I

  Chapter 673 670 [In the name of filial piety, foot binding is prohibited]

   "Xin Ke Jinshi was knocked out by the fruit?" Zhao Han couldn't help laughing.

  Song Yingxing said: "It's not that he was knocked unconscious by the fruit, but fell from the horse in shock and fell on the ground."

  Zhao Han asked: "Is there any serious problem?"

  Song Yingxing said: "It's all right."

  After the resumption of the imperial examination, the minds of the scholars are settled, even though many of them are not qualified to take the exam. But you can educate your children. The gentry, wealthy businessmen, and wealthy businessmen are all crazy about spending money to train their offspring.

  The new education system and the way officials are selected have been adapted to by people all over the country.

  In their minds, elementary school is the former social studies, and primary school graduates correspond to children. Middle school is the former county school, and middle school graduates correspond to scholars. Universities are Fuxue and Guozijian, and university graduates correspond to Juren.

  The appointment of officials is the same as before, except that it starts from the eighth and ninth ranks.

   Officials are selected and appointed, they must be Tongsheng or Juren, and they must take a public examination before they can take up the post. Literary officials and soap officials, regardless of their superiority or inferiority, can be promoted upwards, and they can even be officials.

   It seems that the changes are not big, but they are actually very important.

  The decline in the rank of Jinshi sent to outsiders can make officials more capable of governing. The diploma and examination requirements for officials broke the local control of the family of small officials, made it easier for the chief official to govern, and strengthened the imperial court's control over the local area.

  The price is the rise of administrative costs!

   Many officials in the Ming Dynasty were not paid by the government. They make a living by corrupting the law and exploiting the people, and now they all need the government to pay their salaries, which is equivalent to adding to the salary expenditure of countless civil servants.

   In addition, each county has many primary schools, and the expenditure on grassroots education is also very large. Some poor counties have complained to their superiors about their poverty.

Li Banghua said: "Taxes at the county level should be reserved for local governments. Especially in poor counties where business is not booming and mountainous, rural primary schools and county and town officials have already defaulted on their salaries. In some places, they have It has been in arrears for several years, and only three to five months of salary are paid every year. This situation was reported by the inspector of the clean government, and the local governments at all levels have not reported it to the higher authorities.”

  Zhao Han also read the report of the Inspector of Integrity, and agreed: "Then give the local government an extra 10% of taxes."

  Zhao Han took out another secret report, which was sent by Liaodong Secret Works, bypassing the court and directly delivered to the emperor: "Dorgon and Daishan are dead."

  Pang Chunlai opened his eyes suddenly: "Infighting?"

Zhao Han said with a smile: "Last winter, Daishan and Dorgon died of illness one after another. At the time when the puppet Empress Dowager and Daishan were fighting fiercely, the two suddenly died of illness. The river basin has become independent. Of course, Mandahai did not openly rebel, but only listened to the puppet Qing court and did not listen to the propaganda."

  Manchu Qing's actual control territory is already very small, and now it is divided into two, it is like a grasshopper after autumn.

  Pang Chun said: "Your Majesty, you can use troops in the Northeast."

   Zhao Han said: "Let all the ministries in Liaoning prepare for the expedition as soon as the rainy season is over."

  It is still March, and it will take time to send orders to Liaoning, and it will also take time to deliver military rations to Liaoning. It takes half a year to prepare for the expedition.

  Pang Chunlai said: "When the Tartars are destroyed, please allow the old officials to retire."

  Zhao Han thought for a while, nodded and said: "When the time comes, I will send someone to **** the teacher back to his hometown."

  Pang Chunlai has been in poor health for the past two years, and he really wants to go back to Liaodong to enjoy his old age. Although the bitter cold in Liaodong is not a place for the elderly, but after being away from home for many years, the dream is to return to the roots.

  Li Banghua then said: "Your Majesty, I am old and weak. After eradicating the Tartars, I also request to return to my hometown."

   "Mr. Li is growing old and strong, please spare no effort." Zhao Han symbolically persuaded him to stay.

   "Thank you, Your Majesty, for your respect." Li Banghua planned to ask three times and resign.

  He is really old, he is 76 years old this year. Secondly, he knew the emperor's thoughts, Pang Chunlai stayed to check and balance the Jiangxi officials. Once Pang Chunlai left, he, Li Banghua, had better follow suit.

  …

  A few days after the Qionglin Banquet ended, the Shu Jishi's examination began. Among the 197 Jinshi in the second and third grades, 15 were selected. They first went to the cabinet to observe politics and familiarize themselves with the situation, and then became relatively low-level Zhongshu Sheren, that is, ordinary clerical staff in the cabinet.

  From now on, all the people in Zhongshushe will be champions, second places, Tanhua and Shuji. Let them be familiar with state affairs from a high level, and then they will be sent to other places as deputy county officials, and they will be promoted back to the central court step by step.

   This is very different from the Ming Dynasty. This group of top scholars in the Ming Dynasty were directly thrown into the Imperial Academy. The first three are to compile books, read history, assist the cabinet or government affairs, give lectures to the emperor and prince, and then wait for the promotion of qualifications, and use Zhan Shifu as a springboard to be promoted to minister, minister, Cabinet ministers. As for the concubine scholars of the Ming Dynasty, the most powerful were the officials of science and Taoism, the second was the qualifications in the Imperial Academy and entered the six divisions, and the last was to be the magistrate of the local area.

  Both Zhang Cong and Zhang Juzheng were disgusted with this phenomenon. Among them, Zhang Cong was particularly rigid. He once threw most of the good scholars of a certain class into local officials, and offended a lot of people. As a result, Zhang Cong was hacked in various ways, and even became a villain in "Those Things in the Ming Dynasty".

  With the end of the Shu Jishi assessment, the future of the new Jinshi scholars has basically been finalized.

  In order to express themselves, the first thing they do is to speak to the emperor and put forward their own ideas on national policy.

"This Cui Wenxiu is interesting," Zhao Han said with a smile, "A Korean official insisted that Korea has been the territory of China since ancient times. Please first take back the three roads south of the Yalu River, saying that they are the homeland of the Yuan Dynasty... Haha, Very loyal."

  Li Xiangjun said: "Fanbang scholars, you should be more radical."

  Zhao Han picked up another memorial, only read a few paragraphs, then frowned, and asked: "Are there many women's feet bound in the folk?"

Li Xiangjun replied: "It was rare when I was young. I only heard that there were noble girls with bound feet in the village. Later, it gradually increased, especially when they were sold into brothels. Women in brothels often had feet bound. When I was sold by my relatives, it was over. At the age when the feet were bound, they were still forced by the mother (the madam) to bind their feet.”

  Zhao Han looked down and said, "I can't tell."

  Li Xiangjun said: "It's not too hard."

   "Take off your shoes and take a look." Zhao Han was rather curious.

   Li Xiangjun blushed and said, "Is it here?"

   "Yes." Zhao Han nodded.

  The female officials and palace maids next to each other buried their heads in sniggering, and Ding Shijing, who was in charge of daily life, read a book quickly.

  Zhao Han asked the court lady to move a stool, and Li Xiangjun sat down and took off his shoes and socks.

  Zhao Han stretched out his hand to pinch her ankle, raised her little foot and examined it carefully. The big toe is completely normal, and the other four toes are slightly smaller and slightly indented. On the whole, it is not deformed, and even has a slightly strange aesthetic feeling.

  Zhao Han asked: "Is there any kind of foot binding that hurts the bones?"

Li Xiangjun was flushed with embarrassment, and his chest was tense, and he replied: "I have indeed heard that some people make the feet of young girls become more severe for the sake of the three-inch golden lotus. In severe cases, the bones will be sprained, and even dislocated. .”

   "Are there many cases like this?" Zhao Han asked.

  Li Xiangjun shook his head: "It seems not many."

  Zhao Han picked up the memorial and sighed: "Now there are more and more."

  This memorial was written by Mao Fan, a Jinshi in Zhejiang Province. He denounced the phenomenon of foot binding becoming more and more popular, and it was becoming more and more deformed. He asked the emperor to order a nationwide ban on women's foot binding.

  The formation and spread of footbinding has nothing to do with Cheng-Zhu Neo-Confucianism, nor with the rule of the Qing Dynasty.

  Zhu Xi did not talk about foot binding, but his disciple Che Ruoshui denounced the phenomenon of women's foot binding, and said that foot binding originated from the Han and Tang Dynasties is pure nonsense.

  Foot binding was also banned many times after the Qing Dynasty entered the customs. As a result, the more banned it became, the more common it became. In the end, it had to be left alone. In the late Qing Dynasty, even Manchu women began to learn to bind their feet.

  You can look at the phenomenon of footbinding from the perspective of Western missionaries.

  Ricci in the late Ming Dynasty was not surprised by foot binding. Perhaps it was the footbinding in the late Ming Dynasty, which was not so deformed and was still within the acceptable range.

   During the Qianlong period, when the British envoy Macartney visited China, the British seemed very shocked. After investigation and inquiry, he learned that footbinding is a fashion for upper-class women, but for the convenience of working, very few women of lower class bound their feet, and it was similar in the northern and southern provinces. However, the closer one is to Beijing, the more ordinary women bind their feet, and it has become an act of pursuit of status and fashion.

From Macartney's records, we can infer two points: first, footbinding had not been fully spread to the middle and lower classes during the Qianlong period; It is a symbol of the family entering the upper class.

  Only a few decades after Macartney's visit to China, footbinding in the late Qing Dynasty was everywhere, even the daughters of rural landlords had tiny feet.

   That is to say, it took only a few decades for foot binding to be popularized from top to bottom. Don't talk about footbinding as anti-Qing. There may have been such factors in the beginning, but the great development of footbinding was in the middle and late Qing Dynasty, and this has absolutely nothing to do with anti-Qing.

  Zhao Han read the memorial carefully, and found that the specific situation was not clearly written, so he asked Mao Fan to come to see him.

   "Minister Mao Fan, pay homage to Your Majesty!" Mao Fan clasped his hands, very excited, unexpectedly he was summoned because he asked for a ban on foot binding.

  Zhao Han asked: "Are you from Zhejiang?"

  Mao Fan replied: "Reporting to Your Majesty, I am from Jiashan County, Jiaxing Prefecture. He graduated from Hangzhou University and ranked 16th among the top three in this subject."

  Zhao Han suddenly smiled, he likes the scholars cultivated by the new education: "There are many women with bound feet in Jiashan?"

Mao Fan replied carefully: "Jiashan County is located between Jiaxing Prefecture and Songjiang Prefecture, and the county seat is located on the edge of the canal. After Shanghai opened the sea and built a port, countless goods from northern Zhejiang have to be transported to Shanghai through Jiashan, so the business is getting better. Prosperity. There are also many people who have become rich because of business, and those rich families follow the example of gentry to bind their daughters' feet, and regard this as an upper-class tutor to follow."

   Okay, too much money is causing trouble.

Mao Fan continued: "I don't know where it came from, but the binding of feet is getting tighter and tighter. These rich merchants are extremely face-saving and think that the smaller the binding of their daughters, the more authentic they are, so they learn the new foot-binding method one after another. Even, There are also bound women in the county town, and rich families pay a lot of money to bind their daughter's feet. I once saw with my own eyes that a young girl of a classmate was bound so that the bones of her feet were completely misaligned, and her feet were red, swollen and pus-filled. Instead, her father used this to show off His family education is strict and his family is elegant."

   "It's really hateful!" Zhao Han said angrily.

  Mao Fan said: "Foot binding is an elegant thing. Everyone loves the golden lotus feet. But if they are bound to hurt the muscles and bones, it will not only spoil the scenery, it is simply abhorrent!"

  The mainstream foot-binding method in the Ming Dynasty was divided into two schools, the North and the South.

  Northern foot binding does not even need to bend the toes, it just needs to be more slender. Foot binding in the south requires the four toes to be buckled inwards, which is slightly deformed, but still does not harm the body.

  The entanglement method that hurts the muscles and bones began in the late Ming Dynasty and spread widely in the middle of the Qing Dynasty.

  Zhao Han asked: "What reason do you think should be used to prohibit women's footbinding?"

   Mao Fan said: "It hurts the peace of heaven."

  Zhao Han shook his head: "Haven't you read the "Book of Filial Piety"? The body is hairy and skinned, and it is the beginning of filial piety. Xiangjun!"

   "The minister is here." Li Xiangjun stepped forward.

  Zhao Han said: "Preparation of an edict. Women who bind their feet to the point of damaging their bodies will be regarded as unfilial daughters. They must not study, be an official, or marry an official! Their husbands cannot obtain a franchise license, and they will be taken back immediately once they are found!"

  Zhao Han likes to use magic to defeat magic. He is very comfortable with Cheng Zhu Neo Confucianism, and he is also very comfortable with Confucian classics.

  The "Book of Filial Piety" says so, of course it is an unfilial daughter who binds her feet, even if her parents allow it.

  Nowadays, footbinding is still limited to wealthy families. Once footbound women are not allowed to study, become officials, marry officials, or even marry businessmen with franchise rights, look at those **** fathers who dare to bind their daughters’ feet!

   Moreover, it is difficult for them to get married if they are labeled as unfilial daughters.

  As for the disabled women whose feet have been bound, sorry, we have to sacrifice them. Fortunately, there are not many of them at this time.

  (end of this chapter)