No One Survives (The Story of Minglan X Justice Bao)

Wife pawning is a special marriage custom in ancient China. It refers to a form in which the husband's family lends out his legal wife and transfers sexual rights or reproductive rights in exchange for some material benefits. Generally speaking, the woman who created the marriage and her original husband still have an established marital relationship, but within the agreed period, a de facto marriage relationship is formed between the woman who created the marriage and the person who inherited the marriage. But there are also deformed forms. On the premise of maintaining the marriage relationship, with the permission of the husband, the woman also has sexual relations with other men and implements the sharing and leasing of sexual rights. According to the research of sociologists, the marriage system of married women originated very early in China. It may have appeared when mankind entered the era of monogamy. It developed in the Qin and Han Dynasties, matured in the Song and Yuan Dynasties, and still existed among the people in the Republic of China. For the sake of gaining money and power, it is also common to hear of husbands dedicating their wives to others openly or covertly in order to get something in return. As a special form of marriage in ancient society, when Confucianism became prevalent in the society, marrying a wife was considered contrary to human ethics and a social custom, and was explicitly prohibited by official orders. There were laws in the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties that strictly prohibited this. However, the custom of marrying wives among the people has not disappeared, and it often occurs in remote and remote areas. This reflects the flexibility of folk ethics and its deviation from mainstream ethics under certain circumstances. In nature, the bonded wife system is similar to a marriage by sale, but it has special characteristics, which is reflected in the timeliness of the marriage relationship. The husband of the woman who gave the bond and the recipient usually agree in writing on the transfer period. When the period expires, the contract becomes invalid, and the woman who gave the bond must still return to her husband's family. Under normal circumstances, the act of marrying a wife can be achieved, but the wife who gives the wife is often unable to survive because of the embarrassment of family life, or the husband is unable to bear the burden of supporting the family, while the wife who takes the wife may be unable to bear children, or the wife cannot accommodate concubines due to the infertility, or due to limited economic conditions, she can only rent the woman as a wife for a short period of time, and use her womb to bear children to complete the task of passing on the family line. In the de facto marriage formed after the marriage, the role played by the woman in the marriage is just a fertility machine. Compared with buying and selling marriages where all are funded, the bought woman in the buying and selling marriage can change her status in the family through giving birth. In the married woman who is married, even after giving birth, she still cannot change her status as a near-slave in the family of the bridegroom, unless she is eventually sold completely to the bridegroom. After the marriage period ends, the women return to their husband's family. Their status is usually not respected by their families because they have contributed to changing the family situation. They may even be despised by their families for losing their virginity to others. The system of married women is completely the product of the objectification of women in a patriarchal society. Therefore, when China entered a modern civilized society, this social custom was fiercely criticized by intellectuals who were baptized with new ideas. As early as the Western Han Dynasty, there was the practice of marrying one's wife and selling one's children. In the first year of Emperor Yuan of the Han Dynasty, Jia Xianzhi said in response to the emperor's special envoy: "No one can be close to one's parents, Mo Le and his wife. However, such behaviors as marrying one's wife and selling one's wife cannot be prohibited by law, nor can righteousness stop it. This is really a concern for the social development of Jiangshan." In the second year of Jianwu of the Eastern Han Dynasty, Emperor Guangwu issued an edict, announcing to the world: "If the people marry and sell their wives and want to return to their parents, they should listen to them, dare to hold them accountable, and follow the rules." Emperor Yuan of the Han Dynasty wanted to take measures to reduce such bad folk habits, but to no avail. By the Northern and Southern Dynasties, "marrying a wife" gradually changed into the form of "placing one's wife (sticking to one's wife)". "The Biography of Wang Jingze, Book of the Southern Qi Dynasty" records: "In the early years of the founding of the Yuan Dynasty, military expenditures increased, and the five counties in Zhejiang were taxed one thousand, so some were sold in pledge, thinking that the transition would be a sad road." Tiehu, that is, the embryonic state of a typical wife. In the Tang and Song Dynasties, the phenomenon of pawns targeting people appeared. It is described in the "Dunhuang Documents": "The contract between Zhao Monk and Dian'er in the year of Yiwei", "Now there is a male son in the womb, and the pawn is with the in-laws, the sage Li Qianding, and the pawns are made of money: Maidai Shishuo, Li Wei Shishuo. Since Dian, there is no salary for people and no profit for things." It is generally believed that the practice of marrying wives really began in the Song Dynasty. In the Northern Song Dynasty, "Xu Zi Zhi Tong Jian Long Chapter" clearly stated: "Because of hunger, people have to hire wives." There is a record in "Yi Jian Zhi" written by Hongmai of the Southern Song Dynasty: "The wife was impoverished and her son was not covered by clothes, and she had no food to eat. She only got a few coins from begging every day, and she could only live on vegetable porridge." In the northern region, such as Liaoning, it is called "partnering". Because the husband has been away for many years and has no financial resources, a woman has no choice but to go to Dian and "partner" with another man. As evidenced by the example, if the husband returns home and pays back the money, he can redeem his wife. In the Song Dynasty, in addition to arranging wives, there was also the phenomenon of hiring wives. It is recorded in "Ming Gong Shu Ban Qing Ming Collection": "A certain Chen's daughter hired Zheng Wanqi as an official in a certain year, and the agreed time limit was seven years, with a total of more than 200 yuan. In December, she also asked Xu Baier, the mediator of Xinzhou, and Xu Baier immediately hired Qianshan Chen 29th, and the money for her body increased to 7 A few months later, Chen Erjiu hired Zhou Qian'er, a businessman from Qigong Town. After several twists and turns, his money had been brought to the case, and he was found guilty of selling the girl in violation of the limit. This also shows that although various forms of selling wives have appeared among the people in the Song Dynasty, such as pawnbroking, employment, etc., In actual judicial trials, local officials' litigation concepts have not yet made detailed and accurate classifications of this phenomenon. This may be because the legal provisions of the Song Dynasty have not yet clearly stipulated this. The Yuan Dynasty was the first dynasty in the history of our country that clearly reflected the behavior of "pawning wives" in legal provisions. It was also the first dynasty to explicitly prohibit "pawning wives and daughters" and other similar behaviors in criminal law provisions. "Yuan Dian Zhang" records: "In the style of Wu and Yue, pawning off wives and hiring sons has been a custom for a long time, and it was never prohibited in previous generations.", "People at the bottom of the southern region openly accept money to give their wives to others in order to fulfill their wives' obligations, and it is limited to a few years." Marriage under contract and rent-a-wife marriage are common in places along the Yangtze River and the southeast coast, with the southeast coast being the most popular. In view of the long-standing bad marriage customs among the people, there are no clear provisions in the law. Local officials are deeply disgusted with this. Many officials therefore complained, pointing out that "hiring people in debt is a bad habit of the Song Dynasty when the country was subjugated. It is actually a barbaric custom and is definitely not a good law." During the Ming and Qing dynasties, the development of wife-pawning behavior was more diverse and rich. In addition to the default contract form, wife-renting was applicable to different situations of the parties involved. Types such as "husband-raising" in which the husband was poor and unable to make a living but the wife took the lead sprung up in specific regions and developed like mushrooms after rain. At the end of the Ming Dynasty, the country was in turmoil, the Chongzhen government was in danger, and people were living in poverty. Feng Menglong, then the magistrate of Shouning County, Fujian Province, once recorded: "Unless a big family encounters a major change, they will not marry their wives. However, small families are already living in poverty. If something goes wrong, the wife will give up her shoes to meet an urgent need; or she will rent a child to someone else for one year and three to five years. If the debtor begs for an extension and the payment will be extended, there are also cases where the wife does not return for a long time and is sold out. The records of literati in the Ming and Qing Dynasties show that people in the middle and lower classes of society were no longer satisfied with using wife pawning as a temporary tactic when their families were in danger, but expanded it into a means of making profit. This violated family harmony and social ethics and morals, and was only for profit. Its social harm and blameworthiness were far greater than when a wife was pawned due to poverty. Therefore, it is not difficult to understand that the law in the Ming and Qing Dynasties punished the behavior of wife pawning more severely. At the beginning of the last century, the feudal dynasty fell, the Republic of China was established, and China entered a modern civilized society. Everything was in the process of reforming the old and establishing the new. Feudal ethics were thoroughly criticized. The concept of free and equal marriage was gradually established in society. Many new changes occurred in the form of marriage. Because it was in the transition period between the old and the new, the form of marriage at this time showed the characteristics of a mixture of old and new. Some marriage customs of the old era still exist, such as the legacy of traditional wives, and some changes in form have even occurred. This was reflected in many marriage novels during the Republic of China. Narratives about the custom of canonical wives show that in the new era, women are still subordinate to their husbands in marriage and cannot have independent fate. As a photo of a special era, it has typical significance for studying the changes of Chinese marriages. As far as the customary narratives of wives in the marriage novels of the Republic of China are concerned, there are mainly the following types based on their forms. Works by writers of the Republic of China, such as "Jishun the Gambler" by Xu Jie, "The Raw Wife" by Luo Shu, and "Mother of a Slave" by Rou Shi, all express and describe the custom of marrying wives in the countryside at that time. Among them, Rou Shi's novel reveals the harm this custom brings to women the most deeply, is the most touching, and has the most representative significance. In 1930, Rou Shi published "Mother as a Slave", which showed the tragedy of a mother who went to a scholar's family to give birth to children, but was scorned and alienated by her children when she returned home. This forbearing and helpless mother was the epitome of millions of rural mothers during the Republic of China. In the family, she was subordinate to her husband and had no say in decision-making. She could only work hard to maintain the daily running of the family's affairs. She did not realize the tragedy of not being able to be independent in the marriage. What was even more tragic was that after they were treated as objects, she neither made any efforts to fight nor uttered any words of blame. She could only blindly obey the arrangements of fate. During the days when she was a slave and a wife, she did not complain about the humiliation she suffered, but she was worried about her son from her former husband's family. The mother who became a fertility machine dedicated herself to the family, but it was difficult for her to return to the past. She lost herself in a trance and pain. Rou Shi's novel indicts the cruelty of autocratic husbandship through the mother's self-loss after returning home. But at the beginning, he also writes that the husband was an expert in rice transplanting, and his life was originally good. The hard times made his life increasingly poor, and he gradually became addicted to bad habits. In the end, he exonerated his wife, which weakened the criticism to a certain extent. However, the novel has comprehensive cultural significance due to its realism, and the characteristics of the times such as the stubbornness of feudal ethics, the lack of enlightenment education, and the absence of social management can all be seen from it. Act as a prostitute During the Republic of China, there was also a form of marriage in which the husband treated his legal wife as a prostitute to receive customers for profit. This had nothing to do with childbirth, but in terms of transferring sexual rights to obtain benefits, it had the same purpose as the marriage form of arranging children for procreation. It should be a deformed form of arranging a wife. In 1930, Shen Congwen published "The Husband", which described a marriage like this. The young husband sent his wife to a prostitute ship for "business" as usual. After witnessing his wife taking on customers, he awakened to his consciousness as a man and finally took his wife back to the countryside. But what the husband did was not an awakening in a rational sense. He did not realize that referring to his wife as a prostitute was an oppression and insult to women. He was only vaguely aware of the shame of being a husband who made money by selling his wife's body. The author first explains that turning a wife into a prostitute is a common business in western Hunan, and people are accustomed to it. Therefore, the sudden awakening of the husband's identity consciousness seems strange to the reader, and the sudden change is somewhat confusing. In the novel, women don't seem to think that prostitution is wrong. They call it "business." They come for business. They can hand over their earnings to their husbands who are "honest and hard-working" farmers in the countryside, and they can live a good life in the future. Women's moral integrity and dignity are not considered by them. The issue of women's chastity has been a priority for Han people since the Song Dynasty. However, in this remote and isolated Xiangxi region, the folk customs are different, and the moral judgment is also different from that in the Central Plains. However, the vague sense of shame that arises in the husband in the novel still reflects the slightly delayed penetration of traditional morality in this place. This young couple is not given too much psychological description by the author, and the prose style of the novel is slightly weaker in storytelling. The strange Xiangxi style narrative attracts readers to read the text with a curious mind. After reading the text, you can still feel the author's quiet critical attitude towards this custom. In the novel, "Lao Qi", a boat prostitute, was "very embarrassed" about returning to the countryside, but in the end she "returned to the countryside" with her husband. The husband still had absolute control over his wife. The husband's sense of shame comes from the infiltration of traditional moral education, and the ideas of human rights and freedom promoted by the society of the Republic of China may be unheard of in this remote area for these people struggling to live in poverty. Indulge in wife intercourse Among the urban marriage novels of the Republic of China, many works wrote about husbands allowing their wives to participate in social interactions, and women selling their sex, circling in the aristocratic society, and gaining fame and fortune for their husbands. This can be seen as a variation of the traditional custom of keeping wives in modern society. Different from the typical wife narrative in rural novels, urban women's willingness to be husbands' profit-making tools is mostly out of their own choice. In Zhang Ailing's "The First Incense" published in 1943, Ge Weilong changed from a former motivated student to a gigolo socialite who made people for her aunt and made money for her husband. She was pawned by her husband into a world of luxury and wealth. This is just the latest form popular among upper class society. But this path is her active choice, not out of coercion and helplessness like the village woman who was exonerated. She said on New Year's Eve that she did it voluntarily. There is no pressure in life and no one is forcing her. The reason why a well-educated woman is willing to sell her soul and body is thought-provoking. Ge Weilong seemed to have made sacrifices to defend the so-called love, but her husband's feelings for her were more like a game. Apart from feeling sympathy for being marginalized by the upper class, what he loved most was money, and therefore he indulged his wife's behavior. Ge Weilong knew her lover's character well before she got married, so her defense of love could only be self-deception. She fell deeper and deeper into her aunt's trap and was unable to extricate herself. Indulging in luxury and loving vanity were the main reasons for her self-destruction. Lao She's "Sunshine" published in 1935 exposed the scandal of wife-for-profit in the upper class society at that time. A moral model married a social expert. The seemingly loyal husband acquiesced and even allowed his wife to use her beauty to make friends with high-ranking people, sacrificing her wife to gradually advance himself. Lao She's novel reveals the dirty transaction of exchanging wives for profits, which is the modern transformation of the method of arranging wives. In the 1930s and 1940s of the Republic of China, many urban women were able to receive education, and young ladies were even able to receive higher education, thereby being exposed to more modern ideas of the new era. Compared with rural women, new urban women already have a certain degree of initiative in marriage, and the traditional concept of chastity has also expired. However, the popular fetishism in the city also caused some people to abandon the concept of chastity, use color to exchange interests, and fall into the quagmire of hedonism. This was a new change in female consciousness at that time. However, in marriage, they still have no independent personality or even independent consciousness. They cannot get rid of the control of marriage. They still have the idea of ​​​​obedience to their husbands. They are willing to sacrifice themselves for their husbands and become tools for exchange of interests. Traditional ethics still play a dominant role in the family to a certain extent. The novels of Zhang Ailing and Lao She truly reflected the marriage status of the upper class in the city at that time. Urban marriage during the Republic of China had already shown the characteristics of the era of a mixture of old and new modern concepts and traditional concepts.

It's well written. All content about feudalism should have the main purpose of criticizing feudalism. Otherwise, it would be a resurrection ceremony of feudalism. The author's ideas are so clear and complete. There is even a reason why Mr. Bao appears. If no one survives, feudal society should be destroyed.

😭 😭 The intention is far beyond the original work, and it is not even adhered to the original work at all. Poison harms people for a while, but poisonous ideas can harm people from generation to generation. The victims and perpetrators will become its nutrients, spreading to more people, including more people born in the new era. Even if it is an entertainment work, you should not forget your own value orientation. We must remain vigilant. In the final analysis, in feudal society, women always have one more mountain on their heads than men.

How could anyone think that they could become a master by traveling back in time to ancient times? Just like things that were not available when you were a child, you may not have them when you grow up. Things that are not available in modern times are even less likely to be available in ancient times.

It's good-looking and good-looking. It's not like simply taking revenge on everyone like Shuangwen, but making the evildoers pay for what they've done. The final reform made all the old ministers step down. This setting is also good. In that society, you were a noble, you were awesome, you were great, you looked down upon human life, but under the imperial power, your life was also like a piece of grass.

... But the fact is that there is no need to go back to ancient times, there are still people who can be masters

What you want most in reality... What did the scholar named Lin get? 😂

This article was a bit awkward to read, but the first story was pretty good at first. Since I don't know much about Bao Zheng and Zhifou, I will only talk about the most awkward point for me: ancient criminal law and modern criminal law are mixed with each other. In pursuit of a judgment method similar to equality for everyone when the emperor committed crimes and the common people were equally guilty, while striking out at the feudal powerful, it also retained the concepts of heaven and earth, emperor, relatives, teachers, and filial piety that seriously affected the judgment. The shadow of modern criminal law is obvious, but in ancient times there were indeed "eight opinions" for nobles to reduce or reduce penalties, and "living together is not a crime" for people who live together to be exempted from the crime of harboring. The overall feeling is that, under the background of the times, it is very separate from the actual judgment made by Bao Zheng in this article.

The writing is so good, a feudal era that has disappeared is destined to have no survivors. When I saw the title of the novel at the end of the article, I immediately felt a sense of tingling excitement in my scalp. The Mary Sue time travel novels I read when I was a child greatly affected my ideas when my brain was not fully developed, and I even wanted to go back in time. However, cannibalism in the feudal era did not distinguish between anyone, so there would be no living people. In the new era of freedom and equality, striving to survive and live well is the concept that should be established. Thank you to the author for your article, which has added a solid foundation to the process of establishing my three views.

Coming from Zhihu, it is really a good article with strict logic and high intentions!