The history of ancient China is, in fact, a history of the blood and tears of the suffering masses.
The chaotic times of the Five Barbarians disrupting the Han and the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms need not be mentioned; even in those unified dynasties, if you were born a commoner, your life would still be extremely difficult. So, comparatively speaking, which dynasty would be relatively happier to be born into?
First, let's talk about the Qin Dynasty. What comes to mind when you mention the Qin Dynasty? The first unification of the Huaxia nation, the standardization of writing and cart tracks, Qin Shi Huang's conquest of the six states and his pilgrimage to Mount Tai, achieving unprecedented accomplishments. The unification of the Qin Dynasty had many benefits and historical significance. However, for the common people living in that era,
what they felt most deeply was probably the phrase from the "Records of the Grand Historian": "The world has long suffered from Qin!" As a person of the Qin Dynasty, there were endless corvée labor and countless wars. Since Ying Zheng transformed from King of Qin to the First Emperor, the countless harsh laws and heavy taxes made the people of Qin live in fear and despair every day. The heavy labor and cruel punishments, such as amputating feet or gouging eyes, led to countless Qin people being hanged on the roads or forced to flee.
The taxes in the Qin Dynasty were exorbitantly high. Dong Zhongshu said: "Qin used Shang Yang's methods, changed the rule of the emperors, the rich had fields connected, while the poor had no place to stand, their taxes were 20 times that of the ancients, and the common people often wore clothes made of cattle and horses and ate food meant for dogs and pigs. How could the common people not be in distress!" Of course, Dong Zhongshu was not qualified to mock the Qin Dynasty; the Emperor Wu of Han, whom he assisted, was also a person who sought great achievements and was cruel and ruthless. Emperor Wu of Han exhausted manpower and resources for military campaigns against the Xiongnu and for personal pleasures, and in his later years, he became superstitious, pursuing immortality, depleting human and financial resources.
The wealth accumulated during the rule of Emperors Wen and Jing had long been squandered by him. To amass wealth, he first issued the decree to collect copper coins, making the common people live in fear and report on each other, turning most property owners into the proletariat. Later, he forced the common people to provide horses for the court, leading to countless families being torn apart and ruined because of horse-keeping.
In that so-called prosperous era of "those who offend our strong Han will be punished, no matter how far," there were actually two incidents of cannibalism due to famine. On one side, the common people watched the emperor and generals fight the Xiongnu and conquer the Western Regions, feeling a sense of pride; on the other side, they had to tighten their belts, sell their children, and eat tree bark and wild grass, even starving to death.
So, what benefits do the ambitions and grand plans of those in power bring to the ordinary common people below?
Next, let's talk about the Tang Dynasty. During the Zhenguan period, Emperor Taizong issued a decree prohibiting commoners from amputating their limbs to escape corvée labor, which shows how terrifying the corvée labor was in the Tang Dynasty. The title of "Heavenly Khan" for Li Shimin was not just a boast; it was earned through real battles. And during this process, who was bearing the burden for his peaceful reign? During the Zhenguan years, it was extremely common for people to starve to death, even around the capital Chang'an, where commoners often starved to death at home or in the fields after paying their taxes and having no money left to buy grain.
By the time of his great-grandson Li Longji's Kaiyuan era, it was merely a prosperous time for the powerful, completely unrelated to the common people. To embellish the strength of the state, Emperor Xuanzong held grand banquets in front of the Wufeng Tower. However, Bai Juyi saw in the countryside that "this year in Jiangnan there was drought, and people in Quzhou resorted to cannibalism." If the country were truly as strong as Emperor Xuanzong saw, how could a mere Hu man from Anlu Mountain rally so many people and sweep through everything? Since the Anshi Rebellion, the military revolts and peasant uprisings in the Tang Dynasty continued until its end, coupled with the invasions from Tubo and the Uighurs, one can imagine what kind of life the common people of the Tang Dynasty lived.
As for the Yuan Dynasty, it is even more unnecessary to mention. Its so-called "leniency" was directed at the Mongolian aristocrats and Han landlords. The common Mongolian and Han people under Mongol rule could not enjoy the emperor's compassion. After the fall of the Yuan Dynasty, the common people cheered, while the landlords mourned as if they had lost their parents, for they could no longer find such a "wonderful" era.
Regarding the Ming and Qing Dynasties, they can be discussed together. Apart from differences in hairstyles and clothing, these two dynasties were highly similar, representing the peak of feudal centralized rule in China. Zhu Yuanzhang's invention of the eight-legged essay stifled the limited thinking ability of the common people, and the literary inquisition he initiated was later expanded by Qianlong to an extreme level, making it so that not only was eating a luxury, but even speaking became a desire. During the Ming Dynasty, due to heavy corvée labor and taxes, many people fled to the harsh lands outside the borders to survive. Although there were threats from Mongolian raiders, sandstorms, and wild beasts, there were no heavy taxes from the Ming and no exploitation from cruel officials. In the Qing Dynasty, this situation played out again, with people moving eastward and westward out of desperation.
In ancient China, there are records of 72 large-scale incidents of cannibalism, meaning that an average of once every 30 years, there would be a "famine, and people would eat each other."
The so-called prosperous times in history were merely prosperous for the powerful. Praising "prosperity" and "the eternal emperor" is akin to a servant praising their master, chives praising the sickle, and cannon fodder praising the gunners. From the perspective of the common people, none of those so-called prosperous times were truly prosperous for the people.
In 1329, Zhang Yanghao passed through Tongguan in Shaanxi, with the Yellow River roaring beneath his feet, gazing at Chang'an and Xianyang, reflecting on the vicissitudes of history, leaving behind a famous line that has been passed down for a thousand years: "When the nation flourishes, the common people suffer; when it perishes, the common people suffer."
Mr. Lu Xun said: The common people are "the cattle and horses of prosperous times, and the cannon fodder of chaotic times." What is better about "prosperity" compared to chaos? "Chaos is an era when the common people want to be slaves but cannot; prosperity is a time when they are temporarily stable as slaves."
"If the common people cannot enjoy the prosperity of the times and instead suffer because of it, what does such prosperity have to do with the common people?"