Chapter 285 284 Make Things Convenient for Others and Yourself

"Yesterday, Sansheng came to see me and told me about you"

Zhang Juzheng saw that Wei Guangde was so young, and perhaps he couldn't help but think of himself nine years ago, and he wanted to chat with him.

The Sansheng he mentioned was naturally Zeng Shengwu. Although Zhang Juzheng didn't admit it, Zeng Shengwu always treated him as a teacher and student every time he saw him.

Last year, after Zeng Shengwu went to Beijing to take the imperial examination and passed, he wrote him a letter, in which he mentioned that his friend Wei Guangde, who he knew in his hometown Pengze County, passed the examination.

But at that time, Zhang Juzheng didn't actually take Wei Guangde seriously. Even if he saw the court report later saying that Wei Guangde was selected as a scholar, he was just repeating his own path back then.

For those who were eliminated, being selected as a scholar was naturally full of envy, but for Zhang Juzheng, he naturally knew that being selected as a scholar was actually useless. It only meant that you were qualified to stay in the Hanlin Academy, but if you wanted to pass the Hanlin Academy and finally enter the cabinet, it would be a waste without the help of a noble person.

If it weren't for the intentional or unintentional help of his mentor Xu Jie, it would have been difficult for him to be a reviewer or editor in the Hanlin Academy.

More Shujishi were transferred to other government offices after the selection, rather than being kept in the Hanlin Academy.

In a short period of time, Wei Guangde broke the rule of the three-year selection of Shujishi and was directly appointed by Emperor Jiajing. Later, he shined in the battle of Xuanfu and became a rising political star in the Ming Dynasty court. Only then did he begin to pay attention to Wei Guangde.

Of course, this attention was just to pay more attention to the news about Wei Guangde, and it had not risen to the level of becoming a political opponent.

After all, everyone's official position was actually very humble, and it was really laughable to say that they were opponents.

Seeing Wei Guangde today and seeing Wei Guangde's youth, Zhang Juzheng naturally thought of himself. If the governor of Huguang, Gu Lin, had not deliberately put him down, he would have passed the imperial examination at a younger age, and perhaps he would have rushed to the capital without hesitation to participate in the imperial examination and become a Jinshi at the age of thirteen.

To put it another way, he should have entered the Hanlin Academy at this age, and perhaps Emperor Jiajing would have looked at him differently.

According to Gu Lin, the reason why he failed the imperial examination was that he hoped Zhang Juzheng would be tempered more and become a great man in the future.

After that, Zhang Juzheng's imperial examination road went smoothly, which seemed to confirm his statement back then. In the past, Zhang Juzheng was still a little complacent about this in his heart, but at this moment, when he saw Wei Guangde, he somehow showed a trace of dissatisfaction with Gu Lin.

Zhang Juzheng returned to the court after recovering from his illness. For a seventh-rank official, it was just a little lively in the Hanlin Academy, and it didn't last long.

On the contrary, after Wei Guangde's petition for leave came out from the Tongzhengshisi, it quickly fermented in the officialdom of the capital.

Officials with a keen sense of smell had already known that Wei Guangde's family should be married to the Duke of Wei's mansion in Nanjing, a hereditary Duke family, hehe.

For an official with a promising future like Wei Guangde, this marriage is actually not the best choice. If he chooses a family in the civil service group to marry, it will be more conducive to Wei Guangde's career development.

However, naturally no one would say such a thing.

Parents' orders and matchmakers' words, how can others care about this matter.

In the Yongshou Palace in the Western Garden, Emperor Jiajing saw that there was no reason to refuse Wei Guangde's petition, so he naturally nodded in agreement, and the subsequent approval procedure was logical.

The three major happy events in life are meeting old friends in a foreign land, passing the imperial examination, and the wedding night.

Three days later, the memorial submitted by Wei Guangde was returned to him. The cabinet and the Imperial Household Department had already approved it. What remained was naturally Wei Guangde's request to see the Yintai Yinzhangyuan to confirm the date of the leave.

Emperor Jiajing naturally would not give Wei Guangde special care. He approved it according to the court's regulations. The wedding period was two months in total.

However, in this era, due to the inconvenience of transportation, the court was still very humane and had specific requirements for this. Simply put, the vacation was calculated from the moment Wei Guangde arrived home, and the time consumed on the way back home was not counted in the vacation.

In addition, in fact, Ming Dynasty officials also played a most important way to increase vacations, that is, overdue return.

The punishment for officials who overdue return after taking leave or falsely reported false incidents in the Ming Dynasty was relatively lenient. First, because everyone did this, it was hard to say when it would be handed down to them. Second, it was natural that if they did not return for a long time after taking leave, they could naturally install their own people in the position, and they could not let official business be delayed.

During the Hongwu reign of Emperor Taizu of the Ming Dynasty, a system was established that leave for visiting relatives, worshipping ancestors, etc., excluding the round-trip journey, was allowed for one month. However, during the Hongzhi reign of Emperor Xiaozong of the Ming Dynasty, some officials reported that the leave was too short, and Emperor Xiaozong of the Ming Dynasty then ordered that the leave be increased to two months.

The review and approval of returning home to visit relatives was the most strict during the Hongwu reign of Emperor Taizu of the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang. All internal and external officials needed to report their leave, and Zhu Yuanzhang would personally decide, and then the Ministry of Personnel would report it again.

During the Hongxi reign of Emperor Renzong of the Ming Dynasty, a change occurred. This kind-hearted fat man basically approved all the petitions of internal and external officials to return home to visit relatives in the first year of Hongxi, resulting in many officials taking leave to return home during the Hongxi reign.

Once the atmosphere is bad, it is not good, and there was no corresponding punishment system at that time. Many officials and students did not return on time. For example, during the Xuande reign, the Minister of Rites reported that as many as 60 students did not return on time to visit their relatives.

During the Chenghua period of Emperor Xianzong of the Ming Dynasty, further regulations were formulated to regulate this phenomenon. In the 11th year of Chenghua, it was stipulated that officials in Beijing who had been away from home for more than ten years could be allowed to take leave to return home, otherwise it was impossible!

Perhaps the conditions were too harsh. In the 23rd year of Chenghua, the emperor issued an edict to slightly relax the policy, changing it from ten years to six years. Officials who had not returned home for six years were allowed to take leave to visit their families if they passed the review.

In fact, Wei Guangde forgot one thing in his leave petition. If Emperor Jiajing had not received the report from the Jinyiwei before, he would probably have rejected Wei Guangde's petition. That is, for officials to take leave to get married, they needed guarantees from their classmates and fellow officials.

It was just that it was rare for people like Wei Guangde to not get married before passing the imperial examination.

For most of the imperial scholars of this era, the age of high school was mostly around 30, and the juren gentlemen of this age had already been married.

There were also many jinshi in their twenties, but the Ming Dynasty did not practice late marriage and late childbearing. It was normal for men and women to get married at the age of sixteen or seventeen.

Once the system is relaxed, officials will take advantage of it to seek personal gain. Emperor Chenghua opened a small gap, which was soon torn into a big gap by officials and could no longer be blocked.

Since the court strictly examines leave requests, most officials who get leave choose not to return on time. It is rare to have time to relax and rest, and they can do a lot of things by relying on their official status.

In the third year of Emperor Wuzong of the Ming Dynasty, Zhao Song, the Minister of Guanglu Temple, did not return on time for four or five months after visiting his relatives. Zhao Song was punished for three months.

Emperor Wuzong of the Ming Dynasty was still dissatisfied and ordered the Ministry of Personnel to thoroughly investigate how many officials did not return on time. This investigation was not a big deal, but it was shocking to find that as many as 146 officials did not return on time after visiting their relatives or taking sick leave.

The law does not punish everyone, and Emperor Zhengde could not deal with so many officials at once, so he had to order that those who failed to return on time would be pardoned if the time was three months, punished for four or five months for three months, arrested for six or seven months, retired for eight or nine months, and retired for more than ten months with abdication.

With the existence of this decree, Wei Guangde was actually given a period of time for failing to return on time, which was a two-month vacation, but in fact it was a five-month vacation, and the time on the way back was not included.

Think about why there are so many celebrities writing poems and inscriptions on the famous mountains and rivers in China, and it is probably because of this.

There seems to be no big difference between rushing on the road and traveling all the way back, anyway, it does not take up the time for leave.

Wei Guangde has three errands on his body. The errand of the Hanlin Academy was originally Wu Qing's job. Wei Guangde felt it was easy and continued to take it. Now after talking to Yin Tai, he naturally had to go to Wu Xueshi.

After that, there were the Taichang Temple and the Zhanshi Mansion. Although they were both idle positions, Wei Guangde still went to pay a visit to the officials in charge.

It was already October, and a full moon was hanging high in the sky, casting endless silver moonlight covering the entire river surface.

The weather gradually began to get colder in the howling north wind, and at this time, the sound of "swooshing" boats breaking through the water surface came from the quiet river surface.

From far to near, a large canal boat with two sails appeared in front, breaking through the moonlight reflected on the water surface and continuing to move forward. In the gray, the second and third canal boats appeared one after another, and they followed the canal boats in front and went south along the north wind.

Wei Guangde was going back to Jiujiang Prefecture to get married. The news spread in the capital, and naturally reached the ears of Jiangxi merchants in Beijing.

Wei Guangde planned to go back to his hometown via the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal this time. The last time he came to the capital, they entered Beijing by land because of the cold weather and the frozen canal.

In the Ming Dynasty, it would be a pity if we could not take a trip to the ancient Grand Canal.

Merchants were naturally happy about this, because they could take the goods they had stored in the north back to the south.

The construction of the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal began in the Spring and Autumn Period. The Wu State dug the Han Canal to attack the Qi State. The Sui Dynasty expanded it greatly and connected it to the capital Luoyang and Zhuo County. When the Yuan Dynasty renovated it, it abandoned Luoyang and went straight to Beijing.

In fact, the so-called Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal is a waterway built by making full use of the water systems along the way. The water systems are connected by artificial channels, so that the canal boats can go directly from Hangzhou to Tongzhou or even the capital.

It’s just that the construction and maintenance of this Grand Canal is very expensive, so all dynasties have also collected tariffs on ships traveling on the canal. In the Ming Dynasty, due to effective collection and management, the banknote tariff became an important source of central fiscal revenue, and more than 200,000 taels of silver in both original and discounted colors were directly transferred to the inner court and the Ministry of Revenue every year.

It should be noted that although there were tens of thousands of ships traveling on the canal during the Ming Dynasty, only merchant ships were required to pay customs duties, and the grain transport ships, as an important source of transportation between the north and the south, were actually important carriers.

Because corruption and bribery almost became an open rule in the Ming Dynasty, the grain transport soldiers lived in hardship, but they were responsible for a lot of things, so most of them were unwilling to transport grain.

In order to compensate them, the court also gave them preferential treatment, that is, the grain transport ships could privately carry 20% of private goods, and part of the freight and evaded tariffs of these goods went into the pockets of these grain transport soldiers.

These tens of thousands of grain transport ships were the carriers of the main goods on the canal, carrying the huge commodity trade between the south and the north of the Ming Dynasty, while private merchant ships were much less.

The canal banknotes were directly under the Beijing government, so it was difficult for merchant ships to evade taxes, but there was a way. The simplest and most effective way was to ask Jinshi and Juren to use their identities to avoid taxes.

From Beijing to Jiujiang, their goods had to pass through six customs ports along the way, including Hexiwu, Linqing, Jining, Xuzhou, Huai'an and Shangxinhe. As for the last Jiujiang customs, they had many ways to avoid it.

Six customs, a ship needs nearly 100 taels of silver tolls, and they collected five large ships to transport goods, which is several hundred taels of silver.

The merchants selected representatives to find Wei Guangde, and the person who came was naturally Mr. Lin Erye of Huitong Commercial Bank. The purpose was naturally to hope that their merchant ships could go south with Wei Guangde and take care of him along the way.

In return, the Chamber of Commerce would give Wei Guangde a cabin and a reward of 100 taels of silver on the ship, which means that Wei Guangde would not only not need to pay for the ship when he returned home, but also make a net profit of 100 taels of silver.

These days, everyone does it, and Wei Guangde also follows the local customs and agrees.

He had to agree. According to the information revealed by Mr. Lin, most of the cargo owners were merchants from Jiujiang. If he didn't agree, there might be rumors in his hometown that were unfavorable to him.

Sometimes, it's not that everyone wants to take advantage of the court and harm the public for personal gain, but they really have to do it.

Let's say how much value the 100 taels of silver are to Wei Guangde. In fact, Wei Guangde really doesn't like this money from the bottom of his heart, but he still has to agree, and he has to smile.

Wei Guangde's boat is naturally at the front of the fleet. When passing through the banknote docks such as Hexiwu and Linqingguan, Wei Guangde directly contacts the banknote officials.

As an external agency directly under the court, although the speed of spreading news is not as fast as that in the Beijing government, the banknotes still know the news of Wei Guangde's southward march in advance. In recent years, there have been few impressive achievements against the Mongolian Altan tribe. The most eye-catching one seems to be the battle in Baoanzhou last year.

Wei Guangde is now a little famous all over the world, but he doesn't know it yet.

Everything went smoothly. Wei Guangde had all the necessary documents on him, and he could easily take out official seals and official documents. The officials at the bank would let him go after checking his identity.

They were already familiar with such things. Wei Guangde was not the only official who traveled to and from the canal. Countless officials did this, and they also did this themselves. Therefore, it was convenient for others and for themselves.

This seemed to be an unwritten rule within the civil service group of the Ming Dynasty, just like the tax exemption for people with meritorious service. Everyone actually knew it.

Driven by the north wind, the fleet quickly passed Huai'an, and in a few days it would pass Zhenjiang and enter the Yangtze River waterway, which was very close to their hometown.