Hello, welcome to one book of the week. Today I will continue to talk about this book "Living in the Hongwu Era".
Before, we talked about the Shi Lingzhi case, Guo Heng case, Yang Mantou case and Lu Zhonghe case, showing the major flaws in the top-level design of the military, currency and tax systems in order to maximize the consolidation of the Ming Dynasty. Today we will start with the case of Zhiding Lian’s conviction together and see how Zhu Yuanzhe manages society.
The case is very simple. It is the neighbors of Fangjia in Zhenjiang Prefecture, who have long condoned the eighteen vagrants led by Wei Dong, and let them get the government to harm the people. After the incident of Wei Dong and others, all these "neighbors in Fangjia" were arrested by Zhu Yuanzhang and collectively punished them to be coolies who moved stones to build city walls.
The criminal who was punished to be a coolie in the Hongwu era had a very tragic fate. Liu Ji once lamented that "the corpse of a worker was exposed when he died." This batch of people in Zhenjiang are no exception. Some people exhausted their wealth for this, some people died of exhaustion on the construction site, and some people chose to escape and were arrested and executed.
Why did Zhu Yuanzhe catch these "Bangjia neighbors"? Because they did not implement Zhu Yuanzhe's promulgation, they learned about Ding Fa.
Know Ding Fa's general idea is that people must know what kind of profession their neighbors are in and how many people are in their homes; those who study should know where to go to school, who are teachers, and who are classmates; those who are teachers should know who students are; those who farming should know when to go out to farm and when to come back. When a craftsman goes out to work, he must know the destination, type of work, and the time of return. Know the cost of doing business, the weight of goods, the distance and distance of the road, whether you take water or land. If you haven't returned for a long time, your neighbors must go to your home to investigate the reasons, etc.
Zhu Yuanzhe’s purpose of promulgating Zhiding Law is essentially to confine society and facilitate rule, and to entrust the people to only engage in four professions: scholars, farmers, workers and businessmen, otherwise they will be “ Yimin ” and “wanderers”. Neighbors must monitor each other. If they find that "Yimin" and "hogmen" are not cared about, once Yimin commits a crime and is executed, they will all be punished for the same crime.
The problem is that the "four civil system" of scholars, farmers, industry and commerce is the concept of in the spring and autumn era. By the Ming Dynasty, occupations had long been diversified, and waiters, teethers, actors, painters, playwrights, guards, writing letters on behalf of others were not included in the category of the "Four People".
Those people who are not among the "Four People" can only change their careers, and it takes only one month, and the difficulty can be imagined. But no matter how difficult it is, it must be changed. After all, the general trend is going on, otherwise the neighbors will report it and escort it to the government. If you don’t want to change your career and don’t want to be arrested, is there any way? The answer is yes, that is, self-harm.
In the 19th year of Hongwu (1386), 13 people in Shatian County, Fujian Province could not find another job within a month, and were afraid that they would be arrested, so they discussed breaking their fingers themselves, so they had sufficient reasons not to be within the "Four People". As a result, he was reported and was beheaded and displayed in public. Adult males from all families were killed, and all women and children were exiled.
and Zhiding Law are equipped with the road guide system, which means that people need to apply for a pass when they go out. The processing of channel is not free, and it is not a small number. Converted to rice, the maximum is about 320 kilograms of rice, followed by about 256 kilograms of rice, and at least 192 kilograms of rice. People cannot afford it, so they naturally reduce the frequency of going out.
Zhu Yuanzhang used the Ding Law to restrict the people from choosing a free career, the road-guided system restricted the people's free movement, and at the expense of social vitality, in exchange for the stability of the Zhu family's regime.
At that time, all towns and passes strictly investigated the implementation of the Ding Fa and Road Induction system. Not only were the smuggling troops and fleeing prisoners arrested, but many normal people were also arrested. For example, in order to save money, people will apply for road quotas together when going to a local area, but it is difficult to synchronize when going to a local area. Some people do things smoothly, some people have not completed the work, but road quotas are valid for the road quotas, so there are often cases where ten people register for road quotas and five people return home.
In the face of this situation, Zhu Yuanzhe will only use thunder means to impose severe punishments. He believed that the empire was full of "greedy people" and that the people were foolish and stubborn. I will not understand the predicament of the people at all.From then on, the society was full of fear, with relatives and neighbors monitoring each other, wife, uncle, mother, uncle and brother reported to each other, parents sent their children to the government... This is the Hongwu era described by Zhu Yuanzhang, which was simply a hell on earth.
In the 25th year of Hongwu, Tai student Zhou Jingxin made a comment that risked his life to expose the illusion of the "prosperous era" of the Hongwu era.
Zhou Jingxin said that the people were overwhelmed by heavy labor and heavy taxes; the imperial court's education penetrated into the grassroots, but no people liked it; the imperial court's laws were extremely strict, and the people were unwilling to obey. The court pursued a prosperous country and strong military forces, pursued a profound city and a magnificent palace, pursued a wider territory and more households and people. Therefore, we continue to recruit troops, constantly draw wealth from the people, fight abroad, and build large-scale construction at home. A political purge was launched continuously, including four major operations in the fourth, thirteenth, nineteenth and twenty-three years of Hongwu, and a large number of officials and people were killed without conducting screening and investigation. Among these killed people, many are actually loyal ministers, martyrs, good men and gentlemen.
When the people are living in dire straits, the remaining way out is to rebel. The book "Peng Yulin Case" revealed a Hongwu era where riots were everywhere.
In Guangdong, from Chaozhou in the east, through Huizhou , Guangzhou and Shaozhou, to Gaozhou and Leizhou in the west, including Qiongzhou and Yazhou. Almost the entire Guangdong, the public's military struggle broke out during the Hongwu period.
In Guangxi, in the third year of Hongwu, there was an uprising for the people of Yangshan County; in the fifth year of Hongwu, the Nanning Wei rebelled against the local people, and more than 3,000 people rose up; in the eighth year of Hongwu, there was an uprising in the jurisdiction of Liuzhou Wei; in the twenty-eight years of Hongwu, there was a huge Huang Shitie Uprising. The Ming army killed more than 18,000 strong men and more than 8,200 family members during the suppression process, and only 648 households remained in the area where the riot occurred.
In Fujian, in the third year of Hongwu, there were Hui'an County people rioted violently; in the fifth year of Hongwu, there were Tong'an County people captured the county town; in the tenth year of Hongwu, there were Quanzhou people attacked Anxi County robbed the county seal; in the twelfth year of Hongwu, there were Longyan County thousands of people fell into Leigong Shiziling; in the 14th year of Hongwu, there were more than 8,000 people rose up and the people of Longyan County rioted again.
This is the situation in the three provinces, and other regions are also roughly the same. In short, in the sixty and seventy years of the Ming Dynasty, peasant uprisings continued one after another. The uprisings were spread across more than ten provinces including Guangdong, Guangxi, Fujian, Jiangxi, Huguang, , Sichuan, Shaanxi, Shandong and Zhejiang, with hundreds of thousands of people in large scale. In the early days of a dynasty, peasant uprisings were so frequent and so extensive, which was rare among all dynasties.
OK, the general content of this book "Living in the Hongwu Era" will be introduced to you here. Through 11 cases, the author revealed that there were various problems and defects in the early days of the establishment of the Ming Empire, and the initiator of these problems and defects was Zhu Yuanzhang himself, who thought he was wise and powerful.
Regarding grand problems, ordinary people living in the Hongwu era had no sense of it. Their primary goal is to survive in this cruel environment and survive one day. If it weren't for " Great Edict ", their story might have been buried in the long river of history. Let us dedicate our warmth and respect to ordinary people who struggled to survive in the Hongwu era more than 600 years ago and had tenacious vitality as strong as weeds.
That’s all today. Congratulations, I finished reading another book. You can share this book with your friends. See you next week!
