Pull history - the first master of the Northern Song Dynasty, Zhu Chong

During the Northern Song Dynasty, there was a man named Zhu Chong in Suzhou, who was a lowly ancestor, who was poor and depressed and lived by begging and working, and later saved some money as a country freighter before starting a medicinal materials business. However, Zhu Chong was sleek, scheming and good at business, and later made a fortune from this.

At this time, Zhu Chongji wanted to make friends with powerful people as his backer, and it was also coincidental that a chance really made him marry Cai Jing, the prime minister of the dynasty, and since then he has changed his fate.

Once, Cai Jing, who lived in Qiantang (present-day Hangzhou), passed through Suzhou and stayed overnight at a monastery. The abbot of the monastery asked Cai Jing to help build a Tibetan scripture cabinet in the temple, but cai Jing felt embarrassed when it was estimated to be very expensive. The monk told Cai Jing that there was a zhu chong in suzhou who was in the medicinal materials business who was very rich, and Cai Jing called Zhu Chong to talk about it, and heard that Cai Jing was a high official in Beijing, and the opportunity to recognize his father came. Zhu Chong immediately agreed to this. A few days later, Cai Jing went to the construction site to see that thousands of pieces of wood for building the pavilion had already been piled up there, and his heart was very happy, and it was only two months before the cabinet was completed. Cai Jing was very happy, and when he returned to Beijing, he took Zhu Chong's son Zhu Xun with him, placed the names of his father and son in the army under Tong Guan's jurisdiction and gave him an official position, and also recommended Zhu Xun to Emperor Huizong of Song. Zhu Chong, with the help of Cai Jing, became a red-top businessman.

It just so happens that Emperor Huizong of Song was a merry emperor who only knew how to have fun, and liked to decorate the imperial garden with strange stones and flowers, and he enjoyed it. Cai Jing asked Zhu Chong's father and son to find strange flowers and strange stones in Jiangnan to please the emperor. Zhu Chong immediately found three copies of yellow poplar, and Emperor Huizong was very happy to give him a reward. Since then, Zhu Chong's son Zhu Xun (朱勔) has specially engaged in the collection and transportation of people called "Huashi Gang", and has been promoted to higher ranks repeatedly.

What is even more excessive is that Zhu Chong's father and son also set up a special "Ying Feng Bureau" in Suzhou and Hangzhou, and went around under the banner of the emperor to collect strange flowers and stones, jade calligraphy and paintings, rhinoceros horn ivory and the like. As soon as anyone hears that anyone has these strange things, they will immediately send people to put on the imperial seal, dedicate them within a certain period of time, and if they do not offer them, they will be punished with the crime of "great disrespect", or send soldiers to break into their homes and forcibly snatch them away.

There are families in Yuezhou, and several boulders are favored by the father and son, and because the stone gate is small, they have been demolished by the wall and destroyed the house. There were several ancient cypress trees next to the ancient tomb of the Huishan family, and Zhu Chong's father and son ordered them to be dug up, and in order to dig out all the roots, they dug up the coffin without stopping, and dug the ancestral grave for the family. Therefore, families in Suzhou and Zhejiang regard strange stones and trees as ominous things, which makes chickens and dogs restless and the people's resentment boils. In order to transport these strange stones and foreign objects to the capital, Zhu Chong's father and son also recruited a wide range of civilian ships, and if the civilian ships were too small or not enough, they blocked the transportation of the state grain ships and merchant ships, dismantled them if the bridge was too low, and organized people to dig a river tunnel if the river was narrow. Along the way, they ran amok, extorted and extorted, and the people suffered terribly.

With the support of Cai Jing, the patron, the father and son were credited with collecting and transporting the "Huashi Gang" to Emperor Huizong, and in addition to being promoted, they also received a large amount of land rewarded by the emperor. The Suzhou government gave them all the land around the father's and son's residence according to the purpose of the emblem, and hundreds of people whose ancestors lived here were forcibly driven away. After the father and son acquired this land, they immediately built the Fudi Garden called "Tongyuan", while the people called it "Zhujiayuan".

This Zhu homestead covers a vast area, the architecture is beautiful, the precious flowers and trees in the garden, strange flowers and grasses, rugged and strange stones, all the Zhu homes in the royal garden have everything. Zhu Jiayuan's peonies are even more eye-opening. At the end of the Song Dynasty, peony cultivation in Suzhou was very popular, there were many varieties, and the official eunuchs were proud of peony cultivation, but no one could compare with Zhujiayuan peony. Zhujiayuan planted nearly 10,000 peonies, covering an area of one mile long, all of which are famous species. In order to show the preciousness of these famous products, Zhu Chong also asked people to hang a special gold medal on these famous products, and then write the flower names on the gold medals, and also covered the flower beds with color paintings to show the preciousness of the peonies in his garden.

The proximity to power made Zhu Chong's father and son mistakenly believe that they had power. But good is rewarded with good, and evil is rewarded with evil, and no one can escape. During the reign of Emperor Jingkang of Song, when Jin soldiers invaded and Tokyo fell, Zhu Xun escorted the emperor and fled south, wanting to place the emperor in Zhujiayuan, but was opposed by the ministers. The minister said to the emperor, "This is not good. Folk songs have been spread 'gold belt, silver belt, Zhao family world Zhu family bad. Zhu Xun should be immediately removed from his official post to vent the people's indignation. The emperor was allowed to play, and Zhu Xun was stripped of his post for the people, and later beheaded and paraded to the public.

As soon as Zhu Xun died, the oppressed people immediately poured into Zhu's homestead to drive out his family, and the peonies in the garden were also uprooted and burned as firewood. Zhu Chong, who was already dead long ago, could not have imagined that his descendants had no place to live at this time, and it seemed that they were all troublesome to make friends with powerful people. In the end, a person's whole life cannot escape cause and effect!