Chapter 8 Chapter Five: The Age of Letters and History

In the 950s BC, the era of semi-reliable history ended and the era of authentic history began. After the Zhou Dynasty stabilized for more than 200 years, the tenth king, Ji Hu, staged a coup in the 950s BC, and the era of semi-believing history ended with his frantic footsteps of fleeing for his life.Since then, due to the proper preservation of written records, Chinese history has entered the era of reliable history. We start from the historical era and use the century as the narrative unit, with the purpose of understanding the distance and position of historical events in time.For the sake of clarity, we divide a century into ten epochs.Every decade, including ten years.Since the years before the Epoch are all numbers counting backwards and are not easy to calculate, this kind of chronological division seems to be more necessary.We specially list a brief table below as an illustration, and the following chapters will be deduced by analogy.

900 years ago - 891 years ago 10 years ago 890 - 881 before 880-871 before the 1920s 870-861 before the 1930s In the 1940s, 860 years ago - 851 years ago In the 1950s, 850 years ago - 841 years ago In the 1960s, 840 years ago - 831 years ago In the 1970s, 830 years ago - 821 years ago In the 1980s, 820 years ago - 811 years ago 810 before the 1990s - 801 before ninth century BC Ji Hu, the tenth king of the Zhou Dynasty, got into a catastrophe mainly because he appointed a financial expert, Duke Rong Yi, to preside over the government.Rong Yigong adopted a monopoly policy and changed all the large and small industries that the nobles depended on for their livelihood to the government. This of course aroused the resentment of the nobles, and they resisted in various ways.

Ji Hu adopted a high-pressure method. He sent people to Weiguo (Qi County, Henan Province) to hire many wizards, and established a secret police in the capital Haojing (Xi'anxi, Shaanxi Province).It is said that the wizards of Weiguo have special spells, and they can immediately judge what the other person is thinking just by looking at them.These wizards patrol the streets and alleys in an endless stream, and anyone they deem as rebels or slanders is immediately executed in prison. Soon, Haojing (Xi'anxi, Shaanxi) was peaceful, no one opposed the king, and there was no voice to criticize the government.Later, the nobles simply did not even speak, and only dared to show their relatives and friends with their eyes when they met.Ji Hu Daxi said: "Well, I finally stopped the rebellion and slander." His minister Zhao Gong said: "It's just gagging other people's mouths. Just gagging can't solve the problem." But Ji Hu thought it had been solved. problem.In 842 BC, a coup took place, the nobles attacked the palace, and all the wizards were killed. Ji Hu had to run away and fled to Xiyi (Huozhou, Shanxi), where he spent his later years in a place famous for raising pigs. .

After Ji Hu escaped, the nobles wanted to kill his son Ji Jing. Fortunately, Zhao Gong and another minister Zhou Gong protected him from death, but the situation did not allow Ji Jing to inherit the throne immediately.Zhaogong and Zhougong were jointly regents and presided over the central government without a head of state. Historians call it "republican politics." In 841 BC, the first year of the republic, written records of Chinese history began to be preserved.Until the twentieth century, without interruption, this is one of the greatest contributions of the Chinese to human civilization.Because all the other ancient civilizations of the same period either have no records at all, or although there are records, the records have been lost, and only fragments can be obtained through the hard work of archaeologists.

The republic lasted for fourteen years and ended in 828 BC.That year, Ji Hu died in exile, and Ji Jing took the opportunity to ascend the throne and resume monarchy. The half-believed historical sites, because they are the memories and traces of historians, cannot avoid untrue elements, and need to be verified by experts.After entering the era of reliable history, historical sites are all based on current records, so the degree of credibility is very high.However, the records are not necessarily faithful or complete. On the contrary, deliberate misinterpretation and cover-up often occur, and there are often different or even opposite statements about the same historical site. It depends on our analysis, judgment and choice.

The era of letter history starts from this century (the first nine) to the 20th century, only 2,900 years, but it accounts for 90% of our space.This is a helpless thing, only to blame that we know too little about the previous historical sites.When we narrate the era of reliable history, although the more modern historical materials, we still try to keep the length of each century not too disparate.It is hoped that this will be used to display the coordinate map of historical sites and time. two east west world In 900 BC (Ji Pifang, the eighth king of the Zhou Dynasty reigned), the Greek poet Homer was born.

In 850 BC (Ji Hu, the tenth king of the Zhou Dynasty, reigned, nine years before the republic), the Phoenicians established the Carthaginian Empire in North Africa.