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Chapter 254: One Emperor, One Courtier 4
"Oh...that's it...you say hello to Zhao Shiqing tomorrow, and first ask Li Tianjing to go to the Twelve Treasury of the Inner Palace to be the deputy envoy of the ninth rank, and say that he is Xu Guangqi's good friend.

I will go to him in a few days and tell him that the queen wants to raise silkworms, and I also plan to farm the land myself, and ask him to send a minister who is not afraid of death to manage Xiyuan according to Sejong's old system.If he encounters a problem, you can give him some advice. You can't just add a minister, but it's not too difficult to add a doctor.Let Li Tianjing take on this responsibility, and it will be easier for me to have Xu Guangqi to take care of me. "

If Hong Tao and Wang An cooperate with each other, they can often appear and disappear.Wang An knows a lot about the palace and the court, while Hong Tao is a manipulative person who is best at finding loopholes to take advantage of. It is really a perfect example of two swords, one plus one is greater than two.

This time was no exception. In order to achieve their goal, they actually teamed up to set a trap for the cabinet scholar and the Minister of Household Affairs, and under the pretext of imitating the late emperor, they suddenly became a sixth-rank official out of thin air.

After finishing the job, Zhao Shiqing still had to be grateful to Wang An. At this moment, any serious official who dared to enter the palace casually to accompany him would offend anyone. It seemed that in the Ministry of Household Affairs, only Li Tianjing, a well-connected person introduced by Xu Guangqi, was the most suitable.

You know why honest people can never beat politicians in the officialdom? Whoever has a higher bottom line and whoever lies and deceives people is worse than eating smoothly, whoever is the loser.These are the rules of the game. Whoever understands them thoroughly and implements them resolutely will take advantage.

Who was Li Tianjing, and what special abilities did he have that made it worthy for the emperor to design a promotion route for him alone? Could he be another great figure in history?
According to the standards of most people in later generations, Li Tianjing has neither opened up territories, has no poems passed down to the world, is not an upright official, and has not founded a dynasty, so he certainly cannot be called a great man.

However, Hong Tao's standards are different from ordinary people. He values ​​technical talents more and hates politicians, tycoons, bureaucrats and emperors from the bottom of his heart.Li Tianjing just met his standards, so it was worth the effort.

Li Tianjing's special talents were astronomy and calendaring. He was one of the compilers of the Chongzhen calendar in the Ming Dynasty, but his reputation was not as great as that of Xu Guangqi, Li Zhizao, Tang Ruowang and others.

Is a calendar worth all the fuss about?How should I put it? At first glance, this thing seems to be dispensable, but if you think about it carefully, it is still very important to production and life, especially it played a considerable role in promoting the development of ancient agriculture.

The reason why ancient Chinese agricultural technology has been able to lead the world for a long time is that in addition to the ridge farming method invented 2000 years ago, an accurate calendar is also indispensable.

The so-called lunar calendar in later generations is the Zijin calendar promulgated in 1929. In addition, almost every dynasty has to modify the calendar, generally every few decades, in order to adapt to the farming season.

There are only five major or important calendars in Chinese history, namely the Taichu Calendar of the Han Dynasty, the Dayan Calendar of the Tang Dynasty, the Time-giving Calendar of the Yuan Dynasty, the Chongzhen Calendar of the Ming Dynasty and the Shixian Calendar of the Qing Dynasty.

Before the Han Dynasty, the Chinese calendar was relatively chaotic. In the Western Zhou Dynasty, November was the beginning of the year. There were only spring and autumn each year, without summer and winter.Only after the four-point calendar of the Warring States Period did the four seasons of the year appear, but the calendar was still not unified. For example, the Qin State used October as the beginning of the year.

Why would such phenomenon happen?The ancients relied on observing the stars to confirm the calendar. The method was correct, but the observation methods were crude and the errors were relatively large.Over time, the error will become larger and larger.

By the Han Dynasty, the error was so large that it could not be used. Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty had to order Sima Qian and his son to revise the calendar, officially including the 24 solar terms, and determining 12 months per year. This is the Taichu calendar.In the Tang Dynasty, Indian culture was introduced to China, including Buddhism and the calendar.Seng Yixing, a disciple of the Indian monk Shan Wuwei, revised the Dayan Calendar with reference to the Indian Jiuzhi Calendar.

The time-telling calendar of the Yuan Dynasty gathered a large number of Arab scholars and thoroughly achieved the integration of multiple cultures.During the Chongzhen period of the Ming Dynasty, Xu Guangqi, Li Zhizao, and Li Tianjing referred to European mathematical algorithms and worked with missionary Tang Ruowang to revise the Chongzhen calendar.

Look, Li Tianjing does have some special talents, and they deserve to be carefully cultivated.Although Hong Tao was familiar with the Gregorian calendar, which was commonly used by later generations, he was really unfamiliar with the lunar calendar.In order to achieve high grain yields, in addition to pesticides and fertilizers, calendars are also very important. He alone may be able to produce millions of acres.

Of course, Li Tianjing may not be able to revise the calendar now, but it doesn't matter. Hong Tao can create a better learning environment for him, such as systematic contact with mathematics and geometry, and a limited understanding of the relationship between the earth, the planets, and the sun.

In addition, Hong Tao also wants to recruit several astronomers and mathematicians from Europe, the Indian Peninsula, and the Arabian Peninsula to join the Qintian Prison to participate in the revision of the calendar to see if some sparks of inspiration can be generated from the collision of many civilizations.

However, this wish may have to be delayed. At present, it seems unreliable to let Xifan monks enter the court as officials.Etiquette is also a part of culture. If you want to change it, you can only do it slowly and slowly. If it is too rigid, it will easily cause trouble.

Next is the Ministry of War. With Sun Wei, the minister of the Ministry of War, as an example, the number of Ministry of War officials who were dismissed in rebellion cases is second only to the Ministry of Rites. There is currently a shortage of personnel and urgent need to supplement it.

The person appointed by the emperor was also a Jinshi in the Imperial Examination in the third year of Jingyang. Sun Chengzong, who was currently serving as the ninth-rank clerk in the Hanlin Academy, was promoted to the fifth-rank doctor of the Military Selection Department of the Ministry of War because of his detailed report and sufficient data on the defense system of Shanhaiguan, where he was in charge of training troops.

Talking about foreign wars in the middle and late Ming Dynasty, Sun Chengzong must be regarded as the number one figure.He is a scholar and has never led an army in combat. However, after being appointed by Emperor Tianqi, he has been operating intermittently in Liaodong for more than ten years. The Guanningjin defense line that he carefully built has always been very stable.

Although the method of building a stronghold and fighting a dull war cost the Ming court a lot of financial and material resources, the effect was still good.This made Hou Jin very uncomfortable, but he had to say that he was indeed somewhat talented in the military.

When he saw this name in the list of Jinshi, Hong Tao wanted to immediately send a military post to the Liaodong front line to test his merit, but unfortunately he did not have that much power.

Now the time has come. After three years of hard work at the grassroots level, Sun Chengzong should find a larger and more suitable stage to show his talent.If he can put the paper articles into practice, he will be a handsome man who can keep pace with Yuan Keli for many years to come.

Another person who was promoted was Wang Jiazhen, the sixth-rank chief of the Qing Li Department of the Ministry of War's Arsenal. His promotion was not controversial. The number one scholar appointed by the emperor did not go to the Hanlin Academy to wait for qualifications to join the cabinet, but went to work as the chief of the Sixth Ministry. Being down-to-earth and neither arrogant nor impetuous, it is reasonable to take one step further and become a good official.

(End of this chapter)