Chapter 28 Study why apples fall

Interviewer: Hu Jiujiu, New Weekly Time: November 1, 2006 In 2006, Wu Si still made a fuss in the crevices of history. He did research on two topics: one was to calculate the economic utility of the Great Wall; the other was to calculate how much the lives of miners were worth. ——This last topic is part of his work to deepen the law of blood reward: how to convert the relationship between "blood" and "sweat". When talking about history with Wu Si, he prefers to draw details rather than to raise questions. This is the biggest obstacle and the greatest pleasure. The relationship between history and the present has heated up rapidly in recent years, and it used to be only in the field of reading.Last year I visited a sick friend. He said that someone in the reading circle was studying the Ming Dynasty, and someone was studying the late Qing Dynasty, and then he said which dynasties had not yet been "developed".Since the beginning of this year, driven by the mass media, especially TV, "telling history" has become a relative "news narrative". , resulting in a phenomenon where everyone is talking about history, and everyone is talking about history.

This is a very normal phenomenon, or a time-honored tradition.In the past, from the Yuan and Ming Dynasties or even earlier, it was possible to talk about the Three Kingdoms, and the storytellers included "Water Margin", and two of the four great classics came from the history of the storytellers.Chinese people have been talking about history for a long time.A very important chat topic among folks is talking about history, and then storytellers and cultural people also talk about it.The same is true in the court and officialdom, and historical stories are often quoted in memorials.Whether folk or official, there is a long tradition of learning lessons from history or just having fun and chatting.We're just continuing that tradition now.This is very normal, and it would be a little abnormal to not do so.For example, after the "Cultural Revolution", everyone rushed to write novels and study aesthetics, which is not normal in our history.

After the rise of the historical craze, there is a problem in front of us.How do we judge what kind of history is true and what kind of history is false?Or what kind of view of history is a correct view of history?When so many people are competing to narrate history, there are still two situations that must be faced: 1. History itself is absent; 2. All history becomes contemporary history because it is all analyzed or Reconstructed, and even the emergence of globalized vocabulary is not ruled out here.So, who should I listen to, how should I listen to it, and why should I listen to it? I think one of the reasons why history is booming now is that you can't just tell them about the things they are interested in or the history, the key is that you have to talk about it nicely and amusingly, and you have to be able to chat.If it was a few years ago, we read the history books written by Fan Wenlan, how can we talk about it, it is not a topic that can be talked about.But you can see Sima Qian’s "Historical Records" is a topic that can be talked about, and "Three Kingdoms" is also a topic that can be talked about. There are Liu Bang, Xiang Yu, Cao Cao, and Liu Bei. These things can be talked about, and they can be said vividly. Lively.Only when history has reached this level will ordinary people be interested in them.When I went to jump the queue, there were always a few "capable people" in each village. How could they be more "capable" than others?They know a lot of history, although the so-called history they know is the history in Li, not the history in "Three Kingdoms".Although these stories have been told countless times by predecessors, what you have to admire is that they can really extract the wisdom of life from them.They use stories to create a model of what happens in an individual's life.These historical models can summarize many philosophies of life and provide reference for contemporary people's choices.

What I'm interested in is whether CCTV's "Lecture Forum of Hundred Schools" ever thought of inviting you to give a lecture?Have you seen that show? They didn't invite me, but I've seen some clips.I have watched Yan Chongnian and Yi Zhongtian a few times.I think Yi Zhongtian speaks better. Can the history they tell represent the real history?Is it the history that can restore our history? I think there are three kinds of history.Mr. He Zhaowu said that there are two kinds of history.The first is all the historical facts that have happened, that is, objective history.This is "History One".The second type of history is the description and record of history, in which there may be a lack of record in history.This is "History II".The third kind of history selects part of the historical records as historical materials and writes some works about history.This is "History Three".Because there are too many historical materials, it is impossible for us to possess all the materials, so the history written in this way is more selective or subjective.

Which is the historical fact?A historical fact is that someone in a certain place in a certain year and a certain month did a certain action out of a certain motive, but we cannot completely restore the original appearance of history, we can only see "History II", which is the record and description of history .Of course, this kind of record and description cannot completely record all the details, and there must be something missing.But this is the most authentic history that future generations can see, and then future generations will write new history based on these historical materials.The history that Yi Zhongtian and the others told based on historical materials is of course history, more precisely, it can be called "History Three".

Discussing what is history is actually a question of how to define history.Are historical materials history?Of course it is, which is what we call "History II".Are historical works written based on historical materials history?That is also history, the so-called "History Three".But are they all equivalent to what happened that day, "History One"?Not always.Because it is impossible for historical materials to record all the detailed issues that occurred that day.Documentation is always optional.All historical records help us understand the original appearance of history, but they cannot be equal to the original appearance.Strictly speaking, this is impossible. It is impossible for anyone to have all the colors, aromas, and tastes, and restore even a single day’s history of a family without missing a single factor. It is also impossible to completely restore a person’s stream of consciousness within an hour. , let alone a nation.But readers often don’t need historians to restore everything in the past with such precision. We are only interested and curious about things related to ourselves and the present. Historians have talked about it to this extent and are accurate to this extent, which satisfies our needs. Curiosity, and historical evidence, I think it is enough, it is very good, this kind of narrative is a well-deserved history.

Most of the history education Chinese people have seen and received is textbook-style official history, and such history must be pure historical data.In China, history shows a kind of "hidden presentation". Official historiography holds history in the hands of a few people, and there is no Toynbee who can write "Historical Research" that is beyond human reach, and there is also a lack of historians of the Annals School With a long-term perspective, the history of the public and the people shows a tendency to be literary, such as novels and story books. In your opinion, what role does private history occupy in China?

China has always had a tradition of privately recording history. Ten years ago, history was not as hot as it is now, but there has always been private history, even personal and family history.The sources read by historians have also always included private records.The current historical materials are generally the same, except for archaeological unearthed, there will be no major changes.For example, when talking about the Three Kingdoms and the Wei and Jin Dynasties, the historical materials are those, and that period of history was more than 1,000 years ago.The records are still the same, but different people will have their own different expositions based on the same historical materials.For example, Fan Wenlan's way of exposition, but Fan Wenlan's way of exposition is not easy to become a talking point for ordinary people.Yi Zhongtian has a set of narration methods, his can become a kind of talking material, and it is also fun to say. Every author’s "History Three" is different. The problem is how to adopt a reasonable way of exposition to make the historical materials more suitable for the common people. Taste allows us to understand life and society more deeply and comprehensively.

If we look at historical knowledge as a kind of perception, it is not only an extension of human consciousness, but also a compensation for a certain deficiency, that is, the reason why we are interested in history is that we are not satisfied with existing in the present or at this moment. Go back in history, ruminate, and find coordinates. Just know that today is too thin.Maybe my situation has happened many times in the historical model. By understanding history and my position in this historical model, I can also understand my own position and know what to do in the future.So this is also the basis for one by one to settle down.It is easy for Westerners to find their place in the belief system, and it is easy for us Chinese to find our place in the historical system.Then we have a sense of groundedness, because we know where we are and where we belong.In reality, we can also predict the future more accurately through our understanding of history to guide our behavior.In addition, there are many taboos when talking about reality, and it is very taboo to talk too deeply.But talking about state affairs in history is enough, and talking about the rise and fall, honor and disgrace in history can become a reference for today, so talking about history becomes two supplements, one is a supplement to the depth of history, and the other is to avoid taboos.

Many people are very interested in your work, you extract some laws from history, how do you separate these understandings from history?Because of this, the media has always positioned you as a historian or even as a node of history.But it seems that you don't quite identify with the historian. I'm just doing my job, it's their business how other people define it.But to say that I am a historian is not to deny this identity.I think the title of historian is quite good, but on the one hand, I have a guilty conscience, and on the other hand, I feel that I am indeed different from a conventional historian.I don't study history for the sake of history. I don't care much about the work of sorting out historical materials and textual research. My ambition is to understand the interaction of various factors that promote the operation of history, and to find a conceptual system to describe history and its operating logic.If there is no content that I am interested in in that period of history, I will skip it and jump to other dynasties.This is what I do.

When it comes to guilty conscience, it is because there is not enough effort in historical materials.Some scholars who study history, such as Lu Simian, have read "Twenty-Four Histories" three or four times, but I didn't even read all of them once, but only read some key chapters.For dynastic history, such as the Ming Dynasty I studied, although I have basically read all of it, I don’t know every important historical figure very well. I may have forgotten half of what I knew five years ago.I have a focus on reading and exertion.I kind of follow my interests, mainly to pursue the logic of history. Once the logic cannot be deduced, and there is no exact label, I will create a concept as an identifier.I think this process is the same as the story of Newton discovering gravitation when he saw an apple falling. No matter whether it is a pear, an apple or a stone, the point is that he pondered the inner law. This is the same way I study history. Whether it is pears or apples, whether it is the Ming Dynasty, Qing Dynasty or the Republic of China, as long as this phenomenon occurs many times, at least three or five times, or more than a dozen times, I may discover it and pay attention to it.So I studied this principle that makes apples fall repeatedly.Which dynasty appeared more, the Ming Dynasty appeared more, I studied the Ming Dynasty, and the Qing Dynasty appeared more, so I studied the Qing Dynasty.I don't think this is the work of a serious historian, and I don't know which scholar it is.But it's this type of work that interests me.I wandered around in history, wandered around, and when I saw an apple falling, I went to see the excitement. I found a way to immerse myself in it for a year or so, and continued to wander after writing an article about my research experience. What if the apple fell today?This phenomenon can also be studied by a sociologist, or by an economist.Of course, as I said just now, there are too many taboos in the study of today’s events, and it is difficult for you to see a lot of repetition in a few years or more than ten years. You can easily find this kind of repetition in history. One drop at a time. Who influenced your interest in the Ming Dynasty?Are you influenced by Mr. Huang Renyu? be influenced by him.Because what he wrote was about the Ming Dynasty.The point is that I think the history of the Ming Dynasty is relatively simple.The Qing Dynasty added a tribal factor, which was the rule of foreign nationalities.If you are going to look at the present through history, there is no element of alien tribal rule now.This is tantamount to a disturbing factor.If we remove this factor, then it is the Ming Dynasty.Moreover, the Qing Dynasty mainly followed the political and economic system of the Ming Dynasty, which can show that the dynasty is the foundation.You can find the ideas of the system designers in the Ming Dynasty.So the history of the Ming Dynasty is a simplified model, and at the same time you can find the motivation for the establishment of the system.Pushing forward, the Yuan Dynasty was still ruled by tribes.Pushing it forward, it is also possible to go to the Song Dynasty, and it is also very interesting.However, the Song Dynasty is still a bit far away from us. Compared with the Ming Dynasty, we will find that the model of our modern society is more like the Ming Dynasty.So the Ming Dynasty is simply a research object with no other competitors for me. One historian who cannot avoid studying the Ming Dynasty is Huang Renyu. The historical education we have received is the method of studying history of Fan Wenlan and Guo Moruo, and we have been unable to jump out of the middle for many years.At most, we can look at Sima Qian and Sima Guang's way of narrating history.These two ways of narrating history have continued for many years in Chinese historiography.As soon as Huang Renyu came out and came to us, he created a new way of historical narrative. In it, he described several main characters, an emperor, and several ministers. It is a bit like the narrative method of "Historical Records", but It is much more concise, the internal structure is much clearer, and it has been replaced with elegant vernacular.When your mind is completely rigid in a fixed form, and someone jumps out and smashes the framework for you, you will immediately feel a sense of liberation.Huang Renyu's book has a liberating effect on me.My mind was liberated, and I was interested in embarking on a path of researching history.The authors of many historical works share the same feeling as me. They may have taken another path, but no matter which path they took, it was because the framework was smashed. It is undeniable that historical dramas on TV have also fostered this trend of historical craze.Now when it comes to some people and things in history, ordinary people can easily connect these people and things through TV dramas.There is a saying that people are often willing to quote: "History is a little girl who can be dressed up." If there are only two people in the world, one is a historian and the other is a reader, and the reader does not touch history himself, and only through the historian can he understand history, then history may become a little girl who can be dressed up.The problem is that there is not just one historian in this world, but a group of historians.If you dress up a little girl like that, a lot of other historians will say you're a liar.So you can't dress up.History is actually supported by historical materials, and we can only go deep into the level of historical materials.If we go deeper, we won't be able to walk, and the historical materials are there. How do you dress up?At most, I cut and cut, using this historical material instead of that historical material, which may also be criticized by others. Why do you use this historical material and not that historical material?Are you generalizing and distorting history?Unless you monopolize historical materials and keep people from knowing, it is possible to avoid this kind of criticism.So I think, as long as it is not authoritarian and dictatorial, history cannot be dressed up by others.Monopolize historical materials and stifle other theories. Only at this time can history be dressed up by others.But how long can your monopoly last?After the Qin Dynasty, no monopoly can last more than 300 years, and the monopoly of one person can reach the length of the reign of Kangxi and Qianlong at most, covering the sky with one hand. Even if it ends in 61 years, this is not a big deal in the historical scale, and major historical facts will not be so quickly. forget."Historians" who dress up history casually may not end well.His stuff is fake and shoddy after all, and no one wants to see it in the end. From the 19th century to the present, the Chinese people, as a great nation, have experienced the ups and downs of prosperity and disgrace, and the view of history has also undergone great changes over the past century.How would you summarize these changes?What is your own "historical attitude"? The Opium War, until Kang Youwei put forward his own theory, was basically a traditional Confucian view of history.Let's talk about history from the perspective of orthodoxy, loyalty, good and evil, and the debate between Hua and Barbarians.When it came to Kang Youwei, under the influence of the West, a new theory came into being.He unearthed the "Three Generations Theory" in "Book of Rites".The third generation said, that is, the troubled times, the peaceful times, and the peaceful times. When the West reached the peaceful times, it was the moderately prosperous times, and foreign countries were also brought into this interpretation system.Therefore, Chinese history is no longer an isolated downward cycle that is getting farther and farther away from Yao and Shun, but a history that can develop upward.Then, Liang Qichao introduced Western concepts.At this time, the vision of Chinese historians changed.Not only looking backward, but also looking forward and looking into the future.And there is a stage theory.Liang Qichao said: "Twenty-Four Histories" are the genealogy of emperors.Although this statement is a bit extreme, it shows the distance between him and the traditional view of history.The Chinese have a new view of history.After that, various factions rose up, such as liberalism, Marxism, and the debates on social and historical views, which became very fierce.This is a new understanding of history.Gu Jiegang’s School of Ancient History Debates re-examines Chinese history, and adopts archaeological methods. Those influenced by European historiography include Fu Sinian and others, and those influenced by Marxism such as Fan Wenlan and Guo Moruo.Along the way, we have obviously expanded our view of history.After the founding of the People's Republic of China, the Marxist view of history has been thriving, and the road has become narrower and narrower. Even Wu Han's works have been called "poisonous weeds". After the reform and opening up, the thinking has been relaxed again.Many concepts, such as Toynbee, the Yearbook School and other historical views have come in. Although Huang Renyu is not easy to be called a school, his writing method has also expanded the traditional way. What is the ideal view of history?If you have more contact with this society, society will have a fixed shadow in your heart. If you read more history, history will also have a fixed shadow in your heart, a feeling that is generally the same.So you will make your own choices about the historical views of various schools, and make judgments based on the shadow of common sense, thinking that this is correct, that is nowhere near itching, and so on.What I did was based on common sense and my understanding of Chinese society and history, and compared the various descriptions of history I read with this fixed shadow. Draw one and find a pattern.For example, the law of blood reward and unspoken rules are new labels created based on the concepts drawn from the shadow of history and the real society, and based on historical facts.For more than a hundred years, the predecessors have done a lot of work of learning and introducing.I didn't study well, I didn't understand the various factions thoroughly, and I was eager to say something that I thought I had some experience, so I started a new one.