Chapter 15 Chapter 15 Zou Yan: The first Chinese who opened his eyes to see the world

As we all know, the national hero Lin Zexu is known as "the first person who opened his eyes to see the world". In fact, the attributive "modern China" should be added before this statement, and the first person who opened his eyes to see the world in the entire Chinese history was earlier than Lin Zexu. Much, more specifically, about 2100 years earlier. This person is Zou Yan, a representative figure of the Yin-Yang family among the hundred schools of thought. Zou Yan was a native of Qi, lived in the middle and late Warring States period, and died after the Battle of Changping. It is said that he was the teacher of King Yan Zhao (the one who spared no expense to buy horse bones) during his lifetime.There are more than 100,000 words in his works, but unfortunately they have all been lost in the long river of history.

Zou Yan’s theories are now handed down as the "Great Kyushu Theory" and "Five Virtues Ending and Beginning Theory". The former can be used as proof that he is the first person in Chinese history to see the world with his eyes open. Scholars before Zou Yan imagined that the whole world is a continent, surrounded by sea, and the sea meets the sky at the end; China (including Qixiong and several small countries) at that time was almost the whole of this continent; it is said that this continent was once divided into Kyushu by Xia Yu. . Zou Yan didn’t think so. He took the theory of Yin-Yang and Five Elements as the theoretical basis, from the small to the big, from the near to the far, and boldly and creatively put forward the “Great Kyushu Theory”.

According to Zou Yan's "Great Kyushu Theory", "The Confucian so-called China is divided into eighty-one parts of the world. China is called Chixian Shenzhou. Chixian Shenzhou has its own Kyushu, and Yu's order of Kyushu is also true.  … Outside of China, China is like the Nine Kingdoms of Chixian County... People, animals and animals cannot communicate with each other.... But there is the Great Yinghai (Great Kyushu) around it, and the border between heaven and earth." Although Zou Yan has never been out of China, nor has he read books on foreign geography, his "Great Kyushu Theory" is basically consistent with the world we know now.

During the Warring States Period, when Zou Yan lived, "China" only refers to the seven heroes of the Warring States Period and other small vassal states entrusted by the Zhou royal family. The area is about half of the current China, which is 4.8 million square kilometers.China now accounts for one fourteenth of the world's land area, and the land area accounts for about one third of the earth's surface. Based on this calculation, the area of ​​China at Zou Yan's time was exactly one eighty-tenth of the total area of ​​the earth. . In the "Great Kyushu Theory", the saying that "China is like Chixian Shenzhou Nine" is also very similar to the division of the seven continents.Just imagine, if we divide Asia outside of China into the Asian part of Russia and the rest of Asia, then, can't the whole world be divided into nine parts equivalent to the "Great Kyushu"?Under the premise of such a division, the "Great Kyushu" should include China, the Asian part of Russia, other parts of Asia, Africa, Europe, North America, South America, Oceania and Antarctica.

Due to historical limitations at that time, Zou Yan did not make any effort to explore and understand the world outside of "China", but with rigorous reasoning and bold imagination, he still deserves the title of "the first Chinese who opened his eyes to see the world"!