Jingnan Strategy

Chapter 595 Postscript: Long Wantian Reform

"I have ascended the throne..."

On the third day of the fifth month of the tenth year of the Longqing reign, the late Emperor Zhu Yihuan was buried in the Yongling Mausoleum on Tianshou Mountain after fifty-four days of rest. His son Zhu Changqing ascended the throne at Fengtian Gate in Beijing the next day.

Zhu Changqing was born in the 24th year of Jiajing. Zhu Yihuan was busy with scientific research in his early years, so he was already 34 years old when he was born.

Because of this, Zhu Changqing was a relatively "young" fifty-three years old when he ascended the throne.

After ascending the throne, Zhu Changqing did not bow to the powerful, but continued to employ Yuan Keli and Sun Chuanting to carry out reforms.

In addition, Zhu Changqing issued a notice to the Arab region and had newspapers airdropped to the people in the entire Arab region, promising to stabilize local food prices so that everyone would have a job and would not suffer from famine.

Previously, as long as the rebellious people laid down their weapons and surrendered to the government, they would not be treated inhumanely.

At the same time as Zhu Changqing made his promise, railways were also being planned across the territory of the Ming Dynasty.

The construction of the Arab-Israeli Railway, which would provide a large number of job opportunities, began. It was 3,200 miles long.

The construction of this railway should have started during the Jiajing period, but it was delayed until now due to Renzong's lazy governance.

If the railway had been built earlier, famine would naturally not have occurred in the Arab region.

In July, 7 million shi of grain and 30 million canned food allocated by Zhu Changqing arrived at the port of Bataan (Basra).

In September, the construction of the Arab-Israeli Railway began, and the wages were settled based on three pounds of rice (noodles), one can of meat, and one can of fruit per person per day.

The Ming Dynasty did not restrict the recruitment standards for this railway. After all, the significance of this railway was not only to transport food to the interior of the Arab world, but more importantly, to provide a stable living environment for the people of the Arab world.

In October, Zhu Changqing issued another decree to build the Jiangnan and Southwest railway networks. The two projects cost more than 40 million taels and lasted for ten years.

In the twelfth month, the policy of appeasement in the Arab region began to show results, and the civil unrest in the region gradually subsided.

On the 24th day of the twelfth lunar month, the Censor-in-Chief Sun Zhixie impeached the Minister of Works Xu Guangqi, saying that the Dashi Railway had recruited 820,000 workers, but only 500,000 of them were males, and the rest were mostly old and weak women, which wasted the imperial court's money and grain.

Upon hearing this, Zhu Changqing was furious and ordered the Embroidered Uniform Guard to carry Sun Zhixie out of the Wuying Palace and exile him to Lingbei.

On New Year's Eve, Zhu Changqing changed the reign title to Wanli, and became the Wanli Emperor.

In April of the first year of the Wanli reign, Sun Chuanting and his team concluded their investigation of northern Zhili. 6,574 officials and 55,800 clerks were involved. The confiscated government debts, cash, land, and mansions amounted to more than 72 million taels of silver.

In February, the Shaanxi Provincial Government submitted a petition stating that there had been no rain in northern Shaanxi for several years, the vegetation had withered and the harvest had failed, and requested an exemption to stabilize grain prices.
In late February, Zhu Changqing transferred 27 million shi of grain from the Bohai Changping Warehouse to Guanzhong.

In March, another 6 million shi of grain from the northern Qi region was transferred to Guanzhong.

In May, heavy rains poured down day and night in Wujiang, Gui'an and other places in Suzhou, Songjiang and Huzhou prefectures. The water surged suddenly and became turbulent in an instant, without distinguishing the embankments and collapsing houses.

As of the tenth day of June, 2,460 people had died, 7,275 were missing, more than 2 million people had to be urgently relocated and resettled, and 36.72 million acres of crops had been affected or lost.

Upon hearing the news, Zhu Changqing issued 5 million taels from the national treasury for disaster relief.

On the second day of July, the Southern Zhili reported that due to the flood in Jiangdong, 160,000 houses collapsed, more than 420,000 houses were damaged, and more than 7.68 million people were affected...

On the fifth day, Zhu Changqing issued another 8 million taels from the national treasury to provide relief for the flood in Jiangdong.

On the second day of August, the granaries in Zhili, Shandong, Henan, Shanxi, and Shaanxi in the north reported famine. Zhu Changqing ordered Nanyang to coordinate 20 million dan of grain to be sent north, and ordered Bohai, Daming, and Liaodong to coordinate 150 million dan of grain for the autumn harvest to be sent south.

On September 15, Shandong suffered a locust plague. The Shandong Provincial Government reported: "The locusts are all over the field, hundreds of trees are leafless, and the land is barren for thousands of miles..."

On the 16th, Zhu Changqing ordered Liaodong to transport 5 million shi of grain to Shandong by sea to stabilize the price of grain.

In October, Sun Chuanting inspected various departments in the north of the country and executed 1,286 officials who had embezzled disaster relief funds, detained 5,480 officials, and counted 160,000 civil servants. He requested that an examination be held.

On October 25, Zhu Changqing approved the imperial examination and civil service examination to be held in April of the following year.

On the 27th, Zhu Changqing became ill due to reviewing too many memorials and rested in bed for three days.

Wang Miao, the official who was in charge of recording Zhu Changqing's life at the time, wrote: "The emperor wakes up at 12:00 a.m. every day and goes to bed at 12:00 a.m. He sleeps no more than three hours a day and handles more than 600 memorials, and has been doing this for years."

In the first month of the second year of the Wanli reign, the Arab uprising was quelled, and Sun Chuanting went to Beijing to inspect Southern Zhili.

In March, more than 3,000 officials were convicted by Sun Chuanting, more than 20,000 clerks were arrested, all the positions for juren and xiucai in the Imperial College were vacant, and the imperial examination was suspended.

In April, the imperial examination and the civil service examination were held as scheduled, selecting 900 Jinshi, 8,400 Juren, and 320,000 civil servants.

On April 17, Zhu Xu's grandson Zhu Zhen passed the imperial examination and was promoted to be the Tongzhi of Changshan Prefecture in the Qibei Provincial Government.

In the same month, there was a severe drought in various prefectures in Jiangdong, and locusts covered the sky. The officials ordered them to be captured. Zhu Changqing urgently transferred 8 million shi of grain from Southeast Asia to stabilize the grain price.

In June, there was a severe drought in the two capitals, Shandong, Henan, Zhejiang, and Huguang, and 20 million shi of rice and wheat from the Northeastern Changping Warehouse were urgently transferred south to alleviate the drought.

In July, locusts swarmed in the north, and the two capitals, Shandong, Henan, Huguang, Shaanxi, Gansu, and Southern Zhili suffered from the plague. The affected cultivated land area exceeded 500 million mu, and more than 100 million people were affected.

Zhu Changqing transferred grain from the Changping warehouses at home and abroad to the Central Plains for disaster relief. There was no surplus grain in the Northeast, Nanyang, and the north of the desert, so only Nanzhou transferred 50 million dan of grain to the north.

On the second day of August, the Imperial Astronomical Observatory submitted a memorial stating that the weakening of sunspot activity might cause a decrease in the amount of radiation in the atmosphere, making it easier for the plague to breed, and asked the court to be vigilant.

On the third day of the first lunar month, Zhu Changqing ordered all departments to be alert to the plague, to inform all places in the newspapers, to broadcast daily reminders, and to allocate another 5 million taels of silver to order medical schools in all places to prepare vaccines and antibiotics...

On the second day of October, a man in Dingxiang Prefecture, Shaanxi Province, accidentally grew a bulge of fat and died within an hour. His family members reported the case to the police, and Dingxiang Prefecture immediately closed the border and stopped the railway.

On the third day of the Lunar New Year, people with the same symptoms appeared in Datong, Ningxia, Taiyuan, and the capital. Zhu Changqing ordered the northern railway to shut down, and residents were not allowed to leave their homes. Masks were distributed by the government.

The medical school called it the plague. Four to five out of ten people who contracted the disease died. If one person was infected, several people in the family would die.

The plague lasted for 62 days, killing more than 126,000 people, before it was finally put down.

From the third to the sixth year of the Wanli reign, there were severe droughts, plagues, or locust plagues north of the Qinling Mountains and the Yangtze River.

South of the Yangtze River, there may be earthquakes, heavy snow, tsunamis or floods.

Overseas, drought in East and North China is difficult to alleviate, and plague is rampant...

For four years, the people's lives were miserable. If it were not for convenient transportation, sufficient overseas grain production, and advanced medical methods... I am afraid that the Ming Dynasty would have suffered a sharp decline in population like Xizhou and Kunlunzhou.

During the past seventeen years of the Ming Dynasty, the number of abnormal deaths due to disasters such as plague, drought, heavy snow, tsunami, floods, and war was about five million.

Compared with the Ming Dynasty, nearly 40 million people died in Xizhou during the years of war and plague, including nearly % of the population in Germany. The rest of the countries also suffered from the plague and a large number of people died.

After the war, only eleven major countries remained in Western Europe, including Sweden, Poland, Denmark, the Holy Roman Empire, the Netherlands, France, Hungary, Spain, Britain and the Ottoman Empire.

In the seventh year of Wanli, the population of the Ming Dynasty was more than 874 million, and the population of other places such as India, Stang, Xizhou, Kunlunzhou, etc. totaled about 400 million. The Han people consolidated their status as the world's dominant ethnic group.

In the same year, the new policies and Beijing inspections promoted by Yuan Keli and Sun Chuanting came to an end.

This imperial inspection lasted a total of ten years, the longest since the implementation of the imperial inspection system in the Ming Dynasty. A total of more than 44,000 officials and more than 280,000 clerks were arrested, and the number of officials and their relatives involved reached more than one million.

However, among them, only more than 24,000 people were sentenced to death, and most of them were exiled to Lingbei.

Fortunately, the spoils were rich enough. The national debt alone amounted to more than 186 million taels, and the remaining farmland, houses, and cash were worth nearly 200 million.

Of the 5 billion taels of national debt issued during the Longqing period, only 1.38 billion taels have been purchased today.

After the new policy ended, seeing that the treasury was full, Zhu Changqing announced a halt to the issuance of government bonds.

In October of the seventh year of the Wanli reign, Li Banghua, the Minister of Revenue, reported that the fiscal revenue for the year was more than 324 million taels, and the expenditure was 283 million taels, of which 8 million was used for disaster relief. Although the Ming Dynasty had passed the worst of the disaster, the lowest temperature period of the Little Ice Age had not yet passed.

According to the calculations of the Imperial Observatory, it will probably take at least another fifty years.

Because of this, there were quite a few disasters in one province and several prefectures, but there was no longer the previous situation where seven or eight provinces were affected.

The Ming Dynasty had passed its most difficult period, but Zhu Changqing did not slack off.

On the second day of the twelfth lunar month in the seventh year of the Wanli reign, Minister of War Yuan Keli died at the age of eighty-three.

Zhu Changqing cried bitterly, posthumously named him Wenzheng, and posthumously conferred him the title of Earl of Laizhou, which was inherited by his son.

In the eighth year of Wanli, the Ming Dynasty entered a period of stability. Despite the continuous regional disasters, the dynasty was still able to continue to function and survive.

This period was called the economic depression. Although food and drink were not a problem, it was very difficult to achieve class transition. The imperial examinations and the civil service examinations became the best options for the younger generation.

In April of the tenth year of the Wanli reign, Emperor Wanli Zhu Changqing developed lung disease due to years of high-intensity work.

In order not to affect the country's political affairs, Zhu Changqing began to let the 39-year-old Crown Prince Zhu Youxiao supervise the country.

In the twelfth year of Wanli, Zhu Changqing became seriously ill and abdicated on July 6th. He lived in Daming Palace to recuperate. Crown Prince Zhu Youjiao ascended the throne and changed the reign title to Tianqi the next year.

Zhu Youxiao was fond of machinery and often modified cars and ships by himself. Sometimes he would even draw blueprints and have people make some imaginative products.

He tended to be conservative in governing the country. He handed over political affairs to Sun Chuanting, Lu Xiangsheng, Li Banghua, Zhang Huangyan and others, while he relied on Cao Wenzhao, Cao Bianjiao, Li Zicheng, Zhang Xianzhong, Li Dingguo and others in military affairs.

During his reign, the Ming Dynasty was relatively stable. Even disasters such as snowstorms and droughts were handled well, and the population began to increase slowly.

At the same time, because he was more like his grandfather Zhu Yizhen in character and hobbies, many people's livelihood technologies in the Ming Dynasty began to receive attention during this period.

In the fourth year of the Tianqi reign, film, black-and-white movies and cinemas appeared in people's lives. Ticket prices were usually between ten and twenty wen. At that time, the income of an ordinary citizen in the Ming Dynasty was two taels per month.

Since the films of this era were silent films, many leading actors used exaggerated movements to attract attention.

Such exaggerated actions made Prince Duan Zhu Youzhen feel uncomfortable. He changed his name to "Bada Shanren" and began to present his landscape paintings in the form of movies. In the eighth year of Tianqi, his work "Tales from the East China Sea" raked in more than 146,000 taels of box office.

This kind of landscape painting style movie is called ink film, and Zhu Youxu's success also led to the emergence of a large number of shoddy ink films on the market.

Zhu Youxiao was particularly fond of Zhu Youchen's films and ink paintings, and often sent telegrams to urge him to make new films and asked him to paint ink paintings for him.

On the third day of February in the fifth year of the Tianqi reign, Emperor Retired Zhu Changqing passed away in the Daming Palace at the age of seventy.

After 54 days of mourning, Zhu Changqing was buried in Tai Mausoleum on Tianshou Mountain.

Regarding the temple name, many officials suggested "Suzong" and "Daizong", but Zhu Youxiao, the emperor, chose "Zhezong" as the temple name for his father.

Following Zhu Youxiao's approval, Zhu Changqing decided to give him the temple name Zhezong and the posthumous title of Fa Tian Long Yun Zhi Cheng Xian Jue Ti Yuan Li Ji Fu Wen Fen Wu Qin Ming Xiao Cheng Emperor.

Upon hearing the news of Zhu Changqing's death, people of the Ming Dynasty all over the world felt sad.

The various benevolent policies during the Wanli period made the Ming Dynasty the country that suffered the least damage during the Little Ice Age. Except for the people in the Arab region who suffered famine due to the lack of railways, the lives of the people of the Ming Dynasty were generally guaranteed.

During the global Little Ice Age, Zhu Changqing was able to ensure that the people under his rule had enough food to eat and could buy meat and vegetables from time to time. This was already the greatest benevolent policy he could implement.

Fortunately, people always forget things. Not long after, the people of the Ming Dynasty returned to their ordinary lives. The people who could still remember Zhu Changqing were always a minority.

After all, there are so many heroic rulers in the Ming Dynasty who are worth remembering, and the one who is most missed to this day is still Emperor Shiwu Zhu Gaoxu.

Time flies, and it is already the sixth year of Tianqi.

Without Zhu Changqing's supervision, Zhu Youxiao began to boldly cultivate his own interests and hobbies.

In early April of that year, the "racing car" made by Zhu Youxiao was published in the "Da Ming Daily", which triggered a trend of converting cars into racing cars.

Although the maximum speed of cars in this era is no more than 100 miles per hour, this speed is enough for some people to experience the excitement.

In August, Zhu Youxiao allocated 30,000 taels of imperial treasury to build a racing track in the eastern suburbs of Beijing, and published the news in the Da Ming Daily, organizing the world's first racing competition here.

On the second day of the twelfth lunar month, the Ming Dynasty Racing Cup ended, and the "Apocalypse" made by Zhu Youxiao himself became the champion of the racing cup that year.

In March of the seventh year of the Tianqi reign, the first public tram of the Ming Dynasty started running in Beijing.

This type of car draws electricity from overhead wires on the roof to drive the car and is very popular.

In July, the first telephone line in the Ming Dynasty was opened between Beijing and Nanjing. The two places are more than 2,000 miles apart, and the telephone era began.

At this time, all telephone calls are connected to the correct line by the operator to ensure that there are no problems in communication.

After the telephone appeared, the imperial court, finding it extremely convenient, immediately installed 36,000 telephones between local areas and Beijing. The price of each telephone and line ranged from two hundred to five hundred taels, depending on the distance.

In the tenth year of the Tianqi reign, after three years of development, the telephone industry finally moved from the powerful to the general public under the promotion of the imperial court.

On the third day of May, public telephone booths appeared on the streets of Beijing. People paid ten cents to make a one-minute call, which won the favor of the general public.

At that time, Beijing's population had reached four million, and the urban area basically included the area within the Fourth Ring Road of Beijing in Zhu Gaoxu's previous life, so a public telephone could save a lot of trouble.

Seeing that the people accepted it, the Ming Dynasty began to lay telephone lines in towns and cities. A large number of messengers had to switch to delivering letters to towns and villages, and a large number of people lost their jobs.

This situation has forced many people to seek their own way out.

This was the time when mobility was most frequent in human history. A large number of people who were dissatisfied with their lives in the Ming Dynasty began to move to North Continent, Indochina Peninsula, and even West Continent on their own initiative.

These population movements broke the past geographical concepts based on racial divisions, but also caused more serious social problems within many light industrial countries that were known as the "Ming Dynasty Factories".

Zhu Youxiao's openness led to great development of thought and philosophy during this period of the Ming Dynasty.

Since many previous Ming emperors had done a good job, even though there were many "bold" ideas among the people, the people still believed that the Ming Dynasty would get better little by little.

As they expected, many industrial areas in the Daming area began to use assembly lines. This large-scale production lowered commodity prices and increased output, and cars became an important means of transportation.

The popularity of mass media such as newspapers, radio and movies has brought tremendous impact on mankind. They entertain the public and can also spread various political information.

The invention of pesticides and chemical fertilizers has greatly increased agricultural output, but has also brought about new environmental pollution.

The invention of electrical appliances such as washing machines, air conditioners, and refrigerators has greatly improved people's quality of life.

The Ming Dynasty began to build hydroelectric power stations in the upper reaches of many rivers such as the Yangtze River and the Yellow River, and also began to build thermal power stations on a large scale.

People's demand for electricity began to increase, and the emperor alone could no longer handle such a large amount of government affairs, so decentralization became what the emperor should do.

The monarchy began to decline from its heyday, and Zhu Youxiao did not fight against the tide of the times during this period.

In April of the 15th year of the Tianqi reign, the Minister of Personnel Sun Chuanting died in the military at the age of 72. Zhu Youxiao issued an edict to suspend court for three days, posthumously named him Zhongwu, and conferred him the title of Earl Zhenwu. His son inherited the title.

In July, Minister of Rites Hong Chengchou and others submitted a petition to appoint a crown prince. Zhu Youxiao did not like his eldest son Zhu Cixuan and tried to appoint Zhu Cilang as the crown prince, but was opposed by other ministers.

Zhu Youxiao argued with his ministers for fifteen years. It was not until the 1680th year of the Tianqi reign () that the eldest son Zhu Cixuan was named Crown Prince, while Zhu Cilang was named Prince of Fu and granted the fiefdom of Beizhou.

On the tenth day of the fifth month of the thirty-second year of the Tianqi reign, Zhu Youxiao died in the Daming Palace at the age of seventy-three, and Crown Prince Zhu Cixuan ascended the throne.

On May 17, Zhu Youxiao was buried in the Deling Mausoleum of Tianshou Mountain after seven days of rest. His temple name was Suzong and his posthumous title was Emperor Shuntian Shengming Duanren Zhengkuanda Xiaohui.

(End of this chapter)