The news that needs to be spread has been spread, and now it's time to watch the show.
Xiao Daheng, the censor of Zuodu of the Metropolitan Procuratorate, was quickly ordered to cooperate with Wang An, the admiral of Dongchang, to supervise the "Medicinal Diet Eucalyptus", that is, to investigate Yikun Palace. The reason why it was called this name was because the emperor coughed up blood because of his previous illness.
Some ingredients in the medicated diet may conflict with the Qiulubai you drank that day, so now both the inner and outer courts are accustomed to simply calling this eucalyptus "medicated diet eucalyptus".
At the same time, Zhao Zhigao's family began to collect money, preparing to fill the hole of his son Zhao Fengwei's 70,000 taels of silver, and strive to get help from the Ministry of Household Affairs as soon as possible to get rid of the serious crime of "privately collecting salt tax" for which he was impeached.
In fact, Zhao Zhigao was not short of money. Although 70,000 taels of silver was a huge sum of money, the Zhao family could definitely come up with it. However, there were two reasons why he needed some time to collect the money.
The first reason is very simple. Although the Zhao family is rich, it does not mean that Zhao Zhigao will put so much cash in his bachelor's palace in Beijing. Not to mention cash, even if it is a bank note from the Mining Federal Reserve or a bank note from Jinghua Bank
Tickets, he doesn't need to keep so many on hand.
The Zhao family is not much different from many official and wealthy families in the Jiangnan area. Although their assets are sufficient, they are mainly physical assets, such as fertile land, shops, or merchant ships that have emerged in recent years, goods, etc.
These things account for the vast majority of their assets.
Of course they also have cash and banknotes, and these liquid funds must have reserves. However, since they are called liquid funds, they must be placed in areas that need to flow.
Even though Zhao Zhigao occupies a high position, the business circle in the north of the Ming Dynasty already has the Beiyang Sea Trade Alliance, a super giant. How can the Zhao family's business squeeze in?
Of course, objectively speaking, the Zhao family does not have the ability to expand its business to the capital... His family is mainly engaged in the silk supporting industry, and there are relatively strong regional restrictions.
What is "silk supporting industry"? To put it simply, among the many steps of making silk, the Zhao family is mainly responsible for one of them. As mentioned before, the Jiangsu and Zhejiang regions in the Ming Dynasty had a developed economy and a relatively advanced structure.
There is no need to say more, the structure is advanced but I can say a few words.
To put it simply, a relatively complex industrial division of labor has emerged. For example, the silk industry can generally be divided into three major steps: sericulture, silk making, and dyeing and printing. These three major steps can be further subdivided, such as silk making.
For steps such as reeling, adjusting silk, and rolling weft.
In the past, the Ming Dynasty did not have sufficient competition in silk manufacturing. How could the world be so competitive? However, after Gao Pragmatic developed the Jinghua version of the Jenny spinning machine and invested it in his own industry, the cotton spinning industry experienced more than 20 years of development.
Years of development have begun to squeeze the silk industry - mainly in terms of price. Of course, there are also impacts from improvements in the quality of cotton textiles, etc. We will not go into details here.
In short, people engaged in the silk industry found that if they did not quickly improve production efficiency and reduce production costs, even if overseas trade would still make huge profits, their domestic market share would be in danger. This situation will be very familiar to future generations.
, that is the time when "industrial upgrading must be carried out".
Businessmen in the Ming Dynasty may not have any academic theories on "industrial upgrading", but everyone actually understands the reason, so they were "forced" to upgrade their industries.
On the one hand, this upgrade means that everyone has begun research to see if the silk weaving process can be "mechanized" to a certain extent without affecting its artistry; on the other hand, it is to separate the production process so that it is no longer the same as before.
In that way, each family does its own thing, but each family produces through one-stop production, almost everything from sericulture to silk making to printing and dyeing is done by themselves.
The former aspect has led to the emergence of a production model in the silk industry in which weaving and embroidery are carried out separately. That is, I first use machines to weave various colors of silk and satin, and then let professionals do the embroidery work manually.
This has a certain prototype of specialized production, and it can still be considered a high-end handicraft art - after all, silk and satin are only the foundation, and embroidery is the soul. Without years of study and practice, it is difficult to embroider anything that can be compared to the world.
In Yazhitang, a discerning person can tell the difference at a glance.
The latter aspect is closely related to Zhao Zhigao's family's industry. Since entering the "era of great division of labor in the silk industry", the Jiangsu and Zhejiang regions have also been working together for many years, gradually forming some relatively fixed family industry transformations, and the Zhao family has also transformed from "
"One-stop production" has shifted to specializing in one item - their choice is to specialize in printing and dyeing.
Whether it is natural silk or later synthetic fiber silk, it is usually white. Of course, there are also special varieties. For example, the most precious variety of mulberry silk is celestial silkworm silk, which is jade-green.
Then, to obtain colorful silk fabrics, you need to go through the printing and dyeing steps. China is the earliest country in the world to apply fabric dyeing and printing. In primitive society, hematite, cinnabar, ocher, stone yellow, and carbon black have been used
And natural mineral pigments such as clay, dyed in red, white, yellow, black and other colors.
After entering civilized society, printing and dyeing has developed from a budding state into a profession. Dyeing already existed in the Xia Zhi Shang Dynasty, and dyes progressed from mineral pigments to plant dyes.
During the Qin and Han Dynasties, the variety of dyes increased and the color spectrum expanded. By the Eastern Han Dynasty, it had expanded from more than 20 kinds in the Western Han Dynasty to 39 kinds. Color matching and color matching technology also improved, dye production technology became more skilled, and white muscovite mica was added to the mineral pigments.
Printed valerian dyeing was very popular during the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, and techniques such as twisted valerian, small pattern wax valerian, openwork wax-proof printing, and blue-and-white printing have become mature.
In the Tang Dynasty, the tamping method was to bundle the silk and put it in a stone trough anvil, then stand and pound with a wooden pestle. Porcine trypsin was also used to efficiently hydrolyze sericin, creating a trypsin refining process. This method
It is the earliest invention in China.
At that time, there were more than 30 kinds of plant dyes in the chromatogram, and special printing and dyeing processes such as alkali direct printing, tie-warp blending, hand-painted printing, letterpress printing, rubbing and anti-dye discharge and fading were also developed.
The bleaching technology using sulfur fumigation appeared in the Southern Song Dynasty. There are four methods of hollow printing: plant dyeing, paint printing, color glue printing and gold sprinkling printing.
In the Ming Dynasty, the printing and dyeing process became increasingly complete. There were already 57 dyeing chromatograms, but due to Gao Pragmatic's intrusion, Jinghua came up with many new gadgets. After the spread of these technologies, there are now more than 300.
Species chromatography.
I would like to add here that the development of certain technologies often multiplies geometrically. In history, there were 704 possible color tones in the late Tatar Qing Dynasty, which was more than 30 times more than the Han Dynasty more than 2,000 years ago. Now due to the high pragmatism, it is also
It’s not surprising that Daming’s “color number” has increased approximately six times.
With so many more color spectrums, the variety of dyes will naturally continue to expand. Based on the development of patch-dyeing and over-dying processes, relevant practitioners in the Ming Dynasty created light and dark, tawny, silver, jade, lotus root, agarwood, chinchilla, and sauce colors.
, eggplant flowers and other new colors make the clothing compatible with warm and cold, making it more colorful.
The Zhao family specializes in printing and dyeing, and their technical strength should not be underestimated. Now they have five unique "color numbers", so they are considered rich.
However, their family also relied on Jinghua to a certain extent - because the two dyes required for its unique "color number", namely hematoxylin and garcinia, are mainly produced in Nanyang. Well, this may also be what Zhao Zhigao advocated.
Probably one of the reasons why I can't fight to the death with the real school.
Since the business is in his hometown, and there are many "imported raw materials" that need to be settled at any time when they arrive, of course, enough cash flow must be left. This is the main reason why Zhao Zhigao will not spend too much money in the capital.
The second reason is the political level. As for the officials of the Ming Dynasty, all of them only received the meager salary set by Lao Zhu. They were all so cool that they almost served the emperor on an empty stomach. How could it be possible?
Maybe he could take out a full 70,000 taels of silver at once?
Impossible, absolutely impossible! You have to move around, borrowing from relatives, friends, disciples and old officials, so that you can reluctantly gather this number at the last moment. To gather it a day earlier would be an insult to me, Mr. Zhao Ge, and it would be questioning.
I don't live in poverty and live happily... Well, that's what it means anyway, whether you believe it or not, I believe it anyway.
This approach is very common in the Ming Dynasty officialdom, with only a few possible exceptions, such as Gao Pragmatism. But Gao Pragmatism is from the Practical School, and his "reason" for doing this is to prove that the path of Practical Learning is not only feasible, but also has unique characteristics.
superiority, so his highly pragmatic approach possesses the attribute of "bible debate".
It is not possible for the Xin School to do this, because as mentioned before, Xin Xue is essentially a practical study of morality, and they must put moral attributes first, but they are not willing to "blatantly show off their wealth" like Gao Pragmatic.
As a result, Zhao Zhigao of course began to raise money to perform. He publicly stated that Zhao Fengwei's money was levied in accordance with his understanding of the "spirit of instructions" of the Ministry of Revenue - in other words, the Ministry of Revenue has such a "spirit"
", but it was not stated clearly that Zhao Fengwei, in line with the principle of contributing to the country, determined that additional levies were necessary, so he imposed additional levies.
In this case, two points are very important: the first point is that the Ministry of Revenue must admit that there is such a "spirit", otherwise you, Zhao Fengwei, are "unreasonably speculating on the intentions of the emperor", which is not only unjustified, but will also be regarded as an official fanatic.
, was ridiculed by all walks of life.
The second point is that this money must be made up as soon as possible. But you can't say that the salt tax was increased to meet the costs of the Korean war. But now that the Korean war is over, you have quietly swallowed the money.
But there is a problem here. Zhao Fengwei was impeached. Although he is not a Beijing official, the Transportation Department is under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Household Affairs. After the reform of the Ministry of Household Affairs, the supervision system of the Ministry of Household Affairs is stricter than before. There are clear regulations that he can be impeached because of economic problems.
Officials must be like a Beijing official who has been impeached. They must thank guests behind closed doors as soon as they receive the news - in effect, they suspend themselves from office.
Therefore, Zhao Fengwei should theoretically have suspended himself now, which raises a question: If Zhao Fengwei had already sent the money to the Ministry of Accounts in the capital before the impeachment, then that would be fine, as long as he continues to wait for the money to be delivered. But
If Zhao Fengwei had not issued the money at that time, he would have had to wait for the Ministry of Accounts to send personnel to Huai'an to check the accounts and count the bank.
This is a reasonable and legal procedure, but it takes too long. The Ministry of Revenue sends people to Huai'an, and the round trip and the audit itself are very time-consuming, and maybe half a year has passed.
The imperial court was also well aware of the troubles of this process, so it came up with some accommodation methods, such as Zhao Zhigao's method of filling holes. Of course, in fact, this method was deliberately devised by Gao Pragmatic.
It is a method specially given to some people to help themselves after the reform of the Ministry of Large Households.
This has something to do with Gao's pragmatic habits. As a person who studied law in his previous life, he certainly knows that the law should not be one-sided, but the reality cannot be ignored. Now the law can only be the law, and politics can be politics.
The Ming Dynasty was not a society ruled by law, it was a society ruled by people. This is a basic fact that must be recognized before any reform.
Idealism cannot be divorced from reality. If there had not been such a pragmatic approach after the reform of the Ministry of Household Affairs, the supervision system of the Ministry of Household Affairs would be ten times stricter than before, and the number of people arrested might be tens of thousands.
.
As I said before, there were not many officials in the Ming Dynasty. Typically, the imperial power did not extend to counties. There were even only three official officials in a county. If they were all beaten to death with a stick, anyone caught by the Ministry of Household Affairs with financial problems would be punished according to the laws of the Ming Dynasty.
If we come to deal with it, the administrative system of the imperial court may be paralyzed.
Faced with such a realistic situation, Gao Pragmatic can only put the law aside, give priority to politics, and provide some measures to allow the perpetrators to remedy the situation on their own. In this way, although "guilty must be punished" cannot be achieved, but
At least it can be regarded as "violation must be punished", the stolen money was recovered, and the losses were reduced.
Of course, this was done because the imperial government had not been strict in financial management before. After the sudden tightening, many officials were not used to it and had to provide some temporary accommodations. However, in the highly pragmatic plan, these accommodation measures will eventually be taken step by step and slowly.
Cancel it slowly.
In short, after Zhao Zhigao announced this matter, he quickly started borrowing money. His family borrowed a little, his family borrowed a little, his colleagues borrowed a little, and his disciples borrowed a little. Each family borrowed not much, ranging from a thousand taels to a few.
Then a hundred taels... After all, we are all good officials with clear sleeves. If Mr. Zhao Ge borrows too much, how can we get it out?
On this side, Mr. Zhao Ge started to perform, and on the other side, Mr. Xiao was not exempt from vulgarity, so he had to perform as well.
Of course, Xiao Zongxian's performance was very different from that of Mr. Zhao Ge. He mainly showed the anger of the foreign court against the "Medicinal Eucalyptus" and his determination to investigate thoroughly.
To show his determination, when Xiao Daheng met Wang An, the admiral of the East Factory who was "jointly supervising" this case with him, he first made a suggestion that stunned Wang An.
"This constitution believes that when the Yikun Palace is immediately sealed off by the Jin Yiwei, all the people in the palace must be searched by the eunuchs selected by the inner court in the East Factory, and then temporarily stay in other palaces with only necessary clothes. After that, the two section chiefs Qian and Zhong will
On behalf of Ke Dao, we went into the palace together with the major officials from Dongchang to search to ensure that nothing was missed.”
Wang An opened his eyes wide and asked: "The outer court wants to enter Yikun Palace to conduct a search, and does it require the eunuchs in Yikun Palace to evacuate? Haha... General Xian Mingjian, unless our family does not allow it, we will ask two questions
Questions: First, does the Imperial Concubine have to evacuate Yikun Palace? Has the Emperor agreed? Secondly, do the two section chiefs also personally inspect the clothes left by the Imperial Concubine in Yikun Palace?"
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ps: There are at least half of the lambs around, but I am still overcast. Well, I may have practiced the Nine Yin Manual in my dream... By the way, my cold has basically recovered, and I am just busy now.
