In 225 B.C., Qin kicked off the war to annihilate Chu. The great general Li Xin led 200,000 Qin troops to attack Chu and encountered fierce resistance from the Chu people, who were caught in a bitter battle in Huaiyang (today’s Huaiyang district of Zhoukou, Henan Province). Two young soldiers in the Qin army who were supposed to be brothers wrote a letter Home to their elder brother respectively.
These two letters, written on wooden boards and worth ten thousand Gold in the midst of the battle, not only arrived safely at their hometown, Anlu, the southern county of Qin (today’s Yunmeng County, Xiaogan, Hubei Province), 800 miles away, but were eventually taken to their graves by the recipients, becoming the earliest physical letters in Chinese history that we can see today – This is the earliest letter object in Chinese history that we can see today – the Yunmeng Sanhudi Qin jian. This gives us a glimpse of the blood, tears and sorrows of the people living at the bottom of that vast empire.
Do you want to be the proud Qin people in “The Great Qin Fugue”? If you read these two Family letters carefully, you may not have the courage to answer.
This ordinary Qin family of the lower class had no surname – according to Qin law only nobles were entitled to call their surnames, the people could only have first names. But from the letters, we can learn that there were three brothers, the eldest brother “Chi” was at home to support his mother, the second brother “Jing” and the youngest brother “Heifu” were both fighting at the front. The second brother, “Jing”, and the younger brother, “Heifu”, were both fighting at the front. Among them, “Jing” had just gotten married.
Under Qin law, men began to be counted for poll tax at the age of 15, and all were required to serve in the army at the age of 17. A man could get married if he was taller than six feet five inches (about 1.5 meters today). From the fact that the second brother was newly married and the younger brother was serving for the first Time, it can be inferred that the younger brother “Hei Fu” was probably exactly 17 years old and the second brother “Jing” could not be more than 20 years old. The two letters are written in the same handwriting, so they were obviously written by two brothers who asked the military clerk to write them.
The first letter was written by a man named “Hef” to his elder brother. In the letter, he greeted his mother, family, and various relatives and friends, mainly saying that the two brothers were now trapped in Huaiyang due to the war situation and their lives were unpredictable. Because of the lack of summer clothes, he asked his mother to either make clothes and send them to him or send money directly; he especially urged her not to send less. In addition, “Hei Fu” was very concerned about whether the military service he had earned in exchange for his Life had been rewarded with a “title” and whether the government had implemented the reward. If they did, he must be told.
This letter tells us a lot of harsh facts: the Qin people served early and heavily – for a family of three sons, two had to go to war, and all were young men who had just come of age; more exaggeratedly, service was apparently completely compulsory, not only without the familiar military pay of later generations, but even basic clothing had to be prepared by themselves! It is likely that the state only provided weapons and rations, or the basic completely unable to meet the need for a change of crude uniforms.
You are used to seeing the terracotta warriors and horses in their valiant armor neatly styled, not realizing that this is a fact of history. The unification of the king of Qin, the people at the bottom not only have to contribute their lives, but also money. This is the same as passing on most of the cost of the war to the people at the bottom. The only hope for the people was for the sons of the front to exchange their lives for military service, and use their “titles” to exchange for the corresponding rewards and status in the rear.
So did the family send money to the two brothers?
The second letter was written by the second brother, “Surprise”, to the elder brother. The tone of this letter is much more urgent. The situation seems to have become extremely serious. In the letter, “Surprise” again urges his mother to give money because he has not received any money or goods. And he explicitly asked for “five or six hundred” and “two and a half feet” of fabric. In his letter, he says in a tone of desperation that the brothers are now living on borrowed money and will die if they do not pay back the money, using three “urgent urgent urgent”. He seemed to have foreseen a bad end for the brothers and reassured the family that if you got a bad omen, it was only because I was living in the “anti-city”. He was also worried about his new daughter-in-law and urged his elder brother not to let her go too far away from home to collect firewood ……
From the second letter, we can be sure that the family failed to send them money after receiving the first letter. Did they ask for a lot of money for “five or six hundred”?
In the tomb of another Qin official, Xi, in the same area, there is a large number of Qin legal documents, including the Golden Cloth Law, which states that a piece of Qin clothing worn in summer is worth 55 yuan, and a piece of clothing worn in winter is worth 110 yuan. One hundred and ten. The “five or six hundred” that the two brothers asked for from their family, that is, the money for ten summer clothes, was not much and could barely be afforded by the average family, not to mention the fact that their family was rewarded with titles for their military achievements.
The family will hesitate if they can get this money for their own son or brother who is at the front line and whose life or death is uncertain? Will be stingy? Obviously not. The only reason why the family did not send money could only be that there is really no money!
From this we can see the harshness of the exploitation of the lower class brought about by Qin’s yearly conquests. The elder brother of the recipient of the letter, “Zhi”, was accompanied by burial artifacts and literary tools, and his grave was next to the official’s grave, which means that he knew how to read and write, and he was never a member of the lowest class in those days. But such a family could not get the money for ten summer clothes to save their lives!
In the second family letter, “alarm” also specifically mentioned that “the new land city more empty”, “so the people have for less than the order”, which translates to, Qin’s newly occupied cities and land, the people The translation means that the people of the newly occupied cities and lands were almost all gone, and they rebelled fiercely and did not obey the Qin’s orders. This is exactly the same as what the people of the six countries in Shandong said about Qin – “the world has suffered from Qin for a long time” “not happy to be Qin people”, no country, no land subjects like Qin. The people speak with their feet.
So “black” and “surprised” these two for the Qin threw their heads, blood, but for a little money troubled the ordinary soldiers in history only left these two trivial and true letters home, they finally ended up how?
No doubt, they died in battle. Because if they returned home safely, the elder brother “zhi” is completely unnecessary after the death of the two brothers letters as a burial. The Chinese custom of burial is to choose the most valuable, or the most favorite and cherished things to be buried with. Only in the case of brothers who both died in battle, the elder brother would take the two letters, which were not valuable at the time but were most precious to the individual, into the ground for a long rest. In this, we really feel the kind of feelings and emotions as the elder brother, after losing his two younger brothers. It is also recorded in the history books that the Qin army was attacked backwards and forwards and returned from the first attack on Chu with seven lieutenants killed and countless dead and wounded. It can be used as a kind of evidence to speculate the end of the two brothers. Then Qin launched another 600,000 troops to attack Chu again.
The real ending is that an ordinary Qin family, two sons eventually died in battle, leaving behind an old mother, a brother, and a woman who was newly married but became a widow. After reading these two letters, what do you think, readers?
The history we can see is almost all the history of big people, you can look through all kinds of history books, read all kinds of important events, but it is difficult to find the shadow of the small people, especially the ordinary people at the bottom. Was it Qin Shi Huang who unified China? Not really. It was driven by him, as cannon fodder for millions of “black husband”, “alarm” such flesh and blood, at the cost of the family to interpret the history. But history never had a place for them.
So many ordinary people can not see their own position in history, wrongly paving The Emperor‘s career as their own mission, producing a ridiculous misalignment. For example, at the end of last year, a female teacher in Shenzhen said, “My loved ones, including my children, donated one month’s salary each” to Taiwan, and “Our whole family donated five months’ salary each. Beat him!”
Donating wages is a certainty. But more likely, you have to donate your husband and son. Hu Xijin said something similar, but people’s sons are in Canada. He can fake donate, you, as a grassroots person, must really donate. There is a popular saying that goes like this: The only reason you like war is because you have never experienced it, nor do you even understand it.
Although no one knows the outcome or the mood of the mother whom “Hef” and “Surprise” are thinking of in their letters, there is no need to guess how a mother feels. She would not be proud to say “fight Chu” when her son perished in the wilderness 800 miles away! Because the people of Chu actually have no enmity with you at all. The Qin conquered more and more territory, has it anything to do with you, a grassroots? You still can’t afford to pay for ten pieces of summer clothes, right? Or, in the end, you can’t even afford to pay for your son.
The only person who can be proud of is Ying Zheng. All the dead bones eventually became the territory of one man, and all the subjugation expanded the number of slaves. The so-called “Great Qin Fugue” was a one-man ode built on thousands of dead bones. He must and rightly should praise and promote such a conquest.
In fact, what really moves us today about these two letters from 2246 years ago is that in them we see the embarrassment and hang-ups of normal people. From the beginning to the end of the letter, there is no pride of “opening up the territory and fighting in the north and south” for the Qin Dynasty, nor is there any pretense of “sacrificing the small for the big”, but rather, the whole letter is full of parental stories, thoughts of mother, brother, wife, friends and relatives, as well as the reality of money and things related to survival. The money and things. The real life of the ordinary people in the midst of a brutal war is clearly outlined for us. These are emotions that every ordinary person today can empathize with, and that we can fully relate to.
There is no best war, and there is no worst peace. If our feedback in human nature today is not as good as the ordinary people 2246 years ago, being a fish but having the thinking of a knife, originally a leek but having the urge to sing the praises of the sickle, that is really a tragedy that cannot be laughed at no matter how.
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