In the past years of China, “gentlemen” usually referred to those educated people who were screened by the imperial examination system and distributed in cities and villages in an orderly manner. Because of their special status in the countryside, the gentry was naturally the first choice for small people to cause trouble. Target. The gentry is also the intermediary between “officials” and “people”, and their status is both sensitive and awkward. Although they can talk on both sides, they must bear risks. If they do well, both parties will be happy, and if they do not, they will both offend. When he stands in the position of “people”, he may say a few good things for the people. If he only thinks about it from the perspective of “official”, he may act as a channel for the emperor’s will to insert into the people. No hesitation. The strange thing is that sometimes the civil rebellion and the suppression of rebellion are all led by the gentry. For example, Hong Xiuquan, the rebel leader of the Taiping Army, was a scholar, and Zeng Guofan, the father of the Hunan Army, was a casual Hanlin. A person who leads the way in handling affairs. Whether rebelling or subjugating, the competition between the two sides depends not only on military capabilities, but also on the extent to which the reasons for their actions that they painstakingly advertised can move the hearts of the people and cause them to follow.
Zeng Guofan’s group training to contain the Taiping Army was not a purely military operation. The Hunan Army’s war was supported by a sense of morality. The “sense of morality” is inspired by two sources, one is the hometown concept of protecting the land and the environment, and the other is the Confucian thought of clan cohesion. Therefore, he only chose simple and reliable Yamano villagers, and did not use urban slick people. Zeng Guofan supported half of the Qing Dynasty with these two moral laws. These two laws are not necessarily more provocative and provocative than the pseudo-Christian utopian orders of the Taiping army to kill the “clean demons” and run towards the “kingdom of heaven”, but they are guaranteed to last. Painting cakes to feed off hunger and forging an illusion of the kingdom of heaven is a bit like swallowing a talisman and chanting a spell.
Perry once recorded that members of the Red Gun Club devoured the spell as if they were injected with a stimulant, because the spell was written on yellow paper with cinnabar, and these notes contained saltpeter. The effect of the two medicines is very easy to produce the illusion of invulnerability. Once a war begins, they will fight for their lives and rush forward without fear of death. Delusional thinking about who will destroy who will last for about two hours. fighting. On the contrary, Zeng Guofan’s mobilization method never relies on pretending to be a ghost. He repeatedly emphasized that the cohesion of local chains such as blood, family, and family is the supreme magic weapon to defeat any opponent. This idea seems to be old-fashioned, but it awakens the historical memory that has accumulated for a hundred years. Some scholars in the late Qing Dynasty emphasized
The importance of “local” awareness was slowly realized after the Hunan Army swept the Taiping Army. In the early Republic of China, literati often talked about “local autonomy”. have some kind of connection.
Therefore, when Zeng Guofan and Hong Xiuquan fought each other, they were murderous. The competition was to see who was crueler than the other. In fact, they were just selling a prescription for psychedelic minds. In the end, the competition was still on whose spiritual strength lasted longer. The channel for instilling the medicinal properties depends entirely on which leader can really monopolize the clan, and in the final analysis, it is the gentry who speak with their strength behind their backs.
Luo William described the root causes of violence in Macheng, Hubei for the past seven centuries, and found that the more modern times, whether it is the gangs in the villages or the self-organized group training, in the end, it depends on who can plunder and control the survival resources more efficiently. Therefore, all factions have relied on powerful clan forces. As for whether the ethnic group is a “bandit” or a “people”, it is often impossible to distinguish whether it is true or false because of the rapid change of identities. In the early years of the Qing Dynasty, it was strictly forbidden for the gentry to communicate with heretical secret societies. After all, they could not stop them from joining together with the bandits. The boundary between “self-protection” and “rebellion” of the rural people became blurred and difficult to distinguish.
Gentlemen: Shock Absorbers of Country Violence
The gentry can support themselves in the countryside because he is both a breeding point for violence and a shock absorber for the spread of violence. From a long-term perspective, his shock absorption effect on violence is of course greater than the effect of spawning. The real influence of the gentry on the people should be after the Song Dynasty. People often have a misunderstanding that emperors have been obedient to Confucianism since Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty. It is said that Confucianism is full of benevolence, righteousness and morality, but for a long time, no one could tell exactly what “morality” was, and no one adhered to the nerd-like dogma of Confucianism. Otherwise, it is impossible to explain why the sensuality of the Wei and Jin Dynasties and the Hu and Han of the Sui and Tang Dynasties followed closely after the Han Dynasty. Here, from streaking and taking drugs to riding and shooting in Hu clothes, all acts that are disobedient in the eyes of later Confucians are normal.
At that time, many religions were mixed, Confucianism talked about group benevolence and righteousness, Buddhism talked about self-secret cultivation, and Taoist view of life was waiting to challenge it. The three competed alternately, and no one could convince the other. On the contrary, the value expectations are still slightly thin and unattractive. It is no wonder that the emperors before the Song Dynasty never took Confucian morality seriously. Han Yu of the Tang Dynasty wrote an article “Taotong Shuo”, insisting that the thread of Confucianism has been cut off since Mencius, and it is only connected to him. This is really useless to criticize Confucianism for so many years. This set of teachings is still ignored. In the end, it can only be self-talk, and I feel depressed because of loneliness. Instead, the dispute over “Taoism” indirectly reveals the embarrassment that Confucianism has not been very popular for thousands of years.
Confucianism was unpopular because emperors always believed that it was enough to rule by violence alone. Although Confucianism’s illusory moral preaching was elegant and appealing, it was not so practical, and it was not practical. . The Qin Dynasty used cruel officials to manipulate severe punishments and strict laws, which made the violent control continue to escalate. It seemed that the immediate effect was extremely efficient. Violence was used to the extreme, and the people had no way out, so it was the turn of Confucianism, the red-faced character, to come on stage to save the scene. Chen Sheng said in the torrential rain in Daze Township that he would die if he didn’t, or he would die if he didn’t. If it is weighed down, the cost of rebellion is not necessarily higher than the cost of patience, and the probability of choosing rebellion will increase accordingly.
From the perspective of institutional economics, the magnitude of violence enforcement should be related to the expansion and contraction of space. The faster and farther the “space” expands, the investment in management costs will increase accordingly. The territory of the Qin Dynasty extended all the way to Hainan, and the land occupied was too large, and the cost of violent control was naturally high. Just imagine, how much manpower and material resources would it take to manage every village if cruel officials were assigned to it directly. If you do not care about manpower overdraft forcibly, in the end there will only be a collapse. In the early Han Dynasty, the use of Huang-Laozhi to recuperate was because the governance cost of the Qin Dynasty was too high, but it was only a transitional measure. Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty respected Confucianism on the surface, but also felt that the Qin Dynasty’s torture was too cruel and lost people’s hearts. But don’t think that Emperor Wu’s statement means that Confucianism suddenly swept the world, as if it was everywhere and pervasive. In the Han Palace, there are
The position of “doctor”, it is said that some students study hard all day long under the candle of violent death, and it seems that the scholar is like a model worker, who is really a nerd and foolish, and can only be used as a joke to talk about the country and the country. The plan is irrelevant. It can be seen that Confucianism at that time was a skill that was neglected by the family, and there was absolutely no way to get close to the common people. The prosperous Han and Tang Dynasties generally relied on military power to establish the country, and the governance order was mixed with all kinds of weird ideas that were not related to each other, far from descendants. The imaginary “Confucian state” is as pure and purifying as the innocence. It was not until the emperor of the Song Dynasty came forward to set the tone that later generations seemed to slowly find some ideas to save the cost of ruling. From then on, Confucian scholars began to show their talents.
There is a phenomenon that predecessors have already noticed. From the Song Dynasty to the Qing Dynasty, despite the continuous increase in population density and the continuous expansion of the scope of land reclamation, especially after the realization of the “grand unification” of the territory in the Qing Dynasty, the population suddenly jumped to 300 million. However, the number of bureaucrats has increased very slowly, basically maintaining the level of the previous generation, which shows that there must be a force that is fettering the pace of the direct downward extension of the dynasty’s violence. This force is the rise of the folk clans. They bear the responsibility of helping the clan, resolving disputes and educating their children, so that the common people will not be deceived by the officials, and they will appeal at every level, and there is no way to file complaints. They took over some of the responsibilities that were originally handled by officials, greatly saving the cost of administrative governance and delaying the scope and extent of the official harsh punishments and laws infiltrating the countryside.
How clans came into being among the people is a complicated topic. Before the Song Dynasty, there were only “aristocratic families”, that is, the so-called “aristocratic clans”. , compiling genealogy ultimatum, in order to achieve the purpose of Jingzong collecting clan. At the beginning of the Song Dynasty, only high-ranking officials and nobles were qualified to worship ancestors, build temples and set up rituals, which had nothing to do with ordinary people. It was not until Zhu Xi wrote “Family Rites” that he deliberately simplified the etiquette procedures, loosened the restrictions on the qualifications of folk ancestors to worship ancestors, and allowed the common people to make sacrifices publicly, so that the folk clans had the opportunity to expand and reproduce the population. The chiefs were mostly local gentry who had been selected through the imperial examinations. They had brought the affairs that had previously been handled by the government and administrative agencies to the people to solve independently. This was a good thing in the emperor’s view.
The Song Dynasty was weak in military strength, full of literary spirit, and the style of emphasizing literature and light martial arts was particularly prosperous, but it was still a beautiful era of peace and beauty. The expansion and extension of folk clans in the countryside reduces the probability of officials coming forward to do business, and assumes the role of a pressure-reducing valve for violence. Although later generations often criticize clans for slaughtering human nature and killing people with soft knives, such as private courts, and the proliferation of false morality (cutting shares to heal relatives, widows sacrifice, etc.) Accessible to the legal order, this scene casts a benevolent (and hypocritical) mask on dynastic rule. Of course, Shangfeng does not just let the clan and villagers go and let them mess around. The design of the Baojia system is a supplement to the flexible jurisdiction. The crowd is confined to a well-planned space, staring at each other and restraining each other in their actions. .
Whether the Baojia system has been effective in history is still divided and inconclusive. The only certainty is that even if the emperor wants to use Baojia to limit the personal freedom of the villagers, he must also integrate the soft control of the clan. Take the method of Emperor Yongzheng of the Qing Dynasty as an example. When Yongzheng set up Baojia, he was actually quite entangled. Logically speaking, he had to rely on local clans and gentry, but he was afraid that they would be sitting on the position of Baojia and would not be able to lose his tail and resist the kingship. So he was always thinking about how to incorporate the gentry into the account, the purpose was to intentionally prevent them from becoming leaders and to remove the hidden danger of dominating one side. But in the end, this two birds with one stone plan was still in vain, and the control of the Baojia system fell into the hands of the gentry one after another, weakening the dominance of the yamen official Xu. The reward for this is that the public security system is slowly and smoothly grafted into the local wealth and bloodline, and merged with the homeland defense agency. The effect of the emperor on local control is still obvious.
The consequences of the erosion of the “gentleman” identity
“Clan” and “Gentry” will play different roles in times of peace and turmoil. He may be a simple scholar, a clan leader or a group training leader, or an academy mountain leader and a private school teacher. In troubled times, among the gentry There is also no shortage of reckless heroes who have transformed themselves and pulled up all the way to rebel. Under normal circumstances, the role of the gentry is randomly adjusted by the imperial examination system. Once ordinary scholars are selected, they will be assigned to different levels, and each will become an intermediary between the central and local governments. The Great Qing Dynasty abolished the imperial examinations, and the “gentlemen” lost their unique identity as middle-level coordinators, and they were all transformed into science and engineering men in the new school or the devil king of the military school. The collapse of the Qing Dynasty gave birth to various warlord gangs, probably related to the influx of young people into military academies. Different from the imperial examination education, the school lacked systematic moral discipline courses. The ultimate goal of the science, engineering, law and military school was only to train specialized administrative personnel. After the collapse of the monarchy, the role of the emperor as a symbol that linked politics, society and culture disappeared. Men no longer need to pretend to be loyal to the traditional moral order. People lose their restraints and become abnormally active. It is very easy to become a hypocrite on both sides of the first mouse, or simply become a modern strongman who uses force to take advantage of the situation. The magic box of violence is opened.
The deterioration of gentry status has deeply affected the trend of local governance technology. As mentioned earlier, although the establishment of the Baojia system is a quasi-violent means of coercive control over the countryside, it is still forced to incorporate many moral considerations, such as Regularly preach the township rules and regulations, at least let the people feel that not only the physical and mental constraints, but also the comfort of the human connection. This is clearly the result of the lateral influence of the literate gentry using their own influence. Later, Chiang Kai-shek also wanted to formally restore the old system of ten households with the head of the armor and the head of the ten armor, but it was completely used for conscription and taxation, and ultimately subordinated to the suppression and killing.
The utilitarian goals of the “communist bandits” basically have no consideration of moral education. The remaining wealthy gentry had no interest in this position, and the gangsters scrambled to seize power when they saw the opportunity, which accelerated the festering of the quality of power at the grassroots level. Luo William said that most of the security guards in Macheng, Hubei are illiterate, and they don’t even have simple accounting knowledge. I am afraid this phenomenon spreads all over the country, not just in Hubei. The role of Baojia is changed to be filled by wicked and mediocre people, and it will naturally degenerate into a tool of violence that simply oppresses the people. It was not that Chiang Kai-shek was unaware of the downside of moral decline in local institutions, and once initiated
The “New Life Movement” tried to save it, but the scope of this movement was mostly concentrated in a few large cities, and the goal of popularizing education could not be achieved in rural areas. A typical example is that a gentry named Yu Jinfang in Macheng, Hubei could only reminisce in writing the historical relics of etiquette, integrity, honor, loyalty, filial piety and filial piety among the local sages by compiling county annals, posing as a response to the New Life Movement.
The failure of the Kuomintang to restore the gentry order in the countryside marked the continuous fermentation of the sequelae of the collapse of the imperial examination. From the middle of the Qing Dynasty, after repeated threats from the Taiping Army, the Nian Party, the Red Scarf Army, the Red Spear Society, various warlords, and the Kuomintang-Communist party struggle, the “gentlemen” eventually became a vulnerable group who was bullied by others. Mao Zedong proclaimed romantically back then: “The peasants rebelled in the villages, stirring up the dreams of the gentlemen.” Then there was the following famous saying of digging the walls of the clan: precisely because “the feudal local tyrants and evil gentry and the unscrupulous landlord class have been autocratic for thousands of years. The foundation of politics is imperialism, warlords, and corrupt officials.” Therefore, “all gentry power must be overthrown, and the gentry must be beaten underground, even with their feet.”
In the “Investigation Report on the Peasant Movement in Hunan”, Mao Zedong listed fourteen major events to be held by the peasant movement, the seventh of which was to overthrow the clan rights of the ancestral patriarchs, the theocratic rights of the Chenghuang Land Bodhisattva and the male rights of the husband. This is very different from what he thought when he was young. Mao Zedong admired Zeng Guofan very much when he was studying, and said something like “serving Zeng Wenzheng alone”. It is normal for Mao Zedong, who is also from Hunan, to become a “Zeng Fan”. But many years later, Mao Zedong severely cracked down on big gentry like “Zeng Guofan” in the countryside. In Mao Zedong’s eyes, Zeng Guofan was not a moral idol at all to protect the country and the people, but a “shaved head” who tortured and murdered the people, only worthy of being knocked to the ground and stepping on one foot. Facing the Taiping “cult”, Zeng Guofan’s heroic image of sticking to the Confucian stance instantly disappeared.
“May Fourth” Youth Turning and the Disintegration of Enlightenment Thought
How China’s communist movement differs from the traditional peasant war is a matter of opinion. A little unnoticed fact is that the dark countryside, which was depressing and impoverished, and people could not avoid it, was painted with a moving rose tone. The habit of seeing the countryside as a filthy place incomparable to the modern city must be radically transformed.
It is quite difficult to poetically and romanticize rural life in the urban petty bourgeoisie. There must be a clever design in order to achieve the purpose of drawing wages from the bottom of the pot. Demonizing key figures in the countryside like gentry is a key step to subvert habitual thinking. The angry youths of the “May 4th” have been clamoring to overthrow the Confucius family shop. The lifeblood of the gentry and local tyrants completely rescued the individual from the shackles of the family. The initiator of this so-called “New Enlightenment Movement”, the educational background is either the darling of the school or the returnee. Where should the elderly from the imperial examinations be taken seriously? During the “May 4th” period, the inexorable discussions between “family” and “occupation” choices were all related to the wild style of these “May Fourth” youths bullying their teachers and destroying their ancestors. Not irrelevant. On the surface, their target of attack echoes the revolutionary proposition of the rural communist movement to overthrow the local tyrants and evil gentry. This is why radical youths can easily turn to the left. A large number of urban youths fleeing to Yan’an are not driven by people but voluntarily. It shows that the rural left-wing movement has the urban radical youth as its foundation.
However, the apparent agreement could not hide the huge differences between Mao Zedong and the “May Fourth” youth. Even if the two sides supported each other in terms of eliminating traditional family power in the countryside, it was difficult to compromise with each other in terms of how to view the status of the countryside and the city. This was almost the most important reason for Mao Zedong’s rectification campaign. Surprisingly, twenty years after the May 4th Movement, Mao Zedong made a re-evaluation. He believed that the May 4th Movement had stored up cadres for the Chinese Communist Party, and said that the May 4th Movement was a way for young people to find Marxism. Starting point, on the surface, this is more like a standard official party history rhetoric. One of the truth behind it is that Mao Zedong fundamentally changed the popular definition of “May Fourth” enlightenment in big cities. Most of the youths of the “May 4th” thought that the countryside was the object of transformation of modern cities. It is not surprising that since ancient times, cities and villages have always seemed to be at opposite poles. The earliest towns were generally administrative centers, grain depots and cultural The location of the center, in contrast to it, the vast countryside is mysterious, dangerous, and full of uncertainty and insecurity. Whenever there is a rebellion in the countryside, the cities and towns often take measures to protect themselves, and even brutally burn down the houses around the city, and transport a large amount of food to the city for storage, so as not to leave it to the enemies outside the city.
The Communist Party was mainly active in the countryside, but it was finally distinguished from the general peasant rebel gangs in history. What is the secret? I think at least part of the reason is that the Communist Party consciously re-established the relationship between “urban” and “rural” set. He Zhaotian said that Huang Renyu believed that the Kuomintang had transformed the upper class and the Communist Party had transformed the lower class. This statement gives the impression that the Kuomintang and the Communist Party seem to have a tacit division of labor. It is agreed that one party manages the reform at the upper level and the other party manages the reform at the lower level. The cutting-edge thinking of binary opposition is too problematic, I agree. The key to the ideological difference between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party lies in the
The attitude of the “gentry” remained. The Kuomintang wanted to rebuild social order through the cooperation of new and old gentry, while the Communist Party strived to completely eliminate the gentry, whether old or new, in order to turn it up from the bottom and realize the reconstruction of the countryside. The revolt as understood by the CCP is by no means limited to the hatred of ordinary peasants for urban elites. Otherwise, it is no different from ordinary peasants rioting into cities to smash, smash, and loot. A new interpretation of the relationship between “city” and “rural”.
The romantic painting of roses in the countryside begins with this passage of Mao Zedong, who earnestly taught the young people who came from the Kuomintang-controlled areas: “Many comrades came from the pavilions in Shanghai, and from the pavilions to the revolutionary base area not only experienced two years. This region has gone through two historical eras… When we reach the revolutionary base, we have reached an era when the masses of the people are in power, unprecedented in thousands of years of Chinese history… The past era is gone forever.” The “revolutionary base area” has undoubtedly become a metaphor for the vigorous revival of the vast countryside. In “May Fourth Movement” and “The Direction of the Youth Movement”, Mao Zedong has reversed the original meaning of “May Fourth” in the minds of urban youth, giving youths The values and the direction of struggle have been repositioned. The only correct direction for young people to realize their ideals is to integrate with the masses of workers and peasants. The overtone is that urban youth should join forces with peasants to destroy the gentry (feudalism) entrenched in the countryside, another nationalist anti-Japanese war that was often used at the time. The flag is more like an external decoration.
Through the rectification movement, the petty bourgeoisie consciousness of the “May Fourth” youth and the simple concept of the peasant class were placed on the same platform for evaluation. With the deepening of the rectification movement, the positions of the two were quietly reversed. The original intention of the “May Fourth” youth’s criticism was to oppose Confucianism and get rid of the shackles of the family. Mao Zedong profoundly led the youth’s anti-traditional fantasies to the specific goal of the gentry class. The ugly image of the “evil gentry” made the object of the revolutionary struggle more concrete and vivid. The somewhat vague and vague ideals of struggle of the “May Fourth” educated youth and the interests of the peasants’ struggle against the “landlords” were completely combined through this channel.
After this operation, the anti-traditional enlightenment concept of the “May Fourth” was only absorbed into the rectification thinking on the point of overthrowing the “gentlemen”, while the self-esteem and sense of superiority of the urbanites were resolutely discarded as garbage. . The contempt of the “May 4th” youth for the countryside disappeared, and all kinds of violence against the gentry in the countryside gained high legitimacy because of the branding of destroying feudalism. At this time, works written by urban educated youths extolling the violent suppression of gentry in rural areas emerged one after another, which also proved that the urban-rural dualistic thinking spread under the domination of Western thought had failed, and the gentry who once served as the mainstay of rural areas also followed suit. Declare complete annihilation.
(“Red Rain: Seven Centuries of Violence in a Chinese County”, by William Luo, translated by Li Lifeng, Renmin University Press, 2013 edition; “Rebels and Revolutionaries in North China 1845-1945”, by Pei Yili, Commercial Press 2007 edition)
Source: “Reading” No. 4, 2014
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