Guya Museum

Guya Museum

Guya museum is located in Machang Road, Heping District, Tianjin. This museum is the most distinctive. Elegant meaning: elegant ancient implication, firm will, break through all difficulties, success to see great cause. It mainly displays modern guns (these old guns have all been leaded and lost their use value) and Western furniture. Here you can see more than 1300 kinds of cultural relics, such as old guns, American printers, telephones, coffee sets, foreign wine cabinets, filing cabinets, electric fans, flashlights, sugar jars, foreign vases, foreign sofas, etc.

The most distinctive feature of this museum is that it is not only a hot pot shop, but also a museum.

Analysis of modern pistols collected

Pistol refers to a small gun used for one handed shooting, which can kill close range enemies. The so-called modern pistol refers to the pistol invented and used after the British bourgeois revolution in the 17th century. The "modern pistol" in this paper refers to the pistol made and used in China after the first Opium War

As modern pistols are more defective and easy to damage, and are mainly owned by military officers, few of them have been handed down in the world in ancient times. Mr. Zhang Lianzhi, President of Tianjin yueweixian group, spared no expense to collect 195 modern pistols, and displayed them to the audience free of charge in his "Guya Museum". People from all walks of life highly praised this behavior. Mr. Feng Jicai, vice chairman of China literary company and famous writer, called yueweixian group a "edible Museum".

History of pistols

In order to better understand the historical value of these modern pistols collected by Guya Museum, we first review the development history of pistols.

At first, human beings used production tools for fighting. With the frequent wars, they gradually produced special weapons for fighting. Weapons are divided into cold weapons and hot weapons. The so-called cold weapons are weapons that can be used in combat without gunpowder, while the hot weapons are the opposite. Gunpowder originally refers to the medicine that can ignite, because the two main components of gunpowder are nitrate and sulfur, both of which are Chinese medicinal materials. Gunpowder was invented by China, and it was also China that first used gunpowder in war. According to some information, gunpowder was used in the army at the latest in the first year of yuan zongyou (904). In the early Northern Song Dynasty, the earliest thermal weapons, rocket and fireball, were invented. In the first year of Kaiqing (1259) of LiZong in the Southern Song Dynasty, the earliest tubular thermal weapon that could fire "bullets" was born. The creation of the sudden fire gun is highly valued by the weapon historians of later countries. It is generally recognized that it is the first tubular shooting weapon in the world to spontaneously use the shooting principle, and can be called the originator of all kinds of guns in the world.

The rulers of Yuan Dynasty decided to use metal material to make Tuhuo gun, and named it "or gun". Fire blunderbuss of the Yuan Dynasty were unearthed in Acheng, Heilongjiang, Xi'an, Shaanxi, Heicheng, Inner Mongolia, Xi'an, Beijing, Heicheng, Inner Mongolia and Tongzhou, Beijing. The Yuan Dynasty firearm unearthed in Xi'an is 265 mm in length, 23 mm in diameter, 140 mm in length and 1.78 kg in weight. There is a hoop at the mouth end and the outer edge of the tail, together with three hoops in front of the medicine room and one hoop at the back of the medicine room. There are six hoops in total, which should be used to reinforce the body of the blunderbuss. The gun belongs to the "hand gun" introduced in the materials, which is the best pistol.

In the 13th century, gunpowder manufacturing technology spread from China to Arabia, and then to Europe. European countries used gunpowder to make hot weapons, and finally ended the aristocratic rule in mid season. Just as Engels pointed out in the anti Turing theory, "the firearm is the stone wall of the city and the aristocratic Castle relying on the city at the beginning, which can't resist the citizens' cannons, and the citizens' guns pierce the knight's armor. The rule of the nobles died with the noble knights in armor. "

With the continuous progress of technology, 14 world Europe in addition to the invention of the open fire lance, but also the birth of the earliest pistol. This kind of pistol is a hand-held front loaded smooth bore pistol fired with one hand. The so-called fire door gun is to open a fire door at the rear end of the gun chamber, insert a fire twist through the fire door and pass out of the gun chamber. When the fire twist is ignited, the gunpowder can be ignited and the bullet can be fired. Its shooting principle is the same as that of the sudden fire gun and live blunderbuss. Unfortunately, the shape is unknown due to lack of information.

Because the FireGate pistol is greatly affected by the weather, the European invented the firerope igniter in the 15th century, which is the first mechanical igniter in the world. It includes a snake shaped rod with firerope and a trigger. When the trigger is pulled, the serpentine rod is downward, and the fire rope ignited in advance makes the primary explosive in the powder pool on the side of the barrel burn. The flame of the powder pool enters the bore through a small hole in the bore, ignites the propellant and shoots the bullet out. The use of the firerope pistol is time-consuming and time-consuming. It is also subject to weather conditions to a large extent. In addition, the use of light at night or in ambush will also bring danger. In the 17th century, Europe invented a front loaded smooth bore pistol with a rotary lighter, which was more advanced than the rope pistol.

The working principle of the so-called rotary lighter is the same as that of the modern cigarette lighter, that is, the rough edge turns to produce sparks by friction with pyrite to ignite the gunpowder in the gun chamber and then fire the bullet. By the 19th century, Europe had invented the front loaded smoothbore pistol with a flint lighter. Flint igniter is a better ignition system than rope igniter and wheel igniter. When the trigger is pulled, the spring mechanism drives or the sickle strikes the flint to produce sparks, ignites the gunpowder in the charge pool, and then ignites the gun bore propellant to shoot the bullet.

In the middle of the 19th century, Europe invented the front loaded pistol with a fire cap and a lighter. The so-called fire cap igniter is a kind of mechanism that can produce flame to ignite propellants or detonate explosives. The specific operation method is to use the impact fire cap for ignition. When the trigger is pulled, the round head of the gun will impact and ignite, and the bullet will be fired after the electric charge. At the same time, on the basis of the front loaded smooth bore pistol equipped with the fire cap lighter, Europe has produced the front loaded linear bore pistol equipped with the fire cap lighter. The latter increases the range and shooting accuracy. However, because it took a long time to load the rifled pistol, it was not widely used at that time. In the late 19th century, the modern pistol with breech magazine came out, and the modern pistol gradually withdrew from the battlefield.

In addition, there is another form of modern pistol, namely revolver. Its main feature is that there is a drum magazine on the gun, and there are several chambers in the drum.

The front loaded smooth bore pistol and the front loaded linear bore pistol with the fire cap igniter were used in the British and French allied forces and foreign gun teams. Later, the Qing army, Taiping Army and Nian Army also used and imitated them. The modern pistols collected by Guya museum are these two kinds of pistols, and the former is more.

Handguns used by the British and French allied forces and the foreign gun team

In 1856, Britain and France formed a coalition to start the second Opium War. Equipped with the most advanced guns at that time, the British and French allied forces had the best advantage in fighting against the Qing army, which was mainly equipped with cold weapons and only equipped with a small number of old hot weapons with poor performance. Finally, they occupied Tianjin and Beijing in the tenth year of Xianfeng (1860) of the Qing Dynasty, looted and burned the Old Summer Palace. The brutality of the British and French allied forces was fiercely attacked by righteous people all over the world. Victor Hugo, a famous French writer, once denounced the banditry of the British and French allied forces.

In the tenth year of Xianfeng (1860), after the Taiping army broke through the Jiangnan camp of the Qing army, Li Xiucheng, the loyal king, led the army to open up the bases of Southern Jiangsu and Zhejiang, and his troops were directed at Shanghai. In order to maintain Shanghai, the Qing government proposed to "borrow troops to help the nest". On the one hand, it colluded with the British and French troops stationed in Shanghai to bombard the Taiping army with foreign guns, and on the other hand, it allowed the American hooligan wall to recruit foreign outlaws to form a "foreign gun team" to assist the Qing army to jointly suppress the Taiping army. In history, there are five foreign gun teams, namely, the "wall foreign gun team" formed in Shanghai in 1860, the "Chang Jie army" formed in Zhejiang in 1862, and the "Ding Sheng army" established in Zhejiang in 1862, and the "Ding Sheng army" organized by Chonghou in Tianjin in 1862 "Tianjin Foreign spear team" (led by British officers BORANG and rusereks). The soldiers, mainly Chinese, armed with foreign guns and guns, fought against the Taiping army.

There are several modern pistols in the collection of Guya Museum, which can be judged to be used by foreign officers in the British French allied forces or foreign gun teams. The main reason is that these pistols are engraved with foreign characters. Such as "1170tullo796" on the handle, or "i.r.b.ii. B.A" on the handle, or "suhi VC. S" on the handle, or "styt00r6" on the handle, etc. Although we have not yet understood the meaning of the above foreign characters, according to relevant data, foreigners (especially European and American people) like to engrave their own names or words with special significance on their guns. These modern pistols were all front loaded smooth bore pistols equipped with a fire cap firing machine (hereinafter referred to as "fire cap pistols"), which were favorable evidence of the invasion of China by Western colonial countries.

Qing army

Chinese PinYin : Gu Ya Bo Wu Guan