Chinese virtue

Chapter 51
The Chinese reverence the ancient times more than the people of any other country in the world today, but they do not do as well as the people of any other country in preserving ancient relics.I have already talked about the Chinese people's enthusiasm for fame and their lack of attention to basics. What we want to talk about here is the relationship between these two characteristics and their relationship with the nature of conservatism.The Chinese very much want their descendants to know about themselves, even about the famous things of the whole family and the whole country.In fact, on this point, the entire human race has this nature.The Chinese have used many methods to achieve this goal, including building memorial halls, building archways, engraving stone tablets or plaques, etc.In the Ming Dynasty, people would carve stone figures or animals on both sides of the road leading to the cemetery.

We have already said that the Chinese are destroying public roads at about the same rate as they are building buildings.In China, no temple can be preserved for decades, which is usually the maximum lifespan of a temple.Decades later, if it does not collapse, it will be replaced by another newly built temple.Therefore, strictly speaking, there are no ancient temples in China.In fact, temples, like fruit trees, have a certain lifespan. To prolong their lifespan, they must be pruned from time to time. Otherwise, seeds must be sown to grow new sprouts.Painted plaques made of wood in temples are indeed very beautifully decorated when they are first made, but when they get old, they will obviously become dull in tone.Although this kind of plaque can meet the Chinese people's requirements for face and fame in a short period of time, its lifespan is very short, and it may no longer play this role after a period of time.

Those that have existed for a long time are those archways built for great literati, prestigious officials, chaste martyrs and widows, especially those chaste martyrs and widows. kind of honorary title.The archway built for these people is made of very square and high-quality stone materials, and the archway is just the right size, not too big and not too small.After the archway was built, the stele was erected. This is an excellent masterpiece of architectural art on the land of China.If a rich man in Paris, London or New York wants to bring a gift to his hometown that can give people a clear understanding of Chinese architecture, the best gift is to bring a Chinese archway.If the archway can be placed in the park, it will definitely arouse great interest for several generations.The Chinese will spend a lot of money when building archways, and stone materials are a good proof.If you can't find stone, you will build with wood, which is what Beijing does.But the archway made of wood will usually be destroyed within a generation. Like other Chinese buildings, it will rot from the bottom first, and then the whole building will tilt in any direction, and the paint on it will gradually peel off. It is almost like suffering from severe leprosy.Afterwards, the intricate wood trim that sits on top also falls off.In fact, the same situation exists in the stone archway, but the wood is more obvious.Judging by the materials used and the money expended, it could have lasted for centuries, but we are hard-pressed to find examples that have survived 30 years.The foundation collapsed, the stone pillars were tilted, and the large stone strips placed horizontally were twisted from the drilling holes, and then cracks appeared. Every protrusion seemed to start from a depression.Even if an observer really wants to study its construction age, or is very interested in its strange shape, when he sees such a building, his first thought will be to leave before it collapses .Anyone looking at this building will think about this question, how long will it last?Will it hurt people when it suddenly collapses?
Although buildings such as archways are tall, their structures are fairly simple. Speaking of which, the structure of stone monuments is even simpler.A slightly larger stele will be built on the back of a large stone turtle to represent a long lifespan.On the surface, they achieved their purpose and used the stele to spread their glory to "hundred generations" ("ten thousand generations" is unlikely).However, it should be noted that the way of construction or damage has greatly restricted these steles, archways or temples.Sooner or later, a weak foundation will give way, and over time, the stone turtle will be destroyed or buried up to its neck in soil.The plaques that marked the honor would then fall to the ground, or break into pieces.All honors can only be handed down to future generations through these tiny things.Had the stela remained intact, it might have been used as a stool in a nearby restaurant, as a stone step, or as a pavement on a road.But no matter what the result is, because the inscriptions are too shallow, they have become very blurred. Even if a traveler travels through more than half of China and carefully examines the inscriptions worth investigating, he may not be able to find the inscriptions on them. Steles dating to the Yuan Dynasty (500 years ago) (except for "boundary monuments" in some large cities).

We pointed out at the beginning that the Chinese admire ancient times more than any other country, but they have fewer relics than any other country. In contrast, ancient Babylon, Baalbek and other cities that once appeared on the other side of the Asian continent but have now disappeared , and the large number of relics left in it are in sharp contrast with China.Among the ruins of ancient Chinese cities, there are no tall and straight stone pillars, but countless broken tiles and bricks.The only way to determine the exact location of such an ancient city and find the figure that was once a world metropolis is to search for clues in the soil.Khan Barik is an ancient capital, and it is also a fairly modern city, but even compared with the location of nearby cities, it is difficult for travelers to figure out its location in the Yin, Tang, and Song Dynasties, and it is basically impossible to find it in China. to the well-preserved ancient city.However, judging from their historical records and the records of the ancient city on some city gates, they actually still want to keep records of the location of the ancient city.For a certain period of time, people maintained this tradition, but it was limited to pasting a piece of red paper on the city gate saying "This is the ancient city", but no one can figure out the exact location of the ancient city.

The Chinese pay great attention to the preservation of historical knowledge. As I said before, such work cannot be done by temples, archways, or steles, but by those exquisite maps.These maps show the past and present names of places that existed two or three decades ago and are now relics of history.Some people have indeed done this kind of work before, for example, the government will make a map of the students, or a map of the territory or changes of the dynasty when it is strong.

Some scholars are full of hope of restoring the glory, thinking that the darkness will eventually pass, and the light is ahead, so they began to study sixty or seventy maps.The Chinese have always been inaccurate, as has been said elsewhere, and this is evident from the maps.Some place names will be marked on the map in order to show the evolution of place names from ancient times to the present. The ancient names are used in black ink, and the current names are used in red ink. However, because of the limited size of the map, in the end, everywhere on the map It is an ancient name.Another unexpected result was that the red letters on the map were quickly covered by black letters.Moreover, the annotations on the map are usually written in the most convenient place to write, and almost occupy the entire space of several hundred square meters of the layout, instead of writing on the edge that occupies one-third of the blank space.On some maps, it can be found that such important places as Xinganfu and Beijing have lost their positions, just like those neighboring countries.However, if compared with some other unreasonable places, the above is not important at all.For example, the relative positions of some places on the map are wrongly marked, and sometimes when drawing maps of hostile countries, it is often unclear how many countries there are and what is the situation in the places bordering them.Let’s assume a situation to explain. Now we need to determine the location of Ji, the capital of Yan State, that is, the capital of Yuan Dynasty or the current location of Beijing. About twelve miles away from the ancient Ji, it is the ancient Lu County, which is now Beijing. Tongzhou.If you look up 35 maps that describe their geographical location, you can find that eighteen of them have neither Ji nor Luxian marked; there are eight or only Ji and Luxian are not marked , or only Lu County is marked, but Ji is not marked; only the remaining nine have both Ji and Lu County marked.From this, we can imagine that as time goes by, these cities are like revolving lighthouses, appearing and disappearing from time to time, and there is no rule to follow for this disappearance.And on some maps, Yan is referred to as the State of Yan, but at other times it is only seen as a city.On the map labeled "Seven Heroes of the Warring States Period", Yan is adjacent to the Great Wall, offset by one longitude to the east.On the map several centuries later, although Yan is still close to the Great Wall, it has moved a lot to the northwest and is called "East Yan".

If you want to fully understand the information of the capital of Yan State, you must look at its location changes and name changes.Like Ji, Lu County is also elusive.In the ten maps it appeared on, it almost made a circle around the current Beijing city, first in the east, then in the south and north, just like the constellation Ursa Major revolving around the Polaris, but the direction is different.It will take some time to figure out this irregular trajectory at all. On an earlier map, Lu County was shifted eastward by seven longitudes, and it was located in the middle of Shandong and Shengjing.

Here again, it is very special and thought-provoking to be so conservative like the Chinese, but so lacking in monuments or buildings that have been handed down from ancient times to the present.When it comes to this question, the first thing we think of is the Great Wall, the Grand Canal, city walls and embankments.There is no doubt that the Great Wall is a great achievement in human history, but some people think that the Great Wall is just an eye-catching structure on the ground.The Great Wall has been constantly rebuilt, and there is no way to determine when a specific section was built, and most of it is just a pile of rubble.On countless city walls in China, scenes like the destruction of the Great Wall are constantly reappearing.Such a city wall cannot prove its age, all the city walls are constantly being rebuilt, and many city walls have been moved from one place to another, and this migration cannot find any regularity.

The Grand Canal is a great achievement, which shows the high level of civilization of China during the Sui Dynasty.

It was excavated during the Sui Dynasty, and at that time there were no more valuable canals in Europe.However, since the Sui Dynasty, the Grand Canal has been continuously destroyed.The large-scale Taiping Rebellion led to rapid damage to the Grand Canal, and the diversion of the Yellow River 30 years ago also damaged the Grand Canal to a large extent.People often see sentences used to describe the Grand Canal, such as "the ship that can carry the largest tonnage", "most of the embankments are inlaid with granite", etc., but if people see the northern end of the Tianjin Grand Canal, they will think about it. Disappointed, it is not the Grand Canal at all, the river is very narrow.If you go another three hundred miles, you will arrive at Linqing Prefecture in Shandong Province, where the Grand Canal that people call is just a ditch with a width of one or two poles (about five and a half yards), and the water in it can only support a flat bottom for transporting soil. Boat.There are still many embankments built in ancient times, and they are very long.In normal times, people don't care about the embankment at all, because it's not their own business.

Once the rainy season comes, when it rains suddenly, people will suddenly think of those embankments and the crops in their own homes under the embankments, and then start working hard to repair the embankments.After the rainy season is over, people turn their backs on the embankments, and these two situations often happen in a cycle.People usually have different views on the value of these projects.But one thing everyone agrees on is that the great Great Wall, the Grand Canal, city walls, and embankments are known as the labor goals that Chinese people have worked hard for for generations.

(End of this chapter)