During the Zhu Yuanzhang period, there was a supervisor named Yuan Kai, and once after seeing Zhu Yuanzhang, when he got home, he lay down next to his mud and ate dog shit. Yuan Kai was not mentally ill. Why eat dog poop? This is because he just went to see Zhu Yuanzhang in the morning, and then he had palpitations, he was afraid that Zhu Yuanzhang would kill him, so he pretended to be crazy and stupid to hide people's eyes. Why are you so afraid?
Zhu Yuanzhang took a list of death row prisoners and showed it to Supervision Officer Yuan Kai. The list was drawn up by Zhu Yuanzhang himself. However, Zhu Yuanzhang handed over the list to the crown prince Zhu Biao, and Zhu Biao deleted many people. Therefore, Zhu Yuanzhang asked me and the prince who was right and who was wrong. Yuan Kai had no choice but to reply: "Your Majesty enforces the law like Shandong Palace, and he is compassionate. This, of course, can be said to be two-pleased. But, in all fairness, what else can you say otherwise?
Zhu Yuanzhang is not a personable person, so he lost his temper on the spot and said, "You treacherous and cunning duplicity!" Hearing these words, Yuan Kai went home and hurriedly ate shit, in order to show the spies sent by Zhu Yuanzhang. There were already spies for Zhu Yuanzhang during his time. Dog poop is actually made with sugar mixed with fried noodles. This shit also helped Yuan Kai pick up a life. Dad is like this, and the other emperors of the Ming Dynasty also have a strong rogue temperament. We introduced Zhu Di in this issue of the Yongle Ceremony, after Zhu Di launched a coup d'état to seize the throne of his nephew, he turned all the families of his political enemies into slaves. These women were pregnant and gave birth, and Zhu Di was very happy to hear it, saying: "These illegitimate children have grown up and can continue to bring money." After Zhang Shi, the wife of Mao Dafang, another former minister of Jianwen, Zhang was 56 years old, and after he died, Zhu Di had the body carried out and pecked by the dogs. Ming Wuzong Zhu Houzhao chased ** and widows everywhere in Yangzhou City. Zhu Houzhao simply accepted hooligans as his son, and during his reign of more than ten years, he accepted more than 100 hooligans as godsons.
The emperors mentioned above were all models of hooligan governance. But this hooligan culture started from the Yuan Dynasty and originated from the Yuan Dynasty, and this despicable atmosphere was created from the Yuan Dynasty. Why is this so?
The Yuan Dynasty was an era of free speech. In the words of some historians, the Yuan Dynasty was the only dynasty since the Qin and Han dynasties that did not have ***. Kong Qi of the Yuan Dynasty recorded such an incident: Liang Dong, a relict of the Song Dynasty, was falsely accused by his enemy of writing a poem, and the enemy said that he "slandered the court and had the heart of the Song Dynasty", and the case was reached layer by layer, and finally the Ministry of Rites of the Yuan Dynasty said so, the poet was just chanting emotionality and expressing himself, how could he say that others were maliciously smearing it? What's more, even if it is a smear attack, how can it be that I can't tolerate it.
This is very representative of the attitude of the rulers of the Yuan Dynasty, under this attitude, the literary creation of the Yuan Dynasty was rarely interfered with, Zhu Yuanzhang's seventeenth son Zhu Quan once commented on the Yuan Dynasty Sanqu: There is the rule of Yongxi quickly, and the words are unscrupulous.
The attitude of the Yuan Dynasty towards Han Chinese intellectuals. In a word, it is not care, this lack of care has objectively contributed to the prosperity of literature in the Yuan Dynasty, and almost all the long-form works of the Ming and Qing dynasties, from Journey to the West, Water Margin to the Three Kingdoms to Bao Gong Opera, are all stereotyped and mature in the Yuan Dynasty.
However, the "incare" of the Yuan Dynasty caused a bigger problem, that is, the hooliganization of the whole country. What is hooliganism, hooliganism is a kind of despicable, or despicable temperament. The hooligan character began to blossom in full bloom among the low-level people, the literati, and the emperor.
The 98 years that the Yuan Dynasty ruled China are not long enough to say that they are not short, but they are not short either. This is because more than 90 years is equivalent to three generations, and three generations are enough to cultivate an unbreakable character. Not to mention that before the Yuan Dynasty, the Mongols had ruled northern China for many years. As a result, this hooliganism has been cultivated throughout the country. This has to talk about the system of the Yuan Dynasty.
Before the Mongols became a member of the big family of the Chinese nation, the Mongols were a conquering people. The first problem that comes with this conquering nation is that you don't agree with your original set of teachings. The Yuan Dynasty ruled over a vast territory, so you are just a small class of mine in China, and I still have a lot of classes to bring. The Mongols attacked cities and plundered land everywhere, and for a long time after the completion of the foreign conquest, the Mongols still maintained their steppe standard, with the north of Juyong as the interior, and the Central Plains as only the southeastern corner of the empire. It was never considered to manage the Han Emperor in the Central Plains for local matters. When he arrived at Ögedai, Yelu Chucai was in power, and he tried to change the situation, but still failed.
And even when Kublai Khan established the Yuan Dynasty, this thinking did not really change. In the third year of the Yuan Dynasty, Kublai Khan ascended the throne, and it has been 7 years, and Xu Heng wrote to discuss the practice of Han law. Xu Heng said this, for these Mongolian nobles, they don't know how many world powers they have conquered, and you Southern Song Dynasty is just one of them? Now let these Mongolian lords change to the customs of the dead country, how can they be willing? Even Genghis Khan, who was a great talent, also asked the soul, that is, these Han people only know how to write poems, what is the use of this? The Mongols conquered the world by force, and it was a frontal conquest, and it was not by others to open the back door for you, so what kind of checks and balances of power for your Han people, anti-corruption mechanism, trial separation, primogeniture, education power, in the face of my strong military, what is the use? Therefore, the Yuan Dynasty's leniency towards Han intellectuals does not mean that the Mongols themselves value the Central Plains culture, but conversely, because they do not value the Central Plains culture.
Mongolians are rough by nature, and they are frugal and fashionable, and they can't appreciate the crooked, trivial and delicate set of the Han people. But the problem is that rough and honest is good as a hero's character, but if you want to be a local governor, it will be bad. This is because management is really a delicate job, whether it is justice, administration, or finance, these things are not fine, can't they?
The top leaders sent by the Yuan Dynasty to various places were all Mongols, and the ruling quality of these ** was relatively poor. The vast majority of Mongolians** don't know Chinese at all, and they can't draw and sign, so they have to engrave seals. Some Mongolian nobles went to the local officials to write, and the Shu family wrote a seven-character hook, not from the right but from the left, and those who saw it laughed. But it was the Han officials under him who laughed, but not the ordinary people. The majority of ordinary people really can't laugh, because the darkness of the Yuan Dynasty government followed. The unjust prisons of the Yuan Dynasty are undoubtedly the pinnacle in history, and in the seventh year of the Yuan Dynasty alone, 5,176 unjust prisons were discovered. Those who have not been discovered are even more numerous.
As mentioned earlier, Mongolia has no intention of writing Chinese characters, and it is so troublesome to learn Chinese to write seven, so he is still the official of his bird. So in fact, it was all his subordinates who were in charge, so the common scene in the Yuan Dynasty was this: within a week, dozens of Mongol families were concentrated in the Zhoucheng official mansion, and the Mongols drank and had fun all day long, and only the Han officials were dealing with these small things. This led to the entry of hooligans into officialdom and the formation of a new social class, the powerful scoundrels.
Although the imperial examination system was briefly restored during the Yuan Dynasty, it was hereditary for most of the time, except for those Han Chinese who had made contributions during the early Korean conquests. Here is a talk about the Han people mentioned in this episode, including the Han people who originally lived in the women's area, as well as the original people of the Song Dynasty. The vast majority of Han people did not have the opportunity to be officials in the Yuan Dynasty, and in the process of the Mongol destruction of the Song Dynasty, the knowledge genes of the Han people were almost killed, and many of the remaining scholars returned to the Yuan Dynasty and refused to become officials.
In these cases, so those who want to seek a half-official position are mostly scoundrels in the market, we can only say that they use a lot, and we do not deny that there are also some honest and high-quality people among them. These scoundrels learn Mongolian and pretend to be Mongols in the government. This is because according to the regulations of the Yuan Dynasty, Han and Nanren could not serve as thieves, that is, Janissaries. But because of the privileges of stealing Xue, many Han people want to become thieves in every possible way. Many Han Chinese pretended to be Mongols to hunt for official positions. They gave Mongolian names, which is why Zhu Yuanzhang later wanted to enter Hu Ming and go to Hu customs.
This imitates the living habits of the Mongol Semu people, so much so that in the period of Emperor Yuan Shun, even Han men were not allowed to learn the Mongolian Semu script. The Han Chinese in the north often posed as Mongols to act as Daru Huachi, the highest local governor and in simple terms the current party secretary. Therefore, the emperor of the Yuan Dynasty issued three orders to strictly prohibit Han men and privet Khitans to act as Daru Huachi, and they would be dismissed if they found out. But these measures did not work, because most of the Han Chinese who pretended to be concubines Xue and Daru were scoundrels and of low quality. Once in power, it will be even more blatant to reverse black and white, fish and meat people, after all, this is their ideal from the beginning. This kind of system can only screen out people who are good at studying and have a rogue temperament. Therefore, the entry of the Yuan Dynasty into the Central Plains brought about a complete change in the atmosphere.