Chapter 197

Afraid that he would accidentally wrinkle it a little bit!

This moment was like a dream to him!

As for the audience at the scene, when they heard the words 'Yongle Dadian', they couldn't hold back anymore.

Wishing they could rush up immediately to take a look.

You know this is a true treasure of China, and a few volumes were actually found here today.

As witnesses, only watching on the internet, how could they endure this!

There was already a commotion at the scene, and the crowd was instinctively squeezing inside.

Director Chen broke out in a cold sweat and immediately shouted: "Fang Yang, hurry up and think of a way, if this drags on, it won't be controllable!"

Fang Yang woke up; if they rushed in now, it would highly likely damage the artifacts, and then it would really be a big deal.

So he quickly climbed onto the tracks of the excavator and shouted loudly: "Everyone, don't get excited!! If you all rush over to look, it's very easy to cause damage to the artifacts, and then we will all be sinners!! You don't have to worry, tomorrow, I promise you, tomorrow it will be placed in the museum for exhibition, let you see enough!"

As soon as these words came out, the onlookers immediately cheered and all consciously retreated.

Fang Yang looked at the circle just now, which was significantly smaller than before; if not organized in time, the consequences would really be unimaginable.

【Popularity】 +1+1+1+1.

——【Holy crap holy crap!! Yongle Dadian!! There is actually Yongle Dadian in this coffin, my jaw dropped, I damn regret not going to the scene, such an important moment, I wasn't there, damn, my guts are almost turning green, I must go to the scene to watch tomorrow even if I die.】

——【Awesome, Fang Yang is awesome! At this moment I even want to shout, I don't know why I'm so excited that he dug this up. It's too precious, comparable to our China's Nine Tripod Cauldrons and the Imperial Jade Seal, it's a kind of faith. It can be called an ancient and modern wonder book!】

——【Many people don't understand, isn't Yongle Dadian just an encyclopedia? Is it that important? Let's put it this way, the development of many aspects in foreign countries, art styles, and culture have all been influenced by Yongle Dadian, there are even rumors that the reason why the West developed so fast is inseparable from Yongle Dadian.】

——【All of China, thousands of years of knowledge before the Ming Dynasty, are all collected in it, if it can really be collected, then its historical value is truly immeasurable, it's just a pity, it's impossible anymore, more than 10,000 volumes, now not even a fraction is left.】

After the archaeology staff opened the remaining boxes, they found that they were all Yongle Dadian.

And except for the volume at the very bottom which was a bit rotten, the others were preserved quite well.

After counting, there were a total of 18 volumes of Yongle Dadian.

All the archaeology team members at the scene were overjoyed.

Eighteen volumes!

If calculated by market price, these eighteen volumes could be worth one billion!

But for China, its true value far exceeds one billion.

Chen Feng excitedly held Fang Yang's hand: "Fang Yang, I'm convinced, I'm really convinced, even this you can dig up, its value is much higher than the twelve animal heads you dug up yesterday, I'm really happy that our Xihai City can have someone like you!"

Fang Yang looked at his excited appearance, quite embarrassed: "Uh... say what you have to say, don't move your hands and feet!"

Chen Feng was stunned and immediately withdrew his hands: "Sorry, a bit excited, look at so many audience members here, don't you plan to popularize it for everyone?"

As soon as these words came out, the surrounding audience immediately jeered.

"That's right, hurry up, Teacher Fang!"

"We just love Teacher Fang's history class!"

"That's right, Teacher Fang, start quickly!"

Fang Yang was also stunned, when did he become Teacher Fang.

Just as he was dazed, Director Chen handed over a big microphone: "Hurry up and talk, otherwise do you think we can control these people!"

"This... alright!"

Fang Yang picked up the big microphone and started explaining, and the archaeology staff specially carried the wooden box to his side: "Before talking about Yongle Dadian, we can talk about the person who compiled it, Zhu Di!"

"Zhu Di, this person, might not be a good person, but he must be a good emperor. However, in the moral system of Confucianism, the Jingnan Campaign was the biggest stain in Zhu Di's life. So, under the tradition of compiling books in a prosperous age, Zhu Di was determined to compile an unprecedented Yongle Dadian to prove himself!"

"We just talked about Huo Qubing today. Since ancient times, in terms of martial arts, there is the unparalleled achievement of 'sealing the wolf at Juxu', and in terms of literature, there is the eternal story of compiling books!"

"Before understanding Zhu Di's Yongle Dadian, you need to know that in ancient times without the internet, 'category books' (category books) were important databases for people to retrieve information. The so-called 'category books' is like our current Baidu, compiling related content together, you just need to search for a character, and a bunch of answers will come out immediately."

"But in ancient times, there was no internet, and Yongle Dadian, known as the encyclopedia, was the pinnacle of such 'category books'."

"For example, this 'Rong' character volume in front of me, it not only has the explanation of the plant 'Hibiscus' in "Gewu Congtan", but also the explanation of the economic value of Hibiscus in "Nongsang Cuoyao", and even the poems about Hibiscus by poets like Wang Wei and Liu Zongyuan can all be found."

Following this passage, there was a commotion at the scene.

Most of them knew Yongle Dadian was very precious.

But there really weren't many people who knew it was an encyclopedia.

Almost all stayed at the stage of hearing about it.

But after hearing Fang Yang's explanation, they immediately understood that this was definitely a huge project.

After Fang Yang waited for them to quiet down, he continued: "In 1403 AD, Zhu Di appointed the great talent Xie Jin as the general compiler of "Yongle Dadian"."

"Zhu Di's requirement for this book was that since the beginning of writing, whether it was classics, history, philosophy, or literature, the words of the hundred schools, or astronomy, geography, yin-yang, medicine, divination, Daoism, Buddhism, or skills, in short, what was wanted was to cover ancient and modern times, encompassing everything. Containing all knowledge wealth! To put it plainly, write down everything before the Ming Dynasty!"

"But in fact, at the beginning, Xie Jin thought Zhu Di was on a whim, and only used one year to compile a book and handed it in. The result was obvious, Zhu Di was not satisfied and let Yao Guangxiao, who understood him best, supervise the work personally!"

"Now Xie Jin was stunned, he and Yao Guangxiao understood that Zhu Di was playing for real, wanting to do something big! Zhu Di's original intention was to embrace everything and compile an unprecedented book to prove himself, how could it end so easily!"

"So, from the initial 147 compilers, it increased to 2,196! You can imagine how large the workload was at that time!"

"Finally, more than 2,000 people spent 5 years to finally compile this Dadian. This book contains seven or eight thousand kinds of various books since the Ming Dynasty, and all the knowledge wealth of the Chinese nation for thousands of years is available!"

"A total of 11,095 volumes were revised, 22,877 scrolls, a total of about 370 million characters, I dare say no one in this world can memorize this book!"

Suddenly a burst of laughter erupted at the scene.

But when they heard the numbers and content above, they were all stunned.

What a huge project, I guess only an emperor could complete it.

If an ordinary person, exhausting his whole life, he could only do a small part.

And when Zhu Di was in power, he was often at war, and the national treasury was very tight.

The money required to revise Yongle Dadian must be immeasurable.

But in fact, when an emperor dies, later generations remember more about what he once did.

For example, Zhu Di, clearly snatched his nephew's throne, but later generations didn't scold him much, and more people thought he was a good emperor.

Fang Yang aimed his mouth at the microphone and continued: "You know, these 370 million characters are not like what we can print out now, they were all copied one by one by hand, if one character is wrong, it has to be rewritten!"

"And the most rare thing is that Zhu Di, as an emperor, his requirement for this book was that all personnel strictly follow the principle of only collecting and not tampering, ensuring the authenticity of the information!"

"Take the "Siku Quanshu" compiled by Qianlong, for example, it has 990 million characters, but its historical document value is not worth mentioning compared to Yongle Dadian. It's because this book didn't care even if there were characters unfavorable to Zhu Di, it only pursued truth! On the contrary, Siku Quanshu was changed again and again, all flattery!"

"Later, the palace had several big fires, until the Jiajing period, a biggest fire made him realize that a copy must be copied again, so we have the Yongle Dadian copy we see now!"

"But very strangely, just after re-recording the new one, Jiajing died, and the original of Yongle Dadian also disappeared. Some say it was taken by Jiajing into his coffin, and some say Li Zicheng burned the palace clean that year, and it was all gone."

"I personally still hope it was taken into the mausoleum, it's just a pity that for so many years, archaeology experts haven't dared to open Jiajing's mausoleum, for fear that once opened, the things inside would instantly oxidize and dissipate!"

I have to say that when Fang Yang gave history lessons on-site, the fans listened very attentively.

The sound at the scene was very low, almost everyone was listening carefully, not wanting to make noise.

【Popularity】 +1+1+1+1....

——【Why didn't I feel that history teachers were so interesting in class before? I understand, because in the past, class was purely for getting high scores, but Fang Yang is different here, he has no purpose, so I am very willing and naturally accept, to listen, once I listen in, I will feel very lingering.】

——【Even if it was taken into the coffin, it hasn't been well preserved for so many years, I guess it has rotted, right. It's a pity. Yongle Dadian is probably really gone. I only hate those idiots in the Qing Dynasty who destroyed Yongle Dadian for private gain, these people are sinners of China!】

——【Just like the Great Wall, how many people died when it was built, but it became one of China's landmarks. It benefits the contemporary era, and contributes to the future! If the Yongle Dadian at that time could have been kept, I feel China wouldn't have had a hundred years of dark ages, and it wouldn't have been so cowardly from ancient times to the present!】

——【Strongly request to add the content Fang Yang said today into history textbooks, we need Huo Qubing's war god faith, we also need the passage of the Silk Road, and even more we need the legacy spirit of Yongle Dadian, just as Fang Yang said, Zhu Di might not be a good person, but he was indeed a good emperor, the treasure left to later generations was unfortunately destroyed by a bunch of pigs!】

Fang Yang felt very regretful when he said this, but the story wasn't finished yet, he could only continue: "The original version disappeared here, but the copy re-recorded by Emperor Jiajing also had a bumpy fate!"

"During the Qianlong period, in order to compile Complete Library in the Four Branches of Literature, he took out the copy of Yongle Dadian. But after Complete Library in the Four Branches of Literature was compiled, he directly threw Yongle Dadian to the Hanlin Academy, and more than 2,000 volumes had already been lost after the compilation at that time."

"You know, before this, only the royal family could read Yongle Dadian, now it's good, all officials could read it, every time they went to read a book, they brought clothes or something, and when they came out, they wrapped one volume, and no one saw it!"

"Know why they did this? Because foreigners bought them for 10 taels a volume! Thinking about it makes me feel funny!"

"By the Guangxu period, when counting again, there were less than 5,000 volumes left, a full 6,000 volumes less!"

"And during Qianlong's reign, he also allowed officials to tear up Yongle Dadian as a reward! It can be said that the loss of Yongle Dadian has a great relationship with the Qing Dynasty!"

At this time, everyone was full of hatred. In the Qing Dynasty, except for Yongzheng, no one could be considered a good emperor.

Not to mention destroying the whole of China, they also ruined such precious things.

Many even started scolding on the spot.

Fang Yang shook his head helplessly: "Haven't finished yet, by the 19th year of Guangxu, only 800 volumes were left. In the 26th year of Guangxu, the Eight-Nation Alliance invaded, and Yongle Dadian was used by those robbers as bricks to build fortifications or burned as firewood!"

"Later, the British Embassy returned 330 volumes, but the Hanlin scholars of the Hanlin Academy fled, and it was divided by employees, and finally, only 64 volumes were left officially!"

"And these in my hands were divided by those Five Classics Doctors of the Hanlin Academy back then! I don't know whether I should thank them or hate them!"