Chapter 17 Section 2 "There is no ambition in the world, counties, states and towns"

History turned to 1368 AD.In the first month of this year, Zhu Yuanzhang established the Ming Dynasty and changed it to Yuan Hongwu.In August, the Northern Expeditionary Army of the Ming Dynasty occupied Yuan Dadu, completing another dynasty change in Chinese history.Zhu Yuanzhang, who was born as a peasant leader, has just sat on the throne. The war has not yet completely ended, and the whole country is waiting to be rebuilt: administrative agencies need to be rebuilt, household registration needs to be cleared, fields need to be remeasured, and taxes need to be rectified quickly... Countless urgent matters are waiting to be done. , but he did not forget to put Xiu Zhi on the agenda first.

In the Ming Dynasty, the General Chronicle was revised five times, and only three times during the 31 years of Ming Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang's reign.In the third year of Hongwu (1370 A.D.), Emperor Taizu of the Ming Dynasty ordered Confucian scholars: "Compile the geographical situation of the states and counties in the world, and attach them to the book." ".But this book has been lost.In the seventeenth year of Hongwu (AD 1384), the "Daming and Qing Dynasty Astronomy Division Book" was compiled, detailing the history of the establishment of prefectures and counties; traffic post.These three revisions focused on geography and transportation, and it seems that they were in response to the urgent need to sort out the national administrative divisions and establish an effective local administrative system.

The serious plan to compile a high-level general annals began with Ming Chengzu Zhu Di.Chengzu of the Ming Dynasty planned to compile a "Records of Counties and Counties in the World". Not only did he form a high-level working team headed by Shangshu Xia Yuanji, but also the Ministry of Rites dispatched officials to various counties and counties across the country to interview stories and collect old stories. Chi.However, due to the death of Ming Chengzu, this grand plan could not be completed.It was not until the seventh year of Emperor Daizong Jingtai (1456 A.D.) that 119 volumes of "Huanyu Tongzhi" were compiled on this basis and promulgated throughout the world.A year later, the so-called "restoration of Yingzong" in history books took place.Ming Yingzong, who was captured by the Oala tribe of Mongolia due to the defeat and then released again, took advantage of his younger brother Daizong's critical illness, staged a coup and regained the throne.Yingzong claimed that this general annals was too complicated and inappropriate, so he sent someone to rebuild it. He also claimed to inherit the behest of Ming Chengzu.In the fifth year of Emperor Yingzong Tianshun (1461 A.D.), 90 volumes of annals were compiled.Yingzong personally wrote a preface for it, and named it "Da Ming Yi Tong Zhi".It clearly imitates "Da Yuan Da Yi Tong Zhi" in terms of content, style and name.Among the five general chronicles of the Ming Dynasty, "Huanyu Tongzhi" and "Daming Yitongzhi" were the two most influential.

On the one hand, the Ming government actively compiled the general annals, and on the other hand, it issued repeated orders to urge the whole country to compile annals.The central government supervised the provinces, and the provinces supervised the prefectures and counties. Therefore, in the Ming Dynasty, the compilation of local annals became common practice.According to statistics, during the more than 280 years of the Ming Dynasty, prefectures and counties in Guangdong received an edict from the emperor or a general order from the governor to compile or submit a chronicle, and there were 13 examinations, an average of about once every 22 years.Local governors presided over the compilation of local chronicles, and the local governors wrote the prefaces after the completion of the chronicles. It can be regarded as a kind of political achievement, which can be praised by the superiors, and can also be famous in later generations.At that time, whether there were chronicles in a place was a matter of local reputation.For example, Liu Rui's "(Zhengde) Kuizhou Mansion Chronicle Preface" said: People who passed by Kuizhou (Fengjie, Sichuan) in the past asked if there were any chronicles, and when they said no, they all despised Kuizhou and regarded Kuizhou as " ugly state".Now that the Zhishu has been completed, Kuizhou has been glorious ever since.It can be seen that Xiuzhi has become a symbol of cultural development in a region.

By the middle of the Ming Dynasty, it was already "everyone in the world has ambitions" (Shen Xiang's "(Zhengde) Shangyuan County Chronicles").According to statistics, there are about 3,000 kinds of revision records in the entire Ming Dynasty, and there are about 1,000 kinds of existing ones.The 13 chief ministers of the Ming Dynasty (equivalent to provinces, which are still called provinces according to the custom of the Yuan Dynasty) have all revised their chronicles, and most of them have revised them more than three times.Sichuan, Ningxia, etc. only began to have provincial annals in the Ming Dynasty.There are even more prefectural and county annals, not only most remote counties also have aspirations, but also county annals such as Xiaoshan and Hangzhou in Zhejiang, Liuhe and Changshu in Jiangsu, Chaoyang in Guangdong, etc., have been revised six or seven times.Countless people have repaired it four or five times.

The cultural form of local chronicles has not only firmly taken root in the land of China, but has even been spread to Japan across the sea.At the end of the Ming Dynasty, Chen Yuanyun (yun 氮), a literati from Yuhang, Zhejiang Province, went east to Japan and settled down there.He is a man of many talents. In Japan, he spread Chinese philosophy of Laozhuang, Gong'an School of Poetry, Zhao Zi'ang School of Calligraphy, new technology of ceramics and Shaolin Temple martial arts, and was the founder of Japanese Judo.In the third year of Japanese Yuanhe (1623 A.D.), Chen Yuanyun wrote a volume of "Nagato Kingdom Chronicles" (today's Yamaguchi Prefecture) in Chinese for the lord of Nagato, Mori Terumoto. The manuscript of this chronicle is still preserved in Yamaguchi County. It left a good story in the history of Sino-Japanese relations.Some scholars believe that some Chinese chronicles appeared in Japan one after another, perhaps because of its influence.

Not only the number of Ming Dynasty chronicles increased, but also their varieties.Among the new varieties, Bianguanzhi, Dusizhi and Weisuozhi are more important. The borders of the Ming Dynasty were always tense, with threats from the Oala and Tatar tribes of Mongolia in the north, and continuous invasion by Japanese pirates along the southeast coast.Therefore, the Ming government attached great importance to border defense.It set up capital command and envoy divisions in each province, referred to as capital divisions, as the highest local military institution, under the unified command of the five armies in the capital.Set up guards in important military areas, and set up offices under the guards, which are under the jurisdiction of the capital.Towns were also set up in important border defense areas, and heavy troops were stationed in border towns and important passes to form a complete defense system.In some areas, the capital, Wei, and Suo are also in charge of local administration, and there are no separate provincial capitals, prefectures and counties.At that time, even general annals, especially those in border areas, attached great importance to recording military defense. etc. have detailed records, and military content accounts for 3/10 of the whole book.The annals of Dusi, Weisuo, Bianzhen, and Guanaixiu, of course, focused more on martial arts and became the most distinctive part of Mingzhi.

Among the completely preserved annals of the capital of the Ming Dynasty, there are several "Liaodong Zhi" before and after.The Ming Dynasty abolished the Liaoyang Province of the Yuan Dynasty, and established the Liaodong Metropolitan Command and Envoy Division here. "Liaodong Zhi" was edited by the Liaodong Metropolitan Division.It was created in the Yongle period of Emperor Chengzu of the Ming Dynasty and completed in the eighth year of Zhengtong (1443 A.D.). This is the earliest existing chronicle in the Northeast.Since then, it has been continued several times in the first year of Hongzhi (AD 1488), the eighth year of Jiajing (AD 1529), and the sixteenth year of Jiajing (AD 1537).In the forty-three years of Jiajing (AD 1564), when Li Fu was the governor of Liaodong, he saw that the old annals had been corrupted and fell off, making it unreadable. He instructed the Liaodong capital to rebuild it again and renamed it "Quan Liao Zhi".This series of chronicles vividly reflects the style and features of Liaodong, an important border area in the Ming Dynasty.In addition, in the "Siku Quanshu Zongmu" Volume 74 "Historical Geographical Catalog", there are 12 volumes of "Shaanxi Xingdu Sizhi", which are said to be divided into geography, construction, official division, military defense, There are six categories of age plan and characters, "simple but not absurd", what the original book looks like is no longer known.

The earliest surviving Wei Suo Zhi is "(Zhengde) Jinshan Weizhi" (Shanghai Jinshan).It consists of six volumes, divided into upper and lower annals, each with three volumes, and the above annals mainly record military equipment and military defense.In addition, there is also "(Zhengde) Tianjin Sanwei Zhi", which is the earliest local chronicle of Tianjin, but it was lost because the book board was destroyed by fire.After that, there were "(Wanli) Tianjin Three Wei Zhi", and "Xining Wei Zhi" (Xining, Qinghai) compiled during the Jiajing and Wanli years, but unfortunately none of them survived.

Among the more famous frontier annals, Sun Jilu's "(Jiajing) Sanguan annals" records the Yanmen Pass, Ningwu Pass, and Piantou Pass in Shanxi; Liu Xiaozu's "(Wanli) Four Towns and Three Passes" records in detail the four important military towns of Jizhou, Liaodong, Changping, and Zhenbao and the establishment, Xingsheng, and Shanhaiguan of Juyongguan, Zijingguan, and Shanhaiguan. Military strength, food and salaries, officials, people, fortifications, etc.; Shanhaiguan, which has important strategic significance, was revised five times in the Ming Dynasty (Figure 6).According to the "History of Ming Dynasty Zheng Xiao Biography", in the early years of Jiajing, Zheng Xiao, a new Jinshi, served as the head of the Ministry of War. He was asked to compile a "Nine Borders Tuzhi", which was passed on and copied by everyone.It can be seen that the ruling and opposition people cared about the border affairs and urgently needed this kind of books at that time.

Zhizhi also flourished in the Ming Dynasty, including landscape annals, academy annals, mausoleum annals, famous places annals, and so on.In short, by the Ming Dynasty, the types of local chronicles were basically complete, forming a relatively complete system. In order to standardize county annals as much as possible and not miss important content, the Ming Dynasty government formulated a "Compilation and Compilation of Annals Books". When it was first promulgated in the tenth year of Yongle (AD 1412), there were 17 articles, and in the 16th year of Yongle (AD 1418). year) was revised to become 21 articles.It lists 21 items that should be included in the annals, such as establishment history, territory, cities, mountains and rivers, squares, towns and cities, products, tributes, customs, household registration, schools, military guards, temples, historic sites, people, Poetry and so on.There are clear regulations on what and how to record each item of content.For example, "city pools" stipulated when it was built and who built it, and if there were inscriptions, the inscriptions should be recorded, and the towers, battlements, and suspension bridges must be recorded. "Taxes and grains", "tributes", "household registration", etc., required to record the situation from the previous generation to the 24th year of Hongwu in the Ming Dynasty and the 10th year of Yongle, and the number must be "detailed".This is the first regulation on revision of local records officially promulgated by the government in our country. Many local records of the Ming Dynasty refer to it to set categories.It has played a very good role in improving the overall level of local chronicles. At the same time, many local chronicles editors in the Ming Dynasty continued to explore and improve the style of local chronicles.According to what Mencius said: "The three treasures of the princes: land, people, and political affairs" ("Mencius: Dedicated to Your Heart"), there are only three categories in the local chronicles, namely land, people, and political affairs, which are called "Three Treasures".For example, "(Jiajing) Liquan County Chronicles" (Shaanxi Liquan) and "(Wanli) Huzhou Fuzhi" (Zhejiang Wuxing) are like this.Some people thought that some local chronicles at that time were too long and cumbersome, so they did the opposite and created "simplified local chronicles". "(Zhengde) Chaoyi County Chronicles" (Dali, Shaanxi) is simpler, only 5700 words.Their structure, notes, and literary talent are all excellent, but after all, they are too simple to be satisfactory as information books.In addition, the local chronicles of the Ming Dynasty also had history books in imitation of biography, some in chronological style, and some in imitation of political style, each with its own merits.Although some attempts were not successful, they strived to draw on the strengths of other works to enrich the expression techniques of local chronicles, which is inspiring to future generations. Local chroniclers do not think very highly of the chronicles of the Ming Dynasty, and generally think that the quality is relatively rough, but not as many as the excellent works of the Song and Yuan Dynasties.Even its most important general annals "The Unification of the Ming Dynasty" has many errors, omissions, and self-contradictions, and even some sentences cannot be read clearly, which has been sharply criticized by later generations.It is generally believed that the atmosphere of academic circles in the Ming Dynasty was relatively careless, and they liked to talk in vain, and they were less willing to do practical learning.This style of study obviously also affected local chronicles.However, on the whole, the Ming Dynasty was, after all, a period in which local chronicles made great strides forward.Most of the people in the Ming Dynasty paid attention to extensive research and collection when they compiled their chronicles, and they preserved a large amount of historical materials of the Ming Dynasty for us.The nearly thousand kinds of local chronicles left by them, as well as their exploration and creation in the compilation of local chronicles, laid a solid foundation for the prosperity of ancient local chronicles.