Our Time: Unswerving until Death

Reprint of Chapter 37 "Pingjin Lesson Plan"
Qian Xuan coldly watched the patrols on the street arresting his compatriots. When familiar faces were pressed to the ground, the blood flowing in his body was no longer hot. He remained silent and did not say a word. When I took it back, the corners of my eyes were filled with tears, and I walked alone into the alley alone.

The Qingshiban Road is not difficult to walk, nor is it long, but it is blocked by a high wall from the sun, and covered with a layer of morning dew, so Qian Xuan takes every step carefully, which seems heavy, like a huge boulder falling on his feet .

When the love of one's life is betrayed, the faith collapses. Perhaps, God is cruel. It makes this nation abandon the glory of 2000 years, but it gives this nation hope again and again, but it is even more cruel. Turn this hope into disappointment again and again.

When all the disappointments gather together, it becomes despair, so that this generation can't see where the future lies, and the row of black gun muzzles completely makes Qian Xuan despair.

On the stone table in the small courtyard, a table of dishes had not moved a bit, and they were still waiting quietly, but everyone no longer favored it. Qian Xuan was drinking mulled wine one after another. Just passed out.

He Qi and Brother Xun carried him into the house, covered him with a quilt, and gently closed the door.

Gu Rushui's figure was about the same as He Qi's, and he put on He Qi's clothes, which were just right, but half of his face was swollen, and said, "Brother Qi, I'm sorry, I wanted to use this chessboard as a gift, but it didn't work." think, alas"

"I accepted it, it's very precious." He Qi said, putting the two halves of the chessboard together into a whole, but the scratches could not be erased.

Just like what happened today, He Qi felt deeply afraid. Only by facing life and death directly can one feel the horror of death. Only by experiencing this era personally can one feel the cruelty of this era.

He Qi's mind was in a mess. When she closed her eyes, her mind was filled with panicked crowds, black gun muzzles, and heart-piercing cries, so that He Qi doubted her original belief and couldn't help asking herself : "Can I really live safely in this era?"

The answer is no!

Asked a thousand times and still don't know.

He Qi was bound by her own haunting thoughts.

Brother Xun asked with concern: "What are you thinking? Call you a few times and you won't answer."

He Qi came back to her senses, took a deep breath, forced a smile, and said, "It's okay, I was just wondering why there was a child's body in the church? This is very strange."

However, Brother Xun replied: "It's not strange, this happened before."

The incident that Brother Xun mentioned happened in the ninth year of Tongzhi, after the Second Opium War, and at the beginning of the Westernization Movement.

A scholar failed in the rankings many times, so he found a few people and went to a remote area to plan something big. In the end, he really turned it into a super big thing that shook the world, so that Da Qing had to take action.

This scholar's surname is not Huang, but Hong.

But wars cost money. After the first two wars, the Qing Dynasty signed a series of unequal treaties. The compensation alone is an astronomical sum. Suppressed, not suppressed.

Seeing that the hole in the family property was getting bigger and bigger, and the foreigner's compensation was not paid, the old lady was afraid of being beaten again, so she had to negotiate the payment in installments.

But foreigners are not fools. You have been emptied out of the Qing Dynasty. With such a large sum of money, what do you have to pay it back?
Therefore, the foreigners proposed to use tax offsets, that is, the foreigners will supervise the various taxes of the Qing Dynasty, and the installment payment will be deducted from the taxes. The old lady had to pinch her nose and admit it.

In [-], the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom officially fell. Five years later, the Han group led by Zeng Wenzheng completely wiped out the Nian Army and the rest of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. The Qing Dynasty ushered in a long-lost peace.

But paying in installments is not a problem. The Qing Dynasty’s annual tax income is only a small amount, and it is tightly manipulated by foreigners. If things go on like this, can the Qing Dynasty persist?

What's more, the old lady is also a proud master. When she was in her 20s, orphans and widows dared to stage a coup, and wiped out the eight ministers in one fell swoop. It can be seen that her skills and abilities are also leveraged.

Thus, the germination of the Westernization Movement was born, and the slogan "Learning skills from barbarians to control barbarians" became louder and louder.

However, the real start of the Westernization Movement began in 1970, when Zeng Wenzheng, then Governor of Zhili and Minister of Beiyang, received a difficult case, known in history as the "Pingjin Teaching Case".

At the turn of spring and summer of this year, in the cemetery of Yuyingtang, an affiliated organization of the Faguo Catholic Church in Wanghailou, Pingjin, wild dogs foraging for food dug out the bodies of several children. Afterwards, Pingjin’s guards came and found more than 40 children one after another. dead bodies of children.

After that, a gossip spread crazily, saying that church missionaries paid traffickers to abduct children, and each child gave five taels of silver, and the missionaries bought these children with the children's eyes, hearts and livers as raw materials to configure New Western medicine.

Coincidentally, the Pingjin guards caught a human trafficker named Wu Lanzhen at this time, and according to his confession, it was the Catholic Min Wang San who entrusted him to abduct children.

When this news came out, a thousand waves were stirred up, the people were indignant, and the anti-foreign sentiment was fierce. After two wars, the suppressed sentiment suddenly exploded. The ordinary people in Pingjin spontaneously held strikes and strikes, shouting " Foreigners get out of Pingjin" slogan.

The magistrate of Pingjin had no choice but to bring human trafficker Wu Lanzhen to the church to identify the suspect Wang San, but Wu Lanzhen failed to find Wang San, and thousands of people who came outside after hearing the news had already become emotional and threw bricks at the church , rotten eggs, stinky cabbage leaves and other dirty things.

Feng Daye, the Consul of the Fa Kingdom in Pingjin, angrily demanded that the Pingjin magistrate drive away the Chinese people outside. It happened that the Pingjin magistrate was an angry youth, so he quit immediately. The matter has not been investigated clearly, so why should he leave?
Therefore, Feng Daye and the county magistrate of Pingjin went up in public, and Feng Daye, who lost his mind in anger, pulled out his gun in public and pulled the trigger towards the county magistrate of Pingjin. As a result, the ground was stained red with blood, and the angry Chinese people rushed in. The church killed Feng Daye and his assistants, as well as dozens of missionaries, and even affected the churches in Qi, Ying, and Mei countries.

At this point, the incident got out of hand, and many countries sternly spoke out. The warship sailed into Dagukou, and threatened that if they did not give a word, they would enter Beiping City. Zeng Wen is going to deal with it.

On the one hand, people’s hearts are on the one hand, and on the other hand, there is the threat of force from foreigners. Rao Zeng Wenzheng cannot handle it perfectly. The final result is that Zeng Wenzheng is called a "traitor", and the governor of Zhili and the minister of Beiyang was dismissed, and he was transferred to the governor of Liangjiang. In order to extinguish the fire of civilians.

And it was Zeng Wenzheng's student who took over as Governor of Zhili and Minister of Beiyang. He died a few years later.

After listening to Brother Xun's narration, He Qi finally understood why the people's grievances were so fierce, but after thinking about it carefully, he suddenly felt that it was very strange, because the two incidents could not be said to be exactly the same, but they were almost the same.

He Qi thought deeply: "It is also the church of the Fa Chinese, the corpse of the same child, and the same Fa Chinese fired the gun first, so that a conflict was also formed. The only thing that cannot be determined is a human trafficker named "Wu Lanzhen". It didn't appear. If "Wu Lanzhen" appeared, it would be a copy of "Pingjin Teaching Plan". How can there be so many of them in this world? There must be monsters when things go wrong. things, so as to achieve some unknown goals.”

"Besides, I went to the vegetable market to buy vegetables in the morning. Nothing happened, but something happened at noon. Think about it, it takes time for the news to spread. How can so many people gather at once? It can only explain one thing. Something happened, someone deliberately accelerated the speed of news dissemination, so that the patrols in Peiping had no time to respond, and created conflicts between the Fa people and the people."

After what He Qi said, Brother Xun also noticed something was wrong.

Gu Rushui suddenly picked up the words and said, "Brother Qi, when you said that, I remembered that during the confrontation, there were a few people who kept shouting loudly, but when the fight really started, they disappeared. .”

"Wait for me a moment. I'll go to Deqian's house to look for the materials of the 'Pingjin Lesson Plan'. I think the two must be related." Brother Xun murmured: "If someone really instigated and caused a tragedy, we must pay for it." This pays the price."

(End of this chapter)