The news that needs to be spread has been spread, and now it’s time to watch the show.
Xiao Daheng, the censor of Zuodu of the Metropolitan Procuratorate, was quickly ordered to cooperate with Wang An, the admiral of Dongchang, to supervise the "Medicinal Diet Eucalyptus", that is, to investigate Yikun Palace. The reason for this name is that the reason why the emperor coughed up blood was that some of the ingredients in all the medicinal diets he used before may conflict with the Qiulubai he drank that day. Therefore, both the inner and outer courts are now accustomed to simply calling this eucalyptus. "Medicated Eucalyptus".
At the same time, Zhao Zhigao's family began to collect money to fill the hole of his son Zhao Fengwei's 70,000 taels of silver, and strive to get help from the Ministry of Household Affairs as soon as possible to get rid of the serious crime of "privately collecting salt tax" for which he was impeached.
In fact, Zhao Zhigao was not short of money. Although 70,000 taels of silver was a huge sum of money, the Zhao family could definitely come up with it. However, there were two reasons why he needed a certain amount of time to collect the money.
The first reason is very simple. Although the Zhao family is rich, it does not mean that Zhao Zhigao will put so much cash in his bachelor's palace in Beijing. Not to mention cash, even if it was a Federal Reserve bank note or a bank note from Beijing Capital Bank, he didn't need to keep so much on hand.
The Zhao family is not much different from many official families and wealthy families in the Jiangnan area. Although their assets are sufficient, they are mainly physical assets, such as fertile land, shops, or merchant ships, goods, etc. that have emerged in recent years. These things make up the vast majority of their assets.
Of course they also have cash and banknotes, and they must have reserves of these liquid funds. However, since they are called working capital, they must be placed in areas that need to move.
Even though Zhao Zhigao occupies a high position, the business circle in the north of the Ming Dynasty already has the super giant Beiyang Sea Trade Alliance. How can the Zhao family's business squeeze in?
Of course, objectively speaking, the Zhao family does not have the ability to expand its business to the capital... His family is mainly engaged in the silk supporting industry, and there are relatively strong regional restrictions.
What is "silk supporting industry"? To put it simply, among the many steps of making silk, the Zhao family is mainly responsible for one of them. As mentioned before, the Jiangsu and Zhejiang regions of the Ming Dynasty had a developed economy and a relatively advanced structure. There is no need to say more about the development here, but I can say a few words about the advanced structure.
To put it simply, a relatively complex industrial division of labor has emerged. For example, the silk industry can generally be divided into three major steps: sericulture, silk making, and dyeing and printing. These three major steps can be subdivided. For example, silk making can be subdivided into steps such as reeling, silk conditioning, and weft rolling.
In the past, Ming Dynasty actually did not have enough competition in silk manufacturing - what kind of competition is there in Invincible World? However, after Gao Pragmatic developed the Jinghua version of the Jenny spinning machine and invested it in his own industry, the cotton spinning industry has begun to squeeze the silk industry after more than 20 years of development - mainly in terms of price. , of course, there are also impacts brought by the improvement in the quality of cotton textiles, etc., which I won’t go into here.
In short, people engaged in the silk industry found that if they did not quickly improve production efficiency and reduce production costs, even if overseas trade would still make huge profits, their domestic market share would be in danger. This situation is very familiar to future generations, that is, it is time for "industrial upgrading must be carried out".
Businessmen in the Ming Dynasty may not have any academic theories on "industrial upgrading", but everyone actually understands the reason, so they are "forced" to upgrade their industries.
On the one hand, this upgrade means that everyone has begun to study to see if the silk weaving process can be "mechanized" to a certain extent without affecting its artistry; on the other hand, it is to separate the production process so that it is no longer the same as before. In this way, each family does its own thing, but each family produces through one-stop production, almost everything from sericulture to silk making to printing and dyeing is done by themselves.
The former aspect has led to the emergence of a production model in the silk industry in which weaving and embroidery are carried out separately. That is, I first use machines to weave various colors of silk and satin, and then let professionals do the embroidery work manually.
This has a certain prototype of specialized production, and it can still be considered a high-end handmade art - after all, silk is only the foundation, and embroidery is the soul. Without years of study and practice, the things you can embroider are hard to come by, and anyone with a discerning eye can tell the difference at a glance.
The latter aspect is closely related to Zhao Zhigao's family's industry. Since entering the "era of great division of labor in the silk industry", the Jiangsu and Zhejiang regions have also been working together for many years, gradually forming some relatively fixed family industry transformations. The Zhao family has also shifted from "one-stop production" to specializing in one - their family The choice was to specialize in printing and dyeing.
Whether it is natural silk or later synthetic silk, it is usually white. Of course, there are also special varieties. For example, the most precious variety of mulberry silk is celestial silkworm silk, which is jade-green.
Well, to get colorful silk fabrics, you need to go through the printing and dyeing steps. China is the first country in the world to apply fabric dyeing and printing. In primitive society, natural mineral pigments such as hematite, cinnabar, ocher, stone yellow, carbon black and clay have been used to dye colors such as red, white, yellow and black.
After entering civilized society, printing and dyeing has developed from a budding state into a profession. Dyeing already existed in the Xia Zhi and Shang dynasties, and dyes progressed from mineral pigments to plant dyes.
During the Qin and Han Dynasties, the variety of dyes increased and the color spectrum expanded. By the Eastern Han Dynasty, the number of dyes had expanded from more than 20 in the Western Han Dynasty to 39. Color matching and color matching techniques have also improved, dye making techniques have become more skilled, and white muscovite mica has been added to mineral pigments.
Printed valerian dyeing was very popular during the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, and techniques such as twisted valerian, small pattern wax valerian, openwork wax printing, and blue and white printing have become mature.
In the Tang Dynasty, the method of pounding was to tie the silk and put it in a stone trough and anvil, and then stand and pound with a wooden pestle. Porcine trypsin was also used to efficiently hydrolyze sericin, creating a trypsin refining process. This method was the earliest invention in China.
At that time, there were more than 30 kinds of plant dyes in the chromatogram, and special printing and dyeing processes such as alkali direct printing, tie-warp blending, hand-painted printing, letterpress printing, rubbing and anti-dye discharge and fading were also developed.
The bleaching technology using sulfur fumigation appeared in the Southern Song Dynasty. There are four methods of hollow printing: plant dyeing, paint printing, color glue printing and gold spraying.
In the Ming Dynasty, the printing and dyeing process became increasingly complete. There were already 57 dyeing chromatograms, but due to Gao's pragmatic intervention, Jinghua came up with many new gadgets. After the spread of these technologies, there are now more than 300 chromatograms.
I would like to add here that the development of certain technologies often multiplies geometrically. In the late Tatar Qing Dynasty, there were a total of 704 possible color tones, which was more than 30 times more than the Han Dynasty more than 2,000 years ago. Now, because of his high pragmatism, Daming's "color number" has increased about six times, which is not surprising.
With so many more color spectrums, dye varieties naturally continue to expand. On the basis of developing patchwork dyeing and overdying techniques, relevant practitioners in the Ming Dynasty created new colors such as light and dark, dark brown, silver, jade, lotus root, agarwood, chinchilla, sauce, eggplant, etc., making clothing compatible with both cold and warm. More colorful.
The Zhao family specializes in printing and dyeing, and their technical strength cannot be underestimated. Now they have five unique "color numbers", so they are considered rich.
However, their family also relies on Jinghua to a certain extent - because the two dyes required for its unique "color number", hematoxylin and garcinia, are mainly produced in Nanyang. Well, this may be one of the reasons why Zhao Zhigao insisted not to fight to the death with the Real School.
Since the business is in his hometown, and there are still many "imported raw materials" that need to be settled at any time when they arrive, of course, enough cash flow must be left. This is the main reason why Zhao Zhigao will not put too much money in the capital.
The second reason is the political level. As for the officials of the Ming Dynasty, all of them only received the meager salary set by Lao Zhu. They were all so cool that they almost served the emperor on an empty stomach. How could it be possible to spend a total of 70,000 yuan at once? Where's the two pieces of silver?
Impossible, absolutely impossible! I have to move here and there, borrowing from relatives, friends, disciples and old officials, so that I can reluctantly gather this amount at the last moment. If I had gathered it a day earlier, it would be an insult to me, Mr. Zhao Ge, and it would question my lack of happiness in poverty... cough, In short, that’s what it means. Whether you believe it or not, I believe it anyway.
This practice is very common in Ming Dynasty officialdom, with only a few possible exceptions, such as Gao Pragmatism. But Gao pragmatism belongs to the pragmatic school, and his "reason" for doing this is to prove that the path of practical learning is not only feasible, but also has unique advantages. Therefore, his highly pragmatic approach has the attribute of "definition of scriptures."
It is not possible for the Xin School to do this, because as mentioned before, Xin Xue is essentially a practical study of morality. They must put moral attributes first, but they are not willing to "blatantly show off their wealth" like Gao Pragmatic.
As a result, Zhao Zhigao naturally started collecting money to perform. He publicly stated that Zhao Fengwei's money was levied in accordance with his understanding of the "spirit of instructions" of the Ministry of Revenue - in other words, the Ministry of Revenue had such a "spirit", but did not say clearly that Zhao Fengwei was acting in the spirit of serving the country. In line with the principle of contribution, I decided on my own that additional levies were necessary, so I imposed additional levies.
In this case, two points are very important: The first point is that the Ministry of Revenue must admit that there is such a "spirit", otherwise you, Zhao Fengwei, are "unreasonably speculating on the intentions of the emperor", which is not only unjustified, but will also be regarded as an official fanatic. , was ridiculed by all walks of life.
The second point is that this money must be made up as soon as possible, but you can't say that the salt tax was increased to meet the costs of the Korean war. As a result, now that the Korean war is over, you have quietly swallowed the money.
But there is a problem here. Zhao Fengwei was impeached. Although he is not a Beijing official, the Transportation Department is under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Household Affairs. After the reform of the Ministry of Household Affairs, the supervision system of the Ministry of Household Affairs is stricter than before. There are clear regulations that officials who are impeached due to economic problems must be impeached as if they were officials in the capital. To say thank you behind closed doors as soon as you receive the news is to effectively suspend yourself.
Therefore, Zhao Fengwei should theoretically have suspended himself now, which raises a question: If Zhao Fengwei had already sent the money to the Ministry of Accounts in the capital before the impeachment, then that would be fine, as long as he continues to wait for the money to be delivered. But if Zhao Fengwei had not issued the money at that time, he would have had to wait for the Ministry of Accounts to send personnel to Huai'an to check the accounts and count the bank.
This is a reasonable and legal procedure, but it takes too long. The Ministry of Revenue sent people to Huai'an. The round trip and the audit itself were very time-consuming. Maybe half a year had passed.
The imperial court was also well aware of the troubles of this process, so it came up with some accommodation methods, such as Zhao Zhigao's method of filling holes was one of them. Of course, in fact, this method was deliberately devised by Gao Pragmatic as a way for some people to save themselves after the reform of the large household department.
This is related to high pragmatic habits. As a person who studied law in his previous life, he certainly knows that the law should not be one-sided, but the reality cannot be ignored. Now the law can only be the law, and politics can be politics.
The Ming Dynasty was not a society ruled by law, it was a society ruled by people. This is a basic fact that must be recognized before any reform.
Idealism cannot be divorced from reality. If there had not been such a pragmatic approach after the reform of the Ministry of Household Affairs, the supervision system of the Ministry of Household Affairs would have been ten times stricter than before, and the number of people arrested might have been in the tens of thousands. .
As mentioned before, there were not many officials in the Ming Dynasty. Typically, the imperial power did not extend to counties, and there were even only three official officials in one county. If they were all beaten to death with a stick, and anyone caught by the Ministry of Household Affairs with financial problems would be dealt with according to Ming law, the imperial administrative system might be paralyzed.
Faced with such a realistic situation, Gao Pragmatic can only put the law aside, let politics take priority, and provide some measures to allow the perpetrators to remedy the situation on their own. In this way, although "guilty must be punished" cannot be achieved, it can at least be regarded as "violation must be punished", and the stolen money has been recovered and the losses have been reduced.
Of course, this was done because the imperial court had not been strict in financial management before. After the sudden tightening, many officials were not used to it and had to provide some temporary accommodations. However, in the highly pragmatic plan, these accommodation measures will eventually be slowed down step by step and bit by bit. Canceled slowly.
In short, after Zhao Zhigao announced the matter, he quickly started borrowing money to perform. The master borrows a little, the west borrows a little, the colleague borrows a little, and the disciple borrows a little. Each family can't borrow much, ranging from a thousand taels to a hundred taels... After all, we are all good officials with clear sleeves. If Mr. Zhao Ge borrows too much, how can we get it out?
On this side, Mr. Zhao Ge started to perform, and on the other side, Mr. Xiao was not exempt from vulgarity, so he had to perform as well.
Of course, Xiao Zongxian's performance was very different from that of Mr. Zhao Ge. He mainly performed the outer court's anger at the "Medicinal Diet Eucalyptus" and his determination to investigate thoroughly.
To show his determination, when Xiao Daheng met Wang An, the admiral of the East Factory who was "jointly supervising" this case with him, he first made a suggestion that stunned Wang An.
"This constitution believes that when the Yikun Palace is immediately sealed off by the Jinyi Guards, all the people in the palace must be searched by the eunuchs selected by the inner court in the East Factory, and then temporarily live in other palaces with only necessary clothes. After that, the two section chiefs Qian and Zhong will On behalf of Ke Dao, we went into the palace together with the major officials in Dongchang to search to ensure that there are no omissions.”
Wang An opened his eyes wide and asked: "The outer court wants to enter Yikun Palace to search, and the female eunuchs in Yikun Palace are required to evacuate? Haha... General Xian Mingjian, unless our family does not allow it, we will ask two questions Questions: First, does the Imperial Concubine have to evacuate the Yikun Palace? Has the Emperor agreed? Secondly, do the two section chiefs also personally inspect the clothes that the Imperial Concubine left in the Yikun Palace?"
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ps: There are at least half the goatmen around, but I'm still in the dark. Well, I may have practiced the Nine Yin Manual in my dream... By the way, my cold has basically recovered, and now I'm just busy with things.
