Chapter 209: An Explanation Regarding the Pseudo-History Theory, Catholicism, and Xu Guangqi

Too hard to write. Sigh.

Starting a month ago, for this chapter, I've probably read dozens of papers. Historical sources — even more, beyond counting.

To write a good story, not just regurgitate historical sources, I had to cut a huge amount of detail.

Here I'll add just a tiny bit of supplementary material.

Next, I'll lay out my views, and prepare for the subscriptions to drop off.

(If this book gets banned, even better — I'll just patch in a note right here: if the book gets banned, it doesn't count as me abandoning it, alright? I'm still Chinese.)

On the Pseudo-History Theory

Right at the start of my book, in the very first chapter, the name Xu Guangqi appeared inadvertently, and it drew some comments.

I seem to recall one comment telling me to slaughter Xu Guangqi's entire family, but I can't find it at the moment.

Regarding the pseudo-history theory, I won't engage in any discussion or defense here.

Because there's no point.

You can never win an argument online.

I'll just briefly state my own view on the pseudo-history theory.

In the Joseon historical perspective, everything north of the Yangtze River is their "since ancient times."

And in the Vietnamese historical perspective, everything south of the Yangtze River is their "since ancient times."

So what are Chinese people supposed to do?

We were obviously swimming and bathing in the Yangtze River, having stayed there for 5,000 years — what else?! What else?!

Ridiculous, isn't it?

That's exactly how I feel when I look at the pseudo-history theory.

I believe a gentleman does not shy away from speaking of his own failures.

The fact is, in the Ming dynasty — even before its final years — the natural sciences as a whole had genuinely fallen behind.

Mathematics had declined; physics, chemistry, and the like were even more nonexistent.

This decline is not about practical application — after all, in the Ming dynasty, we still refined gunpowder and matchlock muskets, pushed the north to form a two-harvests-in-three-years system, and after various Western implements were introduced, we quickly caught up and even surpassed them. (The iron cannons cast in Foshan, Guangdong, in the late Ming were even better than the ones the Portuguese made.)

What I'm talking about is the decline of the concept of "science."

In the West, during the same period as the Ming dynasty, the Reformation of justification by faith alone was launched, the cultural Renaissance was propelled, and the Age of Discovery was set in motion.

Universities sprang up everywhere; works like Euclid's Elements, an ancient Greek text, were re-embraced and printed and disseminated far and wide.

Western missionaries, for the sake of proselytizing, brought over 7,000 volumes of books, viewing the Ming dynasty as a land of barbarians, a place without science.

Having emerged from the Dark Ages, they had actually forgotten their own former ignorance, and in turn looked down from on high upon the supposed savagery of Cathay.

Look at the Ming dynasty in contrast: it was still selecting officials by imperial examination, a crowd of people tirelessly laboring, writing lengthy essays revolving around the sayings of Confucius the Sage from two thousand years ago.

They were running out of topics for the examination questions!

Those of you who have subscribed to the whole book up to now should know that I am not an extremist who sees things in black and white.

I have always held that Confucianism has its good and its bad. The wagon-fort tactic has its good and its bad. People, too, have good and bad, and even a single person can be good or bad in different periods.

But the pseudo-history theory alone — I cannot accept even a shred of it at its root.

I am Chinese, not Korean. I don't need to argue that we were once mighty and only grew weak because "traitors" stole our knowledge.

We lost — so we lost. But in the end, we are now standing tall once again among the nations of the world, aren't we?

Alright, that's all I have to say on the pseudo-history theory.

Ah-Q-ism — don't come near me, thank you.

On Catholicism

First, if there are any Christian believers among my readers, let me offer an apology here.

I likewise have no opinion on any religion per se; I simply enjoy looking at them from an economic and political angle.

That Catholicism could become a world religion is due to its own merits.

Setting aside the usual satisfaction it provides regarding life and death, the most important aspects, in my view, are its "exclusivity," "organizational nature," and "spontaneous diffusivity."

If you look at papers on the spread of religion in modern China, you'll see that when Buddhism, Daoism, and Catholicism are placed side by side, Catholicism is invariably the one that spreads most aggressively.

The protagonist says, "Science must be separated from religion."

It's not that he fears religion will impede scientific development — the West hasn't exactly suffered major side effects in that regard.

It's simply that the protagonist is bound to set off a wave of science, and this wave of science, at this moment in 1627, happens to be bound up with Catholicism.

Then it's very likely that what the sovereign favors, his subjects will imitate all the more eagerly, and Catholicism would consequently flourish vigorously in the Ming dynasty as well.

Yet Catholicism in this very period inherently carries a strong flavor of cultural colonization and being a vanguard of colonization, and is controlled by the Western Church — the danger is truly somewhat too great.

After all, the protagonist's efforts to promote "science" will definitely be greater and more thorough than the Chongzhen Emperor's.

So the protagonist will, from the very start, try as much as possible to eliminate this latent crisis.

But the vacancy and frailty of the soul will inevitably need something to fill it.

I haven't figured out how to handle this yet — after all, religion does have its significance, and in the Ming dynasty era, there was no living space for our current beliefs to exist.

The above is my view on Catholicism.

By the way, here's an irresponsible little conjecture — just treat it as unofficial history, everyone.

Because the Chongzhen Emperor believed in and revered the Lord on High, he ordered that all names under heaven containing the character "Tian" be changed to "Da."

Zu Dashou — that's how his name was changed from Zu Tianshou.

Some readers have said that what the Chongzhen Emperor believed in and revered should have been the August Heavenly Emperor of the Chinese tradition, not the Catholic "God."

I thought so too at first.

But after writing this section of the plot, I suddenly became uncertain.

① The belief in the August Heavenly Emperor is a bit strange — in Cathay, there have been believers in Buddhism and believers in Daoism, but there truly haven't been very fervent believers in the August Heavenly Emperor.

② Moreover, the August Heavenly Sovereign had, in fact, gradually had his ecological niche usurped by the Daoist Jade Emperor Heavenly Sovereign.

③ In the twelfth month of this seventh year of Tianqi, Catholicism held a council to discuss the translated name for "God." In the end, the faction following Matteo Ricci's approach (that is, the integrationist faction) gained the upper hand and settled on translating God as Shangdi.

④ After Chongzhen ascended the throne, the Western Learning faction and Catholicism truly flourished. I recall the number of converts expanded to something like over twenty thousand—or was it two hundred thousand?

And, most importantly of all.

I put myself in his place. Suppose I were Chongzhen, an ordinary seventeen-year-old Ming emperor who, by chance, had not read much Confucian learning.

I suddenly encounter Western learning—this doctrine of rigorous logic, of step-by-step reasoned progression—and come to understand the tenets of Catholicism (sanitized, made Ming-dynasty-friendly).

Without the hindsight perspective that sees it as a vanguard of colonization and ideology, I would genuinely have believed in Catholicism.

Because at this stage, in this period, the practical learning and logical concepts of the entire Far West were simply an overwhelming, dimension-shattering assault.

And those early Western missionaries were religious zealots recruited by Matteo Ricci in Europe. They came risking death, their hearts truly filled with faith—they really were the kind you'd call moral sages.

So it is no wonder that large numbers of late-Ming Confucian literati gravitated toward Catholicism.

If you had sent Zhu Xi or Zhang Zai to the West in that era, they would just as surely have made the West prostrate itself before the banner of Confucianism.

Alright, I'll stop here. Any more and I'll turn into a Catholic fanboy. Just describing things objectively, ha.

Xu Guangqi

Regarding Old Xu, I don't have much else to say.

Basically, there are three things about him:

1. I must serve my country; I must save my country.

2. I must do practical work. I must engage in agriculture, in astronomy, in all manner of things that are solid, valuable, and meaningful.

3. I believe in Catholicism. Sincerely believe.

As an aside, this "sincerely believe"—I find it very hard to know whether it means "truly believing that God exists" or "truly believing that Catholicism can save China."

The latter was certainly there. The former is hard to say; after all, I am an atheist, and I find it very difficult to understand the thoughts inside a religious believer's heart.

Can a person, after forty-two years of life, suddenly devote body and soul entirely to a "God" come from the West?

In Xu Guangqi's own words: "All my life I was fond of doubting—until I reached this point where there is nothing left to doubt. All my life I was fond of disputation—until I reached this point where there is nothing left to dispute."

I do not know. But in the historical record, there is no evidence whatsoever that "Xu Guangqi was not a true Catholic believer."

So that is how I shall write the story.

The later plotline for Old Xu will be up to all of you to decide.

If you think Old Xu will have a sudden awakening, a great enlightenment, leave a comment under this post. Later, once the plot has advanced a bit, I will find time to write his break with the Catholic Church or related plotlines.

If you think Old Xu is over sixty and incapable of awakening, leave a comment under this post. I will simply not write about him later; others will naturally take his place. The Ming dynasty truly did not lack for talent.

If you think Old Xu has some other bizarre development in store (I certainly can't think of any other way it could develop), you can leave a comment under this post.

Alright, that's it. Going to sleep!

Today's update is just this fifteen thousand characters. Whether there will be any tomorrow, I don't know—I'll decide after I wake up. I'll do my best to have some.