"Those who have more than fifty people who have the ability to cultivate and be good" are "three elders, one person in each township" - the above is a description of the old man system in the Han Dynasty.
The old people's system is a grass-roots governance policy of the Han Dynasty, the simple understanding is to elect a few highly respected people among the villagers, called "old", the daily responsibility of these old people is to serve as a bridge between the villagers and the government, their identity is between the officials and the people.
Compared with the officials, their powers are not large, and most of them are consultative matters, which is different from the traditional official positions; for the people, unlike the ordinary people, they have certain powers, and the "old people" have played a great role in the central government's governance of the grass-roots level.
In fact, the old man system actually appeared before the Han Dynasty, and during the Warring States period, there were records of the establishment of the "three elders" in the countryside, and this system has continued with the development of society.
The famous Shaanxi vernacular literature "White Deer Plain" has a description of a rural position similar to the "Three Elders". According to legend, Bailu Village was not given this name before, but after the ancestors of the present-day Bailu Village migrated to this place, the White Deer Xiangrui was checked, and the White Deer Village got its name.
In order to take over the auspiciousness of the white deer, the ancestors changed the surname of their descendants to Bai and Lu, and agreed to take the bai surname as the patriarch, and the deer surname was Zuozhi, and this provision was passed down to the generation of Bai Jiaxuan and Lu Zilin as an ancestral training. At this time, the authority of the patriarch was similar to that of the old man of the Han Dynasty.
If the patriarch is not the three elders in the traditional sense, then after the outbreak of the Great Revolution, the position of "township covenant" established by the new government in each township is in line with the old man.
As the "township covenant" of Bailu Village, Lu Zilin is responsible for coordinating matters such as taxation between the government and the villagers, which is in line with the official duties of the ancient three elders, but it is different, such as marriage and funeral between villagers, etc. are still dominated by the patriarch.
It can be understood that the ancient office of the three elders was the synthesis of the patriarch and the township covenant of Bailu Village, and was an indispensable component in the rural society.
To this day, positions similar to the three elders still exist in today's rural areas, the author lives in rural areas, whenever there are marriage and funeral matters in the township, there are always several older people who are elected by the main family as the main person, responsible for coordinating the purchase of materials and the process.
These are all conventional, but also the embodiment of the ancient three old culture in the modern countryside, the recent TV series "Mountains and Rivers Bright Moon" is being broadcast, regardless of whether the plot is in line with the history, the Ming Dynasty, the last Han Dynasty Tianzi Dynasty, appeared in front of the public.
Among them, Zhu Yuanzhang, played by Chen Baoguo, also conforms to the traditional "opening a bowl" personality, unlike the founding monarchs of other dynasties, or born from military aristocrats, or born in a local family of rich families, Zhu Yuanzhang was born in the grassroots, and his early status also determined that some of his policies were different from previous monarchs.
At the same time, Zhu Yuanzhang, who was born at the bottom, also paid great attention to the construction of the grass-roots level, and the traditional grass-roots system of the old man system was also re-adopted by him, what was the impact of the old man system on the Ming Dynasty, and the question of how the development of later generations also led to the theme of this article - the advantages and disadvantages of the implementation of the old man system in the Ming Dynasty.
First, the development of the old man system in the Ming Dynasty
1. The establishment of the old man system in the Ming Dynasty
"Those who have practiced for more than fifty years have the ability to cultivate and be good for the three elders, one person in each township, which has become a system." The Han Dynasty was the era when the old man system was really widely practiced, and feudal rulers used this system to connect the grassroots with the high churches to maintain their own rule.
Facts have proved that the old man system is an extremely effective policy, and because of this, in the later Wei and Jin Southern and Northern Dynasties, the Sui and Tang Dynasties, and the Two Song Dynasties, there was more or less a shadow of the old man system, and the old man system also continued, and it died out without the development of the times.
During the Hongwu period, the Ming Dynasty was founded, and the founding emperor Zhu Yuanzhang also paid great attention to the rural grassroots because of his unique origins, and the old man system was about to emerge.
The "Records of Ming Taizu" Hongwu 21 August article recorded its events: "The first order of the county in the world to select the people who are young and virtuous, and put one person in it, which is called the Elderly Residence, the quality of the right and wrong, and the age is changing." This is the earliest record of the old man system in the Ming Dynasty.
Here, readers may have such a question: Ming Taizu paid so much attention to grass-roots construction, why did it not start to implement the old man system until the Ming Dynasty in the twenty-first year of Hongwu? The answer to this question must be explained in conjunction with the historical background of the time.
At the end of the Yuan Dynasty, the world was in chaos, and there were uprisings in various places, during which there were not only conflicts between the rebel army and the government army of the Yuan Dynasty, but also the infighting between the rebel armies in various places, which can be said to be a disaster for life, and the loss of a large number of labor forces caused by the war played a great negative role in the social production based on traditional agriculture and small handicrafts at that time, and a large number of rural populations were lost, and the grass-roots social system basically collapsed, as can be seen from Zhu Yuanzhang's early experience.
After the establishment of the Ming Dynasty, the situation improved, but the recovery speed was still very slow, because the Ming government at this time was still busy cleaning up the remnants of the Yuan Dynasty, and used troops against Liaodong, Mobei, and Yunnan for many years, which naturally required the recruitment of a large number of soldiers, and social production was also affected.
It was not until the twenty-first year of Hongwu that the war basically stopped, and the grass-roots social system, the Lijia system, was also established, at which time, the soil for the implementation of the old man system appeared, and it also came out of the trend, but after the implementation, there was a phenomenon of "the elderly people are quite different from them, so they have eroded the townships, and the people have been harmed by them."
This had to cause the central government to urgently suspend the implementation of the elderly system - "the elderly who are raised by the strike order of the world, after the abolition of the Old House, will be in charge of the Elderly Residence, and the quality is right and wrong in the middle of the world." The emergence of this phenomenon may occur in the selection conditions, and the lawless people obtain the position of the elderly by colluding with local officials, so as to make a profit, fish and meat in the township.
This will also be introduced in the selection of the elderly in the following article, and will not be repeated here, however, the drawbacks of abolishing the old people's system soon appeared - "many because of small grievances, the rise of prison lawsuits, more lawsuits in Beijing", after the old man was dismissed, all the affairs fell on the shoulders of the elderly, which inevitably led to unjust cases and wrongful judgments.
As a result, the people began to report, and even went to Beijing to complain, and forced by such a dilemma, the Central Committee of the Ming Dynasty decided to re-implement the old man system - "order the people to choose those who are just and able to serve, and listen to their lawsuits."
Naturally, the selection criteria were also more stringent and more standard than when they were first implemented, and after that, the old people system gradually became the normalization system of the Ming Generation, and the old man system was truly established in the Ming Dynasty.
2. The name of the official position of the old man system in the Ming Dynasty and its derivative system
The official name of the position corresponding to the ming dynasty elderly system is inconsistent in various places, and it is recorded as an old man in the county records of some regions, while some history books refer to it as Li Lao, and some also call it Li Lao, and some call it Li Lao, this article in order to avoid confusion among readers, is always called Li Lao.
After the implementation of the old age system at the level of Lijia and achieved remarkable results, measures to implement the old man system were also started in the governments and administrative agencies of the Ming Dynasty.
In the Ming Dynasty, the local grassroots system was established in the city yuefang, near the city yuexiang, the township capital Yueli, the fang, the box in the same li, and also set up the fang old man and the old man according to this system.
In addition, the Ming Dynasty also set up the Old Man of Muduo - fifteen miles of the county, the chief of the county, the old man, the old man of The Old Man of MuDuo, fifteen each; the old man of the market - set in the market, the old man of the warehouse, that is, set in the storage place of the prefectures and counties, the old man of the water conservancy, the old man of the pontoon bridge, etc., the most special of which is the old man of the Shenming Pavilion.
The Jiajing Dynasty records: "The Shenming Pavilion, the east three trees in front of the house, set up two old people. The role of the old man in the Shenming Pavilion is mainly to guide the people to "seek good fortune and avoid evil, and not to violate the criminal constitution", and to give leniency according to the size of the mistakes made by the people who violate the regulations, that is, small mistakes are not recorded in the Shenming court, leaving a certain margin for the people.
For those who have committed serious crimes, they are recorded in the affirmative court, on the one hand, they serve as a warning, and on the other hand, as part of the punishment to achieve the purpose of reducing the total punishment, such policies are praised by the ordinary people.
3. Selection of the elderly in the Ming Dynasty
As mentioned above, in the early Ming Dynasty when the old people system was just implemented, there were bad cases of the elderly in some areas not only not serving the people, but even fish and meat people, which led to the abolition of the old people system, and because of this, the selection system of the elderly was also improved with the second use of the old people system in the Ming Dynasty.
To sum up, the selection of the elderly in the Ming Dynasty is mainly considered from three aspects - age requirements, moral requirements, others, first of all, age requirements, and general areas require that the local elders must be locals over the age of fifty, and both are indispensable.
The second is the moral requirement — "his old man must be ordered by all the people in the book to elect those who are upright and respected, or three or five or ten, and register in office and make them dissected", which is the most important and the most difficult to judge, and often requires repeated consideration by superiors.
Finally, there are the additional conditions that arise depending on the region, such as the specific range of age, the occupation engaged in, and so on. Only if the above conditions are met can the candidate be formally appointed by his superiors as a veteran.
4. The duties of the elderly
In the first paragraph of the article, the author introduced the nature of the elderly - between the officials and the people, which also corresponds to the responsibility, in the administrative affairs of the region, there is a mile chief responsible, the responsibility of the elder is to dock with the ordinary people, to convey the decrees of the higher level government. Specifically, it can be summarized as follows.
The first is to deal with civil disputes, which are often characterized by private conflicts and violations of the law, without the need for the government to make a big fuss, but at the same time need to be resolved in a timely manner, at this time, it is necessary to mediate between the elderly who are highly respected in the local area.
The second point is to supervise the officials, ordinary people generally can not directly go beyond the superiors to reflect the local situation of the officials, the elders as a special group between the officials and the people, must play their role to improve the local officials, and finally to supervise production.
Ancient China has always been a typical agrarian country, agriculture has played a very crucial role in the development of the country, as the representative of ordinary people, the elders have the responsibility to supervise production.
Second, the advantages and disadvantages of the old system
In fact, in this part of the author does not have any specific supplements, first of all, to talk about the favorable side of the elderly system, just as the original intention of the establishment of the elderly system, in the early Ming And early Ming Dynasty, it did achieve the purpose of the establishment of the system - to persuade the people to be good, to promote production.
This has also played a positive role in the development of society; as for the shortcomings of the old man system, the author believes that it cannot be called so, and it can be seen from the phenomenon that the old man system could not be implemented in the early Ming Dynasty, and the implementation of any system is based on the existence of its administrative soil.
In the middle and late Ming Dynasty, land annexation was serious, the Xiaoice period came, crop harvests were generally low, and the elderly system lost the administrative soil for its implementation, resulting in many bad cases, but if it is called the drawbacks of the elderly system, it may not be appropriate, so the author will not elaborate here.
summary
The old people's system, as a grassroots policy that has existed since the Warring States, has now become a traditional custom in ordinary villages, which proves its conformity with China's traditional rural areas. As for its development in the Ming Dynasty, we will look farther ahead and find that when discussing the advantages and disadvantages of a policy, it is necessary to combine the social environment at that time. Without administrative soil, even the best system cannot be implemented.