[Abstract] Ancient and clumsy people probably admire the Han Dynasty, and elegant people mostly like the Tang and Song Dynasties. As for those who intend to cross back to the Ming Dynasty, I think they are more or less immoral. Although the erotic Ming Dynasty was a country of philosophers who emphasized "governing the world with filial piety", why was the king and father so rampant?

The existing brothel site in the ancient town of Haining. The picture is from the network.
I am often asked some very cross cutting questions. For example, which dynasty do you want to go back to most? I have always been politically correct in saying that no one is as good as today, but in fact, I have also secretly speculated about various possibilities. Generally speaking, ancient and clumsy people probably admire the Han Dynasty, and elegant people mostly like the Tang and Song Dynasties. As for those who intend to cross back to the Ming Dynasty, I think they are more or less immoral.
Of course, I was evil at the beginning. In the eyes of many serious and not lascivious historians, the Ming Dynasty is actually commendable. For example, the Sinologist Fei Zhengqing spoke highly of the Ming Dynasty and called it the "perfect body" evolved from the feudal monarchy; The British historians Cui Ruide and Mou Fuli praised the Ming Dynasty in the Cambridge History of the Ming Dynasty of China, saying, "The relatively stable, closed and splendid traditional Chinese culture in its final stage is becoming more and more mature." I admire this sentence closely, mainly because I didn't understand it the first time, After thinking it over and over again, I found that it was awesome - I said a long string of words as if I didn't say anything.
Therefore, in order to truly experience that era, we'd better avoid the wordiness of historians and go back to Daming directly. We set ourselves to enter the brain of an avatar on an afternoon during Zhengde's reign in the Ming Dynasty. The man woke up leisurely from his bed, and the doctor was feeling his pulse... accidentally, two wet thread bound books fell off the man's pillow. The doctor picked it up and looked at it. One was called "The Secret Play of Spring Night", and the other was "Ruyi Jun Zhuan", the originator of spoofing pornographic works. The doctor frowned and stopped feeling his pulse. He turned his head and said to him word by word, "What you have is the exhaustion of kidney water.".
So our hero, who has not yet officially appeared, is in such a tragedy - just for fun, the above paragraph is actually a short plot of the world love novel "Awakening Marriage". This novel, written in the early Qing Dynasty and written in the Ming Dynasty, is the most authentic and subtle depiction of the details of people's life in the marketplace. In the Ming Dynasty, the reading style of the market class was flourishing, but the reading materials were not sages' books, but the yellow books of Zibuyu. Especially in the late Ming Dynasty, there were yellow books such as Roufutuan, Jinpingmei, and Ruyi Jun Zhuan on the pillows of ordinary family men. More salty are the extremely vulgar street stall books such as "Unofficial History of Embroidered Ta" and "Wonders of Wave History". Strangely, they are all used as textbooks. At night, men will follow the description in the book and have a "field exercise" with their wives and concubines. It was the real life situation of the working people in the Ming Dynasty to always think about three inches below the navel.
However, in the Ming Dynasty, the development of Neo Confucianism was at its peak. The lofty moral people shouted on the table every day the noble idea of "preserving the heavenly principles and eliminating the desires of others", but it was the Spring Palace pictures, the art of living in rooms and various salty books that were widely spread among the people. In addition to the boudoirs of ordinary people, the brightly lit urban streets of the Ming Dynasty were full of brothels and songs. In contrast to the great brightness on the table, did the Ming Dynasty have a "two skin face"? The bright skin on the surface was written with Confucius and Mencius' benevolence, righteousness and morality, but when the skin was torn off, it was full of men, women and prostitutes.
Stop first. Is it too angry and "Lu Xun" to rush to such a conclusion? The benevolence, righteousness and morality on the table are hypocritical, but which generation is not? Who can rule such a vast country without pretending? Those who do not pretend in history have quickly become dirt. The ostensible disguise is for the sake of better concealment in private. Smart people are very open about it. As a result, in terms of the "obscenity" of secular life, the intelligent Ming Dynasty has thus collected the great achievements of the past, and often has brilliant inventions and creations, which cannot be ignored.
People often say that if there is something good on the top, there will be something good on the bottom. The reason why the folk pornographic culture in the Ming Dynasty was so developed had much to do with the advocacy of the upper rulers to "lead by example". Look at all the emperors in the Ming Dynasty. Since the Emperor Taizu, they have become more lustful and dissolute. Wu Zong Zhu Houzhao built a leopard room in the West Garden of the capital for sexual pleasure. The number of private rooms exceeded 200, which was the most magnificent "heaven and earth" in history. Later, Shizong Zhu Houxuan was addicted to aphrodisiac medicine during his administration. After eating the medicine, he played "thousand people chopping" in the harem, but he didn't go to court for more than 20 years. His son Mu Zong Zhu Zaige, grandson Shenzong Zhu Yijun, and great grandson Guangzong Zhu Changluo all inherited the glorious traditions of their ancestors, basically drinking aphrodisiac as boiling water, and spending every day in the "sea and sky feast". As far as Liufeng was concerned, even the great medical work Compendium of Materia Medica at that time was about to become a complete anthology of aphrodisiac drugs, in which nearly half of the drugs recorded had similar effects to Viagra.
The erotic Ming Dynasty was also a country of philosophers who emphasized "governing the world with filial piety". However, the moralists' view that the monarch and officials were like father and son made a good excuse for the officials to imitate the emperor's lecherous life. Is it true that I am a prostitute, but not my son? Taking aphrodisiac and lewdness became popular among officials. The tradition of Chinese officials, who are advanced by day and advanced by night, probably began in the Ming Dynasty. The most powerful person was Yan Song, a powerful minister in Jiajing. According to the Ming history, the only furniture in his bedroom was a bunch of naked women. From night to morning, he even used a "human toilet" to spit and wash when he got up. This is not just lewdness, but lewdness to the depths, almost abnormal.
My father is so dissolute, and parents are so dissolute. Is it possible that those who are ruled and taught by them all day long would not want to wade into the muddy waters of pornography and vulgarity? The matter of bed brother was originally popularized by the government from top to bottom. People without freedom were required to go to bed either here or there. No wonder Li Yu, a talented person in the late Ming Dynasty, said the wise saying "The world is really happy, count it and count it". It can be said that the rulers of the Ming Dynasty built a pyramid of desire for the world. Money and flesh are the bricks that fill it. However, this pyramid of desire that ran through the whole Ming Dynasty society was not only a symbol of their political wisdom, but also a symbol of their political wisdom. In addition to pleasure, the word "obscenity" was indeed a means of governing the country and maintaining social stability in the Ming Dynasty.
Since ancient times, the rebels are not those who are starving to death, but the losers who are full and have no place to vent their excess energy. After investigating the Hunan peasant movement, a great man in modern times came to the conclusion that the most revolutionary and rebellious people were not the poor, but the social idle people who secreted too much male hormones. If you want to reverse thinking and eliminate the rebels to the maximum extent, it is better to let the superfluous hormones overflow from society have a destination. Obscene culture and erotic industry are naturally the best places to go.
For the "obscenity" in the Ming Dynasty, Sinologist Gao Luopei's explanation is quite insightful. He believed that the so-called "bedroom art" and the proliferation of pornographic novels were in fact a kind of secular morality that was highly consistent with the social form at that time. In the Secret Drama Textual Research, Gao Lopei wrote that women in the Ming Dynasty lived in seclusion and lived hard. "Apart from overseeing rice, salt, jewelry, cosmetics, and plain tooth tags, they were happy to have sex." Therefore, the standard of a good man at that time was that "every time he controlled his wife, he would wait for her." In a polygamous society, women would be happy and their families would be harmonious, Only expect men to be more diligent in that respect. Therefore, obscene words maintain the stability of the family in a sense.
As for the so-called self-cultivation, family harmony, national governance and world peace, the first step is to make things at home harmonious. Moreover, for those whose lives were not harmonious, the Ming government built countless brothels. For example, at that time, Nanjing, a first tier city, had a large number of sound and color places, and "there were 3000 households with peaches and plums". There are not only the most vulgar meat selling, but also a slightly higher level of emotional companionship, chat, poetry and songs. All kinds of services are available, which was called "the fairyland of desire" by the time. Once the strong men and indignant young people go in, their heroism will be short of vitality. The self defined "harmonious prosperous age" of the Ming Dynasty is probably this kind of dreamlike, dreamy, and dreamy desire fairyland.
Perhaps, as the Cambridge History of the Ming Dynasty in China said, feudal rule in the Ming Dynasty has reached maturity and perfection. Face to face with filial piety to rule the world, but Li Zi is to rule the world with prostitution. This is indeed a kind of political wisdom, but it is not great wisdom. Otherwise, why did the Ming Dynasty, which lasted for more than 270 years, fail again overnight? There is a poem in "The Plum in the Golden Vase" that says well: "The 28 best people have a crisp body, and they use their swords to cut off fools at their waist. Although there is no head falling, they secretly teach you that your bone marrow is dry." Everything built by desire is illusory after all, and a kind of rule based on desire, whose "essence is exhausted and people die", may be just around the corner.