Chapter 326: The Standard Silver

Zhu Youjian absorbed the news, but his eyes drifted unconsciously over a short passage he had just finished writing.

*Investigating Things: A Primer — On Thunder and Lightning*

Question: Little ones, in a summer thunderstorm, why do we always see the lightning first and hear the thunder later?

Could it be that Lord Thunder's hammer falls too slowly, while Lady Lightning's mirror flashes too fast?

And how can we tell how far away Lord Thunder is when he strikes?

Listen closely as I explain: everything in this world, whether light or sound, must travel a path before it reaches our eyes and ears... Looking at this passage, so colloquial it could even be called utterly devoid of literary grace, Zhu Youjian felt rather torn between laughter and tears.

That book he had casually thrown together, *The World Under the Microscope*, was really just a crude description of various bacteria and tiny bugs.

Counting the characters, even at the most generous estimate, it was only a few tens of thousands.

Yet in the end, it had fetched the astronomical price of six hundred seventy thousand taels at auction.

If one calculated the payment by those six hundred seventy thousand taels, that came to roughly a dozen taels of silver per character.

Following this math, he looked down at the hundred-odd-character passage he had been halfway through writing.

In just this short span of time, had a thousand taels not just flowed into the accounts?

If money came this easily, why was he exhausting himself pushing through all these new policies? He might as well just hole up in the inner palace and save the nation through writing.

Write a few thousand characters a day, bring in tens of thousands of taels daily — in a few short months, the Great Ming would be invincible under heaven.

After a small, silent grumble to himself, Zhu Youjian reached out for that auction briefing and leafed through it himself.

Gao Shiming stood respectfully to one side, yet he would not let the atmosphere in the Warmth Chamber grow cold.

Bowing slightly, he turned toward the Empress, Zhou Yu, and spoke with a smile:

"Your Majesty the Empress may not be aware,"

"but this Wu Jinbo was already near the top of that list."

"This transaction of his, carried out at any cost, means either word of the matter leaked, or he grew wary on his own and sensed something." "But however you look at it, his life is ultimately worth this price."

The hand Zhou Yu held her brush with paused slightly; only then did sudden understanding dawn.

This "list" Gao Shiming spoke of was not, in fact, the ranking of capital-debt merchants that the the capital Tax Office was currently compiling.

The latter was merely a "subset" of this list.

This list contained the names of ennobled merit lords, civil officials, inner-court eunuchs, military officers, merchants, and even the estate managers of the various imperial manors.

All of them were people who, as the new policies rolled out, shouted "Long live His Majesty" on the surface, yet in private still clung to their original intentions, or who had relaxed halfway and returned to the path of corruption and graft.

The Grand Court Assembly convened once a month; the dozen or so "chickens" paraded out for execution and property confiscation were, in truth, only a small fraction of this "vast flock of chickens."

The true "flock," after the court had deliberately or inadvertently slowed the pace somewhat, had in fact quietly begun to gather and swell once more.

This matter concerned internal governance; although Zhou Yu knew the general outline, she also deeply understood the bottom line that the rear palace must not interfere in politics.

She lowered her eyes, simply continued tracing lines on the paper, and kept her mouth shut.

Inside the Warmth Chamber, silence fell all at once.

Only the soft rustle of Zhu Youjian turning the pages of the booklet remained.

The first auction's contents were not that extensive — a dozen or so auction items in all — and Zhu Youjian quickly finished leafing through all the briefings. His eyes lowered slightly, his mind already racing.

This auction had exposed many problems.

For instance, that Zhang Wenshan had actually invested nearly two hundred thousand taels to purchase the microscope patent.

A merchant's mind is ever driven by profit — was he planning, as he had in the publishing business, to play that game of "a thing is valued in proportion to its rarity," hoarding goods to corner the market?

If he were truly allowed to drive the price up, would it affect the promotion of microscopes across the realm?

Could the officials under his command notice this potential deviation from expectations in the process ahead and intervene preemptively? And then there was that merchant who had offered a base price of four thousand taels and ultimately won the bid for the dormitory construction project.

The briefing specifically noted that standing behind this merchant was none other than Wuqing Marquis Li Chengming.

This deal was, perhaps, a small gesture of sincerity that Li Chengming was presenting to the court in the aftermath of that storm over "clearing the fields in Baodi — is the Wuqing Marquis cleared or not?"

Since the other party had bowed his head and made a statement, the new policies ought to respond to this sincerity in kind — otherwise, who would dare bow their head in the future?

Could the Committee and the Secretariat capture this point and deliver an appropriate response?

All manner of thoughts raced through his mind at lightning speed, but in the end, Zhu Youjian still said nothing.

He placed the briefing gently on the imperial desk, his expression calm. "I understand."

"Handle it according to the established procedures. Have the specific plans for each stage approved by the Committee and the Secretariat before submitting them up."

He did not directly issue any concrete instructions for handling the matter.

Since a system had been established, the system must be allowed to operate on its own.

Otherwise, if he attended to every matter personally, he would sooner or later work himself to death upon the dragon throne.

Gao Shiming nodded, then lowered his head and retreated backward out of the Warmth Chamber.

Only when the door curtain fell did Zhu Youjian turn around, the imposing pressure between his brows dissipating, replaced by a warm smile:

"A trifling matter — pay them no mind."

"Let us first finish writing today's chapter."

He strolled over to Zhou Yu's side, glanced down at the draft on her desk, and could not help but laugh:

"It seems you have quite surpassed the master in capturing the essence of these comics."

On the drawing paper was no traditional ink-wash landscape, but a little figure — head large, body small, lines simple yet brimming with vivid expression — energetically demonstrating a scene of thunder and lightning.

(Attached image: the lines should actually be even simpler, and the drawing style not this mature; just take this as a rough idea.)

Zhou Yu's cheeks flushed slightly; a little embarrassed, she set down her brush and said softly:

"Your Majesty is teasing your consort again."

"This sort of drawing technique, after all, is not fit for refined company. A master of the caliber of Master Chen would perhaps scorn to put effort into such things." But at this, Zhou Yu looked at the little figure on the paper, and a glint of fondness flashed in her eyes:

"Yet this style of drawing is truly adorable and charming, and quite beloved by the younger eunuchs and palace maids."

"This consort does not know if she is with child, but when drawing these, I truly do feel a certain natural ease."

Zhu Youjian heard this, gently shook his head, reached out and drew Zhou Yu's shoulders close, looked at the draft drawings on the table, and said with earnest amusement:

"Skill is skill — what high or low, noble or base distinction is there?"

"Can a painting fit for a hall of high refinement accomplish the work of scientific enlightenment?"

"The simplest skill, placed where it is rightly used, is a fine skill indeed."

Before long, the Emperor and Empress's warm domestic interlude came to an end.

Around three in the afternoon, the Empress set off for the women's and children's hospital to begin her daily routine of work.

By now, the nursing attendants — drawn from palace maids and midwives — as well as physicians selected from among the gynecological profession, were all fully in place and undergoing collective study of the various rules and regulations.

Once this period of training concluded, the hospital could formally open to the public and begin using data to prove whether the new methods of midwifery were truly superior.

On the Emperor's side, after tidying himself up briefly, he at last permitted Wu Cheng'en — who had been waiting outside the hall since the noon hour — to set foot inside this modest palace for the third time in his life.

After the formal obeisance, Zhu Youjian leaned back against his chair and spoke with a beaming smile:

"Sit."

Wu Cheng'en hastened to sit down gingerly, mustering every last shred of his attention.

During the long wait, he had already worked out a host of contingency plans.

What should he do if the Emperor simply repaid the debt outright?

What should he do if the Emperor, following the precedent of the Wanli reign, appointed each of his sons as a Secretariat Drafter?

Yet no matter how much mental preparation he had done, no matter how many drafts he had rehearsed in his mind, he had never anticipated that the Emperor would be so direct.

Zhu Youjian opened his mouth and dropped a thunderbolt:

"Wu Cheng'en, what do you want?"

"Do you wish to be the richest man for a hundred li around, a grand merchant laden with silver? Or do you wish to serve all under Heaven, an appointed official of the court who brings blessing to his native soil?"

A buzzing roar filled Wu Cheng'en's head. He froze on the spot.

What sort of question was this?

Let him choose? Was he even worthy?

As his thoughts raced furiously, in the very instant he dropped to his knees, he had already composed his entire reply:

"This commoner is a mere illiterate. In former days, when the times were harsh, I was unfortunate enough to stray onto a crooked path, weighing every matter by the smallest fraction of a tael."

"Only when the wind of the New Policies began to blow, sweeping away the gloom, did this commoner — like parched earth meeting sweet rain at last — behold the bright and cloudless day." "This commoner once believed all crows under Heaven were black; now I know at last that in Your Majesty's hands, this world can yet be remade, that a day of purity restored can truly come!" "Amid the thunderclap of this all-encompassing renewal, this commoner dares not presume to speak of seeking office, still less to prate of wealth and rank."

"All this commoner thinks of, all he longs for, is simply to offer what feeble strength he has, at this moment when a hundred boats race upon the current."

"For the Great Ming, for all under Heaven… and for Your Majesty!"

Again with this!

Zhu Youjian rolled his eyes, his patience wearing thin.

This was precisely why, having met Wu Cheng'en twice, he still placed the man on his list of "chickens" marked for the butcher's knife.

For the affairs of the old policies, he needed slippery, steady-handed types like Huang Liji to hold the situation in check.

For the affairs of the New Policies, what he needed were fierce commanders of thunderous resolve.

Men like Xue Guoguan, like Li Shiqi, like Yuan Jixian, like Sun Chuanting, like Lu Xiangsheng — these were all men he favored precisely because they were capable and dared to fight. Conversely, men like Yang Sichang or Bi Ziyan, though he remembered them as well, were downgraded a tier in his regard because their mettle fell short. The Yongchang Emperor, in employing men, did consult the histories, but he did not take the histories as his sole standard; he placed greater weight on the spirit of daring that showed through a man's conduct. And the first time he had summoned Wu Cheng'en, it had been to discuss how the 780,000 taels the Tianqi Emperor owed him ought to be repaid.

But the man had been terrified out of his wits, his mind filled with nothing but the conviction that the Emperor meant to use this pretext to ruin his family and destroy his house.

Throughout the entire audience, apart from kowtowing, all Wu Cheng'en did was beg for punishment — and in the middle of it, trembling and quaking, he even tried to offer up another fifty thousand taels as a donation.

— This was nothing short of an insult to him!

And so in the end, no substantive outcome whatsoever was reached.

The second time, it was because Zhu Youjian, in consideration of Wu Cheng'en's voluntary donation of silver for road-building, gave him another chance.

He had Gao Shiming chase after him and instruct him to submit a written "Account of Merchant Bribery and Official and Clerical Corruption in the Course of Commercial Tax Collection."

When this document was submitted, it did at last show some glimmer of promise.

Wu Cheng'en had not only catalogued the various forms of corruption in commercial tax collection, but had also, with remarkable precision and from the merchant's perspective, laid out why "paying bribes" was far more profitable than "paying taxes according to the statutes."

The accounts were clearly reckoned, the reasoning thoroughly expounded.

But it was still not enough.

The document contained virtually no "countermeasures."

Its depiction of corruption stopped almost at the faintest touch, never daring to involve any specific ministry, bureau, or personal name.

Even the various illustrative examples were all vaguely worded — "a certain Zhang," "a certain official in a certain place."

Zhu Youjian understood perfectly well that this was an entirely normal response.

To put it plainly, it was fear.

The merchant's innate fear of the bureaucracy — and still more, the fear of retaliation for shattering the unspoken rules.

But the very thing one looked for in a statecraft memorial was precisely the courage to face that fear head-on.

After all, the various ills of the Great Ming, and even the remedies for those ills — so long as a man was neither blind nor a fool, so long as he had spent a few years in officialdom or the marketplace, anyone could rattle off the broad outlines.

If you could not, in your statecraft memorial, ruthlessly sever yourself from that filthy old world and deliver a genuine pledge of allegiance in solid deeds —

On what grounds should the collective of the New Policies admit you?

On the strength of this so-called statecraft memorial you have written?

Don't be absurd!

Do you truly imagine that what you have produced is Zhuge Liang's "Longzhong Stratagem" or Wang Meng's "Golden Dagger Plot"?

The statecraft memorial is the first threshold of the New Policies.

The level of theoretical understanding and insight into current affairs displayed within it is only the most basic requirement.

What matters far more is the attitude, the courage, the hunger… even the ambition, revealed in its pages!

It is in itself a form of social discipline, a remolding of political identity.

From top to bottom, the atmosphere and cohesion of the entire New Policies team began precisely with this kind of "cutting declaration" in statecraft documents.

Without even the nerve to offend people, how could one push through a New Policies program that faced resistance at every turn?

That was why Zhu Youjian had given Wu Cheng'en two chances in the past, yet he had seized neither.

Naturally, Zhu Youjian would no longer waste his attention on an old-era merchant who only knew how to chase profit and dodge risk.

The Yongchang Emperor was so busy every day his feet never touched the ground — where would he find the time to spend on an ordinary merchant?

But… then again!

What Old Wu had offered this time was simply too much. Six hundred seventy thousand taels of silver — no matter what, that was worth the Yongchang Emperor taking some time to treat seriously.

For the sake of those six hundred seventy thousand taels, Zhu Youjian spoke again, his face expressionless as he repeated the question from moments before.

"Wu Cheng'en."

"Do you want to be an official, or do you want to do business?"

The air in the warming chamber seemed to freeze solid.

No matter how foolish Wu Cheng'en might be, at this moment he understood completely.

He had almost no time to think; acting purely on instinct, he answered directly and without hesitation:

"This commoner wishes to serve as an official, to sweep away every obstacle to the New Policies for Your Majesty."

Zhu Youjian nodded, neither approving nor disapproving.

"Under the New Policies banner, entry depends on attitude, advancement depends on ability."

"Your attitude today is enough for me to give you one more chance."

"But how far you can go, and what position you can reach — that will depend on your ability."

He paused, then directly set the question:

"Standard silver."

"Standard as in benchmark; silver as in silver taels."

"On these two words, I grant you one ke, that is, fifteen minutes, to think. Right here, compose a statecraft policy essay." "You may choose any direction, design any method, without any constraint whatsoever."

Having spoken, Zhu Youjian turned his head and nodded to Gao Shiming, then looked at Wu Cheng'en no further.

He rose directly, lifted the door curtain, and passed into the inner hall, leaving Wu Cheng'en kneeling alone in place, facing this sudden examination question.

What was standard silver?

The character "standard" originally referred to merchants dealing in standard cloth.

Terms like standard merchants and standard firms initially all referred to the business of selling standard cloth — cloth of a standard size.

After Altan Khan received his title and the frontier markets were opened, the beacon fires along the Nine Borders gradually died down, the frontier grew peaceful day by day, and trade beyond the passes was able to develop steadily.

The standard cloth produced in abundance in Jiangnan mostly traveled north along the Grand Canal, sent to the Qin-Jin region, the various frontiers around the capital region, and Liaodong for sale.

Only the journey was long and the road far, and moreover in the middle and late periods of the dynasty, bandits and vermin ran rampant everywhere.

With this rigid demand for transporting bulk goods north and south, products like "standard security firms" and "standard guards" came into being as a matter of course.

To put it plainly, they were private armed groups responsible for protecting the transport of goods.

And under heaven, if one were to speak of the strongest private martial force, the standard guards of Linqing had to be ranked first.

In the forty-seventh year of Wanli, the great defeat at Sarhū shook the Ming court and the whole realm.

At that time, the matter of recruiting soldiers became the most urgent priority.

Some wanted to transfer troops from Shaanxi, some wanted to transfer native troops from the southwest, some wanted to transfer troops from Zhejiang.

But on a level equal to the various troop sources mentioned above, there were also censors who submitted memorials requesting that the court go to Linqing to recruit soldiers.

Their memorial stated:

"The people of Linqing make their living escorting standard merchants; they are practiced in martial affairs, and there is no one who is not so. For recruiting soldiers, there is no place like Linqing."

From this matter alone, one can see how abundant the martial virtue of the Linqing standard guards was.

And one can further see just how vibrant an ecosystem the Ming's north-south economic exchange and trade transport network truly was.

And the term "standard silver" was precisely a technical term that emerged as these trading activities steadily matured, gradually extending from the protection of goods to the escort of silver.

In that case…

Wu Cheng'en — this old fox who had scrapped and scrambled for decades in the world of commerce, and who had now used six hundred seventy thousand taels of silver to bluntly smash open the palace gates and trade for this examination question of "standard silver" —

In these brief fifteen minutes, how would he draft that statecraft policy essay that would decide his fate?

Old Wu, Old Wu.

Answer this question well, and in the long annals of history, your name will surely be there.

But if you answer poorly…

You will only be able to walk away with the title of imperial merchant, and spend the rest of your days staring at your millions in bitter regret.