When the Ming Dynasty rebuilt the city of Beijing, there were stone roads, and there were ditches of the size of the city for drainage and sewage. However, the Manchus entered the customs and became the home of Beijing. So the gravel road was finished and the ditch was plugged. It's not that they don't understand that ditches need to be dredged at any time, but they don't have the mind and the habit. Therefore, every year, the dredging expenses went into the pockets of the officials in charge of this matter, and they only spent three years digging for the largest stinky ditch to cope with the matter. It just so happens that the time of Taogou overlaps with the time when people enter the Beijing exam. Therefore, there are rumors and proverbs at the time: "Raise the son, the stinky ditch opens, the ink is out, and the stinky ditch plugs." "Even the dredging once every three years was so confused, so that the city of Beijing in the Qing Dynasty, whether inside or outside, was full of filth.
The reason for this is that the emperor cannot see. The Forbidden City where the emperor lived, the drainage ditch has been intact, so inside the palace, there is no view of the city. When the emperor traveled, the water was splashed on the street, the loess paved the road, and even if the emperor stretched out his head out of the car curtain, what he saw was also clean.
The palace was too crowded and stuffy, so the emperors of the Qing Dynasty liked to live in the garden. There are not many dead corners in small gardens such as the Three Seas (South Sea, Middle Sea, and North Sea), because the eunuchs do not know from which corner the emperor will appear, so they dare not be sloppy and clean everywhere. However, the Yuanmingyuan was big, the emperor could not visit at all, the eunuchs in the garden had long since figured out the emperor's law of action, and knew that in some places the emperor could not get involved, so they only made superficial articles, so that many rooms and pavilions were dirty, chaotic, and broken, and for many years not only no one repaired, but also no one cleaned.
Even in the Forbidden City, when the emperor's spirit was insufficient and his national strength was poor, the eunuchs also followed suit. At first, only some of the corners and corners were cleaned sloppily, and gradually, even on the sides of the three great halls, there would be excrement left by the eunuchs—in these places, the emperor could never come anyway. The emperor is on the front, and the front is guaranteed to be spotless.
The world is the emperor alone, no matter what he does, it is for the emperor to see, the emperor can see it, he will definitely do it foolproof, and there will be no difference in the slightest. People above and below, etc., must pay a hundred times the effort to do a good job. In a sense, every dynasty, everyone is doing a game to perform for the emperor. Where the emperor sees, it is always good. Man is loyal, things are good, everywhere he goes is clean and glorious; where he cannot be seen, he is always a mess. So it is not difficult to understand why the emperor is so afraid of being deceived, but he is always deceived. Send out his cronies to inquire into the truth, and finally even his cronies deceive him -- cronies are people, people have human weaknesses, know that Jiangshan is not their own, can cope with the emperor, cope with it, why are they so tired, can't get along with themselves?
It is precisely because of this idea that there are batches of mediocre officials who are not busy doing practical things and making political achievements, but only make efforts in receiving leaders and catering to the tastes of leaders. They think that if they do it perfectly, they can continue their leisure life and even get promoted. Such a mediocre official who only does face engineering will be eliminated sooner or later with the development of the times.