The golden age of lasting prosperity of the Ming Dynasty was the thirty-eight years after the Wanli Emperor "pro-government". In the past thirty-eight years, although the Wanli Emperor spent most of his time hiding from cats and cats to "slacken the government", the courtiers also pulled gangs and factions to pinch each other, and the absurd things in the court were a basket, but after all, they inherited the strong family business left by Zhang Juzheng's reform, and the national economy still developed at a high speed. From the prosperous commodity economy to the domineering martial arts of the "Three Great Marches of the Wanli Calendar", and even the scientific and technological culture with a hundred flowers, the piles support the pride of future generations of Chinese people.
Such an era of "Wanli Zhongxing", just like Jin Yong, the martial arts master of the Ming Dynasty who "blood annoyed", praised it convincingly: "(During the Wanli years) China is the most advanced and richest country in the world."
But what makes people sigh is precisely this: Why did such a great Ming Dynasty, which has the glory of "Wanli Zhongxing", sit on such an "advanced and rich and strong" family business, but with the tragic defeat of the "Battle of Salhu" in the forty-eighth year of Wanli, the national situation suddenly fell all the way, and all kinds of natural disasters and man-made disasters smashed into the brain, and completely "smashed" the Ming Dynasty, which was still "ZTE" before, into the abyss of national subjugation. From strength to decline, why did the "reversal" come so quickly?
Perhaps, the following strange phenomena in the "Wanli Zhongxing" era, which do not have much ink in the annals of Huanghuang history, can give this question some thought-provoking answers.
Strange phenomenon 1: foreign trade is developed, and the national treasury is empty
During the "Wanli Zhongxing" period, the Wanli Emperor was always "crying poor". However, if those "foreign businessmen" who visited the Ming Dynasty hear this crying and poverty, they must be puzzled: How can you still have poor money when your foreign trade is so developed?
How amazing is the foreign trade wealth at the time of "Wanli ZTE"? According to Spanish historical records, in Manila, the Philippines alone, 2 million pesos of silver coins were imported into the Ming Dynasty during the Wanli calendar year, and the Canadian economist Frank estimated that during the entire Wanli period, one-third of the world's silver was earned by Chinese. At that time, European merchants also issued an envious complaint for this: "The Chinese emperor (Wanli) can build a palace with silver."
Wan Li heard this, and he didn't know how to feel: It is a bad money to repair a palace, and you still want to use silver to build a palace?
But this scene is an aggressive and strange thing: don't look at the Ming Dynasty's foreign trade to make all the world's money, but the Ming court during the "Wanli Zhongxing" years really can't receive much money. The tariff revenue of several seaports is only thirty or forty thousand taels of silver per year, and on the one hand, silver is surging in, and on the other hand, the Treasury of Daming is empty, and it is poor and slaggy. Why is there such a strange thing? There are many reasons for the policy system, but one direct cause is real: the proliferation of smuggling.
Compared with the smuggling trade of the knife head licking the blood in the era of the "Jiajing Great Rebellion", the smuggling in the "Wanli Zhongxing" period was a "peaceful" routine: collusion between officials and businessmen. According to historical records such as the Ming Jing Shiwen Compilation and the Jinglin Continuation, in Guangzhou, where foreign trade was prosperous at that time, businessmen who honestly paid taxes were all exploited by the government. On the contrary, those smuggling ships, as long as they pay enough "protection fees" to the government, can earn money under the banner of "legality", a smuggling ship at least tens of thousands of taels of silver, "its officials and taxpayers are only one-tenth of two", and other money and wealth are all divided up by officials at all levels.
In the late stage of the "Wanli Zhongxing", such as Guangzhou, these golden ports have long formed a complete set of corrupt systems of "tacit understanding", and the smuggling gangs have been given a protective umbrella at the first level. Even the Seven Pin Sesame County Orders can "build a seat and get it, without the labor of a thin book and a staff." It's literally lying down and counting the money to spend. The successive governors of Liangguang in the Ming Dynasty made a lot of money, and He Shijin, the governor of Liangguang during the Wanli calendar, fished for 300,000 or 400,000 taels of silver from this "tacit understanding" operation in four years. No matter how rich the dynasty is, it can't stand the moths eating like this!
But these moths are not the evil consequences of "Wanli's slack administration"?
Strange phenomenon: 2: "Strange music" flooding
In the most serious years of "Wanli's slack administration," the missing officials were not compensated, so that three of the six Shangshu were missing, ten were missing of the six attendants, ninety-four were missing from the Imperial History of Yanguan, and sixty-six officials at the level of envoys from various provinces were missing. For serving officials, it is common for one person to carry several posts. Are they all busy? Well, busy writing the sonata.
Since the time of Ming Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang, this matter has been highly valued. Ming Dynasty officials wrote the recital, originally had strict format requirements, said a few things with a few words, and resolutely could not talk nonsense. At the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, the famous minister Ru Taisu was beaten to death by Zhu Yuanzhang because of too much nonsense. However, if Zhu Yuanzhang saw the ming dynasty officials' recital during the "Wanli Zhongxing" period, he was afraid that he would carry a few meters of long knives on the road: another aggressive and strange thing at the time of the "Wanli Zhongxing" was this "strange recital" that was piled up every day.
How "strange", the first famous problem is that it is smelly and long. During the Ming Taizu period, Ru Taisu's "Strokes" recital was only 17,000 words, and it was placed in the "Wanli Zhongxing" period, but it was only a pediatric. Even if it is a trivial matter, it is common to say tens of thousands of words. A little bit of a big deal, and the folds are more like opening floodgates. For example, after the Battle of Pingding Bozhou, the commander Li Hualong wrote 60,000 words in one breath.
What is worse than the length of words is that the content is not in tune. The Ministers of the Ming Dynasty during the "Wanli Zhongxing" period wrote and folded one game after another, and the imposing pai bibliography was handy, and all kinds of large sections of allusions to the scriptures were even more sprinkled. There are also people who like to use strange words and never give up without confusing the reader (Wanli). But what is the theme of this kind of recital? For example, In the nineteenth year of the Wanli Calendar, Hou Xianchun's "Anbian Twenty-Four Discussions", almost every paragraph of the whole text is either dual or comparative, and the "writing skills" are quite mature, but how to "Anbian", read and read, still cloudy and foggy, there are few reliable methods.
Such a style is the epitome of the "strange playing" of the "Wanli Zhongxing", and its Thunderman style is just like a spat of the same era: "Words and weapons are bare-handed, and words and literary affairs are clichés" - it is unreliable.
Why was such a laborious and unreliable thing so popular among officials at the time? The people's calculations are shrewd: the Wanli Emperor is slack, and the officials are also vegetarian in their own corpses, but the appearance must always be laid out. A "strange song" is written well, that is, a fig leaf of "hard work", in which a few paragraphs of cloud and mountain fog are circulated, and they can also brush their own popularity, which is equivalent to reasonable and legal laziness. Therefore, the upper liang of the Ming Dynasty is not right and the lower liang is crooked, and the administrative efficiency can be imagined.
The effect of this pit country is just like the hitchhiker of the modern scholar Xu Tongxin: "The evils of the articles of the past, and the harm of the country by the scholars, are not too wise." Indeed, the consequences of laziness in the name of grandeur are often as terrible as corruption.
Strange phenomenon 3: The city is prosperous, and there is no one to save the disaster
One of the highlights of "Wanli ZTE" is the prosperous urban economy. Foreign missionaries wrote about Suzhou, Guangzhou, Fuzhou, Hangzhou and other Ming Dynasty cities, which made European countries look at them hotly. Yu Shenxing, a university scholar during the Wanli Dynasty, also sighed: The vendors who sell oil, salt, sauce and vinegar in Beijing are often worth millions, and they have money than his "cabinet elder". Was it that all over daming during the Wanli dynasty was so prosperous? In the forty-fourth year of the Wanli Calendar, Chen Qiyou's "Map of the Hungry People" in Zhucheng County, Shandong Province, revealed the shocking truth.
Chen Keyi, the son of the beijing meeting, on the way from Zhucheng to Beijing, happened to experience the tragic scene of famine in Shandong, and then painted everything he saw in the "Map of Hungry People". In the word-by-word preface to "Map of the Hungry People", Chen Qiyou even issued a cry of grief and indignation: Twenty miles away from home from Zhucheng, his eyes are full of scenes of hunger and death, and even the tragic scenes of the last days such as "cannibalism" are commonplace in the local area. But what about the city of Beijing not far away? There are still "singing and singing" and "bustling and dazzling" everywhere, and the disasters and famines that are shocking to the eye are actually "indifferent and irrelevant" in the eyes of officials at all levels.
Looking at the distance on the map, you can make up for such a scene: the famine on the land of Shandong is sweeping, and the people are not happy. However, the city of Beijing is intertwined, and the drinking and banqueting between officials and scholars is extremely luxurious. What about the victims? What was the disaster? No one knows, no one asks. This is the scene of "Wanli Zhongxing" era, thinking about it carefully.
The scene described by Chen Qiyou was not an isolated case at that time, and the Ming Jing Shiwen Compilation recorded a large number of scenes during the Wanli calendar year of "disasters recommended to the people", "people eating the soil", and "(refugees) taking care of things and not knowing where to go". However, above the court, whether it was the wanli who neglected the government or the group of courtiers who pinched each other, they never saw how important the reaction was, let alone how urgent the Ming Dynasty had. In the prosperous era of "Wanli Zhongxing", the Ming Dynasty's disaster early warning ability, and even the country's ability to resist risks, were ruthlessly reduced to the freezing point between the "grinding foreign workers" of the Manchu Dynasty.
Comparing with the next scene, the scene of disasters and civil unrest in the late Ming Dynasty, and these "disasters" during the Wanli years, how shocking and thought-provoking, how thought-provoking.
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