Chapter 30 The Confucian scholars of the past two thousand years are not good, but it does not mean
Of course Jiang Dejing, the Minister of Household Affairs, was very concerned about what Chongzhen ordered.
After returning home, we conducted a rigorous review, had people conduct experiments, and make precise calculations. Finally, it was confirmed that Shen Shuren's technical optimization and management optimization of grain ship loading and unloading could indeed save at least half of the cost compared to the current old method.
However, it takes some time to conduct experiments, so when Jiang Dejing finally came to report, it was already after the New Year. After the meeting on the sixth day of the Lunar New Year, Jiang Dejing found time to see the emperor privately and state the situation.
In these days, he also did a lot of extra homework, mainly to collect more official resume information of the Shen Shu man, to see the results of the Beijing inspection by the Ministry of Personnel, and the follow-up arrangements.
Jiang Dejing knew Chongzhen very well, and knew that when he met the emperor again this time, his majesty might ask more questions, so it would not be wrong to be more fully prepared.
As expected, after listening to the report, Zhu Youjian was in a good mood and asked about Shen Shuren's situation.
Jiang Dejing hurriedly replied: "Your Majesty, I also think that Shen Lin is a man of practical ability, so I went to the Ministry of Civil Affairs to find out more about him. Before this, Shen Lin only had the reputation of being a scholar.
In July last year, he was promoted by Wu Weiye, the Secretary of the Nanjing Imperial College, and donated a graduate student. Later, he donated an official position and became an official, becoming the eighth-rank official of Susong River Road.
In the performance appraisal that just passed, it was determined that his performance last year was excellent, and he is planned to be promoted to the rank of seventh-grade Hedaoku envoy. If Your Majesty feels that there is nothing wrong, the Ministry of Personnel will handle it accordingly."
After only four months of working at the eighth grade, he was promoted to the seventh grade, skipping the seventh grade in the middle. It was indeed an unusually fast promotion.
However, Zhu Youjian was obviously not very satisfied. What he thought was that if such a small official could save the court such a huge amount of money, why couldn't he use talents in a more eclectic way?
"In this time of national crisis, when there are extraordinary ways to employ people, how can we just stick to the rules?"
Jiang Dejing's heart trembled, and he quickly said calmly:
"It is right for Your Majesty to forge ahead. However, I believe that the measures taken by the officials are also mature and prudent. After all, this matter involves hundreds of thousands of people and millions of dollars. It is also appropriate to reward the officials involved step by step. of.
The Ming Dynasty has a vast territory, and the folk customs and geography are different in different places. Just because the small-scale pilot project in the Ministry of Household Affairs can be repeated does not mean that it can be implemented nationwide. A policy is good governance in Jiangzuo, but when it reaches a place where the folk customs are strong, it may be implemented. Got a discount.
If your Majesty just wants to promote Youyin and encourage people who are talented and good at calculation to be loyal to the country, why not let various places try it first, and after feedback on the actual results, if it is really effective, then reward the relevant people in the future."
When Zhu Youjian heard this, he realized that this was indeed the case.
The merit of this matter can be great, but it has not been fully verified. Then the rewards and promotions can be completely separated.
At present, Shen Lin has been promoted to the seventh level due to his outstanding work in the two houses of Su and Song. In the future, it will be promoted to the entire Jiangnan. If everyone benefits, then he will be promoted to another level.
A two-level upgrade for a great feat can be regarded as a great favor from the emperor.
Moreover, these words also reminded him: this kind of innovation involves too much. At present, the first stage may only report good news but not bad news, and disadvantages may be exposed in the future.
After thinking about it, Zhu Youjian made a decision: "In that case, Jiang Qing, please immediately arrange to promote the trial in various places, and report it in time if there is any situation."
Jiang Dejing quickly thanked him and stepped back, and heaved a sigh of relief.
As the Minister of the Ministry of Revenue, he was aware of the contradiction between the Ministry of Revenue and the Governor of Water Transport. These tests by Shen Shuren were obviously a step forward in the Shen family's water transport reform.
At present, this strategy has not been promoted nationwide, and Zhu Dadian's counterattack is not yet obvious. But once it is pushed hard, a backlash will inevitably occur.
He was caught in the middle, but he couldn't just wait for the Zhu family to counterattack and the emperor to make the final decision, then he could rush forward.
This is the "iron rule of guarding against taking the blame" that I learned after serving as an official around Chongzhen for many years.
…
When the Ministry of Personnel and the Ministry of Household Affairs in the capital were dealing with the promotion arrangements for Shen Shuren, he was on the vast sea and did not know all this.
Since boarding the ship and going to sea on the second day of the Lantern Festival, Shen Shuren has been in "offline mode" for twelve days, not knowing whether there is a Han Dynasty, regardless of the Wei and Jin Dynasties.
Of course, the offline mode also has things that the offline mode is suitable for, such as staying in the cabin every day, exchanging wisdom with university hegemons, discussing articles, and talking about knowledge.
By the way, let’s play “Eight-legged Essay”, a stand-alone game that does not require the use of an Internet connection.
Not to mention, being locked up on a ship and concentrating on studying would be really efficient.
It is comparable to the efficiency of later generations of writers who locked their mobile phones and opened the black room software to code on the computer. Twenty thousand updates a day is not a dream.
After more than ten days of intense concentration training, and being surrounded by a famous Jieyuan-level teacher like Fang Yizhi, Shen Shuren, apart from other things, has basically mastered the eight-part question-answering skills and high-scoring routines.
It's just that the level of writing and rhetoric is still slightly lacking, and there's nothing that can be done about it. Those things require accumulation over time and cannot be achieved overnight.
Fang Yizhi did not know the change in the direction of this year's exam, nor did he know the real questions on current policy in the history books. Based on his assessment of the true strength of Shen Shuren's article, he was quite discouraged.
On this day, we were approaching Shanhaiguan and were about to dock. No one was in the mood to write any more articles. Fang Yizhi persuaded him with emotion:
"Brother, you don't really think you can do this exam, do you? I think you are just going through the motions and have gained a lot of experience. Anyway, you have donated your official position and made meritorious service, so you might be promoted soon. If you continue to take the exam, I can't get a better official position.
It’s not that Brother Yu is attacking you. Looking at it these days, even if your article is trained and trained by me in battle, it will only be barely at the level of a scholar at best, and it is really far from being a Jinshi."
"I'm very satisfied with the ability to be a real scholar. How will you know if you don't try it. I am a supervisor who bought it. To put it bluntly, I was only an above-average scholar at first. It's great to be able to be a scholar."
Chen Shuren didn't take it seriously either. He smiled playfully and pretended to be careless, concealing the fact that he already knew the real question based on the "History of the Ming Dynasty. Biography of Wei Zaode".
During these days at sea, while studying articles and calming down, he suddenly figured out a big question, which further strengthened his determination to take the imperial examination.
To be honest, Shen Shuren did not do it to become a bigger official, nor did he do it to "be able to integrate into the team better among colleagues with a professional background and not be ignored and excluded" in the future.
If you just want to get promoted, buying an official position and doing meritorious service is definitely fast enough, and getting a Jinshi is just the icing on the cake.
The recognition of corrupt scholars and literati only has three or four years of validity left, and the future will be an era of tough talk.
The real reason why he insisted on taking the exam was that he thought of the historical lessons of Wang Mang and Zhao Kuangyin - why were martial virtues abundant in the Han and Tang Dynasties in history? But the Song Dynasty was so cowardly?
Although there are many complicated reasons for this, one important reason cannot be circumvented.
The Han Dynasty was interrupted because Wang Mang, a "model of Confucian morality," gave in. It was a peaceful coup by high-level aristocratic politicians who did not hold military power.
Therefore, after Wang Mang was overthrown, the Han Dynasty felt that the biggest threat still came not from military generals, but from aristocratic politics, so there was no need to be too wary of military generals.
The Song Dynasty succeeded the Zhou Dynasty through the "Chenqiao Mutiny". Zhao Kuangyin's previous identity was as a military envoy and a general of the Forbidden Army. In addition, the Song Dynasty was the first dynasty to truly implement the imperial examination system from top to bottom, and the status of literati and officials was unprecedented.
improve,
When scholar-bureaucrats want to suppress a military minister with outstanding merits, they can always use "Emperor Taizu was also a loyal minister of the Zhou Dynasty" to disgust people, which has always worked.
Although the Ming Dynasty was not as serious as the Song Dynasty, the problem of using culture to control military force still existed to some extent.
This is not to say that it is wrong to prevent military generals from rebelling, but the key point is that many Confucian scholars and liberal arts classes regard this as a tool to exclude dissidents and unite the party, which will bring disaster to the country.
Chen Shuren had the ambition to hold the emperor hostage in the future to command the princes, unify the Central Plains and drive out the Tartars, so he figured it out during the days on the boat:
Aren't those corrupt Confucians just relying on the shameful historical record of "never in history has a Confucian scholar successfully stolen the highest power" to beg for mercy from the Emperor in exchange for the Emperor being most confident in using them?
But this logic does not make sense. If the more incompetent the emperor is in rebellion, the more important the emperor will use the imperial examination officials. Then the more incompetent the eunuch is in rebellion, the more important the emperor should use eunuchs? This is the underlying logic of the eunuchs in the Ming Dynasty.
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It is shameless to rely on the supreme ruler to believe that you are a low threat and use you instead of using you because you are capable and can do good things.
Then he, Shen Shuren, must destroy the sexual impotence that Confucian scholars have had for two thousand years, and let the history books of future generations clearly write:
Confucian scholars can also successfully seize power. There is no need for the emperor to give them extra preferential treatment just because Confucian scholars are particularly incompetent and can't afford to cause trouble.
There is another advantage of doing this, that is, in the future world, science and technology may advance, and even military ministers will not be important, and wars will depend on science and technology. At that time, maybe Shen Shuren's operations in this life can further suppress those liberal arts students and bureaucrats who rely on "I am incompetent"
In exchange for the operating space of the supreme ruler’s trust,
Prevent liberal arts students from overpowering science students and end up with a garbage political system like the United States in which "law students become president". Finally, we can achieve good governance with science and engineering students "led by the working class".
The Confucian scholar relied on his own sexual impotence to maintain his virginity for two thousand years, but even after Chen Shuren broke his resolve, Confucius could not keep him.
…
With this strong ambition, the sea fleet gradually approached the mainland, and Qinhuangdao also appeared on the sea level.
In the distance, the Shanhaiguan garrison's sentinel ship could be seen. It came up for inspection and questioning. After confirming that it was the Ming Dynasty's military grain transport fleet, the garrison immediately respectfully guided the fleet to Qinhuangdao to dock.
At the end of the Ming Dynasty, Qinhuangdao was actually a peninsula connected to the land by silted sandbars. The defenders also specially laid a road to facilitate the passage of vehicles and horses.
In this way, the deep water area on the south coast of Qinhuangdao is very suitable as a port anchorage. After the goods are loaded and unloaded ashore, they are then pulled by ox carts to the granary of Shanhaiguan.
Because of the large scale of the fleet, loading, unloading and delivery took several days. There were not enough civilians on the docks, and many Shanhaiguan garrison soldiers were captured by the generals as coolies.
Chen Shuren originally thought he could see Wu Sangui, but after asking a little bit, he learned that Wu Sangui is still the commander-in-chief of Ningyuan, stationed outside the customs in Ningyuan. There is only one military eunuch Gao Qiqian in charge of Shanhaiguan.
This is also due to the rapid change of the spheres of influence of all parties outside the Pass in the late Ming Dynasty. Shen Shuren may have misremembered it when he was reading history. Today, the Ming army still has several strongholds outside the Pass. It seems that it will be completely destroyed by Hong Chengchou the year after tomorrow. Throw it away.
Gao Qiqian said that after unloading the grain, they had to find another way to transport it to Ningyuan.
Of course Shen Shuren felt that this was too troublesome, and took the initiative to ask for advice from the other party, asking some of the seagoing ships not to unload their cargo, but to continue along the coast closer to the Northeast Pass and unload their cargo in Ningyuan, Jinzhou and other places.
Gao Qiqian also felt that it would be better to do less than to do more, so he went with the flow and issued a written authorization to Chen Shuren.
Chen Shuren took the documents and was delayed for several days, traveling to and from Ningyuan and other places to transport all the military rations in batches.
Anyway, the Chunwei exam won't be taken until late February, and I still have more than twenty days to rush back to the capital, so it's definitely too late.