主题：【原创】意大利侧记(3)：夕阳下的那布勒斯 -- 风雨声

The End of a World

Pictures of a lost Empire

Giuliano Bertuccioli

When Fr. Nani arrived at Hanzhong in 1904, China’s millenary Empire was in full decline and seemed close to an end. The various wars waged during the previous century against overseas invaders ?C Europeans as well as Japanese ?C had resulted in disastrous defeats and deep humiliation, even if they had only dented its territorial integrity. An Empire which for centuries had regarded itself at the centre of everything, above every other nation, was eventually forced to give in to yield territory and acknowledge the superiority of foreign nations no larger than its provinces, that it would once have treated as tributaries. Huge damage was caused by a number of bloody internal revolts, central as well as peripheral, which depopulated whole regions, destroyed prominent wealthy towns and drained the country’s resources. As a last proud effort, the Boxer Rebellion attempted to shake off foreign aggression, hoping in vain to move the clock a hundred years backwards. But the Empire was invaded, its capital humiliated by occupation, and it was forced to sign even worse dishonourable conditions.

One wonders how, despite such repeated blows the Empire had resisted, why it did not fall much earlier. Many answers can be suggested, but two in particular deserve mention. The sheer extension of the Empire made sure that no single Western nation could attempt occupation single-handed, while rivalry prevented any joint action to this effect. Furthermore, the ancient bureaucratic framework of the Empire was able to hold it together and acted as a catalyst. Its administrative machinery was kept still running for a long time, as it had been for centuries earlier, by a class of bureaucrats ?C the mandarins ?C senior state officials who were selected through extremely difficult examinations. «Emperors and invaders pass by, but mandarins remain... » was repeated at every change of dynasty, at every invasion; without the mandarins the Empire would have ended much earlier, just like the Roman Empire. Despite their many defects, they were in fact held together by an extraordinary corporate feeling and by the bold, arrogant knowledge that they constituted the pillars on which the state rested.

But the entrance examination for mandarins was held for the last time in 1904. The following year this age-old tradition of state exams was abolished so that the Empire would no longer be administered by civilian mandarins chosen for their brilliant yet useless literary and Confucian learning, or by military mandarins selected through archery and weight-lifting tests suitable, at most, for recruiting the leaders of a Medieval army. Mandarins were only useless remnants and the Empire, in order to survive, had to renew itself, get rid of these incompetent bureaucrats and replace them with a new class of administrators, a new type of officials. But where could such skilled individuals, loyal to the Empire and driven by a deep commitment to the State, be found? The reforms were too hasty and came too late to yield the expected results. The Empire’s fall came only a few years later, in 1911, brought on by the selfsame new class of soldiers to whom it had committed its future, and China entered a long period of civil war, without a central government, at the mercy of the army; the country was ruled by the warlords, that is the military leaders who had established their personal control over each province.

Father Nani arrived in China just after the abolition of state examinations and of the mandarinate had marked the end of a whole age. The demise of the mandarins brought about the end of many other traditions and customs; it also started a troubled and distressful process of change destined to carry on for decades. The society of imperial China had always relied on the strict principles of Confucianism, which favoured stability and order, separation between traditional social classes (peasants, artisans, merchants, literati), respect for the hierarchy, gender divisions and the submission of women. But Confucianism was no longer a state doctrine or the foundation of Chinese culture: the traditional classes had to accept a new middle ?C class of merchants from the coastal towns, educated in the western manner; the hierarchy was thrown into disarray; gender divisions, which entailed the inferiority of woman, were upset.

From 1904 to 1914 Father Nani was confined to a part of inner China still strongly governed by tradition, where with his camera he captured the last images of a dying world and witnessed the first changes. He recorded everything: male and female portraits, both posing and during everyday work, festivals and ceremonies, both joyful and sad, the monuments of a civilization anxious to deny itself and thus destined to disappear out of neglect and carelessness, the humanitarian work of fellow?Cmissionaries. His precious photographs bear witness to a world which disappeared less than a century ago and yet seems ages away from present?Cday China.

Father Nani ended the age of the great photographers and pioneers who from the second half of the 19th century onwards, regardless of endless difficulties and using makeshift equipment often in dramatic conditions, recorded aspects of China that would otherwise be unknown or restricted to the descriptions of travellers. An Italian photographer, called Felice Beato left some dramatic pictures of the battlefield just after the taking of the Dagu (Taku) forts and a few views of Peking, including one of the beautiful city wall, the only documentary evidence of an exceptional monument which was regrettably destroyed after 1950.

So we can proudly say that both the first and the last great photographer of imperial China were both Italians. But while Felice Beato’s name is known by very few Italians and the original copies of his photographs can be found only in the American and English museums that fondly preserve them, the work of Fr. Nani never left Italy.

http://www.artmuseum.gov.mo/italy2001/english/intro_e.htm