A Good Landlord in the Tang Dynasty: Emperor Yuan Cong

Chapter 367

in the temple.

The emperor finished reading the opening chapter of the novel Pipa Xing, and then took the portrait of Pei Yunu holding a pipa half-faced that Huaiyu had drawn this morning on the road, and was fascinated by it.

Every time he looked at Wu Huaiyu's portraits, the emperor was amazed.

This is not just a portrait, it is like a real person in the painting, which is completely different from the portraits of Yan Lide and Yan Liben brothers.

"Is it okay that she is with you?" The emperor still can't forget the pipa girl, but as the emperor, Li Shimin also knows the seriousness, and he can still restrain himself, but he feels a little regretful.

"The minister brought her back to Xuanyangfang yesterday, where she is more familiar, and everything is fine."

The emperor looked at Huaiyu and smiled, "Are you satisfied last night?"

He looked at Huaiyu's eyebrows, and he could tell that Wu Huaiyu must have accepted her last night, and of course Wu Huaiyu's dark circles under his eyes betrayed him even more.

How many people would refuse such a beauty?

He now regrets why he confiscated this beauty earlier, and even more regretted bringing her to the hall to play for the prime ministers, but all the meat in his mouth flew away.

Huaiyu laughed.

"This story is well written. It can be published in the Beijing News. Do you want to print this portrait on it?"

Huaiyu said: "I have an idea, that is to add a cover picture to the cover of the next issue of the Beijing News. The plan is to draw the scene on the Golden Palace yesterday and publish it on the Beijing News, and add an illustration inside, using this in the hands of His Majesty." A portrait of Pei Xingnu."

The cover uses the scene from yesterday's Golden Palace, the girl playing the pipa, Wang Gui and Wei Zheng admonishing her, the emperor finally restores the girl Pipa to her status as a benefactor, the girl asks to stay in the Duke of Yi, and the emperor gives her to Huaiyu as a concubine.

This is a commonly used painting method in ancient times. It unfolds like a scroll and can tell a story. For example, the famous Han Xizai Night Banquet, the Eighteen Scholars in the Qin Palace, the Walking Chariot, and even the Qingming Riverside painting are all like this.

The idea of ​​this kind of magazine cover is quite advanced. Although it is limited to the cover of Beijing News, it is not big, but there is still a lot of room for development.

Coupled with the increase of illustrations, it can make the Beijing News a lot more colorful.

"Is it possible to add cover pictures and illustrations to every Beijing News?" Li Shimin now often reads Beijing News, and is very satisfied with this Beijing News produced by the East Palace, and even often regards it as a work of Prince Li Chengqian. This achievement, although the prince is young, is produced by the East Palace after all.

"The minister makes a good picture, then engraves the block, and then prints it."

In the past year, the Beijing News has made great progress from the pure hand-copying at the beginning to the block printing now. The research direction is pointed out.

The main problem of engraving is the ink problem. After this is solved, other problems will not be difficult.

Now the Beijing News has even begun to study the problems of typography and printing.

Today's Beijing News is backed by very mature technology. It not only has its own ink workshop, but also has an engraving workshop.

The number of workers is large, the funds are sufficient, and the vitality is full.

From writing to typesetting, then writing to engraving, and then papermaking, cooked paper, printing, binding, and distribution, the entire process has become more and more mature.

From the very beginning, it was published every ten days, and now it is published every five days.

The content is also increasing, the layout has increased, and the number of words has also increased. Now a journal has at least [-] words, and sometimes there will be additional issues.

The emperor is a must-see every issue.

From Chang'an to Luoyang, and even through post stations to more than three hundred states in the world, the coverage is getting wider and wider, and the influence is naturally getting bigger and bigger.

"It shouldn't be so exquisite after engraving and printing?"

"Some differences."

Due to the quantity, cost and technology, the cover and illustrations can only be used in ordinary black and white and not in color, and even engraving and printing paintings must be directly drawn differently, but they can still have good effects.

"Then after you print it, show it to me first."

Li Shimin attaches great importance to this matter, because now the circulation of the Beijing News is quite large, not only in Chang'an and Luoyang, but also in remote frontier prefectures. The Beijing News is just a matter of speed.

On the cover is a picture of the palace of saints, there will be an image of the emperor for the world to see, this must be carefully checked, and one's own image must be mighty and holy.

Under normal circumstances, not many people in the world can see the emperor.

Even the officials in the capital, some of the lower grades may not see the emperor all year round, let alone the people from other places.

Huaiyu responded.

Holding the portrait of Pei Yunu, Li Shimin was a little reluctant to let go, "Huaiyu, I want to give you a task, to make me a real hero, and to draw a life-size portrait of them, and I want to respect Qin Qiong and Yuchi you drew earlier. The same, so mighty and lifelike.

At that time, I plan to put the portraits of these heroes in this Chongxian Hall, and then let the scholars write a biography for them under each portrait, recording their great achievements, so that the prince can see it every day ,"

Huaiyu inexplicably thought of the portraits of people hanging on the classroom walls when he was in middle school, but at that time his school classrooms were all hung with people like Einstein, Qu Yuan, Lu Xun, and Confucius, and there was a sentence under each portrait Celebrity quotes, what is standing on the shoulders of giants, what is the long way to go, what is the practice of reviewing the past and so on.

Imagine that in the Chongxian Hall, dozens of portraits of heroes are hung, with a personal biography on one side, and one or two famous quotes, such as a sentence for Qin Qiong, horses on both sides of the Yellow River, mace to the six states of Shandong, or come to Qin Qiong. Sentence, every time the emperor of Zhenguan came to the battle, he looked at the thieves, the brave generals, the sharp men, showing off the people and horses, and those who came in and out, he ordered Qin Shubao to take them. .

Among the thousands of troops, taking the head of a general is like searching for something!
How exciting that is.

It is not a small project to give life-length portraits of dozens of real meritorious officials, but since the emperor has an order, Huaiyu has no choice but to accept the order.

Ever since he painted a portrait of Qin Qiong and Yu Chigong and made Zhenyu the door god of the East Palace Gate, people have been wanting to ask Huaiyu for a portrait, but Huaiyu can push it whenever he can, and he only gave it to Cheng Yaojin, Fan Xing and others. painted.

Although many princes are willing to spend a lot of money in rewards, Huaiyu will not agree easily. He is not a painter, just like it is difficult to find Wu Huaiyu to see a doctor and prescribe a prescription.

Otherwise, it will be endless, and there is no need to do anything.

"Your bond idea is quite good. You can draw up a detailed plan first, and then I will discuss it with the prime ministers."

"Xiao Yu wrote a few times before, talking about feudalism, you should also write about it when you go back."

Originally, the main topic of today's palace meeting was relief of disaster victims and feudal affairs.

Xiao Yu is a strong sect of enfeoffment. He believes that the death of Qin II meant that there was no system of enfeoffment, and that the prefectures and states of the Han Dynasty were parallel, so there were hundreds of years of state ancestry in the Han Dynasty.

He advocated that the younger brothers and princes should be feudalized, entrusted with titles, and the land should be sealed off, just like the Han Dynasty, and let the kings defend the court and guard the place.

The three generations of feudalism lasted for a long time, and Qin was isolated and died quickly. These words moved Li Shimin a little.

However, there are actually more voices of opposition to the feudal system in the court. Fang Mou Duan believes that the Qin political law has been implemented for a hundred generations, referring to the prefecture and county system implemented by the Qin Dynasty, which represents the system of the Great Central Committee.

Li Shimin wanted to establish a feudal system, mainly because he wanted the Tang Dynasty to last forever. Qin II died, and the Sui Dynasty, which also died the second, did not implement a real enfeoffment system, but let the prince serve as the local governor. This is just a division of the town. , not feudalism.

After the Qin Dynasty, apart from the Han Dynasty, only the Jin Dynasty was the only dynasty that could last for more than a hundred years. There was no other dynasty that could last for a hundred years, especially the Sixteen Kingdoms and the Southern and Northern Dynasties since the Wei and Jin Dynasties. very short.

It is precisely because of these histories that Li Shimin wants to make the Tang Dynasty long-term, so he agrees with Xiao Yu's enfeoffment system.

Before the Qin Dynasty implemented the system of prefectures and counties, it was a feudal system, and each dynasty was very long, such as the Zhou Dynasty in 800 years, and Xia Shang Guozuo was also long.

This year, the imperial court implemented the plan of ten ways in the world and the merger of provinces and counties. Up to now, many states and counties have been merged, but there are still more than 300 states and more than [-] counties, which is a lot.

It is true that the imperial court directly governs these states and counties, but it is indeed impossible to control them, but the merger and power reduction of the Dudufu is imperative. With the unification of the world and the end of the war, the Dudufu, a special institution that is jointly controlled by the military and the government, will inevitably It is necessary to abolish a large number of people, and even cut power.

The retained Dudu Mansion can't take on too many responsibilities, and can't help the central government to directly govern these hundreds of states.

Although the imperial court has newly designated ten roads, this road is only a supervisory road, not an administrative division, and the imperial court does not care about dividing the world into ten administrative roads, which is too dangerous.

Today there are more than 300 states in the world, but Li Shimin can't even remember the names of these governors.

Zhongshu servant Yan Shigu was very supportive of Xiao Yu's proposal, but Li Baiyao, the minister of the Ministry of Rites, opposed the most fiercely, thinking that feudalism was the source of turmoil instead.

This is true of the Seven Kingdoms Rebellion in the Western Han Dynasty, the Eight Kings Rebellion in the Western Jin Dynasty, and the Spring and Autumn and Warring States Periods since the Eastern Zhou Dynasty. He also concluded that,
Conferring monarchs and nations, forgetting the difficulties of their predecessors, and all the world will increase sexual abuse and arrogance and extravagance.

But Li Shimin didn't give up, he wanted the Tang Dynasty to last forever, and wanted to let the descendants feudalize the Pingfan Central, thinking about the death of Qin II and Sui II, and although there were seven kingdoms and eight kings in the Han and Jin Dynasties, they still continued. Going on, even after the Western Han Dynasty was usurped by Wang Mang, it was Liu Xiu who later rebuilt the Han Dynasty, which lasted for nearly 200 years.

Similarly, although the Eight Kings' Rebellion in the Eastern Jin Dynasty led to the subjugation of the country, there were still white horses crossing the river to rebuild the Jin Dynasty.

Wu Huaiyu certainly has some opinions on feudalism. He thinks that the unified dynasties in Chinese history, Han, Jin, Tang, Song, Ming and Qing, generally speaking, centralized power is the mainstream.

Like Zhu Yuanzhang, he divided his descendants into enfeoffments, and when he died, he died because of the civil strife. When Zhu Di, who succeeded Jing Nan, came to power, he immediately turned enfeoffment into raising pigs. No, it has no effect, except to consume food and infringe on the local area, it really has nothing to do.

In the Western Han and Western Jin dynasties, however, the enfeoffment power was too great, and the disturbances caused were indeed great.

But to say that the Qin, Sui, and even Wei countries did not engage in enfeoffment and restricted the clan too much, so they died quickly, and there was no chance of rescue.

Wu Huaiyu feels that the general trend of history is that centralization is still the mainstream, and enfeoffment can be used as an appropriate supplement.

He even thought of Liu Zongyuan's later masterpiece "On Feudalism". This article ended the debate between feudalism and prefecture and county systems. It was very reasonable, and he thought he could write it for the emperor.

(End of this chapter)