Huizhou Culture

The good treatment of the relationship between man and nature is not only the protection of the ecological environment, but also the maintenance of the living environment of man himself, indirectly or the care of the psychological environment of man. Ancient Huizhou society is for us.

2. The relationship between people

Wherever there are people, there are contradictions. Harmonious society does not mean a society without contradictions and disputes. Social harmony should be based on the elimination of a large number of social disharmony. The key is to see how to solve contradictions.

Summarizing the ancient Huizhou society, we find that "rule by both etiquette and law" is the basic principle of dealing with and solving the relationship between people in Huizhou society. In Huizhou, the communication between people is always "courtesy first" and "law first". As a result, contradictions are seldom intensified. Once contradictions intensify and disputes arise, Huizhou people will not take the form of violence such as armed struggle to solve them, but will activate an internal adjustment mechanism generated in Huizhou society and resolve contradictions step by step. The logical process is as follows: first, the parties consult, and then form a negotiation to settle disputes by means of peace agreement and ink negotiation; if the negotiation fails, the people of the same race will appeal to the clan elders and ancestral temples, and the people of different races will appeal to the covenants and cultural associations to arbitrate and mediate disputes; and then, all kinds of contradictions and disputes will be settled by arbitration and mediation. The ultimate solution to the dispute is to call an official lawsuit and defend their own interests by filing a lawsuit.

The above experiences and practices of Huizhou society have direct reference significance today.

3. The Relation between Man and Society
Harmonious society should also effectively handle the relationship between people and society. In this regard, the basic principles and concepts held by ancient Huizhou people are: obedience and effectiveness.

Huizhou is a clan society. In ancient Huizhou, the interests of clans and society as a whole were always greater than those of individuals and families, and the interests of the state were paramount. There are many aspects of this manifestation, which can only be illustrated by two enlightening points for us today.

One is the public welfare consciousness of Huizhou people, which is very strong. There are many public and public welfare undertakings in Huizhou's countryside, such as bridge repair, road repair, Pavilion construction, trench construction and dam construction, which are mostly donated by villagers. In the past, we only know that Huizhou merchants are keen on serving the society, but we don't know that this is still the common behavior of all the people in Huizhou. In some places, the concern for public welfare has even settled into a custom. For example, every year in the 1th day of the seventh month of the Chinese lunar calendar, the village of Hang Kou, Qimen, has a "Road Festival". Every village, men, women, old and young, has to volunteer for one day's public welfare activities, such as road repair, weeding, river cleaning and public sanitation. This custom has lasted from the Tang Dynasty to the present day.

The second is the tax consciousness of Huizhou people, which is very conscious. Now we always say "taxation is glorious". Historically, Huizhou people have never considered it glorious to pay taxes, but just considered it shameful not to pay taxes. It seems to Huizhou people that paying the state's tax and grain according to law is a matter of course, but it is impossible not to pay it. Sometimes Huizhou people sell land, land, mountains and houses for paying taxes. There are plenty of concrete examples.

4. The relationship between man and himself
To achieve social harmony, first of all, we must do a good job in the harmony of people's own spirit and soul. In this regard, there are at least two points worth our attention in the history of Huizhou people.

Firstly, Huizhou people have their own persistent pursuit of life in their lifetime. It originates from three aspects of motivation and embodies three levels of pursuit of goals. The first level is the pursuit of survival under the pressure of reality. The biggest reality of Huizhou is that there are many mountains, few land, barren land and dense people. Although the scenery in Huizhou is beautiful, the environment is still very bad from the perspective of human long-term survival and development, especially in the production of food and other necessities. Therefore, the pressure of reality compels Huizhou people to strive for their survival and development all the time. They have to do everything possible to expand their living space and seek the way of survival outside their own surroundings and realistic conditions. This has produced a kind of motive force, which drives every Huizhou people to strive hard in their lifetime. The second level is the pursuit of "Kangwu Zong" in the call of clans. Huizhou is a clan society with the legacy of Tang and Song Dynasty formed by the emigrants of the great families in the Central Plains. Every clan regards the survival and development of the clan as the representative of the best interests, and regards the "Kangwu clan" as the highest pursuit of clan development, with which every clan is restrained and required to make unremitting efforts. The third level is the pursuit of the social responsibility of "peace of the world". As a "Cheng Zhu Queli", Huizhou has a solid deposit of Confucian culture. Almost everyone has a positive attitude towards life after joining the WTO. He consciously and unconsciously carries out his life pursuit of "self-cultivation, family unity, governing the country and world peace".

Because Huizhou people in history have the above persistent pursuit of life, they can effectively adjust themselves and grasp the relationship between themselves in this consistent pursuit.

Secondly, the leisure life of Huizhou people is very healthy and full. Leisure life is an important manifestation of a person's self-control. In the Song Dynasty, emphasis on literature and education had settled into a social custom. Huizhou people's leisure life was always dominated by tending to attach literature to education. There were countless scholars studying, scholars blogging, women, children and old men chanting poems and painters. At present, we have found a lot of Huizhou folk poems, anthologies, couplets, music scores, Phonograms and so on. The rural society and clans in Huizhou actively advocate and guide this healthy mass life, such as running literary clubs, Xingshi clubs, inviting theatre troupes and practicing festivals. There are many bans and conventions among Huizhou people. If someone breaks the contract, the content of the penalty often includes "a stage of punishment". For those who idle and trouble gambling, not only family rules and family laws are strictly prohibited, but also the world despises them. So far, many banned gambling tablets and abstaining from gambling in history have been left behind.

If we firmly pursue life, we will not be idle; if we live a healthy leisure life, we will not be idle. Harmonious society should be like this!

III. Social Security of the Harmonious Society in Huizhou

A harmonious society must have a series of social security. Ancient Huizhou society has been able to maintain stability for thousands of years because of the existence of the social security system and mechanism of the civil society itself. It is embodied in the following aspects:

1. Guarantee of Relief within Clan

In Huizhou, people must have surnames, surnames must have clans and clans must belong to clans. Every clan in Huizhou regards sympathy and relief to poor clans as the basic requirement of a harmonious clan, forming a system and writing it into clan rules, family laws and genealogy. Huizhou's clans all have Clan property, which is used not only for clan sacrifices and other activities, but also for running clan schools, offering money, plaster and fire, and relieving the lonely, widowed and impoverished clans. So in history, there were few "Huazi" in Huizhou.

2. Guarantee of Social Charitable Relief

Huizhou is a deep deposit area of Confucian culture, and benevolence and charity are the mainstream value orientation of society, especially among Huizhou businessmen. Huizhou businessmen have done a lot of righteous deeds, including Yitian, Yicang, Yihu, Yimound, etc. in return for the society and relief the poor. At least after the mid-Qing Dynasty, this kind of charitable donation of Huizhou merchants has also formed a "statute" in some industries, its behavior has the nature of organization, thus further maturing the social charity relief in Huizhou.

3. Guarantee of Mutual Assistance of Non-governmental Economy

In history, there were many forms of folk mutual aid in Huizhou, the most typical of which was the mutual aid of folk economic and financial associations. Boshan Bookstore, the Huizhou Research Center of Anhui University, has a large number of meeting books. Among them, there are 18 Qimen Xie's meeting books, all of which are in complete volumes. They are the same household and have gone through four generations: Tongzhi, Guangxu, Xuantong and the Republic of China.

4. Guarantee of Medical Socialization

Medical Science in Huizhou was very developed in history. After the Southern Song Dynasty, Xin'an Medical School was formed, which had great influence. In addition to great achievements in theoretical research and clinical practice, the social characteristics of Xin'an medical practitioners include: first, patriarchal character. In order to ensure the prosperity and development of Huizhou's clan, the clan always strives to increase the birth rate of the clan population and reduce the mortality rate. Therefore, it becomes a custom to train and support doctors within the clan and to pass them on from generation to generation. In fact, the existence of clan doctors constitutes a part of Huizhou's clan division of labor. They are the health messengers of clan. The family of medical practitioners is handed down from generation to generation, with few generations and more than 20 generations. They constitute a medical family and form a very distinct phenomenon of family chain in the history of Xin'an medicine. Second, ethics. Influenced by Confucian traditional values, Xin'an physicians are "good doctors instead of good ones". Benevolence is their basic value pursuit. Emphasizing justice over profit is their common moral characteristic. Although medical practitioners are also a profession of healing, their professionalization process has strong ethics. Huizhou businessmen are "Confucian businessmen" while medical practitioners are "Confucian doctors". Medical practitioners generally have good medical ethics and consciously shoulder the social responsibility of saving lives and injuries.

5. History of very few wars

Huizhou "has a solid barrier mountain in the east, a cold Zhejiang Mountains in the west, a dangerous river beach in the South and an evil Huangshan Mountains in the north." In the past, there were few soldiers. Except for the Taiping Army Rebellion in the years of Xianfeng and Tongzhi in Qing Dynasty, which had caused disasters to Huizhou, Huizhou was basically in a peaceful development environment in other periods, which was also an important condition for Huizhou society to maintain stability and prosperity for thousands of years.

The construction of a harmonious society is a huge social system engineering, whose work involves all aspects of society. Although Huizhou people's efforts in building a harmonious society in history are epochal and regional, their basic concepts and practices still have important enlightenment significance today. (Liu Boshan)