Chapter 1031 1026 [Curiosity of the Second Generation Officials]
After only three years of study, Lu You graduated from Taixue ahead of schedule.
This speed is very fast, but it is incomparable with the top students in Taixue. He did not obtain the qualification of Jinshi directly awarded by Taixue students, he just graduated successfully.
Even so, most scholars of the same age were left behind.
Because the Taixue graduation exam is difficult, the passing rate is only slightly higher than the provincial exam. Even if you cannot be directly awarded a Jinshi, as long as you successfully graduate, you will automatically have the status of a scholar.
This Juren status can be retained for nine years. There is no need to take the hard work of taking the government examination or the provincial examination. You can directly participate in the examination held by the Ministry of Rites.
The graduation ceremony was over and the Taixue graduates went their separate ways.
Some stayed in the capital to continue their studies, some went to local academies to study, some chose to go home and study hard behind closed doors, and some chose to travel around together to study...to prepare for the next Beijing Examination.
In fact, they can become senior officials. As long as they don't make mistakes, they will definitely become low-ranking officials within three years.
After all, he is a graduate of Taixue University!
However, the development prospects of being transferred to official positions are limited, and Taixue graduates disdain this and would rather continue to study hard and pass the Jinshi examination.
Lu You's biological father is already the Minister of Rites. In order to avoid suspicion, he does not plan to take part in the examination next year.
Well, actually these are all excuses.
Although the examination was organized and organized by the Ministry of Rites, officials from the Ministry of Rites had to avoid it from the beginning of the Northern Song Dynasty. That is, officials from the Ministry of Rites were only responsible for organizing the examination and were not allowed to participate in setting questions, invigilating examinations and marking papers. It was impossible for Lu You to cheat from his father.
Lu You just wants to walk around and travel around the country with his sword.
This trend arose after the fall of the Jin Kingdom. Rich families who were not sure of passing the imperial examination and had no shortage of money invited each other to travel around with their entourage.
Lu You had a total of four companions on this study tour.
They all have quite a lot of background.
One was Wang Lianqing, the son of the great painter Wang Zhi. His grandfather was a student of Ouyang Xiu, and his mother was the granddaughter of Zeng Bu.
One is Qi Qi'an, the son of Qi Chongli, the minister of Taichang Temple. His cousin is Li Qingzhao, and his teacher is retired Prime Minister Zhai Ruwen.
A man named Bai Shihou, the second son of Bai Sheng, the leader of the palace guards.
One is called Fan Chengda. He is from the same hometown as Fan Zhongyan's family, and the two families are collectively known as "Suzhou Erfan". His father, Fan Yu, was a Jinshi scholar during the Huizong period of the Song Dynasty. He was nominally a student of Ju Ming - Ju Ming had done
Taixue Zheng. Therefore, Fan Yu did well in the Ming Dynasty and belonged to the "Taixue School" official.
The civil servant factions of the Ming Dynasty include the Qianchen faction, the Sichuan faction, the Jiangxi faction, the Shandong faction, the Taixue faction, and the Tongnian faction.
The core of the Qianchen faction is Ju Ming's old acquaintances or officials before he started his army.
The Sichuan faction refers to the officials who took refuge with Zhu during his occupation of Sichuan.
The Jiangxi faction was originally a faction formed around Prime Minister Zhang Gen.
The Shandong faction was initially formed with Prime Minister Zhai Ruwen as the center, but later split into two forces. One was Zhai Ruwen's disciple Gujiu, and the other was led by Qin Hui, who had been in Shandong for many years.
The Taixue School was headed by Chen Dong and Wei Liangchen.
The same-year faction was centered on Zhu Ming, who was a Jinshi in the same year, and Qin Hui was also one of them.
Some factions are declining rapidly, while new factions are emerging.
Generally speaking, the Qianchen sect, Sichuan sect, and Taixue sect are the strongest now, and they are intertwined with each other!
…
But it is said that the five of them traveled far together and had more than ten followers in total.
Bai Shihou alone went out with five followers. His mother could not stop her son, so she could only provide him with bodyguards. Three of the followers were retired sergeants.
Other scholars chose to visit famous mountains and rivers when traveling far away with their swords. Those who liked frontier fortresses went to Ningxia, Liaodong, and the northern grasslands.
But Lu You and the others all have a copy of "Arabian Nights", so it's obvious where they want to go!
Of course, these guys were from well-known families and did not dare to tell their parents the truth. They claimed that they were going to the southern provinces. The travel route was along the canal south to the Yangtze River and Huaihe River, then up the Yangtze River to the two lakes and Sichuan, and finally along the Shu Road to the north and back through Shaanxi.
Luoyang.
In reality?
Outside Shangqiu City, on the Bian River, among the passenger ships.
Qi Qi'an said: "There is a flood in the southeast, and we don't know if the flood has receded. We can go to sea from Dengrai, first go to Korea, and then go to Japan. When the wind and water are favorable, we will go from Japan to Fujian and Zhejiang, and then take a boat to Nanyang.
My family is in Shandong, and before going to sea, I can still visit Mount Tai with you."
Wang Lianqing didn't care about this: "It's all good, you make up your mind."
"I will go to Shandong next time," Fan Chengda said. "In "Arabian Nights", there is not a single story about Goryeo, and only one story was recorded about Japan. It is best to go directly to Nanyang. When passing by Jiangnan, I will take you
Go to Suzhou for fun.”
Lu You asked Bai Shihou: "Where do you want to go from Brother Pu?"
"Anyone can do it," Bai Shihou said with a smile, "Except for Hanzhong, Hubei and the East and West Beijing, I have never been to other places. This trip is just to broaden my horizons. I can take any route."
"Then let's draw lots," Lu You said.
There are ten paper balls with the words north and south written on them respectively.
The five people grabbed the paper balls and spread them out, but they were three to the south and two to the north.
The next day, they took a boat along the Bianhe River to the southeast, traveling around the mountains and rivers and visiting celebrities.
After passing Linhuai, I encountered a large lake and invited local scholars to play. The five of them also left some beautiful poems.
The Hongze Lake at this time is to the east of the Hongze Lake in later generations.
Huaiyin City is on the north bank of Hongze, where there are several sections of canals built in the Northern Song Dynasty: the canal going north from Yangzhou relies on the Shahe River, Guishan Canal, and Hongzexin River to connect to the Bianhe River, avoiding the dangerous areas of the Huaihe River.
Ze Town, Guishan Town and other towns.
The northernmost end of the Yangzhou Canal is Shanyang (Huai'an), the capital of Huainan Province in the Ming Dynasty.
Li Zuqia, a local scholar and nephew of Prime Minister Li Hanzhang, said to them when they were visiting the lake: "If you are not in a hurry to go south, you can follow me to Lianshui to climb Haidai Tower. Along the way, the rice is fragrant and the frogs are chirping. It is a land of fish and rice. This year
There are floods in the south of the Yangtze River, and the transport of grain to the north depends entirely on me in Huainan!"
Bai Shihou asked: "Where Lianshui enters the sea, is there a port?"
Li Zuqia said: "There is a small seaport, but it is not used for maritime trade, but for collecting salt ships. The two Huainan chief secretaries have requested to open a port in Lianshui outer port, but the court has never approved it."
At this time, Huainan was also a land of plenty.
The Huai River and Si River meet to form Lianshui, flowing eastward into the sea.
The entrance to the sea is in Wugang Town, Lianshui in later generations. As for Binhai, Sheyang, Xiangshui and other cities and counties further east, it is still a vast ocean.
From the Huaisi area to the estuary, the water network on both sides is densely covered. There are natural rivers, canals and irrigation canals, as well as lakes dotted here and there. There are no floods in most stretches of the river because there are so many lakes that can discharge floods.
Nowadays, it is prohibited to build farmland around all lakes, and irrigation canals have been dug based on the Northern Song Dynasty.
The irrigation canals were also divided into three levels according to the standards of the Northern Song Dynasty. One more first-level canal was dug, four more second-level canals were dug, and hundreds of third-level canals were dug.
As long as the Yellow River does not come to seize the Huaihe River, Huainan and Jiangnan can protect each other. If one region's grain production decreases, another region will support it.
Hebei's water network is still under management, and the population of Hebei and Hunan is also increasing day by day.
It is estimated that in another ten years, Hebei and Hunan will also become large granaries, especially the Dongting Lake area.
Coupled with the two major grain-producing areas of Henan and Sichuan, as long as there are no natural disasters across several provinces, the entire Ming Dynasty's food will be guaranteed.
At that time, control over cotton fields can also be relaxed, and farmers in Shandong and Jiangnan can freely grow cotton - Shandong cotton is the best, followed by Zhejiang cotton.
Bai Shihou was curious about everything he saw. He pointed to the rows of boathouses by the lake and asked, "Do those fishermen usually live in the lake?"
Fan Cheng laughed and said: "They are all fishermen, and there are more in Jiangnan."
Although Bai Shihou came from a family of military commanders and had practiced martial arts since childhood, he was a proper scholar: "How do those fishermen pay taxes?"
Li Zuqia said: "The fishing classes in the former Song Dynasty were very chaotic. The Ming Dynasty has now organized them into Baojia and unified the fishing and salt classes. The number of fishermen in Hongze is actually smaller than before. In the late Song Dynasty, some fishermen took refuge in Songjiang to cause chaos.
, some took refuge with Mr. Fang Ge (Fang Mengqing) and became officers and soldiers, and some joined the Salt Owl to fight against Mr. Fang Ge."
In the Northern Song Dynasty, the tax on fishermen was relatively light, but the operation made it difficult for fishermen to survive.
Especially during the reign of Emperor Huizong of the Song Dynasty, the government contracted large areas of water to the powerful through buying and selling. The powerful then occupied the water and exploited the fishermen there wildly. At the same time, the government also illegally collected miscellaneous taxes from the fishermen. For example, the fishermen in Liangshanbo had a large number of
Taking refuge in Song Jiang has reached the point where he will die if he doesn't rebel.
Li Zuqia smiled and said: "Now that the Holy Emperor is in court, even the children of fishermen can take part in the imperial examination. Because taxes have been reduced, some fishermen's children actually go to village schools, and a fisherman's scholar came out of Huaiyin County. After the results were released, Hong Ze
The fishermen in the lake all sailed to his house to propose marriage. At that time, thousands of boats gathered together, which was a spectacle."
"A boy as poor as a fisherman can still become a scholar. I guess he is born with the seed of reading." Lu You couldn't help but admire.
Li Zuqia smiled and said: "This scholar from a fisherman's family got married last year and became the son-in-law of a fish farmer."
"I'm not short of money to study anymore," Fan Chengda said.
Many industries in the Song Dynasty developed explosively, one of which was aquaculture.
There is a special fish bucket for selling fish fry, which is made of bamboo and lined with paint paper. The water is changed several times a day to prevent the fry from dying of lack of oxygen. The fry must be stopped and stirred from time to time so that the fry can be transported to distant places for sale.
.
If you can start a fish fry breeding business, you must be a big landowner and have your own fish fry pond.
The offshore fishing industry in the Song Dynasty also developed explosively.
During the fish season along the coast of Fujian and Zhejiang, fishermen went out to fish one after another, with as many as a million fishing boats. This prosperity of offshore fishing gradually declined in the early years of the Southern Song Dynasty. Because a large number of boat owners were forcibly recruited into the navy, in
During the resistance against the Jin Dynasty, many people died in batches. Then pirates emerged everywhere, and fishermen turned into bandits to attack each other, and even went to plunder coastal villages, and were eventually encircled and suppressed by the officers and soldiers of the Southern Song Dynasty.
In this time and space, the coastal and offshore fishing industries of Huainan, Zhejiang, and Fujian not only did not suffer severe losses, but continued to prosper and develop.
Moreover, the fishing area is getting larger and larger, and the distance from the coast is getting farther and farther, and the tonnage of fishing boats is also increasing.
The industrial chain has become richer.
For example, the by-product rubber swim bladder is a necessary material for making crossbows. Now the price has become even lower. There are many workshops in coastal areas that make rubber swim bladders.
Moreover, due to the monopoly on salt, each salt producing area has designated an exclusive sales area. And the areas where the offshore fishing industry is developed happen to be the production areas of sea salt, so they use salt to pickle salted fish like crazy, giving you half a pound of salted fish.
The wonders of salt are sold to other places.
This disguised practice of selling illegal salt has been strongly resisted by officials in other salt-producing areas.
As a result, salted fish sold across provinces will be heavily taxed by customs along the way.
Li Zuqia introduced the fishery and salt industry in Huainan and said in a joking tone: "For the people of the Ming Dynasty in Huaidong counties, fish is cheap and salt is also cheap. Every household can afford salted fish. Even a well-off family can eat three meals a day."
Eat salted fish meat for a meal. It is probably the place that eats the most meat in the entire Ming Dynasty. Unfortunately, it cannot be transported out of Huainan. Just the tax on shipping out of Huainan is higher than the price of local salted fish."
"This tax is a bit heavy." Qi Qi'an sighed.
Li Zuqia smiled and said: "It's not heavy at all. Those who sell salted fish across provinces, where is the fish they are selling? You can't even see the fish. A pound of fish can shake out more than half a pound of salt. You also have such merchants in Shandong, right?
Thinking of taking advantage of the loopholes in the "Da Ming Law"."
After a few people chatted on Hongze Lake, Li Zuqia took them to Lianshui to climb Haidai Tower.
A month later, we continued southward and the team grew again.
Li Zuqia, the nephew of the then prime minister Li Hanzhang, actually stopped taking the imperial examination for the time being and took his entourage to travel south to study with them.
Six second-generation officials, all of whom hid the truth from their families, ran away to commit suicide regardless of the dangers at sea.