Historians
have attributed the demise of the Ming Dynasty (1368 – 1644) to various reasons,
the most prominent being: emperors indulging in extravagance and/or self-glory
or being pathetically paranoid and/or incompetent, factional feuds between
eunuchs and officials in court, endemic corruption in all levels of
administration, and the court overtaxing the already desperate underclass of
peasants. It took a long period of time (stretching over the reigns of the last
three or four emperors) for these factors to foment and become a deadly tumor
that set the nation’s body and spirit on an irreversible trend of decay. This internal
cancerous growth, in convergence with fateful external factors like the emergence
of an ogling neighbor state and the rise of rebellious commoner leaders,
ultimately put the Dynasty to rest. Indeed, those internal causes of death
sound almost banal, given that they can probably be applied, with adjustments
here and there, to any previous dynastic era in China’s long history.
In
the case of the Ming Dynasty, one external factor - the “ogling neighbor state”
- turned out to be the Manchu Empire, a newly united tribe of cavalry Jurchens
under Nurhaci of the Aisin Gioro clan. The origins of the Jurchens could be
traced back to the Great Jin Dynasty (1115 to 1234), which had persisted in
nettling the Southern Song Dynasty after defeating the Liao in Northern China.
It was Hong Taiji, one of Nurhaci’s sons, who established the Qing Dynasty in
Mukden, just outside the borders of Ming China. But his dream of conquering
China proper was not to be realized in his lifetime. Just one year after his
death, though, his half-brother Dorgon, Regent to the child Shunzhi Emperor,
fulfilled that dream with the uncanny help of a Ming General, Wu Sangui. Yet
the fledgling years of Qing were far from stable, and it took the wits and
tenacity of one Mongolian woman – Empress Dowager Xiaozhuang - to keep the multi-ethnic
Empire from crumbling.
Those
are just some basic facts of history at the crucial crossroads where Ming’s end
met with Qing’s rise. The study of history can turn people off if it involves
only chewing on dry hard facts. But we ought to sing the praises of historians
who take great pains to attempt an unbiased and accurate recording of
historical facts, if only because our collective future depends on drawing
valuable lessons from and avoiding disastrous mistakes of our past, all races
included. That said, we must remember that history is often written by the
victors, or those who dominate or suppress others (no distinction is made
between Western and Eastern history here), and thus we should keep a
questioning mind. As well, there is always the element of historians’ own
subjective interpretation of facts, so that three different historians may well
present three accounts of the same event with quite different slants. All of
them valid.
Yet,
history is intrinsically made by people and it is always the “actors” of
history that make the study interesting or even worthwhile. It should not be
surprising then, that some of us love reading historical fiction for the very reason
that such fiction focuses on telling the personal stories of those “actors” of
history.
The
task of weaving historical facts with fictional narratives (in some cases with
fictional characters) falls to historical novelists, whose mission is to work
creatively with the gaps left by historians, while animating the actors of
history with feelings, emotions and thoughts. In general, historical novels are
invariably more enticing and less intimidating than dry, non-fiction history,
thus more likely to reach a wider audience. If such novels can pique readers’
interest and curiosity and make them want to learn more, then they will have
served one great purpose.
I
am not a historian, at best only an amateur in Chinese history. But I am
passionate about writing historical fiction set in China’s distant past, in
which is embedded a colossal untapped reservoir of juicy materials to write
good fiction from. The historical fiction genre has long been skewed towards
Western history and badly needs diversification into Oriental history. I, for
one, would certainly love to see more historical fiction writers jump on this Old
China bandwagon.
The
above is my humble view.
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