Under the leadership of the Shaofu officials, Liu Che's imperial chariot drove into a village in a mighty manner.

This village is called ‘Jiali’.

Like most Han villages today, most of the houses in Jiali are built of bamboo or wooden boards.

Those who could live in brick houses were either landlords or officials.

The design of the bamboo house of the Han Dynasty is very interesting.

It is basically divided into two floors: the upper floor is for people and the lower floor is for livestock.

Moreover, most houses are designed with load-bearing wooden beams.

This kind of design made it possible that, in fact, the walls of most buildings in the Han Dynasty were not load-bearing themselves and only served as partitions.

In other words, even if the walls collapse, the house will not collapse.

Liu Che looked at the farmhouse outside through the curtain of the carriage with great interest.

Listening to the sounds of pigs, sheep and cows coming from the livestock pen in the farmhouse, Liu Che felt warm in his heart, as sweet as eating honey.

The fact that farmers can spare the time to raise livestock, especially large livestock such as pigs, cattle and sheep, proves that people's lives have been maintained at the subsistence level.

If they can't even fill their own stomachs, where will they find the spare money and ability to raise pigs, cattle and sheep?

The young master can cheat in other aspects, for example, filling the barns in the village with corn and wheat, having the roads and sanitation inside and outside the village cleaned, and dressing the children in new clothes.

But the bureaucrats of the Shaofu will never go to other places to bring livestock and put them in farmers' livestock pens.

It's not that they can't, it's that they can't think of it.

The cart stopped near a brick house in the village. The young man ordered Cenmai to come over and ask for instructions: "Your Majesty, the three elders of Jiali are outside the carriage to greet the Holy Father!"

Liu Che opened the car curtain slightly and saw more than a hundred people kneeling in two rows on both sides of the road, led by an old man on crutches.

Liu Che hurriedly said: "Go and ask the elders for help..." As he said this, he quickly got off the cart with the support of the eunuchs.

In the Han Dynasty, the status of the three elders was even higher than that of the scholar-bureaucrats.

Of course, the people who usually serve as the three elders are basically from the scholar-bureaucrat class.

The "scholar" class of the Song and Ming Dynasties, united together, could silence the government and even the eunuch group was afraid.

Do you think this is awesome?

But the three elders of the Han Dynasty were even more awesome!

Scholars in the Song and Ming dynasties also relied on public opinion to kidnap and hold them hostage to intimidate the government.

But the three old classes in the Han Dynasty did not need to do this at all.

Their political status is protected by law and supported, recognized and respected by the whole society.

Emperor Taizu Liu Bang of the Han Dynasty personally drafted an edict and announced it to the world: The officials and the people dare to scold the three elders. It is unethical! The three elders are allowed to go in and out of the government to meet their younger brothers and travel on the road;

Don’t rent, it’s more complex than Shandong!

The meaning of this edict is that anyone who dares to insult or abuse the three elders, whether officials or common people, will be regarded as "treason and immorality." The three elders are allowed to freely enter and leave all government offices except the palace, and walk on all roads including the royal road.

No one can stop the three elders from doing business or opening shops, and no one can tax them. The land cultivated by the three elders, as well as the three elders' families, are exempted from all taxes for life, and their treatment is the same as that of the elder brothers in Shandong.

In the Han Dynasty, the old Shandong brothers had the same status as the old Red Army, the old Eighth Route Army, and the old New Fourth Army of the Chinese Dynasty.

Compared with the three elders of the Han Dynasty, the scholar class of the Song and Ming Dynasties had extremely weak combat effectiveness.

Therefore, even the emperor Liu Che must give him the necessary respect and preferential treatment in front of one of the three elders.

This shows that the emperor's attitude of respecting and caring for the elderly echoes the Han Dynasty's national policy of "ruling the world with filial piety".

In other words, as long as the Han Dynasty still adheres to the fundamental national policy of "ruling the world with filial piety", the social and political status of the three elders will be fully guaranteed.

But compared with the literati group in the Song and Ming Dynasties, the three old classes in the Han Dynasty hardly caused trouble to the country and the government.

The answer is simple.

In the Han Dynasty, if you wanted to be the third elder, there was a hard condition.

This is what Liu Bang stipulated.

The three elders must be over fifty years old, have spiritual practice, and be able to lead others to do good deeds.

In this era before the Christian era, when the average life expectancy was less than fifty, if a person could live to be fifty, he would basically have to consider his own funeral arrangements.

Such an old man who is half buried will inevitably become increasingly conservative in both his thoughts and actions.

Such a person, even if he is given privileges, will not be like young people who want to rely on this privilege to gain fame, wealth and a bright future.

In particular, many of the three elders were once powerful officials in a certain place.

After retiring, they may even use their lifetime income to do something to benefit their hometown.

For example, they built bridges and roads, renovated water conservancy projects, and even opened some primitive private schools to educate the children in the countryside.

For example, Liu Che's current internal history uncle Tian Shu, when he became an official at home a few years ago, he took his fellow villagers to dig channels and repair roads. They were very busy.

The same is true for the three elders in this group.

The name of this third elder is Wang Zheng.

He is sixty-three years old this year. He was born when the Chu and Han Dynasties were fighting for hegemony. When he was young, he attended the lectures of Fuqiu Gong, a famous scholar in Chang'an.

This Duke of Fuqiu has a great background.

He is the direct disciple of Xunzi and a world-famous celebrity at the turn of the Qin and Han Dynasties.

His disciples are all over the world.

For example, Shen Gong, the leader of the Lu Confucian sect in the Han Dynasty, King Chu Yuan, the founder of the Chu Confucian sect, and King Chu Yi, the son of King Chu Yuan, all attended his lectures.

Although this Duke of Fuqiu has an inconspicuous status in history, few people even know about him.

But, if it weren't for him.

The current situation of Confucianism may not be much better than that of Mohism.

When Wang Zheng first attended the lectures at Fuqiu Gongmen, his qualifications were not very good, so his achievements were not great.

Relying on the support of his fellow apprentices, he finally became a county magistrate.

If someone else becomes the county magistrate, it is easy to make a fortune of 100,000 or 80,000 yuan, and then return to his hometown as an official.

But as an official, Wang Zheng was extremely honest.

After being a county magistrate for nearly twenty years, he still has a cool look on his sleeves, and even his official uniform is patched.

After becoming an official and returning to his hometown, he had no choice but to sell his family's land because he had no salary.

What a tragedy!

But then, the local magistrate discovered that there was such a colleague under his rule who had to sell off his property to make ends meet after becoming an official. So he reported his name to the internal history, and the internal history reported it to the Prime Minister's Office, who was in charge of the government at that time.

The prime minister was Shen Tujia, the Marquis of Gu'an. With a wave of his hand, Shen Tujia put this man into Shanglin Garden and appointed him as the third elder in Sixian Garden.

Of course, at that time, Si Xian Yuan was not called Si Xian Yuan.

Well, this is a comedy again.

Liu Che thought about the information Wang Dao reported yesterday about this third elder, and sighed in his heart.

It seems that it is time for the salary of civil servants in the Han Dynasty to be increased.

Otherwise, this upright official will not even be able to support his family. He will even have to sell off his land when he gets old.

Doesn’t this encourage people to become corrupt?

Moreover, official salaries are indeed very low.

A thousand-stone county magistrate's annual salary is only one thousand stone of corn, plus some rewards and subsidies from the draft tax.

Even if you are exhausted, your income will only be equivalent to 10,000 yuan.

The average monthly salary is less than a thousand yuan.

At the beginning, the former Prime Minister Shen Tujia, a dignified prince who was at the top of the hierarchy, had only ten servants and servants in his family!

In his previous life, the current Prime Minister Zhou Yafu finally went on a hunger strike and died because his son was reported for selling arms.

Then why does his son want to resell arms?

The answer is that his son felt that his father was getting worse and worse, so he had to prepare for future generations and earn some funeral expenses. He could not let his father go underground and live in the same poverty as he did in the human world.

If Shen Tujia and Zhou Yafu are like this, one can imagine what life is like for other people who are neither greedy nor taking.

Therefore, it can be imagined that bribery is common in both the government and the public in the Han Dynasty, and there are countless money and power transactions even in the palace.

Liu Che has been looking for an opportunity to raise the salaries of officials in an honest and fair manner.

Of course, Liu Che knew that a salary increase would not solve the problem of corrupt officials.

For a person who deserves to be corrupt, even if you give him a salary increase of a hundred times, he will still do it.

But at least we can't let good people suffer in vain.

Besides, after the salary increase, maybe it can save some people who are not willing to commit corruption in the first place?
To be continued...