Four masterpieces
Among the four masterpieces of classical Chinese novels, there are more or less contents related to international exchanges. The whole book of "Journey to the West" is set in Xuanzang's Western Heavenly Scriptures, which is itself a trip around the world; the first time in the "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" is mentioned, the merchants went north to the pastoral area to buy horses, and on the way back, they gave Liu Bei a thousand pounds of imported Post-produced "iron", and Liu Bei's three brothers used it to create high-grade weapons such as double-stranded swords, green dragon crescent knives, and Zhangba-point steel spears. In "Water Margin", Song Jiang Zhengliao repeatedly fought against the "blue-eyed and yellow-bearded" Soldiers, and also mentioned the "Java Kingdom".
However, in the above three masterpieces, the foreign exchange information involved is very limited, but "Dream of the Red Chamber" is different. From the perspective of time, "Dream of the Red Chamber" was the latest to be written, and the types of foreign goods involved in it are not very numerous, and the most important thing is that it also involves a real history.
Jia Wang Shi Xue
The historical prototype of the four major families of Jia Wang Shi Xue
In the fourth time of the novel, Cao Xueqin put forward the concept of four major families, and there are four major families in Jinling City: Jia, Wang, Shi, and Xue, and for this reason, there is also a "Talisman":
Jia is not fake, and bai jade is a horse for Tang Jin.
Afang Palace, three hundred miles, can not live in Jinling a history.
The East Sea lacked a white jade bed, and the Dragon King came to invite the King of Jinling.
Good snow in good years, pearls like earth and gold like iron.
Among these four major families, judging from the key points of the book, Jia Fu seems to occupy the first place of the four major families, but in fact, in these four major families, the real dominant one is the "royal family" of "the lack of white jade beds in the East Sea, the Dragon King to invite the King of Jinling".
Among the four major families, the Jia, Shi, and Wang families all had official positions, and the Du Xue family was a merchant, but it was not unrelated to the imperial court, and the Xue family was not an ordinary businessman, but an imperial businessman.
In the fourth time in the novel, it is mentioned that Xue Pan "now leads the Inner House Banker", which shows that the official title of the Imperial Merchant is "Inner House Banker", which belongs to the Household Department in name, but is actually sent by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and its original capital is provided by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, similar to loans, called "Imperial Merchants", so it is called "Imperial Merchant".
In the early years of the Qing Dynasty, these imperial merchants were stationed in Guangdong and other foreign trade ports, because they received special treatment from the customs and were unimpeded in the Guangdong foreign trade market. As an official broker, all foreigners who want to buy tea and silk must operate through them, which is actually suspected of monopoly. It can be seen that the weight of "Imperial Shang" is also very heavy.
Well, the problem is, since the Xue family is an imperial businessman, it should be in the first place in terms of financial resources, but compared with the three major families of Jia Wangshi, the Xue family is only a small witch. So how did the wealth of the other three families accumulate?
In the novel, the author focuses on the founding of Jia Fu, whose ancestors were wrapped up and knighted for military merit. In the Qing Dynasty, the cloak was subordinate to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which was an institution dedicated to serving the emperor. This institution was called "Twenty-Four Yamen" during the Ming Dynasty, and it was deliberately created by the Ming Emperor for his own convenience, and its main administrator was eunuchs. We also know that the reputation of the eunuchs of the Ming Dynasty was very bad, which caused the people's resentment to boil.
In the Qing Dynasty, Kangxi saw that the Ming court had made this small treasury really good, and the emperor wanted to spend money without opening his mouth to the household department, and he could achieve financial freedom himself. Therefore, in the first year of the Kangxi Dynasty, the "Twenty-Four Yamen" was abolished, eunuchs were forbidden to interfere in politics, and then a new institution was established without changing the soup, that is, the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
So who should the administrators of the Ministry of the Interior use? They must meet several conditions: first, they must be absolutely loyal, secondly, they must be good at taking horses, like to spread gossip, and they must be subservient from time to time; the third mind must be flexible, greedy and miserly, and the emperor must be very familiar with their private property. Candidates who meet these conditions are "wrapped".
The Qing Emperor and the princes and nobles of the Eight Banners all possessed a large number of coats, and the main sources of the coats were, plundering the people as slaves, forcing the people to surrender, the people entering the officials for crimes, buying the people as slaves, and the people remarrying the flag people with their mothers or inheriting the flag people. Since the sources of the coating are mixed, there are also requirements for the wrapping that can enter the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
Among the Eight Banners of Man, only the Yellow Banner, the Yellow Banner and the White Banner were directly commanded by the Emperor and were known as the "Three Banners", so only the clothes of the Three Banners were eligible to enter the Ministry of Internal Affairs. In this way, it is not difficult for us to find that the coat of the Three Banners is actually the emperor's personal slave.
On the three flags
In the Qing Dynasty, more than a dozen important fiscal and taxation positions, such as Guangdong Customs, Lianghuai Yanzheng, Changlu Yanzheng, Jiangning Weaving, Suzhou Weaving, and Hangzhou Weaving, were held by members of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for a long time. These members were nominally appointed by the Ministry of Households, but in fact they were all commissioners elected by the Emperor from the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
The many fat deficiencies arranged by the Qing Emperor for the Interior Ministry were of course useful. The first of course is to accumulate wealth, to do a good job of taking out the family property to fill the emperor's small treasury at any time, and to unconditionally convey a large amount of benefits to the emperor; for example, the Cao family spent a huge amount of financial and material resources because of the four times to take over Kangxi, resulting in a deficit and laying hidden dangers for their subsequent raids. For example, in the Guangdong Customs, which had the "Tianzi Nanku" in the Qing Dynasty, half of the annual tax revenue would be charged to the royal account in different forms, which also became one of the main sources of private income for the Qing emperor. Secondly, as a royal domestic slave, he also had to undertake the work of reporting local intelligence. Both Cao Yin and Li Xu had given Kangxi a secret fold several times.
Dense folding
Based on these characteristics of the coat, we can completely draw the conclusion that the four major families in the novel, in addition to the Jia Province, the real identities of other Shi, Wang, and Xue are all wrapped in the Three Banners of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The same identity, the same background, and the same interests closely linked the four major families, who occupied the fat shortages of various industries, wantonly amassed wealth, and accumulated huge wealth, so that they had the wealth of the enemy in the talisman.
So, why is the Wang family dominant?
Mr. Wang's Family
Jia Wang Shi Xue's four major families, who is the dominant one?
In the seventy-second time of the novel, Wang Xifeng quarrels with her husband Jia Lian because of the problem of profit money, she says:
Sweeping the cracks in the floor of my royal house is enough for you to live your whole life." If you say it, don't be afraid to be ashamed! The existing proof: If you look at the dowry of your wife and my wife in detail, and compare it to yours, is that the same thing that is not worthy of you?
Wang Xifeng's tone has always been relatively large, but she will not lie. When she got the power of the Iron Sill Temple, her tone was just as big, but things were still done. Therefore, we have reason to believe that what Wang Xifeng said is by no means a lie.
So where exactly does the Wang family hold office? In the novel, it is written that the core character of the Wang family, Prince Teng, was initially appointed as the envoy of the Jingying Festival, and later promoted to the control of the nine provinces, and was ordered to check the border and ascend to the capital inspection of the nine provinces. These descriptions of the author are actually "false words", and the historical prototype of "true things hidden" is Cao Xueqin's grandmother, the Li family, who is also from the wrapping family.
Li's father, Li Yuegui, had a cousin named Li Shizhen who served as governor of Guangdong from 1681 to 1687. Li Shizhen's son Li Xu (李煦) and Cao Xueqin's grandfather Cao Yin (曹寅), both of whom had close relations, and both served as weavers and served as inspectors of the Two Huai Dynasty. It can be seen that the Qing Emperor trusted the Baoyi family.
In particular, Li Shizhen, as the wrapper of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the "Separate Residence Licensed Goods Tax" promulgated during his tenure as governor of Guangdong had a far-reaching impact on Guangdong's foreign trade, and foreign goods companies flourished as a result, which not only increased Guangdong's tax revenue, but also filled the emperor's personal pockets as the Guangdong Customs Office as the "Tianzi Nanku".
As we said above, half of the revenue of the Guangdong Customs will go into the emperor's small treasury in different forms. Some of them are explicit, and the other part is reversed, such as presenting "zhenggong" to the emperor four times a year, annual tribute in spring, lantern tribute in the Lantern Festival, Duan tribute in the Dragon Boat Festival, tribute on the emperor's birthday, and many times "passing on the square goods", (that is, purchasing imported goods for the imperial family). From this, we can also have a deeper understanding of "the lack of a white jade bed in the East Sea, the Dragon King came to invite the King of Jinling".
Mr. and Mrs. Li Xu
In the novel, we see that the Wang family has a lot of foreign goods in their hands, for example, in the third time, when Lin Daiyu entered the Jia Mansion, she saw that Wang Xifeng's dress was different, and it was mentioned in the description that she was wearing a "wisp of gold and butterflies wearing a flower big red satin narrow gown" and a "jade sprinkled flower crepe skirt"; for example, in Madame Wang's bedroom, "there was a pair of plum blossom-style foreign lacquer on both sides".
The fortieth time, Feng Jie was holding a Western cloth hand towel in her hand; the fifty-second time, when Qingwen was ill, Baoyu sent someone to ask Wang Xifeng for "Western plaster for headaches," and so on, and so on, and there is a foreign word in these descriptions, which represents foreign goods. The author has written about foreign goods dozens of times in the Rongguo Mansion, of which the Wang family has 14 in their hands.
So where did the foreign goods of Rong Guofu and Madame Wang and Wang Xifeng come from? According to the historical prototype of the Wang family, Li Shizhen, it can be speculated that its main source is the Wang family. On the sixteenth occasion, Wang Xifeng said personally:
At that time, my grandfather was solely in charge of the tributes and congratulations of various countries, and whenever foreigners came, they were supported by our family. All the foreign ship cargo in Guangdong, Fujian, Yunnan and Zhejiang is our family.
From Sister Feng's description, we can see that Wang Jiazu was in charge of the foreign trade of the Qing Dynasty, so he made a lot of money, and it was naturally a piece of cake to snare some "foreign gadgets".
In addition, fifty-two times in the Red Chamber, Xue Baoqin said that when she was eight years old, she had gone to the West Sea with her father to buy foreign goods and saw a girl from the True Kingdom. It can be seen that as an imperial merchant, the Xue family is engaged in a variety of industries related to foreign trade, which can also be inferred that another source of foreign goods in Rongfu is the Xue family.
It can be seen that Cao Xueqin's ability to create such a complex "Dream of the Red Chamber" is not just a simple artistic imagination, but has a profound historical imprint.
Looking back at the inner boss of Jia Fu, why is it controlled by Lady Wang and Wang Xifeng, and the style of the two in Jia Fu is quite tough, one reason is of course that when the two married into Jia Fu, they brought a lot of dowry, and the second reason, and the most critical reason, is because the background of the Wang family is far above Jia Fu.
In the seventy-fifth time of the novel, the author has written that the Zhen family in Jiangnan has been copied, and the Zhen family has always existed in a state of "true things hidden" in the novel, as many red scholars say, this historical prototype of the Zhen family is also the Li family.
In this way, an interesting scene appears, the Jinling Royal Family in the novel and the Jiangnan Zhen Family of "True Things Hidden", whose prototypes are the Li family in history, is exactly in response to the sentence "When it is false, it is true and false, and there is nowhere to do anything." So, is this statement contradictory? In my opinion, this is not a contradiction.
The Zhen family in Jiangnan and the Wang family in the novel
The reason why the Lee family was raided was not only because of the deficit, but also because of corruption. During his tenure in Guangdong, Li Shizhen accepted huge bribes, mainly from foreign trade merchants, and in 1687, Li Shizhen was impeached and resigned on the charge of "corruption".
However, Li Shizhen's departure did not have much impact on the Li family. In 1703, Sun Wencheng, a relative of the Li family, became the inspector of Guangdong customs, and Li Shizhen's second brother Li Guoping also held this position from 1710 to 1713. After all, the foreign trade of the Qing Empire was still in the hands of these coats, which shows that the Kangxi Emperor's trust and dependence on them was quite high.
After Yongzheng came to power, officials who had close contacts with the Eight Ye Party were implicated one after another, and the Li family was one of them. Yongzheng came to power in 1722, and in the first month of the following year, he could not wait to dismiss Li Xu from his post, and the Cao family did not escape this fate four years later.
In the novel, it is mentioned that the Zhen family in Jiangnan has been copied, which is the seventy-fifth time. In the subsequent sequels, Wang Xifeng also gradually lost power, according to Wang Xifeng's sentence "one from two to three people wood", it can be known that in the process of her husband Jia Lian's attitude towards her, Feng Jie finally fell to the point of being hughed, which is incredible.
How obedient Jia Lian was to Feng Jie in the past, and the reason why her attitude changed greatly in the end was essentially related to the loss of power of the Wang family, so "one from two to three people" is clearly writing about the process of Jia Lian's change of Feng Jie, in fact, it is the process of the decline of the Wang family that is hidden.
It can be seen from this that the relationship between the Zhen family in Jiangnan and the gradual loss of power of Wang Xifeng in Jia Province is complementary, and the final conclusion can only be that the Historical Prototype of the Jiangnan Zhen Family, which is the "real thing hidden" and the fictional Wang Family in the novel, is the Li Family.
In addition, we also do not forget that there is such a pair of characters in the novel, Zhen Shiyin and Zhen Yinglian father and daughter, these two are also the threading characters of the whole book, they both exist in the "real thing hidden", but also in the "false language deposit", true and false, virtual and real, this is the cleverness of Cao Gong's penmanship, but also the essence of "Dream of the Red Chamber".
From this, we have to sigh that the novel creation technique of "true things hidden, false words stored" quoted by Cao Gong is really too clever, and at the same time, it also reveals that he knows the history of the Kangxi Dynasty very well, and hides it in all corners of the novel, which not only enriches the plot and environment of the novel, but also deepens the tragic portrayal of the fate of the characters.