Gao Pragmatic has always had a good attitude towards Ye Hebe, but in the final analysis, this does not mean that he is defenseless against Ye Hebe. Even if the two Beile of Yehe tribe are now his brother-in-law, that cannot change the fact that they are Jurchen tribe.
"Those who are not of my race must have different minds." This sentence may be too extreme. After all, there were many other ethnic minorities in the Ming Dynasty who were not Han, and they did not have "different minds." As far away as Ma Fang, and as close as Ma Gui, they are not Han people, but who can say that they are not loyal ministers of the Ming Dynasty?
However, this kind of loyalty has a premise, that is, the degree of Chineseization of their nation is already very high, and they have long accepted the rule of a Han imperial power like the Ming Dynasty, and have already formed an inertia.
At the same time, the Ming Dynasty did not discriminate against them. It could be said that they were basically treated equally, and even received some preferential treatment in some cases. For example, as mentioned long ago, the Hui, Mongolian and other ethnic groups in the border army often accounted for a considerable proportion. The Ming Dynasty also respected some of their traditions and specially formulated some rules for them that were different from those of the Han army.
However, the Jurchens have not achieved such a status now.
Although they had been the so-called "fences" of the Ming Dynasty for a long time, they had not been able to completely obey the orders of the Ming Dynasty for a long time. At most, they could only be postponed to the time when Gao Jingshi became governor of Liaodong - how many years had it passed? How could they be allowed to do so? Did everyone in the Ming Dynasty regard them as one of their own?
Even Gao Pragmatic himself can only guarantee that the Jurchens will never dare to turn against him for one day when he is in power. However, if he is no longer in office and the court changes its style and removes one of the carrots and sticks, who knows the consequences?
In the final analysis, the problem has three aspects: the Jurchens did not fully surrender for long enough, the degree of sinicization was not high enough, and the characteristics of tribalism were too distinct. If these three issues are not resolved, it will be difficult for the court to fully trust them, and it cannot "favour" them too much, otherwise it will definitely cause discussion between the government and the public, and even become a political handle.
There is nothing that can be done about the fact that the time of attachment is not long. Gao is pragmatic and is not a god. He certainly does not have such magical power as changing time and history. Fortunately, this can be covered in other ways. It’s not difficult to find a way to cover it up, just start with the “low level of Chineseness”.
To put it simply, if the degree of Chineseization of the Jurchens is extremely high and they are almost exactly the same as the Han people, then "the time of their attachment is not long" will not be a problem.
This is like China after the Qin and Han Dynasties. Whether you are from Guanzhong or Guandong, from Hebei or Henan, this will not constitute an additional cost of governance at all - anyway, you speak Chinese and write Chinese characters. I admit it. Orthodoxy is all Han culture. Therefore, even if a new dynasty rises and defeats the old dynasty, it will not have difficulty ruling because of any national issues.
Therefore, it has to be said that Qin Shihuang is indeed the only emperor through the ages. "Books with the same text, cars with the same track, unified weights and measures" are indeed an epoch-making weapon. The purpose of the same book is communication, the same track of cars is for transportation, and the unified weights and measures are for circulation.
Many people think that since Chinese characters have basically the same origin, even if they look different, they should at least be mutually identifiable. In fact, this is not the case. The characters of the Six Kingdoms at the end of the Warring States Period were quite different. An ordinary scholar from the Qin State who went to the Qi State would basically not be able to read the documents of the Qi State, and vice versa. Whether people from Qin go to Qi or people from Qi go to Qin, they have to bring a translator if they want to read books when they get there.
Qin unified writing, and from now on everyone will use Xiaozhuan and official script as standards. This is the first time that later generations of Han culture have a unified communication method, although it is only in written form. Don't criticize Qin Shihuang because he didn't have a unified pronunciation. It would be impossible to solve it without entering modern society - think about how many old people still can't speak Mandarin.
Cars on the same track are more likely to be ignored than books on the same track, and many people even don’t know what the “rail” here is. Qin Shihuang's vehicle-tracking policy simply means that the distance between the two wheels on the vehicle must be changed to six feet, so that the distance between the wheels is the same.
As a modern person, when you see this, your first reaction may be: That’s it? Does this have any meaning? I'm afraid you, Ying Zheng, are not in the advanced stage of obsessive-compulsive disorder, so you still have to take care of this trivial matter! I buy a large SUV with a wheelbase of more than two meters, and a mini SUV with a wheelbase of 1.6 meters. Do you care? What's bothering you?
Sorry, this is looking at history without seeing it.
The roads at that time were not the cement roads and asphalt roads of today. Once the damage reached a certain extent, repairs and maintenance would be arranged to ensure the quality of the road surface. What was the road back then? The answer: Dirt road.
After the new century, the Red Dynasty did a big thing at the beginning of its rural revitalization strategy. It built all the roads in the countryside into cement roads. This was a great undertaking! But because of this, younger people may have never seen "wide dirt roads" other than country roads, and lack an intuitive understanding of the situation of "getting stuck" on such dirt roads.
In fact, before the implementation of the rural revitalization strategy, many areas with relatively poor infrastructure conditions could not speak of rural roads. Even provincial roads were often in tatters. When it rained, they were as pitted as the surface of the moon, and the mud was knee deep. Common thing. On this kind of road, it is natural that vehicles often get stuck in potholes and are unable to escape.
In ancient times, the best roads outside cities were rammed earth, that is, hardened dirt roads. Although this kind of road has been compacted, ruts will be formed by driving for a long time in sunny or rainy weather. These ruts are not the "shallow marks" imagined, and are often twenty or thirty centimeters deep - which means that less than half of the road will be marked when driving. Every wheel will be in ruts.
Because of this, in ancient times, if two vehicles met when driving outside, it was a big problem who should avoid the other, because you have to force the vehicle out of such a deep rut, which is no small feat. So much so that later on, it became institutionalized that who should give way to the sedan chair between officials in the city, and the root of this also stems from the rut.
Now that we know that ancient ruts are easy to get in and out, we can say it again: if the vehicles are on different tracks, the ruts will be messed up, and the traffic efficiency will become extremely low.
For example, if the ruts in the state of Qin are six feet long, and the vehicle of the state of Qin goes to a country with ruts five feet wide, it will not be able to enter the rut, or it may accidentally enter only one side of the rut, and it will get stuck in it and cannot get out. At this time, the entire convoy was stuck there unable to move.
So it will affect one big thing: long-distance transportation of materials, such as military rations. If forced transportation is required at this time, the transportation cost will be greatly increased until it cannot be transported at all.
Therefore, the construction of trains on the same track, including the Qinzhi Road, was essentially the “new infrastructure” of that era and a transportation reform of unprecedented scale.
If the same text of the storybook gives a unified country a basis for realizing cultural identity, then it is precisely because of Che Tongrail and Qin Zhidao that a unified country has a material foundation. Otherwise, we can only continue the situation of separate regimes as in the Warring States Period, and there will be no unified country.
The reason is simple. It will not be able to control such a large territory and extend its dominance. In this way, there may be no difference between the historical development of China and Europe, and there will be no sophistical sophistry by some European and American scholars that "Chinese history is characterized by political precocity" (great unification).
You're laughing so hard, you don't have Qin Shihuang, so you say China is precocious? Why didn't you say it was your own developmental disability?
I'm going too far, but let's talk about weights and measures for now. I'll talk about them later when I have the opportunity.
In short, the key to solving the problem of Chinese Jurchenization lies mainly in culture, secondly in form, and finally in structure.
In terms of culture, the Jurchen tribes who moved to North Korea must immediately learn Chinese in a unified manner. It cannot be the case before that only a few Baylors or senior generals and other high-ranking figures can speak Chinese, and they may not even be able to understand Chinese. We must start building schools for them and improve their literacy.
Of course, just building schools is not enough. Given the level of investment in education in the Ming Dynasty, the thirteen provinces of Han are still far from being able to educate all the people. How can we arrange it for the Jurchens first? Therefore, "Hu and Han must live together".
But this is also problematic, because the Jurchens moved their town to North Korea, not to the mainland. How could there be so many Chinese-speaking people? This then raises a question about the way North Korea is governed, that is, it is necessary to immigrate to North Korea and at the same time move the local North Korean population inland to create a continuous change of blood.
Gao Pragmatic thought about it seriously and believed that this point is indeed very important. In the past, he only focused on the political structure attached to North Korea, which was actually incomplete.
There is no doubt that the Han people have a huge advantage in terms of population. As long as the two sides start a continuous large-scale "blood exchange", the Han people will eventually assimilate the Koreans and Jurchens. However, doing so requires long-term investment - investment in the physical sense. After all, moving costs money.
Fortunately, Gao Pragmatic had quite a lot of experience in doing this, so he quickly figured out the basic principles: if North Korea was hit by a disaster, the population would be relocated from North Korea to the mainland; if the mainland was hit by a disaster, the population would be relocated from the mainland to North Korea.
Not to mention, the timing of this incident was perfect - it was the Little Ice Age, and there was not much else in East Asia, but there were so many disasters.
Thinking of this, Gao Pragmatic admired himself a little. Who else but a time traveler like him would have thought that disaster situations could be utilized at the national policy level?
Of course, this is a long-term task that will take at least one or two generations, and now there are more urgent things to do. Only by doing this can the Jurchen ministries quickly gain recognition from the government and the opposition.
Is there any method that can be so effective? Some, such as asking the Jurchen high-level officials to send all their sons to the capital to study!
At the same time, there is a prerequisite for them to inherit their ancestral business: passing the cultural qualification examination specially set by the Ming Dynasty! If you fail the exam, continue reading until you pass!
Of course, Gao Pragmatic didn't mean to make them all lose their inheritance rights. Doing so would be too obvious and could easily be backlashed.
The difficulty of this inheritance qualification examination will definitely not be as exaggerated as that of the Jinshi examination. Basically... it is enough to have a scholar level. After all, later generations who graduated with a bachelor's degree in Chinese language and literature may not be able to pass the Ming Dynasty's scholar examination. Apart from anything else, how many Chinese undergraduates can write an eight-legged essay in a closed book? [Special note: Neither can I. ]
Of course, the difficulty of implementing this matter also needs to be considered by Gao Pragmatism, but after thinking about it, he felt that it was not a big problem, because the current chief minister of the cabinet of the Ming Dynasty was Gao Pragmatism! He really didn't believe that any female character would dare to go against his will.
These are basically the same issues related to "books and texts", and the next one is "cars and cars on the same track".
Cars on the same track was a transportation problem. Thanks to Qin Shihuang, it is no longer a big problem. Even North Korea is "the same as the Han system." However, transportation problems are not without problems. It is necessary to build an official road from Liaodong directly to North Korea on land, and the specifications and standards must be high. It must be able to significantly reduce the loss of the long-distance supply army like the Qin Straight Road.
Although North Korea is on the same track as the Ming Dynasty, North Korea will obviously not take the initiative to build a "straight road" level "highway" connecting to the Ming Dynasty. The Ming Dynasty originally regarded North Korea as a country without conquest, and had no motivation to build official roads to the border.
Things are different now. The construction related to "trains on the same track" must be launched as soon as possible to completely connect North Korea and Liaodong, so that in the event of an accident in North Korea, a large army can be immediately dispatched to support it.
Finally, there is the issue of Jurchen organizational structure. The origins, changes, and respective characteristics of the Meng'an Muke system of the Jin Dynasty and the Eight Banners system of the post-Jin Dynasty have been specifically discussed in the previous article of this book, and there is no need to repeat them here.
In short, although the current Jurchens did not produce the Eight Banners system due to the high pragmatism, the foundation of the Eight Banners system actually exists faintly - in fact, this is nonsense, otherwise how could Nurhachi implement the Eight Banners system so smoothly?
In later generations, the general saying about "the foundation of the Eight Banners system" is that "the Eight Banners system is based on the unity of soldiers and civilians, and there are no regulations on military pay before entering the customs."
In fact, this is not deep enough. The foundation of the Eight Banners system should actually be a relationship of personal dependence and economic dependence similar to slavery.
Historically, after the establishment of the Eight Banners, the royal family was the leader of the Eight Banners. Each flag had its subordinates, and there was a personal dependence relationship between the flag owners and the subordinates. Therefore, the subordinates often called the flag owners "masters" and called themselves "slaves". "This is a special situation determined by the typical Eight Banners system of the Qing Dynasty.
Since then, with the continuous strengthening of the imperial power system, the subjects of each of the Eight Banners must not only be loyal to the flag owner, but also loyal to the emperor. Since then, it has become common for banner ministers to call themselves "slaves" in memorials, forming a pyramid-like relationship of dependence.
This is explained by the fact that the Jurchens in Jianzhou were split due to the promotion of Gao pragmatism. It turns out that the Jurchens in Jianzhou have been unified, and Nurhaci is the only official "Belle" of the Jurchens in Jianzhou [Note: a variant translation of "Bo Jilie" in the Jin Dynasty]. At this time, all the Jurchens in Jianzhou are theoretically Nurhaci's "minions" .
However, although Nurhachi is the only official Baylor, Jianzhou internally only calls it the "big Baylor" because there is also the "second Baylor" Shuerhaqi. The reason why Shuerhaqi was as famous as his brother Nurhaci for a while was because he had his own independent force - five thousand elite soldiers and forty generals.
There is no doubt that since there are soldiers and generals, the prerequisite is that they have their own territory and can afford to support these soldiers and generals. Under the organizational structure of the Jurchen army and civilians, having its own territory and its own soldiers naturally means having its own tribe. This is the premise for Gao Pragmatism to promote the secession of Jianzhou.
If this basic organizational form is always maintained, the Eight Banners system may still appear at any time, and the Jurchens' Chineseization will always be short of breath. Therefore, Gao Pragmatic believes that the Jurchens can be used, but the previous system must be changed - towards the Han system.
Completing the above three changes means that the Jurchens can be used. By then, whether Ye He wants to develop in Japan or simply wants to go to Japan to make a fortune, that is acceptable. Gao Pragmatism will not feel sorry for the Japanese - although he also plans to use the naturalized household registration system to Chineseize Japan. But that is already in the future, and there is no telling whether he can successfully see it during his lifetime.
After a long time, Gao Pragmatic turned to look at Meng Guzhezhe, and said in an unquestionable tone: "I have a few conditions. If the two Baylors can agree, I will allow them to go to Japan and obey orders under Kai Fei. Of course, the matter is After they are successful, they will naturally receive the rewards they deserve."
Meng Guzhezhe lowered his head and said obediently: "Please tell me, I will tell you the truth."
——
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PS: My wife’s office is completely sunny except for her. Although I am a little uneasy, I also doubt that our family of three may really be immune to the new coronavirus?
(End of chapter)
