Chapter 26 Section 3 Meticulous Paintings of Social History

The most colorful local chronicles are the descriptions of social history. Major events in history are almost reflected in local annals, such as the Taiping Rebellion, and wherever the Taiping Army went, there are records.The "Compilation of Historical Materials of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom" edited by Luo Ergang cited more than 1,600 kinds of materials, of which 730 were local chronicles.Guangdong, Jiangxi, Hunan and other provinces have published historical collections of Taiping Army activities in their provinces, all of which use local chronicles as the main source of information.As for some small-scale regional events, they mainly rely on local chronicles.For example, during the uprising of the Shanghai Small Knife Society, Zhou Zhichun and others responded to the uprising in Qingpu County. They first wore red scarves as signs and occupied Jiading, Chuansha, Baoshan and other counties. The local people actively participated, or supported candles and dry food.This period of history is preserved in the county annals of these counties.

Local chronicles are historical witnesses of the imperialist invasion of China in the past century.For example, many annals of the late Qing Dynasty recorded the situation before and after the Opium War.Because Baoshan County in Shanghai is located in Haikou, it is deeply affected by opium. "(Guangxu) Baoshan County Chronicles" records that at that time, there were generally more than 10 opium dens in the towns and towns of Baoshan County, and there were more than 100 opium dens. Strong." "(Guangxu) Yin County Chronicle (Ningbo, Zhejiang) records that when the British army invaded in 1841, Ningbo relied on Zhenhai as a barrier and was not prepared to resist.When the news of the fall of Zhenhai came, all the civil and military officials in Ningbo fled from the west and south gates at once.The British army occupied Ningbo without fighting, looted all the money accumulated in the shops in the city, and demolished the government offices and temples in the city.

In the local annals of Guangzhou, it is recorded in detail that the local people spontaneously resisted the invading army in May 1841.For example, "(Tongzhi) Xiangshan County Chronicles" Volume 16 "Loyalty Biography" records: "Lei Zhaocheng and other thirteen people are also the villagers of Jushayongdutou. In the 21st year of Daoguang's reign, the British and barbarians invaded the country...the barbarians entered the village, armed with swords and muskets, and plundered wantonly. The thirteen people were very angry, and handsome Lei Tiangui … Wait until they come out, hit them with all their strength, shout loudly, the sound shakes the forest and valleys, rushing without guns, each holding a hoe [youyou] and fighting to the death. Yi wields his sword and kills several people, and then burns his muskets to surround them, and they all die. Fearing that all the people from the village will come, they will all run away. The heavenly rule is that five people who are wounded will chase after them, and they will return if they are too late."

At the same time, a woman named Lei Liu was also sacrificed.Holding a wooden baton, she joined Lei Zhaocheng and others in the battle, and was only 24 years old when she died.Her deeds are recorded in Volume 18 of this county annals.This is a righteous song of the Chinese people who rose up to defend their hometown, in stark contrast to some Qing Dynasty officials who fled without a fight. Through the economic data in the chronicles, we can understand the level of economic development and people's living standards of a region in different historical periods.The number of acres of cultivated land, land taxes, and industrial and commercial taxes are almost the contents of every local chronicle, and there are often definite and specific figures. "(Republic of China) Baxian Chronicles" (Baxian, Sichuan) records that during the era of warlord separatism, there were dozens of exorbitant and miscellaneous taxes in Baxian County.However, according to the tax and service chapter of "(Republic of China) Xinfan County Chronicles" (Xindu County, Sichuan), the pre-collection of land taxes in 1934 has been collected in 1981.At that time, the people in Sichuan were poor and rich, and the degree of hardship of the people can be imagined.

Due to the close relationship between household registration and taxation, chronicles also contain the number of households and the number of people in each county, township, and village in great detail.For example, the official and systematic household registration records in Shanghai began in the 24th year of Hongwu in the Ming Dynasty (AD 1391).Continuous population records reflect the increase, decrease and migration of our country's population in the past dynasties, and also indirectly reflect the major political and economic changes in the past dynasties, which are of great reference value for the study of the large subject of Chinese population.

Local chronicles also contain rich historical materials of industrial and commercial development.The local chronicles of Suzhou and Songjiang in Jiangsu in the middle of the Qing Dynasty recorded the economic prosperity of the market towns in the south of the Yangtze River during the Ming and Qing Dynasties.For example, Volume 4 of "(Qianlong) Wujiang County Chronicles" describes the development of Shengze Town located in the southeast of Wujiang County.Shengze was just a small village with dozens of households in the early Ming Dynasty. During the Jiajing period of the Ming Dynasty, the number of residents doubled. Most of them were weaving silk and silk, and a market began to form.By the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty, its population had been a hundred times that of the Ming Dynasty, and the production of silk and silk had also increased by ten times. Every day, midday was the market, and transactions were carried out. There is an endless stream of people coming. Volume 2 of "(Daoguang) Zhenze Town Records" records that by the middle of the Qing Dynasty, many weaving workers in Zhenze Town, Suzhou had already "taken silk from the line (ya line), spun on behalf of them and received their value".The tooth shop originally only introduced sales, but now it has developed into distributing raw materials (silk), organizing processing and paying wages.Network workers are actually workers employed by dental firms.These are very vivid portrayals of the budding of capitalist economy in my country's textile industry after the middle of Ming Dynasty.

The local chronicles of the modern Shanghai area record the occurrence and development of modern capitalist enterprises in the Shanghai area.What is particularly valuable is that the local chronicles are not limited to the urban area of ​​Shanghai, but also reflect the situation of small counties and towns; they are not limited to large enterprises, but also record the economic affairs of many small and medium-sized enterprises and some unknown business figures. Activities, these are things that other books, newspapers and magazines seldom pay attention to.From these chronicles, we can also see the changes in social life caused by the development of modern capitalism, such as the elimination of cloth socks from thread socks, the elimination of flint from matches, the replacement of oil lamps by gas lamps and electric lamps, the popularization of machine-made industrial products, and the improvement of people's lives. Increasing poverty, and the ensuing resistance to rent, tax, rice grabbing, strikes, etc., are all valuable modern economic historical materials.

In some local chronicles, you can find religious historical materials that are difficult to find elsewhere.For example, the word "Ye Li Ke Wen" appeared frequently in the history books of the Yuan Dynasty, but no one knew what it meant for five or six hundred years.It was not until the Guangxu period of the Qing Dynasty that a scholar named Liu Wenqi discovered the answer in the "(Zhishun) Zhenjiang Zhi" (Zhenjiang, Jiangsu) in the Yuan Dynasty.According to this chronicle, "Ye Li Ke Wen" is a religion that came from a place "more than ten thousand miles northwest of the Central Plains". It mainly worships the East and worships the cross.From this, Liu Wenqi concluded that it was Catholicism. "(Zhishun) Zhenjiang Chronicles" also specifically records the number of people and households who believed in "Yelikewen" religion in Zhenjiang at that time, and there are several biographies of "Yelikewen people".The contemporary historian Chen Yuan made a further textual research based on this and wrote an article "Yuan Ye Li Ke Wen Kao", which was highly appraised by Chinese and foreign scholars.The situation of the spread of Catholicism in the Yuan Dynasty was confused for hundreds of years before it was basically understood.

The local chronicles contain many poems and essays of ancient people, which are often not found in other books.For example, Liu Yong in the Song Dynasty was a great writer of Song Ci.According to legend, he was a vagabond, and most of his poems sang about the luxurious scene of pleasure-seeking, so that some people in the Song Dynasty said that the peaceful scene of Song Renzong's 42-year reign was all written in Liu Yong's poems.Liu Yong left few poems, only two or three. In the 1950s, Qian Zhongshu compiled "Selected Notes on Song Poems", and only selected one poem by Liu Yong: "Song of Boiled Sea".