Chapter 10 Section 8 Zhu Yuanzhang's Spiritual Foundation

From the time he was born in this world until the age of seventeen, Zhu Yuanzhang never left the countryside. In his eyes, the world is the familiar plants and trees from Nangang to Beipo.The people he has come into contact with are just the hundred or ten people in the village, old and young. Zhu Yuanzhang met all the conditions for a poor and lower-middle peasant who suffered and hated deeply.Since he was sensible, he has started his working life, pulling weeds behind his mother's buttocks, and going up the mountain with his friends to collect firewood.Since I was in my teens, I have been herding cattle for landlords.The child of the poor is easy to feed. Although he eats the worst food in the world, it does not delay him from growing into a burly figure, but his appearance is a bit ugly: his head is very long, his chin is wide, and he has the face of a donkey. "History of Ming Dynasty" implicitly called him "majestic in appearance, with strange bones piercing through the top".

Although he was born in a poor family for generations, Zhu Yuanzhang had a very high IQ and enough brains since he was a child.And because he is strong and good at fighting, he became the king of children in the village.He is self-taught and knows how to play with all kinds of children with different personalities: those who are strong and capable, he wins them over and uses them for me. For the other followers, he beat and scolded as he should.All the children in the village belonged to his unified leadership, and they obeyed his orders honestly. The future emperor's favorite game is "Being Emperor". "Look, even though he's barefoot, and his blue shorts are full of holes and patches, and they don't fit well, he can tear palm leaves into shreds, tie them around his mouth to make a beard, and find a car spoke to cover them. It is a flat crown on the head, sit on the mound, and let the children line up, row by row, respectfully, kneel three times and kowtow nine times, shouting long live at the same time." (Wu Han "Zhu Yuanzhang Biography") Who can kowtow not? He walked down, fell down with one foot, and then asked the child next to him to continue beating until he was willing to knock his head bang bang, and a big bump grew on his forehead.

The only cultural activity is to listen to the storytelling masters who travel around the neighborhood and eight villages.What "Sui and Tang Dynasties", "Three Kingdoms", "Generals of the Yang Family", "The Last Event of Xuanhe of the Great Song Dynasty".In these storytellings, he knew that "the emperor ordered the ministers to die, and the ministers had to die", that there were "loyal ministers" and "treacherous ministers" above the court, and that "Song Taizu defeated four hundred and eighty military states with a whistle stick" .For the vast majority of Chinese people today, these Pingshu Romances, that is, the rough cultural products of the low-level traditional culture, rather than those elegant Four Books, Five Classics, Tang Poems and Song Ci, are their real spiritual cornerstones and have laid their foundation. A lifetime of thought patterns.

Zhu Yuanzhang's childhood was too ordinary.After an ordinary person becomes famous, fellow villagers will always attach some legends about how he was unique and extraordinary at a young age.Poor Zhu Yuanzhang's folks found it difficult to create such legends that did not require too many raw materials.Manufactured and manufactured, but such a clumsy story was made up.It is said that Zhu Yuanzhang and his companions were grazing cattle on the mountain together, and they were hungry.Some people say that it would be nice to have a bowl of white rice to eat, but that one said that eating meat is delicious, and the more people say it, the more they burn in their stomachs.

Zhu Yuanzhang pointed to the cow in front of him and said, isn't this just meat?If you want to eat, let's kill one and try it.Some people say, then you won't get your ass spanked when you go back?Zhu Yuanzhang said, don't care about him, let's have a good meal first.As he spoke, he picked up a woodcutter and slaughtered a calf.Someone took the lead, so everyone was not afraid. Someone helped to peel the skin, someone picked up branches, and started a fire. Everyone had a hearty meal of roast beef.After a while, there was only one ox tail left on the ground.After eating the beef, everyone became scared, and no one knew how to explain when they went back.Zhu Yuanzhang had a brainstorm, and stuck the ox's tail in the crevice of the rock, and made an appointment with everyone, saying that the calf had got into the cave, and he couldn't pull it out no matter how hard he pulled it.Everyone said yes in unison, and they dispersed.

Of course, such a mentally handicapped legend cannot be true.This clumsy story originally created to deify Zhu Yuanzhang, the only real information revealed is still poverty and hunger. In his youth, which is crucial to the development of a person's spiritual world, Zhu Yuanzhang had access to too few external resources.It is said in history that Zhu Yuanzhang was talented since he was a child. "Records of Ming Taizu" contains, "The queen mother said that Renzu said: 'People say that my family should be a good person. Now all the sons are down, and the property is gone. Pointing up and saying: Is this the case?' "It turned out that Chen Erniang once asked someone to make a fortune, and the divination said that their family would produce a "good guy". Erniang said to May Fourth: "Who is it? These children are all good-for-nothing, I think maybe It should be on Chongba." Judging from Zhu Yuanzhang's later performance, Chen Erniang's words were prescient.

However, if it hadn't been for the peasant uprising at the end of the Yuan Dynasty that jolted him out of his original life track and started a wrong life, no matter how smart Zhu Yuanzhang was, he would be just a poor boy in the countryside, destined to deal with the dirt all his life. In rural society, there are not only simple human feelings and idyllic scenery, but also ignorance, barbarism and blind obedience to power.In the struggle at the bottom of the society, the cultural spirit of the bottom penetrated into Zhu Yuanzhang's body and mind in an all-round way.With the miraculous change of fate, Zhu Yuanzhang, who ascended the throne, inevitably spread the poverty cultural factors in his character to the whole country and national spirit more widely and deeply.Throughout his life, every move of the founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty was firmly restricted by the way of thinking of farmers. We can clearly distinguish the spiritual imprint of the poverty culture in the small village on the south bank of the Huaihe River in his major policies for governing the country.

In the eyes of these farmers in the Fengyang countryside, the sky is round, the sun rises and the moon sets, and the scenery around the small villages will never change.The life experience of the older generation has a lasting repayment power to the peasants, so the elderly have supreme authority. "If you don't listen to the old man's words, you will suffer in front of your eyes."