Chapter 36 Section 3 "Wei Fool"

Like all the gleeful and spitting exaggerations, being a eunuch can make you rich is just a beautiful legend.Yes, as an eunuch, you don’t have to worry about food and clothing. You eat four buckets of rice every month, and you have a set of winter and summer clothes every year, and a set of bedding for six years.Life is much better than when I was in Dazhaozhuang. However, that's all.The eunuchs who are said to be well-clothed and well-fed are all great eunuchs in the palace, and the supreme leader is the eunuch who is in charge of the ceremony and his assistant, the admiral of the East Factory.A little bit below are the eunuchs who hold pens and follow the hall, the handprint eunuchs of various supervisors, divisions, bureaus, etc., and the senior eunuchs who directly take care of the emperor's life around the emperor. However, these people are among the hundreds of thousands of eunuchs. There are only a few dozen people in total.

These people are very powerful, and their status is more than that of senior bureaucrats. There are thousands of people in the middle class, and they hold some power more or less in various positions in the inner palace, such as the purchase of various materials in the palace, blackmail when going out of the palace to handle errands, this power is enough for them A considerable amount of oil and water was obtained, enough to live the life of an ordinary bureaucrat.But when they reached the base of the pyramid, which was the level of tens of thousands of eunuchs like Wei Si who were attendants, palanquins, night watchers, sweepers, and gatekeepers, the only benefits they got were food and clothing.Some families even have heavy burdens. In order to earn more money, they still work as servants for the maids in the palace, doing everything from washing to cooking, and they are called "rotary craftsmen".

After entering the palace, Wei Si was given a new name, "Li Jinzhong".It is said to be a name, but it is actually just a symbol, but it is more fluent than "Ling Lingji".His daily job is to empty the toilet in the front palace when he gets up early, and he has nothing to do the rest of the time.This just fulfilled his idle nature, and the rest of his time was spent gambling and drinking.Since then, he has been buried among the low-level eunuchs and has not been seen for more than ten years, which caused a headache for Wei Zhongxian's biographer. It is impossible to tell from any angle that this person will become a man of great influence in the Ming Empire in the future.There are three conditions to be successful in the palace, one is to be literate, the other is to be scheming, and the third is to have a strong ambition.

Wang Zhen, the famous eunuch during the Zhengtong period, is the most typical representative.This man was originally a Confucian scholar with a desire for power that was abnormal. He had been in the lower officialdom for nine years but failed to make a name for himself. He simply put all his eggs in one basket and eunuched himself into the palace.In this position, he was conscientious, humble and self-confident. He did a very good job and quickly gained the trust of the prince.After the crown prince ascended the throne, he naturally became the highest eunuch in the palace. From then on, he used all his scheming to seize power and dominate the world.

Liu Jin, a famous eunuch during the Zhengde period, was also able to read and write since he was a child, and he was extremely scheming.And these three, Wei Zhongxian has none of them.Wei Zhongxian didn't go to school for a day, he seems to be not close to writing, he has been in the palace for many years, and he has been educated by cultural eunuchs for many years, but he still doesn't know a single character. When it comes to scheming, people comment on him as "stupid".He treats people with enthusiasm, and is daring to do things, but he can't get along with the word "scheming".During the days of drinking and gambling with a group of eunuchs, he was often tricked by those cunning eunuchs, and over time he got the nickname of "fool".

As for ambition, he is even more insulated.His purpose of entering the palace was to have enough food and clothing, at most, to bring his family along with them.After recognizing the gap between himself and others in intellectual ability, he has no wishful thinking.In fact, with his ability, it is not easy to do this.He has been in the palace for several years, but he is still unable to help his family get rid of extreme poverty. His niece and niece were sold to the capital one after another to become servants of wealthy families. Due to his mediocre ability and lack of desire to make progress, after more than ten years in the palace, he left the ranks of low-level eunuchs and became a talented food manager in the Eastern Palace. .And until he was fifty-three years old, after 30 years in the palace, his hair started to turn gray, and he still stayed at the position of the food manager. Because of the "falling out" of the year, he lived happily and contentedly. , if he can spend his whole life like this, he won't have any opinion.

Even in his dreams, he would never have imagined that someone would hand over the power of the entire empire to him.