"Since you can't stand being bullied by villains, please resign! In order to avoid being angry, it's better to live in seclusion in the woods. This will also prevent others from thinking that a gentleman is easy to bully!"
When Lu Shude met Shi Yingyue, he heard from Shi Yingyue that he had not seen bureaucrats resigning angrily because they prevented them from using camp soldiers, let alone that the gentry wanted to move elsewhere because of this, so he also saw that he was also dissatisfied with the matter of checking the use of camp soldiers. Huang Yuanshi, the prefect of Yangzhou, suggested it.
Huang Yuan smiled bitterly: "How can you abandon your father and the country?"
Lu Shude looked disappointed after hearing this, but he could not refute it, so he had to leave Yangzhou.
And not long after.
When Lu Shude passed by Rugao, he saw that the market here was much more prosperous and lively than when he passed here last year. Many scholars and civilians were flowing in and out of Rugao City like a torrent, and the sound of shouting and chatting continued all night long.
Lu Shude's face darkened at this, and then he saw with his own eyes that when a life member passed by a post with a folding fan that said "Fengyang Inspector Zhang Wenxi stayed at the nunnery," he ignored it and even dropped another one on the ground. The tabloid that wrote "Zhang Wenxi amassed money to be the first in inspections tomorrow" was stepped on directly. He only chatted with the old farmer who came to the county to sell fruit, and his face became even more ugly, so he asked:
"Why are you so cold-blooded?!"
This student’s real name is Jinggui, and he is a student from Rugao County.
At this time, he couldn't help being startled and looked up at Lu Shude. Seeing that he was wearing a red robe and official uniform, he had to salute solemnly:
"I wonder how the students got such bad comments?"
Lu Shude snorted: "Look at your own feet!"
Jing Gui looked down and saw a tabloid smearing Zhang Wenxi under his feet, and smiled:
"I must have just come to Rugao for the first time. I don't know why. This kind of tabloid is obviously fake news and is used to confuse the public. Otherwise, there would not be more tabloids in the city. It is about Zhang Xun's rectification of powerful families and the use of soldiers and civilians." , so no one takes it seriously anymore, not even us, and even people are too lazy to pick it up for home use, after all, there are too many tabloids that can be picked up."
"Is that so?"
Lu Shude did not criticize Jing Gui directly, but asked a question pretending to be surprised.
Jing Gui said: "Of course! The students think that these are true. He Zhang Wenxi really only abused the officials and gentry to make money. But he did not hear that there were big people around him who were asked for bribes, nor did he contaminate him as a servitor of soldiers and civilians when he failed to ask for bribes. Case."
"You want these to be true?"
Lu Shude asked again pretending to be puzzled.
Jing Gui nodded and said: "Yes, because we scholars can no longer buy tickets from the officers and generals to serve the soldiers and civilians, it will be much more convenient for us to study abroad!"
"After all, if you can't command the soldiers and the people, the slaves will not be willing to follow you on a long journey. They have to have benefits before they are willing to follow you. The benefit is that they can rely on the master's power to command the soldiers and the people, but now they can't. Then, then The hard work along the way is naturally borne by the domestic slave, and the domestic slave is naturally unwilling. If he is willing, we, the masters, will naturally have to provide more benefits."
"No matter what else, it makes study tour inconvenient and detrimental to success. As the saying goes, it is better to travel thousands of miles than to read thousands of books."
"The imperial court should allow local soldiers and civilians to serve as soldiers!"
Lu Shude sighed seriously.
Jinggui was overjoyed and hurriedly bowed his hands: "If all the people in the world are as considerate to scholars as you are, it will naturally be a blessing for our scholars!"
"You should also be tougher yourself. You can't just rely on us as officials!"
“In a situation like this, we should persuade the local magistrates to clean up the tabloids that are detrimental to the dignity of the people. We should also go on strike, strike schools, or even move to another place, so that the court can see that this policy is too harsh and makes the local gentry uneasy. "
Lu Shude began to give explicit instructions.
Jing Gui said: "The public doesn't know, it's not that we don't want to do this, but the problem now is that these tabloids that harm the dignity of gentleness cannot be cleaned up at all. Today, we send local slaves to tear them up, and tomorrow they can suddenly appear all over the country. City, printing is so fast, it’s like gods are casting spells!”
"In addition, the bustling market has nothing to do with us gentlemen, but the fact that the people in the towns and villages have become more and more happy and luxurious these days. They compete for luxury and beauty, and ordinary people also ride in cars to enjoy the arts, so that The streets and alleys were filled with the sound of copper coins and broken silver swaying."
"Therefore, it is useless for us to want to go on strike, not to mention that the gentry whose families are doing business cannot bear to go on strike and lose profits when the prosperity of the market is greatly restored. As for the current harsh treatment of the gentry's government, they have to move to other places, and few gentry are willing. After all, People can leave, but where are the ancestral lands and ancestral graves?"
"So, the students did not stop going out because of this. They also came to this market to take a walk."
After Jinggui said this, Lu Shude smiled helplessly.
He couldn't help but take a look at the market in front of him, and sure enough he saw many villagers walking back in open carriages carrying two large bags of goods, all with smiles on their faces.
"good!"
Suddenly.
Lu Shude also heard that in the overcrowded tea shop, many people in short clothes were sitting on the seats on the second floor and shouting loudly at a storyteller. Many of them even imitated their own scholar-bureaucrats and voted for the storyteller. As a reward, when drinking tea, he put one end of the tea cup, blew it gently, and took a slight sniff, and became more particular about it, instead of just using it as a thirst quencher.
This made Lu Shude feel quite nondescript, and he suddenly felt that going to a teahouse to listen to books had become tacky, and he no longer even felt that there was anything elegant about tasting tea.
Lu Shude was too lazy to enter Rugao City again, so he continued southward in despair.
Not long after, he was on the post road outside the city and saw some villagers from the countryside also imitating the playboy You Ye and having a picnic. They were also doing things like drinking wine and drinking wine, and even invited one or two actors to play.
"The world is really declining! Even the common people don't know how to be thrifty. They imitate the scholar-bureaucrats and wander in the woods. They don't know how to work diligently and regard themselves as rulers!"
"As everyone knows, if you don't first study and understand the truth, how can you enjoy high music? Once this happens, I may not give birth to the scholar-bureaucrat's ambition to take the world as his own responsibility, but he will develop a lazy and lustful heart!"
Lu Shude really couldn't bear to see people going out and having fun.
After all, he always advocated that people should behave according to the standards of Neo-Confucianism, that is, they should eliminate their own desires.
He believed that even if the common people had earned some savings by diligently farming, they should first actively study and learn the teachings of the sages. How could they not first experience the taste that only scholar-bureaucrats could taste without studying? How could scholars do this? Have a sense of elegance when it comes to entertaining in life?
There were many scholar-bureaucrats like Lu Shude in the Ming Dynasty. They could accept the arrogance and licentiousness of wealthy nobles, but they really could not accept the arrogance and licentiousness of the common people. In some cases, the common people were even prevented from listening to social operas.
One is that they are afraid that the people will gather to cause trouble or provide opportunities for the spread of cults; the other is that they feel that if the people know too many stories, they will become unruly people, so some officials prohibit people from having entertainment.
But what Lu Shude didn't know was that due to the influence of the officials in some places who used the Qing army to rob the people without authorization, many people woke up and felt that if they had extra money at home, they would only be raped by the officials. , it’s better to enjoy it yourself and do yourself a favor.
certainly.
In addition, now is the time of prosperity, the internal economy of Ming Dynasty is getting better and better, and the income of the people has been increasing. Naturally, the people have nothing to worry about their ability to make money and their prospects. The only worry is that they are afraid of the greed of officials. That is to say, there is no sense of security, so I just start spending like crazy.
(End of chapter)
