Standalone Northern and Southern Dynasties

Chapter 304 "Essential Techniques for Elevating the People"

As a descendant of a noble family, Su Chao certainly did not want Su Ze to open the Chongwen Pavilion and delegate knowledge to ordinary scholars.

Su Cho certainly knew that there was a threshold for admission to Chongwen Pavilion, and it had nothing to do with ordinary people. After all, only the children of local small landlords or merchants who had received reading and writing training could support their children to study full-time.

However, the number of children of these small landlords and merchants is far greater than that of children of the gentry.

Whether it is the opening of Chongwen Pavilion or the printing technology that Su Ze is experimenting with, it will greatly reduce the cost of disseminating books and make the era when the gentry monopolized knowledge a thing of the past.

But as a member of the Suze Group, and even an early joiner, Su Chao also understands the benefits of doing so.

If a large number of scholars loyal to Su Ze were cultivated, the power would be infinite.

Su Chao personally implemented the land inspection and was also in charge of the annual budget submission.

However, Su Cho actually had a rough idea of ​​how much of the land and population registers sent by local counties could be trusted.

Hezhou can be trusted, Liangzhou cannot be trusted, Longxi can be trusted half, and Liangzhou can only be trusted one third.

Most of Xiazhou’s land registers are credible, but most of its population registers are not.

Even though he had the power of victory in the battle of Liangzhou and had killed the Yang family of Hanzhong on the charge of colluding with Southern Liang, Su Ze did not implement local policies on a large scale in Liangzhou.

There is no way. Reality is not a game. You cannot implement policies by simply clicking a button.

A policy, from formulation at the top to the decomposition of tasks transmitted up and down at the middle level to specific implementation at the grassroots level, all requires people, and a large number of people who can read and write and are familiar with the administrative operations of the government.

In this era, only children from noble families could do such a job.

When it comes to the fundamental interest of land, Su Ze has no way of getting these people to work for him.

But as long as the Chongwenguan could be established and books could be printed on a large scale, Su Ze would have an administrative team and could implement the Three Chiefs System and the Fubing System more thoroughly.

"Chief historian."

Wang Sizheng looked at Su Cho, and Su Cho came back to his senses.

Su Chuo asked:

"How is the printing of the woodblock books going?"

Wang Sizheng was the person in charge of Chongwen Pavilion, and the achievements of Chongwen Pavilion were his personal achievements.

Although he knew that the spread of books and woodblock printing might shake the foundation of the gentry, he believed that the spread of Confucianism was a good thing.

Wang Sizheng said:

"The Criminal Law Compilation has been almost printed and will be sent to the counties soon. The Si Shengzhi Book has also been printed halfway and the copywriter is currently proofreading it."

The Compilation of Criminal Laws is a collection of laws that have been revised.

It seemed that it was too presumptuous for Su Ze, the General of Pingxi, to compile the laws and regulations.

But Feng Shu proposed a solution.

The good thing is that the judicial quality of officials in this era is also very low.

In this era where talent is judged by family background, not all aristocratic families are from a family of jurists.

Many children of the gentry did not understand the law at all, and local justice was in the hands of clerks.

Feng Shu compiled a judicial practice operation manual based on the laws commonly used in judicial practice and some easy-to-understand cases.

This booklet is not thick and mainly deals with common cases encountered in local areas. Feng Shu's book can also be called "Hand-in-hand teaching you how to judge cases as a county magistrate".

Anyway, according to the order of the General's Office, major cases involving human lives must be submitted to the state and county level, and also need to be sent to the legal department of the General's Office for review. Complex cases can be handled by professionals at the state and county level, and the county magistrate only needs to handle ordinary cases.

Feng Shu selected and compiled legal provisions to review his own legal concepts, which was equivalent to regulating grassroots judicial practice from a practical level.

"The Book of Si Sheng" is an agricultural book, and encouraging agriculture to cultivate mulberry trees is also one of the requirements for the assessment of officials in the General's Office. Su Ze organized Sunong (farmers with super hands-on skills) to translate "The Book of Si Sheng" into vernacular that ordinary people can understand, and ordered it to be printed into a book and distributed to the party leaders of each Sanchang Village.

There is a party leader for every 125 households. The party leader is the highest grassroots manager under the three-leader system. He is also the executor responsible for checking household registration, supervising farming, collecting taxes, and levying corvée and military service.

It’s a pity that woodblock printing was not yet mature and could not be used to print picture albums, otherwise Su Ze would even have planned to adapt "The Book of Si Sheng" into a comic strip and distribute it to party leaders.

Printing these two books, one is a law enforcement manual for officials and the other is a basic agricultural technology book, is also something Su Ze has considered.

This would not cause opposition from the gentry, and would also train craftsmen to improve their skills. When the woodblock printing technology matured in the future, Su Ze would be able to print books on a large scale.

The work at Chongwen Pavilion was good. Su Ze would ask Wang Sizheng about his progress every now and then, and he also came to Chongwen Pavilion several times to give subsidies to the bookkeepers. Wang Sizheng had forgotten that Su Ze had originally arranged for him to compile geographical atlases, but how did he end up dealing with paper and ink?

Su Cho still encouraged Wang Sizheng and said:
"The general attaches great importance to the affairs of Chongwen Pavilion. You should work hard. News has come from Luoyang that Master Li will soon enter Guanzhong. With the general's recommendation, you can also become Master Li's disciple."

Wang Sizheng became excited and quickly thanked Su Cho, saying that he would work hard.

After Wang Sizheng left, he thought about the days when Su Ze made promises for him in the past, and wondered why he often made promises for his subordinates now?
Su Chao sighed, people always live the life they hate.

Shortly after Wang Sizheng left, Wei Xiaokuan walked into Su Cho's room.

"Su Changshi, the Xuanjing Division has reported that Lord Li has passed Tongguan."

In addition to Chongwen Pavilion, Su Ze personally established another department and named it Xuanjingsi.

The Xuan Jing Si was nominally a department under the General's Office, but in reality it only reported to Su Ze and the Su brothers. Specific government affairs were handled by Wei Xiaokuan, while the Xuan Jing Si spies were in the hands of Su Bai (the "Inconspicuous Egret Messenger").

Su Bai was originally sent by Su Ze to Qinzhou to establish an intelligence network. It was Su Bai who sent back the military updates of the Mozhe Dam.

Now that the Xuan Jing Division has been established, Su Ze will allocate all the followers he summoned, such as the [White Egret Messenger] and [News Messenger] series, to the Xuan Jing Division and hand them over to Su Bai for management.

After Wei Xiaokuan and Su Bai took over the Xuan Jingsi, they began to build a network in Guanzhong.

Wei Xiaokuan also has a natural advantage in this regard. The Wei family is a prominent family in Guanzhong, and his uncle Wei Sui is now Xiao Baoyin's leading general. The Wei family is very familiar with the various gentry in Guanzhong, so all the upper-level research and development is left to Wei Xiaokuan.

The middle and lower-level spies were managed by Su Bai, and the intelligence was analyzed and processed by the [News Officer] before being sent to Su Ze's desk.

When Li Daoyuan was appointed as the ambassador of comfort, Su Ze had already learned the news through the intelligence network in Luoyang.

In the historical timeline before Su Ze traveled through time, Li Daoyuan was still appointed as an envoy by the Northern Wei court and sent to Guanzhong after Xiao Baoyin rebelled, and was finally killed by Xiao Baoyin.

So this time when Li Daoyuan was appointed to go to Guanzhong to comfort the people, Su Ze immediately asked the envoy of Xuan Jingsi to protect him along the way, and also sent people to inquire about Xiao Baoyin's movements.

Li Daoyuan did not bring too many soldiers. In order to find out the real situation in Guanzhong, he ordered his men to put away the ambassador's ceremonial guards, disguised himself as a minor official going to Guanzhong to take up his post, and inquired about the people's sentiments along the way.

Li Daoyuan's hair turned white after he was exiled from Luoyang by Yuan Yi last time.

Li Daoyuan is already 52 years old this year. Today, he rushed to a post station before nightfall, but was told that the post station was full.

This post station was located between towns and was very remote. Li Daoyuan could only let people sleep outdoors near the post station. He also gave money to the post station chief and asked him to prepare some hot water and food.

Li Daoyuan picked up a book and began to read it under the candle brought by the postmaster.

He was a book lover throughout his life. Due to his upright character, he often offended the powerful and wealthy. So, except for the time when he served as the governor of Henan, he basically spent the rest of his life serving in various places.

Li Daoyuan read a wide variety of books. The book he was reading now was given to him by his good friend Jia Sixie, the prefect of Gaoyang, after he was exiled from Luoyang by Yuan Yi.

This book is an agricultural technology book compiled by Jia Sixie based on his summary of northern agricultural technology. Only the first five volumes have been completed so far and it has not yet been named.

Li Daoyuan was very interested in this kind of book, which was regarded as miscellaneous books by mainstream Confucian disciples. Jia Sixie's book was not written for the gentry, but was a book written for agricultural officials to promote agricultural technology.

Li Daoyuan closed the book and let out a long sigh.

In the preface, Jia Sixie also wrote about the reasons why he wrote this book.

When Jia Sixie was young, the Northern Wei Emperor Xiaowen was at the peak of his sinicization movement. Agriculture was the top priority in the court's political affairs, and those who violated the rules were dismissed from office.

In the ninth year of Taihe, the equal-field system was implemented, which distributed unowned wasteland to landless or land-poor farmers for cultivation, and stipulated the planting of grains, fruits, vegetables, and trees.

Emperor Xiaowen even personally compiled a book called "Encouraging Agriculture" for grassroots officials, teaching them how to plant mulberry, elm and jujube trees, hoping that grassroots officials would encourage farming.

At that time, a movement to develop agriculture broke out throughout the Northern Wei Dynasty. Jia Sixie also believed that agricultural technology was the key to national prosperity, so he kept collecting books and agricultural techniques from the people, and gradually compiled this book.

The above technology was not invented by Jia Sixie, but he thought it was worth promoting after summarizing his practice.

Li Daoyuan sighed. He had also experienced the era of Emperor Xiaowen and knew what the court was like at that time. It was also at that time that he determined to travel all over the world to annotate the "Water Classic".

Thinking about today's political situation, Li Daoyuan felt even more upset.

At this time, there was a noise in the post station. The people staying in the post station began to drink and have fun. Li Daoyuan also heard the sound of gambling tools.

Li Daoyuan called the postmaster and asked:
"Who are the people staying at the post station? The imperial court has ordered that post stations are not allowed to provide alcohol or banquets. Why don't they comply?"

The postmaster said with a bitter face:
"This is the envoy sent by the Duke of Danyang to Luoyang to deliver gifts. I dare not disobey him!"

(End of this chapter)