A banquet is a feast for both the host and the guest.
After Sun Shining left, the county magistrate breathed a sigh of relief.
An aide on the side asked curiously: "Dong Weng, although Mr. Sun is a relative of a foreigner, we have always banned foreign relatives since our dynasty. Why do we have such contact?"
"Once you make Qingliu unhappy, your career will be in danger..."
The magistrate wiped his sweat and slumped down on the chair. He was very tired.
The maid on the side quickly brought him shaved ice, and he took several mouthfuls before he regained his composure.
His face relaxed slightly and he said, "You only know one, but not the other."
"Your Majesty has repeatedly issued orders. The lessons from the previous dynasty are not far away. Therefore, we should focus on business to gain its benefits and alleviate the people's difficulties. The most important thing is to ban the party and secure the court."
"Nowadays, the imperial examination does not select important ministers to take the examination, and the provincial examination and the general examination are reduced in complexity, just to prevent party strife."
Having said this, the staff on the side nodded repeatedly.
This is what the Ming Dynasty Gongbao has been preaching for many years, and it is also the key point of the examinations over the years. Scholars have always taken this as a warning and kept it in their hearts.
Party strife, tired farmers, and lack of money.
These are the three major shortcomings of the previous Ming Dynasty.
The public also summarized two other items, Zonglu and corruption, totaling five items.
"Nowadays, Yan Shoufu has great prestige in the cabinet, and the court is relatively stable, but the party struggle has faded into the background."
The magistrate shook his head and sighed with emotion.
The staff member frowned. He was also a scholar. He didn't know a little about officialdom, but he knew a lot about it. However, these words still made him confused.
"But the Shaanxi nobles? Or the dispute between the south and the north?"
"No."
The magistrate stood up with a look of melancholy on his face: "The foundation of honor and nobility lies in the army, but each province has a governor, and now there is a governor. His majesty's right-wing military spirit is known to both the government and the public."
"I remember that in the early years of Shaowu, there was still control over several provinces, but it has been abolished long ago."
As he spoke, he took a sip of tea, and when he saw the latter's expression of doubt and his eyes full of inquiry, he continued:
"Huguang is divided into two, and Nanzhili is divided into three. How can there be a Chu Party or a Donglin Party now?"
The staff member was stunned, but the confusion on his face was indeed even worse.
"Then why are the parties fighting?"
"The current battle is a battle of ideas."
The magistrate said softly.
"In the past, there was an endless quarrel between psychology and Neo-Confucianism, but as long as the eight-legged essay continues, Neo-Confucianism will not tend to go down and will be able to handle it with ease."
"But now, eight-part essays are only used in children's examinations. New methods are used in both rural examinations and general examinations. Over the years, new ideas will naturally come up."
"No way?" The staff was shocked: "I have not failed in Neo-Confucianism for hundreds of years, how can I gain the upper hand in Xinxue?"
When the county magistrate heard this, he was silent for a while, with a melancholy look on his face: "It's not Xin Xue, but Qin Xue."
"Qin Xue?"
The staff were stunned.
In his understanding, this was a school of thought in the Song Dynasty. The famous Zhang Zai's Four Sentences have been passed down through the ages.
But wasn’t it already lost to the pressure of Neo-Confucianism? Why did it come to life again?
"It's not Neo-Confucianism in the Song Dynasty, but Gu Yanwu, a native of Kunshan, Jiangsu, respectfully called Mr. Tinglin. He lectured in Huayin, Shaanxi for several years, and was later recruited to Beijing to participate in the "History of the Pre-Ming Dynasty."
It turned out to be him...
As for Gu Yanwu, his staff knew that he was famous in Shaanxi, and they never expected that he would actually create a school of thought and become more and more famous.
But to say that Neo-Confucianism is being suppressed is a bit of a fantasy.
"He pays attention to the practical application of the world, is based on both industry and commerce, benefits the country and enriches the people, and empty talk is harmful to the country. He has made a name for himself in Beijing. Many meritorious disciples and Imperial College students have listened to his lectures. It can be said that he is
Famous throughout the world."
The county magistrate said with envy.
"I heard that in the court there were Zheng Sen, Huang Zongxi, Wang Fuzhi, Zhu Zhiyu, Fang Yizhi, Shaanxi Li Yong, Zhili Rongcheng Sun Qifeng, etc. as friends..."
"The chief minister, Yan Chongxin, was very happy about it, especially his emphasis on business. The court benefited greatly."
When the staff heard this, they were stunned and stunned.
"Then, what about Your Majesty?"
"Your Majesty is indifferent and silent." The magistrate sighed: "But sometimes acquiescence is also a kind of confirmation!"
Gu Yanwu advocated Qin Studies, which has gained a lot of recognition from the imperial court for more than ten years, and has also won the love of many nobles.
Especially since the word Qin was used as the name, a group of warriors only knew that their hometown was famous for it, but they did not know its inner meaning. In addition, the court and the emperor did not object, so they immediately rushed to have their children worship him as their teacher.
This is a top-down model with extremely low difficulty, and it quickly became popular.
Xin Xue, on the other hand, is from the bottom up, and coupled with the danger of being absorbed and annexed by Qin Xue, it has become weak.
As a centuries-old official school, Neo-Confucianism is rooted in the imperial examinations. Naturally, it is not something that can be taken lightly, but has always been secretly fighting against it.
Therefore, the current party struggles in the court are all based on the ideas of the two schools.
The attitudes of the Cabinet, the Eight Ministries, the Metropolitan Procuratorate, and the local civil and military forces are not something that a mere county magistrate can find out clearly. At this time, it is like seeing flowers in the fog, walking blind.
Let him understand that he has no choice.
It's just that the emperor has been in power for many years and has great power. No one dares to mess around. They can only fight without defeating him and stab him secretly.
"In other words, the Sun family is Qin Xue?"
The staff was shocked: "Dong Weng?"
"I don't know." The magistrate shook his head and said with a bitter smile: "Although the Sun family is only an earl, he is the prince behind him. He has been silent all these years, and no one knows his position."
"At the banquet just now, I have been giving hints and explicit instructions. Let's find out what's going on. This Mr. Sun is so tight that he can't see clearly."
When the staff heard this, their faces turned pale.
If the Sun family is committed to Qin learning, then the prince will most likely be Qin learning. In other words, Qin learning will even defeat Neo-Confucianism in one fell swoop and become orthodox in the next few decades.
Therefore, by understanding its status, we can better understand the prince's thoughts.
But, can the prince's thoughts be the same as those of the emperor?
It's best to be the same, but the worst thing is to be different...
A son who is unworthy of his father is the precursor to many emperors deposing their princes.
There are not many people like Taizu.
If we really find out clearly and the prince is shaken, then it will not be a big earthquake for the court.
But to the magistrate, he was just a pawn. Once his attitude was revealed, he would become a source of fire and could easily make Lei Lei furious.
"Dong Weng——"
"Fortunately Mr. Sun has no leaks. This is the best thing."
The magistrate finally showed a smile: "Safety is the best."
The staff also nodded heavily.
What civil servants hate most is disorder and they are used to stability.
Because when it comes to taking sides, although it is a fast lane, the chances are too small and the risks are too great.
If order remains unchanged, step-by-step promotion is the first choice.
After leaving the county government office, Sun Shining got into the carriage and frowned.
"Has this party struggle gone all the way?"
In the early years of Shaowu, the imperial court was dominated by the nobles of Shaanxi and Chu. Then there was a dispute between Shaanxi and the south, and then the nobles were completely reduced to spectators.
After Zhao Shu took office, although Yan Chongxin had a high prestige, he could not reach the level of Zhao Shu's decision-making regarding the cabinet, and could only control the cabinet to a limited extent.
In this way, because of the distribution of power, Yan Chongxin and Zhu Mou started fighting secretly.
It is precisely because they both belong to the nobility that they immediately tore up the nobility system and each fought for his own.
Zhu Mou preferred clan civil servants such as Shaanxi, while Yan Chongxin preferred the south.
This cannot be generalized and treated differently.
But Sun Shining discovered that in the past two years, ideas have become weapons, and officials have unconsciously begun to align themselves.
He stood tallest and could see clearly.
On the surface, Yan Chongxin supports Qin Xue, but he is from Hanzhong. He studied Neo-Confucianism from childhood to university, and he has always been Neo-Confucianism in his heart.
Zhu Mou, on the other hand, did not mention it. He only studied Buddhism for a few years, and later worked in the officialdom for many years. He was promoted continuously under the promotion of the emperor, and his knowledge was just that of an ordinary boy.
Therefore, although he was inclined to Neo-Confucianism, he only regarded it as a tool. Once he took the position of chief assistant, he would definitely ignore it.
Sun Shining whispered: "Qin Xue is biased toward profit, while Neo-Confucianism is pragmatic. How difficult it is!"
As the saying goes, you can't have it both ways.
Although scholars disliked Neo-Confucianism, they only hated it, but they respected and loved Zhu Xi.
Similarly, Qin's philosophy of applying traditional Chinese medicine to the times and valuing business and the people is undeniably true, but it ignores the importance of moral cultivation.
Both have shortcomings and advantages, so it's really hard to choose.
Sun Shining was naturally inclined towards Neo-Confucianism, but due to the identity of the Sun family, he did not dare to reveal anything.
His trip this time was just to go home to worship his ancestors and take part in the provincial examination.
The Sun family lived in Zhenwuwei in Daizhou. Their family was a military household in the guardhouse. Now Zhenwuwei was merged into Daizhou and became Zhenwu Township.
In the Ming Dynasty, although military households were miserable, enslaved and oppressed, they achieved many successes in the imperial examinations and accounted for 20 to 30% of the Jinshi rankings all year round.
For example, Zhang Juzheng, Sun Chuanting, etc. all came from military households.
In the Sun family, Sun Cheng, the ninth ancestor of Sun Chuanting, was appointed as the Zhenwu Guard Baihu during the Hongwu period. He moved from Gushuli Village, Guangshan County, Runing Prefecture, Henan Province to Daizhou, Shanxi, and later settled here.
Sun Feng, the sixth generation ancestor, began to encourage his descendants to study. The fifth generation ancestor, Sun Qi, great-great-grandfather Sun Zongzong, grandfather Sun Siyue, and father Sun Yuanzhen all passed the imperial examination.
It can be said that the Sun family is a scholarly family in Daizhou, with scholars for generations, making it one of the leading wealthy families.
Along the way, three village elders and gentry traveled thirty miles from the countryside to greet him, and they almost gathered at the city gate.
Sun Shining was so ashamed that he could only modestly get on the carriage and return to his hometown.
It is a large house with five entrances and two big lions at the door, which can be said to be majestic.
Although it is not as good as the Earl's Mansion in the capital, it is still a large courtyard in the local area.
Not to mention worshiping ancestors in the ancestral hall, his father's grave had long been moved to the ancestral tomb, and the elders, relatives and friends were filled with tears.
Everything is left unsaid.
Of course Sun Shining understood that as the saying goes, when one person attains enlightenment, chickens and dogs ascend to heaven, the Sun family becomes earls, and women become queens, they naturally have to take care of these relatives.
It's a pity that Earl Sun Shirui has been away as an official all year round and has never come back many times, so it is difficult to take care of him.
Sun Shining finally came back, so naturally he had to curry favor with him.
However, Sun Shining was only willing to give up some money and donated all of the Sun family's more than 1,000 acres of ancestral land in Dai County to his ancestors as sacrificial land.
Field sacrifices originated in the pre-Qin Dynasty and became an important component of the clan system in the Song Dynasty.
Under the requirements of the patriarchal thought of "death as life", ancestor worship is solemn, very grand, and very expensive. This requires the clan to have a certain financial capacity to support the continuation of the sacrificial ritual system. In this case, specially
The fields used as the source of sacrifice fees appeared.
Among the people, sacrificial fields are public property and are not allowed to be resold and inherited. Therefore, the lightest punishment for selling sacrificial fields is exile.
Clan members went to school, built canals, and built ancestral halls, all in the sacrificial field.
At the same time, if the clan relatives really can't get rid of the problem, they can also borrow money from the clan, which is also the function of the field sacrifice.
Therefore, since ancient times, the larger the clan, the larger the scale of its field sacrifices, and the more it can benefit the clan members.
Then the tribesmen became officials and fed back to donate their land, thus forming a virtuous cycle.
The famous Fan Chongyan family donated hundreds of acres at a time, which enabled the Fan family to frequently produce talents.
According to statistics, when the People's Republic of China was founded, 20% to 30% of private land was public property, and the scale was extremely large.
The Sun family's sacrificial land had only been about 200 acres for many years. Sun Shining donated more than 1,000 acres at once, and he was immediately loved by his relatives.
The poor can rent fields for sacrifice at low rents, and even borrow money at low interest rates when they are hungry and cold. Their children can also hire famous teachers and have a bright future.
Some lonely elderly people almost sacrifice their fields to support them.
This benefits everyone in the Sun family.
Several clan elders who wanted to ask for peace and official positions for their families could only open their mouths but could not say anything.
For ordinary people, the clan not only provides protection, but can also borrow money to tide over difficulties. However, the court has no benefit at all except paying the emperor's rations. Naturally, they are close to the clan and far away from the court.
If the imperial power really wanted to go to the countryside, it could only equalize the land and return the sacrificial fields to the court, but this would be too much resistance.
Once the land was allotted, the imperial court would inevitably be unable to undertake functions such as offering land for the elderly, providing schools, borrowing money, and saving money.
Sun Shining climbed up the hillside and looked at the settlement of the Sun family. There were one hundred and fifty households, two to three thousand acres of land, eighty percent of which was dry land, and two percent of which was irrigated land. It was considered a wealthy place in Shanxi.
He stepped on the loess and looked at the crop fields: "What kind of crops does the clan have now?"
"Corn, wheat, and sweet potatoes."
The person beside him was Sun Shimao, a talented scholar in the family. He was in his thirties and was going to take the provincial examination in Jinke.
Like ordinary scholars, he is relatively thin, wearing a square scarf and a half-worn robe, showing the ordinaryness of his family.
He sighed: "The season is better now. Although eating these sweet potatoes will burn your heart, it is better than being hungry in the past when there was a shortage of food."
“Can’t sweet potatoes be used to make sweet potato flour?”
Sun Shining said in confusion: "That thing is made into vermicelli and boiled with a half-sized rooster. It tastes really good."
"Poor people are reluctant to part with mill money, so they make do with what they have." Sun Shimao said softly:
"The branches can be fed to pigs and eaten by chickens and ducks, so poor families like to grow sweet potatoes in large quantities."
Sun Shining sighed. He had been well-fed and well-clothed since he was a child. He didn't know what it felt like to be hungry, but he could also understand that it was really hard for the poor.
In this countryside, there is no Qin Xue or Neo-Confucianism. The people just bury their heads in the land and worry about food and clothing for a year.
"Beet, you know what?"
"I don't know."
"It is something that can be made into sugar. It is most suitable for planting in our Shanxi area. Sugar is very valuable, so it is a good opportunity to make money."
Sun Shining remembered the emperor's words and couldn't help but suggest: "Grow beets in nooks and crannies at the foot of some mountains and boil them into sugar. This will make more money than growing grain."