Chronicles of the Forty-Eight Villages of Qihuang

There is no need to get hung up on the labels of "counterinsurgency" and "anti-Qing". Open it and you will meet a group of ordinary people fighting to protect their clothes and dignity - their stories are more moving than the conclusions of history books. This book reconstructs the anti-Qing epic in the Qihuang region in the early Qing Dynasty from a "dual perspective". It not only compiles the military actions recorded in the Qing government's official "Chronicle of the Counter-Rebellion" - from the expedition of King Azige and the joint siege by the governors of the four provinces, to Xu Yong's fire attack on Siwang Mountain and the bombardment of Tiantang Village in Bashan, it fully presents the 18-year counter-insurgency process of "suppression and appeasement at the same time"; it also uses folk archives as a context to deeply explore the spiritual core of the Forty-Eight Villages' resistance to the Qing Dynasty. From the geographical dimension, it analyzes in detail the natural danger advantages of the fort system at the foot of the Dabie Mountains, such as the triple trenches of Dongshan Village, the single path to the top of Tiantang Village, and the joint water and land defense of Doufang Village, restoring the joint defense pattern of "one village warns, and many villages rush to rescue"; from the character dimension, Chen Zongyue "martyrs himself for guarding his hair", Chen Mengru "burns grain as a young man", and Wang Ding "refuses to surrender and dies in battle" It also includes biographies of loyal people, such as the inscription "Don't shave your hair", the couplet "Guarding Food Temple" and other folk relics; from the perspective of events, it provides a panoramic view of more than 100 battles such as the defense of Dongshan Village, the alliance's joint operations, and the final defense of Doufang Village. It also records the Qing court's "Evidence Commentary" as well as folk songs and legends of survivors, showing the diverse aspects of historical records. The whole book is not only a military history that restores the local turmoil in the early Qing Dynasty, but also an important document for interpreting the "cultural resistance under the hair-cutting order". In the collision of official narratives and folk memories, readers can understand the integrity of the Qihuang ancestors who guarded China's clothes with their flesh and blood, and its spiritual echo across time and space.