1900's Beijing

Author: (Italian) Adriano Madaro
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-06-01
Features: The Manchu Dynasty pushed the Celestial Empire to the brink of collapse. They ruled China for 250 years and were known as the "Qing Dynasty" (meaning "pure," but in reality, the Han Chinese, who made up the vast majority of China's population, referred to them as "foreign rule"). The only ones who truly maintained "purity" were the Tartars. They not only forcibly ruled the advanced Chinese culture but also preserved their martial traditions and habits of fear and hatred towards foreigners, lacking tolerance. In 1644, the last Ming emperor, constantly threatened by peasant uprisings, requested aid from the Manchus (in reality, it was the Ming general Wu Sangui who invited the Qing army to enter the pass—translator's note). When the Tartar army entered Beijing, they found the Chongzhen Emperor already hanging himself from a tree on Jingshan, behind the Forbidden City, on a white imperial robe. He wrote on it: "I, with my humble virtue and lowly status, have offended Heaven. But it was all the fault of my ministers. When I die, I have no face to see my ancestors. I will take off my crown and robe, cover my head with my hair, and leave myself to the enemy's division. Let not a single person of the people be harmed." These words allowed him to be buried like an emperor. The emperor died, the imperial throne was empty, and the Manchus took the throne, establishing the 22nd dynasty in Chinese history. The occupation of this vast empire by the foreign ruler began. Three hundred and fifty years ago, Manchuria was an independent kingdom separate from China. The Manchus had their own language and traditions. Manchuria was the land of the Tartars, a semi-nomadic, martial people closely related to the Mongols. Manchuria and China were separated by the Great Wall. About two thousand years ago, the Chinese emperors built this Great Wall to protect their borders from the invasions of the Mongols and Tartars. In the West, since the Middle Ages, the area outside the Great Wall has been called Tartary. The Tartars were extremely barbaric. At that time, people imagined the Tartars as the gateway to hell, the headquarters of hatred for Christ. The Tartars were indeed violent, warlike, with bloody and brutal customs, and repulsive in appearance. They were dirty, wearing animal skins, and considered life as worthless. They had the habit of shaving their foreheads clean, gathering the hair at the back of their heads with animal fat, and combing it into a single braid, which they then coiled on their foreheads. They forced all conquered people to shave their heads and wear braids, with those who refused being executed. This was a simple way to identify rebels. After occupying Beijing, they quickly occupied all of China and forced 400 million new subjects to keep their braids. They started with the guards of the court, who had to respectfully escort them from the border to the capital. They were stationed together, and everyone wore braids. At that time, a scholar named Xu Qi wrote a dialogue where the Manchu said, "Leave your head but not your hair, leave your hair but not your head," and the Han Chinese replied, "My head can be cut off, but my hair must not be shaved." A very telling example is the three-month resistance of the city of Jiading in the south, which refused to cut its hair. Xu Qi wrote: "When the city fell, the emperor ordered the city to be three times to warn the rebels. A total of 97,000 people died in the city, and 75,000 in the suburbs. From then on, the people all kept their braids to show their submission." The braid became the most obvious feature of all Chinese. By 1912, when the Republic of China was proclaimed, an order was issued to cut braids. The custom of keeping braids had been deeply rooted after hundreds of years of promotion, and cutting them was strongly resisted. However, the Han Chinese's hatred of the Manchus persisted until the Qing Dynasty was overthrown in 1911. In 1928, the Nationalist army entered the royal cemetery of Dongling, dug up the graves and discarded the bodies, and stole the jewelry, an extreme expression of this long-standing resentment. Among the ten emperors who inherited the throne of the Qing Dynasty, two indeed achieved great achievements: the Kangxi Emperor, who ruled for 61 years from 1662 to 1723, and the Qianlong Emperor, who reigned for 60 years from 1736 to 1796. These two emperors particularly identified with Han culture and promoted the integration of the court with Han culture. They protected the characteristics of Han culture and created the famous "Kang-Qian Prosperity" in Chinese history. Although the Qing Dynasty conquered the Han people with force and their usual barbaric violence in 1644, in the end, the Han people assimilated the Qing Dynasty with their spiritual strength and great civilization. In the mid-19th century, Britain forcefully penetrated, followed closely by France, and then other powers joined in, leading to the collapse of the Celestial Empire. At the same time, some rulers in China stubbornly refused all foreign influences, adding to their arrogance and prejudice, bringing disaster at the end of the century. From 1830 to 1840, the world's most powerful navy—the British Navy—sent its ships into China, forcing the Qing Dynasty to open its coastal ports, allowing them to set up trade stations and station guards. Not only that, they demanded that the Qing Dynasty pay them occupation fees and insisted on conducting the opium trade through the natural port of Guangzhou in the Pearl River Delta. From colonial India, opium was brought to China, the most convenient and safest route. This trade was controlled by the infamous East India Company. The East India Company thus became incredibly wealthy: a deadly poison for a sound silver. This was a highly profitable business for Britain but a social and economic disaster for China. The emperor ordered the destruction of stored opium, and crates of opium were publicly burned. As a result, Britain launched an attack on Guangzhou and quickly won the victory of the First Opium War. How could the bows and arrows of the Qing soldiers compete with the guns and cannons of the British army? In 1842, Qing China was forced to sign the Treaty of Nanking, according to which Hong Kong was ceded, and Britain also received compensation and other concessions. After Britain succeeded, France also made spurious territorial claims to Chongqing, Yunnan, and Hainan Island.