"Your Majesty, I only have four words in mind: divide and conquer."
"Oh? What should I say?" Li Po asked.
Fan Wenjin had obviously thought about it and immediately replied: "Many people think that today's Qiang are descendants of the ancient Qiang, but this is not the case. The ancient Qiang are descendants of the Shang and Zhou Dynasties, and they are actually one with our Central Plains.
During the Qin and Han Dynasties, the ancient Qiang people had already attached themselves to the Central Plains, and those who came after them were all barbarians who wandered here and only occupied the land where the ancient Qiang people herded cattle and sheep.
During the Han Dynasty, the Qiang was divided into the east and west Qiang..."
Li Po frowned, he was not here to listen to people talk about ancient times, "I know the origin of the Qiang people. The Qiang people today are very mixed. I heard that many of them were born with parents who no one knows. They just live in groups and don't know.
Just a shameless savage.
I want to tell you here, if you want to serve in the court, you should not show off your knowledge. This is not to look down on your talents.
I come from a rough background, and if everyone comes to talk to me about the past and present, I won’t be able to handle it... You should understand what I mean, right?"
What's not easy to understand? You don't have enough knowledge. Sometimes what you say is too difficult and obscure, and he won't understand.
Fan Wenjin lowered his head and responded, but the corners of his mouth twitched a few times. He thought to himself that it seemed that it was not easy for the emperor to calm down the world and govern it like it is now.
I don’t know what the situation of those well-educated people in the court was like. It must have been quite difficult for them. And based on this, what kind of imperial examinations did the court hold?
How were so many academies built?
Fan Wenjin stumbled a few times before he regained his train of thought, "Just as His Majesty said, the ethnic groups in the northwest are often said to belong to the Qiang people, but in fact they are not one entity.
In the Han Dynasty, they were known as the Seven Qiang...Nowadays, there are also Duocang, Bailan, Dangxiang, Dongnu, Fuguo, Baigou, etc., most of them are more than twenty, and the smaller ones are as numerous as cow hairs, which is impossible to count."
At this time, Li Po asked with some curiosity: "I heard that the status of the Qiang people in the northwest is extremely low. Why do so many tribes like to call themselves Qiang people? On the contrary, Xianbei, Di people, Turks, etc. went there and made no noise.
?”
Fan Wenjin was stunned. This angle was very strange. He really hadn't thought about it carefully. Now that the emperor asked him, he also wanted to ask, yes, how come the people who came to Liangzhou and Hexi areas finally integrated into it?
Among the Qiang tribe?
This is really a good question. Fan Wenjin thought about it carefully and said uncertainly: "I think the Qiang people have been living in the northwest for a long time, so if outsiders want to live there, they have to associate with the Qiang people and marry into each other.
Have you become a Qiang person after a long time?"
Li Po smiled slightly, this answer was quite embarrassing, "In my opinion, it's not that other tribes have disappeared, but that people like Qing, who are officials in Liangzhou, have forcibly classified them into the Qiang race."
Fan Wenjin thought about it and suddenly realized it, and then he felt ashamed. As a minister, he needed the emperor to remind him all the time. It was so embarrassing.
I didn't realize at all that I had fallen into a rhetorical trap. The answers to the preset questions must have been already known in my mind. This was a kind of school examination. It has to be said that Fan Wenjin lost some points.
However, in terms of how to govern the Qiang people in the northwest, the strategies Fan Wenjin later expressed were still very insightful.
He just realized that although the Qiang people in the northwest were collectively called the Qiang tribe, their origins were very complicated, so he thought there was no need to go through as much trouble as he did with the Tuyuhun tribes who were now moving back to the highlands.
They gathered all the leaders of the Qiang tribe in the northwest, some of whom numbered more than 5,000 people, and gave them surnames and clan names so that they would no longer call themselves Qiang.
The Qiang people generally have little knowledge, and they are actually unwilling to call themselves Qiang race, because the Qiang people are at the lowest level in the northwest, Hexi, and even Hanzhong.
When others see your appearance, they are not very willing to say anything to you, and when they hear that you are a Qiang, it is not to mention that when they hire you to do work, the price is much less than others.
No one wants to continue with this kind of treatment, but as Li Po said, they cannot easily get rid of the Qiang ethnic group, because it is not something they can change if they want to, but is imposed by outsiders.
Give them a racial classification.
In the northwest, Qiang people are easy to distinguish. Those with unkempt hair and ragged clothes are Qiang people. Most of the servants are Qiang people. If you don't understand what is being said, 80% of them are Qiang people.
If a Qiang person is wealthy and can speak fluent Chinese, even if he looks strange, no one will think that he is a Qiang person, and he himself will not admit it.
This is too bad, because this is a rhythm that cannot retain any talents. Outstanding people do not admit that they are Qiang people, but those who live in misery must be Qiang people. Under this model, it is simply impossible to change the situation of Qiang people.
Hell difficulty.
Otherwise, the Qiang people would not have gathered around Bai Yusuo and later An Xiuren, because they had a strong urge to change their own situation.
It's a pity that they are just headless flies. Bai Yusuo is a Qiang who was born as a herder slave. Relying on him to change the Qiang people's class is simply nonsense, but the general approach should be correct.
Later, An Xiuren was even more ridiculous. An Xiuren was a Sogdian, an ethnic group that specialized in trading on the Silk Road. In many cases, they were slave traders.
When dealing with the Qiang people, they want slaves to be trafficked to the Western Regions or the Central Plains for profit.
If you let such a guy take the lead, isn't that like letting a wolf cub lead the sheep? When he's hungry, he'll just eat a few of them and care whether your sheep live or die?
…………
Fan Wenjin's strategy is not surprising, but it is very practical. What is lacking in the officialdom is actually this kind of pragmatic person. The colorful articles are useless. At most, he is a literati. When you are an official, you have to understand practical matters and know how to do things properly.
Only when there are more people like this can the dynasty prosper. If there are more high-ranking officials who have not been down to the grassroots level, the greater the official position, the more serious the damage will be. There will be peace and prosperity at the top, but it will be a mess below.
Later, most of the Hanlin Academy officials elected by the Eight-Party Examination Hall were of the latter type.
…………
Fan Wenjin immediately grasped the weakness of the Qiang people. In fact, it is not a weakness, because these guys are full of weaknesses, which makes it difficult for people to attack.
Fan Wenjin is very straightforward, he wants to separate the Qiang people. The so-called divide and rule means to separate some of them from the Qiang group. The Qiang people do not yet have such a strong ethnic consciousness, and many of them are extremely dissatisfied with the status quo.
In this way, it is easy to handle. It is up to the imperial court to distinguish which ones are Qiang people and which ones should be singled out and discussed again. This almost coincides with what Li Po said before, and it fits perfectly.
Fan Wenjin wanted to see this matter through to the end. He thought that the imperial court should create a register and distribute it to the Qiang tribe, so as to give some tribes among them an origin.
Those tribes that refused to obey the rules and are still wandering around are finally the Qiang species. They can chase and kill them at will, and those they capture are slaves.
In other words, according to this strategy, the Qiang people will eventually become synonymous with slaves and savages.