Chapter 70 Nostalgia for Ancient Times and Historical Situation

History is a vegetable garden. Although there are fences, they are basically useless. Anyone can come in and hoe and sow seeds.On the one hand, it is because the so-called professionals in the garden are actually not very high-quality themselves.On the other hand, the threshold for the subject of history is indeed relatively low, at least the requirements for so-called professional training are not so strict, and laymen only need to study for a few years, and they can enter through the fence.However, coming in is coming in, and whether it can grow decent things is another matter.Recently, when discussing history by laymen, there are certainly decent ones, but there are also many parallel imports that have been mixed with too much water.What I'm going to say today, though, is a decent one.

The author of "Civil and Military Beiyang" comes from the media. When it comes to history, it also has the problems of ordinary media writers, overconfident and passionate, and intentionally or unintentionally reveals the hammer of moral judgment, and is too entangled in right and wrong.However, generally speaking, the author's writing is quite readable, and praise can be seen everywhere. Although he has done a little more to reverse the verdict, it cannot be said that he is unreasonable.What is particularly interesting is the author's eagerness to get into a dead end.The author is obsessed with the Beiyang characters he is interested in, one by one, searching for the traces, digging to the bottom, visiting the relics of these people's former residences, and expressing nostalgia for the past during the search, making us seem to have returned to the not-so-distant past.

The narrative of history is nothing more than an interpretation of history by later generations, but any interpretation will lose its meaning if it departs from the truth.In the final analysis, history is a subject that pursues the truth. If any researcher dares to declare that he doesn't care about the truth of history at all, then what he says can only be for the self-entertainment of himself and his family.But people today cannot go back to the past, and the truth of history often has to be filtered by the concepts and values ​​of researchers. Needless to say, those researchers who take the responsibility of proving certain concepts and theories are those who pursue objectivity and try to restore history. Due to the distance of the times, it is inevitable that there will be estrangement. Consciously or unintentionally, the prejudices of today's people are used to frame the actions of the ancients.In fact, for those who are interested in history, the construction of the situation is very important, that is, through the relics of the ancients and archaeological discoveries, to imagine and construct the living space of the ancients, let their thoughts and emotions go back to the past, and give birth to "Understanding and sympathy", in this way, maybe the gap will be smaller.

Fortunately, the history of "Civil and Military Beiyang" has not been too long. Although there have been too many vandalism, there are still some relics left, including the guns and utensils from that time.What's more valuable is that the Beiyang people caught up with the invention of the camera, so many photos have been handed down. We can not only see the appearance of those stalwart warriors and dog-headed military divisions, but also browse the military and social life of that year. silhouette.Duan Qirui, who is known as the "tiger" of the "Dragon Tiger Dog" of Beiyang Three Masters, his photos of playing billiards in a mandarin jacket and the ruling government of an authentic Gothic bungalow, leave a caring person far more than a biography many meanings.The photos of Hu Shuai Zhang Zuolin and his two young sons wearing general uniforms, as well as the murals in the village of the Grand Marshal's Mansion and the Guan Gong Temple outside, will also tell people something that is difficult to express in words.It can be said with certainty that you have read too much of these things, as long as you are a caring person, you will definitely have a certain feeling for these long-dead characters, which cannot be brought to you by words.

For professional historians, perhaps the authors of "Civil and Military Beiyang" did not reveal too much that they did not know, but it is difficult for professionals to have such intriguing narratives, and it is even more difficult to make efforts to reconstruct historical situations .When readers follow the author from one ruined wall to another, history gradually comes alive in their minds.