It is written in "Chang'an Road": "The brothel is blooming where the flower branches are missing, and a beautiful song is played and a glass of wine is drunk. The beauty advises me to hurry up and have fun. Since ancient times, beautiful women will not come again. You don't see guests from other states. Chang'an Road is full of beauty. Come back and grow old again."
This poem vividly expresses the prosperity of Chang'an at that time. The name Chang'an is also full of dreams, making people full of yearning just by hearing the name. But over time, the names of many cities have changed. Chang'an was also changed to Xi'an by Zhu Yuanzhang, but the lingering flavor contained in the word Chang'an has been lingering over Xi'an, making people unable to help but recall the glory of thousands of years ago.
Therefore, the name of a city is particularly important to the city and will not be changed easily. However, during the reign of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom in history, major changes were made to the names of various places, and there were even riots. There were a lot of jokes! The Taiping Rebellion
The Taiping Rebellion was a large-scale peasant uprising led by Hong Xiuquan in the late Qing Dynasty. Hong Xiuquan was born in Guangdong Province and took the imperial examinations many times, but failed in all of them. Unable to achieve his goals, he was very dissatisfied with the times and rulers at that time. Later, in Guiping County, he led Hong Renxuan and others to launch the Jintian Uprising. As the team grew, the armed forces of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom also developed. They conquered hundreds of cities, owned half of the country at that time, and had a stable political power.
In the early days of the Taiping Rebellion, a series of reforms were carried out, and the "Celestial Land Acquisition System" and "New Chapter of Administrative Affairs" were issued, proposing an ideal society where everyone has fields to farm and food to eat. It didn't come true in the end, but it had very positive meanings. However, the peasant uprising has its limitations after all, and it still retains feudal ideas ideologically. For example, the name of the emperor has been taboo in China for thousands of years. During the reign of the Taiping Rebellion, not only the name of the heavenly king was taboo, but also the place names of the provinces. Therefore, the rulers of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom changed the names of various places. A wide variety of names
The names that were initially taboo were the names of the Heavenly King Hong Xiuquan and the other five leaders. Because Hong Xiuquan’s surname was Hong, people with the same surname as him were not allowed, and those named Hong had to change their surname to Tong. , he also did not allow anyone to use the surname Wang. People with the surname Wang could only change their surname to "Huang" or Wang. This approach also caused dissatisfaction among many people at the time, but they dared not speak out.
Because surnames were very important in ancient times, no one wanted to change the surnames passed down from their ancestors. After surrendering to the Qing army, the first thing many people did was to change their surnames back.
In addition to the names, Hong Renxuan’s renaming of provinces is even more unacceptable. At that time, many provinces were occupied by the Taiping Rebellion. In addition to avoiding the name of the ruler, another reason for changing place names was to erase the traces of the Qing Dynasty, and also to have the names of provinces belonging to the Taiping Rebellion. At that time, Hong Xiuquan proclaimed himself emperor in Nanjing, so he changed Nanjing to Tianjing. Because the word "tian" was taboo, Fengtian Province became "Fengtian". Although the pronunciation is the same, the meaning is different. This word "天" gave people a It has a rustic feeling that makes people laugh or cry.
Xiao Chao, the king of the West, changed Guizhou to "Guizhou" because he wanted to avoid the word "gui", which has the same name as Guizhou in Guangxi. It's easy to get confused by people. Heilongjiang was changed to "Wulongjiang". This name sounds really unattractive. Not only that, the Southern King Feng Yunshan changed Yunnan to "Yun" Nan Province because there was a cloud character in his name. Although they all have the same pronunciation but different words, they are difficult to write and tacky.
But the provinces closest to the Qing Dynasty were the ones that changed the most. Tianjin Province was changed to "Tianjin", which also meant to fight against the Qing Dynasty. There are also many provinces whose names were changed by the rulers of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. Some of them were changed directly according to their personal preferences. For example, the name of Daijiang was changed to Jiang, Zhejiang was changed to Zhejiang, etc. After this random change, I guess they I got myself confused.
During the Taiping Rebellion, many provinces changed their original names. Lost its original charm. It was changed randomly without careful consideration and people laughed at it. Hong Xiuquan also came from a family of farming and reading, and had read the Four Books and Five Classics, but his feudal thoughts were revealed in the matter of changing the names of various provinces. He was able to conquer half of the Qing Dynasty, but he could not govern these areas well.
Although the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom rulers made a joke about changing the names of various provinces, their patriotic stance was true. After Hong Xiuquan stabilized the regime, foreign countries sent envoys to negotiate with him, hoping to He wanted to join forces with him to fight against the Qing Dynasty and carve up China's territory after victory, but Hong Xiuquan decisively refused. He said a very classic saying, "When it is done, if I share the territory equally with foreigners, the people of the world will laugh at me; if I fail, I will let foreigners enter Chinese territory and lure wolves into the house." This shows that no matter what, Hong Xiuquan still has a patriotic heart. In the end, the emperor will lose the country
But in general, the peasant uprising still has great limitations. Even though the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom advocated an ideal society where everyone is equal, it still had feudal concepts when it was realized. They did not do what they imagined, and the rulers did not escape their pursuit and yearning for power. When the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom had just stabilized its power, it built palaces on a large scale. Hong Xiuquan even had a group of wives and concubines, indulged in pleasure pursuits. Don't ask about national politics. After gaining power, Hong Xiuquan lost his original intention.
Before the fall of Tianjin, Hong Xiuquan made more than 2,000 people kings. The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was even more intrigued and suspicious of each other in order to compete for power. The civil war continued, and was eventually strangled by a joint alliance between China and foreign countries. It can also be said that internal fighting was an important reason for the demise of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. If we work together and deal with the outside world as one, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom will not be destroyed so quickly. There is a poem describing them: "The king wears the king's robe and prosperes, and the heavenly brother and the father secretly fall in love. Taiping has been completely defeated, and only regrets the civil war."
Indeed, although to a certain extent, their anti-feudal struggle dealt a heavy blow to the Qing rulers, they could not escape the shackles of feudal society in their thoughts and behaviors. They lost their original aspirations and were Power went to his head, which led to the decline and demise of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom in the later period.
History is developing and advancing. The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom movement opposed feudal society. The starting point was good, but it stopped moving forward and did not change the nature of the feudal society at that time. Changing the soup but not the medicine, even if the Taiping Rebellion did not fail in the end. They were just like changing a group of rulers, and the lives of people at that time would not change.