My father is Jiajing

Chapter 289 The Special Features of Ming Dynasty

After listening to Prince Yu's words, Zhao Zhenji and Li Chunfang were suddenly enlightened and could not contain their excitement.

They never expected that after Prince Yu's explanation and guidance, what they thought was just a boring book editing office would be transformed into a place that could control the literary masters of the world.

This is really incredible. Why didn’t people in the past think of such a simple thing?
In fact, this is not because the ancients were stupid, nor is it because they were rigid-minded as imagined, but because of the limitations of the development of the times.

In the past, productivity was too low, which made the efficiency of the dissemination of knowledge and culture extremely low. Except for a few aristocrats and gentry families, most people had never even seen what a book looked like in their entire lives.

But when the times developed to the Ming Dynasty, everything changed.

Apart from the lack of mechanized industry, the Ming Dynasty had also reached the pinnacle of all inventions and creations that were within human reach.

Many tools invented in the Ming Dynasty are amazing even to modern people.

Therefore, after the Ming Dynasty, both novels, stories, and opera and literature reached their peak. The reason why they could support such a prosperous civilization era was that the productivity of the Ming Dynasty was much stronger than that of previous generations.

Whether it is papermaking, printing, or the reading community, earth-shaking changes have taken place.

Although later generations often describe the Ming Dynasty as poor and miserable, it must have been special that a dynasty could last for nearly three hundred years in such a poor state.

One of the first special features of the Ming Dynasty was its investment in education.

During the Ming Dynasty, the government did not have to build government offices, but it had to build schools. Moreover, these public schools were managed by special officials, whose official titles were called "Jiaoyu".

It is also worth mentioning that, according to the original historical course, Hai Rui's starting point in officialdom was as a teacher in Nanping County, Fujian.

It was also during this small teaching post that Hai Rui first demonstrated his extraordinary abilities.

Hai Rui advocated that scholars should respect their own status, should not kneel down or flatter their superiors, and should have the integrity and backbone of a scholar.

So when he was serving as the Nanping teacher, once the imperial censor came to inspect the county school (a school where scholars in ancient China studied). The teachers of other schools knelt on the ground and announced their names, but Hai Rui bowed and said, "When I go to the yamen where the censor is, I should behave like a subordinate. This school is a place where teachers teach students, and I should not bow and salute."

In this way, Hai Rui's independent character left a vivid impression on people. From then on, Hai Rui gradually emerged and rose from a county teacher to a county magistrate, and then was promoted to the head of the Ministry of Revenue.

He also completed the "Memorial on Public Security" while serving as the head of the Ministry of Revenue, which went down in history. With real magical damage, he actually broke the defenses of Emperor Jiajing, causing him to shed tears of regret.

Therefore, we can get a glimpse of the whole picture from these historical records. The Ming Dynasty's investment in culture and education was indeed the largest among all dynasties.

So much so that during the later Qing Dynasty, in order to make ordinary people powerless to resist, it is said that many Ming Dynasty schools were destroyed and abolished, so that ordinary Han people no longer had the opportunity to study, and their generations became walking corpses who only knew how to eat and sleep, and were exploited by others.

It can be said that in the area of ​​education, the Ming Dynasty was very liberal. Not only did it allow ordinary people to open academies, but it also allowed scholars to make friends. But unfortunately, the Ming Dynasty's financial and taxation system was so rubbish that the court was simply unable to maintain its proper national defense capabilities.

Most of the scholars who benefited from the Ming Dynasty were extremely selfish. Even when the country was about to fall, they were still living a life of drunkenness and dreaming, thinking that it was just a normal historical cycle of changing dynasties. Anyway, they still turned a deaf ear to the taxes and responsibilities required by the court, and only complained about whatever made them unhappy, without any sense of responsibility or morality.

Even though the Ming Dynasty had fallen and the world had changed its master, they still thought they could continue to enjoy the privileges and preferential treatment they had previously enjoyed in the Ming Dynasty. In the end, they all paid the price in blood.

The most famous among them is the famous literary critic Jin Shengtan.

In the 18th year of Shunzhi, Ren Weichu, the newly appointed magistrate of Wu County, flogged the people in order to collect the unpaid taxes and make up for the shortage of grain in the granary, which aroused the indignation of the scholars in Suzhou.

In early March, Jin Shengtan and more than one hundred scholars gathered at the Confucius Temple, mourning the death of Emperor Shunzhi. They took the opportunity to vent their pent-up anger and went to the government office to present a petition to Zhu Guozhi, the governor of Jiangsu, accusing Ren Weichu and demanding his removal from office.

But the world today is no longer the Ming Dynasty where any disturbance would cause the court to worry about the impact and leave it alone.

The Jiangsu Governor Zhu Guozhi immediately ordered the arrest of eleven of them, and concealed and protected Ren Weichu, reporting to the capital that the students were inciting rebellion and resisting taxes, which alarmed the spirit of the late emperor.

At that time, the Qing court also intended to intimidate the Jiangnan gentry and strengthen its actual rule over the south.

As a result, seven scholars including Jin Shengtan were arrested and tried in Jiangning. They were severely tortured and finally sentenced to beheading for treason. The execution was carried out on July 13. This was the Weeping Temple Case, also known as the Jiangnan Tax Resistance Case.

Therefore, no matter how developed and brilliant the culture of the late Ming Dynasty was, if these scholars lacked empathy for contributing to their country, their fate would ultimately be like that of Emperor Chongzhen who hanged himself on Coal Hill, ending in a miserable tragedy.

In the end, under the brutal butcher's knife, it will become a series of lamentable, pathetic and shattered dreams.

Therefore, since Zhu Zaigui had obtained the power to re-establish the Hongwenguan this time, he had to find a new way to allow these capable scholars to obtain control and support from the court in a different way, so that they could have a sense of honor in participating while creating culture and knowledge.

This allowed them to enjoy the court's help and fulfill their tax obligations to the court while earning royalties. At the same time, Zhu Zaigui could also use the influence of the Hongwen Academy to explain the importance of paying taxes and the sense of honor that taxpayers should have.

As long as the concept and obligation of paying taxes can be deeply planted in the minds of these scholars, when these scholars who are able to create cultural imagination have paid taxes, they will naturally use their influence to force those gentry and landlords who do not pay taxes to pay taxes together.

Otherwise, who the hell would be willing to be the scapegoat under such unfair treatment?

After all, the Ming Dynasty was not the Qing Dynasty, and there was no privileged class of Eight Banners descendants above them.

The difference between people is at most that you studied hard and became an official, while I studied hard but haven’t become an official yet.

Therefore, if you want to deal with the scholars, you must learn to use them and let those scholars who have not benefited attack and force those scholars with vested interests. This is the balanced and enterprising way, the kingly way in the era of reform!
If we simply rely on tough policies and only implement measures such as the performance evaluation system and the single whip system, these changes may improve the country's financial situation to a certain extent.

However, this approach will easily cause a backlash from the entire scholar community. They will think that this is a tyranny of the court exploiting them. Once the people who force this policy are dismissed or die, the reality will become apparent: the government will be forgotten and the policy will cease to exist.

Therefore, if one wants to reform the financial ills of the Ming Dynasty, one should try a different approach and start from the inside. First, differentiate the group attributes of scholars, create a strong sense of social difference for them, and then stimulate them to narrow this sense of difference. Wouldn't that be much easier?

(End of this chapter)