Oracle - Readings of Zhou Meisen

Author: Zhou Meisen / Country: Mainland China
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-08-01
Features: The Southern Seas fleet only comes once a year, usually arriving in early summer—the fleet has to sail for over a month at sea! The goods they bring also vary greatly. At first, they carried things like copper buttons, sewing needles, leather boxes, and leather pillows. Later, they brought ivory, jade, brass water pipes for smoking opium, large bricks for keeping out moisture, brown sugar, oranges, and bananas. Later still, they brought feathers—these weren’t ordinary items for the people of Qingpu; they were specially sold to officials, the flower feathers for hats that commanded respect. The people of the Southern Seas are so clever; as long as they can make silver, they can get anything to sell. The elders of Qingpu’s Eighteen Shoals therefore believed that the Southern barbarians were unprincipled, half foreigners, and would even dig up their ancestors’ graves and sell their bones. Dealing with these people, would Qingpu’s Eighteen Shoals ever be any better?
In the late years of the Qianlong reign, the flat-bottomed sand boats from the Northern Seas arrived. These sand boats brought northern goods such as soybeans, pork, beef, timber, wheat, and medicinal herbs in a steady stream, selling them not only to the locals in Qingpu but also engaging in large-scale trade with the Southern Seas merchants. As a result, the commotion grew. Both the Northern and Southern Seas fleets landed in Qingpu Town simultaneously, buying up a stretch of street along the Southern Temple Slope and establishing over a dozen commercial firms under different names. Qingpu Town truly began to take on the scale of a town, becoming the second busiest place after Jinkou County. From then on, opium (known as "foreign medicine") appeared in Qingpu Town.
According to the elders of Qingpu, opium came from the Southern Seas, manufactured by foreigners in distant lands and then shipped to the Southern Seas before being brought to Qingpu. The chests of opium bore the initials of foreigners, and even the erudite Confucian scholar of Qingpu’s Lu Family and the magistrates of Jinkou County couldn’t recognize them! Once opium was introduced, it spread rapidly across the land. Taking opium became fashionable, even the soldiers did it! The wise and benevolent Emperor of the Great Qing knew that opium was no good, so he issued an edict to ban it. But how could they stop it?! Opium is addictive; once someone tries it three or four times, they can’t stop. When the court banned opium, the price of opium shot up, and the profits for opium traders increased even more. The Southern Seas merchants grew bolder in their trade.
Even today, opium has not been completely banned and has spread even further, causing many troubles. Ruan Laoer, a salt producer from Ruanjiachi, was smoking opium in front of his large salt pot when he became drunk and stumbled into the boiling water, ending up boiled to death, leaving behind nothing but bones. Lu Rongling of Qingpu Town lost almost all his wealth within a few years because his family members took opium.
Foreign religion also arrived. The arrival of foreign religion was later than that of opium, and it was not as openly obvious. In the 23rd year of the Jiaqing reign, the Southern Seas fleet, while transporting goods from the Southern Seas, brought two foreigners to Qingpu. These foreigners claimed to be merchants but wore crosses around their necks and alternated between speaking foreign languages and Chinese. One was named James Jackson, and the other was John Li. During the day, they did business, but at night, they spread their religion, claiming to bring the gospel of God to save people from their sins. They bought a house behind the Southern Temple Slope from a Southern Seas merchant and secretly set up a chapel. Now, it is said that they have many followers. Their followers also wear crosses secretly around their necks and worship God, worshiping an old foreigner named "Jesus."
The elders of Qingpu’s Eighteen Shoals began to wonder: If they worship God and Jesus, do they still need the Emperor? Do they still need Confucius? Do they still need the virtues of loyalty, filial piety, integrity, and righteousness? This was even worse than opium! Opium harmed the body, but foreign religion harmed the heart.
To make matters worse, it is said that in recent years, the bird ships and appraisal ships from the Southern Seas have brought Southwestern bandits to the peaceful Qingpu Town! This made the elders of Qingpu’s Eighteen Shoals even more uneasy! The elders knew that the bandits were rebels against the Great Qing Court. Their leader, Lin Shuangwen, had once risen up in Taiwan but was later suppressed by the imperial troops. So, what were these bandits doing in Qingpu? They were surely plotting rebellion! The elders were not yet fully aware of the spread of the bandits, but they had heard many rumors about their activities.
At this time, the loyal elders of Qingpu longed for the good old days that had passed. Although they had never seen those good times themselves, they stubbornly believed that everything back then was better than now. They all yearned for the imperial authority to cleanse the filth and corruption spreading across this land, restoring them to a peaceful and harmonious era. They hoped for a reversal of time, even for the Great Qing Emperor to reinstate the maritime ban and reerect a large wooden sign on the Southern Temple Slope of Qingpu Town, reading: "Those who exceed the limit will be executed!"
The people of Qingpu were noble, honest, and upright. They would rather go their entire lives without eating seafood, refuse lacquered boxes and silk robes, just to preserve the bright and pure rule of the Great Qing and the unchanging simplicity of the world. As if sensing their desires, that year, the Southern Seas fleet did not arrive in Qingpu Town as usual in May or June, and there was no news of them until late July. During this time, two fleets of Northern Seas sand boats did come, but they had to return north without waiting for news from the Southern Seas bird ships, unloading the pine timber and soybeans they had carried and loading some local specialties of Qingpu instead before sailing back.
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