Chapter 8 clash of civilizations

⊙On June 2, 1840, the British army invaded, and two ships sailed into Shenjiamen port.The officers and soldiers panicked after seeing this, but Zhang Chaofa didn't take it seriously, saying: "It's a common thing for barbarian ships to be blown by the wind, so it's not surprising." Later, someone reported that there were more and more barbarian ships, and Zhang Chaofa hurriedly consulted with his subordinates to discuss countermeasures. : "Smoking is banned in Guangzhou, barbarian boats are forced to come here, this place will become a large trading wharf, and I will increase my salary."

⊙In 1859, after the French imperial envoy returned to China, he sent a telegraph to the Qing court as a gift.However, Prince Gong Yixin "thought it was useless" and gave it back to others. ⊙The Boxers hated everything related to foreigners. Those who used foreign things, such as cigarettes, small glasses, foreign umbrellas, and foreign socks, would be killed without mercy.There were six scholars who met the Boxers on their way, and because they had a pencil and a piece of foreign paper with them, they were captured by random knives.Another family was found because they had a match. As a result, all eight members of the family were killed.

⊙Li Hongzhang was interviewed by an American reporter. When asked what he was most interested in in the United States, Li said: "I like everything I see in the United States, and everything makes me happy. What surprised me the most is It is a skyscraper with 20 floors or higher. I have never seen such a tall building in Qing Dynasty or Europe. These buildings seem to be built very firmly, can they resist any strong wind? But the Qing Dynasty cannot build such tall buildings, Because the typhoon will blow them down quickly, and it is very inconvenient for high-rise buildings without such good elevator equipment as yours."

⊙In July 1900, the Boxers attacked the believers gathered in Songjiahe Church.First, they used explosives to blow up the wall and invaded, killing all the nuns, and then burned 1,000 men, women and children trapped in the church. In the end, only 50 people escaped through the window. ⊙ Gu Hongming said: "Although the Chinese people's manners are not as complicated as the Japanese's, they are pleasant." From the heart, it is filled with a strange fragrance similar to expensive perfume." ⊙When the Boxers were at their worst, Li Hongzhang went to Hong Kong to inquire about the British governor of Hong Kong: "I heard that if the Boxers kill all the ministers in Beijing, then the big powers have the right to intervene legally and declare that 'we To establish an emperor'. If so, who will you choose?" and hinted at Buli: If the great powers decided to replace the Manchu ruler with a Han ruler, he himself would be willing.Bu Li replied that the great powers "probably consult the most powerful people in China they can find to see how best to do it."

⊙At the beginning of the European War, Germany was the most powerful country and shocked the world.Yuan Shikai then followed the moral system in everything: the training footwork was changed to the German Yulin Army's footwork, and the selection of generals also used German army students. Even the uniforms of the princes imitated the army uniforms of the German princes. The tutors hired German teachers, and even Yuan Shikai Even the beard imitates William II's horoscope mustache. ⊙At the signing ceremony of the Sino-French Treaty of Beijing, the French special envoy, Baron Gero, behaved very gentlemanly.Prince Gong reported to Emperor Xianfeng afterwards: "Fayi are more obedient than Yingyi."

⊙In mid-March 1841, the British army attacked Guangzhou.The fort guard of the Qing army secretly negotiated with the British army and said: "If you don't fire cannons, I won't fire cannons, and no one should fire cannons. I can fire six empty cannons to save face for the emperor, and then go away." ⊙In 1881, China's first railway, the Tangxu Railway, opened to traffic, and used the first locomotive made in China, the "Dragon" steam locomotive.Not long after it was opened to traffic, the Qing court ordered the use of locomotives to be banned on the grounds that "the locomotive drove straight, shook Dongling, and sprayed black smoke, which would hurt the crops". railway".

⊙Li Hongzhang went to an aristocratic banquet in London, England. He coughed during the banquet. He took the small glass of champagne in front of his seat, spit out a mouthful of thick phlegm, and put it back in front of the seat. Everyone was shocked. ⊙Before the Opium War, many people thought that what foreigners ate was beef and mutton powder, and they would eat it without melting it. Without Chinese tea and rhubarb, they would "die from defecating".When Lin Zexu first arrived in Guangzhou, he concluded that the British would not dare to go to war easily, otherwise, China would only need to embargo tea and rhubarb, and the British would defecate and surrender without a fight.

⊙When Li Hongzhang visited the United States, he told the Western media: "Wealth can only be generated when money, labor and land are organically combined. The Qing government is very happy to welcome any capital to invest in our country." ⊙The book "Li Hongzhang's Family" said: Li Hongzhang not only invited Bidger, the US Consulate in Tianjin, to teach his son to learn foreign languages, but he also learned it himself.Bidger once "read no less than 800 books in English, French and German in Chinese" for Li Hongzhang. On the issue of breastfeeding his daughter and child, Li Hongzhang instructed in his letter: "Nursing is fine, and you can sip for a year." After that, feed the cows according to the western method."

⊙Li Hongzhang went to Germany to pay a visit to Bismarck, the iron-blooded Prime Minister, and proudly said that some people praised him as "Oriental Bismarck".Bismarck pondered for a moment, and said: "You are the 'Oriental Bismarck', but it is hard for me to get the title of 'European Li Hongzhang'." ⊙The New York Times published a telegram on April 13, 1903, which said that Zhang Zhidong sent his son to study abroad: "Zhang Zhidong sent his son to study in the United States at his own expense, and asked him to communicate with the new ambassador to the United States. Mr. Liang Cheng went to the United States together. According to news from Shanghai on March 4, this move has attracted close attention from local public opinion and greatly shocked the local dignitaries. It is generally believed that this is a promising sign of progress for the country.”

⊙In 1841, Yang Fang went to Guangzhou as the Minister of Counselor to fight against the British army. Seeing that the British artillery fire was almost accurate, she thought there must be some magic in it, so she came up with a clever plan to "destroy evil with evil": collect all the toilets , Women's filthy belts were loaded on bamboo rafts to resist the British army's attack, and the result was a disastrous defeat.At that time, people wrote poems to ridicule: "The dung bucket still talks about using clever tricks, and the filthy sound spreads throughout the city of Guangdong."

⊙After the British and French allied forces assisted the Qing government in breaking through Ningbo, which was occupied by the Taiping Army, the China Post reported: "(The official army) destroyed more in a few hours than the rebels occupied Ningbo in five months Many." "Hong Kong Daily" also commented: "There is nothing more absurd, more unreasonable, and more unjust than the action of the coalition forces to seize Ningbo from the Taiping Army. We should just discard the immortal British warships." The shameful behavior is recorded in the annals of history." "The Times" also admitted: "The undisciplined coalition forces and the foreign gun team hired by the Chinese government carried out large-scale destruction in Ningbo, which was unanimously complained by Western businessmen and Chinese officials. Arrange for their evacuation." ⊙The population of Nanjing under the rule of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was very small, and the ratio of women to men was about 2:1.On foot or on horseback, women paraded openly through the streets, all wearing beautiful garments made of fine Suzhou silk.A foreigner saw this and wrote: "The subordinates of the king of heaven seem to have been wise enough to keep all the beautiful women in the massacre after their victory. We hardly see old women and girls, although there are a considerable number of boys. " ⊙When Li Hongzhang went to the royal banquet of the Queen of England, because the coffee in the cup was too hot, he poured it into a small saucer, sipped it and ate it.All the distinguished guests in the seat, all of them covered their mouths and snickered.The Queen is the host, fearing that the Chinese guest would be embarrassed, so she also poured coffee into a small saucer and sipped it to accompany Li. ⊙In England, Li Hongzhang paid homage to Gordon's tomb.The Gordon family was very grateful and presented a pet dog as a gift.This dog once won the first place in the British dog meeting, which is a rare thing.After returning to China, Li Hongzhang replied to Gordon's family to show his courtesy, saying, "I'm very grateful for my kindness, but I'm an old man, and I can't eat too much. I appreciate the treasures, and I'm so grateful for them. I'm lucky to eat them." , and so on. ⊙When Sun Yat-sen was in London, he was playing ball on the playground one day. Huo Shi, a reporter from "The Times" who knew him, deliberately swung the ball straight to Sun's face, and joked, "This is the British way of beating people." His buttocks, said with a smile: "This is the Chinese way of beating people." ⊙Li Hongzhang likes to smoke, but in western countries, smoking is not allowed on formal occasions, especially when there are female guests present.Li Hongzhang attended the banquet of the Belgian king, and the king also hated his smoking, but in order to "sell" Belgian guns, he had an idea and said to everyone: "Governor Li is not among them." ⊙In March 1896, Imperial Envoy Li Hongzhang went to Russia to celebrate the coronation of Tsar Nicholas II.The Russian empress stretched out her hand to Li Hongzhang. Li Hongzhang didn't know it was a hand kiss, thinking that the empress was asking him for a gift, so he hurriedly put a diamond ring given to him by Empress Dowager Cixi on the empress's hand.After putting the ring on, the queen said "thank you" and stretched out her hand again.Li thought the queen was too greedy, and he had no other gifts to give, so he had to stand there in a daze. The situation was very embarrassing. ⊙In 1861, Guo Songtao, feeling the strange phenomena that had occurred repeatedly in the barbarian work in the past 20 years, said: "I have said that China can blatantly draw rules with barbarians, but China is blindly afraid. Barbarians must not be bullied , while China is blindly deceitful. Treat everything with reason, eliminate its rebelliousness, and not a little bit of its anger, while China is blindly barbaric. Others can speculate on emotions, and reason can be subdued, while China is blindly stupid. There is really nothing to do. " ⊙In 1910, Wu Tingfang returned from his mission to America and wrote a letter to the Qing court, "Please cut your hair and it will not be easy to accept", but it was not approved.Wu Sui held a hair-cutting meeting in Shanghai, and took the lead by cutting off the braids. ⊙In 1874, Li Hongzhang presented to the Qing court, proposing the benefits of building railways.He said in the memorial: "Trains and railways, stationed by troops, and heard that the police rush to help, can travel hundreds of miles a day, so the commander-in-chief will not be in trouble." He was resisted by the opposition in the DPRK. The railway, the spirit of the mountains and rivers is restless, that is, the disaster of drought is easy to call." ⊙In 1865, Reynolds, the head of British Li Fu & Co. in Shanghai, secretly built a dedicated telegraph line along the small cape of Chuansha Hall (now Pudong, Shanghai) to the Jintang Lighthouse at the mouth of the Huangpu River, with a length of 21 kilometers and 227 poles. .At that time, foreigners were arrogant, and ordinary people walked around when they saw it.But the government saw that these people were confident and thought that there must be a backer, so they didn't dare to ask.In this way, the first telegraph line in China was built. ⊙In 1863, the British and French envoys proposed to the Qing court to introduce the telegraph, but the Qing court had no interest in it.At that time, Chonghou, the Minister of Commerce and Industry of the Three Kingdoms, believed that the telegraph "has no benefit to China, but endless harm."There are even rumors that the poles are poked on the ground to suck the air of the ground and the souls of the dead, and then spread along the line to England and France for foreigners to suck.He also said that foreigners eat local gas, just like our people smoke opium, they are addicted. ⊙Before the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1898, Japan Telecommunications Manager Sato Aima, who was in charge of monitoring Chinese communications, successfully deciphered the Qing court code, but the Qing court was completely unaware of the code leak. ⊙In May 1841, Yishan was defeated, but he falsely reported the victory in the memorial, and the statement was as bizarre as a myth: "When a fire broke out in the gunpowder depot of Guanyinshan, suddenly a goddess in white stretched out her sleeves to fight the fire, and it was extinguished instantly. When the British artillery fire was onslaught, there was a sudden downpour of rain, which dulled the British artillery." ⊙In 1843, Wei Yuan's "Pictures of Sea Country" was published, but no Chinese people paid any attention to it, and only about a thousand copies were printed. In 1851, when the Japanese Customs inspected a Chinese merchant ship, they found three copies of "Pictures of Sea Countries". In 1859, prices soared by as much as three times their initial value. In 1862, Shinsaku Takasugi, a Japanese reformer, came to Shanghai and was surprised to find that the best-selling book "Pictures of Haiguo" in Japan was out of print in Qing Dynasty. ⊙In order for Empress Dowager Cixi to support the construction of the railway, in 1888, Li Hongzhang planned to build a 1,500-meter-long miniature railway fully funded and sponsored by the French in Zhongnanhai. car.Cixi opened her eyes and began to support the construction of the railway.Soon, Cixi began to hate the sound of locomotives, so she implemented reforms, and the eunuchs pulled the carriages to slide slowly on the track.