In ancient times, except for the reckless heroes who accompanied the founding emperor to fight the world, the possibility of illiterate officials was very small.
The world depends on the barrel of a gun, but the governance of the country depends on the ink in the stomach. During the war years, Liu Bang dared to use urine to feed the literati, but in peacetime, he had to drink and cook well.
Why did ancient China have a thousand-year-long imperial examination system?
It is because the governance of the country depends on the literati, not the recklessness. Just as the so-called "learning and excellence are good", if you want to become an official, you must be the top among the students, and the illiterate people have no chance to enter the political stage.
Of course, there are also some illiterate people in history who live in the temple, and there are three main situations in this situation:
First, buy official hats with yellow and white things;
The second is to inherit lao tzu's official position;
The third is when the eunuchs are mixed with the reds.
In the late Qing Dynasty, the military minister Tara Gangyi was able to enter the career path because of his lao tzu. The Manchu Qing dynasty was an ethnic minority regime, so successive Qing emperors adhered to the basic principle of "ruling the Han dynasty with Manchu". During the Qing Dynasty, the Manchus all had an innate sense of superiority, and even the illiterate who did not have any ink in their stomachs had a place to wait for him.
Gang Yi was born in the Eight Banners, and if he followed the principle of "learning and excelling", it is estimated that he would not even be able to touch the threshold of the official field. In the early years, Gang Yi was arranged by his father to go to the mailroom of the institutions directly under the imperial court, serving tea and pouring water and running errands, and mixing with high-ranking officials. Perhaps because of the pure blood of fortitude, relying on the innate aristocratic advantages of the Manchus, they were mixed up in the official arena.
He successively served as a political envoy, a military minister, and a criminal shangshu, and later, he became a big red person around Empress Dowager Cixi, and even, together with Yuxian, he was a hateful representative of Qing officials compared to corrupt officials in Liu Hu's "Travels of the Old Remnant". He is a very strong and powerful subject, but he has not read a book for a few days, and he is a standard "typo king". At that time, the common words were estimated to be about three thousand, and it was estimated that he could not even recognize a thousand of them, let alone write them.
For example, the words "drink" and "rest" are estimated to be written by second-grade primary school students, but They can't distinguish between Fortitude. When he was a local parent official, he took over a case. The farmer's paper contains the following sentence: "I picked up the dung and came to the mouth of the village to rest." Gang Yi took the paper and read it aloud: "I picked up the dung and came to the village to drink it." ”
As far as the cultural level of fortitude is concerned, I am afraid that in other dynasties, I am afraid that I can only drink dung.
That year, Gang Yi was promoted to minister of military aircraft, at that time, Sichuan reported that a rebellion had been quelled, and Gang Yi saw such a sentence in the official document: "Chase and chase the north." At the time, "north" meant failure, and that's how the term "defeat" came from. However, when Gang Yi read this sentence, he actually misinterpreted the meaning of the words. Only to see him slap the table, angrily said: These will only chase north, and the thieves are not fools, won't they run towards the east, west, and south? Fortunately, after all, there were still some readers in the Qing Dynasty.
When Gang Yi lost his temper, Weng Tonggong next to him quickly explained to him. The anger of fortitude was suppressed, but he couldn't figure it out, how could "chasing north" mean "chasing defeat"? Weng Tonggong covered his mouth and smiled, and Gang Yi could only scratch his head with a red face. Fortunately, this Weng Tonggong had once served as an imperial master, otherwise, according to his ridicule and fortitude, he might not be able to make any kind of chaos. The key lies in the complex social situation in the late Qing Dynasty, and the fortitude does not even have half a literary foundation, how can we accurately judge the current situation?
The foreigner sent an official letter, and he saw that the foreigner's words were like spiders crawling, and he also punched the fat man with a swollen face and said that he knew these words. The Boxers claimed that the boxers were invincible, and boasted that they could win the battle with a pair of meat fists. This kind of nonsense is undoubtedly a fantasy in the eyes of readers, and it can fool those illiterates who have not read books. He was such an illiterate man who firmly believed in the miraculous feats of the Boxers. Gang Yi was a war leader, and he stood firmly behind the Boxers, and wanted to share the enemy with these grassroots insurgents.
As a result, "the calamity of Gengzi is fixed on King Duan and Li Lianying as the backbone, and those who help to succeed are really strong and resolute."
In the twenty-sixth year of Guangxu (1900), when the Boxers entered Beijing, Gang Yi, Zai Yi and others, out of extreme xenophobia, advocated the appeasement of the Boxers, hoping to use the "magic" of the Boxers to achieve the effect of "supporting the Qing Dynasty and destroying the west". In June, Gang Yi and Zhao Shuqiao went to Liangxiang and Zhuozhou to inspect the Boxer Rebellion, and after returning to the dynasty, they reported that "their techniques were available", so Tong Zaixun was appointed as the commander of the Boxer Rebellion, leading the Boxer Rebellion to fight against the Eight-Nation Alliance. In August, the Eight-Nation Alliance occupied Beijing, and Gang Yi accompanied Empress Dowager Cixi to "Xi Hunt" (fleeing west), and died of diarrhea in the town of Houma in Shanxi.
Illiteracy has plagued the country and the people, but during this period, Gang Yi still feels good about himself: "And now that he is preparing for the throne, how can he chew on the words of the text and chew on the words with him, and he will exaggerate a thousand words and fall into the path of poverty and not protect himself?" "I haven't even read a book for a few days, but I'm already a very popular person. You have been reading for so many years, and in the end you are still a poor student, how?
What else can be done?
What is not known is that fortitude actually has a love of culture.
During his tenure, Gang Yi was enthusiastic about cultural engineering, and he produced a collection of reports a year, "Juguan Mirror". Open this book, among them, "the official is loyal, respectful, sincere, straight, diligent, prudent, honest, and clear eight characters", "the official does things all by the public heart, one person sees that what he thinks is not necessarily what he thinks is not necessarily what he sees, one person thinks that what is not necessarily wrong is not necessarily wrong, and when seeking justice is not necessarily wrong", such famous aphorisms abound.
So, Gang Yi must be an honest and upright official, right?
The answer is no. After writing this honest government book, He went to the south to supervise the taxation. On a trip to the south, he scavenged millions of people's cream, which was jaw-dropping. It is a contradiction that people like him trample the people under the heavens and the people under their feet, and that they follow the example of the literati everywhere. It is said that Gang Yi published six books of poetry in a short period of sixteen months in the south, and the quality of this collection of poems can be seen.
It is estimated that these few poems have squeezed out all the ink in Gang Yi's stomach. I wonder if the poetry collection published by Fortitude has sold well? It is estimated that it is still good to buy it as a joke.
Resources:
["The Travels of the Old Remnant", "Qing History Manuscripts, Liechuan 252"]