After Wang Gong received the order, he said to Xu Huizu, Claviyo and others: "Xu Aiqing, Chen Aiqing, Fu Aiqing, it's getting late today, I will give you a meal with me." ”

"Thank you, Your Majesty." They immediately bowed down and thanked him.

Yunxi responded with a smile, and said to Claviyo and 5, "Claviyo, 5, I will also give you a meal together." He said this sentence in Chinese and asked Fu An to translate it.

Chen Ji wanted to admonish, but after thinking about it, he didn't say anything. There is also a precedent for His Majesty to give foreign envoys a meal together, as long as they are eaten separately.

"Thank you for the gift of His Majesty the Emperor." Claviyo and 5 also bowed down to express their gratitude.

Meals came up quickly. The kitchen had been waiting for a long time, and when I heard Wang Gong's order, I immediately sent the soup that had been boiling, and then fried the meat and vegetables that had already been cut, and the sumptuous dinner was ready.

Before the meal was served, Claviyo and 5 were attracted by the aroma of the food; When Yun Xi moved his chopsticks, Claviyo and 5 tasted it, and immediately their tongues were swallowed, and they praised loudly: "It's really delicious!" ”

Yun Xi smiled. He didn't understand what they were saying, but he could tell what they meant by looking at their expressions. "The two messengers don't need to be in a hurry, eat slowly, and there is more. Besides, even if you don't have it today, you can still eat it for the next few days. He said in English.

"Your Majesty, we are so surprised. It was the first time we had such a delicious meal. ”

5 said: "Your Majesty, I won't say much about the food of the European countries, but we have also sent many envoys to the heavenly countries, and the ordinary people of these heavenly countries do not eat well, but the aristocratic diet is still very particular, and the taste is good, but it is not as good as this meal." If it's better than the food, Daming will definitely be able to rank first in the world. ”

"Haha, it's true, Daming's rice is the most delicious in the world, but European countries also have their own specialties." Yun Xi smiled: "For example, architecture and painting, astronomy and navigation, Europe also has its own uniqueness. ”

"Although Europe is not as good as the Ming Dynasty, it does have its own uniqueness." 5 said. He was of course very happy to hear the emperor of the Ming Dynasty praise them.

"I wonder what masters of architecture and painting, astronomy and navigation are there in Europe today?" Yun Xi asked again.

"This, Your Majesty, Giotto di Bondona was a recognized master of painting decades ago, but he has been dead for more than sixty years, although there have been ...... and other famous painters, but they are not masters. ”

Giovanni Pisano was famous, built many churches and created a new style of architecture, but he also died. After the person, such as ...... Although he is very powerful, he is not as good as him. At the time of our departure, however, there was a young man in his twenties in Florence whose surname was Beroneleschi, who was said to be very talented, and the local bishop commissioned him to build the cathedral of the city. ”

"What master can come out of astronomy and navigation? Where is the astronomy, it will not change for thousands of years, and navigation is only sailing according to the star chart, it is just skilled, what master can be produced? 5 said.

Yun Hee's face showed an unswerving look. Of course, it was not without purpose that he had just praised Europe. At this time, the Renaissance should have begun, and Europe was about to enter an era of talent. 5. As a diplomat, you should know a lot of things when you go south and north, and you should know all the masters. Yun Xi held a handful of Europe just to ask him to name such people, and then he sent someone to 'invite them all over'.

But he didn't expect 5 to say that there was no master in Europe at this time, which disappointed him. After a while, he instructed the emissaries sent to the Golden Horde, and if they could make a trip to Europe, they would try to invite some famous painters, sculptors, architects, and so on. ’

Yunxi lowered his head to think about things, and was about to say something more when he saw Claviyo talking to 5. Seeing this, Yun Xi thought that he didn't have anything important to tell them, so he didn't hurry to speak, turned his head to Wang Gong and said, "Wang Gong, have you packed up your things?" ”

When Yun Xi spoke, Wang Gong was looking sideways at Claviyo and 5, and was stunned when he heard Yun Xi's question, and then reacted, "The official family, except for the things that the official family carries with them, the rest have already been packed up, and they will be cleaned up immediately after the official family gets up tomorrow." ”

"Okay." Yun Xi praised first, and then asked with a smile, "What are you looking at?" ”

"Official, the minion has never seen yellow hair. The minions had always thought that everyone's hair was black, but this was the first time he had seen hair that wasn't black, so he couldn't help but take a few more looks. ”

"Only a few Europeans don't have black hair, and everywhere else has black hair." Yun Xi said.

"Why isn't their hair black?"

"This, because they live in a colder place, is to have a lighter hair color. And do you see if their skin is a little whiter too? ”

"Huh?" Wang Gong listened to Yun Xi's words and looked at the two of them carefully, and then said: "Official, although it is not clear that the light is shining at dark now, according to the experience of the slaves watching people on Chinese New Year's Eve for more than ten years, their skin is not white. ”

"Huh? Are they not in vain? Yoon-hee turned his face to look at them, trying to get a closer look at whether their skin was whiter. But under the lights, it is difficult to see whether it is white or not.

At this moment, he suddenly heard the word "Negro" come out of Claviyo's mouth, and he couldn't help but say, "Claviyo." ”

"Your Majesty, what do you tell me?" Claviyo said in English.

"That word you just said Negro means black?" Yun Xi asked.

"Your Majesty still understands Castilian?" Claviyo said in amazement.

"Isn't that an English word?"

"Your Majesty, there is no such word in English, this is Castilian, and there is also this word in Portuguese."

'Huh? At this time, there was no word 'Negro' in the English language? Yun Xi was surprised.

But it doesn't matter, and Yun Xi suddenly spoke to him because of this. He asked, "You Europeans, do you think you're white?" ”

"Your Majesty, we do consider ourselves white."

"Then why do you think you're white?"

"Your Majesty, in our European culture, white symbolizes holiness, purity, nobility, and wisdom, while black symbolizes lowliness, wickedness, filth, and barbarism. That being the case, of course, we don't want to think of ourselves as black, but as white. ”

"At the same time, it happened that on the African road south of Europe, there were many very dark-skinned people. So we think of ourselves as white; Of course, people with dark skin are called blacks. ”

"Isn't this the Kunlun slave written in the Tang legend! Kunlun Nu is said to be like black charcoal. Wang Gong whispered.

Yun Xi didn't hear Wang Gong's words, he suddenly became curious, and asked, "Then what kind of people do you think the big cannibals and Han people are?" ”

"Of course, the big cannibals and Han Chinese are also white."

Claviyo said in a very firm tone: "Although the Great Cannibals follow a different religion from us Europeans, their civilization is very high, their country is strong, their people are rich, and they are naturally white. We passed through the Great Food Peninsula to 3 o'clock through Baghdad, and even though the city was once slaughtered by 1, the wreckage can still see the prosperity of the year. In the whole of Europe, only Venice is comparable to Genoa. ”

"What about the Han Chinese? Why do you think Han Chinese are white? Yun Xi said in a peculiar tone.

"Your Majesty, the Ming Dynasty is now the most powerful country in the world, and even if we only come to Yiwu, a city on the edge of the Ming Dynasty, and have just experienced war, we can feel the wealth and civilization of the local people, so of course the Han people are also white."

"And your majesty, do you think that the complexion of the Han people is darker than that of us Europeans? I've also seen a lot of Han Chinese these days, and their complexion is as white as we Europeans. Occasionally, you can see women on the street, and these women are also white like us, and they look very much like the women of Castile. ”

"Of course, it would be better if the Han people could believe in God." Claviyo replied.

For a while, Yun Xi didn't know what to say. Claviyo's words just now contradict his education and cognition in many years of his previous life. And he gave birth to a new question: 'If Europeans thought that Han Chinese were white at this time, why would later generations be considered yellow?' ’

Yun Xi didn't know that in fact, the term yellow race appeared with a concept coined at the end of the 18th century in the Western calendar. Before the advent of this term, most Europeans referred to Han Chinese as white. The yellow race is not really yellow for the Han people, but a subjective identification of Europeans. And why is this designation happening? This goes back to the Age of Discovery. Historically, from this period, Europeans began to expand throughout the world, and it was necessary to distinguish and describe people in various places.

At the beginning of the Age of Discovery, the Chinese civilization in the East was still a very powerful civilization, and the country was also a relatively powerful country. The common people were also relatively wealthy (compared to their contemporaries in other countries), and their efforts to spread the cross religion to the Han Chinese had been somewhat effective, so the Han people were generally considered to be white.

For example, there was a Portuguese Pieres, who came to Daming in 1516 with the Portuguese mission. He also wrote a famous book on the history of Sino-foreign relations, "Oriental Chronicles", and later died of illness in China. In the book, he says that the Chinese are "as white as us", that Chinese women are "white like us, who look a lot like Portuguese women, and that Japanese are well-dressed white."

Some people will say, Japan's national strength was not strong at that time, why is it still regarded as white?

This is, of course, because of the Crucifixion. Although the missionaries of the West achieved some results in the Ming Dynasty, the greater results were in Japan. At the end of the 16th century, thousands of Japanese believed in the Crucias, and the missionaries saw great potential for widespread proselytization among the Japanese, which made the Japanese whiter than the Chinese in their eyes.

However, later, in 161 Claviyo, Japan banned the religion of the cross, which caused their status in the eyes of Europeans to plummet, and in their mouths, the complexion of the Japanese suddenly darkened.

In the mid-18th century, a German named Engelbert Kempfeld wrote a book called "History of Japan", which was the most important book for Europeans to understand Japan at that time. So you see, the shade of skin color is actually an evolution process of concepts, and it has nothing to do with the fact that the skin color of Oriental people has nothing to do with it.

Later, a thunderous name appeared, this is the 18th-century Swedish scientist Linnaeus. Linnaeus named us humans Homo sapiens and divided them into four species, according to geographical units and skin color from white to black, into white Europeans, American red people, Asian brown people, and African black people. With this as a sign, the complexion of our Oriental people is no longer white.

The complete combination of yellow skin and Oriental people is due to the German anthropologist Blumenbach in the late 18th century. He believed that a more scientific way to distinguish between humans and skull morphology was to analyze the morphology of the skull. In 1795, he proposed the division of human beings into five races, which were then combined with skin color: white Caucasians, black Ethiopians, red Americans, black-brown Malays, and yellow.

This distinction is clear and easy to remember, it has a strong vitality, Caucasian race, Mongolian race, Malay race these words make today many people tenaciously used, since then East Asians have become yellow people, if you set a specific time for this matter, it is 1795 AD.

This is not something to be happy about. Anyone who knows a little bit about history knows that this period was a time when Europeans were getting stronger and the countries of the East were becoming weaker, and European scientists were actually discriminating against Orientals by lowering their skin color, and no longer regarded Orientals as equals. It's just that at the time they thought it was 'science.' ’

Today, with the development of science, the classification of human beings into different groups by race has lost its biological basis. It is simply impossible to draw a clear and scientifically based dividing line between so-called races. The mainstream in Europe and the United States has abandoned the term "three or four major races" and instead refers to them according to ethnicity, such as Latino, cannibal, Indian, etc.

"Yes, Your Majesty, the ministers are respectful of the Holy Wisdom." Their brothers bowed at the same time and said.

"I only wish you could really listen to what I say." Yun Xi finally said a word and told them to step down.

After they retreated, Yun Xi instructed Wang Gong: "You go and call Xu Huizu, Lan Zhen, Geng Xuan, and Zhang Fu, I have something to tell them." ”