The quiet high walls and deep courtyards, the broad pavilions and houses, together enclosed a domain of power. Just like that vermilion gate—it was absolutely not something an ordinary household could have, or dare to have. Even truly wealthy sea merchants, in this flourishing age of the Great Ming, did not dare overstep in clothing, food, housing, or travel. Because although the laws of the Great Ming seemed vague and lenient, and often ignored matters entirely, if one day they truly decided to ask, to stretch out a hand and pursue accountability, then they were Mount Tai, heavy enough to crush local magnates. People would really die!
"The Collected Works of Duke Li Wenxi? Master Pu'an, Li Chun? I seem to have heard my examination mentor, Duke Liu Daxia, mention him. He said that when he was young, he once studied under Master Pu'an with the rites of a disciple, and respected him greatly..."
Shi Wende's eyes flickered. As for Li Chun, the first-rank first-place zhuangyuan of Tianshun's first year, this was all he knew. The great gate of officialdom had only ever opened a narrow crack for him, the descendant of sea merchants.
And the fact that he could thicken his face and address Liu Daxia as "examination mentor" was all thanks to the Zhejiang provincial examination in the renzi year two years earlier, when Liu Daxia had served as examiner. Among more than eight hundred candidates, he had barely scraped into the one hundred and four Zhejiang juren selected, taking a tail-end place just over the hundredth rank.
After that, it was by relying on this official status as a "juren," by relying on calling Liu Daxia "examination mentor," that the wealth of his sea-merchant clan could find a path, could rack its brains to be spent, all