There is no such thing as the Kangxi and Qianlong eras

Chapter 379 Macau

Removing the statue of Confucius and replacing it with a shrine tablet are not the goals.

Nie Yu's true purpose was simply to dismantle the sacred aura of the Confucius Temple, or rather, the sacred aura of Confucianism.

Confucius was indeed a sage, but through the constant reinforcement by these Confucian scholars, he has become a sage whom ordinary people cannot look directly at.

His Confucianism, through the misinterpretation and exploitation by intellectuals, has become a tool for the ruling class to enslave the people.

It can be said that modern Confucianism has long deviated from Confucius's original intentions.

A few years ago, Nie Yu organized a debate on the classics in the official gazette. One of the points of contention was the core idea of ​​Cheng-Zhu Neo-Confucianism: starving to death is a small matter, but losing one's integrity is a great matter.

Confucius's explanation of this is very simple: "Food and sex are the greatest desires of humankind."

Confucius never said that women should remain widowed and starve to death. Eating and surviving are human nature. If a person loses their nature, what difference is there between them and a wild animal?

Of course, Zigong might be to blame for this initially, as he deified Confucius in order to promote his teacher's Confucianism.

However, Zigong's deification of Confucius was relatively restrained, as it was only for the purpose of passing on Confucianism and educating the people.

However, things became increasingly uncontrollable later on. From the Gongyang School of Confucianism in the Han Dynasty to the Cheng-Zhu School of Neo-Confucianism in the Song Dynasty, each school became more extreme than the last, and they served only the imperial power, with the aim of enslaving and oppressing the people.

To put it simply, if the emperor and officials want to bleed you dry, then if you resist, you are considered disrespectful; if you cry out in pain, you are considered disrespectful of the law.

In this cannibalistic system, if you can't stand it and fight back, your relatives will use etiquette to stop you, and your friends will be driven by etiquette to become pawns to suppress you.

Once you are suppressed, the emperor and officials will be afraid and will provide food for the people to survive. The people will only eat the food you bring them and shout a few words of "the emperor's grace is boundless".

The rites and rituals that kill have never used knives, but only distorted rituals and rituals.

Nie Yu felt that this was not right. He could not change things overnight, so he decided to first reform the schools so that people could study, and then further liberate women's productivity through debates on classics in the official gazette.

Then, they knocked down the statue of Confucius and rescued him.

The idea that Confucius was a king was a deliberate attempt by Confucianism to create a god-like figure. Now, the most important thing is to destroy this god-like figure and weaken the status of the Confucius Temple in people's hearts.

As the status of the Temple of Confucius weakens, the pseudo-Confucianism that uses Confucius's name to practice enslavement will also weaken.

Kong Guangbiao certainly knew what the consequences of doing this would be, but he didn't care; he only wanted to revive the Southern Confucian tradition.

Whether Confucianism will decline in the future, or whether Southern Confucianism will become weak again, has nothing to do with him. In any case, Southern Confucianism has already been revived in his generation.

……

This summer has been exceptionally hot.

Nie Yu had already taken off the royal robe, and was only wearing a t-shirt, which was already soaked with sweat on his back.

On his desk where he placed memorials, there was a bowl of delicately made shaved ice, steaming cold. This shaved ice was not a product of later technology and ruthless craftsmanship, but simply a summer drink of this era.

It has nothing to do with making ice with saltpeter. There are very few records of making ice with saltpeter in official history. It is only clearly recorded in the "Huainan Wanbishu". By the Ming and Qing Dynasties, it had been almost half lost.

Because ice-making with saltpeter has two fatal drawbacks:

First, ice made from saltpeter may be mildly toxic.

Secondly, the yield of ice made from saltpeter was extremely low, barely enough to be considered as good as nothing.

The ancients used saltpeter to make ice not primarily for making shaved ice, but for special purposes where ice was absolutely necessary.

The shaved ice that Nie Yu is eating now comes from the underground ice cellars in Nanjing. It is made from ice blocks collected during the winter snowfall, which are stored in deep underground ice cellars to keep warm, and then taken out to cool off and eat the following summer.

To be honest, if it weren't for the relevant records, Nie Yu wouldn't have dared to imagine that the ancients had such advanced technology.

The principle is understandable; an ice cellar is essentially a natural refrigerator. But how it works is completely unclear.

Nie Yu quickly reviewed a few memorials, but then felt unbearably hot. He loosened his collar slightly, picked up a spoon, scooped up a spoonful of shaved ice, and put it in his mouth.

"Hi~!"

It must be said that the shaved ice here doesn't have the wide variety of flavors found in later ice creams, but it still has its own unique characteristics of this era. Pure, natural, and pollution-free winter ice cubes, combined with various fruit slices, frosting, and milk, make for a truly unique and delicious taste.

Before he had eaten more than a few bites, a secretary suddenly came in to report.

"Your Majesty, Grand Secretary Liu and Minister Wang of the Ministry of War request an audience!"

"Xuan!"

Nie Yu put down his spoon, straightened his clothes, and then sat down behind the imperial desk. Soon after, Liu Jun and Wang Ruoyu arrived.

"Your subject Liu Jun (Wang Ruoyu) pays respects to Your Majesty!"

"No gifts, please give me a seat!"

Nie Yuwei raised his hand. On such a hot day, he didn't make the two of them stand to report on their work. Sitting down would at least prevent them from sweating too much.

"Thank you, Your Majesty."

The two thanked the emperor and sat down.

Liu Jun then stood up, took out a memorial from his sleeve, and said, "Your Majesty, this is an urgent memorial from Guangdong. Please review and decide on it."

Upon hearing that it was an urgent report from Guangdong, Nie Yu was puzzled. Guangzhou had already been captured, and Yang Yuchun had surrendered. Could it be that something big had happened again?
After receiving the memorial from the secretary, Nie Yu quickly glanced through a few pages and understood: "Macau!"

Haojing'ao, the ancient name for Macau, is derived from the fact that the area was rich in oysters. "Ao" means harbor, and "Hao" is related to "oyster". "Jing" describes the calm and mirror-like surface of the waters in the north and south bays of Macau, which resembles an oyster shell. Hence, it was called "Haojing'ao". It gradually evolved into Haojing'ao.

This memorial was both an urgent report and a military report delivered by the Guangdong Han Army.

Because Guangzhou had been captured by the Han army, and under the joint pressure from the Han army and the Yao people of Guangdong, the Tiandihui of Guangdong, along with the Han army's promise to exempt the people of Guangdong from past tax arrears, allowed all the people and soldiers to share land.

The Eight Banners garrison troops stationed in Guangzhou's Manchu city have all been beheaded and their heads displayed to the public.

Although the Han Army did not use the slogan of "anti-Qing and restoration of Ming" as its banner, its actions were practically the same.

The Heaven and Earth Society were not truly loyalists to the Ming Dynasty. Their slogan of overthrowing the Qing and restoring the Ming was just a banner. Since there were other legitimate Han Chinese, and they had already succeeded, they were naturally willing to surrender.

This is also due to the butterfly effect of the Han army on the Guangdong Heaven and Earth Society. The uprising started too early, and the society was weak and fragmented. Without unified command, it was impossible for it to develop any ambitions.

If it had been a few decades later, it's hard to say whether the Guangdong Heaven and Earth Society would still be so well-behaved.

When the Heaven and Earth Society of eastern Guangdong surrendered, the prefectures and counties under their control followed suit. Then, a problem arose in one of these areas, which was very close to Guangzhou, in Haojing'ao to the south.

Chen Younian, the commander of the Han Army in eastern Guangdong, was a veteran general of the Han Army with many military achievements. However, he was from Huguang, a country with a purely inland background and a mediocre level of education. He had no idea what the situation was like in Macau at that time.
Even the tongue-twisting name "Haojing'ao" was something Chen Younian had never heard of before.

So Chen Younian sent an army to take over Haojing'ao. When they arrived, they found a large boundary wall and many red-haired foreign devils (Portuguese) speaking fluent Cantonese and Beijing dialect.

The Portuguese in Macau did not know the origins of the Han Army. They only knew that the officials in Guangdong had told them that there were rioters from the Heaven and Earth Society rebelling in Guangdong and that they should be careful. They also mentioned the specific characteristics of the rioters, namely that they did not have queues (braids).

The queue (braid) was a feature used by the Portuguese in Macau to identify people from the Qing Dynasty. If someone didn't have a queue, they weren't a Qing Dynasty person and could only be a rebel.

Fortunately, the Han soldiers didn't have queues either.

The two sides clashed immediately upon meeting.

Caught off guard, two Han soldiers were wounded by Portuguese muskets.

Then, the remaining Han troops formed a battle formation and engaged in combat with the Portuguese in Macau.

The Portuguese in Macau did not have rifled guns and were no match for the Han army. They were quickly defeated after a short battle, with seven men killed. The remaining Portuguese immediately retreated to their fortified positions.

The Han army surrounded Haojing'ao and reported the battle to Chen Younian.

Chen Younian was almost dumbfounded when he heard this, but the surrendered Xiangshan County Magistrate hurriedly explained that Haojing'ao was a Portuguese leased territory.

Moreover, it wasn't just the Qing dynasty that leased the land; it had been leased to the Portuguese since the Ming dynasty.

Since the matter involved foreign vassals and an accidental firefight resulted in casualties, Chen Younian could not act arbitrarily and could only report to Nanjing first, requesting a ruling from Nanjing.

(End of this chapter)