Chapter 83: Companion Gao, Are There… That Kind of… Book?

Zhu Youjian sat upright behind the imperial desk, carefully reading the answer papers that had just been collected.

Earlier in Wuying Hall, time had been too rushed, and he had only managed to select one for a close reading.

Now, during the interval while Xue Guoguan was entering the palace, he could calm his mind and peruse them in detail.

Among these answer papers, apart from a very small number still playing that game of empty, flashy rhetoric, the great majority were extremely concrete and detailed — they truly justified that performance of his.

Zhu Youjian turned the pages one by one, his gaze utterly impassive.

One answer paper wrote of the capital; though it used the standard Guange script, in certain characters the ink flew and the brush grew hasty — indignation, one might say, spilled across the page.

It read: in the winter of the fifth year of Tianqi, he was in the capital preparing for the examinations, and unable to bear the cold, wished to go out and buy charcoal.

Yet he saw that on the street outside his gate, carriages and horses streamed endlessly; a crowd of people carrying food boxes had blocked the entire street so tightly that not a drop of water could pass.

He had thought some major event had occurred, but after pulling aside a bystander to ask, he learned that these were all servants of the great households within the city.

What those carriages and horses bore was gold and silver; what those food boxes carried was jewels and treasure.

And that day happened to be the time for Lantern Festival gifts — all these people were going to pay their respects to the officials of the Troops and Horses Office.

The man wrote indignantly at the end:

"Beside that street stands the Shuntian Prefectural School. We, the host of assiduous students, study bitterly by the cold window — seeing this scene day after day, what are we to think in our hearts?"

"The Sage said, 'The gentleman understands righteousness; the petty man understands profit.' Yet now the petty men sit high in the temple halls, while gentlemen fade into the wilderness — what sort of age is this, after all?"

How sharp those words are…

Though in the midst of it, one wonders whether there is not a touch of resentment that others got to be corrupt, while he, remarkably, did not.

And, my young friend, those "gentlemen" you believe in — I fear they too wish to be corrupt; only perhaps they corrupt a little less, and with somewhat more refined table manners.

Zhu Youjian showed no reaction and picked up the next one.

The author of this answer paper drew his examples from what he had seen on a long journey to Liaodong.

He did not analyze the Liaodong military situation at great length, nor did he expound upon loyalty and righteousness with impassioned fervor; he simply described, in plain and straightforward terms, the scenes he had witnessed in the Liaodong garrison towns.

"The residences of the Liaodong officers and generals are of grand and imposing structure, surpassing all others in the city; gate beyond gate, chamber beyond chamber, resplendent in gold and jade, carved in strange and fantastic shapes, with patterned walls and whitewashed fences — lavish to the utmost extreme."

"From the Battle of Sarhu to the present, in these ten years, the court has expended tens of millions of taels of silver, yet Liaodong remains rotted and ruined to this degree."

"On the meager salary of a military officer, how can such extravagance be sustained? Behind this, can there be no embezzlement of troop pay, annexation of land, false reporting and fraudulent claims?"

At the very end of the answer paper, only one brief judgment remained: "That the Liaodong enterprise cannot succeed — one look at these grand mansions suffices to know it."

Though still somewhat too naive, to have gone to Liaodong in person and to have perceived the problem of the officers and generals — this already counts as a middling work.

Zhu Youjian's gaze lingered long on this final line; he continued turning the pages.

In yet other answer papers, the writers perhaps had never traveled far, but their gaze was cast toward the more minute details of the countryside.

"In every market town today, there are sure to be crafty and cunning fellows who lead a host of idle rogues, either opening gambling dens or laying swindling traps, preying upon the villages."

"When they encounter monks and Daoists chanting sutras, they go door to door extorting incense money by force; when they meet a festival procession, they coerce the common villagers into pooling money for the revelry."

"Worse still, they collude with lawless merchants, privately traffic in official salt, reap enormous profits, spread rumors and fabricate tales, stirring the whole neighborhood into unrest — there is no evil they will not do."

"And behind these sorts, there are often retired local officials backing them. Even if there are one or two upright and unbending retired officials in the countryside unwilling to wallow in the mire with them, they merely shut their doors to protect themselves and pass their days in idle talk, of no help to the larger situation, and still less able to turn back the heavens."

Zhu Youjian read through them one by one.

Rampant bandits, hereditary petty clerks, the dissolute ethos of the Jiangnan literati, the local despotic gentry bent on annexation…

Fourteen answer papers, forty-two "ills of the realm" — though the great themes of corruption, fiscal taxation, and factional strife were mentioned most often, the concrete cases set forth within them did not repeat a single one.

From the central hub of the capital to the key frontier garrisons, from the myriad facets of officialdom to the livelihood of the rural people, a fine-meshed and rotting great net had already enveloped the entire Great Ming dynasty, so dense that not a breath of air could pass through.

At last, Zhu Youjian finished reading the final answer paper.

He slowly leaned back against the chair and let out a satisfied breath.

These answer papers, compared to the "Ten Policies for Statecraft" and "Ten Policies for the Capital" he had seen over the past few days, were a hundred times, a thousand times more brilliant!

Having read them, he finally had a vague, tangible sense of this dynasty.

The the the Taicang treasury treasury treasury's annual revenue declining? The nine border garrisons in arrears of pay? Military equipment decaying? These were merely the symptoms of the malady visible at the very topmost layer.

If one were to view the problems of this aging dynasty solely through the court's millions in unpaid wages and the the the Taicang treasury treasury treasury's revenue shortfalls, that would be far too superficial.

The entire dynasty was like a precision instrument that had been running for over two hundred years — every gear, every bearing, had rusted and worn to its limit.

And the Wanli Emperor's decades of absentee governance, his refusal to hold court, had thoroughly drained the last lubrication and maintenance from this decrepit machine.

Even if some minor repairs were made during the Tianqi reign, it was no more than a brief flicker of life before the end.

Even without the Jurchen, even without natural disasters, if the Great Ming did not produce another figure like Zhang Juzheng, sooner or later it would still perish.

But what Zhu Youjian was now curious about was a different question.

Any living organism possesses an instinct for self-repair.

A dynasty that has endured for over two hundred years is naturally no exception.

Judging from the people he had encountered since his enthronement, setting aside a certain tendency to drift with the current,

many among them were not wholly insensible to the nation's decline, and a few were even brimming with zeal.

One can well imagine that during the Wanli reign, the Tianqi reign, and even the more distant Jiajing reign and before, the proportion of such people was perhaps even higher.

Then what efforts had they once made?

What surgeries had these people performed upon this dynasty's body, barely hanging on to its last breath?

He turned his head and looked toward the senior eunuch Gao Shiming, who stood in attendance beside the imperial desk.

"Gao Shiming."

"In the palace… are there… that kind of… book?" For a moment, Zhu Youjian was somewhat at a loss as to how to express his need.

What he wanted to read were writings in which people of this era used their own wisdom to ponder and resolve one concrete problem after another.

Not the Four Books and Five Classics, nor ornate display pieces.

Gao Shiming saw the Emperor hesitate, a trace of uncertainty in his expression; his mind raced, and in an instant, he understood completely.

Heh… His Majesty is, after all, still a youth…

He swept a cautious glance left and right, and only when he saw the other junior eunuchs all standing at a respectful distance with their hands at their sides did he step a pace closer, lower his voice, and ask in a tone of smug, knowing conspiracy, all hushed and mysterious:

"Your Majesty… means the picture albums?"

Zhu Youjian stared blankly at the words, his brow furrowing.

Picture albums? What picture albums?

He looked at Gao Shiming's furtive, shifty expression and could not make head or tail of what the man was driving at.

Why had Eunuch Gao's manner suddenly turned so sleazy?

Then a flash of insight lit up his mind, and he finally hit on the right way to describe what he wanted.

"What picture albums!" he snapped in exasperation. "What We want is a collection of the memorials and policy essays of the renowned ministers of this dynasty. The sort that stress practical achievement and statecraft. And the more recent the memorials, the better."

Gao Shiming's old face, which had creased into a chrysanthemum of a smile, stiffened slightly. He could not suppress a light cough.

"Ahem…" Gao Shiming bowed. "Your Majesty must be referring to works such as the 'Compendium of Statecraft.' This slave shall send someone to fetch them at once for Your Majesty's perusal."

Zhu Youjian waved a hand impatiently, motioning him to hurry up and go.

Watching Gao Shiming's retreating back as the man practically fled the scene, Zhu Youjian could not resist stroking the short beard he had only recently grown and turning over the exchange in his mind.

Picture albums?

He was puzzled at first, and then it suddenly hit him exactly what kind of "picture albums" Gao Shiming had meant.

—Damn!

Zhu Youjian swore viciously in his head.

What sort of filthy nonsense did these eunuchs fill their heads with all day long!

He had seen every kind of thing and tried every kind of move — did they really think he needed to look at antique Ming-dynasty picture albums!