Spoiler History: Starting from the Three Kingdoms

Chapter 724 Born at the wrong time
[The death of Yuan Dynasty Prince Zhenjin had an impact comparable to that of Zhu Biao's death.

There is really no need to say anything about Zhu Biao. It can be said that Zhu Yuanzhang had devoted all his efforts to cultivate a son who was almost perfect in all aspects at that time and was half an emperor. His sudden death directly cast a thick layer of blood over the Hongwu Dynasty and directly led to the great turmoil of the Jingnan Rebellion in the early Ming Dynasty.

The impact of Prince Zhenjin's death was more complicated. Its direct impact was that it cut off Yuanru's future.

We have said before that one of the major problems of the Yuan Dynasty was that it did not hold imperial examinations.

In fact, it was also held in the Yuan Dynasty. For example, Yelu Chucai, who was promoted during the Mongol Empire, joined forces with Ogedei to organize the imperial examination. At that time, 4,000 talents were selected at one time to fill the management system of the Mongol Empire, and the effect was very good.

But later, Ogedei died suddenly, and his wife Naiman took control of the government. In order to let her son Guyuk inherit the throne, she tried her best to please the old Mongolian nobles who had voting rights in the Hulitai Assembly.

This directly led to the famous prime minister Yelu Chucai being demoted and dying of grief, and the abolition of the imperial examination system.

During the Yuan Dynasty, after Kublai Khan destroyed the Southern Song Dynasty, he attempted to bring up the imperial examination system for discussion again.

As a result, this proposal was jointly resisted by the Mongolian nobles at that time.

The main reason was that the trend of clerks becoming officials had already emerged in the Yuan Dynasty.

For most of the feudal era, officials and clerks were clearly distinguished. Unless they rebelled, it was unlikely that a clerk would be promoted to prime minister. If one wanted to become an official, one had to take the imperial examination, which was controlled by the central government of the dynasty. This was the simple logic of talent selection in the feudal era.

But it was different in the Yuan Dynasty. If the Mongolian masters saw that you had ability, they could promote you from a clerk to an official with a stroke of their pen. Of course, this ability included many things, and it could also be the ability to flatter or the ability to bribe.

The essence of the prevalence of this trend is that the power to select officials, which should have been controlled by the central government, has fallen into the hands of nobles. Naturally, they are unwilling to hand it over, and they also have good reasons on the surface - the demise of the Southern Song Dynasty was caused by Confucian scholars harming the country, and Khan, do you still want to implement Confucianism?

As mentioned before, the other khanates that were dissatisfied with Kublai Khan had united under the banner that Kublai Khan would implement Chinese law, so in the end Kublai Khan had to accept it temporarily.

Crown Prince Zhenjin was supposed to be the backup plan for gradual reforms, but now this backup plan is gone. The ones who are left at a loss include Kublai Khan and the more than 100,000 "Confucian households" at that time.

The Confucian households were demarcated by Kublai Khan, the founder of the Yuan Dynasty. As long as you were identified as a Confucian household and studied, you would not only be exempted from taxes after paying money, but the status could even be inherited by your ancestors.

After the fall of the Southern Song Dynasty, scholars from Jiangnan joined in again, and the number of Confucian households directly exceeded 100,000. Jiangnan, which was already rich, quickly recovered its vitality by giving money and exempting taxes. Then, it soon discovered the glass curtain wall in front of it:
If you want to be an official, studying is useless. You have to be able to serve the Mongols as a dog.

Some real scholars were naturally unwilling to do so. So, with abundant material support and the reality that there were no official positions to hold, the scholars of the Yuan Dynasty who were among the people combined Song poetry with popular folk songs, and Yuan opera was born. This can also be regarded as the ancestor of modern opera.

When many people talk about Yuan opera, they can only subconsciously think of Ma Zhiyuan's "Tian Jing Sha Autumn Thoughts", and always feel that Yuan opera is completely declining compared to Tang poetry and Song lyrics.

But in fact, Yuan opera includes both sanqu and Yuan zaju. Speaking of Yuan zaju, even if we don't mention Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Journey to the West and Water Margin which were already in their embryonic form at that time, the representative works of the four great Yuan opera masters, such as "The Injustice of Dou E", "Autumn in the Han Palace", "Rain on the Wutong Tree" and "The Orphan of Zhao", are also classic works that still shine today.

Of course, the most famous Yuan opera is Zhang Yanghao's "Shanpoyang·Tongguan Nostalgia".

In the Guangzheng Hall, Zhao Kuangyin watched the conversation between Zhuge Wuhou and Li Shimin, and then he fixed his eyes on the Imperial Medical Officer Liu Han with a slightly pondering look.

This made Liu Han wave his hands and refuse, saying that it was impossible and unreliable to diagnose diseases for people hundreds of years later.

Besides, one is Zhang Zhongjing and the other is Sun Simiao, a medical saint and a medicine king. What virtue and ability do I, Liu Han, have that the government thinks I can be compared with these two sages?
Especially since he had absorbed the essence from the light curtain, his medical skills were probably better than those of the two sages in the past.

Zhao Kuangyin suddenly felt a little regretful:
He also wanted to talk more with Emperor Hongwu.

After all, the Ming Dynasty was the successor of the Song Dynasty, so Zhu Yuanzhang's background could be connected to the Song Dynasty in a roundabout way.

But for now, Zhao Kuangyin decided to focus on the present, just like this Yuan opera.

When Zhao Kuangyin saw Tianjing Sha Qiu Si for the first time, he thought it was too vulgar, but the more he read it, the more he found it memorable.

Then I sighed in my heart, it is indeed worthy of being praised as the essence by the younger generations, and although this work does not conform to the rules of poetry, it has a different flavor to read.

So he simply put his arm around Li Yu's shoulder and asked directly, "Can you write?"

Li Yu frowned in disdain:
"Vulgar, this is a top-grade text, condensed with the efforts of a wise man, how could it be written easily?"

Zhao Kuangyin didn't care and said happily:

"It is also possible to copy it and distribute it in Bianliang so that scholars can know it widely. It will definitely be useful in the end."

"But you have to use Cong Jia's name to say that Ma Zhiyuan is your good friend."

Li Yu suddenly realized that Emperor Zhao had such an idea, but this idea... seemed quite feasible?
……

In the Huagai Hall, where the atmosphere had calmed down for a while, Zhu Yuanzhang simply skipped over the Yuan Dynasty situations that he was more familiar with:

"Bloody? Rebellion? Great turmoil?"

"What's so difficult about Jing?"

"Who dares to embarrass our Ming Dynasty?"

Having said that, Zhu Yuanzhang suddenly felt a sense of powerlessness.

The loss of his wife and son was something he had never imagined. After going through all this, what decision would he make? What methods would he use?
Could it be that someone is dissatisfied with Xiongying?
Is that Xiong Ying Yongle or the good grandson?
For a moment, Emperor Ming felt that things that he thought he had known well became increasingly confusing.

[He was born in a humble family, entered the officialdom through literary talent, understood the sufferings of the people, cared about people's livelihood, was frugal in his style, and impeached corruption. This was Zhang Yanghao.

It can be said that if Zhang Yanghao was born in any dynasty, he would have had a good chance of shining to the fullest and realizing his life ideals, but unfortunately he was born in the Yuan Dynasty.

He was ostracized by his colleagues because of his sympathy for the people, mocked by the Mongols for his frugal style, and would have been executed on the spot if he had not run away quickly when impeached for corruption (so he changed his name and escaped).

When the emperor changed, he returned fearlessly to organize the imperial examination again. After the success, he had seen through the officialdom of the Yuan Dynasty and quietly retired.

During the eight years, the Yuan court summoned Xu Shangshu seven times, but Xu the Crown Prince's Secretary did not go, Xu the Hanlin Academician did not respond, and Xu the Inspector General did not accept the call. It was not until 1329 that there was another summons: there was a severe drought in Guanzhong, and people were starving to death, so he was specially appointed as the Deputy Prime Minister of Shaanxi.

Zhang Yanghao then obeyed the order without hesitation.

During the four months since he took office in charge of disaster relief, all his properties were sold out and disappeared like water without a sound. The money he seized from fighting with the powerful saved countless lives, but he only became impoverished and his body was ruined. In the end, he lay emaciated on a hospital bed, but he was still asking whether there were any people who starved to death that day.

After being bedridden for two months, Zhang Yanghao passed away, and the entire 800-li Qinchuan area was filled with grief.

There are two sentences in the family motto left by Zhang Yanghao, which are also the best footnotes to his life:

All sufferings are like those that one should bear. If one has a goal, there is nothing in the world that one cannot accomplish, let alone studying.
Tongguan Nostalgia was written by Zhang Yanghao when he passed through Tongguan on his way to Shaanxi for disaster relief. It is also a masterpiece among Yuan opera that perfectly combines ideology and artistry. It is truly a solitary piece that has lasted for thousands of years, and its short eight characters reveal the essential characteristics of feudal society.

Compared with Zhang Zai's slightly lofty four sentences of Hengqu, Zhang Yanghao used simple eight words to express the fact that famous ministers and wise ministers in the feudal era had not been able to figure out for thousands of years.

From then on, the only way to describe the chaos and peace in the world was to sigh about the rise and fall of a country.

The death of Crown Prince Zhenjin led to the temporary oblivion of the Confucian scholars in the south of the Yangtze River by Kublai Khan, which led to the flourishing of folk literature in the Yuan Dynasty. As a result, it unexpectedly gave the Yuan Dynasty a layer of gorgeous literary embellishment.

This was probably something that those Mongolian nobles of the Yuan Dynasty who could not even speak Chinese had not expected. 】

　It's late. Sorry.
　　
　
(End of this chapter)