What is history: it is the echo of the past to the future, the reflection of the future on the past. - Hugo
First, the birth of genius
In the four years of Jiajing, Zhang Wenming, a poor xiucai, waited anxiously for his son's crying. This child is the most outstanding cabinet chief assistant of the Ming Dynasty, Zhang Juzheng.
As an unambitious reader, Zhang Wenming pinned his dream of entering the army on Zhang Juzheng. It is magical to say that one day Lao Zhang took Tang poems and read them in front of Xiao Zhang, who was still swaddled, and as a result, Xiao Zhang could speak when he was more than one year old! Neighbors were amazed and thought he was a child prodigy.
In the blink of an eye, when Xiao Zhang went to private school, his talent was gradually revealed. Never forget it, write it down. Mr. Private School advised Lao Zhang to take Xiao Zhang directly to the exam, but he could not teach it.
So Zhang Prodigy went to the examination room, and that year, he was twelve years old. As a result, Zhang Shentong became Zhang Xiucai. In the nineteenth year of Jiajing, he passed the examination again.
Slowly, Zhang Juzheng lost himself in the sound of praise, thinking that it was inevitable that he would be a soldier. Books are not read, no tests are taken, a bunch of literati and celebrities are gathered to play, chanting poems against each other, anyway, sooner or later the soldiers are their own. But then something happened that woke him up like a dream.
Zhang Juzheng's grandfather Zhang Zhen was the guardian of the Liao King. And this Liao king is a master who can do things. Zhang Juzheng was about the same age as the Liao King. When Zhang Juzheng was writing poems that caused a sensation in the city, the Liao King and his mother always had to chant in front of him: "You look at people, look at you again..."
Zhang Juzheng is like a neighbor's child.
After being nagged for a long time, the Liao King hated Zhang Juzheng. He called Zhang's neighbor's grandfather into the palace. A few days after returning home, Zhang Zhen died mysteriously. Obviously, grandpa's death was related to the Liao King, and Zhang Juzheng could only cry. After the grief, Zhang Juzheng woke up - how useless the praise he received was, he couldn't do anything but write poetry, he wanted to change all this.
2.
In the twenty-sixth year of Jiajing, he finally got his wish to pass the entrance examination, was selected as a Shu Jishi, and entered the Hanlin Academy for training. At that time, the training teacher was Xu Jie, a servant of the bureaucracy and a bachelor of the Hanlin Academy.
Xu Jie took a fancy to him at a glance and wanted to pull him down the door. But for this teacher, Zhang Juzheng did not seem to be interested. In the twenty-ninth year of Jiajing, the "Gengshu Change" broke out. The Mongols set fire to the outskirts of Beijing and robbed them, and no one in the imperial court dared to take care of them. Zhang Juzheng was very angry, and several times he made remarks that were not used. He couldn't stand it and took leave of absence from the capital.
Thirty-three years after Jiajing, Zhang Juzheng returned home. With nothing to do, he began to travel and write anthologies. At this time, the Liao King heard that Zhang Juzheng had returned and jumped up happily. He's not trying to keep him whole, he's about playing. So Zhang Juzheng was called to the palace to accompany this old man to drink and write poetry, eat, drink and have fun, and force his face to smile.
When Zhang Juzheng stepped over the threshold of the palace, he found a hungry and homeless wanderer lying on the road. People are displaced and precarious. However, the prince who was high up in the palace was dressed in gold and jade food, and he wanted to have fun every day. Zhumen wine smells of flesh, and there are frozen bones on the road. Zhang Juzheng has strengthened his ambition - to take the world as his own responsibility.
Third, maturity
Thirty-six years after Jiajing, Zhang Juzheng returned to the capital. He changed, becoming an unfathomable political master of the city government. He was able to move between his teacher Xu Jie and his political enemy Yan Song, who never suspected him. Xu Jie was very happy, and he believed that Zhang Juzheng would be an excellent successor.
Yan Song fell, and Xu Jie pretended to be a grandson for more than twenty years, and finally won the victory and became a new generation of leaders in the political arena. Zhang Juzheng was promoted to the rank of Right Counselor and became a lecturer to King Yu. With him, there was a man—the high arch. Gao Gong himself has an arrogant personality, but he admires Zhang Juzheng very much, and the two people become friends because of the same ambition.
In the following years, Zhang Juzheng repeatedly jumped between Xu Jie and Xu Jie's political enemy Gao Gong. But Zhang Juzheng has never been a duplicitous person, and he has only done so for one purpose - to realize his dreams. In this round, Xu Jie lost, Gao Gong became the first assistant of the cabinet through his own means, and Zhang Juzheng also entered the cabinet.
Gradually, Zhang Juzheng found that Gao Gong was becoming more and more arbitrary, and the entire court opposed his walk and died. Zhang Juzheng does not want to be under the people, not to mention, the position of the first assistant, I also want it. Goodbye friends, for the sake of my ambitions, you and I can only go one.
Zhang Juzheng quickly found a breakthrough - The eunuch Feng Bao, the superintendent of ceremonies. This brother was crushed to death by the high arch and had always had a grudge against the high arch. The enemy of the enemy is the friend, and Zhang Juzheng reported gao gong's intention to rebel to the Wanli Emperor at the time through him, and the evidence was a sentence: "Ten-year-old child, how to be the son of heaven!" And Gao Gong's original words were: "Ten-year-old prince, how to be a son of heaven!" ”
I have to say that Zhang Juzheng is really taller than the high arch, and after changing two words, he changed from complaining to rebellion, which really frightened Wanli. So the high arch was vaguely abdicated.
Fourth, reform
Zhang Juzheng finally got his wish. As soon as he ascended to the throne, the empire changed its surname to Zhang. The emperor was only ten years old, basically negligible, the emperor's mother was still rumored to be ambiguous with Zhang Juzheng, and the ministers of the DPRK were also obedient to him. Zhang Juzheng began his great cause, reform.
The first is a whip law, a major turning point in China's tax system. The main content is that the tax has changed from a tax in kind to a currency tax. Collecting things before, now collecting money, at first glance there is not much change, but in fact it has great significance.
In the past, when collecting things, local officials could pick and choose and collect more. And there are many kinds of things, such as traditional Chinese medicine, rice, fish and shrimp and so on. When the state did not have excess spare money, the officials in the capital had to collect these things to offset their wages. Now that the state uniformly collects money and hands over real money and silver, local officials cannot pick it up and can only offer it according to the number.
The second item is the examination method, which is equivalent to attendance. In the middle and late Ming Dynasty, most officials were already greedy everywhere and seamless. If you can do less work, you will never do more, and if you want them to have a passion for work, hard work seems impossible.
Zhang Juzheng came up with a way to write down the work that officials would do in a year, divide them into two parts, one to retain, and one to give to the officials. At the end of the year, compare them one by one, which work has been done and which work has not been done, at a glance. In this way, the officials had to start working hard.
Officials worked hard, the treasury gradually became abundant, and this dilapidated imperial machine had a thriving atmosphere. Zhang Juzheng single-handedly supported this Empire State Building, worthy of being an outstanding politician of the Ming Dynasty.