Chapter 172: Grand Opening

After emerging from the warm chamber, Bi Maokang and Bi Maoliang felt the whole world had become wonderful.

The two chatted as they walked, and suddenly, even the eunuchs standing nearby with smiles waiting for their cut of the money no longer seemed so penny-pinching—they had become kind and amiable. The guards at the gate, though big and burly, all looked like good men, and the commoners outside, though their faces were dark, all seemed refined and courteous. They truly loved it here.

Song Yingxing went about his work at the Armory Bureau methodically, chanting the slogan "If you want to get rich, build roads first," determined to pave all of Beijing with crushed-stone roads.

Bi Maokang and Bi Maoliang weren't idle either. They returned to their original shabby little house, then first went to take a look at the grand mansion the Chongzhen Emperor had allocated to them, exchanging a few words with the maidservants and stewards the court had sent over, and only then did they leisurely head for the Armory Bureau offices.

The next day, the news that the two Bis had been reinstated to manage the Armory Bureau and develop flintlock muskets spread throughout Beijing in the newspaper at once.

Although the court had also produced imitation muskets during the Jiajing and Tianqi reigns, the scale had not been very large. The court valued them, but not to the point of relating to the very foundation of the state.

This time was different. From the news that came out, the Chongzhen Emperor had already placed the development of firearms on equal footing with the survival of the Great Ming.

Many people couldn't understand this. Firearms, that's all—were they really that important, to the point of such a degree?

It hadn't been long since the New Year, and the court had already stirred up so many major and minor affairs. Before many people had even reacted to the last matter, the next one followed right on its heels. First of all, there was this thing called the newspaper.

This was a real novelty. Many people had heard of military dispatches and the Capital Gazette and such, but those had always been exclusively for the court's civil and military officials and the Emperor—when had it ever been the turn of us mud-footed common folk to read them?

Although many people didn't quite understand these new terms like "newspaper" and the "Great Ming Royal Newspaper Office," they each had their own interpretations.

For instance, the common mud-footed folk, upon hearing "newspaper," would immediately think of the Capital Gazette and military dispatches the court used for communication. As for the scholars, they could instantly understand that the Great Ming Royal Newspaper Office was a propaganda organ legally established by the Son of Heaven—in plain words, specially set up to argue with the sacred Fushe Society.

Once the Great Ming Royal Newspaper Office was established and the official newspaper existed, the natural next step was to issue relevant documents and decrees.

Anyone with discerning eyes could see that by then, the scholars' so-called Fushe Society, Yunjian Book Society, and the like would instantly become privately run illegal pyramid-scheme organizations, and sooner or later they would be cracked down on like drug dens.

And then it wasn't over yet. No sooner had they heard about the Royal Newspaper Office than they saw yamen personnel everywhere banging away repairing roads—there were even cases where the yamen dispatched runners to clear an entire street for the sake of road construction.

Many people had lived in the capital for years, but this was the first time they'd encountered such a thing. The scale of road construction was unprecedented, and many scholars seized on it to make a big fuss, saying this was another policy that wasted labor and money yet was utterly useless.

They also said the road construction had thrown Beijing into chaos, causing a massive uproar and disturbances, with more than half of the shops facing the risk of closing down due to lack of customers, and GDP declining every day.

This once again let Chongzhen experience just how formidable the keyboard warriors' eloquence could be.

Chaos there might have been, because road construction required temporarily sealing off an entire street, but at most it was only one or two streets at a time—far from the whole of Beijing.

As for the claim that more than half of Beijing's shops would close, that was even more absurd. After the streets were closed for construction, most merchants would choose to sell at the newly opened markets, so the impact wasn't actually very great.

Song Yingxing wasn't repairing roads across all of Beijing at once. He wasn't stupid—naturally, he was doing it section by section.

Even granting a hundred steps back, if one wanted to do it all at once, how much manpower and material resources would that require?

In the past, aside from killing them, Chongzhen might truly have had no good way to deal with these scholars whose power bases were in Jiangnan.

But now it was different. The newspaper office was a good thing—it was time to let the people of the Great Ming see the true faces of these hypocrites, to ruin the reputations they depended on for survival first.

While road construction was going on over here, things weren't idle over there either. Chongzhen appointed Bi Maokang and Bi Maoliang to manage the Armory Bureau, allocating one million taels of silver for the first batch.

When the wealthy magnates heard this, they were grieved and indignant. "That Chongzhen brat—that's a huge pile of gleaming white silver! Why don't you do something good with it, instead of throwing it into the bottomless pit of firearms?"

……

"Crackle, crackle, pop……"

Early that morning, the commoners heard firecrackers going off beside the Donghua Gate and couldn't figure out what was happening.

Only after asking around did they learn that today was the opening day of the Royal Newspaper Office, so they quickly set down their work and hurried over to join the excitement.

After all, you could go tend the fields or set up a stall any time, but the Great Ming Royal Newspaper Office's grand opening happened only once—miss this village and you'd miss this store.

"Thank you all for coming to show your support. I offer my greetings here." Wang Cheng'en stood at the door early on, smiling as he cupped his hands toward the crowd below.

Today he wore neither the eunuch's court attire nor the yellow-and-black brocade robe he usually wore when conducting business at the Eastern Depot, but rather a blue-and-white silk robe—from any angle, he looked like a portly country gentleman.

"With the newspaper office opening, your subordinates congratulate the Director, rejoice for the Director!" Below, besides some country gentry, the majority were the agents of the Eastern and Western Depots.

"What are you saying? It's congratulations to the Great Ming, rejoicing for the Great Ming." Wang Cheng'en, who had been all smiles a moment before, instantly pulled a long face upon hearing this. Seeing everyone exchanging bewildered looks, he chuckled again and said, gesturing to the side: "Come, come, everyone, please step inside and go read the first issue of the newspaper."

The scene now was about as lively as a wealthy household's grand birthday celebration. The Great Ming Royal Newspaper Office was established by imperial decree of the Chongzhen Emperor, and Wang Cheng'en concurrently held multiple posts including Chief Steward of the Inner Palace and Director of the Eastern Depot—his power and prestige already surpassing that of Wei Zhongxian, the Nine Thousand Years of years past—so anyone in the city with any face at all had come.

But there was also something strange. The scholars who were usually seen everywhere were nowhere to be found today, and few of the court's high-ranking ministers had come either.

"Oh! You've arrived, Minister Feng of the Grand Secretariat!" Just as they were hesitating, a sharp-eyed gate attendant suddenly cried out.

Everyone turned to look—it was none other than the current Grand Secretary and Minister of Works, Feng Quan, arriving with gifts in hand and a smile on his face.

"Your subordinate has come late—please, Eunuch, do not be angry." Feng Quan laughed heartily, handing his gifts to the gate attendant with one hand, speaking with a somewhat apprehensive air.

Wang Cheng'en looked him up and down, then said with a beaming smile: "What are you saying, what are you saying—Minister Feng, please, step inside."

After Feng Quan arrived, the current Chief Grand Secretary Wei Zaode, Second Grand Secretary Jiang Dejing, Minister of Revenue Ni Yuanlu, Minister of War Zhang Guowei, and a host of other important ministers came belatedly.

On the first day of the fourth month of the seventeenth year of Chongzhen, the Great Ming Royal Newspaper Office grandly opened for business amid the applause and cheers of the pack of hounds under Chongzhen's command.