In China’s feudal society, the period marked as “the end” by the dynasty was a disastrous time for the common people to suffer. This was the case in the late Han and Three Kingdoms periods, the late Tang, song, yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties.
The sudden fall of a big tree is nothing more than the sudden destruction of external forces or the gradual decay of the interior. However, the collapse of a huge Dynasty was usually caused by internal causes, which came to an end in the last years of the Eastern Han Dynasty: first, natural disasters were frequent, and the people were unable to make a living; Second, officials are greedy and corrupt; Third, the crafty and the deceitful hold power, and the tiger and the wolf are in power; Fourth, evil deeds are rampant and dark. Then, yellow scarves are everywhere, thousands of miles away, princes are flocking, and the chaotic times are bustling and contending; Then, the Three Kingdoms stood apart and fought for more than a hundred years.
“The thief ministers held the power of the state, killed the Lord and destroyed Yujing. They swayed over the emperor’s foundation, and the ancestral temple was burnt. They moved westward, crying and walking. They looked at the city of Los Angeles and felt sad for the Weizi.” These are the last eight lines of Cao Cao’s poem Xielu, which describes the scene of emperor DongZhuo threatening to move westward to Chang’an and incinerate Luoyang.
People used to divide the Han Dynasty into Western Han Dynasty and Eastern Han Dynasty because of the geographical location of its capital. From the time when liuxiuding, Emperor Guangwu of the Han Dynasty, was the capital of Luoyang, to the time of the Three Kingdoms, it had a business history of more than 200 years. The scale of Huagong Hongdian, fangyuanxiuyuan, busy streets and liangsihuaxuan is no less than that of Chang’an. In the Fu on two capitals written by Zhang Heng of Jin Dynasty, he praised the magnificence of Luoyang in those years. But Dong Zhuo’s fire at the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty made Luoyang, the most popular area in a country, a metropolis with hundreds of thousands of people, leaving only hundreds of families. How sad!
Where there is division, there must be war, and where there is war, there must be dead. According to Qian Mu’s outline of national history, “when Shu died, there were 280000 households, 940000 mouths, and 102000 officers and men with internal armour, accounting for one ninth of the total. When Wu died, there were 530000 households, 2300000 mouths, 230000 internal soldiers, accounting for one tenth of the total, 32000 officials, and 5000 harem palaces. When Wei and Ping Shu, there were 663423 mouths, 4432881 mouths. The total of the Three Kingdoms was about, households, 1473423 mouths, 7672881.” Qian Mu said, “as far as the whole history (referring to the whole history of China) is concerned, the registered permanent residence is no less than the time. Generally, it is the number of Nanyang and Runan counties in the Han Dynasty. This is the case in the late seasons of the Three Kingdoms. You can imagine when the chaos was blazing.”
In a poem entitled “Artemisia in”, Cao Cao described the tragic scene in the Central Plains at that time: “white bones are exposed in the wild, and there is no Rooster crowing for thousands of miles. The living people have one hundred relics, and the heart is broken when they read it.”
More than once in history, there has been a great regression of barbaric extinction of civilization. DongZhuo moved his capital to Chang’an and burned Luoyang, which is a very typical case. “The fire was burning in the sky, black smoke spread on the ground, and there were no chickens, dogs or people in twoorthree miles.” this fire may be a little worse than the fire that Xiang Yu, who had been in a hurry in the late Qin Dynasty, set on fire in Afang palace for three months, but it was even more brutal. DongZhuo killed the rich and relocated the poor. The rich died of non crime, and the poor died on the way. Even those who survived, they could not escape the ravaged and trampled army of tigers and wolves. As a result, Heluo was covered with scorched earth, chixian county was thousands of miles away, razed to the ground, and never recovered.
No matter Huang Jin or Dong Zhuo, all grass-roots people who come from a low level of civilization and poor material conditions will be merciless to the cities they trample on once the leather whip in the hands of herdsmen is replaced by a gun rod and the hoe in the hands of farmers is replaced by a printed handle. Trampling, destroying, burning and destroying are the only ways for them to vent their hatred. Especially when they have the power of life and death, the power of domineering, the ease of venting their sexual desires, and the ease of collecting gold and silver, they will never be polite or humble.
There is always a collision or even war between good and evil in the privacy of everyone’s soul. Good can control evil and become a normal social person; If the good cannot restrain the evil, it will become more and more intense as the cancer cells spread. However, the society can not restrain the spread of evil virus. The evil of individuals will naturally develop into a group evil, and the group evil will be manipulated by ruffian pioneers with low intelligence, low literacy and low rationality, which will inevitably be an uncontrollable human tragedy.
The greatest evil of mankind is massacre. In China’s recorded history, there have been murders between countries, but more often within a country, this group and that group, this party and that party, this army and that army kill each other, and those who kill with this kind of internal strife are even more bloody and cruel. When the ruler kills his subjects, the rebels kill the emperor, and suppress the uprising, he will kill all the people, wipe out the government, and eliminate the root causes. As for the princes and concubines, the mutual murders in the palace and outside the palace, and the civil war among warlords, courtiers and generals, their heads are rolling, and the blood is stained with the sun, which has become a dark battlefield. None of the nine families involved were spared. Innocent people were killed by the sword. Those murderous demons killed their eyes and brought disaster to the people. They were like cutting crops and killing generals. Blood flowed with pestles and bodies were everywhere.
Every retrogression in the history of Chinese civilization is a “masterpiece” made by these “brave men” who are destructive, vindictive and never soft hearted in doing evil.
In 263 A.D., Shu died, in 264 A.D., Wei died, and in 265 A.D., Sima Yan called the emperor Jin. The central plains were unified, and the people finally got rid of the shadow of war. In 280 ad, the first year of Taikang in the Western Jin Dynasty, Wu died and the country was unified. At this time, the total population of China was 16million, which was almost the same as that of Shanghai and Beijing. In 156 ad, Emperor Huan of the Eastern Han Dynasty lived for two years, and the total population of the country had reached 50million. In other words, after more than 100 years of fighting, only one third of the population is left!
The life of the Chinese people is like a mole ant. Tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people are often killed, trapped, exiled, and treated as political victims. With a stroke of pen, people who die do not even blink an eye. Don’t say fair trial, not even the condemnation of conscience. After it becomes history, one line and two lines of words will be used to understate it.
As a result, people have become accustomed to each other. In China’s long feudal society, the value of people is insignificant in the eyes of those who hold power. Even today, not all people know how to respect people’s basic rights. Both those who treat people as human beings and those who are treated as human beings do not think it is abnormal that people are so insecure. Don’t you see that during the ten years of turmoil, so many powerful and important people were locked up in cowsheds by the rebels at random and did their best to humiliate them? Who ever said “no” and dared not submit? This is the result of the subtle influence of this eternal poison.