The literary giants of the late Ming Dynasty began by copying books

Chapter 171 Changzhou Shangshu

Emperor Wanli sat quietly. He did not curse, but he had a huge rebellious mentality in his heart.

After a long time, Wanli said coldly: "I'll just give them an answer. Isn't it just a memorial?"

As he said this, Wanli reached out and flipped through the bottom fold.

When the eunuchs and eunuchs handed in the documents, the chief ceremonial officer carefully arranged them in order. The emperor carefully considered which ones to look at first and which ones to look at later.

This process is extremely maneuverable. For example, when reviewing the annual execution list in autumn, the eunuch can put the list of criminals to be reviewed and executed at the bottom. If the emperor cannot read through it in one day, he may not even be able to read the criminal's name. I can't see that if he escapes this year's autumn beheading, he can live for one more year.

Emperor Wanli knew that Tian Yi was very loyal, so every time he would put the most heated excerpts discussed by the courtiers at the top according to the actual situation, and the content with less support would be placed at the bottom.

"Your Majesty, what are you..." Seeing the emperor go to the bottom of the fold first, Tian Yi looked surprised, and quickly persuaded him: "There are already many discussions in the court at this time, and if you rashly take out a fold, it will definitely cause dissatisfaction among the ministers."

Wanli said: "The ministers are already dissatisfied. I just follow the instructions of Governor Fengyang. Will the situation be better?"

"Even if I approve Li Sancai's discount, if I get foot pain next time and can't do anything, do you think Tian Daban will they gather around and scold me again?"

Tian Yi was silent.

He is more than twenty years older than Wanli and has been with Wanli since he was a child. In fact, his feelings for Wanli are like treating his own children.

He also knew that the foreign ministers were very harsh on Wanli. No matter how much Wanli compromised, he would not get many good words. Even the more he compromised, the less freedom Wanli had in his activities.

Rationally speaking, Tian Yi felt that Wanli should do good things for the country, get rid of his bad habits, and work hard.

But emotionally speaking, Tian Yi didn't want Wanli to drag his sick body to work until he died, and in the end he would not be able to gain a good reputation.

After a long time, Tian Yi said in a low voice: "I beg you, the Holy One, to treat me fairly. If you go too far, I'm afraid it will be counterproductive."

He was already prepared to cater to Wanli's wishes, but he just prayed in his heart that Wanli would not go too far.

Wanli smiled and said nothing, concentrating on reading from the last memorial.

The history of the previous ten years has proven that Emperor Wanli was very good at controlling the mentality of his courtiers.

After all, he was a good disciple trained by Zhang Juzheng. He was extremely smart and resourceful. The courtiers had been fighting with him for almost ten years, but they really didn't get much benefit.

If you don't want him to react to the public opinion in the DPRK, then Wanli just needs to find a memorial with a different tone and respond to it.

In this way, as emperor, he responded to the public opinion of the court, while at the same time avoiding the issue of the courtiers wanting him to remove the mine supervisors and tax collectors.

On the one hand, the courtiers can't find his fault, on the other hand, it can also disgust the ministers in the court.

I have to say that it is quite strange for an emperor to use his intelligence and wisdom to think about how to disgust his ministers.

After flipping through the pages, Wanli picked out the article submitted by Ouyang Dongfeng, the prefect of Changzhou, and signed by all the students in Changzhou.

It’s really hard not to pick this article because Wang Wenlong’s article has a particularly unique perspective among all the articles published in the journal.

When Wang Wenlong wrote this article, on the one hand he wanted to convey his thoughts to the gentry class in Changzhou and Jiangnan, and on the other hand it was purely to cope with the invitation of the Donglin Party.

Therefore, in the whole article, Wang Wenlong only mentioned the tax supervisory issue a little bit. He objectively stated that the main problem of the tax supervisory office was that it affected the survival of ordinary people. Wang Wenlong did not even object to the eunuchs finding big businessmen to collect taxes, or according to what Wanli said To collect mineral taxes.

These texts are much less critical of the emperor than other articles, but at the same time the three suggestions they make are extremely enlightening.

At this time, there was no such voice among the people, but firstly, few were as systematic as Wang Wenlong. Secondly, Wang Wenlong's logical thinking ability was much stronger than the far-fetched divine logic of Li Sancai and others, so it was naturally easier. Make people accept it.

At this time, Wanli was quite surprised when he read this article.

The first thing he felt was that he was surprised to find that the article did not criticize him.

The ministers were secretive when scolding the emperor, but Cheng Wen of Zhusheng was often more unscrupulous because he was not a court official. Even if he made the emperor angry, he couldn't arrest all the scholars from the government?

Even because they are ordinary people, they can still use some things they have personally witnessed to show how difficult the world is today, and curse people with reason and evidence.

Therefore, it was actually good for Wanli that Zhu Sheng's articles about Tian Yi were not placed at the top, because after reading a few articles, the emperor found that the curses there were much uglier than those of the ministers.

The reason why Wang Wenlong's article initially received support from some gentry in Changzhou was because it was in line with the interests of both the merchant gentry class and the royal family. It only made the status of the landlord class and the accompanying Confucian scholar-bureaucrats somewhat embarrassing and could not help the Donglin Party. The imperial power was divided among the scholar-bureaucrats, so they were covered up by the Donglin boss.

What Wanli reflected here is that he found that this article was relatively gentle to him and the mine supervision system. Although there were criticisms, it was basically targeted and did not blame any of the world's mistakes on him.

The emperor immediately liked this article.

If you continue reading, you will see that Wang Wenlong’s article also puts forward three suggestions:

Broaden the voice of the people so that the voices of the people can enter the court, avoid the situation where eunuchs and local officials exploit the local area and the people have no voice, which is conducive to the development of business; open overseas commercial trade and reduce taxes on ordinary traders in the inland;

Issue ship guides to increase national finances and transfer financial pressure to overseas trade.

Wanli read Wang Wenlong's article, and the more he read, the more logical it became. It seemed that the principles behind this policy were quite convincing.

“This article is interesting!”

Emperor Wanli nodded secretly while watching.

Is he determined to implement these three policies? Of course not. Wanli is not a fool. He has been emperor for so long and he also knows how the Ming Dynasty handles affairs. Each of these three policies involves a large amount of dispersion of power and transfer of interests. If you want to implement one of them, you will not be busy for several years. possible.

He was not determined to do such hard work, but he was happy to promote this article to a high level because he had found the starting point to cause trouble.

Tian Yi was surprised to find that Wan Li showed a rare smile. He secretly glanced at the proclamation that the emperor was holding, and he instantly felt something bad.

He had already read through these articles before, and he still had fresh memories of the three strategies presented by Changzhou students.

Tian Yi quickly said: "Your Majesty, you need to be careful when handling court proceedings."

Wan Li smiled and nodded: "Of course I know, Tian Daban, remember my instructions!"

Didn’t the courtiers want him to listen? He just listens!

……

"Xunbao" newspaper office.

Xu Xueju walked to Wang Wenlong's desk with a smile on his face and felt a little embarrassed: "Jianyang, our "Xunbao" profit this month has been calculated, and it is fifty taels higher than last month."

Wang Wenlong smiled and said: "We can't deliberately control the booming sales of newspapers."

Xu Xueju said: "I never imagined that our chief envoy, Si Yamen, would one day have a headache because of too much money."

The "Xunbao" has been published in Fuzhou for its fourth month. It has issued eleven issues, and the sales volume has gradually increased to about [-] copies per issue.

Books these days can only print two to three thousand copies per edition. Books that are not easy to sell can only be digested after selling enough for half a year.

In comparison, you can see how amazing the sales figures of "Xun Bao" are.

This is only because "Xunbao" is so cost-effective. "Xunbao" has now developed to have three fixed columns in each issue and twelve pages, including: current affairs news, business information, novels, literature and art sections, and entertainment sections.

Even without adding pages, each newspaper has at least [-] words, and three newspapers have [-] words.

The price of such a "Xunbao" is eighty cents, which is equivalent to two or three days' salary of an ordinary family.

Don't think the price is expensive, it's actually quite cost-effective.

At this time, a large novel had between [-] and [-] words, and the price of such a book was at least two taels of silver. A novel was divided into more than ten volumes, and each volume also required more than [-] words to write. Buy it.

The printing quality of such novels is often worrying, and there are a lot of clichés about wheels in them. In contrast, the articles selected by "Xunbao" are short, concise, novel and interesting.

Wang Wenlong also specially asked the editorial department to select works that suit people of all cultural levels, many of which are both interesting and easy to read.

The whole purpose was to attract the largest consumers of books on the market at that time - a large number of small landowners, small businessmen and citizens with low levels of education.

During the Wanli period, when novels were flourishing, the situation of "selling ancient books was not as good as selling contemporary texts, and selling contemporary texts was not as good as selling novels" was created by these people who only had low-level cultural levels.

They cannot understand classics and knowledge, and are not interested in things that are too complicated. Reading is to satisfy their strong entertainment needs and their desire to understand the outside world.

"Xunbao" was easier to attract these readers than most novels on the market at this time.

The martial arts novels, market novels, and various market news serialized in "Xunbao" fascinated the people who were exposed to this kind of entertainment product for the first time.

Some businessmen who came to Fuzhou City for business met newspaper sellers on the streets and bought a copy out of interest. After reading it, they couldn't put it down.

Some rich farmers and small landowners who went to the city to go to the market also read newspapers with gusto after buying them at the market.

(End of this chapter)