Chapter 89: Grading Memorials

Zhu Youjian raised an eyebrow.

Not bad — the efficiency is quite high.

Having said this, Gao Shiming pointed to some of the memorials with red strips pasted on their covers and added, "All those where the Directorate of Ceremonial and the Grand Secretariat disagreed on the grading have been marked with red strips, to set them apart."

Zhu Youjian nodded with satisfaction.

Now that's more like it — he shouldn't have to personally review every little thing, down to buying a roll of toilet paper.

He reached out and first picked up the two memorials the Directorate of Ceremonial had graded "A." One of them the Grand Secretariat had also graded A; the other, the Grand Secretariat had only given a C.

The first was submitted by Li Dan, the Supervising Bureau Secretary of the Arsenal Department in the Ministry of War — a lengthy piece listing seven proposals for the military academy's academic administration.

Zhu Youjian sighed, opened it and flipped through. Just as expected.

The entire text was filled with universally correct platitudes, expounding at great length on the importance of military education, its phrasing earnest, its concern for state and people nearly overflowing the page.

Then it listed some empty strategies about prohibiting fraudulent registration, tightening academy examinations, and emphasizing teaching materials for officer training.

This was the classic Ming official document — seemingly grand in narrative, yet utterly hollow in substance.

Nor was there any way to assess to what degree doing this thing would count as good, and to what degree as bad.

He looked again at the grading justifications appended by the Grand Secretariat and the Directorate of Ceremonial: both had graded it A on the grounds that "military education bears upon the foundation of the state."

The reasoning, admittedly, was passable.

Whether from the perspective of the Great Ming's emphasis on education, or from the angle of state affairs, grading military academy matters as A was entirely unobjectionable.

But — this essay was truly no good.

Zhu Youjian shook his head and said to Gao Shiming, "Yesterday you witnessed Our exchange with Xue Guoguan. Henceforth, whenever a policy essay of this sort lacks a detailed implementation plan, it shall be downgraded one level from its original grade."

"This subject obeys the decree." Gao Shiming bowed in acknowledgment, but inwardly he was mulling it over.

The Emperor's preferences were now practically laid out in the open.

Zhu Youjian set this memorial down and asked, "Has Xue Guoguan's new memorial come in?"

Gao Shiming pulled out the memorial with the red strip from another stack and presented it, saying, "This is the one."

"The Grand Secretariat graded it C, on the matter of road-building in the capital. But the Grand Secretaries, mindful that it was personally assigned by Your Majesty, elevated it one grade to B."

"The Directorate of Ceremonial, however, holds that this is the beginning of Your Majesty's new governance and should be graded A."

Zhu Youjian nodded with satisfaction.

Considered purely as a matter of road-building, in ordinary times grading it C or even D would have been reasonable.

That the Grand Secretariat was willing to raise it one grade already showed they were gauging the sovereign's mind.

But as expected, it was still Gao Shiming and those personal attendants who stayed by his side day and night who better understood his intent.

He opened the memorial and skimmed through it quickly.

The entire memorial was indeed far more detailed than the original draft; between the lines, it was faintly no longer of the same species as the vague policy essays now in circulation.

Yet it still fell short of what he, in the later age, would have required of an intern at the most basic level.

Zhu Youjian picked up the vermilion brush and, without a word, began writing meticulous annotations directly in the margins of the memorial.

"First: for the various allocations of silver, materials, and labor, the sequence must be considered. On what day the materials arrive, on what day the labor arrives, on what day the silver arrives — all must have clear deadlines. If the silver arrives behind schedule, what preparatory work can be done in advance? This is the foundation of practical achievement and must not be overlooked."

"Second: all figures listed in the text shall uniformly be presented in tables and filled in using Suzhou numerals, to facilitate accounting. Additionally, the amounts may be written out in formal Chinese uppercase numerals after the tables, as a backup record."

"Third: the order of the document shall begin with the background, stating the necessity of road-building. The middle section shall present the projected progress milestones for the two nodes of the tenth and eleventh months — these are the objectives. The final section shall detail the required silver, manpower, and materials — these are the expenditures. When the main threads are grasped, the details fall into place; only thus can it be clear at a glance."

Once Zhu Youjian started writing, he found it hard to stop the brush.

It was utterly exhilarating, as if he had returned to those later days when he first began leading a team, teaching interns hand in hand how to write project proposals.

Only after he had attached two additional pages, densely filled with his "essay revision comments," did he reluctantly set down the brush.

He laid the brush aside, nodded with satisfaction, and said to Gao Shiming, "Send it back. Have Minister Xue revise it according to this and submit another version."

He paused, then asked, "When this memorial was submitted, and when Our annotations are issued, both will pass through the Office of Transmission, and all the officials at court will be able to see them — is that correct?"

Gao Shiming nodded: "Your Majesty, for routine memorials, that is the established procedure."

"Excellent." A hint of a smile tugged at the corner of Zhu Youjian's mouth.

He wanted everyone to see it.

He was already using the most direct means to signal his inclinations.

Now it remained to be seen whether the bureaucrats filling this court could, or would, follow his tempo and sculpt themselves accordingly.

In any case, those who could keep up would find promotion awaiting them. Those who could not could slowly grind their way up the seniority ladder.

He set these two memorials aside and then carefully read through the nine B-grade memorials one by one.

After that, he also leafed through, one after another, the twenty-odd memorials in the C and D grades where the Directorate of Ceremonial and the Grand Secretariat had disagreed on the grading.

Having reviewed them, Zhu Youjian found that the grading logic of the two institutions was, on the whole, without major problems. The minor discrepancies among them were entirely tolerable.

It was just that some routine memorials touching on ritual matters, though the issues were extremely trivial and utterly unimportant, had often still been assigned a very high grade.

For instance, according to ancestral regulations, within twenty-seven days of the Tianqi Emperor's passing, all official documents were to use blue seals, not vermilion seals.

Guo Yunhou, the Minister of Revenue, submitted a memorial arguing that blue ink fades easily, and over time the writing becomes blurred; he feared that in matters of fiscal security, villains might exploit this to perpetrate fraud. He therefore requested that all matters involving money and grain continue to use vermilion seals.

For such a trifling matter, both the Grand Secretariat and the Directorate of Ceremonial had graded it B.

Zhu Youjian thought it over and decided, for the time being, not to alter the grading of this type of matter.

A great part of the majesty of feudal imperial power derived precisely from these ritual protocols, which to people of a later age would seem both tedious and pointless.

But a good half of his current authority came, in truth, from the boost conferred by the dragon throne beneath his backside; the time had not yet come when he could afford to shake the foundations of his own rule merely to save a bit of reviewing effort.

After finishing these twenty-odd memorials, Zhu Youjian simply pulled another twenty at random from the remaining routine memorials and looked through them, but found no major issues.

When he had finished handling all of this and raised his head, he realized that barely half a shichen had passed.

For a moment, Zhu Youjian felt as though he had returned to the later age.

Back then, working overtime late into the night every day, on the rare occasion he could leave at six in the evening, he would wander dazed along the street, as if he no longer belonged to this world.

The sunset glow and the passersby — all so unfamiliar.

Since his enthronement, except for a handful of days when he relied entirely on the Directorate of Ceremonial to filter them, he had personally handled everything — going through these routine memorials, which often numbered in the hundreds, one by one, all by himself.

Each session took at least one double-hour, sometimes as long as two.

Today's sudden burst of efficiency filled him with lightness and joy.

Just as Zhu Youjian was about to announce that the day's work was done, Gao Shiming, who had been standing in attendance at his side for a long while, gave a soft cough.

"Your Majesty, there are… still a few more here."

Zhu Youjian followed his gaze and only then noticed that, beside those four tall stacks of memorials, several more memorials lay in lonely isolation, along with a black-lacquered wooden box secured with a lock.

Gao Shiming stepped forward and explained in a low voice, "Your Majesty, these few are secret impeachment memorials submitted by Sir Li Guopu and Sir Yang Jingchen. Sir Yang's memorial was presented inside the wooden box."

"In addition, Eunuchs Liu Ruoyu, Cao Huachun, and Zheng Zhihui have each submitted inner-palace reports on personnel, finances and taxation, and oversight respectively."

He added, "These matters, being either secret memorials or inner-palace affairs, do not pass through the Grand Secretariat by regulation. The Directorate of Ceremonial judged that there were not many, and therefore did not grade them, presenting all of them for Your Majesty's imperial perusal."

Zhu Youjian jolted abruptly awake from his leisurely state of "getting off work early."

Well, so be it — only these few remained.

A trace of a smile lingered at the corner of his mouth as he reached for a memorial and said, "Indeed not many… Companion Gao, you are most considerate…"

Before he finished speaking, his hand froze in midair.

Wait!

A thought flashed through his mind like lightning.

He suddenly realized that as his secret memorial system spread wider and wider, these mere handful of memorials at the corner of the desk would soon balloon into dozens, even hundreds!

Even setting aside the secret memorials, once the reconstruction of the Depot and Guard was complete, the tentacles he extended into every corner of the Great Ming would multiply, and the sheer volume of information he needed to process would inevitably explode at a geometric rate.

When that day came, the current Directorate of Ceremonial and Grand Secretariat would likely be unable to bear such an order of magnitude of work.

Zhu Youjian tapped his knuckles lightly against the smooth surface of the imperial desk, producing a steady tok, tok, tok.

Preparedness ensures success; unpreparedness courts failure.

There was a matter he had never thought through carefully before, but now, it seemed, he had to plan for it in advance.

The existing Directorate of Ceremonial and Grand Secretariat were, after all, products of this era — the pinnacle of an agricultural empire's governance model.

But as the tentacles he extended into every corner of the Great Ming multiplied, the sheer volume of information he needed to process would inevitably explode at a geometric rate.

What he needed was a more modern, more specialized institution.

No longer divided along the lines of civil officials versus eunuchs, but one that drew in professional bureaucrats from every field — finance and taxation, military affairs, science and technology, intelligence, personnel, public sentiment, and the like.

The entire institution should be on a scale of over a hundred people, not the small teams of a dozen or so in the Directorate of Ceremonial and three in the Grand Secretariat as it was now.

Interesting — could it be that I am about to establish the Grand Council ahead of its time?

No… perhaps it should be called — "?"