Recently, Li Zhurun, a former Xinhua News Agency reporter, came forward to clarify that the rumor that "students at West Point learn from Lei Feng", which has been circulating in China for many years and has a wide influence, was the western April Fool's Day news he introduced under the pseudonym "Xin Li" at198/kloc-0. Throughout history, there are many such rumors, which have caused great influence intentionally or unintentionally. Only in the late Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China, choose the one with the deepest influence, and give three examples:
The word "the sick man of East Asia" is needless to say about the scale of the wave of nationalism in modern China. However, the western media used this word to describe China in the late Qing Dynasty, and the original intention had nothing to do with the physique of Chinese people. Tracing back to the source, as Shanghai Sports Daily said:18961June 17, "the English newspaper in the concession reprinted the monograph of that school year in London, England, calling it' husband China, the sick man of the East'. Since then, China people have often been denounced by westerners as "the sick man of East Asia". The so-called "English newspaper in the concession" refers to Zilin Xibao, the so-called "monograph". At that time, the reformist publication "Current Affairs" published a Chinese translation called "The Truth of China". The main purpose of the article is to criticize the failure of the reform in the Qing court that day. At the beginning, I said that the politics of the Qing Dynasty was "insensitive for a long time" and was a "sick man". There isn't a word about the constitution of China people.
In fact, until today, as a habit. The word "sick man" still often appears in the political news headlines of western media. For example, The Economist reported the following contents: European patients (1999/06/03), patients who revived Europe (2003/07/24) and real European patients (2005/05/03).
The word "sick man" was first used to describe the physique of China people, and it was Liang Qichao, the first public opinion mouthpiece in the late Qing Dynasty. In "Xinmin Shuo" published by 1903, Liang accused China people: "If you don't pay attention to hygiene, the wedding date is too early, so the seeds will be passed down, and the seeds will be weak ... without exercise ... This is the so-called weakness ... touching the bed consumes its energy, smoking opium kills its body ... 40 million people, but you can't get it." They are all sick people. "From then on, foreigners said that China people were' the sick man of East Asia', and as the wave of' nationalism saving China' spread wider and wider that day, it suddenly became a' conclusion'. Looking back at this distortion, although it played a miraculous role in inspiring national sentiment on that day, it also made Chinese people forget the spur of the word "sick man" to China's political reform.
Example 2: The survival instinct under the rumor of "killing Han soldiers" opened the door to the demise of the Qing Dynasty.
In 1911, when the regime was crowned revolution, the feat of "Wuchang Shouyi" once became the focus of contention among revolutionary parties. In fact, the most critical factor contributing to "Shouyi" should be "rumor".
In the early summer of that year, the saying of "killing Tartars on August 15th" had spread all over Wuhan. In response, Governor Rui Cheng of Huguang ordered that starting from June (July 26th), Wuhan Knife Shop must engrave the brand number when selling knives, and all customers who buy more than five knives must register their names and addresses. And suddenly ordered the military camp to celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival one day in advance to disrupt the possible scheduled uprising date.
Nothing happens in the Mid-Autumn Festival, and rumors die. On October 9th, 65438/KLOC-0, revolutionaries accidentally exploded while making bombs, which triggered a search and rumor. First, it was widely rumored that "party member is being killed according to the roster", then it suddenly changed to "party member is being caught according to whether there are long braids", and then it suddenly changed to "the roster of Han soldiers is being compiled to kill all Han soldiers". -The fact is that Rui Cheng, the governor of Huguang, took the advice of most new army officers, destroyed the captured roster, and did not pursue party member in the army.
If the rumor hadn't developed to the point of "killing all the Han soldiers", the so-called "Wuchang Shouyi" probably wouldn't have happened-even at the most optimistic statistics, less than one-eighth of the new army in Wuhan that day could barely be counted as a revolutionary party. Gong Liu, the backbone of the revolutionary party, also admitted: "Sun Wu worked among the soldiers ... At one time, the soldiers were very timid. They ... didn't want to make a definite commitment to participate in the revolution at a certain time. We held secret meetings many times and finally thought that the only way to induce some of them to participate in the revolution was to threaten that if they did not participate, they would be killed. " Obviously, the vast majority of soldiers are unwilling to risk their lives for the "revolutionary ideal." However, the rumor of "killing all the Han soldiers" pushed it into the desperate situation of "fighting with it now, or fighting with it or dying", and the "first righteousness" began outside the revolutionary's plan and suddenly broke out. ②
1924: Sun Yat-sen "passed away"
On May 1924, 13 and 14, Reuters sent special telegrams announcing that Sun Yat-sen had died of meningitis, which quickly caused an uproar at home and abroad. People from all walks of life asked the newspaper if the news was true.
In Hong Kong, the British Business Daily and Chen De's Western Newspaper took the lead in publishing the news of "Sun Yat-sen's death". According to Chen Dexi, "Dr. Sun Yat-sen, the founder of the Republic of China and the most famous in China, passed away at 1: 30 this morning". In Shanghai, on the afternoon of June 5438+04, the amazing news of "Sun Yat-sen's death" spread all over the city. The Republic of China Daily newspaper in Shanghai has become the center of doubters. At that time, the major newspapers in Shanghai had already found out the portrait of Sun Yat-sen, scrambled to make bronze plates, and prepared thick black borders on all sides, which were printed in the newspapers the next day. Some impatient newspapers have sent Sun Yat-sen's copperplate prints to the typesetting room. The bad news has not been confirmed, so the copper plate was withdrawn from the typesetting room. On May 16, Guangdong police arrested Huang Xianzhao, a Reuters correspondent in Guangzhou, for spreading rumors, and the rumors subsided.
1928: A non-existent evocation event.
1928 One day at the end of March, Mr. Yao Zhang, who lives in Xiaguan, Nanjing, took his one-year-old son to the east of the city by carriage and turned around and returned to his home in the northwest of the city. That night, the child began to have a fever. Yao Zhang thought it was chilly in early spring, and the child caught cold, so he asked the doctor to take medicine to drive away the cold. However, the next day, the child had a high fever and began to vomit, with bruises on his body. The Yao family began to panic. When they learned that Yao Zhang had brought the children to the east of the city the day before, they suddenly felt a catastrophe. Yao Zhang, who seldom goes out, doesn't know that a shocking thing is happening in Nanjing.
It is said that the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum built by 1925 is about to be completed, and masons need the souls of 160 boys and 160 girls to close Longkou. In order to get the souls of these boys and girls, the municipal government is conducting a survey of registered permanent residence and preschool children, and needs to report their birthdays. Around the East Gate of Nanjing, several children have been taken away and died young. Three days later, Yao Zhang's son passed away. Yao's family was heartbroken. Neighbors are even more frightened by this, and the rumor of Sun Yat-sen's ecstasy gradually spread throughout the city.
As soon as the rumor began to spread, the Nanjing Social Investigation Office immediately reported to the Education Bureau, asking the Education Bureau to order all primary schools to explain it to parents seriously and patiently, and to investigate school-age children purely for the benefit of citizens, for the sake of municipal administration and for education, so as to dispel the rumor. On April 2nd, the Education Bureau of Nanjing Special City held an enlarged meeting. At the meeting, it was proposed to advertise to explain the significance of investigating registered permanent residence and school-age children, so as to dispel the misunderstanding of the public. Soon, the Education Bureau issued a vernacular notice explaining that Sun Yat-sen's Mausoleum needed a child's soul, which was purely a rumor to confuse the audience.
The explanatory role of the Education Bureau seems to be quite limited. After mid-April, the rumors of ecstasy intensified. Since the victims of the myth of ecstasy are no longer limited to children, adults in Nanjing hang a red cloth bag on their bodies, which contains tea, peach leaves, uncooked rice and seven small pieces of women's menstrual cloth to ward off evil spirits.
At 2 pm on April 17, Nanjing Public Security Bureau held a seminar.
More than 50 people from agriculture, industry, commerce, women's federations, public security bureau officials, news media, etc., discussed the methods of preventing rumors from physiological and psychological dimensions. According to the doctor's diagnosis, the death of children and citizens is actually an infectious disease "diarrhea". It is in the context of the construction of Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum that the accidental coincidence of children's death in Dongmen area, coupled with the opportunity of investigation of school-age children, led to the spread of rumors.
The whole of Nanjing has been mobilized. All walks of life spontaneously organized the abolition of superstitious propaganda teams and publicly dismissed rumors to set the record straight. The mayor also lectured the staff of the Public Security Bureau the next afternoon, demanding to expand the people's right to know and disclose the trial details of dozens of cases involving rumors. /kloc-On the afternoon of 0/9, he called 64 delegations from Nanjing to talk in the First Public Library. Explain in detail all kinds of rumors about ecstasy, and ask each group to publicize and explain in detail to relatives and friends. On the same day, the Nanjing Municipal Government also issued a government notice explaining the rumors of ecstasy, and announced the trial results of the "witch" handed over by the citizens to the Public Security Bureau, proving that all the so-called ecstasy things were false.
(Excerpted from Reading History Magazine)