Sentence origin

Yu Qiuyu’s Land of Exiles

The Land of Exiles

The Northeast is the Northeast after all. It is already the end of midsummer, and the watermelons in Jiangnan have long been harvested. , but this place seems to have just begun to flourish. A wall made of watermelons stretches high and low along the road. The melon farmers are still taking out the melons one by one from the green melon fields and piling them on top. I bought several and carried them to the car. I cut one open and gnawed it on the roadside. When I took a sip, I was surprised again. It was refreshing and sweet that I had rarely experienced in my life!

The sky here is extremely blue, which makes the white clouds look silvery and three-dimensional. Under the blue sky and white clouds are all plants, including crops and flowers and plants growing on their own. Compared with the Northwest, this place is not barren at all; but compared with the south of the Yangtze River, it lacks those warm and exquisite twists and turns, showing a bit of desolation and vastness.

Does this land actually contain so much sweetness?

My heart trembled when I asked this question, because I was standing halfway from Mudanjiang to Jingbo Lake. At my feet was Ning'an County, Heilongjiang Province, which was called "Ninggu Pagoda" in the Qing Dynasty. ” location. Anyone with a little knowledge of Qing history can understand my feelings. In the long hundreds of years, the verdicts of countless "prisoners" read: "Exile Ninggu Pagoda."

There are so many major court cases that ended with it, so "Ninggu Pagoda" These three words "Tower" have become the most unlucky talisman in the hearts of officials across the country. Anyone may develop a lifelong connection with this place overnight, just like falling into a dark abyss from which it is impossible to swim out. The Jinluan Palace is far away from here and very close at the same time, so these three words often quietly sneak into the nightmares among high pillows and brocade quilts, scaring so many people into cold sweats.

The rulers of the Qing Dynasty especially liked to exile people from Jiangnan, so this land also has a deep connection with my birthplace and place of livelihood. There must be a lot of differences between the accents of Jiangsu and Zhejiang hundreds of years ago and now, but the clouds are still the same and the sky is still the same.

The land is not like this. There is a book called "Miscellaneous Notes of Yantang's Insights" which states that the Ninggu Pagoda at that time was hardly a human world. When the exiles went there, they were often eaten by tigers, wolves, and evil beasts along the way, and were even killed by hungry locals. Not many can survive eating it. At that time, there was another famous place of exile called Shangyang Fort, which was also a creepy place. But compared with Ninggu Pagoda, Shangyang Fort still had houses to live in and could survive. It was as good as heaven. . Some people may think that wherever there is a tower, there should be some remnants of civilization, right? This is a mistake. There is no pagoda in Ninggu Pagoda. These three characters are completely Manchu transliterations, meaning "six" ("Ninggu" means "six" and "ta" means "one"). It is said that there were brothers very early on. Six people lived here, and these six people may have been distantly related to the later Qing Dynasty.

The ancient pagoda in Ning is associated with several other famous places of exile in the Northeast, such as today’s Shenyang (then called Shengjing), Kaiyuan City, Liaoning (then called Shangyang Fort), Qiqihar (then called Bu Kui) and other places. I want to touch some uncomfortable parts of Chinese history again.

The punishments for prisoners in ancient Chinese dynasties were complicated and complex, but roughly speaking, they were nothing more than beating, killing, and exile. Beating is a light punishment, killing is a capital punishment, and exile is "neither light nor serious", embedded in the middle.

There are many ways to beat, and the tools (such as whips, sticks, etc.), methods and quantities are different. Leaving aside civilian criminals, even in court, there is always the possibility of being beaten. No matter how sanctimonious a high-ranking official is, no matter how elegant a scholar is, he has received the education of "see no evil" since he was a child, and his gestures are reserved. When he stood in the center of the hall to speak just now, he even used a series of profound allusions in a low and slow voice to replace all the worldly things. Vocabulary, suddenly I didn't know which sentence was wrong, and I was immediately pushed to the ground by a group of palace guards, and was beaten up in front of everyone. The pale muscles, the bright red blood, the wailing that dare not make a loud noise, and the messy white hair strongly remind the other civil and military officials standing aside: in the final analysis, you are just a physiological existence; use your thoughts to There is no such thing as refuting thoughts and confronting reason with reason.

There are even more ways to kill. In the early years, I read in an old book a detailed account of how the Jiaqing court killed an assassin, and I couldn't eat for several days. Later, I finally learned about other killing techniques. I really hope that no one in our next generation will know about these things. Their trick is to turn death into a long process that can be savored and chewed slowly. In this process, all the organs and skin that make up a human being become the cause of pain, so the victim can only resent that he is a human being. I believe that the killing method implemented by the Chinese court officials is the most cruel self-killing game in the millions of years since humans became human beings. Even jackals, tigers and leopards who look on will be stunned.

Cruelty, for rulers, is first a kind of intimidation, and secondly a kind of pleasure. As time goes by, the element of intimidation becomes less and less, while the element of pleasure becomes more and more. This becomes a psychological toxin that sweeps away the basic dignity of human beings. The rulers thought that this would facilitate their rule, but it fundamentally destroyed the humanity and humane foundation of Chinese civilization. The consequences were so serious that even today, after torture has been abolished, it has not yet recovered.

Now we can talk about exile.

Exile is a long-term torture compared to killing. It's okay to die. The scary thing is that people are still alive, and all kinds of cruelty have to be endured bit by bit with their hearts. This is more difficult than death.

For the Jiangnan and Central Plains people who were exiled in the Northeast at that time, the most unbearable thing was the scale of the exile. Sometimes not only the whole family is exiled, but also the nine clans are affected. All relatives near and far, and even neighbors, become exiles, often in groups of dozens or more than a hundred people.

Don’t think that traveling together in such a lively and noisy way is not bad. You must know that these homes that were well clothed and well-fed just a few days ago have been raided, and their property has been wiped out. What will you do after arriving in the penal colony? It has also been decided long ago, such as "rewarding soldiers with strength as slaves", "giving slaves to armored men", etc. Even the children around them are already slaves. Along the way, he was afraid that they would escape, so he was yoked for thousands of miles. I saw this record in historical materials: In the eighth year of Xuande in the Ming Dynasty, 170 prisoners were exiled to the Northeast at one time. Two-thirds of them died on the road, and only 50 prisoners were left in the Northeast.

After finally arriving at the penal colony, these slaves were assigned to their masters. When the masters saw beautiful women, they abused them at will. They were afraid that their husbands would get in the way, so they killed their husbands first. There were so many exiles that there was no need for them, so some women were selected to be sold to prostitutes, and some men were selected to be exchanged for horses.

The best treatment is to work as a coolie in the so-called "Guanzhuang", but of course there is no freedom at all. According to the records of Wu Zhaoqian, an exiled scholar in the Qing Dynasty, "all the people in Guanzhuang are as skinny as firewood" and "all year round, they are either farming, hunting, burning lime, or burning charcoal, and there is no free time."

In a book called "The Chronicles of the Absolute Territory", a scene of women from the south of the Yangtze River who were exiled there was described: "The leftovers were pounded and then drained, the frosty wells were like mountains, and the bare feet and single clothes were howling on the shoulders. Those who bear the burden must not be disciplined, they are all descendants of wealthy Chinese families."

There must be many Cui Yingying and Lin Daiyu among these poor water-carrying girls. They dare not think about the delicate and reserved nature of yesterday, even that. A bit of sad love tragedy has become a luxury.

Ding Jie, a poet in the Kangxi period, once wrote these two poems:

The beauties of the southern country are mostly in the north, and the celebrities in the Central Plains are half in Liaoyang.

There must be so many truly great tragedies here that people dare not think about! The poem may be a bit exaggerated, but it is true that at that time, the provinces in the Central Plains were in exile in the Northeast to the point of "no provinces and no one". According to Mr. Li Xingsheng’s statistics, the total number of exiles from the Northeast alone during the Qing Dynasty (the concept is slightly larger than the exiled prisoners) was over 1.5 million. Ordinary civilians are rarely exiled, so the proportion of "celebrities" and "beauties" among them is indeed not low.

As mentioned before, a large part of so many people are implicated. This injustice is really too great. Those distant relatives may have never met the person involved, and their kinship relationship could only be sorted out through the twists and turns of the older generation, but now they are all rushed here.

In the eyes of the rulers, Chinese people are not individuals, they are just leaves growing on the family tree. If a leaf is not pleasing to the eye, it proves that the root is not good, so a big tree is uprooted. I think this is the original meaning of the word "implicated".

There are so many leaves on the tree, and you don’t know which one will have an accident and harm you, let alone when your every move will endanger the entire tree, so you can only tremble, as if you are facing an abyss, or walking on thin ice. In this way, how can China still have an independent individual consciousness?

We have also seen many people who understand in their hearts but act cowardly: for some things, if they insist on what they want in their hearts, they will persist in their character; but when they frown and think about their wives, children, children, relatives and friends, , and immediately changed his mind. Since not a single leaf on the big tree dares to face the blowing wind, the infiltration of dew, and the drifting of frost, then the entire forest has become a dead forest without the sound of wind and birds.

I often imagine what the people involved would say and what their expressions would be like if they met distant relatives whom they had never heard of before but were killed because of them this time. And how will those distant relatives react?

There is no doubt that the person concerned is extremely guilty, but is guilt alone enough? And what do you feel guilty about? He might be able to explain the facts of the case, but can he really figure out the facts of his own case?

The ones who can tell the truth of their cases are the real anti-Qing fighters among the exiles. There are also some losers who are fighting within the palace, and they can generally explain the reasons for their exile. The most unclear thing is that those literati accidentally got involved in the Literary Prison and Examination Cases, became prisoners overnight, and stumbled to the Northeast together with a large group of implicated people. Most of them could not figure out the facts of their own cases. .

Many people have written about the inexplicable inability to describe the literary inquisition, and I don’t want to say anything more about it. The imperial examination case was aimed at suspicions of cheating in the imperial examinations and was more involved.

Since the Ming Dynasty, especially the Qing Dynasty, there have been a series of so-called examination cases. It seems that Lu Xun’s grandfather also suffered such cases later. Fortunately, the whole family was not exiled, otherwise we would not have "Ah Q Zheng". "Biography" is a great read.

In my opinion, there are real cases of cheating in the examination room, but a large part of it is exaggerated or even fabricated out of thin air. For example, there were two famous imperial examination cases in 1657, in which many people were killed and exiled. We might as well choose the more serious one among them, the so-called "Nanwei Medical Examination Center Case", and take a closer look.

After the exam was over and the results were released, the scholars who failed the exam were full of complaints and talked a lot. The one that has been talked about the most is Fang Zhangyue, a young man from Anhui who was admitted to the Juren Examination. He may be a distant relative of the examiner, the so-called "joint clan". He should be avoided. If he does not avoid it, he may cheat.

These hearsay stories of failed candidates were overheard by an official, who went to Emperor Shunzhi to submit a copy. After hearing the report, Emperor Shunzhi immediately issued an order to dismiss both the chief and deputy chief examiners and arrest the examinee Fang Zhangyue for severe interrogation.

The father of this Anhui examinee is Fang Gongqian, who is also an official in the court. The memorial said that our family has never joined the clan with the examiner. The theory of joining the clan is a misinformation, so there is no need to evade it. , has passed the exam in previous sessions, and the court can investigate.

Originally, this was a matter that was easy to investigate, but the trouble is that the emperor has already expressed his position and dismissed the two chief examiners. If there is really no union, the emperor's face will be Where to put it?

So everyone in the court insisted that your two families must have joined the clan. It is impossible not to join the clan. There is no reason not to join the clan. Why not join the clan? It would be strange not to unite the sect! Since we must have joined the sect, we should avoid it during the examination. Failure to avoid it is a crime.

The Ministry of Punishment spent a lot of time thinking about this case, and then pondered the emperor's thoughts. Finally, he was heartbroken and drafted a handling plan to report. The general meaning was that the chief and deputy examiners had aroused the wrath of the emperor and were killed by the emperor. If you are dismissed personally, then you can simply be executed. If you carry out the matter to the end, others will have nothing to say. As for the candidate Fang Zhangyue, the court did not recognize him as a candidate and was invalidated.

This solution was sent to Emperor Shunzhi.

Everyone originally thought that the emperor might be a little more lenient than the Ministry of Punishment and make some gestures, but the emperor's reply was extremely terrifying: the chief and deputy examiners were beheaded, there was nothing polite about it; and where were all the other examiners under their command? Eighteen of them were all hanged, their property was confiscated, and their wives and children were all punished as slaves. I heard that an examiner named Lu has died? He was lucky, but his family property would also be confiscated, and his wife and children would have to be slaves. Also, just let that Anhui candidate not do the judging? No, all the eight candidates who passed the exam should be dealt with, their property should be confiscated, and each person should be hit with a severe slap of forty. What's more important is that the parents, brothers, and wives of these candidates will all be exiled to Ninggu Pagoda together with these people! (See Volume 121 of "Records of the Ancestors of the Qing Dynasty")

This is a typical ancient Chinese judgment, and the punishment is so severe that it is completely outrageous. Isn't it just that one candidate and the examiner are somewhat related to each other? His father came forward to eliminate the suspicion, but the result was still so tragic, and the involvement was so large. These twenty examiners should have been the top scholars in China at that time, but they were all killed without any reason, and their families suffered accordingly. This kind of atrocity is still outrageous when I think about it today.

Among them, the only one who can explain the ins and outs of the suspicion slightly clearly is the Fang family, the family of the candidates from Anhui. The other people who were killed, beaten, and exiled may not even have the basic reasons. Know. But no matter what, heads were already rolling and blood stained on the execution ground, and there was already a long queue on the way to the northeast.

While traveling long distances, the family members of these candidates felt relieved when they thought of the twenty or so great scholars whose heads were missing a few days ago. Famous people didn't say anything before they died. Why should I come out and complain?

This is the usual psychological logic of the Chinese people when they face the greatest injustice and disaster. There is no reason to ask, even if it is a natural disaster.

I have been wandering for a long time. In the past ten years, my deep gratitude has been exhausted, and I have become a teacher and friend. It's not a shame to have the same name in the past. Let's see Du Ling lose weight. It has not diminished, and the night is quiet. I have to say farewell to my close friend after a long life. I wonder if life is miserable at this point? I hate you so much, I will cut it off from you. My brother, Xinwei, I, Dingchou, when I was young, the frost destroyed the willow trees and caused them to age prematurely. From now on, I need to write less poems and poems, leaving my heart and soul to be with me. I hope you get it, He Qing Life. After returning home, I hurriedly turned over the garrison manuscripts and passed on the empty dishes behind me. Without words, I paused.

I don’t know what readers thought after reading these two poems. Anyway, Nalan Rongruo burst into tears as soon as he finished reading it and said to Gu Zhenguan: "Give me ten years, I will treat myself as myself You don’t have to tell me anymore.”

Gu Zhenguan was anxious when he heard this: “Ten years? How many years does he have left?”

Nalan Rongruo wiped his tears and nodded.

After the efforts of many people, Wu Zhaoqian was finally redeemed.

I often think that the generosity, hospitality, friendship and loyalty of Northeastern people today must be somehow related to the spiritual legacy of the exiles. Exile created a rich spiritual world that has benefited us to this day.

In addition to enjoying friendship, the exiles also want to do something they want to do. Due to climate and management reasons, the exiles also have a lot of free time. In some places, it is even in a state of laissez-faire. This gives cultural people some small opportunities for self-selection.

I always have to do something that others cannot replace, right? There must be some behavior higher than picking wild vegetables, picking up horse manure, burning lime, and burning charcoal, right? After thinking about it, this kind of thing and behavior are all related to culture. Therefore, this is also a return, not in a geographical sense but in a cultural sense.

Teaching is more common. For example, Hong Hao once wrote the "Four Books" silently on dried birch leaves and taught it to the villagers' children; Zhang Shao even gave lectures on the "Dayi" in the exile, "Listeners Bi Ji"; Han Ke, as a Buddhist scholar, takes advantage of every opportunity to teach Buddhism.

The second step is to teach farming and merchants. For example, Yang Yue spent a lot of effort to spread southern farming techniques in the exiled areas, teaching the locals to use "broken wood to build houses" instead of the original "digging in the ground" It also allowed the exiles to use the items they brought with them to exchange fish and animal husbandry products with local indigenous people, which cultivated a preliminary market awareness and at the same time provided cultural education, which promoted the progress of civilization on this land in almost all aspects.

The exiles with higher cultural literacy took the Northeast as the target of their own cultural inspections and left their inspection results in writing, which is still loved by regional cultural researchers today. For example, "Ninggu Pagoda Chronicles" written by Fang Gongqian, "Ninggu Pagoda Chronicles" written by Wu Xiechen, "Ninggu Pagoda Landscape Chronicles" written by Zhang Jinyan, "Liubian Chronicles" written by Yang Bin, and Ying He "Longsha Product Ode", etc. These works have high academic value in history, geography, customs, product study and other aspects.

We know that, with the exception of a few exceptions such as Li Shizhen and Xu Xiake, most of the academic research in ancient China was accustomed to going from book to book and lacked the spirit of field investigation. As a result, our academic tradition still often lacks empirical consciousness. These exiles overcame this shortcoming in the face of hardships and wrote a surprising page in the history of Chinese academics.

The land under their feet has given them so much unspoken strangeness and so much desperate bitterness, but they have no intention of resenting it, but caressing it with warm palms to make it feel civilized. The heat made it enter the annals of culture.

In this regard, several southern families who have been exiled for generations have played a particularly important role. For example, the Lu Liuliang family in Zhejiang during the Qing Dynasty, the Fang Gongqian and Fang Xiaobiao families in Anhui, and the father and son Yang Yue and Yang Bin in Zhejiang, etc. In the early years of the Republic of China, Mr. Zhang Taiyan, a master of modern Chinese studies, once talked about the contribution of the Lu Liuliang (Lu Yonghui) family who was exiled to the Northeast for generations because of literary inquisition: "Most of the descendants are engaged in private school, medicine, and merchants. The natives call them the old Lu family. Taili, those who seek guidance must come from the Lu family, and those who have violated the official position and are sent to the garrison must serve in his court. The natives dare not take it lightly, and their descendants have never surrendered." "

Speaking of the Fang family, Zhang Taiyan said: "In the beginning, outside Kaiyuan and Tieling, there were no people who knew how to read and write. The descendants of Xiaobiao were relegated to Shu. "("Taiyan Wenlu Continuation") Contemporary historians believe that Mr. Taiyan's statement may be inaccurate in historical facts, and the evaluation may be a little too high, but it is certain that the two families have great cultural and educational significance in the Northeast. The merit of enlightenment is completely good.

Looking at the victims who have been displaced in the past, how many of them have asked clearly about the causes of typhoons and the reasons for flash floods? Forget it, just keep your head down and work, it would be nice to be able to do this.

Disaster is just a disaster for ordinary people, but it is different for literati. At the beginning of the disaster, they will be more nervous and painful than the average person. However, after passing this point, some of them may awaken their cultural consciousness and begin to face the disaster to find the foundation of life. The previous value system may also be deconstructed, even more completely.

Some scholars, when they were first exiled, still looked lonely and loyal, waiting for the day when the Holy Lord would come to vindicate Zhaoxue. Some hope that after their death a historian will say a few words of justice. However, the vast wilderness beyond the Great Wall denied them, and the mighty cold wind of the Northland laughed at them.

Exiles will remember that during the Song-Jin War, the envoys of the Southern Song Dynasty, Hong Hao and Zhang Shao, were exiled to Heilongjiang by the Jin people. Hong Hao and Zhang Shao could be regarded as fighting for the Song Dynasty court, and they remained unyielding even when they collected wild vegetables to satisfy their hunger and horse manure to keep warm.

Unexpectedly, these two people suffered for the Song Dynasty in the Northeast for more than ten years, but they were immediately demoted after finally returning. On the contrary, the Jin people respected these two envoys who opposed them very much. Every time someone from the Song court came, they would always ask for news about them, and they even felt pity for their children.

This kind of incident made the later exiles think deeply: Since the imperial court treats its envoys like this, is it really worthy of everyone's loyalty to it? Are all the things we thought were supreme in our minds really so valuable?

Following this line of thought, a miracle occurred in the Northeastern exile colony: many exiled Qing officials became good friends with anti-Qing martyrs, even to the point of life and death. The original political stances of each have been dissolved, and they have been dissolved in the reaffirmation of the value of life.

When the official title, status, and family property are stripped away one by one, what remains is the direct call of life to life. Han Ke, a famous anti-Qing righteous man, and his best friends when he was exiled in the Northeast, Li Yin, Wei Guan, Ji Kaisheng, Li Chengxiang, Hao Yu, Chen Yeshen and others were almost all demoted officials of the Qing Dynasty. But he used these people as the backbone and established the "Bingtian Poetry Society".

Han Ke’s friends are all worthy of respect in terms of personal character. For example, Li Yin was convicted because she remonstrated with the court, saying that the "Fugitive Law" at that time was too heavy and had too many implication; Wei Guan himself was exiled because Shangshu advocated that a prisoner's wife "should be exempted from exile"; Ji Kaisheng admonished the emperor to select beauties among the people; Hao Yu impeached Wu Sangui for being arrogant and lawless... In short, they were all kind and upright people. Now their voice has been taken away, but kindness and integrity cannot.

Han Ke formed a society with them in the seventh year of Shunzhi. At that time, many intellectuals in Jiangnan were still ashamed of serving in the Qing Dynasty, so they looked down on the Han officials who were killed by the Qing Dynasty in the Qing Dynasty. But Hanke completely ignored this, discovered their kindness and integrity with an unimpeded mentality, and respected them as individuals with independent character.

The political opponents disappeared, the confrontation relaxed, and only a group of friends who met each other sincerely remained.

With friends, most disasters, no matter how big they are, will be eliminated; with friends, no matter how bad the environment is, it will become better.

I dare to assert that in the long history of ancient Chinese society, the most precious and touching friendship must have occurred in the exile places of Shuobei and Nanhuang, among those unkempt scribes. Those other famous stories of friendship have too many external carvings.

In addition to the friendship between exiles, the friendship between outsiders and exiles also has a special weight.

In an era when corruption is at its peak, maintaining friendships with exiles is a very dangerous thing. What's more, they were far away and it was very difficult to maintain friendship under the transportation and communication conditions at that time. Therefore, the exiles can re-evaluate the world they were originally in based on the degree of friendship they have maintained in the past.

During the Yuan Dynasty, Chief Luo from Zhejiang was exiled to the Northeast. His friend Sun Tzu Geng actually accompanied him all the way from Hangzhou to the Northeast. During the Kangxi period of the Qing Dynasty, Cai Yurong, Minister of War, was convicted and exiled to Heilongjiang. His friend He Shicheng from Shanghai not only escorted him all the way, but also stayed with Cai Yurong in Heilongjiang for more than two years before returning to Jiangnan.

What particularly fascinates me is Gu Zhenguan’s hard work in rescuing his old friend Wu Zhaoqian from the exile in the Northeast during the Kangxi period.

Gu Zhenguan knew that his old friend had been in the wilderness for a long time and had suffered all kinds of hardships. He really wanted to redeem him in his later years and let him live a stable life for a few days. For this reason, he was willing to pay homage to all the wealthy families. Come to raise funds. But this cannot be done solely by money, but also by getting the nod from the most authoritative person in the day. He finally got acquainted with Nalan Rongruo, the son of the current Taifu Mingzhu. Nalan Rongruo was a man of good character and literature, and he was willing to help his friends, but he felt that the request made by Gu Zhenguan was of great importance and found it difficult to nod.

Gu Zhenguan had no choice but to show Nalan Rongruo two lyrics called "Golden Thread Song" that he wrote because he missed Wu Zhaoqian. The full text of the two poems is as follows:

Is Ji Zi safe? Then he comes back, everything in his life is worth looking back on! Who can comfort me during this long journey? My mother's hometown is poor and her son is young. I can’t remember, I drank a glass of wine once upon a time. You should be used to seeing evil spirits fighting against others, and you will always lose to him. Ice and snow go around for a long time. There are no tears left on the cow's clothes, even if they are even to the ends of the world, they still have the same flesh and blood. How many people can do that? What's worse than a beauty with a long life and a short life? And so on. There is no blockage, the bitter cold is uncomfortable, and for twenty years Baoxu made a promise, hoping that Wu Toumajiao will eventually rescue him. Put this letter in your arms.

It is a great sadness for a family to be exiled for generations, but they have continued to tackle the development of Northeast China from generation to generation. They are exiles, but they have actually become senior "natives". So where is their hometown? Faced with this problem, my sympathy and melancholy also include respect for the victors, because in a cultural sense, they are heroic occupiers.

I hope that the above description will not lead to the misunderstanding that the exile caused a lot of suffering on a micro scale, but it was not too bad on a macro scale.

No. From a macro perspective, exile is a kind of destruction to civilization anyway. Some of the exiles struggled out of the scarred pain and hurriedly created those civilizations, which did not add color to the exile itself. Not to mention that most of the exiles no longer have any cultural creations, even the ones we rated highest above cannot become the first-class talents in the cultural history of our country.

First-class talents can endure hardships, but they cannot let the hardships exceed basic physiological and material limits. Although Qu Yuan, Sima Qian, and Cao Xueqin also suffered a lot, Ning Guta's method of exile would never produce "Li Sao", "Historical Records" and "Dream of Red Mansions".

Civilization may arise from barbarism, but it never likes barbarism. We can survive suffering, but we never praise suffering. We are not afraid of persecution, but we never affirm persecution.

The reason why some literati were able to show their humanity and create civilization in the suffering of exile stems from the nobility in their hearts. Their external identities may change again and again, and they may even be imprisoned for life, but their inner nobility has never been completely destroyed. This is just like some people, no matter how they follow the trend or hold a high position, they can never hide their inner inferiority.

Undoubtedly, the most touching thing is the nobility in suffering, and it is this nobility that makes people most aware of the reason why nobility is noble. With this kind of nobility, people can recite poems and compose poems on the edge of life and death, use their own warmth to melt the ice and snow in other people's hearts, and then use their humiliation to ignite the fire of civilization. For the sake of culture and civilization, they can disregard material interests and utilitarian gains and losses, and do so without hesitation, generation after generation.

I stood on this piece of land called Ninggu Pagoda in ancient times, raised my head for a long time and finally lowered my head. I paid tribute to some distant souls - most of them came from Zhejiang, Shanghai, Jiangsu, and Anhui, places that I am very familiar with, are even more noble in their suffering.