53 replies to this topic

[浪淘音]

its rumored in my family that my great great grandmother (paternal side) was an ethnic Manchu so i don't think causing a schism between Han and Manchu is a good idea (especially since you have so many Korean nationalists claiming Manchus are their "brothers" and setting their sites on Dongbei)

however, pigtails and Man Zu clothing are purely SUBJECTIVELY ugly.

other than the Liuyedao and Manchu recurve bow(which was similar to the pre-Ming Chinese recurve bow as well as the different HuQin(bowed string) instrumentsm like Banhu, there is not a whole lot aobut the Qing dynasty that is pleasing on an aesthetic level.

i had chest length long hair from the time i was 13 until i turned 22(i'm still 22) so i can understand my Han ancestors' unwillingness to shave the front

[Sephodwyrm]

I would say that the Manchu dynasty reinforced certain aspects of Han culture and destroyed certain elements of it. Particularly, they strengthened the elements that would allow themselves to rule effectively (the traditional Confucianist thought and the Imperial Examinations system, honoring of ancestors etc). They weakened elements of certain cultural elements that would make ruling difficult.

In any case, the Wen Zi Yu of the Qing dynasty is not permissible. It created batches after batches of regurgitators and not thinkers. The reason why there's only 1 Lin Zexu and 1 Zuo Zongtang and 1 Zhang Zhidong said a lot about the corruption of the examination system. Corruption started when it first began, and it reached its zenith in the Qing dynasty as the emperors sought to appease the corrupting scholars.

[Yun]

Note: Wenziyu 文字狱 is a Chinese term meaning literally 'word jails', and referring to the literary inquisitions launched by the Kangxi, Yongzheng and Qianlong emperors of the Qing. Any written material suspected of encoding an anti-Manchu sentiment would cause its writer, his clan, and his students to be arrested and killed. It was a kind of censorship that left its mark very deeply on Chinese politics.

[snowybeagle]

I read that when the court official Cha Siting 查嗣庭 in charge of Imperial Exams in Jiangxi (江西) sets the question to 维民所止, he was accused of lese majeste(sp?) because two of the characters 维 and 止 were like the characters Yongzheng 雍正 beheaded.

Yet the term 维民所止 is actually taken from the Chinese Classics Book of Odes 《诗》.

Was this a rumour or fact?

[Yun]

This actually happened, in 1726. Cha Siting committed suicide, but his corpse was still dismembered. His sons were all beheaded, and his other family members were exiled to the frontier.

Many of the inquisitions were caused by word interpretations like this: careless uses of the words Ming and Qing, for example. But the 维民所止 case was not baseless paranoia: Lu Liuliang 吕留良, a long-deceased scholar, had written a book entitled 《维止集》 in which he condemned the Manchus as barbarians. This book later inspired another scholar, Zeng Jing to launch the coup plot in 1729 that was detailed by Jonathan Spence in his "Treason by the Book". Lu Liuliang's corpse was exhumed and dismembered, and his direct descendants were executed while other family members were exiled to Heilongjiang. [A legend goes that Yongzheng was later assassinated by Lu's granddaughter.]

Other inquisitions arose from the writing of historical works, including the official Ming dynastic history. The number of historians (as well as printing and publishing personnel involved) who got executed in the Qing literary inquisitions was unprecedented, and basically scared most scholars off from writing history. They instead went into the study of ancient texts, trying to prove or disprove their authenticity - a pursuit that posed a challenge to the Neo-Confucian orthodoxy but was not directly subversive to the government.

[bhchao]

Zeng Jing was later sliced up piece by piece in Beijing, by order of Qianlong. Although Zeng was a follower of Lu Liuliang's teachings, Yongzheng did not execute him despite many Qing bureaucrats' recommendations to do so.

[Grigori]

Can we list a number of Han culture that were exterminated by the Manchus that you think would benefit Chinese society today?

[kaixin]

^From some other forum, I heard that the Manchus outlawed the widespread use of firearms and cannons after long protracted battles with Koxinga and remnant Ming forces in southern China. Since then, the Chinese still resorted to swords and spears. That was why they lagged behind Europe when ports were invaded.

But, during the Taiping Rebellion, the native Han Chinese in the south dug up old firearms and cannons that were buried at the end of the Ming and used them against the Qing with much success. The Qing had to seek the help of the West to quell the rebellion.

[wlee15]

^From some other forum, I heard that the Manchus outlawed the widespread use of firearms and cannons after long protracted battles with Koxinga and remnant Ming forces in southern China.  Since then, the Chinese still resorted to swords and spears.  That was why they lagged behind Europe when ports were invaded.

But, during the Taiping Rebellion, the native Han Chinese in the south dug up old firearms and cannons that were buried at the end of the Ming and used them against the Qing with much success.  The Qing had to seek the help of the West to quell the rebellion.

Nope the Qing continued to retained significant amounts of firearms and artillery throughout it's existence. Are you sure you're(or they're) not confusing the events in Japan after their Sengoku period?