"Mother, what do you think of these officials' proposals?"
After listening to Zhang Yan read the officials' proposals, Zhu Cixiang did not express his position immediately, but looked at her and asked, wanting to hear her opinion first.
Because he knew that Zhang Yan must have her own ideas about some of the shortcomings exposed by the imperial examination.
"Hong'er, how can you, a woman like me, have any opinions and not show off your shame?" Zhang Yan quickly shook her head and waved her hands.
Obviously, he knew his status and role very well in his heart, and he always insisted not to express his own opinions, but only screened the opinions of ministers for the emperor's reference.
Zhu Cixiang also knew that she was not without opinions, but was adhering to the Ming Dynasty's tradition that the harem was not allowed to interfere in politics.
Although he has given Zhang Yan the greatest rights in the past few years, she has never done anything according to her own wishes. All the things and decisions she made were all explained by him.
Thinking of this, Zhu Cixiang was both emotional and grateful that he had found such a kind, wise, careful, and capable aunt who had no ambition or selfishness at all. The key was to obey his words.
An emperor is really lucky to have such a queen mother, and it can save a lot of effort, otherwise he would not be as relaxed and carefree as he is now.
So I don't want to test it anymore, lest I create a gap in the newly close relationship and end up really being alone.
"To sum up, all the suggestions mentioned above are good. Let's do this. From now on, it will be stipulated that the top 100 scholars in the academy examination each year can take the provincial examination for free. The remaining scholars can also take the provincial examination if they want, but each must pay a fee of five taels of silver.
, and you have to wait for one year before you can continue to participate. Well, there is also an age limit, so you must be over fourteen years old to participate in the provincial examination."
After finishing speaking, he thought about it and added: "Considering that there are too many talents in this first session, this year's provincial examination will be changed to the top one thousand!"
Zhang Yan quickly recorded Zhu Cixiang's words, and then said: "Xian'er, do you really have to pay? Doesn't this make the court look too..."
"Haha, although the scale of the imperial examination in the future will not be as scary as this year, it is still a time-consuming, labor-intensive and money-consuming thing. Holding it every year is also a huge expense. It is necessary for the candidates to pay.
It is reasonable, after all, except for the top 100 talents, in principle, other talents are not eligible to participate in the provincial examination."
Zhu Cixiang waved his hand. Paying money would only restrict those talents who were not yet able to pass the examination but still wanted to participate. He asked them to be more cautious when deciding to participate. It would not affect the truly capable talents.
"Well, in that case, let the Ministry of Rites prepare for the provincial examination in accordance with the new regulations, and at the same time let the government offices issue notices and publish these restrictions in newspapers."
Zhang Yan nodded, then looked at him with questioning eyes.
"Let's do it this way." Zhu Cixiang waved his hand, obviously not caring about the specific implementation, as long as he achieved his effect.
"In addition, there is the possibility of impersonation during the trial, which is also a difficult problem to solve. Although many officials have also raised this matter, they have not proposed any good solutions."
"Well, this is indeed a difficult problem. It is not easy to solve with the current technology."
Zhu Cixi nodded and frowned involuntarily.
In the past, if you wanted to take part in the imperial examination, you needed to be recommended by a scholar. In addition, there were few scholars and everyone knew each other. If you wanted to pretend to be someone else, you would be courting death.
But now there is no need for recommendation, any kind of monster can participate, and there are so many people, there will definitely be endless cases of imposters in the future.
"Let's put this problem aside for now and solve it later."
After thinking about it for a while, Zhu Cixiang finally decided to suppress this issue and deal with it later.
Because there is simply no solution now.
To solve this problem, we must re-count the population, compile household registers, and issue a household registration book to each household like in later generations.
Then during the exam, you have to take your household registration book and go to the government office to get an identity certificate. Even so, I am afraid that it may not be able to completely eliminate imposters, so this is definitely a loophole that needs to be filled for a long time.
At that time, we can also legislate that anyone who pretends to take part in the imperial examination will be punished by death. In fact, according to the current Ming Dynasty law, cheating in the imperial examination is a capital crime.
Impersonation is naturally considered fraud, so he knew that although this college examination was a bit rough, there would probably be no one who would dare to impersonate.
Because no one dared to think about it at all, let alone do it. This was the deterrent created by the imperial court's long-term severe punishment of imperial examination fraud.
In order to become a scholar, it is simply uneconomical to risk beheading or even killing one's family.
So even though Zhu Cixiang said he wanted to govern the country with humanity, under today's technical conditions, there are many things that must be prevented and deterred by severe punishment.
For example, private counterfeiting of currency, fraud in imperial examinations, and other things that cannot be completely eliminated with technical conditions, violators must be beheaded and sentenced to death, and even their families will be implicated and exiled.
Immediately, Zhang Yan raised some other questions about the imperial examination. Now, whether the imperial examination in the future will continue to be the responsibility of the royal family and assisted by the Ministry of Rites, or it will be handed over to the Ministry of Rites, with the royal family only supervising the construction of examination rooms in various places, etc. Zhu Cixiang also agreed.
One gave instructions.
Just when the discussion about the imperial examination was over and Zhu Cixiang wanted to learn more about sea trade and commerce, Xu Lan outside reminded him that it was time for lunch.
The two of them suddenly realized that it was noon before they knew it.
"Hong'er, there's no need to rush these things. You didn't sleep well this morning. You'd better go and have a rest after lunch. It won't be too late to talk about it tomorrow."
Zhang Yan stood up and said.
Zhu Cixiang waved his hand: "No, let's just have something to eat in the imperial study room and then continue the conversation."
"Oh well!"
Zhang Yan also smiled bitterly. Xun'er was indeed lazy, but once he got serious, he was no worse than his father.
In fact, how did Zhang Yan know that Emperor Xiao Zhu took care of all the matters that needed to be dealt with in just one day, and then went to the shipyard, salt factory, and shipping companies in various places?
This not only ordered Xu Lan to bring in all the food, but also asked her to send someone to call the three daughters of Chen Yuanyuan to the palace to wait for their summons.
Of course, the reason why Zhu Cixiang wanted to finish everything in one day was because of the Queen Mother Zhang Yan.
He just needs to solve some things that Zhang Yan can't solve, and then have a general understanding of all aspects of the situation, and convey his thoughts to Zhang Yan, and she will naturally know what to do.
If it weren't for Princess Kunxing being in charge of business matters, and Fengyue Si and Publicity Supervisor Zhang Yan not interfering, he wouldn't need to summon anyone else.