One day, Zhu Yuanzhang was sitting in the palace, carefully checking the financial accounts reported from various places. Suddenly, he discovered a very subtle problem in an account book: "One hundred thousand taels of silver" in an account book had been artificially changed to "50,000 taels of silver", that is, three entries were added to the "ten" It became "five".
Zhu Yuanzhang took a breath after reading it. One word difference put the country in danger of losing 50,000 taels. At the same time, he also secretly admired the person who changed the accounts. It would be difficult to find it without careful inspection. Who is so bold as to modify the government's financial accounts without authorization? What is its purpose? Corruption must be corruption. Zhu Yuanzhang's teeth hurt when he thought of these two words.
It turns out that Zhu Yuanzhang was an orphan born as a sharecropper. Before becoming emperor, he had been a beggar, a monk, and a handyman. He was well aware of the sufferings of the people. Therefore, he had a heartfelt compassion for the poor people and an extremely strong hatred for corrupt officials. Therefore, he made up his mind to investigate the matter clearly and severely punish those who cheated and embezzled.
After carefully looking at the account book, he determined that the account book was reported by Guo Huan, the Minister of Accounts, and sent the Chief Supervisor to call Guo Huan to come to see him. Before Guo Huan arrived, he also followed Guo Huan's example and added the word "ten" in the narrow gap in the middle of "fifty thousand taels of silver". "Fifty thousand taels of silver" immediately became "five hundred thousand taels of silver".
After a while, Guo Huan came with a big belly. After seeing Zhu Yuanzhang, he stood aside obediently.
Zhu Yuanzhang suppressed his anger and asked Guo Huan: "Guo Aiqing, let me ask you, was this account book submitted by you?" Guo Huan took the account book, looked at it, and carefully replied: "For your Majesty, this account book is the "
"Did you check it carefully when you submitted it?" Zhu Yuanzhang continued to ask Guo Huan.
"This is to your Majesty. The lower officials have verified that it is true. Please have your Majesty take a closer look." Guo Huan said.
"Okay, now I will ask you to check again to see if there is anything missing." After Zhu Yuanzhang finished speaking, he threw the account book to Guo Huan. Guo Huan took the account book and felt uneasy. He could not guess Zhu Yuanzhang's original intention. But when he took a closer look at the account book, a chill ran down his spine. He didn't expect that his carefulness was still exposed. He stared blankly at the numbers that Zhu Yuanzhang had just changed. He couldn't calm down for a long time, and his face became increasingly ugly. But he still pretended to be calm and asked Zhu Yuanzhang: "Your Majesty, this account book has been changed."
"Oh? Tell me where it has been changed." Zhu Yuanzhang looked surprised.
"Your Majesty, the taxes and fees paid by the provincial governments each year are only five to one hundred thousand taels of silver, but this account book contains five hundred thousand taels of silver, and ten of them were filled in later." Guo Huan remained calm. said in a tone of voice.
"Really? But it's more than that, right? Take a closer look to see if there are any changes." Zhu Yuanzhang further said.
"No more." Guo Huan replied.
"Is it really gone?" Zhu Yuanzhang asked in a serious tone.
Guo Huan was agitated and realized that Zhu Yuanzhang was about to show his power. But he still pretended to be calm and said: "I'm sorry for my clumsiness." When Zhu Yuanzhang heard this, he was furious, slapped the dragon case, pointed at Guo Huan with his finger and reprimanded loudly: "Well, you Guo Huan, eat You have the royal rations and salary, but you are still greedy. You have obviously tampered with the account books, but you are still talking nonsense. "Where did the 50,000 taels of silver in the account books go?"
Now, Guo Huan is gone. He was stunned and suddenly collapsed on the ground. Zhu Yuanzhang immediately ordered Guo Huan to be imprisoned.
Later, after repeated interrogations, a shocking case surfaced. Guo Huan colluded with petty officials from the six ministries of punishment, rites, military service, and industry, as well as provincial bureaucrats and landlords, and embezzled taxes, grains, fish and salt, etc., resulting in more than 24 million shi of rice, and also misappropriated large amounts of gold and silver. Zhu Yuanzhang Long Yan was furious and ordered that 12 senior officials from the six ministries including Guo Huan and tens of thousands of accomplices from the left and right ministers down were sentenced to death, and many of his accomplices were sent to the border.
After this major case, Zhu Yuanzhang realized the importance of numbers in financial accounts. He also felt that the current numbers were easily altered and would cause endless harm if they continued to be used, so he decisively introduced a regulation to record money and grain figures. The Chinese characters "one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, one hundred, thousand" are changed to uppercase letters and replaced with "one, two, three, four, five, land, seven, eight, nine, "Shi, Bai, Qian" instead. As soon as this decision was made, the financial opportunities of those corrupt officials were cut off, and they no longer dared to do evil.
Zhu Yuanzhang hated corruption and corrupt officials. In order to fight against corruption and establish integrity, he almost spent his whole life. Cleverly changing numbers to punish corruption not only shows his extraordinary courage and extraordinary wisdom, but also shows his determination and courage to fight corruption and uphold integrity.
Author: Bai Yucheng
Selected from "Literature and History Monthly"
