Undergraduate /
'A Coercive Passage' - Yongzheng Emperor (Common App historical figure) [3]
Hi everyone, you may have already seen this essay, but at that thread I requested to write about your comments because it was already submitted. However I recently decided to apply a college which has a later deadline, so I want you to help me edit the grammartical issues, and of course, tell me how you think about the essay. Thank you.
A Coercive Passage173 years ago, British artillery compelled China to open her gate; 160 years ago, Matthew Perry's naval fleet broke the mists of Japanese archipelago; 6 years ago, Yongzheng Emperor, the fifth emperor of Qing Dynasty who made the empire economically prosperous and significantly contributed to the last golden age during feudal China, killed a child's childhood by his biography.
Everyone's childhood is without any thoughts of pressure, danger or conspiracy, just like a blank paper, yet as soon as the blank paper is written with black "ink", the childhood ends because children view things simply with the "either black or white" method. A mature person analyzes things from different perspectives. A coercive passage to a new stage of life is what Yongzheng gave to me.
As a debatable emperor, Yongzheng has always been a mystery and a controversial topic of Chinese history. For example, did he usurp the throne? Were some of his policies such as establishing the Grand Council positive or negative? No affirmations can answer these questions. Adults understand that it is impossible to comment a historical figure as a "good" person like Cinderella or a "bad" person like the Big Bad Wolf. But when I first read about Yongzheng at the age of 11 and faced the complexity of the figure, I was like an explorer in a tropical rainforest. Everything contradictory about him flooded my brain: he killed his brothers and uncles just for the crown, but he has been respected through centuries. He was valued as the most significant contributor of Qing Dynasty, but he initiated the literary inquisitions. I had no idea. In my immature mind, I did not understand the conflicting facts, but since then, I began to realize that the world might not be as simple as I thought.
Ironically, on-lookers see more than players, Yongzheng, as a "player", saw much more than I did as an "on-looker". In 1735, a few months before he died, the architect who designed Yongzheng's mausoleum asked him what the contents of the epitaph were. He calmly said, "No gold is completely pure, and no man is perfect. Leave the tombstone blank and let the later generations comment on me." My "black-or-white" world has been broken since then because I finally knew that everyone has faults and contributions, and the faults and contributions cannot replace each other. Instead, both of them are the components of all the characters. Contradictions are more common than harmonies. I must adapt to them. In other words, my childhood was sentenced to death.
Getting out of childhood is a crucial step of life, but it can be either pleasant or painful. I have gained the skill to view things from wiser and more comprehensive perspectives, but I have had to make decisions among contradictory choices; I have known more about the society and the world, but the ugly parts have appeared in front of me as well. Is that good or bad? Again, I can't answer with an absolute judgment. But Sherlock Holmes' comment about the First World War in the end of His Last Bow could be my answer: "The east wind is cold and bitter, but a cleaner, better, stronger land will lie in the sunshine after the storm". Yongzheng is like the storm that cleared my happy memories as a child, but I have become a wiser, more capable person because of him.
