Restless Ghost

What Remains: Coming to Terms with Civil War in 19th Century China

Daily life is interrupted, 20 million people die, and the familiar world is destroyed. Once born as a human, how should we face the worst civil war in history?
The Taiping Rebellion: Fighting Textbooks and Nationalism
Challenging official historical interpretations, this is the first historical work to offer a folk perspective on the Taiping Rebellion. In the mid-19th century, the Qing Empire endured the 15-year-long Taiping Rebellion, which claimed over 20 million lives and displaced many more, making it arguably the most brutal civil war in modern world history.
Studied by the renowned storyteller, Sinologist Jonathan Spence, author Mei Erqing boldly departs from the traditional textbook narratives of victors and losers and nationalism. He no longer focuses on the political and military struggles behind the rise and fall of Hong Xiuquan, Zeng Guofan, and the emperors and generals, but instead focuses on those directly affected by the war, whose voices have been forgotten in official commemorations and national memory.
What did the Taiping Rebellion mean to the millions of local people who lost their loved ones, their livelihoods, and their lives?
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Unearthing forgotten voices, capturing the turbulent times through the eyes of local people, "What wrong did people do to deserve divine punishment?"
When the Taiping Rebellion captured Nanjing, a philanthropist whose hometown was nearby posed a question to the heavens. He portrayed the brutal war before him as a sign of heaven's guidance for good. He wrote furiously and preached to the villagers, seeking funding for the local militia and a corrective to the moral order of the world.
Beyond this philanthropist who framed disaster through moral justification, the book also chronicles the lives of individuals who endured adversity, including a Yangzhou poet who chronicled the horrors of the war in his diary, a scholar captured and barbed by the Taiping Rebellion, and a filial son who learned to cope with his mother's loss through writing. Through never-before-seen perspectives from the public, readers are able to glimpse stories long forgotten or distorted by official sources, and understand the real impact of the Taiping Rebellion.
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Through the restless spirits of the dead, we see the scars left by the Taiping Rebellion in people's hearts. How did war disrupt daily life? How did people cope with disorder and turmoil? How did they deal with the corpses scattered across the ground and remember their loved ones? How could they regain their inner certainty and rebuild a world shattered by war?
The restless souls of the dead reflect the restlessness of human hearts. The Taiping Rebellion left thousands of souls dead and left a mark on the hearts of countless living people.
Through local chronicles, biographies, poetry collections, diplomatic documents, and missionary reports, this book leads readers to see these scars and the most personal experiences of the people at that time: the pain of losing loved ones, anger at government incompetence, and horrifying memories mixed with stench of decay and nightmare images.

2020-06-03

衛城

432

9789869889032