Chapter 4 A Historian and His Town

Kubluk The search for the small town of Kubluk was purely accidental. Co-authored by Qian Gang and Hu Jincao, "The Story of Young Children Studying in the United States in the Qing Dynasty" describes the story of a group of Chinese schoolchildren studying in the United States more than a hundred years ago.The headquarters of the Qing Dynasty to take care of these schoolchildren was in Hartford, the capital of Connecticut, and the stories of these schoolchildren mainly took place in the northern land of New England.New England is home to Harvard University and Yale University, and it is a place where outstanding students from all over the world yearn for.For those of us who live in the Deep South, New England is very far away.But we know from the history books that New England was the "Mayflower"

Landing is the birthplace of American political tradition.New England is best known not only for Harvard and Yale, but also for its small towns, especially its unique system of self-government.Its "town meeting" is unique. We've been to New England in the past but didn't have time to see its small towns. When going to a small place, there must be a reason or an excuse, which is the so-called fate.This summer, we have something to go to Connecticut, and we specially brought "The Story of a Young Child Studying in the United States in the Qing Dynasty". In Hartford, we followed this book to find the place where the schoolchildren who studied in America lived, which is also where Mark Twain and the author of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" lived.We visited the Chapel on Mount Refuge where the schoolchildren gathered, and paid homage to the cemetery of Yung Wing and his descendants.We then drove north, into the mountains on the Connecticut border, to find Kubluk.Tan Yaoxun, a schoolboy studying in the United States who died young, is buried there.

Tan Yaoxun told by Qian Gang is a sad story.Tan Yaoxun, a schoolboy from Xiangshan, Guangdong, was eleven years old when he arrived in the United States in 1872.The schoolchildren go to school in Hartford, and they will arrange vacations in the small town of Kubluk on weekends or summer vacations. The mountains here are high and the forests are deep, and the climate is cool, making it a good place to escape the summer heat. nearby.The Kellington family in Kubluk especially loves the Chinese boy Tan Yaoxun and treats him like an adopted son.Tan Yaoxun is in this mountain town, playing with children of the same age, helping adults with work, and going to church together, gradually integrating into the lives of American children.This kind of assimilation aroused the anxiety of the Qing officials, especially when school children went to church, they were suspected of deviant. In 1880, Tan Yaoxun was one of the first two people ordered to return to China early.At this time he was already nineteen years old, and he was determined to arrange his own destiny by himself.After receiving the deportation order, he cut off his braid and refused to return it.

An important reason why he dared to do this is that he has a home in the United States, which is the Kellington home in the small town of Kubluk.With the help of the Kellington family and other students studying in America, he graduated from Yale University in 1883 and found a job at the Consulate General of the Qing Dynasty in New York.Unfortunately, just three months after his graduation, he fell ill suddenly and died shortly after returning to the Kerrington family in Kubluk. He was buried in the Kerrington family grave in the Kubluk public cemetery. We drove out of Hartford, gradually entered the mountains, turned from Highway 44 into a small forest road; saw the sign of Kubluk, passed a church, a few houses, and then drove into the forest again.It turned out that we had passed the town and had to turn around and head back.This is the tiniest small town we've ever seen in America.Next to the town is the public cemetery.

We went to the cemetery first, found the cemetery of the Kellington family, and also found a tombstone inscribed with Chinese characters "Tomb of Tan Yaoxun, a student of Xiangshan county official in the Qing Dynasty".Before Tan Yaoxun came here, the eldest son of the Kellington family, who was also a Yale student, joined the Civil War and died in southern Florida one month before the end of the Civil War.His tombstone is in front of Tan Yaoxun's.The two daughters of their family lived until the 1930s, and their tombstones line up with Tan Yaoxun's tombstone. This cemetery completely regards Tan Yaoxun as a member of the Kellington family.The descendants of the Kellingtons had left Kubluk in the 1960s and were scattered nowhere.

Standing in the cemetery, under the bright sunlight, everything is silent. We can't help feeling that more than a hundred years have passed, but everything in front of us seems to have happened yesterday.Back then, Tan Yaoxun, did he ever imagine that compatriots from his hometown would come here to visit his grave more than a hundred years later? The only store in the town has been open from 1830 to the present.The small shop sells daily necessities as well as food.We had lunch at the little shop, then walked into the town historical society across the road.The house where the Historical Society is housed was the original inn in the town, as old as the town itself.Next to it is the post office, and next to it is a town hall transformed from a large barn. The "town meeting" that decides public affairs is held here every year.A little farther away is the town's church, with a tall spire.This is the center of Kubluk. All the houses were finalized in the early nineteenth century and have not changed much since then.There is a simple notice on the door of the town hall, reminding that the local tax deadline is approaching this year.

Not many people come here.As soon as we entered the Historical Society, the staff inside immediately called a historian to receive us.Soon came an old man with white hair, Bob Gregg.Bob is a retired geographer who knows the mountains, rivers, forests and historical allusions near the town like the back of his hand.He has participated in the shooting of TV documentaries for Chinese schoolchildren studying in the United States, and is very familiar with the cultural relics left by Tan Yaoxun and the Kellington family.The old man is very enthusiastic and easy to get along with. He drove us all over the surrounding mountain roads, visited the house left by the Kairington family, the places where Tan Yaoxun and his friends of the same age visited, explained the changes in the vicinity, and looked for bits and pieces relics.

When the sun goes down, we will say goodbye.Before we leave, we really want to know about the special system and history of the New England town.Bob said that Kubluk, with a population of 1,700, is known as the second smallest and best-preserved New England town, and, too coincidentally, if you want to know the history of this sesame-sized town, this town A newly published history book, "Kubluk: Historical Sketches", is the work of the famous historian William H. McNeill (William H. McNeill). When we left Kubluk, we took this history of the town, bound and signed by McNeill, with us.

The historian McNeill, who wrote a monograph for the small town of Kubluk, specializes in world history. Born in 1917, McNeill taught history at the University of Chicago for forty years. In 1963, his monograph on world history "The Rise of the West" (The Rise of the West:: A History of the Human Community) established him in the field of historiography, and this one-volume history of the world won the National Book Award.Although the title of the book is "The Rise of the West", his views are against the West-centrism.Starting from ancient times, traveling back and forth from east to west, north to south, several major civilizations are comprehensive, paying special attention to the mutual influence between civilization trends.

When writing this book, he explored the reasons why Europeans had a fatal impact on the Aztec and Mayan civilizations in the New World after Columbus discovered the American continent, and found that previous historians did not pay enough attention to a major factor in human history. This factor is Bacteria and viruses cause epidemics to impact civilization. In 1976, his "Plagues and Peoples" (Plagues and Peoples) was published, which is his most famous book and is still an authoritative work in this field. In his view, human civilization is developed on a global scale, and the development trend of civilization must be examined and described in the context of mutual exchanges between civilizations.

Such exchanges include war, plunder, and conquest, caravans and trade across seas, the spread of religion and ideas, the transfer of technology and tools, the interaction of institutions and management methods, the spread of species, and the spread of bacteria, viruses, and diseases. and the spread of plague. In 2003, the eighty-six-year-old McNeill and his son co-authored "The Human Web: A Bird's-eye View of World History" (The Human Web: A Bird's-eye View of World History).This is a work that examines the history of world communication.His point of view and narrative style are so-called "Macro-history", which is a bit like Huang Renyu's historical narrative.For world historians like him, "globalization" is not a new term, it is an inherent feature of human history, but this feature is constantly changing and unfolding over time.All human beings on this earth, from the very first day, are in the network made by human beings themselves.This network is gradually becoming denser, thicker, and tighter.His history and narration are characterized by large-scale investigation and exploration, eloquently, and the whole world is in sight. One such historian has written a book about Kubluk, one of the smallest towns in New England. A brief history of the small town of Kubluk The reason McNeil wrote the history of the small town of Kubluk is because he lived in Kubluk, and Kubluk was his home.Mrs. McNeill was born in Kubluk, and the couple retired to Kubluk to retire.With beautiful mountains and clear waters, cool climate, quiet environment and convenient transportation, it is a good place for retirement.The Kubluk Historical Society, organized by enthusiastic volunteers among local residents, is the most powerful "civilian organization" in the local area, preserving a large number of archives and historical relics in the history of Kubluk.That set the stage for McNeill, a retired historian. The Kubluk in McNeill's eyes, although counted from the colonial period, is only more than 300 years old, but it is like a microcosm of the world civilization he has studied all his life.The history of Kubluk is the evolution history of production, life, transportation and communication of the people living in this place.Therefore, the history of the small town he wrote seems to be a little bit like the traditional county annals and town annals in our country, but it is completely different.From the perspective of evolution, he takes the technological progress of transportation and communication as the main clue, and describes the changes in production, trade, and internal and external exchanges of people on this mountain and forest land under certain transportation and communication methods. Tracing the history of the small town of Kubluk starts with the early "communication" between Europeans and local Indians in New England.Only a dozen years after the "Mayflower" arrived in New England, smallpox brought by Westerners broke out among the Indians who had no resistance.The Indians ended their armed resistance to the Europeans under the attack of disease, plague and the advanced technology of the Westerners.In 1760, more than a hundred years later, when white people came to settle in the woodlands near Kubluk, there were very few Indians surviving here.But it was these Indians who taught the Europeans to open up wasteland in the dense forest and grow corn on the barren mountainous land with many rocks and little soil to make a living.Corn was a gift from the American Indians to European colonists and to the world. The last forty years of the 18th century was the pioneering period of Kubluk.People scattered in the mountains and forests, felled the big trees, set fire to the shrubs and withered grass, opened up farmland and pastures, planted corn and potatoes, and herded cattle.The people who settled here were all Congregationalists, and everyone had to go to church on Sunday.At that time, there were only small paths for people to walk in the mountains and forests, and it often took half a day to go to church.People lived scattered, worked all day long, and their main communication was church service on Sunday.It was during this early pioneering period that they, like other small towns in New England, established a system of self-government.Every autumn, a town meeting is held to elect its own government and make decisions on public affairs.To be eligible to vote, one had to be a "freeman," that is, a male resident who owned land. The "town government" is composed of three people's representatives (selectman), who are responsible for implementing the decisions reached by the town meeting, and the chief representative (first selectman) is equivalent to the mayor of the town.This system of government has continued to the present, essentially unchanged, except that suffrage has been extended to all resident adults of both sexes.During this period, they also organized militias and conducted regular drills. On the one hand, they maintained local law and order, and they were also called to participate in the American Revolutionary War. From 1802, Kubluk entered the "private toll road" (turnpikes) era.People see that to improve their lives, they must have convenient internal and external transportation in order to sell surplus agricultural products.At that time, the mountains and forests were sparsely populated, and it was not easy to open mountains and roads.When the government does not have the financial resources and energy to plan and build roads, people will collect tolls for all passing vehicles.A vestige of this tradition is that tolled highways are often referred to as "Turnpikes" in the northern United States.Judging from the photos that are preserved now, the mountain road at that time was only wide enough for a carriage to pass, and it was full of potholes.It is conceivable that rainy days must be muddy to the knees, with pits everywhere.We have a special feeling of intimacy when we look at such photos, because when we were young in the Great Northern Wilderness, the carriage road was exactly the same as this one.Driving on such a road is a test for both people and horses. Even though it is the most primitive carriage road, after all, it opens up the external traffic of the mountain village, and from then on, the surplus agricultural products can be sold.Farmers who have the conditions use the hydraulic dams of the rivers in the mountains to gain power and set up sawmills.Iron shops and cheese processing factories were also set up. In the era without refrigeration, surplus milk could be made into cheese and shipped out to the cities.Kubluk began to prosper. From the 1840s, the railway appeared here.The emergence of the railway has connected this wild mountain forest area with the capital Hartford.In this way, the export of agricultural and sideline products is more convenient, but the competition in the processing industry and commerce has also intensified.This development is a double-edged sword.The railway brought Kubluk to the market in the big city, and brought the farmers of this barren land into competition with farmers in other regions, and they soon discovered that the agricultural products of their barren mountains could not compete with the plains The fertile farms in the area, and the industrial products next to the small dams in their mountain streams, cannot compete with the industries of the big cities.The convenience of railway transportation only makes it easier for their children to go out and go to big cities to find employment opportunities. Therefore, in the era of industrialization in the United States after the arrival of the railway, the population of the small town of Kubluk showed a downward trend instead, and the farmland and pastures returned to forest land. The old sawmill had been lost in the bushes and could only be vaguely identified with Bob's guidance. Meanwhile, the railroad brought weekend and summer city vacationers to Kubluk.It was also at that time that the students studying in the United States from the Qing Dynasty came to Kubluk from Hartford, and Tan Yaoxun entered the Kellington's house. The railroad age lasted until the 1920s.A new change has occurred.In McNeill's world history works, 1914 is mentioned many times.This year, Ford Motor Company's assembly line began mass production of Model T cars.This kind of car that the masses can afford has promoted the improvement of the road network, especially the emergence of expressways, which has fundamentally changed the speed and ability of individuals to move.Kubluk has changed dramatically over the ensuing decades without knowing it.Except for a few people in the small town, almost everyone works in the outer city. The highway makes this remote mountain town on the Connecticut border only half an hour's drive away from the capital, Hartford, and the distance from New York. Only two and a half hours. People in big cities have come to the mountains and forests with a pleasant climate to buy land and houses, and set up holiday villas or second homes.Real estate prices in Kubluk skyrocketed, and the original residents all became unknowingly millionaires.As a result of rising land prices, local taxes are abundant, which in turn improves roads and schools.What is commendable is that in such a wave of development, the people of the small town discovered the important value of history and culture early on.The Historical Society has the oldest inn building in the town, with well-preserved materials and cultural relics, and is known as the best-preserved New England town. what is history What makes us curious is, why did the great historian McNeil write a history for the small town of Kubluk?Maybe, after he retired, out of his love for the place where he lived, he was idle and idle, and it was a pastime with nothing to do.However, as long as you read the history of this small town, you will be convinced that a scholar who has been monopolizing world history with a big historical perspective all his life has his own uniqueness when dealing with a sesame town. This is about to say, what is history?If it is said that recording and writing history is a profession and a need of society, then why do we ordinary people, who have no professional relationship with history, study history? General Robert E. Lee during the American Civil War once said that in a short life, most of what a person sees is misery and suffering, despicability and disappointment. In order to maintain confidence in human nature and the future of mankind, it is necessary to read history. In other words, the society and the relationship between people we see in our short life are different from the picture presented in a large period of time and a wide range in the long river of history, and may even be different. There is a big difference.In a short life, more chances are to see the evil of human nature, which is a disappointing reality.Even in our first half of our lives, we have seen countless people leave this world with complete despair for human beings, countries, and society.Such things have happened since ancient times.Only when you read history, you can experience hundreds of years and thousands of years between the pages, can you see progress and improvement, and you will be grateful that you are living at this moment. McNeill once asked students in class: What is history?His own answer is that history is the collective memory of the crowd, and collective memory is necessary for collective self-knowledge.If a person has no memory, no matter how smart he is, he will not be able to recognize who he is, what kind of environment he is in, and what relationship he has with others.Similarly, if a human group has no collective memory, it cannot recognize what the group is, what the environment it is in, and what the relationship with other groups is. For McNeill, governing the history of the world is the same as governing the history of a small town, except that the scales of time and space are different.When Bob led us to watch the plants and trees of Kubluk, and explained the past of this town like a few treasures, he also explained to us the difficulties and doubts that the town is facing the trend of globalization now, and explained the residents of the town. their way of coping.McNeill's history of the small town makes a thought-provoking footnote to his history of the world.