Chapter 715: The Imperial Academy Self-Study Class

When the "treasure-hunting group" led by Qian Qianyi, Kong Yinzheng, Zhu Zhiyu, and others crossed the sea by boat and reached Lüshunkou, the port city at the southern tip of the Liaodong Peninsula, this newly rising commercial port was in the midst of a feverish construction boom. Near the harbor, everywhere there were work sites in full swing and brand-new houses just completed. Computer-side:: /

The whole city not only brimmed with vitality, but everywhere displayed absolute confidence in its safety and security!

It was as though this city were not held in the tiger's mouth of the Great Qing, but placed inside the most secure of safes.

Lüshunkou originally had two walled towns, a northern and a southern, both ancient towns handed down from the Hongwu reign, the two towns separated by a little over a hundred paces, the northern town garrisoning troops and the southern town storing supplies. Later the Qing army, led by Kong Youde, captured Lüshunkou and demolished the northern town, leaving only the southern town for its garrison. After the Ming army advanced north again and seized the Jinzhou Peninsula at Lüshunkou, the southern town of Lüshunkou was likewise demolished.

Afterward, Zhang Huangyan, who had been appointed Prefect of Jinzhou, and Shen Tingyang, the Northern Ocean diplomatic and trade commissioner who had shifted his post to Lüshun, began construction of a new town on the coastal plain of Lüshunkou.

The new town's outer wall was built following the hilly terrain around the coastal plain of Lüshunkou, its materials the timber and earth-and-stone that were everywhere in the vicinity of Lüshunkou, and it was not especially tall; along the side facing the coastline no wall was built at all. On the whole it could not be called sturdy, but it was enough to give the people living under the protection of this wall complete peace of mind.

For the safety of Lüshunkou did not rest on this wall or on the Jinzhou Long Wall more than eighty li away, but on a model Ming infantry division garrisoning Jinzhou Prefecture and on the Northern Ocean Fleet based at Lüshun harbor. A single model infantry division, relying on the two long walls and several forts built into the hilly terrain, was enough to hold off a hundred thousand of the Great Qing's finest troops. And the fleet that controlled the sea lanes could keep Lüshunkou endlessly supplied with goods and reinforcements.

With its safety assured, and its geographical position lying exactly between the Ming, the Qing, and Joseon, with extremely convenient water and land communications, and close to the northeastern region that the Great Qing was focusing on developing, Lüshunkou quickly boomed. Merchants of every people and every nation came and went through this city. Train after train of camels and line after line of carts and horses moved constantly between the Jinzhou Long Wall and Lüshunkou.

In the bay at Lüshunkou, it was even more crowded with merchant ships from Joseon, the Great Ming, and the Tianjin Guard area of the Great Qing. Occasionally one could also spot a few Western sailing ships, none of them large vessels, all small and medium-sized merchantmen of two or three hundred tons burden, flying the flags of the Dutch, the English, the Portuguese, and the Spanish.

The treasure-hunting party heading north — Qian Qianyi, Kong Yinzheng, Zhu Zhiyu, and the others — had crossed the sea northward from Penglai aboard a merchant ship belonging to a disciple of the Kong school. It was a large seagoing sand-ship of three thousand shi, owned by a clansman of the Qufu Kong family named Kong Yinxi. This Kong Yinxi, like Kong Yinzheng, was of a collateral branch of the Qufu Kong family, but he lacked Kong Yinzheng's great physical prowess, so he could not pass the examination for the Duke for Fulfilling the Sage. Instead he first sat the civil examinations, then went into trade. His examination career was only a modest success: at eighteen he earned the xiucai degree, and after that he idled along until he was nearly thirty. Because Qufu came under attack by the Qing army, Kong Yinxi, unwilling to stand beneath a dangerous wall, slipped away to Dengzhou. He did not continue his studies, but used the capital he had brought to open a restaurant in Dengzhou, and even invited several good cooks from his old home in Qufu. After several years of running it, he had actually made quite a bit of money.

In the past, when the Kong family made money they always bought land. Here in Shandong, as long as land bore the surname Kong, one paid no taxes or levies of any kind, and one had no need to make offerings to officials and petty clerks either. The name was harder than a princely estate — a truly guaranteed profit with no risk. But now the times had changed, and the Kong family name was no longer reliable. So Kong Yinxi, now that he had money, no longer bought land, but instead bought ships and invested in sea transport. First he ran the Dengzhou–Tianjin route, and now he ran the Dengzhou–Lüshun route. He had also bought land inside Lüshunkou and built a "Food Street," and his business grew ever more prosperous.

Then in the summer of the third year of Hongxing, Kong Yinxi discovered a new road to wealth — treasure appraisal!

He had always enjoyed dabbling in antiques, calligraphy, and paintings, and he had a fair eye for them, barely enough to count as professional, but not yet to the point where he could go about appraising things for other people.

But the "treasures" that had recently appeared on the Lüshunkou market were said to have all been dug out of Qufu — grave goods, that is, treasures of the Kong family!

Let the Kong family's own Kong Yinxi appraise the Kong family's treasures — how could that be wrong? Even if he was fooled, people would still take it as genuine!

So these past few months Kong Yinxi's life had been beyond words — he could make money lying down. And not only did he make money, he also made a name for himself in the Northern Ocean antiques circle.

"One-Eye Kong of Dengzhou" — that was him!

Not only did the local magnates of Dengzhou and Laizhou seek him out to appraise their pieces, but people from Shanghai, Ningbo, and Quanzhou also came seeking his reputation. And this time he had actually been pulled into the "treasure-hunting group" by the newly passed Duke for Fulfilling the Sage, Kong Yinzheng, to go north together to Lüshun to see the "relics of the Supreme Sage."

This was no small matter!

Grave goods dug out of the tombs of successive Dukes for Fulfilling the Sage — he had seen quite a few of those, but most were from the present dynasty or the previous one, the oldest going back only to the Tang and Song. Compared with relics of the Supreme Sage, the difference was not just a little bit!

So One-Eye Kong did not dare be negligent. He bustled about making arrangements, and even brought out a large sand-ship that had just been launched not long before for the treasure-hunting group's use. He also volunteered to go ahead as an advance man, traveling north first to Lüshunkou to meet with the agent of the party selling the relics of the Supreme Sage — Jia Bushi, the great proprietor of the Jiale Market Firm, one of the Great Qing's nine great imperial merchants.

Here in Lüshunkou, the Jiale Market Firm and its great boss Jia Bushi were no ordinary figures!

The trade at Lüshunkou was in theory the "Ming-Qing mutual market" — that is, the little mutual market located between the Jinzhou Long Wall and the Xiaoheishan Long Wall. With that signboard, the great trade of Lüshunkou could keep going. So the merchants of Lüshunkou had to raise a sum of money every year to send to this mutual market, counting as the market's tax revenue.

This Ming-Qing mutual market was operated by none other than Jia Bushi, who was registered under the Plain Blue Banner!

And after Jia Bushi got the money, he did not immediately send it to Dodo in Shengjing, but instead made large purchases in Lüshunkou. The Great Qing emphasized agriculture and suppressed commerce — money was of little use in economic life, but there was still a need for all sorts of handicraft goods, so barter was very common.

At the Jiale Market Firm in the Ming-Qing mutual market, he met with Jia Bushi and saw several bamboo slips whose surfaces were coated with a thick layer of some unknown grease. The writing on them was very faint. On one of the bamboo slips were carved five large seal-script characters: "The Master Discusses the Investigation of Things." On the other several slips, in question-and-answer form, were carved dialogues about investigating things by means of analysis, inference, empirical verification, and other such methods.

Although Kong Yinxi could not tell whether the bamboo slips were genuine or fake, he was still a minor scholar. He would not claim to know the Four Books and Five Classics by heart, but he did understand their essential meaning — yet he had never seen this kind of "the Master said" that taught people how to investigate things.

Moreover, the content recorded on the bamboo slips all seemed highly philosophical, giving one a sense of sudden enlightenment.

Such principles could probably only have been put forward by sages of old like Confucius and Mencius, could they not?

"Holy Duke, Chancellor Qian, Governor-General Shi, these are the sentences from the bamboo slips that this junior has copied out."

In the central hall of the Liaodong-Shandong Governor-General's yamen at Lüshunkou, Kong Yinxi, who had hurried back from the Ming-Qing mutual market, handed several sheets of white paper covered with large seal-script characters to the great officials seated in the hall who had come to Liaodong to hunt for treasure.::

Qian Qianyi took one of the sheets, on which was written "The Master said: trial and error can seek out truth," and read it over and over, his brow gradually knitting. He had originally been half-believing and half-doubting about the lost text, and had not taken it too seriously. He had always felt that even if it was a lost text about the investigation of things, at most it would contain earnest admonitions about careful observation and the like — it could not possibly be anything subversive. The Confucians had investigated things for so many years without ever investigating out any knowledge; could one lost text of Confucius really make everyone suddenly see the light?

But after reading this copy of the lost text, Qian Qianyi finally understood how vast the learning of "the Master" truly was!