went through hardships and created and changed the current living environment and social system for the residents of all ethnic groups in today's China.
Since then, the two opposite cultural orientations of forgetting ancestors and recognizing thieves as fathers have become the norm. However, in the past 15 years, the so-called nationalism, encouraged by power and aided by uniformity, seems to have become the focus of historical tradition.
Could it be that the foolish act of the Empress Dowager Cixi in the late Qing Dynasty to take advantage of the xenophobia of the Boxers can be called nationalism?Conquered nations such as the conquerors who entered from Manchuria and ruled over the culturally advanced Han nationality did indeed use the history of the defeat of the Liao, Jin, and Yuan dynasties as a mirror of history. With the Manchu controlling Han, prohibiting Manchu-Han intermarriage, declaring Manchu as the Chinese language, ** the regime implements the Manchu-Han dual-track system, does not allow non-Eight Banner Han people to get involved in military power, and even re-examines all traditional historical classics, and uses power to forcibly delete the history of the ruler and even his ancestors, all of which seem to be reproduced in the history of the ** official revision of the Qing Dynasty.
It has been 94 years since the Manchu Qing Dynasty was in history, and it has been 56 years since it became a thing of the past on the mainland. According to the 2,000-year-old tradition of "revising history across generations" since the Book of Han, Chiang Kai-shek did not complete the revision of the "Qing Historical Manuscript" before he withdrew from the mainland, which has proved that this regime is not the "orthodox" of the Qing Dynasty. If Jiang had been driven to establish the country, more than half a century, the history of the Shengguo Dynasty would have stopped at the fragments, and the power would have intervened, consumed hundreds of millions of people's fat and people's ointment, gathered thousands of experts and shallow people, and ignored the "Qing History Biography", "Qing History Manuscript" and many actual records, and clarified the basic historical facts of the Manchu Qing Dynasty in the past 300 years, and used the so-called new Qing history to impact the research of the first history and even the history of the struggle between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, and even divert people's attention from the history of the Republic. Isn't this a phenomenon worth pondering?
Qin Shi Huang burned books to pit Confucianism, burned mainly the historical works of the Six Kingdoms, and buried alive the main anti-system cultural elites. Since then, from Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty to Emperor Gao of the Qing Dynasty, all regard this as the only way to achieve cultural excellence. **From Yuan Shikai's imperial movement to Chiang Kai-shek's new life movement, from the resumption of Bible reading, to the reverence for Confucius and Mencius, to the restoration**, it has almost become a historical cycle phenomenon. Similarity of phenomena does not mean consistency of connotation. Yuan Shikai is not Zhang Xun, Sun Yat-sen is not Chiang Kai-shek, and it is not to be known to the wise, but from Yuan Shikai, Sun Yat-sen to Chiang Kai-shek, the universal values of democracy and human rights have increasingly been transformed into exceptions in China's "democracy", and even the opposite definition is called Chinese characteristics.
China, with more than one-fifth of the population of the world, has become a global leader in terms of population alone. It is a pity that in the past 100 years, China's political system has changed back and forth, and it has not escaped the scope of the Kangxi era and the French Emperor Louis XIV. Although the monarch can be used as a link for great unification, a constitutional monarchy, a hypothetical monarchy, and even a democratic republic can all become the foundation of a strong country, and as early as the end of the Qing Dynasty, it has become the consensus of all parties opposing the Qing Dynasty.
Yuan Shikai restored the imperial system at the beginning of the Republic of China, Zhang Xun supported the restoration of the Qing Dynasty, one failed faster than the other, it can be seen that the Chinese oppose the monarch **, accumulated for a long time, so the monarchy system has been abolished, which person who thinks that he has the power to have an army, if he dares to restore the imperial system, all of them are pointed out, most of them are less than three months, as short as only ten days, and they will lose everything.
9. Introduce a few books
History teaches people to be smart, but reading history is very hard. Moreover, it is rare to find a more informative, concise, readable and enlightening introductory history.
In addition to most boring textbooks, students who are interested in understanding Chinese history in general may wish to read the following books:
1) Fairbank, China: Tradition and Change. This is a general history of China that precedes The New History of China, which Fairbank completed before his death in September 1991. Before the Song Dynasty, the chapters were written by Lai Shihe. The chapters from the Mongol Yuan to the People's Republic of China were written by Fairbank. The target audience he set for Western intellectuals is very suitable for our beginners, especially since we still do not have a decent history of ** and the history of the republic. There is a Chinese translation published by World Knowledge Publishing House in 2002. In addition, his classic works "The United States and China" and "Observing China" have also been translated into Chinese.
2) The first three volumes of Fan Wenlan's Compendium of the General History of China.
3) Qian Mu's "Outline of National History".
4) Chen Xulu, editor-in-chief, Eighty Years of Modern China.