The second volume is full of glory and splendor in the capital, and the spirit is full of vitality in the foggy city. Chapter 194: The Banquet of Eight Horses (Part 2)
Subtitle of this chapter: Let’s talk about history again
"Then he is the only one among us who can be called a gentleman!"
Everyone looked in the direction of Yuan Yan's finger... and saw that it was Mr. Huang Zongyi, who was sitting at the last seat.
"Cough! Cough! Cough!"
He had never expected his uncle to turn the topic to him. He had a mouthful of wine in his mouth at the time, and when he heard this and saw everyone's strange looks, he couldn't help but startled and choked.
He kept coughing and waving his hands hurriedly, saying: "Cough cough cough... Uncle, I am nothing but a cough cough cough... Gentleman, cough cough cough... You are making fun of me, cough cough cough..."
"Hehehe..." Our Master Yuan chuckled and said, "Shuzhi, I'm not kidding you. I'm speaking from the heart."
He looked around at everyone and asked seriously, "Do you all know history?"
Is this actually nonsense? The three Harvard geniuses knew a lot about history. The others were also educated since childhood and had some knowledge of Western classics. If these people didn't know history, then no one in the world would know history.
Yuan Yan suddenly asked himself, "Thinking about Confucius... When did Confucius live?"
"Of course it's the Eastern Zhou Dynasty, where rituals and music collapsed!"
"Then what period of rituals and music does the old man want to restore?"
"Of course it's the Western Zhou Dynasty with its strict patriarchal system!"
"Then who are the gentlemen who uphold the Western Zhou Dynasty's patriarchal system?"
"When inside, he is a humble scholar; when outside, he is a valiant warrior!"
"Compared to this, how can we, a bunch of weak scholars, restrain ourselves? How can we restore propriety? How can we call ourselves gentlemen?"
"SO... Gentleman, only a 'pointed-headed man' like my nephew, who has served in the military, could do this."
To be honest, Yuan Yan suddenly felt that the army with the "Three Disciplines and Eight Points of Attention" was very "self-disciplined and proper".
Serious violations of discipline were punished with a single punishment, and even those who committed adultery were executed. Isn't this "self-control"? No wonder the Puritan-born Wang Shi Special Mission looked upon them with such favor.
To distinguish between families of origin and to elevate revolutionary soldiers to the top, isn't this "restoring rituals"? It can be seen as a modern replica of the military nobility system of the pre-Qin and Han dynasties.
Of course, the masters of Chinese studies present here strongly disagree with his point of view.
Chen Yinke shook his head and said, "Brother Hongjian, I have to say that you are making far-fetched arguments. As the saying goes, times have changed, and now is not the Spring and Autumn Period anymore..."
"Brother Heshou, we can't even catch up with the Spring and Autumn Period!" Yuan Yan suddenly chuckled and bluntly interrupted, "I know what you're going to say. It's nothing more than the Cheng-Zhu Neo-Confucianism of using propriety to attain truth, preserving the principles of heaven and eliminating human desires."
Zhu Xi elevated the "ritual" in "control oneself and return to ritual" to the "principle" of universal law, and thus deduced the saying "preserve the principles of heaven and eliminate human desires."
"After the Northern Song Dynasty, the Confucian scholars kept going back and forth, and they left behind the Jingkang Humiliation, the Yashan Hate, the Jiashen Rebellion, and the Gengzi Year. Now, what has been left to us is this great change that has lasted for three thousand years..."
"Brother, let me tell you, Confucianism isn't failing now; it's been failing for a long time. It's just that before, things that could compete with Confucianism for ideological supremacy couldn't catch up to Confucianism..."
"Barbarians like the Mongols and Manchus didn't have anything better than Confucianism, so they could make do with it. But when the foreigners came, there were all these Qianjia School, the Hunan-Xiang School, the Song School, the Tongcheng School, and the Conciliation School..."
"I've been sending all these guilds, but none of them are any use..."
"If Confucianism was useful, we wouldn't be in New York right now. Instead, we'd be flocking to Beijing and Shanghai... No, it should be Bianliang and Hangzhou!"
Wu Mi's face turned pale with anger after hearing this. He said coldly, "Brother Hongjian, let me ask you, if we want to overthrow the Confucian school as you say, will we Chinese still be Chinese after that?"
Our Master Yuan suddenly widened his eyes and looked him up and down carefully, then suddenly burst into laughter: "Hahaha..."
He pointed at Wu Mi and said, "Brother Yu Seng, Brother Yu Seng, look at the hair and skin you inherited from your parents..."
Everyone here has short hair... and none of them have beards. If you follow the saying, "Your body and hair are given to you by your parents," they're considered rebellious.
"Look at the left-side-lapeled Hu clothing you're wearing..."
Western-style clothing has the lapel on the left for men and the lapel on the right for women, supposedly to make it easier for men to draw their swords and women to breastfeed. This is exactly the opposite of the ancient Seres tradition of men wearing the lapel on the right and women on the left. Otherwise, why would Confucius say, "If only I had let my hair down, I would wear the lapel on the left"?
"By the way, your father and mother are still alive, but you're traveling across the ocean. Didn't you say your parents are still around ?"
"Brother Yu Seng, Brother Yu Seng, according to your Confucian standards, can you still call yourself Chinese?!"
"You..." After hearing these words, Wu Mi was so angry that his lips trembled and he could not speak anymore.
Chen Yinke, however, spoke up to defend his friend, saying, "Brother Hongjian, you're being a bit far-fetched. Confucianism focuses not on the external but on the internal, not on material things but on the mind. This is the strength of our Eastern civilization. Just a few years ago, Westerners were slaughtering each other in a sea of blood, nearly destroying all of Europe. Western civilization, which values external things, is still inferior to Eastern civilization, which focuses on the inner heart."
"Hahahaha...hahaha..." Our Master Yuan was so happy after hearing these words that he laughed so hard that he fell on the table.
After a while, he took out a handkerchief and wiped his tears, then said in a very creepy tone: "Brother Heshou, Brother Heshou, it's fine if you're fooling foreigners with these words, but if you tell them to a Jiangnan person like me... you're just teasing me, right?"
"It's true that a lot of people died in the last European war, but...was it as many as during the Taiping Rebellion?"
The Taiping Rebellion was the largest "peasant uprising" in world history and also the war with the highest death toll.
At the time, the US Minister to China, John Rockefeller, estimated the war's death toll at 20 million, a figure that was considered a low estimate. After the 1980s, Chinese historians, based on historical data, speculated that the direct death toll was 70 million, and the indirect death toll was over 100 million!
A full 100 million. Not to mention World War I, even World War II couldn't compare to it, not even the combined total.
"Your great scholar, Zeng Wenzheng, who 'only values the inner self and not external things,' has reduced our Jiangnan region to a wasteland. Even the accents of my hometown, Wuxi, and Nanjing, where you lived, have been changed."
"Hahaha, you Confucians are indeed..."
As a master of economics, Yuan Hongjian is not ignorant of historical materialism, but once historical materialism applies to himself, things become different.
Shi Jianlie from Jinkui wrote the four-volume "The Fall of Ji County City - The History of Its Recovery" based on his observations. The book recorded in detail the tragic tug-of-war between the two armies around Wuxi.
After the war, standing in Chong'an Temple in the center of Wuxi, one could see the city wall directly, because there were not many houses left.
He believed that the Taiping Rebellion was not solely responsible for the burning and killing; in some cases, the Qing army's brutality was even worse than that of the Taiping Rebellion. Naturally, this book was banned in the Qing Dynasty and was not allowed to be published. It did not see the light of day until the Republic of China.
The Yuan family originally had thirteen branches, a thriving population. However, after the Taiping Rebellion, only two remained. One branch served as an official in another province, while the other fled to Shanghai.
In short, as a Jiangnan native, Yuan Yanshu was not a fan of Zeng Guofan like Tianmo Chuanhe and Chuanlin Beitui. Nor was he like a true proletarian revolutionary who would describe the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom as a "national liberation movement."
Our Master Yuan took a deep breath and uttered through gritted teeth a famous quote from the shaver: "If you are not a saint, then you are a beast!"
