After a year and a half of renovations in the sacred capital of Luoyang, Ziwei Palace, the palace city of Luoyang, is still a large construction site, but the construction of Luoyang city has been basically completed.
Although it does not have the scenery of the most prosperous city in the world like the divine capital Luoyang during the Wu Zhou Dynasty, it is not the awe-inspiring divine capital that bypasses the green fields after Huang Chao.
Unexpectedly, Li Shengtian's bicycle frame was very simple. Even the king-level bicycle frame that Zhang Jian ordered Cao Yuanzhong to prepare for him was thrown away by Li Shengtian in Tongguan.
Along with him, except for two thousand Khotan warriors and hundreds of accompanying royal family members, officials, and merchants, there were no carriage frames or yellow umbrellas.
The only eye-catching thing is the complete set of ceremonial guards of the Khotan king given to Yuchi Yao by Emperor Suzong Li Heng of the Tang Dynasty in the past.
Of course, this set of ceremonial guards is not the one from back then, but was imitated after the restoration of Khotan, so there are some omissions and some specious things mixed into it.
Zhang Yan led all the civil and military forces, with the left and right Yulin guards and the left and right Jinwu guards as escorts. More than 7,000 people went north to Jinyong City to meet Li Shengtian.
Not mentioning the identity of his uncle Zhang Yan, nor his help to Zhang Yan, the two hundred years of loyalty of the Khotan Li family alone was enough to deserve such a grand welcoming procession.
Just outside Jinyong City, thousands of the Khotan royal family, civil and military ministers and warriors collectively put on the robes and robes, symbolizing obedience to orders. Everyone had their heads smeared with red and their foreheads were smeared, looking extremely powerful.
When Li Shengtian landed at Mengjin, he specially sent Li Cunhui as an envoy to inform Li Shengtian that he did not need to kneel down when he arrived.
But when they arrived outside Jinyong City, Zhang Yan led Wenwu to greet them. As soon as they saw the Khotan procession, they saw Li Shengtian, wearing the royal robes of a prince, already kneeling at the front of the procession.
Zhang Gao hurried over to help Li Shengtian up, but before he could reach him, Li Shengtian kowtowed and put his head on the ground. When he lifted it up again, his forehead was already covered with loess.
Zhang Yan immediately slowed down and showed the majesty that an emperor should have, because he could see that Li Shengtian was saluting him as a minister.
“I, the King of Khotan, Yuchi Monk Wubo, have paid homage to His Majesty the Emperor of the Great Dynasty.
Since the second year of Zhide, Emperor Sumiao Daxuanxiao of the Great Dynasty ordered my sixth ancestor, King Yao of Khotan, to guard Anxi Khotan and guard the gate for the country.
In the 190th year of the Han Dynasty, although he fell to the Tubo, he never lost his loyalty. Fortunately, the King of Nanta used Emperor Huan Zuding to raise righteousness in Guasha, drive out the Tubo power, and also contacted the heroes of various ethnic groups in Khotan to raise troops to regain it.
Khotan.
Today, I submit to the King of Khotan that I will finally lead the three governor-general offices of Khotan, 21 prefectures, 87 counties, 470,000 households, and a population of 2.31 million to return to the country.
In the past, the great dynasty Sumiao Xuan Emperor's entrustment and the ancestor's legacy have been fulfilled in the end!"
Zhang Yan was shocked. He finally understood why Li Shengtian insisted on coming to the Central Plains and why he was so determined to be recognized by the Central Plains Dynasty.
Because this is their spiritual belonging to the Li family in Khotan, and it is their choice in civilization.
It has been almost nine hundred years since Ban Dingyuan went to Khotan to kill the Xiongnu envoys and help Khotan recover in 73 AD, the 16th year of Yongping in the Eastern Han Dynasty. Except for the conflict with the Eastern Han Dynasty court over the annexation of Mumi during the Eastern Han Dynasty,
Khotan has always been the most loyal minister and partner of the Central Plains Dynasty in the Western Regions.
Especially during the Sui and Tang Dynasties, ever since Yuchi and Yuchi became famous all over the world in the Central Plains, Khotan and the Yuchi family have become part of the Central Plains culture. The imperial court believed so, and so did the Khotan state.
As a tribe that came from the west, it was probably the Scythians who finally established a foothold in Khotan with the help of the Han army. The cultural attributes of Khotan have always only had two lines.
One is Buddhism and the other is Han culture.
When Buddhism died out in the Tianzhu area and gradually integrated into Han culture, the only roots of Khotan were the Han culture.
You must know that the real Khotanese are already a relatively small number in the Khotan Kingdom today, with only 300,000 to 400,000 people.
To rule the southern Xinjiang of later generations, the entire Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, one-third of Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, and a small part of Kazakhstan, we can only do it by becoming completely Han Chinese.
Only with the support of the Central Plains dynasty can the Khotanese people be preserved in wealth and dignity while achieving complete cultural conversion.
In addition, Zhang Yan also saw Guo Guangwei from the Guo family of Suiye in the crowd. He was the son of Guo Xuanqing, the current governor of Suiye and a great Nestorian figure.
To the left of Guo Guangwei, there is an embarrassed young man, who is Li Tongqi, the son of Li Guoshou, the deputy governor of Talas?
It turned out that Li Shengtian would talk about the three governor-general districts and claimed that there were more than two million people. It turned out that he had persuaded the Suiye Guo family and the Talos Li family to come over.
Needless to say, this 'persuasion' scene will not be so harmonious.
Zhang Hao walked forward quickly and helped Li Shengtian up. What happened in the two time and space seemed to be intersecting before his eyes.
Historically, the Kingdom of Khotan and the Li family of Khotan were the last echoes of Han culture in the vast land of Anxi.
Even if the largest treaty of the Central Court is included, it will be seven hundred years later, in the 22nd year of the Qing Emperor Qianlong (1757), that the Central Court will truly recover the Western Regions after the collapse of the Li family in Khotan.
At that time, the old man Shiquan sent Chenggun Zhabu to completely defeat Zhungeer. The three generations of Kangxi, Yongzheng and Qianlong in the Qing Dynasty almost emptied the entire treasury.
Once controlled the Western Region.
The Western Regions finally stabilized after Duke Zuo Wenxiang led his disciples from Hunan to defeat the invader Agubai in 1878, the fourth year of the reign of Emperor Guangxu of the Qing Dynasty.
Only then did this land, the homeland of the Han nation, which had always been the jurisdiction of the Central Plains dynasty, be confirmed in the territory of modern China.
Eight hundred and seventy-seven years have passed since the year 1001 when Khotan was destroyed. People and things are no longer the same, not to mention the broken leaves, Ili Valley, Tangnu Ulianghai and other places that can never be recovered again.
Thinking of this, Zhang Gao held Li Shengtian's hand and said with emotion, "The loyalty of the former kings of Khotan is well known to the world, and the people of Khotan should be commended for not forgetting their homeland."
After saying that, Zhang Hao looked back at the civil and military officials and said, "Today we will play the music of reunion. A certain relative is here to play drums, and all the ministers can dance to congratulate us!"
The chamberlain brought drum music, and the civil servants and generals also dismounted and stood up. Zhang Gao sounded the drum, and thousands of people in Khotan, dressed in red 髜鞬 uniforms, headed by Li Shengtian, started singing and dancing. Zhang Gao's civil servants and military officers also
They also danced in return.
The drums beat and the people cheered and sang in unison, and in the end even the people of Jinyong City started cheering, singing and dancing.
Zhang Yan then invited Li Shengtian to get into the emperor's chariot and enter Luoyang City with him, with great fanfare.
Because this is not just a matter of Li Shengtian's return, but it can be said that half of the credit belongs to Zhang Yan.
The more grandly Li Shengtian was welcomed, the brighter his face became.
And Li Shengtian, who has always liked extravagance and grand scenes, would not miss this opportunity. This is what the Khotan merchants who came with him did.
So Li Shengtian followed Zhang Yan into the newly renovated Zhuque Gate, and Khotan merchants wore gorgeous silk clothes and bought wantonly in Luoyang, which looked like a large construction site.
From the coarse cloth and other small items woven by the people themselves to the purchase of an entire neighborhood in the north of the city, it was used as a place for the Khotanese to live in Luoyang.
Then they started sending gifts from door to door. The gift was nothing but pickled mutton shipped all the way from the west.
In today's Luoyang, giving anything as a gift is worse than giving mutton.
Because after Zhang Chang stabilized the situation in the Central Plains and the economy quickly recovered, although the countryside was not very wealthy, big cities like Luoyang became rich by contracting national projects.
This not only created a large number of wealthy businessmen, but also made the working people rich, and they had money for food and work every day. If they knew how to do carpentry, masonry, etc., the income would be even more considerable.
But when people in Luoyang and other places became wealthy, what followed was that their living standards could not improve.
Having enough food is not a big problem. After all, you can eat mutton oil, millet rice and a little salt every day, but if you want to upgrade it, it will be difficult.
After Zhang Zhi promulgated the official drinking order, the wine on the market was really unpalatable.
The so-called official liquor order does not allow one household to brew privately. Brewing must be reported first, and once brewed, it must be sold through the government. It is a weakened version of the alcohol prohibition.
You can't help but drink! The food shortage in Henan is not over yet.
I can't afford to drink wine now, and the sheep population hasn't flourished since the disaster.
At this time, the price of sheep in Luoyang was three times that of Guanzhong and more than ten times that of Hexi.
Wang Sanlang hugged his child and mingled with the crowd cheering and celebrating.
Two years ago, the emperor gave him milk to keep his child alive, and he was also exempted from paying a small amount of silver for a year by the emperor's favor. From then on, Wang Sanlang became a loyal supporter of the emperor.
So when he heard that there was a shortage of people in Luoyang, he took his family from Tokyo to settle in Luoyang. Over the years, living conditions gradually improved. Wang Sanlang always said that he was an emperor's benevolence to everyone he met.
This time King Khotan came to Beijing for an audience, so he naturally went to help the emperor to cheer him up. He waited until King Khotan entered the palace before Wang Sanlang took the child home.
But it didn't matter when he returned home, he saw his wife at the door, chatting with a businessman in fancy clothes.
Wang Sanlang's heart tightened. His wife had some beauty, and she was usually worried about the libertine in the neighborhood. He was worried about it all the time, but now she actually came to his door. Is that okay?
Wang Sanlang hugged the child and almost ran to the door of his house. When he saw it, he was so angry that one Buddha was born and two Buddhas ascended to heaven.
In the hands of the businessman is a marinated leg of lamb wrapped in red cloth.
This leg of lamb is very fat, probably weighing seven or eight kilograms, and there is a thick layer of crystal clear coarse salt on the surface. If you scrape it off, you can eat it at home for several days.
Whether it is mutton or salt, they are the most popular commodities in Luoyang today.
"You are really willing to give up?" Wang Sanlang was so angry that he almost cried.
I got this big leg of lamb as a gift when I first came to my door. How about I get it later?
He has to go out to make a living every day. Can his wife withstand this temptation?
As soon as he spoke, the businessman in silk clothes turned around, cupped his hands and asked, "But the boss is back."
When Wang Sanlang saw the businessman, he turned out to have a foreign face, and he was so angry that his mouth trembled.
In fact, if my wife really wants to steal from everyone, he can still tolerate it, and life will always be difficult!
At this age, it is not easy to find a wife who can take care of the house in such an orderly manner.
However, this is a bastard! That is absolutely impossible!
When the businessman saw that Wang Sanlang was silent, he thought he was too happy to speak, so he raised his hand again.
"I was imprisoned in Anxi in Khotan. I haven't returned home to see my elders in my hometown for two hundred years. Today I returned with honor. Your Majesty ordered me to bring some gifts to my neighbors. It's not extravagant, but I'm sure I'm willing to give it up."
Wang Sanlang suddenly realized it, his face turned red, and the tension in his heart immediately disappeared.
At the same time, he suddenly felt vaguely that these Khotanese with foreign faces seemed to be his fellow countrymen who had left Anxi far away.
At this time, all the neighbors came, and everyone was notified by Fangzheng. Every family had pickled mutton, so naturally they came in neat order.
After everyone waited for Fangzheng to arrive, they collectively raised their hands to the Khotanese people who were surrounded by them and bowed in advance.
The elders slightly cupped their hands, the peers reached waist level, and the children and juniors bent over their knees.
After bowing, everyone took a step back. This time, the elders stood at waist level, the common people bent over their knees, and the children and juniors bowed to the ground.
This is called the two-bow ceremony, which is a great civil ceremony for visiting parents, elders, and relatives who have not seen each other for a long time.
"May I ask dear dear, are you in Anxi? Are you going well on your way home? Can you remember where your hometown is?" The elders in the square greeted the Khotanese from far away on behalf of everyone else.
At this time, the Khotan merchants bowed to the neighbors twice as if they were just now, and then stepped forward to answer.
"Thank you to the elders for asking, everything is well in Anxi and the journey home is smooth. Now that I am returning to my hometown, I only know that my hometown is here!"
After listening to this, the elder smiled brightly and held up the wine bowl and handed it to the Khotan merchant, "Please drink the Jiefeng wine to wash away the dust and dust and not be stained by any evil."
At this point, after the greetings were completed, the neighbors were all smiling, the children were running around with the Khotanese, and no one was secretly scolding them for being thieves anymore. These Khotanese people seemed to have really gone home.
....
In the main hall of Zhuque Gate Tower, similar etiquette was also going on.
In the main hall, Zhang Zhi's aunt and Li Shengtian were like sisters. Empress Dowager Ciyou looked at Li Shengtian with tears in her eyes and personally bought a glass of Jie Feng wine.
Li Shengtian shed tears in front of his eldest sister, took Cao Yuanxin and his seven children with him, and went home from afar to pay homage to his parents.
Then Empress Dowager Ciyou stepped aside, and Li Shengtian, Cao Yuanxin, and their children bowed four times to Zhang Zhangxing.
Li Shengtian said, "The vassal ministers visited the Emperor of the Great Dynasty at the Khotan King Yuchi Sengwubo, and now return the gold seal, treasure book, banner, etc. given by Emperor Xuan of Sumiao of the Tang Dynasty, and also ask the Great Dynasty to re-canonize and award them.
.”
Li Shengtian could only call himself Yuchi Seng Wubo, because the surname Li and Shengtian's name were chosen by himself and were not recognized by the central court.
Later, Huangmenlang of Khotan began to chant Li Shengtian's tribute gifts to the emperor, including a hundred pearls, three thousand square meters of jade, two war elephants, two lions, 30,000 pieces of Khotan brocade, and countless other treasures and utensils, worth more than 100,000
Through.
Not to mention anything else, the royal family of the Li family in Khotan benefited from the re-opening of the Silk Road. In addition, Khotan itself produced cloth and other export goods, the entire Khotan country was making a lot of money.
Zhang An sat on the throne, and after receiving the four bows from Li Shengtian and Cao Yuanxin, he immediately ordered that Yuchi be given the surname of Li, still using the original name of Shengtian.
The Jin Dynasty granted King Li Shengtian of Khotan the title of King of the Kingdom of Jin. The throne of the Kingdom was above the princes and princes. He was a vassal of the imperial court and established a vassal state. The Jin vassal was located 200 miles around Kangju City (Samarkand).
At the same time, King Li Shengtian of the Jin Kingdom was granted the title of Pingzhang of Anxi Province, Inspector of Anxi Province, Defense Envoy of Anxi Province, Jiedushi of the Four Towns of Anxi, and Suiye and Talos Prefectures for Observation and Disposal of the Advocate for the Fall of Tibet.
Give the king a uniform seal, a royal banner, a banner, a talisman, a gold book, etc.
He was ordered to supervise the military affairs of Anxi.
Cao Yuanxin was granted the title of eldest princess of Wei State, with a settlement of 5,000 households, and an actual settlement of 200 households in Shazhou. Queen's robes and ceremonial guards were allowed.
Li Congde, the eldest son of Li Shengtian, was granted the title of Crown Prince of the Jin Dynasty and Deputy Envoy of the Four Towns of Anxi.
Li Congyu, the second son of Li Shengtian, was granted the title of King of Yanqi County, and the envoy of Yanqi Town was allowed to use the prince's robes and ceremonial guards.
The second daughter of Li Shengtian and the wife of Cao Yanming were granted the title of Princess Shache, with a settlement of 1,000 households, and the actual settlement was 50 households in Khotan.
This reward was discussed with Li Shengtian in advance. Li Shengtian also understood Zhang Yan's attitude towards returning the four towns of Anxi to the state, so he generously gave up the entire Khotan Kingdom.
Zhang Yan chose to seal the Kingdom of Jin to Kangju. From now on, Li Congde would go to Samarkand, where Kangju was, to become king.
Of course, Zhang Gao only took back the four towns of Anxi, which is now most of the Khotan Kingdom.
The wealth of the Li family still belongs to them, and any courtiers who are willing to follow them can still go to the land of the Jin Kingdom.
At the same time, Ningyuan (Fergana Basin), Suiye and Talos, which Khotan currently controls, must also be handed over.
In these three places, a group of second and third generations of the Li family and Zhang family will be granted the title of king.
Ningyuan, in particular, is now extremely wealthy and will become the backing of the imperial court's westward march to conquer the entire Transoxian and Persian regions.
As for the Broken Leaf Guo family, if Guo Xuanqing doesn't produce any moths, the Guo family can keep Broken Leaf, and maybe a few more princes will be born.
Talos Li Guoshou's family was completely ruined. They were too domineering and forgot their roots. After Zhang Gao took his hand, he would punish them thoroughly.
Cao Yuanxin received the title of eldest princess of the Wei Kingdom that she had always dreamed of.
In Zhangzhou, the emperor's aunt was named the eldest princess, his sisters were named eldest princesses, and his daughter was named a princess.
This is a legal recognition that Cao Yuanxin is a concubine just like Zhang Zhang's aunt.
At the same time, the Cao family in Shazhou claimed to be descendants of the Cao family in Qiaojun, and the Cao family in Qiaojun was the descendant of Cao Cao, Emperor Wu of Wei. They named Cao Yuanxin the eldest princess of Wei, which was equivalent to giving her the title of her ancestors.
After the award was completed, everyone was very happy. Zhang Jian summoned the court painters headed by Gu Hongzhong to make a rough draft of the Khotan Jin Dynasty's meeting with His Majesty the Emperor.
In the manuscript, the emperor is sitting on the throne, tall and majestic, and the king of the Jin Kingdom is worshiping in his royal robes.
Then Zhang Gao retreated behind the scenes, changed out of the emperor's court clothes and put on home clothes, and then ordered the painter to draw a sketch of the uncle and nephew having fun together.
In this painting, the portrait of Zhang Zhi is much smaller, and the uncle and nephew are fighting, so their status is relatively equal.
The larger scrolls, "The Return of the King of Jin from Anxi" and "The Return of the Heroes from Khotan" are currently being painted.
Well, Zhang Yan likes to draw pictures of everything he encounters.
Because this kind of painting is the most precious legacy left by people of this era to future generations, allowing them to have a glimpse of the style of that time thousands of years later.