Spoiling History: Starting from the Three Kingdoms

【The death of the Yuan Dynasty's crown prince Zhenjin had an impact comparable to that of Zhu Biao.

It goes without saying that Zhu Biao was a son who Zhu had cultivated with all his heart and soul, and who was almost perfect in all aspects at the time. His sudden death directly cast a thick bloody shadow over the Hongwu Dynasty and directly led to the great turmoil of the Jingnan Campaign in the early Ming Dynasty.

The impact of the death of the crown prince Zhenjin was more complicated. Its direct manifestation was that it cut off the way out for Yuan Confucian scholars.

We have said before that one of the major problems of the Yuan Dynasty was that it did not hold imperial examinations.

In fact, the Yuan Dynasty did hold them. For example, Yelu Chucai, who was promoted during the Mongol Empire, jointly held imperial examinations with Ogedei. At that time, 4,000 talents were selected in one go to fill the management system of the Mongol Empire, and the effect was very good.

But later Ogedei died suddenly, and his wife Naimazhen took control of the government. In order to let her son Guyuk inherit the Khan throne, she flattered the old Mongol nobles who had voting rights at the Hulitai Assembly without any bottom line.

This directly led to the death of Yelu Chucai, a famous prime minister, who was dismissed from his post and died of grief. At the same time, the imperial examination was abolished.

During the Yuan Dynasty, after Kublai Khan destroyed the Southern Song Dynasty, he tried to bring the imperial examination back for discussion.

As a result, this proposal was jointly resisted by the Mongolian nobles at that time.

The main reason was that the Yuan Dynasty had already seen the trend of officials becoming officials.

For most of the feudal era, officials and clerks were clearly distinguished. Unless they rebelled, it was unlikely that clerks would be promoted to prime ministers. If they wanted to be officials, they had to participate in the imperial examination, which was controlled by the central government of the dynasty. This was the simple logic of talent selection in the feudal era.

But the Yuan Dynasty was different. If the Mongolian master saw that you had the ability, he could promote you from a clerk to an official with a stroke of his pen. Of course, this ability included many things, including the ability to flatter or bribe.

The essence of this prevailing trend is that the power to select officials, which should have been controlled by the central government, has fallen into the hands of the nobles. Naturally, they are not willing to hand it over, and they have good reasons on the surface - the fall of the Southern Song Dynasty was caused by Confucian scholars harming the country, and you, Khan, still want to implement Confucian law?

As mentioned earlier, the banner of the other Khanates that did not submit to Kublai Khan before uniting was that Kublai Khan implemented Han law, so in the end Kublai Khan temporarily accepted it with a pinch of his nose.

Prince Zhenjin was supposed to be a back-up plan for the gradual reform, but now this back-up plan is gone. In addition to Kublai Khan, there are more than 100,000 "Confucian households" at that time.

Confucian households were divided by Kublai Khan at the founding of the Yuan Dynasty. As long as you are identified as a Confucian household and you are still studying, you will not only be exempted from taxes, but this identity can even be inherited.

After the fall of the Southern Song Dynasty, scholars from Jiangnan joined in again, and the number of Confucian households directly exceeded 100,000. Jiangnan, which was already rich, quickly recovered its vitality by giving money to exempt from taxes, and then soon found the glass curtain wall in front of it:

If you want to be an official, studying is useless, you have to be a dog for the Mongols.

Some real scholars naturally did not want to do that, so with abundant material support and the reality that there were no officials to be employed, scholars in the Yuan Dynasty who were in the folk combined Song Ci with popular minor tunes, and Yuanqu was born, which can be regarded as the ancestor of modern opera.

When many people talk about Yuanqu, they can only think of Ma Zhiyuan's "Autumn Thoughts in the Clean Sands of the Sky", and they always feel that Yuanqu is completely declining compared to Tang poetry and Song Ci.

But in fact, Yuanqu includes Sanqu and Yuan Zaju. If we talk about Yuan Zaju, even if we don't mention the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Journey to the West, and Water Margin, which were already in their infancy at the time, the representative works of the four great Yuanqu masters, such as "The Injustice of Dou E", "Autumn in the Han Palace", "Rain on the Wutong Tree", and "The Orphan of Zhao", are also classic works that are still shining today.

Of course, the most famous Yuanqu is Zhang Yanghao's "Shanpoyang·Tongguan Nostalgia". 】

In Guangzheng Hall, Zhao Kuangyin watched the words of Zhuge Wuhou and Li Shimin, so he fixed his slightly thoughtful eyes on Liu Han, the imperial physician.

This made Liu Han wave his hands and refuse, saying that it was impossible and unreliable to diagnose and treat diseases for people hundreds of years later.

Besides, there is Zhang Zhongjing and Sun Simiao, a medical saint and a medicine king. What virtue and ability do I, Liu Han, have that the government thinks I can be compared with these two sages?

Especially since he had absorbed the essence from the light curtain, his medical skills were probably better than those of the two sages in the past.

Zhao Kuangyin suddenly felt a little regretful:

He wanted to talk more with Emperor Hongwu.

After all, the Ming Dynasty was also a successor to the Song Dynasty, and Zhu Hongwu's origins could be connected to the Song Dynasty.

But for now, Zhao Kuangyin decided to focus on the present, just like this Yuan opera.

When he saw Tian Jing Sha Qiu Si for the first time, Zhao Kuangyin felt that it was too vulgar, but the more he read it, the more he felt it was endless.

Then he sighed in his heart, it was indeed the essence that was brought out by the younger generation, and although this work did not conform to the rules of poetry, it was a different taste to read.

So he simply put his hand on Li Yu's shoulder and asked directly:

"Can you write it?"

Li Yu frowned in disdain:

"Vulgar, this is a top-grade text, condensed with the efforts of wise men, how can it be written easily?"

Zhao Kuangyin didn't care, and said happily:

"It's okay to copy it and spread it in Bianliang, so that readers can know it widely, and it will definitely be useful in the end."

"But this must be in the name of Cong Jia, just say that Ma Zhiyuan is your good friend."

Li Yu suddenly realized that Emperor Zhao had such an idea, but this idea... seems to be quite feasible?

...

In the Huagai Hall where the atmosphere was slightly relieved, Zhu Yuanzhang directly skipped the Yuan Dynasty situations that he was more familiar with:

"Bloody? Jingnan? Great turmoil?"

"What's the problem?"

"Who dares to embarrass our Ming Dynasty?"

Although he said so, Zhu Yuanzhang suddenly felt powerless.

His wife and son died. This situation was something he had never imagined. After experiencing all this, what decision would he make? What means would he use?

Could it be that someone was dissatisfied with Xiongying?

Was Xiongying Yongle? Or was he the good grandson?

For a moment, the emperor of Ming Dynasty felt that the things he thought he had known well became more and more confusing.

[Born in a humble family, he entered the officialdom as a writer, knew the sufferings of the people, cared about people's livelihood, was frugal, and impeached corruption. This is Zhang Yanghao.

It can be said that in any dynasty, Zhang Yanghao would have been very likely to shine with all his glory and realize his life ideals, but unfortunately he was born in the Yuan Dynasty.

He was excluded by his colleagues for sympathizing with the people, laughed at by the Mongols for his frugal style, and would have been killed on the spot if he had not run fast for impeachment of corruption (he changed his name and fled).

When the emperor changed, he returned fearlessly to start the imperial examination again. After the success, he quietly retired after seeing through the officialdom of the Yuan Dynasty.

In the eight years, the Yuan court summoned him seven times, but Xu Shangshu refused, Xu Taizi Zhanshi refused, Xu Hanlin scholars ignored, and Xu Lianfangshi refused to accept. It was not until 1329 that he was summoned: Guanzhong was suffering from a severe drought, and the people were eating each other. He was appointed as the governor of Shaanxi.

Zhang Yanghao obeyed the order without hesitation.

In the four months after taking office to help with the disaster relief, all the family property he sold turned into flowing water and disappeared without a sound. The money he got from fighting with the tyrants saved countless people, but he became poor and his body was ruined. In the end, he lay on the sickbed with a skinny body, but he was still asking if there were any people who starved to death today.

After two months of bed rest, Zhang Yanghao died of illness, and the 800-li Qinchuan was filled with grief.

There are two sentences in the family motto left by Zhang Yanghao, which are also the best footnotes of his life:

All sufferings are as if they were your own. If one has a goal, there is nothing that cannot be done in the world, let alone studying?

Tongguan Nostalgia was written when Zhang Yanghao passed Tongguan on his way to Shaanxi for disaster relief. It is also a masterpiece that perfectly combines ideology and artistry in Yuan opera. It is truly a single piece that has been popular for thousands of years. In just eight words, it reveals the essential characteristics of feudal society.

Compared with Zhang Zai's slightly lofty Hengqu Four Sentences, Zhang Yanghao used simple eight words to tell the fact that the famous ministers and wise ministers of the feudal era for thousands of years could not figure out.

Since then, the only name for the chaos in the world is the sigh of rise and fall.

The death of Prince Zhenjin led to the temporary forgetting of Jiangnan Confucian households by Kublai Khan, which led to the prosperity of Yuan Dynasty folk literature. As a result, it unexpectedly gave the Yuan Dynasty a layer of gorgeous literary whitewash.

This is probably what those Mongolian nobles of the Yuan Dynasty who could not even speak Chinese did not expect. 】

It's too late, sorry