Since the New Year is coming soon, the Nanning Marquis Mansion has been very busy these days. In addition to cleaning and decorating, there are countless gifts that need to be counted, and there are also an absurd number of gifts that need to be given out.
With his high and pragmatic background and current status, plus the fact that he also serves and manages in many places, the gifts he receives are naturally varied.
There are thirty-six flawless pure black Dongzhu from the Yehe tribe in the east, a cart of deer antlers from the Hada tribe, nine complete tiger skins from the Ula tribe, and two carts of ginseng from the left and right tribes of Jianzhou. , there are even red jade ornaments of the twelve zodiac signs sent by the former King of Joseon and the current King of Obedience, Li Huan, who calculated the time in advance.
From the south, Siam sent the ivory-inlaid gold waistband of the Eighteen Arhats, Annan sent the Ten Confucian Philosophers agarwood carvings, Nanzhang sent a cart of Ganoderma lucidum, Burma sent the Jade Buddha III, and Cambodia sent ebony wood. Twenty carts of furniture, as well as ten carts of bird's nests, sea cucumbers, shark's fins, badi cloth, etc. sent by the "Old Port Xuanwei Department".
In the north, there were a hundred high-quality Ujumqin stallions sent from Han Naji and Zhongjin Hatun. Most of the leaders also sent treasure bows, BMWs, treasure saddles and other items. Ordos Taihu Hantong, Yin Leduci and others had no other special products to give, so they still gave away a hundred stallions.
Only the gift from Erdemutu was special. He may have thought that the teacher liked all kinds of minerals, so he sent some bluish-green transparent stones that he didn't know, nor did Gao Pragmatic know. Later, after Liu Xin pointed it out, I found out that it was lapis lazuli. With the current level of technology, it was really useless and could only be played with.
In addition, Liu Xin estimated that this thing probably came from near the North Sea - near Lake Baikal in later generations. This place is still the territory of Transkarkha, but it is also inaccessible. God knows how Erdemutu obtained the lapis lazuli.
The most shabby gift was probably from the west. Huo Luochi from Qinghai sent ten kilograms of Cordyceps sinensis. How to say this? Although Cordyceps is a precious medicine, it is nothing to Gao Pragmatism, who is rich in the world. But it’s not hard to blame Huo Luochi for not being dedicated. After all, Qinghai’s development level in this era is too low. What else can there be besides Cordyceps? Even for Kunlun Stone, Huo Luochi's people don't know how to mine it, so they can't just rely on luck to pick it up.
All of the above are gifts from outside the two capitals and thirteen provinces of the Ming Dynasty, and there are even more in China. There are so many that I can list them in a separate chapter, so I might as well not mention them at all.
As the saying goes, the more gifts you receive, the more gifts you will receive in return. In the past few days, the Secretariat has been busy giving and returning gifts. There is a constant flow of traffic outside the Nanning Marquis Mansion, with loads of gifts coming and going.
So, when Gao Pingshi returned to his mansion, he was almost embarrassed to call his secretaries for a meeting. Fortunately, Liu Xin did not need to be personally responsible for these mundane affairs. She was quite free in person. She looked pragmatic and looked heavy, so she took the initiative to ask the reason.
After learning the details, Liu Xin immediately said that this matter should not be delayed and a meeting must be held immediately to discuss it, so he quickly sent people to find everyone who should be present at the meeting. At this time, Gao Pragmatic discovered that there were many valuable maps of the western region on the shelf in Liu Xin's study.
"Hey, are you preparing a plan for the Western Expedition in advance?" Gao pragmatically asked.
Liu Xin pursed her lips: "Although it is not yet known which official the imperial court will send to manage the Western Expedition, but since you named my brother to go and asked me to lead the Erdemutu generals, then I You have to do some homework in advance, right?”
Anyway, it would take some time to wait for the meeting, so Gao Pragmatic planned to talk to Liu Xin about the Western Expedition, so he asked: "So what do you think now?"
Liu Xin curled her lips and said: "I can't speak of my experience. Judging from the troops you plan to mobilize at present, no division means that the troops are divided into two groups, one is good and the other is strange. The southern line follows the old land of Hehuang and the ancient Silk Road. This can be called a serious soldier; the northern route is through the grassland, as long as there is plenty of water and grass, you can go any way, this can be called a surprise soldier."
She swept her hair and said: "On the northern front, the main force must be the Mongolian cavalry from Tumut and Ordos. They have been on the Western Expedition countless times. This offensive route is familiar to them. Nothing could go wrong.
In this way, the firearm-based cavalry, mainly our Jinghua musket-equipped cavalry, can hitch a ride, which not only saves them the trouble and danger of finding a way, but also allows them to rely on their supplies to save resources..."
"Wait a minute." Gao Pingshi interrupted: "Although the Beijing cavalry along the way can eat the Mongolian supplies on the way, they cannot eat and drink for free. We must communicate with Bahan Naji, Zhongjin Hatun, and Taihuhan in advance. So much so that Boshu Ketu, Yin Leduqi and others agreed that those who should pay should pay, and those who should give materials should be given materials.
All in all, what I mean is that not only can we not steal their wool during this war, we even have to make them feel that this deal is a good deal. "
Liu Xin was slightly startled at first, but then she understood immediately and said with a smile: "I see, you mean 'if you want to take something, you must give it first', right?"
"No, I didn't mean to 'take what you want'." Gao Pragmatic shook his head decisively and said: "If I meant to 'take what you want', it means that I always regard them as outsiders.
But you have to know that my long-term goal is to never treat them as outsiders - what I want is not Han chauvinism, I want 'Chinese nationalism', so in my eyes there is no real difference between the Mongolian people and the Han people, they are nothing more than The lifestyle is just different. "
Liu Xin sighed and said helplessly: "If it weren't for the clear family tree of Lao Gao's family, I would have suspected that you are a Mongolian... This statement really sounds like you are speaking from the perspective of a Mongolian."
"If you say that, then I have objections." Gao pragmatic shook his head and said: "It is precisely because I am a Han that I can say this openly and with a clear conscience.
The Han and the Mongols, or the Han and the steppe peoples, have been fighting for thousands of years, but the age of firearms has arrived, and it is no longer possible for the steppe peoples to gain a strategic advantage.
Assume that the two sides are still hostile to each other for a long time as in the past and are incompatible with each other. In the future, the Han people will definitely carry out a one-sided massacre and bloodbath against the grassland peoples. But I want to ask, is this necessary?
The Han people are a farming civilization, not a nomadic civilization, and they are not a pirate civilization. Massacre and plunder have never been the background of farming civilization. The foundation of agricultural civilization is to obtain profits through large-scale production. Therefore, it has the most stable economic production model and social construction, which is conducive to the inheritance of social culture from generation to generation.
Nomadic civilization and pirate civilization are different. The productivity of the former is seriously insufficient. Once the weather turns cold, they can only plunder to survive; the productivity of the latter is between farming and nomadic, so it needs the ocean as a convenient material trading channel to achieve production. balance with consumption.
The heyday of nomadic civilization was the period when the Mongols established a super empire. They found that they could defeat almost all their opponents and became the 'superior of men', so they continued to expand until they collapsed;
After the Ottoman Empire interrupted its trade with the East, the pirate civilization had to open new routes to maintain the balance between production and consumption, so it searched for roads to the East through the ocean.
However, their luck or 'luck' happened to be right. They first discovered that America and Africa were less civilized than they were, so they regarded these two places as their sources of raw materials and labor, and completed primitive capital accumulation through plunder.
Moreover, due to the need for suppression and the fierce competition for interests within the pirate civilization, they have been in a long-term internal war, which in turn promoted the advancement of science and technology, especially military technology, and ultimately allowed them to dominate the world with tyrannical force for hundreds of years.
Later Westerners often use various so-called "advanced" and "civilized" to whitewash their ancestors. In fact, from a civilized perspective, pirate civilization is fundamentally a predatory civilization. Their most accustomed practice It is always about oppressing and plundering other people through military conquest, rather than attracting others to join oneself through the development of productivity through agricultural civilization.
I remember I told you before that around the Zhou Dynasty, concepts such as "Huaxia" and "Zhonghua" appeared in China, and they were used to distinguish themselves from the Yi and Di.
But unlike the pirate civilization, which likes to strictly distinguish itself from the conquered, one of the biggest characteristics of "Huaxia" is that "when the barbarians and the Di enter China, China will follow."
That is to say, our ancestors have long stopped judging advanced and backward based on superficial bloodline. Instead, when someone is willing to implement the same production and living system as ours, we recognize him as one of us and no different from us. To.
Could it be that a civilization with such a broad mind is not the right direction for historical development, but is a pirate civilization that is always based on the essence of oppression the right direction for historical development?
Without the Chinese civilization as a comparison, even if the pirate civilization develops for ten thousand years, it will still be a civilization in which a small minority oppresses the majority. Those descendants of pirate civilization at the top of the pyramid will always consider themselves superior and will always engage in all kinds of racial discrimination and cultural discrimination.
If they find that some so-called 'backward nations' are developing so fast that they feel chilled, they will definitely regard them as the biggest threat in the world, and then unite as much as possible to suppress them with the strongest possible force. This kind of 'subversion' is strangled in the cradle and in its infancy.
Instead of relying on the resilience of civilization to rise or revive in the face of adversity, why not quickly expand the scope of this civilization now, include more civilizations that have been deeply influenced by us in advance, and gain the ability to compete with us earlier? What about the power of pirate civilization to fight against?
That's why I said that I am not talking about the Chinese nation from the standpoint of a Mongolian. I am talking about this from the standpoint of "China" as a Han Chinese.
I hope that one day, there will be no such thing as Han, Mongolian, Jurchen, Miao, Tong, Yao, etc. in China. I hope that by then, everyone will have the same answer in their self-awareness: I am China. "
Liu Xin listened quietly to Gao Pangshi's long speech, and said with emotion: "I have been wondering about one thing for a long time, that is, you already have such a strong strength, among the people of Shilin and even the military. You also have a high reputation, but why do you have no intention of rebelling at all?
You said before that you don’t want to see civil war among the Chinese. I...how should I put it? As someone who grew up in the same education system as you, I can understand this sentence, but I still feel that this truth is not true. Very sufficient. However, after hearing what you just said today, I think I roughly understand what you mean.
The biggest threat in your mind is never the opponent you need to face if you 'rebel'. Whether he is the current emperor, the officials of the Ming Dynasty, or other forces - they are not opponents of the same level in your eyes. , you don’t care how they will resist, because you are confident that you can solve them.
Your situation is much higher than establishing a new dynasty, because your opponent is not a dynasty at all, but a civilization, a pirate civilization that should have dominated the world for hundreds of years in history.
Now the only thing I'm curious about is, why do you think you don't have to build a new dynasty, but just some reforms to fight that pirate civilization? "
Gao Pragmatic was silent for a moment, and then suddenly asked: "Have you ever heard of a British professor named Martin Jacques?"
"Is that the professor who proposed that 'China is a civilization disguised as a country'? I have some impressions." Obviously, Liu Xin had indeed heard of it, but he might not be very familiar with it.
"Yes, but what I want to discuss now is not the quote you quoted, but another less dramatic quote he mentioned in another speech.
I can't remember the original words, but it probably means 'They (China) have been one of the most advanced and powerful countries in the world for thousands of years, so we should not be surprised by their current rise, but should Explore what happened in China between 1800 and 1949. '"
Liu Xin thought for a while and was a little confused, and said, "Yes, why? 1800...when was that?"
Gao pragmatic shrugged and said: "The second year after Qianlong's death."
Liu Xin said distressedly: "My majors are different from yours. I don't have much research on history, culture, and civilization. Why don't you tell me the conclusion directly?"
"My conclusion is not necessarily correct, it only represents my opinion... Of course, I admit that now I have a certain ability to correct some things that I think should be corrected based on my understanding."
Liu Xin asked: "For example, through your series of reforms?"
"Of course, this is the main method." Gao Pragmatic admitted frankly.
"How complete is it now?"
"It's difficult to quantify, so it's impossible for me to give you an accurate percentage value." Gao pragmatically said: "But I want to say that there is a very important reform that I have been laying the groundwork for more than 20 years, but it is not there yet. Take a practical step. Once the matter of canonizing the crown prince is completed, I will start taking action."
"You mean to wait until you become the first assistant?" Liu Xin was very curious and asked with blinking eyes: "You dare to make drastic reforms on the old and difficult issues such as Beijing business, commercial taxation, and vassal ban. What else can you do?" What makes you so cautious that you dare not take action after more than 20 years of preparation?"
"The foundation of the country..." Gao Pingshi smiled and spread his hands: "Imperial examination."
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Thanks to book friend "Cao Mianzi" for your reward and support, thank you!
Thanks to book friends "Cao Mianzi", "So Nervous_I'm Going to Get Rich", "cxxmp", and "Doubu" for their monthly support, thank you!
ps: I saw that people backstage were discussing these recent chapters quite heatedly. Some friends expressed a considerable degree of recognition for the literary drama, and their expectations for the subsequent plots were also relatively high. I'm grateful, but also deeply stressed. The update has been slow in recent days for this reason. I am really cautious in writing, and I am very worried about creating hard bugs.
All I can say is that I will try my best to connect the previous chapters and lay the groundwork for the following chapters to develop this plot reasonably. As for the number of updates that have fallen behind in the past few days, you don’t need to worry. At this point, I should still have a credibility guarantee. Maybe the time for delaying the update is not so fixed, but it will definitely be made up in the end.
Finally, thank you again and apologize.
