In the middle of the Northern Song Dynasty, the country's decline was fully revealed, especially the problem of "redundant soldiers, redundant officials, and redundant expenses", which ushered in the haze of this dynasty, which was already fluctuating in the wind and rain.
In order to revive this decaying dynasty, during the Shenzong period, Wang Anshi vigorously promoted new laws, and his changes also severely impacted the internal mechanism of the Zhao and Song dynasties.
However, Wang Anshi's changes have also caused him to suffer a lot of criticism, and to this day, the academic community still shows a polarized evaluation of him.
Why is this happening? This requires us to start from Wang Anshi's life and see a different Wang Anshi.
In 1021 AD, Wang Anshi was born in Qinghe County, Linjiang Military Mansion, which is today's Zhangshu City, Jiangxi Province.
His father is a well-known local scholarly family, and his father Wang Yishi is also a local judge.
In addition, he has been smart since he was a child, so when he was still young, Wang Anshi was already able to write and write, and when he was older, he followed his father to travel all over the country and increased a lot of knowledge.
Therefore, in the second year of Qingli, when Wang Anshi was 22 years old, he went to Kaifeng to participate in the examination, and was admitted to the Jinshi with quite excellent results and became a civil servant of the Song Dynasty.
After being admitted to the civil service, ** will arrange jobs for these talents, Wang Anshi was named the judge of Huainan Jiedu at that time, which can be regarded as following his father's path.
During his tenure, Wang Anshi has always been conscientious, and his merits were enough to pass the Beijing examination to enter the pavilion, but Wang Anshi's ambition is not in this.
Later, Wang Anshi was transferred to the magistrate of Yinxian County, which was an official position closer to the people.
According to historical records, seven days after Wang Anshi took office, he went to the local area non-stop to investigate, and spent 19 days traveling all over the 14 townships in the east and west to conduct in-depth investigation and research.
And left a large number of works during the tour, and many of the poems we are familiar with were also left at this time.
Through this investigation, Wang Anshi found three problems in Yin County, the first is the problem of people's livelihood, the ancient productivity was low, and the people had to rely on the sky for food, so in case of drought or waterlogging, it will cause extremely serious losses.
And as for the secondYinxian County is an area highly dependent on farmland, but because of the imperfection of water conservancy facilities, there has been a very serious drought and flood disaster.
The third, is a talent problem that has plagued Yinxian County for a long time, and before, Yinxian County did not even have a ready-made talent.
After that, Wang Anshi introduced the first policy to improve people's livelihood after taking office, which is "lending grain to the people", the so-called lending grain to the people, literally.
That is, when the farmers have a bad harvest and the green and yellow are not harvested, the first will issue loans to these people, and when the people have a good harvest, they will repay the loans.
This measure has indeed brought a lot of convenience to the people and improved people's livelihood to a certain extent.
However, soon after, Yinxian County ushered in a very serious drought year, the people's lives were extremely difficult, in order to solve the problem of drought, Wang Anshi decided to implement the "big dredging to control the river canal" strategy.
The so-called "Great Dredging River Canal" is to organize the people to build water conservancy measures to solve the drought problem.
In just one year, 21 water conservancy measures have been built in Yinxian County, and the most representative achievement is the construction of Dongqian Lake and other seven townships of drought and flood disasters.
And this initiative also successfully solved the second problem, and later, Wang Anshi also responded to the call of **, searched for the old man in the mountains and fields, and worked tirelessly to find five well-educated people.
And asked these five gentlemen to teach in Yin County, and it was at this time that Jinshi began to officially appear in Yin County, and a large number of talents entered the imperial court.
And these talents who successfully passed the examination and entered the imperial court will in turn build their hometown and promote the all-round development of Yinxian County.
His reforms also brought about some far-reaching changes in the local area, however, Wang Anshi was soon transferred to Shuzhou to be judged, and it was here that Wang Anshi also gave full play to his talents.
Later, because of his outstanding political achievements, he was recommended to Renzong by Wen Yanbo, the prime minister of the dynasty, on the grounds of "indifferent to fame and fortune", and Renzong also had plans to promote Wang Anshi.
However, in the face of fame and fortune, Wang Anshi obviously looked further, and he said that his promotion to skipping the rank may cause this evil wind to blow across the country.
Therefore, he politely declined the proposal. There is a good saying, gold will shine when it reaches **. Later, because of Wang Anshi's outstanding political achievements, even Ouyang Xiu recommended Wang Anshi to be promoted to an official.
However, Wang Anshi refused on the grounds that his grandmother was old and needed to be taken care of. Later, Wang Anshi served as the governor of Changzhou and became close friends with Zhou Dunyi.
Zhou Dunyi is the lyricist who wrote "The Love of Lotus", his personality is very similar to Wang Anshi, they are not limited to fame and fortune, so the two talked very happily.
Later, as Wang Anshi's position was further promoted, he wrote a book on his own experience in the past few years as an official, and submitted it to Emperor Renzong, which opened the curtain of controversial reforms.
As mentioned above, the Northern Song Dynasty had a serious problem of "redundant soldiers, redundant officials, and redundant expenses", and in order to solve this problem, Wang An wrote the "Book of Words of Emperor Shangrenzong" with more than 10,000 words.
In this book, Wang Anshi summed up his experience in governing Yin County, and systematically put forward the idea of changing the law.
As for the main point of the book, it is necessary for politicians to follow the path of the ancient sages, change the legal system, and bring in more talents, so as to raise talents to a higher position.
It can be said that Wang Anshi's idea is very advanced, and he wants to use this way to change the situation of poverty and weakness in the Northern Song Dynasty.
However, this reform proposal was difficult for Song Renzong to accept, because once he wanted to change, it would mean repudiating the law of his ancestors. Therefore, Song Renzong's refusal was also expected.
However, Song Renzong also knew that Wang Anshi was a virtuous minister with governance talents, so soon after, he gave Wang Anshi many times to appreciate.
But without exception, Wang Anshi refused. At that time, many people thought that Wang Anshi had no intention of refusing fame and fortune, so he was also very sorry for such a talent.
But judging from Wang Anshi's later resignation, there may be other reasons. One of the most critical is that Wang Anshi's ideas were denied and excluded in the court.
This matter has to start with Wang Anshi's tenure in Jixian Yuan, at that time, according to the regulations of the imperial court, the Sheren Yuan could not delete or change the text of the edict.
Wang Anshi reported this issue to the imperial court, but this caused the displeasure of the court elders. After that, Wang Anshi was targeted everywhere.
In the end, the dispute ended with Wang Anshi's resignation. After that, Wang Anshi stayed in Jiangning for four years, and it was not until later, after Song Shenzong ascended the throne, that Wang Anshi re-entered the office.
Compared with Song Renzong, Song Shenzong obviously valued Wang Anshi more. With the support of Song Shenzong, Wang Anshi implemented the Xining Reform, and Song Shenzong turned Wang Anshi's concept into reality.
In the early days of the reform, Wang Anshi was appointed to the same Zhongshu Sect as the Pingzhang Shi, and his actual status was similar to that of the prime minister, and then he vigorously promoted a variety of new laws such as the Equalization Law, the Qingmiao Law, and the Shiyi Law.
However, in that era when the feudal forces controlled the imperial court, we can guess that after presiding over the reform movement, Wang Anshi became the person the feudal forces wanted to get rid of the most.
We all know that the best way to pour dirty water on a person is to magnify his shortcomings.
But Wang Anshi is a bit terrible to be honest, he is not lustful, and he only married the wife of the Wu family in his life. As for money, let alone accepting bribes, when he resigned, he didn't even dare to bring a bed in order to avoid people's ears.
Even the big families can't quit drinking, and he can't touch it. The only shortcoming is that he does not pay attention to hygiene, and therefore, later, the old school who really can't find the shortcomings will attack Wang Anshi on the grounds that he does not pay attention to hygiene.
There is a small allusion that is widely spread in history, saying that Wang Anshi often does not take a bath, so there are a lot of fleas on his body.
Once, he was discussing with Song Shenzong, and suddenly a flea jumped out of Wang Anshi's body, which made Song Shenzong laugh.
This matter is not groundless, and it can be seen from many historical documents that have been handed down that it is said that "Wang Jinggong is simple and straightforward, and does not embellish and serve." ”In addition, Wang Anshi's complexion is dark and he doesn't like to take a bath, so he naturally has a smell on his body.
Because Wang Anshi did not pay attention to the problem of hygiene, his wife was also very disgusted, and when Wang Anshi resigned, his wife took it home because she was reluctant to put a chair.
Later, ** sent someone to ask for it, but Wu insisted on not giving it, and in desperation, Wang Anshi thought of a way and rolled around the chair, and Wu let go.
It can be seen from this that Wang Anshi is so stubborn, he can resign without hesitation for his own ideas, and he can also endure the scolding of everyone to maintain his own life habits.
And in addition to the personal shortcoming of not liking to take a bath, Wang Anshi is a very capable and honest official, so later Song Shenzong also asked, can Wang Anshi be regarded as a saint with good conduct?
But because Cheng Hao and Wang Anshi's concepts are different, he replied, how can he be called a saint if he can't even handle personal hygiene? It is true that Wang Anshi has some shortcomings, but this does not completely negate his contributions.