Nanjing Old News

Author: Xue Bingdian
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2003-12-01
Features: Naming this book "Old News of Nanjing" involved some hesitation on the author's part. "Old news" is naturally a good name, even though going back a hundred years, these would have been "Nanjing News." In other words, it refers to real events that occurred in the Nanjing region over the decade or so following the 10th year of the Guangxu reign (1884). Of course, some of them, due to the colored glasses of the chroniclers, have distorted the truth, making it difficult to distinguish between fact and fiction. Others are entirely "just take it with a grain of salt" hearsay. It seems that the problem of news not being true has existed since the emergence of news. The two characters "Nanjing" are worth pondering over. This ancient city has many aliases, including ancient names like Jinling, Malin, Stone City, Jianye, Jiangning, Jiankang, Baixia, and Jiqing; during the Ming Dynasty, it was established as Yingtianfu, later becoming Nanjing as the capital. In the early Qing Dynasty, Jiangnan Province was established, and Yingtianfu was changed to Jiangning Prefecture, governing Shangyuan and Jiangning counties. The most commonly used names in contemporary news were Jinling and Jiangning, while "Nanjing" was rarely used. This book collects over 200 "old news" stories, covering various social strata and reflecting many aspects of life, weaving them together into a "Along the River During the Qingming Festival" or "Prosperous Age." Reading them today, the most profound feeling is that there is a significant gap between them and the history taught in textbooks. Some major historical events recorded in history books had little reflection in the daily lives of Nanjing people at the time, or were evaluated completely differently.