Recently, I read Mr. Zhang Hongjie's book, which is called "Hunger in the Prosperous Age: Gains and Losses in the Qianlong Era". To tell the truth, the title alone triggered my ** desire, after all, in the history textbooks we studied, the excellence of the Qianlong Emperor and the last prosperity of feudal society were emphasized more than once.
Why does Mr. Zhang Hongjie call this prosperous era "hunger"? Some may have questioned his views, but if you read his writings, you will understand that his views are not fabricated out of thin air.
Hongjie Zhang, a graduate of the Center for Historical Geography at Fudan University, holds a Ph.D. in history and postdoctoral experience in the Department of History at Tsinghua University, and is currently a researcher at the School of History at Renmin University of Chinese, where his main research areas are non-fiction historical writing and public historical communication.
In the field of history, Zhang Hongjie has a high prestige and recognition.
Zhang Hongjie, an authoritative figure in the field of history, once appeared on the 100 forums in June 2013 to give a lecture on "Success or Failure on Qianlong", and the ratings of the show hit the highest of the year.
He is also a contributor to many large-scale historical programs and one of the authors of best-selling history books, among which "Hunger in the Prosperous Age" is one of his masterpieces. In terms of historical research, especially the study of Emperor Qianlong, Mr. Zhang Hongjie's insights are unique and profound.
He described the prosperous era under Qianlong's rule with a very vivid word, that is, "hunger". He believes that although Qianlong created an unprecedented stable society and fed an unprecedented number of people, if this phenomenon had occurred in the Han or Tang dynasties, then Qianlong's exploits would have been worthy of the word "prosperous era".
However, it is a pity that the Qing Dynasty is only the Qing Dynasty after all, and the prosperous era is hungry after all.
There is no shortage of great emperors in history, who are often busy with political affairs and neglect literary and artistic creation, but Emperor Qianlong is an exception. He wrote 41,863 poems in his lifetime, almost as many as the more than 2,200 poets of the Tang Dynasty, but only a very small number of these more than 40,000 poems were selected for primary school textbooks.
So, which poem was selected for the primary school textbook? Let's find out. Emperor Qianlong had a deep love for poetry, and as early as 2014, when the relevant personnel of the Palace Museum in Beijing were sorting out the warehouse, they stumbled upon two large chests covered with red clouds and dragon patterns.
The Forbidden City was once the residence of the emperor, and the paper manuscripts in these large boxes were naturally highly valued. However, when the manuscripts were opened, people couldn't help but laugh.
Emperor Qianlong's handwritten imperial manuscript, which covers all of his poetic works, totaling 28,000 pages, is in good condition. After calculation, Emperor Qianlong composed 41,863 poems, which is a surprising number.
Some people may think that this number is equivalent to more than 40,000 words, but in modern times, A4 paper can print about 1,000 No. 5 fonts, and there are only about 40 more than 40,000 words.
However, in fact, the Qianlong Emperor wrote more than 40,000 poems in his own hand, not more than 40,000 words. You must know that in the 300-year history of the Tang Dynasty, there were only more than 2,200 poets in total, and together they only wrote more than 48,000 poems.
That is to say, in terms of the number of poems, Emperor Qianlong almost equaled more than 2,200 poets in the Tang Dynasty.
Although Emperor Qianlong did have a reputation for longevity, he was not born to write poetry, and even if he was talented, he needed to be five or six years old before he could pick up a pen.
From the time he began to compose poetry, until the year of his death, there were only more than 32,000 days. Excluding the time when he could not write poetry in his childhood, there were about 30,000 days, and on average, Emperor Qianlong needed to write more than one poem a day, and every day could not be interrupted.
Considering that there are unexpected situations such as illness, it is not easy to maintain continuous creation. As a result, the Qianlong Emperor may have written a dozen poems a day at times. Emperor Qianlong's flow account creation is a rather difficult task, for the ancients, it is not easy to compose poetry, not only need to pay attention to the choice of words, but also need to consider the level, but also to have a sense of meaning.
Take the poet immortal Li Bai as an example, his poetry is beautiful to the bones, even though he loves poetry very much, but he only wrote more than 1,000 poems in his life.
In terms of quantity, Emperor Qianlong alone is worth forty poet immortals Li Bai, but if you talk about the artistic level of poetry, even if Emperor Qianlong writes 40,000 works, it is not as good as Li Bai's poem.
Qianlong's poetry level is really not flattering, he wrote the poems that should be profound and beautiful into diaries, running accounts, and even sometimes added or deleted poems at will in order to rhyme, which is difficult to understand.
For example, in the forty-first year of Qianlong, he wrote a poem that reads: "The cabinet report should be every other day, and it is called two inches of rain and joy." Ransi is said to be eighteen and nine, and it is not known that he is nine or nine. ”
When I first saw this poem, I was completely confused and struggled to understand. It wasn't until I referred to the notes that I realized that Emperor Qianlong was actually describing the weather: on the 18th, it rained two inches in Beijing, but on the 19th, I received news from Hebei that they had rained four inches.
Among Qianlong's more than 40,000 poems, many of them are difficult to understand, some are messy even the most basic ones, and some even write about what they ate, what they drank, and what they played, ......In Qianlong's poetry collection, only one poem was selected as a primary school Chinese textbook.
Although the reason for the selection is not how well the poem is written, the poem is really easy to understand. As the weight of ancient poems in Chinese textbooks becomes heavier and heavier, most of the selected poems are famous works, because children are the future of the motherland, and we must give them the best.
Primary school is a critical period for students to develop an interest in poetry, and if poetry is too difficult, it may discourage them from learning. This poem by Emperor Qianlong is very suitable for primary school students to learn because its content is simple and easy to understand, and it is very easy to memorize.
The whole poem is as follows: One by one, two pieces, three pieces, four or five pieces, six pieces, seven pieces of **, flying into the reeds are not seen. The poem is preceded by the use of a superposition of measure words, and the last sentence is the finishing touch, which makes the whole poem very meaningful.
Although some people question whether the last sentence was written by Qianlong, it does not matter because the copyright of the poem already belongs to the Qianlong Emperor. Although the level of poetry writing of Emperor Qianlong was not high, he spent a lot of time on poetry creation.
If we had spent all this time governing the country, would the Qing Dynasty have made a difference?
No, that's not all there was to the Qianlong Dynasty, the repressive rule of the Qianlong Emperor had hindered the progress of history, and the West had begun to overtake and catch up with the Qing Dynasty, all of which laid the groundwork for the later humiliation.
As Mr. Zhang Hongjie said in "The Prosperous Age of Hunger", the spiritual trauma caused by the Qianlong era to the Chinese nation is far more than a temporary achievement. If you love history and want to become more informed in your study of history, be sure to read this ...... of Hunger