Chapter 27 An Economic Interpretation of "The Tale of the Peach Blossom Spring"

In 184 AD, the Yellow Turban Army Uprising broke out in Hebei, and then triggered the "Dong Zhuo Rebellion" in 189 AD. From this time to 589 AD, the four hundred years were the longest period of chaos and division in Chinese history. It is for the Three Kingdoms, Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties. In the past few hundred years, two extreme phenomena have appeared, one is the great liberation of the national mind, and the other is the great retrogression of the industrial and commercial economy. There have been three periods of great ideological emancipation in Chinese history. The first was the Spring and Autumn and Warring States Periods, the second was the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, and the third was the early Republic of China in the early 20th century. The common feature of all of them is that they all occurred during the period when centralization collapsed or was lost.During the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, the shackles of thought were lifted, and various nationalities blended with each other, presenting a splendid scene of exotic flowers competing for beauty, and countless military strategists, painters, writers, and religious figures appeared.

Simultaneously with the emancipation of the mind was an astonishing setback in the economy.After the Warring States period, the self-sufficient natural economy gradually gave way to the commodity economy. In the Han Dynasty, commerce and trade became more and more developed, and the division of labor tended to be specialized.However, since the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, all industrial and commercial order has been trampled and destroyed. There are three main manifestations: One is that currency cannot be issued normally.After Dong Zhuo, "money and goods are not good enough", the common people use grain and cloth as currency, and the market function is seriously degraded.

The second is local separatist regimes, with numerous docks and forts, and the national unified market has been destroyed.According to Zou Jiwan's statistics in the book "History of the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties", after the Yongjia Rebellion, the Wubao organization developed to its peak. There are more than 300 in Guanzhong, Taiyuan and other places, and the Guanzhong area has the most, with more than 3,000. The third is that urban civilization has been repeatedly prospered and destroyed.Taking Luoyang as an example, in more than three hundred years, six prosperity and six ruins, the prosperity disappeared in a blink of an eye. Chang'an, which is as famous as Luoyang, suffered at least four catastrophes, while Jiankang in the south (now Nanjing, Jiangsu Province) was razed to the ground twice. .

Even more shocking is the sharp drop in population.In 157 A.D. at the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, the country's population was already 72 million. By 265 A.D. when Sima Yan established the Jin Dynasty, it dropped to 24 million, leaving only one-third of the population.By 300 A.D., the population finally recovered to 33.8 million. However, after the outbreak of the "Eight Kings Rebellion", more than half of the population died.Flipping through this history book, there are brutal killings, city massacres and bloodshed, and coup plots everywhere. The long-term separatism and wars have left a deep imprint on the national memory of the Chinese nation, thus rooting two traditional values: First, "Better to be a dog of peace than to be a man in troubled times", and politically, the call for great unification Dictatorship and centralized rule; second, economically, yearning for a small-scale peasant society that escapes the world and does not fight.These two seemingly contradictory demands were finally "perfectly" realized in the Ming and Qing dynasties.

Tao Yuanming, a literati in the Eastern Jin Dynasty, once wrote that a fisherman from Wuling strayed into Peach Blossom Land. This place was completely isolated from the outside world, with criss-crossed rice fields, chickens and dogs acquainted, and the residents even "didn't know there was a Han, regardless of the Wei and Jin Dynasties."When the fishermen told about the war in the outside world, "everyone sighed with regret".This prose is so beautifully written that it has been included in every textbook of posterity, read by almost everyone, and regarded as the most ideal form of society.

However, if interpreted from the perspective of economics, the conclusion is quite different: Taohuayuan Village is small and sparsely populated, and it is an agricultural society without industrial and commercial industries. The material conditions are very poor, and there is no communication, information or commodity circulation with the outside world. As a result, economic and cultural development completely stagnated.Tao Yuanming did not record whether there is a salt well in Taohuayuan. If there is no salt well, it must be turned to the outside world, otherwise it cannot be explained from the diet.Therefore, the longing for the Peach Blossom Land is essentially a psychological "atavism" phenomenon. If the national economy returns to the state of the Peach Blossom Land, it will undoubtedly be an incredible reaction and a negative abandonment of social progress.

However, the longing for a peach blossom-like, closed and self-sufficient natural economy became a mainstream consciousness in the Wei and Jin Dynasties and had a far-reaching impact.Yan Zhitui, a Confucian scholar in the Northern Dynasties who was more than a hundred years later than Tao Yuanming, wrote a widely circulated "Yan Family Instructions". , mulberry and hemp for clothing. Vegetables, fruits and livestock are produced in the garden; the goodness of chickens and pigs is produced in the pen. Love and building equipment, woodcutters and butter candles are all things that are planted. Those who can keep their business There are enough things to live behind closed doors, but there is no salt well at home.” That is to say: “The basic life of the people is to grow crops by themselves to harvest food, grow mulberry and weave by themselves, all daily necessities, from a chicken From a pig to a hoe to a candle, they are all self-sufficient, and the only thing they need from the outside world is salt.” Since the Song and Ming Dynasties, "Yan's Family Instructions" has become the blueprint for many family precepts.If we look at the history of the country, from Taoism's "Neighboring countries look at each other, chickens and dogs hear each other's voices, people don't communicate with each other until they grow old and die", to Confucianism, Confucius and Mencius's obsession with the well field system, and even Tao Yuanming's and Zhu Yuanzhang's views on men farming and women weaving. The deliberate pursuit of Mao Zedong's "free food" people's communes, all the way back, we can see the attractiveness of the small peasant economy among the people.