After the Jiaqing Emperor brought him down, the property found in his family was 800 million taels of silver alone, and if he added other antique calligraphy and paintings and treasures, his embezzled silver would be 1 billion yuan. In 2001, Americans claimed he was the richest man in the world at the time, and even Meyer Rothschild of the same period could match him. However, He Yan is greedy, but he is a talented person who understands power and scheming, and can sneak around and shoot horses.
He Yan (和珅), literally Zhi Zhai (致斋), whose original name was Shanbao ( Shanbao ) , was born in Fujian in the fifteenth year of Qianlong ( 1750 ) , and was a Manchurian Zhenghongqi man. When he was three years old, his mother died of difficult childbirth, and his father Chang Bao also died of illness when he was 9 years old, and he was often ostracized by his brothers of the same clan without the protection of his elders, so he secretly swore in his heart that he would definitely get ahead in the future and mix up as a person. Later, he was admitted to the Xian'an Palace, and he not only read poetry and books, proficient in the Four Books and Five Classics, but also spoke manchu, Chinese, Mongolian, and Tibetan languages, and became a great talent.
After having the ability to settle down, He Yan began to think about how to approach Qianlong, and he inherited the official position of "Third Class Light Vehicle Lieutenant" by virtue of his status as the granddaughter-in-law of the university scholar Yinglian, but this was only an insignificant petty official, and He Yan did not pay attention to it. Soon after, he successively became a third-class bodyguard and an honor guard, and approached Qianlong step by step. By chance, He Yan revealed his erudite and talented side, so he was appreciated by Qianlong, so he became a household attendant at the age of 26.
After that, He Yan gradually gained Qianlong's trust, and whenever Qianlong encountered a problem, he was often able to solve it at the first time. In addition, he was still Qianlong's "mobile small treasury", and in order to find a reasonable reason to give Qianlong money, he created the "system of discussing crimes and silver", and all officials who committed crimes could be treated differently as long as they handed over the "fine silver" to the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The Ministry of Internal Affairs is Qianlong's "private wallet", taking money from his own wallet, I believe that no one can find fault.
Not only that, in addition to "making money" for Qianlong, He Yan would also "save money" for him. Once, there was a drought in Hebei, and the local farmers not only had no harvest, but also owed a lot of foreign debt, and in order to survive, they had eaten everything they could eat. In order to avoid riots, Qianlong had to order the opening of warehouses to release grain and provide relief to the people. However, Qianlong's good intentions were taken advantage of by people with hearts, and in order to be greedy for a little cheap, many people who did not worry about eating and wearing were mixed in, pretending to be disaster victims to receive relief grain.
At the same time, in order to evade inspection, they would also incite the victims to rob the grain, which caused great trouble to the imperial court. Obviously, if this continues, the grain depot of the imperial court will be less than half, and if there is no way to distinguish the real victims, we can only stop releasing grain. He Yan was a wise man, and he knew that Qianlong could not stop releasing grain, but in order to save money, he could only think of some other way. So he instructed the lower officials to let them mix some sand in the porridge for disaster relief.
However, within two days, the folds of the report and the embezzlement of disaster relief grain were handed to Qianlong one by one, and after Qianlong understood the beginning and end of the matter, he said to the group of ministers: "He did the right thing." "Originally, He yan did this just to screen the victims, generally speaking, only the real victims would not care about the sand in the porridge, but those fake victims were different, they would not mix here for a mouthful of white porridge mixed with sand." In the end, the fake victims scattered on their own, and the problem of disaster relief food was solved.