At present, some units have a small meeting a day, and a conference every three days. In fact, not to mention the meetings of various units and departments, there are several large-scale meetings at the national level. On the mainland, the main ones that need to summon deputies from all over the country to Beijing for meetings are the National People's Congress, the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, and the National Congress of the Communist Party of China. The three congresses are the People's Congress, the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and the Party Conference: the NPC and the CPPCC are held annually, while the Party Congress is held every five years. Whenever these meetings are held, representatives from all walks of life from all over the country gather in Beijing.
Of course, the transportation is very convenient now. Delegates can fly or take the high-speed train to Beijing for meetings. So did the ancients need to go to the capital for a meeting? How are they going to get to the capital? First of all, it needs to be made clear that the vast majority of ancient people did not need to go to Beijing for meetings. Nowadays, in addition to several major official national meetings, some large group companies may also call employees from foreign branches to the headquarters for meetings. However, in ancient times, there were not so many large conglomerates with business throughout the country or even the world. In the Ming and Qing dynasties, groups such as Jin merchants and Hui merchants began to appear with some names that operated in multiple provinces.
However, such businesses with industries in many provinces are usually sent from the headquarters to inspect various places. Even when it comes to getting your staff to report, they rarely choose the capital as the meeting place. In ancient times, there was actually only one kind of person who needed to go to Beijing for a meeting, and that was an official of the imperial court. In fact, even imperial court officials did not need to come to Beijing for meetings. In ancient times, officials were divided into Beijing officials and local officials. We can see in some film and television dramas that the emperor will summon a meeting of the civil and military officials in the capital. In fact, not all Beijing officials need to go to the dynasty, and the court meeting is not necessarily every day.
For example, the Tang Dynasty stipulated that Beijing officials above the fifth grade needed to go to the dynasty. In other words, Jing officials below the fifth rank do not need to go to the dynasty, but the first and fifteenth days of each month are exceptions. In these two days, all officials in Beijing must participate in the meeting in principle, unless there are no special circumstances. This is equivalent to our current division between conferences and small meetings: the routine early morning is equivalent to a small meeting specially convened by the heads of various departments, while the first and fifteenth days of the first year of the first year are enlarged meetings that require the participation of grassroots workers. After the Ming and Qing dynasties, it was generally necessary for officials above the fourth rank to go to the dynasty and have direct dialogue with the emperor.
Hajj is not held every day. In ancient times, there were also working days and rest days. Han Dynasty officials were given four days off per month. These four-day days off do not need to go to court. Tang officials could only rest for two days a month. After the Ming and Qing Dynasties, there was no distinction between working days and rest days. How often to go to the dynasty at this time depends entirely on the mood of the emperor: a diligent emperor like Yongzheng has to go to the dynasty every day, while the two emperors like Jiajing and Wanli of the Ming Dynasty have not been in the dynasty for a long time. Of course, the officials who need to go to the dynasty here all refer to the Beijing officials, and the local officials generally do not need to go to the upper dynasty.
After all, China is vast. Some remote areas took a long time to enter Beijing once under the ancient traffic conditions. If the magistrate is allowed to go to the court every day or every few days like the Beijing official, then it is not enough for the magistrate to spend all his time and energy on the round trip from the station to the capital. In this way, how can there be work to deal with local government affairs? Therefore, the magistrate does not need to go to court. So how did the imperial court evaluate the performance of local officials? They were usually asked to go to Beijing every other year or every few years to report to the emperor. This was equivalent to the emperor summoning them alone for a small meeting.
Before the Ming Dynasty, official debriefings in Beijing had not yet become customized. At that time, how often officials entered Beijing to report their duties depended entirely on the emperor's mood, so some local officials might not need to go to Beijing to report on their duties for the rest of their lives. Emperor Ming Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang standardized the system for officials to report on their duties in Beijing. In the fifteenth year of Hongwu, Zhu Yuanzhang ordered all the officials of the world to go to Beijing once a year to report on their duties, and in the eighteenth year of Hongwu, they changed to go to Beijing once every three years to report on their duties. Since then, it has become customized for local officials to report to Beijing every three years. The so-called debriefing is actually going to Beijing to report his work to the emperor.
Even if you can't walk for three years on foot, right? Of course, officials will not walk when they go to Beijing to report on their duties. In ancient times, officials traveled with pomp and circumstance. If an official goes to the capital on foot to report on duty, it is not his own face, but it will be considered a loss of dignity for the imperial court. Therefore, it is impossible for officials to go to the capital on foot to report on duty out of face. In addition to the face problem, there is another reason for security reasons. From the station to the capital, I don't know what I will encounter. It is really somewhat unsafe for officials to travel such distances on their own.
Therefore, officials who go to Beijing to report on their duties generally bring a group of bodyguards, servants and other entourage. This is both for security and for the sake of face. The entourage can walk, but the official must not walk. If it is a military attaché who can ride a horse, he may choose to ride into Beijing; If it is a civil servant who cannot ride a horse, he usually chooses to take a carriage or a palanquin. The two means of transportation of the carriage and the palanquin have their own advantages and disadvantages: the advantage of the horse-drawn carriage is that it is faster, and the advantage of the palanquin is that it is relatively smoother. The ancient road was not as smooth as the asphalt road today.
Traveling by horse-drawn carriage was quite bumpy in ancient times. Therefore, people who are generally in a hurry will choose to travel by horse-drawn carriage. The sedan chair is much smoother, and it shows the dignity of officials more than a horse-drawn carriage. However, in ancient times, there were clear regulations on what kind of palanquin officials of different levels should take when traveling. Once you sit on a palanquin that exceeds your rank, you will be reprimanded by your superiors at light, and sentenced at worst. Of course, riding a horse, carriage, or palanquin is all land transportation, and in some areas it may be necessary to take the waterway. That's when you need to take a boat. For example, in "Dream of Red Mansions", it is mentioned that Lin Daiyu took a boat from Gusu to Jinling by water.
In fact, in ancient times, officials went to Beijing to report their duties, and in addition to choosing land transportation, they sometimes passed by some large rivers and took boats. In fact, not to mention ancient times, even cadres from some remote areas in the seventies and eighties may have had the experience of riding horses and boats when they wanted to go to Beijing. In the seventies and eighties, planes, trains, and automobiles were available, but airports, railway stations, and bus stations were mostly located in some major cities. Like some small counties or rural areas, you can't take a train or a car to go to a big city. If you're lucky, you can ride a farmer's walk-behind tractor or ride a horse or bicycle, but if you're unlucky, you can only walk.
At that time, some delegates from remote counties and villages went to Beijing for meetings, usually by walk-behind tractor or horseback or bicycle to the city's railway station and then to Beijing. Then in ancient times, you could only ride a horse and ride a sedan for the whole time. Of course, it took less than ten days and a half a month to go to the capital on horseback, and I don't think of it. So how to solve the eating, drinking, and sleeping of officials and entourage? This is the same as mentioning the delivery system that has appeared in the mainland since the Shang Zhou period. Ancient Chinese post stations were first used to transmit military intelligence, and later began to receive officials on official business.
There is a record in the "Rite of Zhou": "There is a lu in the ten miles of the way of the wild of every country, and there is a diet in the lu; There is a lodging in thirty miles, a road room in the lodging, and a committee in the road room; There is a city in fifty miles, the city has a houguan, and the houguan has a ji." The houguan here is the inn of later generations. By the time of the Qin and Han dynasties, the post delivery system centered on Chang'an began to spread throughout the country. At that time, a pavilion was set up every ten miles on the post road, which was managed by the pavilion chief. In the Tang Dynasty, there were 1,639 water horse stations in the country, with an average of one post every thirty miles. After the establishment of the Ming Dynasty, on the basis of the previous generation, three types of post delivery agencies were set up: post stations, delivery offices, and express delivery shops.
Courier owners transporting military materiel; The express delivery shop is responsible for forwarding official documents; The caravan mainly delivers passengers. In other words, the main function of the post station in the Ming Dynasty was to receive official travel. On the way to Beijing, officials can solve the problem of food and lodging at post stations along the way. After Emperor Zhu Di moved the capital to Beijing, two major transportation hubs centered on Beijing and Nanjing appeared. After that, the intersection of post roads and waterways throughout the country will lead to large trunk lines to reach Liangjing, and the branch lines of various provinces form dense transportation lines. This can effectively ensure the exchange of officials and messengers.