Qin Official

Dianke was one of the nine ministers of the Qin Dynasty, in charge of the barbarians in Guiyi, and was equivalent to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs + Ethnic Affairs Committee in later generations.

The subordinate officials under Dianke include Xingren, translator, and Biehuo, who are responsible for envoys, translators, and barbarian tribes paying tribute respectively. In addition, in the border counties, there are also county chiefs who are directly responsible for each department. Belongs to the state.

Wu Shiyan was the Dianke Changcheng of Zhangye County. Although this newly-established county had a small household registration, it controlled the world and communication channels between the Qin Dynasty and the Ministry, and even the diplomacy of the "Thirty-six Kingdoms", so its rank and salary were higher than Those in Beidi and Longxi are higher, six hundred stones. The tributes from Wusun, Loulan, Gushi, and Khotan in the Western Regions were all handled by him, which can be said to be low in salary but high in power.

But in September of the thirty-fifth year of Qin Shihuang, Wu Shiyan left all the affairs of the Western Regions to his subordinates and personally led a delegation to Xianyang in a hurry.

That was the envoy of the Great Xia Kingdom who Xi saw at the crossing of the river. He had unkempt curly hair, a high nose and deep eyes, and was wearing a white cloth.

This group of "Great Xia" people were like country bumpkins entering the city. They were excited from the moment they entered the territory of Great Qin and were curious about everything they saw.

Wu Shiyan was very concerned about everything he said and did, and asked translators who spent more than half a year to learn the language of Daxia to come one by one.

"Chang Cheng, the Daxia people said that they originally thought that the people of Qin were three feet tall, had loud voices, and had extremely long lifespans, up to three hundred years old..."

Wu Shiyan sneered: "Why didn't I know? If we could really live to be three hundred years old, His Majesty wouldn't let us go find the Queen Mother of the West to seek immortality."

The translator said: "They also said that the secret to the longevity of Qin people is to drink cold water all day long..."

Wu Shiyan found it very funny. As far as he knew, the Huarong soldiers and civilians in Beidi County imitated the soldiers of Heifu County Lieutenant. After they started drinking hot water, their diseases were slightly reduced. Drinking cold water will lead to longevity? OK, let the Daxia people drink it themselves!

However, the Daxia people's national imagination of "Serris" is actually: "Live in peace, without weapons, and never have war..."

This is even further away from the Qin Dynasty's war of aggression. By the way, Seris, this is Daxia's name for the people of Qin, and the literal translation is "Silk Kingdom".

Daxia's impression of the Qin Dynasty, or the Central Plains, comes entirely from silk and the recently popular sugar.

In mid-September, after entering the Neishi area, Daxia people became even more excited after seeing the silks and silks that could be seen everywhere in the shops. They took the jingling silver coins and bought all the silks they saw, completely ignoring the Ushi. Yan: "This is just poor quality and coarse silk, the silk from Shandong is better".

As a result, of course, because illegal currency was used, nothing was purchased.

Silk, which is ordinary in the Central Plains, is a symbol of miracles and beauty in the eyes of Daxia people. Where can there be a second kind of fabric in this world? After being draped in three layers, the transparent silk gauze can also be used to cover the statue of the goddess. Are the vagina and navel fully exposed?

As for where the silk came from, the Daxia people also had a fierce quarrel in front of Wu Shiyan.

Someone said: "The silk used by the Seris people to weave satin comes from a small insect called Seer. This insect is about twice the size of a beetle. When it spins silk, it looks like a spider spinning a web under a tree. The spider has eight legs. , the insect also has eight legs. The Seris people built houses to breed the insect in winter and summer, and used the filaments spun by the insect to wrap its legs. They first raised it with millet for four years, and then switched to green reed in the fifth year. Green reed is This is the favorite insect. Due to excessive feeding, the insect dies of excessive blood and body splitting, and its body becomes silk."

However, some people objected to this statement and put forward a more bizarre imagination: "There should be sheep in the forest. Someone irrigated them diligently and carded them out into fine silk threads, half like wool fibers and half like sticky silk."

When this person was passing through Longxi, he saw Qin girls weaving woolen clothes and became even more convinced.

The more Wu Shiyan listened, the funnier he became, until a literary scholar who held a reed pen and wrote and drew on leather all day said: "There is no need to argue. Ya Shiyan once said that silk fabrics are made from a kind of horned head. Made of cocoons produced by giant maggots!"

Wu Shiyan was still smiling, but when he turned around, he was a little surprised. The wise man named "Yashi" was so powerful. He said that they were inseparable, and he was still sure that this kind of "maggot" deformed into a larvae first. , first a pupa, and then a moth, the integration process takes six months!

But the rest of Daxia people laughed at it and thought it was impossible.

In order to protect business secrets and maintain Daqin's trade surplus, Wu Shiyan strengthened control and prevented the mission from contacting anyone, resulting in the leakage of secrets.

Let them continue to remain ignorant. The more bizarre the imagination, the stronger the desire for this precious fabric!

…

No matter what, the image of China in the eyes of Daxia people is just like its silk, light, mysterious and noble.

For them, the distant east is a dream. The sky is clear and the moon is bright. It is like a dream and a fairyland, just like flowers in the mist.

But now, with the opening of the Western Region and the fog dissipating, the two sides have had their first close contact.

But having said that, Daxia knew a lot about Qin, and Qin people actually didn’t know much about Daxia...

As soon as he returned to Xianyang, the Daxia envoys were imprisoned in the inn in the name of "epidemic prevention". Wu Shiyan hurriedly communicated with Dianke, one of the Nine Qin Qings of Daqin, who was the former governor of Beidi and now Jiancheng. Hou Zhaohai ventilated.

Explain how he went to Daxia and what he talked about with the people of Daxia.

"Dianke, Daxia is more than 2,000 miles southwest of Dawan, north and south of the Guishui River. The indigenous people have city houses, the same custom as Dawan. There is a king, and the city often has a small chief. There are more than a hundred of them. Ten thousand, more than one hundred thousand soldiers, Shanjia City, whose capital is called Bozhi, whose language is heavy with nine translations, and whose coins are made of silver. The sunny side of the money is painted with the face of the king, and the negative side is painted with the image of the naked body of his god."

At this time, Dawan, as an ally of Daxia, was relying on Daxia's protection to resist "the approaching large number of nomadic warriors." A year ago, when they came into contact with the mysterious "Serris people", they informed Daxia about it. The king of Daxia took it very seriously, and that's why Wu Shiyan's trip to Bozhi City took place.

It can be said that the entire thirty-six states in the Western Region combined are not as big a shock as Bo Zhicheng brought to Wu Shiyan!

The city is surrounded by tall walls, with white stone temples, stadiums, palaces, etc., all in neat order. Daxia people especially love figure sculptures, with different shapes, standing or lying, and full of beams and pillars.

At the end of the wilderness, there is another form of civilization, which the people of Qin have never thought of.

There are Kyushu beyond Kyushu. The Yin Yang family’s conclusion is correct. The world is bigger than imagined!

But U Thiyan did not forget his mission: to find the Queen Mother State of the West. Over the past few years, he went to a place where the translator, after he had a good grasp of the local language, kept asking:

"We are looking for the Queen Mother of the West, a beautiful emperor's daughter with shaggy hair, a hoopoe, a staff, and a ladder. She lives in the weak water, bears the mountain of fire, and has three blue birds on her shoulders. She can make people immortal and make people alive. Good weather..."

Faced with this question of asking questions based on pictures, the countries in the Western Region mostly shook their heads in confusion. Only the Daxia people seemed to understand. After a heated discussion among their elders in robes in the hall built with stone pillars, the King of Daxia Gave the Qin people a definite answer.

"we know!"

Only then did the Daxia envoy pay a return visit to Xianyang.

But Zhao Hai didn't believe the Daxia people at all and firmly believed that they had some ulterior motives.

"It is true that Your Majesty wants to find the Queen Mother of the West, but have you ever thought about why the people of Daxia are so enthusiastic for no reason?"

Wu Shiyan tried his best to explain: "Dianke, as far as I know, the silks, silks and sugar purchased by merchants from the Western Regions are all gathered in Daxia. The people of Daxia are interested in the beauty of Qin and want to be friendly with Qin so as to obtain more silk sugar." "

Let’s put it this way, Daxia was the Qin Dynasty’s “first trading partner” in the west, so it worked hard to make friends with Qin in the hope of getting more silk candies.

However, Wu Shiyan still concealed one thing from Zhao Hai: he vaguely understood from the translator's eavesdropping report that most of the silk purchased in Daxia was not for his own use, but was sold to them westward at a higher price. of fellow nations.

One of the countries, named Tiaozhi, is larger than Daxia. Its vast territory and military might are even comparable to that of the Qin Dynasty, and it may annex Daxia at any time!

But Wu Shiyan carefully concealed what he knew, and tried his best to divert the Daxia people's purpose to the commodity and colonial trade.

However, Zhao Hai was skeptical and still believed that the Daxia people had "ulterior motives" and did not approve their pilgrimage. What if they had evil intentions and used foreign magic to assassinate them? You have to ask clearly.

But the Daxia people who had been trapped in the library for several days gave up. In Zhao Hai's eyes, this group of "barbarians" with a strong taste actually openly protested:

"We come from Daxia, a country with thousands of cities full of wealth, and from Bozhi, the mother of all cities. Euthydemus, the king of Daxia, asked us to present a gift to His Majesty the Emperor of Daqin!"

"What kind of gift is it?"

After the translator reported it to the Ming Dynasty, Zhao Hai disagreed. The Qin Dynasty has a vast territory and rich resources, and the emperor is rich all over the world. How can your majesty take the gifts from small countries outside the area to your heart?

The Daxia people unloaded the wooden boxes they carried and took away all the stuffing inside, leaving only a marble-carved statue half a man tall.

It was a heroic woman, wearing a long robe, holding a spear, a shield, and a crown-shaped war helmet. She was fully armed, with a lifelike face, and elegant and strong limbs...

"Your Majesty has ten thousand terracotta warriors and horses."

Zhao Hai did not appreciate this kind of aesthetics, and sneered: "Everyone can carve better than her!"

The people of Daxia were very excited. They pointed to the goddess statue and asked the translator to tell Zhao Hai: "She is the goddess the Qin people are looking for. We also know where she is!"

"Is this the Queen Mother of the West?"

Zhao Hai was stunned. He could imagine that when the so-called "Statue of the Queen Mother of the West" was placed in front of Qin Shihuang, His Majesty's expression was similar to that of Bole who asked his son to follow the picture and found a toad instead.

But the people of Daxia never understood this. They proudly read out the name of this goddess in Daxia and the Greek states:

"aθ?νη!"