Chapter 11 Section 9 Peasant Thinking

Based on the experience of rural life, Emperor Hongwu's concept of governing the country showed a strong static orientation.His basic tendency in governing the country is to fix the way the country operates, causing the entire society to regress to the original state of "a small country with few people, old and dead".Zhu Yuanzhang, who became emperor, maintained a simple peasant morality and showed special respect to the elderly all over the world.He promulgated the "Cunxie Gao Nian Zhao", which stipulates: There is a department that carefully examines the elderly... who are eighty or ninety years old, and those who are called good by the neighbors, prepare their age, practice, and come to hear about them.Those who are poor and have no property, over eighty years old, are given five buckets of rice, five catties of meat, and three buckets of wine every month; those over ninety years of age are given one horse of silk and ten catties of cotton wool; those whose land property is only enough to support themselves, are given wine, meat, and three buckets of wine. It's like silk.

That is to say, for the elderly in various places who live to be over 80 years old, he will give five dou of rice, five catties of meat, three dou of wine every month, and also bestow the title of "Lishi"; Ten catties of horses and cotton wool will be awarded the title of "community scholar".When seeing the county magistrate, they all salute in parallel. After canceling the prime minister, Zhu Yuanzhang was too busy alone.He was whimsical, thinking that the folk old Confucianists were born in the fields, simple, honest, and rich in experience, so he directly promoted administrative assistants from the bottom of society.In September of the thirteenth year of Hongwu (AD 1380), he established the system of four assistant officials. To "assistantly praise political affairs", he found several ordinary old Confucian scholars Wang Ben, Du Zhan, and Gong Xiao (xiao) from the people to serve as spring officials, The summer officials, autumn officials and winter officials assist themselves in governing and "caring for Tron".However, after implementing it for a period of time, Zhu Yuanzhang found that his ideas were too naive. "Everyone is an old Confucian, starting from the Tian family, there is no other merits in simplicity." Apart from looking after their grandsons, these old people are really hard to make other contributions.So in the fifteenth year of Hongwu (1382 AD), he had to abolish the four auxiliary officials.

To the outside world, the basic responses of farmers are rejection, fear and mistrust.Closed living conditions make them feel safe and relaxed.They don't like to take risks, they just want to stick to the way of life passed down from their predecessors, and survive in a stable and stable way.Although taking the world relies on force, aggressiveness, and adventurous spirit, once the world was stabilized, Zhu Yuanzhang immediately restored the conservative nature of the peasants. The Great Yuan Empire was a worldwide empire, but its successor, Zhu Yuanzhang, had no interest in the outside world at all.He was content to drive the Mongols back to the desert, and did not have the courage and vision to "pursue the remaining brave to chase the poor bandits" and went deep into the desert to wipe them out.The Japanese kept making troubles and provoking him. He also issued a few imperial edicts and reprimanded him to settle the matter. He never thought of launching an expedition.He was not interested in the overseas trade that had brought huge wealth to China. Not only did he ban overseas trade, he even banned fishermen from fishing in the sea, and moved all the residents of the island inward, "within three days, the latter will die."

In "Emperor Ming Zu Xun", he listed more than 20 neighboring countries as countries that would not be confiscated, and warned future generations of these countries that "the land is not enough to supply, and the people are not enough to make orders" They are emotional.Although there is not much property to protect, generations of Chinese farmers have always had an unfailing enthusiasm for courtyard walls.After Qin Shihuang, Zhu Yuanzhang's Ming Dynasty once again spent huge manpower and material resources to rebuild the Great Wall, so that the Great Wall we see today are basically relics of the Ming Dynasty.

The short-sighted view of benefits is another profound imprint on Zhu Yuanzhang's life in Guzhuang Village.The subaltern culture is the product of hunger, and pragmatism is its core. Possessing and preserving the few survival resources has attracted the full attention of the farmers.For a little food and a few thatched huts, people can use their physical strength and brain power without hesitation, make the most accurate abacus, and let every grain of rice get the most out of it.From this point of view, it is realistic, smart and effective.However, due to the limitation of life experience, farmers are short-sighted and lack imagination.Their shrewdness and reality inevitably sometimes turn into short-sightedness and ignorance.

Farmers have fewer opportunities to exercise higher-level thinking skills such as classification, abstraction, and reasoning.In their minds, the world exists in the form of real objects, which are the sum of mountains, rivers, land, trees, crops, pigs, cows, sheep, and chickens.When they calculate numbers, they always have to flash the images of these things before their eyes, or imagine the appearance of fingers and toes, so that they can count.They cannot understand the truth beyond the physical level. Zhu Yuanzhang, like any fellow in Guzhuang Village, is a firm advocate of agriculture rather than business.In their eyes, businessmen are people who get something for nothing.They worked hard on the land in exchange for real food with their sweat, while the merchants just exchanged the goods from various places. The total amount of goods did not increase, but many additional goods were conjured up like magic. profit.This confuses them no matter what.Therefore, Zhu Yuanzhang is the most light-hearted emperor in Chinese history.In order to belittle businessmen, he specially stipulated that farmers can wear silk, gauze, silk, and cloth, while businessmen can only wear clothes made of silk and cloth; .

Originally, in the Song Dynasty, China implemented the full monetization of taxation, but Zhu Yuanzhang degenerated the taxation system to the stage of material system. "The orders and guards in the yamen are sent by the villages in rotation. Even the stationery and paper, and even the repair of the tables, chairs, and benches, are also collected from the villagers sporadically." Huang Renyu said that Zhu Yuanzhang's design "is tantamount to announcing to China and the world: China As the largest rural group in the world, it can be content without business." A third influence is a strong sense of kinship. "Brothers in battle, father and son in battle." In rural society, blood ties are more reliable than any relationship.Zhu Yuanzhang, who became the emperor, had a strong suspicion of everyone, but he unconditionally relied on trust for his blood relatives alone.

Although there are lessons learned from the past dynasties' chaos, Zhu Yuanzhang still turned a blind eye and stubbornly let his children share the emperor's power.His children were all named princes and possessed a strong military force, "with 80,000 armors and 6,000 leather chariots", in order to prevent the power of the empire from falling into the hands of foreign surnames.The ministers pointed out the serious drawbacks of his feudal kings' strategy, but he thought it was to alienate his flesh and blood, and arrested the speaker and imprisoned him to death. This arrangement finally led to the Jingnan Rebellion.He is mean and ungrateful to anyone, but he is afraid of not being kind to his relatives.He stipulated the thinnest official salary in the past dynasties, and at the same time stipulated the thickest royal salary in the past dynasties.He stipulated that his relatives and descendants should enjoy wealth and honor for generations without having to engage in any occupation, so that the supply of the royal family became the heaviest financial burden of the country after the mid-Ming Dynasty.