Dynasty Sayings Of the Collected Remains (5): Rabbits enter from the dog's sinus, and pheasants fly from beams.
In ancient times, the word fish and meat township can be said to be very graphic. No matter which dynasty it is, the person who has this ability is simply arrogant. In their eyes, the common people are like fish and meat, and they can eat a lot. The wisdom of the ancestors also used the term "fish and meat in the township" to describe the relationship between these people and the common people.
In Sichuan in the Qing Dynasty, there was a popular bad rule called "Thief Blossoming", which was an "art" about how to use thieves to blackmail. Whenever there was a case of theft in the private sector, after the prefecture and county magistrates received the report, the officials did not conduct any investigation first, and first pointed out the rich households around the stolen homes as nesting stolen households. They do, of course, there is no risk. Those who are accused of being "nest stolen households" also have a common feature, that is, there is no one in the family to be officials, and there are large local households with little background.
Therefore, the Qing court officials in these places were also assured and bold to detain them for extortion, and each time a case was reported, several families were often implicated, and "thieves blossoming" was also named after this, after all, these tiger and wolf criminals who held power earned a pot full of smiles and flowers. In fact, they also grasped a psychology, those who were accused of being thieves, especially afraid of going to prison, could only admit that they could only take out a lot of money to bribe these eunuchs and evildoers, as well as some errands to stir up trouble.
It was only when the unscrupulous horns had made enough money that the rich were released and announced that they had no stolen goods. In terms this is called "washing the name of the thief". From the perspective of the situation of those who were blackmailed, they only hated why there was no study and examination, chao wei Tian Shelang, Twilight Tianzi Hall, mixed with a meritorious name, so that they did not dare to extort, which is why so many people in ancient times squeezed their heads to join the world.
This method can only be counted as personal self-protection, and Duan Guangqing, a not-so-bright reader in the Qing Dynasty, invented a high-level trick to deal with this kind of extortion in their local Susong County. In September of the seventeenth year of Daoguang, Duan Guangqing, who had already been promoted, another identity was a small landlord, and his tenants and several other neighbors with slightly better families were suddenly summoned by the messengers, saying that they had received the thief's booty.
Duan Guangqing understood that this was a collusion between the lost owner and the capture, and instructed the thieves to bite them in order to knock out a sum of money. The tenant found Duan Guangqing's brother crying, and Duan Guangqing's brother consulted him on countermeasures. Duan Guangqing first looked back at history and sought inspiration from the wisdom and experience of his predecessors. He said that his father once said that in the early years of Jiaqing, there was a vicious habit in the township, and if a beggar fell to death, the scoundrels would take the opportunity to make waves, saying that they must go through the local government to bury it.
And every time the Qing Dynasty Officials conducted an autopsy, they had to bring a large group of people. The deeds and the punishment book are required, and they must also include the door seals, signings, detentions, and small envoys in the courtyard of the county yamen, the six rooms and the third class in the outer courtyard, plus the honor guards, soap guards, horse servants, and caravans of the county orders, and there are as many as a hundred people. As a result, as soon as the gong of the magistrate's autopsy was heard, the families of those with hundreds of acres of family property in the countryside were about to go bankrupt, and even the ashes would not be left.
Duan Guangqing said that his father's method at that time was to summon the gentlemen of the same village to the county order to ask for instructions, and if the beggar was indeed dead on his own, and there were no wounds after examination, he could be buried by the local security guard without reporting to the official government for autopsy. The county decree agreed, and the provision was engraved on a stone tablet and erected on the side of the road. Duan Guangqing did not say that his father did not bring silver when he met Xian Ling and others, and from a reasonable guess, he should not go to ask for someone with his bare hands.
Therefore, the predecessors of the Duan family were likely to honor these people in some way. Duan Guangqing linked it to reality and said that it was another bad habit to ask thieves to plant stolen goods now. The brother had better call a meeting with his fellow villagers, and everyone should make up a sum of money to give thousands of entrants in charge of this film every year as a reward for their hard work to catch the thieves, and at the same time ask them not to ask the thieves to slander others. Duan Guangqing's brother accepted the suggestion and summoned his fellow villagers to a meeting, and sure enough, everyone enthusiastically paid money, and the problem of "thieves blossoming" was thus satisfactorily resolved by both sides.
As for the specific process of negotiations with Xu Guan, Duan Guangqing did not record it in his miscellaneous records, but the basic idea should be very simple: "We admit that you can harm us, we pay money, and you should stop using such means to harm us." This makes people under the eaves, have to bow their heads, if you dress it up in a roundabout way, it is a more "decent" umbrella of the people, and the Qing Dynasty even prevailed in the Beiyang warlord period.
References: Miscellaneous Notes of Bamboo Leaf Pavilion, Self-written Chronology of Mirror Lake
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