When we watch historical-related film and television dramas, we can often see the ladies and ladies in the play traveling in the palanquin carried by the caravan.
Although this means of transport is not fast, it is very comfortable to travel steadily.
Some rich and powerful people even sit in large palanquins carried by eight people, and the spacious space is even more enviable.
There are also many stories about palanquins in history, especially the ming Dynasty minister Zhang Juzheng, who needs to be carried by thirty-two people.
▲Statue of Zhang Juzheng
It is said that this palanquin is not only divided into two parts, the living room and the bedroom, but even reserved a corridor for Zhang Juzheng to enjoy the scenery, and its luxury is staggering.
However, in fact, when the Ming Dynasty was founded, Zhu Yuanzhang made a lot of restrictions on the use of palanquins, and such a practice as Zhang Juzheng actually violated the Ming Dynasty system.
▲The sedan man who carries the palanquin
However, from the emperor's connivance of him, we can also see that the rule of the Ming Dynasty at that time has gone downhill, and we can also glimpse the trajectory of the rise and fall of the palanquin in the development of the Ming Dynasty.
At the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, there were strict restrictions on palanquins
The era from which the palanquin appeared in Chinese history has always been a matter of divergent opinions.
Some people think that when Da Yu ruled the water, the palanquin had become a means of transportation for the tribal leader, but the palanquin at that time had only one seat, which was completely different from the luxurious descendants.
The more complete palanquins first appeared in the Sui and Tang dynasties, but this kind of transportation that required multiple people to serve was not affordable for everyone.
At that time, only the emperor and his concubines could use palanquins.
In the Song Dynasty, with the development of productive forces, palanquins gradually spread in society, and in addition to the relatives of the emperor and the state, those high-powered ministers were also allowed to travel in palanquins.
▲Ancient palanquin-shaped system
During the reign of Song Taizu, he explicitly forbade ordinary people to ride in palanquins.
However, with the continuous development of the Economy of the Northern Song Dynasty, the government's ability to control landlords and merchants also continued to decline, and the effectiveness of this ban became worse and worse.
Eventually, the capital of the Northern Song Dynasty, Beijing, even appeared as a commercial house specializing in renting out palanquins, and traveling by car was also popular among the people for the first time.
In the early years of the Ming Dynasty, China was in ruins after a long period of war.
Zhu Yuanzhang believes that the way of traveling in a sedan will affect the "willpower" of officials and the people.
So he ordered that officials and civilians should be strictly forbidden to travel in palanquins, with the exception of the elderly and infirm and women.
▲Ming Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang
During the Song Dynasty, the palanquins worn by officials of different ranks had different ornaments, and these palanquins were painted with red paint to show their identity.
In order to prevent the situation of officials competing, Zhu Yuanzhang stipulated that the palanquins of officials could not use red paint, and only elderly officials with more than five pins could add green curtains as decorations on the palanquins.
Because Zhu Yuanzhang was very strict about the management of the car, some ministers still maintained the habit of riding or walking even if they were physically ill or reached the age when they could take the car.
In the early years of the Ming Dynasty, the national economy was not very good, and many ministers could only ride donkeys because they could not afford to buy horses, which became a spectacle at that time.
The ban on car rides is relaxed
With the prolongation of the Ming Dynasty's rule, the country's political and economic order gradually got on the right track, and more and more literati entered the political arena.
At that time, Zhu Yuanzhang asked officials to ride horses to the court, so that they would not forget the ability to ride and shoot.
▲ Ming Dynasty officials on horseback
However, the literati of the middle of the Ming Dynasty would not have ridden horses in the first place, and it was obviously difficult for them to learn this new skill.
Therefore, when the Jingtai Emperor was in power, the Ban on Sedans in the Ming Dynasty was loosened for the first time.
He stipulated that in addition to those old and infirm officials, civilian officials of more than three pins could also travel in sedan cars, but large members outside the capital were still not allowed to take sedans even if their grades were sufficient.
Although Emperor Jingtai only made a small opening in Zhu Yuanzhang's ban, this actually made the atmosphere of riding a car spread rapidly.
In the years that followed, the streets of Beijing were filled with palanquins of officials of all sizes.
Not only did they sit in palanquins when they went up to the court, but sometimes they also had to sit on palanquins when they went out of the city to run errands, and even when a ceremony was being held, some officials actually passed by the side in a palanquin, and did not get off the palanquin to worship or walk to show respect.
This made some of the imperial histories very dissatisfied, and complained to the Jingtai Emperor about the imperial complaint.
▲Ming Dynasty palanquin
However, The Jingtai Emperor did not impose substantial penalties on these people, but only emphasized the standard of traveling in a car later.
This act of turning a blind eye has led to more and more people sitting in the sedan car, and later some rich families have also begun to travel in the car.
During the Chenghua period, the eunuch Wang Zhi proposed that Zhu Yuanzhang forbade officials to ride in a car in order to keep them simple and not to have the mood of comparison. The prevalence of travel by car is bound to cause the prevalence of extravagance and laziness
At Wang Zhi's suggestion, the Ming government redefined the conditions for taking a sedan car, that is, only elderly and sick officials of sanpin or more could travel in a sedan car.
This order was still effective when it was first issued, and some officials who violated the rules were also investigated and dealt with by Jinyiwei and Dongchang.
▲Wang Zhi stills
However, at that time, the Ming Dynasty scholar class had become a social trend, and these warning punishments could not fundamentally reverse this trend.
Gradually, the number of people riding in the car increased again, the so-called law did not blame the people, and the Ming rulers could not impose heavy punishments on them, so they could only continue to travel in the car.
Later, some military attachés also began to learn to go out in a palanquin like a civilian official.
At the same time, many officials also abandoned the simple four-person palanquin and instead sat in an eight-lift palanquin.
▲Ming Wuzong stills
After Emperor Mingwuzong ascended the throne, some ministers hoped that he would be able to rectify the social and official atmosphere in the name of the new monarch.
He again made a request to ban the military attaches from riding in the car, and Emperor Mingwuzong accepted their suggestion and punished some of the officials who violated the rules.
However, during the reign of Emperor Wuzong of Ming, he also set a precedent for allowing the minister of Chincha to ride on a palanquin.
This made many Beijing officials who went out to run errands scramble to travel in palanquins, and local magistrates sometimes intimately prepared luxurious palanquins for them, which obviously violated the original intention of the Ming rulers to restrict palanquins.
It can also be seen from this that at this time, the ming rulers' ability to control the local area has declined.
The collapse of the car system in the late Ming Dynasty
During Emperor Mingwuzong's lifetime, although he relaxed the restrictions on Qincha officials riding in palanquins outside Beijing, he was still very strong in punishing some illegal Beijing officials.
Although some people say that this is the Grand Eunuch Liu Jin using the name of illegal sedan to eliminate dissidents, this has made officials jealous of usurpation of sedans.
But during the Jiajing period, this situation changed again.
The decades of Jiajing's reign were the most frequent periods when the imperial court issued bans on sedans, mainly because military attachés had begun to ride in large numbers of palanquins at that time, and even some low-grade civilian officials had also begun to ride in sedans.
▲Jiajing stills
This situation does not seem to be different from the Ming Wuzong period, but with the increase in the number of people in the car, there are also some problems with the etiquette between officials.
In the past, low-ranking officials needed to give way and give gifts when they saw the palanquins of the senior officers, but now everyone sitting in the palanquin is no different.
Therefore, there were frequent cases of low-grade officials and high-ranking officials, and those high-ranking officials naturally did not want to suffer such grievances, so they went to Jiajing and hoped that the emperor could help him punish those petty officials.
Although Jiajing made some punishments, it still had little effect in such an environment, and the helpless Jiajing Emperor could only reiterate the ancestral rules many times, but there was no good way to change the status quo.
At the same time, the Jiajing Emperor often used the right to ride a car to bribe officials.
▲Palanquins of the Ming Dynasty
At that time, all those who made meritorious contributions were likely to be granted the right to sit on palanquins in the capital by Jia, which made the palanquins in the capital endless.
However, under the persuasion of some officials, Jiajing still criticized the military attaché for riding the car.
Although many military attaches already had luxurious palanquins behind their backs, on the surface, the ancestral rules of the Jiajing Dynasty had not been completely abandoned.
However, after Emperor Mingguangzong succeeded to the throne, in order to gain the support of the Ming Dynasty nobles, he chose to crown all the meritorious titles.
Among these people, those who had been sealed before were given the right to ride in palanquins.
During the Ming Dynasty, most of these nobles were military attaches, and this decision of Emperor Mingguangzong was equivalent to completely breaking Zhu Yuanzhang's ancestral system.
Since then, although the military attaché has not been able to ride in a palanquin in name only, there are very few people left who have actually adhered to this rule.
▲ Peasant rebel army at the end of the Ming Dynasty
In the last years of the Ming Dynasty, palanquins, which originally symbolized the status of officials, became a common way of travel for bureaucratic gentry.
This led to more and more ceremonial conflicts during the Jiajing years, but the Ming emperor at this time had no heart to manage these problems in the midst of internal and external troubles.
The emperor could only reiterate the rules of his ancestors when officials objected, but he could not come up with a way to stop it, which showed the decline of the central government's dominance of the Ming Dynasty.
After Chongzhen succeeded to the throne, he looked at the palanquins coming and going in the capital, and once privately mentioned that he wanted to restore the management of the early Ming Dynasty, but he himself knew that this was just a fool's dream, so he did not implement it.
At that time, military attaches all over the country were accustomed to traveling in palanquins, and some of the nobles could not even ride horses after that.
After the Fourth Year of Chongzhen's Mutiny in Jinan, the Chinese general Shen Tingyu was ordered to beg for thieves.
As a result, he actually commanded the battle in a palanquin, and asked the soldiers on the front line how they could fight with all their might when they saw such a commander?
The decline of the Ming Dynasty was irreversible here.
▲Zhang Juzheng palanquin restoration model
Although the official sitting on the palanquin had little to do with the fall of the Ming Dynasty, it was from the ban on sedans in the early Ming Dynasty to the popularity of palanquins in the last years of the Ming Dynasty.
We may be able to see the problems of the Ming rulers in managing officials and nobles, and we can also see the spread of hedonism among the scholar class, which is the so-called "born of sorrow, died of happiness", which is the real bane of the decline of the Ming Dynasty.
concentrate:
This article on the management of the Ming Dynasty car, with reference to "Gifts and Trespassing: The Ming Dynasty Car System and the Fashion of The Car Ride", written by Gong Shihao, published in May 2017
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