Chapter 237: Entering the Capital

Before Hong Chengchou returned home to visit his parents, Zhu Youjian had already bestowed upon him the residence of Liu Yuliang, a former Grand Secretary of the Eastern Pavilion who had retired and returned home in the seventh year of Chongzhen. On this return to the capital, Hong Chengchou brought his entire family from his native Quanzhou to the capital.

Fearing that his mother would not be accustomed to sea travel, Hong Chengchou did not take a ship from Quanzhou by sea directly to Tianjin Guard, but instead traveled overland straight to Hangzhou, then boarded an official boat of the Hangzhou prefectural government and sailed north along the Grand Canal.

After arriving at the dock in Tongzhou, Hong Chengchou sent a personal attendant into the capital to inform the steward who had been left in the capital to manage household affairs. He then hired more than twenty horse-drawn carts, loaded with various goods brought from his hometown, and headed straight for the capital.

After soldiers of the Five Wards Troops and Horses Office on sentry duty outside the Chongwen Gate cleared the way, the steward Hong Fu, who had been waiting at the gate, led the way. Hong Chengchou, guarded by his personal soldiers, rode his horse into the capital, with the long train of carts following behind.

The road-paving project within the capital was still underway, and construction scenes were bustling everywhere in the city. Hong Fu led the convoy twisting and turning through the capital for half a shichen before arriving at the new residence in the western part of the city around the hour of you.

At the side gate opened on the eastern side of the residence, Hong Chengchou dismounted. Several carts carrying the womenfolk of the Hong household drove into the courtyard; the carts loaded with goods drove to the main gate to unload, and the crowd of personal soldiers also went to the main gate—they would be temporarily housed in the front compound before following Hong Chengchou to take up his post in Jiliao.

Hong Chengchou stepped through the side gate into the courtyard, strode quickly to the foremost carriage, and bowed with clasped hands: "Mother, the journey has been long and tiring—are you well?"

As the carriage door opened, two maidservants in their teens came down first, then helped Madam Fu—dressed in a light-colored ru skirt, her silver hair pinned with a jade hairpin—down from the carriage. From the third carriage, Hong Chengchou's wife, Hong Lin-shi, also hurried over.

"Asheng, now that we have arrived in the capital, have you submitted a memorial requesting an audience? His Majesty's grace toward our Hong family is as heavy as a mountain—not only has he promoted you to the first rank, but he has even granted this old woman an official stipend. Our Hong clan has from this point ascended to the ranks of the great houses. Such imperial favor—you must exert every ounce of your strength to repay it, and must never dare harbor the slightest slackness!"

Having stood steady, the over-sixty-year-old Madam Fu called Hong Chengchou by his childhood name and spoke in a solemn voice.

Madam Fu came from a wealthy family, had studied books and learned propriety from childhood, and had disciplined Hong Chengchou and his two brothers very strictly. It was precisely under Madam Fu's strict discipline and upbringing—after Hong's father died early—that the Hong family produced a court minister of such weight as Hong Chengchou, causing the Quanzhou Hong clan to leap into the ranks of the Ming's top-tier great houses.

"Rest assured, Mother. I have already sent someone to submit a memorial requesting an audience, and I expect to see His Majesty's countenance within a few days. It is only that I will soon have to part from Mother and cannot fulfill my filial duty at your side—for this, my heart is truly filled with shame!"

Hong Chengchou had not seen his aged mother for over ten years. This time he had returned home to visit his parents for only a little over a month before he was compelled to return north. At his repeated earnest entreaties, Madam Fu—who had been unwilling to leave her hometown—accompanied him to the capital. His third son, Hong Chengyu, and his family remained in the hometown to look after the old residence and the grave of Hong's father.

"Go attend to your affairs, my son. Since ancient times, there have been many for whom loyalty and filial piety could not both be fulfilled. My son is a man of towering stature—why make such a fuss like a little child! This old woman will be fine with my daughter-in-law to keep me company!"

Madam Fu looked at her eldest son, who stood before her bowing with clasped hands, with loving eyes, her heart filled with pride and satisfaction.

Two stout serving women carried over an exquisite soft sedan chair. After the maidservants helped Madam Fu into the chair, the soft sedan tottered and swayed straight toward the rear compound. Hong Lin-shi hastily led several maidservants and coarse-work servants to follow, while Hong Chengchou respectfully saw his mother off.

"Master, the bath barrel has been prepared. This old servant will have someone show you the way. The kitchen is preparing the meal—please bathe and change clothes before dining. This old servant will go see to having the carts unloaded!"

The over-fifty-year-old steward Hong Fu stepped forward and bowed.

He was a household-born servant of the Hong family, having grown up in the Hong household since childhood. Ever since Hong Chengchou passed the examinations and became an official, he had stayed by his side, managing Hong Chengchou's daily food, drink, and living arrangements. Previously he had been left in the capital to handle various miscellaneous affairs such as cleaning the new residence, purchasing furniture, and hiring various servants, and had not accompanied the family back to their hometown.

"Has everything in the inner quarters been properly arranged for the old lady? Are the hired hands reliable? It has been many years since I last came to the capital—the changes within it are so great! But why is construction and building going on everywhere?"

Hong Chengchou asked as he surveyed the scenery of the courtyard.

"Rest assured, Master. The old lady's quarters have been properly arranged, and all those hired for the household are people of clean backgrounds from good families! As for the construction—this old servant has heard that it was ordered by imperial decree, with officials of the Ministry of Works supervising the building by imperial command. As for the specific purpose, this old servant does not know!"

Then Hong Fu called out, and two maidservants of sixteen or seventeen years with comely features came forward, bowed, and led the way ahead. Hong Chengchou, hands clasped behind his back, strolled toward a moon gate on one side.

News of Hong Chengchou's arrival in the capital was delivered to the palace at the earliest opportunity. Considering the fatigue of the journey, Zhu Youjian did not summon him immediately—one had to let the man rest and settle in first; summoning him after he had visited friends and relatives would not be too late.

The problems of Liaodong had existed for a long time and were not urgent at this moment. Whether Hong Chengchou could properly resolve such a thorny problem was also open to question.

As for the houses being built in the capital, that was another plan Zhu Youjian was preparing to implement: after resolving the Liaodong problem, he would take the opportunity to merge the Nanjing Six Ministries as well as the Censorate, the Office of Transmission, the Five Chief Military Commissions, the Hanlin Academy, the Imperial Academy, and other institutions with the various ministries and offices in the capital, and move these Nanjing officials to the capital. The houses being built on a large scale were prepared for the officials who would be relocated north in the future.

Of course, these houses were not for bestowal—they were for sale or rent.

Following the principle of not letting profit go outside the family, this construction project was contracted to several relatives of the imperial family by marriage, including Zhang Guoj i, father of Empress Dowager Yi'an; Zhou Kui, father of Empress Zhou; Tian Hongyu, father of Noble Consort Tian; and Yuan Yerang, father of Noble Consort Yuan.

Each of these imperial relatives contributed a certain amount of capital and formed a commercial firm. They then hired workers to be responsible for constructing the houses, and when the time came, they would simply sell the houses and collect the silver.

This move would not only allow the imperial relatives to earn a substantial profit, but would also be more conducive to stabilizing sentiment within the inner palace.

With surplus wealth, Empress Zhou and the others would be able to give more rewards to those around them—this was the most effective means of increasing the loyalty of those close to them.

The construction of the houses was planned by officials dispatched by the Ministry of Works before construction began, modeled on the templates of the residences of existing officials of various ranks in the capital. The sizes differed, and the prices would likewise be completely different.

The continued existence of the Nanjing mini-court had made the court's edicts and orders unsmooth—for this, one could really only blame Zhu Di.

In the nineteenth year of Yongle, Emperor Chengzu decreed that "the administrative affairs of the Six Ministries are all moved north," formally making Beijing the capital. After Emperor Chengzu ordered the capital moved to Beijing, for various reasons he still preserved Nanjing's status as a capital and retained a set of central institutions there.

This was a textbook case of "taking off one's pants to fart—an utterly superfluous act." Since you had already overthrown your own eldest nephew, why fear that crowd of Jiangnan literati? Did you think that by doing this they wouldn't curse you behind your back?

Nanjing, like Beijing, had the Six Ministries, the Censorate, the Office of Transmission, the Five Chief Military Commissions, the Hanlin Academy, the Imperial Academy, and other institutions, with officials of the same ranks as those in Beijing. Beijing was in Shuntian Prefecture, Nanjing in Yingtian Prefecture, together called the Two Capital Prefectures.

Although the power of the Nanjing Six Ministries was far inferior to that of the Beijing Six Ministries, the Nanjing Six Ministries still had certain authority. This was mainly because the South Zhili region where Nanjing was located governed fifteen prefectures and three directly-administered subprefectures—equivalent to the later Jiangsu and Anhui provinces plus the Shanghai area—yet did not establish the three commissions of the Provincial Administration Commission, the Provincial Surveillance Commission, and the Regional Military Commission. The authority originally exercised by the three commissions was instead handled by the Nanjing Six Ministries, among which the Nanjing Ministry of Revenue and the Nanjing Ministry of War held the greatest power.

In the current situation of stability and peace within the realm, the Nanjing mini-court no longer had any reason to exist. Authority must be gathered back up, and the regions under Nanjing's jurisdiction unified under the court—only then would future reforms not encounter greater resistance.

The several ministries and offices in Nanjing had too much power, having in fact already slipped beyond the control of the emperor and the court.

The Nanjing Ministry of Revenue was responsible for collecting tax grain from South Zhili as well as the provinces of Zhejiang, Jiangxi, and Huguang—the tax grain paid by these four regions accounted for nearly half of the entire Ming's total.

At the same time, the Nanjing Ministry of Revenue was also responsible for grain transport by canal and for the storage and management of the Yellow Registers nationwide. The Vice Minister of the Nanjing Ministry of Revenue therefore often concurrently served as Commander-General of Grain Reserves.

The Nanjing Ministry of War was responsible for the defense of the Nanjing region. The forty-nine guards in the Nanjing region were all under the command of the Minister of the Nanjing Ministry of War. The Minister of the Nanjing Ministry of War generally bore the title of "Counselor of Military Affairs," and together with the eunuch garrison commander and the meritorious Nanjing defense commissioner, jointly managed all affairs of Nanjing.

The Nanjing Ministry of Personnel was responsible for the once-every-six-years capital evaluation of officials in the Nanjing region, and the Ministry of Personnel in the capital was not permitted to interfere.

In this way, the emperor and the court had an extremely weak presence in the South Zhili region, and many of the court's edicts and orders were very difficult to implement and enforce in South Zhili.

These interest groups in Nanjing were the very foundation of the Donglin Faction. If one wished to deal with these communities of interest, the only strategy was to remove the firewood from under the cauldron.