Who Does a Decent Person Write a Diary?
Emperor Taizong of Tang's plane.
At that moment, Li Shimin asked curiously, "How is a president different from an emperor? And what is the Republic of China like?"
Wei Zheng stepped forward and said, "Mencius said that the people are most important, the state comes next, and the ruler is least important. The Republic of China sounds as though it puts the people first."
"Putting the people first? It's probably just talk," said an official from the Five Surnames and Seven Clans.
Comments section—
[Puyi was the unluckiest emperor. He even had to buy a ticket to go home.]
[You pity him? That's hilarious! Leaf through the pages of history: when dynasties fell, how many emperors and members of their imperial clans came to a good end?
He was lucky enough to be alive! Compare him with the Ming Dynasty's imperial clan: a million people surnamed Zhu were slaughtered by the Great Qing.
And the Manchu Qing imperial family received preferential treatment for a time after the abdication. Later, Feng Yuxiang drove Puyi out of the Forbidden City, and Puyi ran around trying to restore his empire. In the end, he colluded with the Japanese, becoming their puppet and a Han traitor. Even then, he wasn't shot afterward. He was only locked up for a few years as a symbolic punishment. And you think he had it bad?]
[The Jianzhou Jurchens brought disaster upon our Huaxia!]
[Too bad Feng Yuxiang didn't kill Puyi.]
[Warlords were everywhere back then, and the Manchu Qing imperial family was so rich. Why didn't anyone rob them? Wouldn't it have been better to kill them, take their women and money, and use the money to recruit troops and buy horses?
They were all a bunch of cowards who only knew how to fight among themselves and bully ordinary people.]
The video ended, and the comments section appeared on the screen of light.
Thanks to the text conversion, people in every historical period could understand the comments.
Taken together, the information about the Jianzhou Jurchens and the slaughter of the Great Ming's imperial clan revealed that there had been a Great Ming before the Great Qing, and that the Great Qing imperial family came from the Jianzhou Jurchens.
As for the Jurchen people, those living during the Liao, Song, Jin, Yuan, and Ming periods knew about them!
The Jin Dynasty had been founded by the Jurchens!
The people of Jin said they didn't know anyone in their ethnic group had the surname Aisin Gioro.
As for the Jianzhou Jurchens, the Yuan and Ming dynasties knew of them.
"The Jianzhou Jurchens?" On Emperor Taizu of Ming's plane, murderous intent showed in Zhu Yuanzhang's eyes as he said coldly, "A mere band of Jianzhou Jurchens will actually be able to overthrow our Great Ming Dynasty in the future, and slaughter a million of our descendants!"
Lan Yu stepped forward and volunteered. "Your Majesty, I am willing to lead troops north and annihilate the Jianzhou Jurchens."
The other famous generals of the early Ming also stepped forward one after another to volunteer.
Zhu Yuanzhang approved.
"Not just the Jianzhou Jurchens. Every Jurchen, no matter the tribe, man or woman, young or old—not even their chickens or dogs are to be spared!"
This was not merely a northern campaign against the Jurchens, but a plowing of the court.
Crown Prince Zhu Biao, unusually, did not object. The Great Ming would be replaced by the Jianzhou Jurchens' Great Qing, and a million descendants of the Zhu Household would be slaughtered. He was angry too.
Emperor Chengzu of Ming's plane—Zhu Di said, "That's one more reason for a northern campaign!"
When it came to plowing the court, no one in the history of the Great Ming understood it better than the Chenghua Emperor, Zhu Jianshen.
The Chenghua Plowing of the Court was a campaign to plow the court of the Jianzhou Jurchens.
In another time and space, the Chenghua Emperor, Zhu Jianshen, looked at the screen of light in the sky and felt that the plowing of the Jianzhou Jurchens' court had not been thorough enough.
In the future, the Jianzhou Jurchens would not only recover, but also destroy the Great Ming.
Zhu Jianshen felt it was necessary to plow their court again.
On the late Ming Chongzhen plane, the Chongzhen Emperor learned of the future from the screen of light. He wanted to act but was powerless, and murmured to himself, "Could it be that the Great Ming will fall by my hand? Am I to become a sinner against the Great Ming?"
What he did not know was that, as the video played, the future in his time and space had already changed.
The reason was that the words "a million people surnamed Zhu were slaughtered" alone had thrown the princes and imperial clansmen surnamed Zhu across the land into a panic.
The Aisin Gioro were still beyond the pass. There was no Great Qing Dynasty yet, only the Jin State.
If those Jurchens gained the empire, the fate of those surnamed Zhu could be even worse.
Unlike the Ming Dynasty's emperors and ministers, the Qing Dynasty's emperors gnashed their teeth in anger as they read the comments on the screen of light.
The Kangxi Emperor said, "Japan? Isn't that the Land of the Dwarf Barbarians? Our descendants were utterly incompetent. Not only were they driven from the throne, they were even made into puppets by the Land of the Dwarf Barbarians. Disgraceful!"
"A Han traitor? Shouldn't it be a Manchu traitor?" the Yongzheng Emperor corrected him.
"Wretched commoners! With no emperor in later generations, they lost their reverence for imperial authority and dared to say anything. How I wish I could execute their entire families," the Qianlong Emperor said resentfully.
The Jiaqing Emperor said, "We of the Aisin Gioro clan actually came to a good end in the end. Did the 'court' of later generations still revere imperial authority?"
[What self-respecting person keeps a diary? #Qing Dynasty]
"A diary? A daily journal? Why say it isn't respectable? The words 'Qing Dynasty' come after it. Who wrote it?"
"Whoever kept a journal was at least literate."
The second video's title piqued the curiosity of many people.
["There was an official in the late Qing named Du Fengzhi. He didn't have many hobbies; he just loved keeping a diary, and he dared to write about anything. Some of his diaries were exposed, and they were absolutely riveting. They stripped the late Qing officialdom right down to its underpants. One of the main attractions in the diaries was how officials made money."]
Hearing this, the Qing emperors' faces immediately darkened.
The emperors of other dynasties watched the screen in the sky with great interest, listening to find out what had happened.
The faces of the late Qing officials turned grim.
Officials in many dynasties began to feel nervous.
["According to Du Fengzhi, the main income of local officials in the late Qing came from taxes. In principle, taxes were supposed to be handed over to the court, but local officials had their own pricing system. At the time, the court required the common people to convert their grain into silver for tax payments. For example, at market prices, 100 jin of grain was worth one tael of silver. If you owed 100 jin of grain, you could simply pay one tael of silver. But to the local officials, 100 jin of grain was worth five taels of silver, and you had to pay five taels. So what happened to the extra four taels? What do you think?"]
Good heavens, they had opened with a king bomb.
Emperor Shizong of Ming's plane—the Jiajing Emperor sneered. "That local official was really something. The court collected one tael of silver, while he collected five. And just like that, the extra four taels went into his own pocket!"
Young emperors on certain planes learned a lesson from Du Fengzhi.
As for Du Fengzhi himself, he could now be certain that the person named on the screen in the sky wasn't just someone with the same name—it was him! That so-called diary was the one he had written!
The late Qing officials now wanted nothing more than to take knives to Du Fengzhi. Of all the things he could have written about, why did he have to write about this? Did he find the silver too hot to handle? Or did he think their Great Qing had too much popular support?
["Didn't anyone do anything about it? Throughout the late Qing officialdom, from the petty tax collectors below to the great officials at court above, everyone benefited from this scheme. Who was going to stop it?"]
["A man named Jiang Yili became governor of Guangdong. He was a good official who thought the common people had it too hard, so he decided to collect grain taxes at market prices."]
["As a result, the viceroys of Liangguang and Minzhe joined forces against him. As governor of Guangdong, he was a high-ranking official in charge of an entire region, but those two still managed to make it impossible for him to stay and drove him away."]