The shaving order was a policy of the Qing rulers to require the Han people to change their hairstyles after the elimination of the Southern Ming regime. This seemingly simple change in hairstyle is actually the destruction of the traditional Confucian values of the Han people, and the replacement of Han culture by Manchurian culture.
As a result, this policy was strongly resisted and resisted by everyone from Han Chinese doctors to ordinary people. The rulers of the Qing Dynasty waged a fierce struggle against the vast number of Han gentry, and even tragic events such as the Three Massacres in Jiading and the 81st Day in Jiangyin occurred.
Eventually, the implementation of the shaving order ended with the maintenance of Manchu rule and cultural oppression of the Han Chinese.
From the coexistence of Manchu and Han hairstyles to the implementation of the shaving order, 1644 was a period full of uncertainties for the people of China. Li Zicheng, who was born in northern Shaanxi, led hundreds of thousands of peasant troops to sweep through the Central Plains with an unstoppable momentum, and in March he invaded Beijing, where Zhu Youzhen, the last emperor of the Ming Dynasty, hanged himself on a coal mountain.
However, only a month later, the Manchu clique entrenched in the northeast joined forces with the Ming general Wu Sangui to defeat the peasant army in the Shanhaiguan area, driving Li Zicheng out of the capital and becoming the new ruler.
In just two months, the Beijing division changed hands three times, and people were panicked for a while. The Manchurians, as a minority regime outside the Guan, needed to gain a firm foothold as soon as possible. In the eyes of the Qing rulers, the reason why the Jin and Yuan dynasties fell quickly and ruled for a short time was because they were too yearning for Han culture, carried out Sinicization reforms, and advocated Han customs, but lost their fine martial traditions.
In order to maintain its dominant position, the Manchu Qing Dynasty not only issued proclamations to stabilize the social order, but also learned from the past and strictly prohibited the sinicization of its own people. At the same time, they used coercion to demand changes in the customs of the Han people, especially the hairstyle known as the money rat tail, which was the most prominent cultural symbol of Manchuria.
In the early years of his reign, Dolgon forced Han Chinese to shave their hair, but this caused widespread opposition and resentment. Considering the insufficient number of Manchurian troops and the presence of resistance forces in various places, Dolgon was forced to announce the abolition of this policy in just two weeks and allow the Han Chinese to retain their traditional hairstyles.
Although the shaving order was abolished, the Manchus still believed that braids were the foundation of life and the sustenance of the soul. Eight Banners soldiers who died on the battlefield would bring their hair braids back to their hometowns as a sign of respect.
Dolgon proposed that "the officials return and return to their posts; The national policy of "the people return and resume their careers" successfully appeased the hearts of the Han people, eliminated the ethnic estrangement between the Manchus and Hans, and enabled the Manchus to gain a firm foothold in the Central Plains.
As a result of this shaving court controversy, the Manchus and Han ** were independent of each other for a long time, with the Manchu** wearing Manchu clothes and the Han ** continuing to wear the official uniforms of the Ming Dynasty, and the two sides coexisted in harmony.
However, in May 1645, the Manchu Qing captured Nanjing, the Hongguang regime of the Southern Ming Dynasty collapsed, and the Manchu-Han balance was broken, and it was Sun Zhiqi, a scholar of the Inner Academy, who broke this balance.
During the Shunzhi period, there was a ** named Sun Zhiqi, who secretly shaved his head at home in order to cater to the new regime. When he went to court the next day, he shaved his hair and wore a Manchu official uniform, which surprised everyone from the emperor to the ministers.
Sun Zhiqi said: "The minister's wife is the first to be alone, and the family shaves the hair effectively." This kind of behavior was naturally despised by the Han ministers. So, after the collapse of the Hongguang regime, he wrote a letter to try to make the whole country follow the emperor's likes and dislikes.
However, this letter aroused a strong reaction from the Han ministers, who accused Sun of being ill-intentioned and selfish, and pointed out that the Qing dynasty must follow the etiquette of the Han people when ruling China.
In the end, Sun Zhiqi was embarrassed and was forced to submit his resignation. Although he played to Dorgon's heart, it was considered inappropriate at the time, as Qing rule China had to respect the traditions and culture of the Han Chinese.
Dolgon stills The Qing Dynasty ruled basically stable after defeating Nanming and Li Zicheng. To further rule the Han Chinese, Dolgon used shaving his hair as a means. Sun's twist and turn provided Dolgon with an opportunity, and instead of approving his resignation, he promoted him to the center and stayed with him.
For Zhao Xingxing, who opposed shaving his hair, he reprimanded and deposed a group of **, and Dolgon's attitude determined the outcome of this debate. On May 29, 1645, Dolgon issued another shaving order, which limited the shaving of hair within ten days to all officials and citizens throughout the country, inside and outside the capital, and in all provinces and localities, and those who violated the order were to be put to death.
At the same time, he also asked Duoduo, the commander-in-chief of the Jiangnan front, to implement a shaving order in Jiangnan, and all parts of the country should complete the shaving of hair within ten days of the arrival of the official document. If the local ** is opposed, it will be punished with "no mercy".
As soon as this order was issued, the whole country was in an uproar, and a protest of "keeping your hair without your head, keeping your head without leaving your hair" began. From the Three Massacres in Jiading to the 81st in Jiangyin, the Manchurians destroyed the resistance of the Han people with butcher knives.
Under the forced requirements of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, the Han people who opposed shaving their hair were forced to submit, and the few who did not compromise were dismissed from their posts and demoted to commoners. Although the resistance to shaving comes mainly from the folk, the Han people have always attached great importance to the tradition of hairstyles, and the "Book of Filial Piety" has a saying: "The body hair and skin, the parents who receive it, dare not destroy it, and the beginning of filial piety is also." ”
Han people are not allowed to shave their hair after adulthood, both men and women twist their hair into a bun on the top of their heads, under the influence of thousands of years of Confucian traditional culture, Han people regard hair storage as life, how can they shave their hair easily.
The people's anti-Qing movement to restore the Ming Dynasty continued to rise, but the Qing army tore off its camouflage, treated civilians with butcher knives, and forced a shaving order. Among them, the squire Hou Dong of Jiading led the people to revolt against the Qing Dynasty, but was suppressed by the Qing army of 5,000 people, and the city of Jiading was broken.
The Qing army began to massacre the city, countless civilians were cut down, thrown into wells, and limbs were amputated, and women were brutally killed. The rebels were nailed to the door panels, and more than 30,000 people were killed in just one day.
A few days later, the surviving civilians, led by Zhu Ying, revolted again, killing traitors and officers who had surrendered to the Qing army. Li Chengdong led his troops to counterattack, and a large number of residents were killed, and the corpses were piled up in mounds, and then set on fire.
Wu Zhifan, the general of the Southern Ming Dynasty, led the people of Jiading to pick up the ** uprising and drove away the Qing army. However, Li Chengdong's whole army counterattacked, Wu Zhifan and others were wiped out, and Jiading was washed in blood again, with nearly 20,000 people bleeding.
In less than two months, the Qing army attacked Jiading three times, and more than 100,000 people were killed, which is the "Jiading Three Massacres".
At the same time as the three massacres in Jiading, the people of Jiangyin led a large-scale anti-Qing struggle with the strength of the people of the whole city. From the first day of the sixth month of the leap month to the 21st day of August, Yan Yingyuan and others resisted bravely, and the Qing army mobilized more than 100,000 horse infantry to besiege the city and surrender.
However, Jiangyin Yimin's resolute reply rejected the Qing army's request. Next, the Qing army began to attack Jiangyin, but the stubborn resistance of the people of Jiangyin caused heavy losses to the Qing army, and three princes and eighteen generals were killed successively.
The Qing army gathered 240,000 troops and more than 200 artillery pieces and launched a fierce attack on the city, resulting in the loss of more than 75,000 men. Almost all of the 200,000 people in Jiangyin were killed, and only 53 survived hiding on the temple's tower.
The battle, which lasted 81 days, was known as the "Jiangyin Eighty-One Day", and at the same time, there were anti-Qing uprisings in other parts of the country, and it took the Qing army 10 years to put down these rebellions.
Although the shaving order was implemented, it was only a further restraint and control of the Han Chinese by the Manchu ruling group, which provoked hatred in the hearts of the Han people. Even in the sixth year of Kangxi, after the North Korean envoys returned from Beijing, they all sighed: "Hanyi is no more, when can China be changed?" ”
At the same time, he described the scene of Beijing residents looking down and crying when they saw their North Korean clothes. This war and the shaving order filled the Han people with deep resentment and hatred for the Manchu rule.