What is history: it is the echo of the past to the future, the reflection of the future on the past. - Hugo
"Good-looking skin bags are the same, and interesting souls are one of a thousand." The Qianlong Emperor was undoubtedly an emperor with a funny soul. At the age of seventy, he wrote with great interest the couplet "Seventy Heavenly Sons Ancient Six Emperors, Five Generations of Sun Zengyu". Surprisingly, however, the couplet later silenced The Chinese and Russian experts.
I. The territory of the Qing Dynasty
As the last great unified dynasty in China's feudal history, the Qing Dynasty had a vast territory. It stretches from the Pamir Plateau south of Lake Balkhash in the west to Central Asia Minor; the Sea of Japan, the Bohai Sea, the Yellow Sea, Sakhalin Island, Taiwan and nearby islands in the east; the Gorno Altai, Sayan Ridge, Waixing'an Ridge to the Sea of Okhotsk in the north; the Zengmu Dark Sands in the South Sands of the Nansha Islands; and the Southwest Himalayan Mountains, including more than 13 million square kilometers of land in Ladakh, all of which belonged to the Qing Dynasty.
The northeast of the Qing dynasty is the hometown of the Jurchens. During the Emperor Taiji period, the heilongjiang river to the left bank of the Selenge River was already under the control of the Qing Dynasty. After the Shunzhi Emperor fixed the capital in Beijing, the imperial court set up a capital in present-day Shenyang, Liaoning Province, to rule the northeast region. Sakhalin Island, as far as the Sea of Okhotsk, was also under jurisdiction at the time.
2. The eastern boundary between China and Russia
When the Qing Dynasty strengthened its control over the northeast of its homeland, Russia, which was expanding eastward, also looked at this land. In the seventh year of Shunzhi (1650), the Russian government sent Khabarov to lead more than a hundred people to knock on the gate of the northeast with cannons. In the same year, the Yaksa region of the Heilongjiang River Basin essentially fell under the control of Tsarist Russia.
In the fifteenth year of Shunzhi (1658), Tsarist Russia again occupied Nebuchu and used it as a stronghold to accelerate the encroachment on the surrounding areas. The Qing court had to send troops to deal with it, and the Russian government did not stop the pace of aggression because of this failure. During the Kangxi Dynasty, the Qing court sent troops twice, directed at Yaksa, which had been occupied by Tsarist Russia for a long time. The battle ended with a complete victory for the Qing court, and Tsarist Russia signed the Sino-Russian Treaty of Nebuchu (hereinafter referred to as the Treaty of Nebuchu) with the Qing court.
The Treaty of Nebuchadnezzar was signed on the basis of the defeat of Tsarist Russia, but the conditions set by the Qing court were very favorable to Tsarist Russia. The treaty covers the demarcation of the eastern boundary between the two countries, cross-border aggression and the handling of fugitives, and bilateral trade. According to the provisions of the "Treaty of Nebuchu", the eastern boundary between China and Russia is bounded by the Erguna River and the Gelbiqi River, and then from the source of the Gelbiqi River to the east to the sea, Lingnan belongs to China, and the north of the Ridge belongs to Russia.
In the fifth year of Yongzheng (1727), the Qing court and Tsarist Russia signed the Sino-Russian Treaty of Brynskiy and the Treaty of Kyakhta, which updated the border between the two countries. The new border begins with the first Ob between Kyakhta and Orwitu, which stretches east to the Erguna River and west to the Shabinai Ridge. To the north of the border belongs to Russia and to the south belongs to China.
Since the Qing court of the Kangxi and Yongzheng dynasties signed a border treaty with Tsarist Russia, there has been no large-scale military conflict on the northeast frontier for more than a hundred years. Sakhalin Island, in the western part of the Sea of Okhotsk, still belongs to China at this time.
But it is an indisputable fact that this century of calm was bought by the Qing court for a total of 232,000 square kilometers of land from the east bank of the Selenge River in the upper reaches of the Heilongjiang River to the west bank of the Erguna River and the Uddi River Basin.
The "peace" approach to land eventually took place on Sakhalin Island.
3. Qianlong's Heshou Stone Stele
In the eighth year of Xianfeng (1858), through the Sino-Russian Treaty of Hun, a large area of land originally belonging to China between Heilongjiang and Waixing'anling was occupied by Russia. Two years later, Sakhalin Island, then China's easternmost island, was also acquired by Russia through the Treaty of Beijing. To tell the truth, the inequality between these two treaties is obvious, it is a naked exploitation of the Kangxi and Yongzheng eras.
Unequal treaties were like cold knives, and about 1.5 million square kilometers of Land in China were cut off by Russia. People can't help but sigh at the weakness of that era, and what makes people sigh is the undeserved attitude of the Qing court when the land is lost.
The land ceded to Russia by the Qing court was inhabited by a number of ethnic minorities with weak local concepts. Due to the long-term influence of concepts such as "the whole world can not be the royal land", "the world is the world", "the kingdom of heaven", etc., the foreign policy of the Qing court is mostly manifested as "giving way and changing the recruitment of security". Sakhalin Island was not where Tianzi lived, and it was sought by neighboring countries, so the Qing court gave it up. Tsarist Russia was silent, and it was a burst of joy. The Qing court was silent, it was a kind of indifference.
In the 1990s, a group of Russian scholars went to Sakhalin Island to investigate and found a chinese-character stone stele. Because of the language barrier, they contacted the Chinese side. As a result, both sides were surprised: "Seventy Heavenly Sons Ancient Six Emperors, Five Generations of Sun Zengyu One." This is exactly the famous sentence of Qianlong in those years.
When Qianlong wrote this couplet, his pride overflowed into words. There were only six emperors over seventy years old, and Qianlong reigned the longest. Of these six, he was the only one with five generations of the same church.
To celebrate his high birthday, Qianlong wrote this couplet and was erected by a carved stone on Sakhalin Island, the easternmost part of the territory at that time.
A piece of the Qianlong Emperor's triumphant couplet appeared on Sakhalin Island in the form of stone carvings, evoking people's embarrassment.
Since the Qing Dynasty, the Sino-Russian border issue has brought many troubles to people. Although the monument celebrating Qianlong's birthday found on Sakhalin Island is silent, the past behind it may be unexpected by the Qianlong Emperor.