After seeing the rivers through the ages, 1 emperors and generals, royal aristocrats, such successful people occupied too many places in the ancient history of China, and their power made it difficult for ordinary people to occupy a place in history. In thousands of years of history, there are many people who speak for the people, but few people write history for them and pass it on to future generations. From this point of view, Mr. Xu Zhuoyun and his book Rivers through the ages are really rare.
Historically, Mr. Wang sought to explain difficult theories with gentle and soft brushstrokes. As he said in the preface: "Today's historical readers are different from those in the old days. In this era of popularization, a large proportion of people with high school education or above may be interested in history. " Now we are not all descendants of emperors and princes, nor can we know where we come from from the genealogy history of successful people. Therefore, what Mr. Xu has done is to make a biography for the people and leave a memory for the whole society.
In Long River, Mr. Xu compared China culture to the Yangtze River and the Yellow River, and compared the world culture to the ocean. He told the story that in the long river of history, China culture meandered down from the source, gradually embraced various cultures, and finally formed a pluralistic and complex cultural system in China. Mr. Xu Zhuoyun benefited from the enlightenment of Liang Rengong's A General History of China, and regarded this process as the continuous expansion of China's cultural circle, which was divided into China in the Central Plains, China in China, China in East Asia, China with multiple systems in Asia, China in the world and the stumbling process of China's modernization wave in the past century. This division has surpassed the traditional dating technique of China historians. What is more commendable is that Mr. Wang focuses his narrative on ordinary people in daily life and looks at the turning point and development of culture from the perspective of social history. This kind of courage and perspective is not something that everyone can do.
Thousands of years of history, rivers last forever. In Mr. Xu's view, history and culture are to natural geography, just as emperors are to ordinary people, and the role and influence of the former are incomparable to the latter. As Mr. Wang said in a lecture: "Nature is a long distance, culture is a medium distance, and politics is only a short distance." However, many people who study history today seem to turn this sentence upside down. Many historical works published recently still can't get rid of the old habit of focusing on political history. There is almost no pen and ink in daily life, and no one cares about physical geography. Today's best-selling history books "Pin San Guo" and "Fifty Years of Ming Dynasty's Death and Qing Dynasty's Prosperity" are inseparable from this pattern. Therefore, Mr. Wang's efforts on rivers in past dynasties not only filled a certain gap in the general history of China, but also gave people great inspiration.
After watching Through the Ages, I remember that Trump visited the Forbidden City during his visit to China. Trump asked, has Chinese civilization never been broken? Pointing at the ground of the Forbidden City seems to imply that this is the palace of the foreign Qing Dynasty, not the palace of your Han regime.
In fact, China people also have a saying that there is no China after the cliff mountain.
The official history of China has always been based on the cultural history view of the Han nationality. Therefore, I used to read the history of China, and I only liked to read such prosperous chapters as the rule of Zhenguan, the rule of Kaiyuan and the rule of Wenjing. This is the highlight moment of the Han nationality as the kingdom of China. We have seen the export of culture, and the universal values and social order dominated by Chinese culture have been established and spread in the international community. Our cultural self-confidence is based on such a historical fragment. They just don't want to see those low periods of the prosperity and decline of the Han nationality, such as the Five Revolts, the shame of Jingkang, the Anshi Rebellion and the change of the Civil Fort, not to mention the history of suffering since the late Qing Dynasty.
However, the author of Eternal River reminds us that China culture cannot be viewed from a single perspective of China culture, and China culture itself has been changing and developing. Although the main ideas in the pre-Qin period laid the foundation for us, China culture has been in the process of continuous integration. For example, after Buddhism joined, the integration of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism became the core of China culture, such as Khufu riding and shooting us to learn from the northern nationalities and so on. Di Xierong in the north is a barbarian in the east, which was not a derogatory term at first. War is an extreme means of communication and integration and a fierce collision. Those Han people's trough moments are precisely the most intense moments of cultural collision, which have produced new changes like kneading dough. This kind of absorption and integration is often rare when it is exported in the prosperous times. Without these changes, China culture would not be as rich as it is today. During the Southern Song Dynasty, the serious northern area of Hu Hua, because of the lack of ideal channels for Confucianism to become an official, nourished the scientific development of mathematics and medicine. In the Yuan Dynasty, a large number of literati were not officials, so literati painting in the Yuan Dynasty developed unprecedentedly.
The Central Plains' integration with the east and the south is mild, because they are all farming cultures, while the integration with the west and the north has fierce collision and repetition between nomadic culture and farming culture. In the modern Ming dynasty, specialized handicraft production and foreign trade shipping produced the seeds of capitalism in the south, widened the economic gap between the north and the south, and maintained the pattern of differences between the north and the south to this day. The development of modern industry has further brought about great differences between urban and rural areas.
The China process of the ruling class in the Northern Wei, Yuan and Qing Dynasties was accompanied by the changes of China's culture and population structure and the addition of new elements. To put it simply, the Han people's sinicization of other nationalities is arrogant and one-sided. China culture has been absorbing changes while sinicizing others.
We should not only face up to the times when the Han people regarded the Northern Wei, Yuan and Qing Dynasties as a part of China. This book puts forward a refreshing point of view when it comes to the Ming Dynasty. In the official history, the Ming Dynasty was followed by the Ming Dynasty. At this time, the descendants of the rulers of the Yuan Dynasty returned to the grassland and established the later Yuan Dynasty. We generally don't pay attention to it. Usually, we don't bring the grassland ethnic regimes such as Liao, Jin and so on into the orthodox history of China, but this is narrow, just like there is no Huaxia after the cliff mountain. The author thinks that this period can actually be regarded as another Southern and Northern Dynasties in modern China, and both of them are part of our own history. Although the slogan of opposing the Qing Dynasty and restoring the Ming Dynasty or expelling the Tatars and restoring China has its historical importance and inevitability, for a multi-ethnic country with 56 ethnic groups, if these northern grassland regimes are not included in the official history, we will still look at history from the perspective of the Han nationality, which is not in line with the values of many ethnic groups.
The last chapter of this book objectively tells the social development and changes in China since the late Qing Dynasty, and there are many perspectives that I didn't think of before. Why did Japan's Meiji Restoration succeed and our Reform Movement of 1898 failed? Why did we miss the opportunity to keep pace with the development of the world under the historical environment of the vigorous development of the Western Enlightenment? These were all discussed when I was studying history, and xu teacher brought me new reflections.
Mr Xu Zhuoyun, thank you for bringing me many new ideas.
Reflections on the Eternal River 3 Recently, I read Xu Zhuoyun's Eternal River, which was quite rewarding, so I wrote some notes.
I agree with Mr. Xu's comparison of cultural development to the confluence of rivers flowing into the sea: Chinese culture, like the Yangtze River and the Yellow River, originated from the top of the snow-capped mountains, where thousands of rivers stirred, collided and confronted, then merged, digested and flowed eastward, and finally merged into the sea composed of world cultures. China culture is characterized by a long history, profoundness, harmony and tolerance. Throughout the long history of China, China culture was formed in the constant conflict and integration between nomadic people in the north and farming people in the Central Plains. After entering modern times, it completed an unprecedented revolutionary transformation in the fierce conflict with western civilization.
China culture originated from the trickle of the Stone Age. In the Xia, Shang and Zhou Dynasties, the northern culture initially merged into a stream and began to blend with the southern culture. In the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, a hundred schools of thought contended, which was the first period of great confrontation and integration of China culture. By the establishment of the Qin and Han empires, China culture had been unified: Confucianism and the philosophy of binary dynamic complementarity laid the mainstream of China culture and the thinking direction of China people, while Dong Zhongshu's theory of heaven and man induction and fuzzy system theory raised Confucianism to the status of religion; During the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, foreign Buddhism and local Taoism began to flourish and merged with Confucianism, which became the three cornerstones of China people's thinking mode; Especially in the Northern and Southern Dynasties, Wumang was a large-scale national integration, and the Qiang, Di and Xianbei nationalities in the north were constantly sinicized and integrated into China. The establishment of the Sui and Tang empires ushered in an unprecedented era of openness, pluralism and tolerance in the history of China. The political division of the Five Dynasties led Zhu to explore the way of being a saint inside and a king outside in the Song Dynasty, and created Neo-Confucianism, which was also the beginning of China's cultural introversion and closure. The brief rule of Yuan Dynasty further sinicized Mongolia. At the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, the superficial glory, in fact, Zhu Cheng's Neo-Confucianism has become the shackles of China culture, but by the end of the Ming Dynasty, this rigid and closed cultural system has been hard to return; Since the middle of19th century, China's culture has been very fragile due to the modern industrial civilization of western powers. The May 4th Movement broke away from tradition and became the mainstream by learning from the West: gradual and moderate "reforms" (saving the nation by industry, Westernization Movement, Reform Movement of 1898 and Constitutional Movement in the late Qing Dynasty) failed, radical democratic revolution (Revolution of 1911) failed, and imperial model and Japanese model failed. By 1949, People's Republic of China (PRC) was founded, and the greatest revolution in China's history was successful; China worked hard, and China culture abandoned the past without hesitation. At the same time, China culture eagerly absorbs and learns from western civilization. It learned from the Soviet Union 30 years before the founding of the People's Republic of China, tried and tested in socialist practice, and took many detours. Thirty years after the founding of People's Republic of China (PRC), China is now on a great journey. Whether it is political, economic or cultural reconstruction in China, we are still on the road, and the people of China should have confidence and be able to accomplish this great mission. This mission is not simply to learn from the United States, learn from the United States, and learn from the most advanced civilization in the world, but to enrich themselves, strengthen themselves, and finally build themselves. At the same time, we should learn from the historical depth of China culture, remould ourselves in the cultural integration of globalization, and shoulder the heavy responsibility of integrating the world culture.
Since19th century, globalization has become an irresistible trend in the modern world. From the beginning of trade globalization to the present economic globalization and cultural globalization, in this process, with the fierce conflicts and confrontations of economic colonization, armed aggression, genocide and two world wars, it is actually a process in which powerful civilizations conquer and assimilate weak civilizations, and the social competition law of survival of the fittest is the driving force of this process-cruel but efficient. At the same time, although the weak civilizations are marginalized or even eliminated, as a branch of world culture, they have played a certain role in supplementing and conserving the mainstream culture, and have more or less integrated into the world cultural system. There is no doubt that the 20th century is the century of America. With its strong economic, military, scientific and political advantages, American liberalism has naturally become the mainstream of world culture, constantly conflicting, tolerant and integrating with other cultures in the world.
China culture in history has such capacity of accommodation and digestion, and now the new China culture has the capacity to cover the world. I am lucky to see all this!