My Dynasty Takes the North as its Foundation, Valuing the North and Slighting the South!

"Ah! My Great Ming takes farming and sericulture as its foundation, and the pacification of military affairs as its priority—and maritime trade is the source of chaos under Heaven?!..."

In the courtyard study, when he heard those words, Shi Wende was horrified, nearly unable to keep himself perched on the half of the chair beneath him. The reason for his shock, naturally, was not the claim that "farming and sericulture are the foundation, maritime trade a calamity" in itself.

In truth, he had heard those mainstream literati arguments of "agriculture as the root, commerce as the branch" countless times already, and he held them in deep contempt. These coastal gentry clans, on the surface, "valued farming and restrained commerce, revered moral instruction," while behind the scenes they annexed land, linked field paths into vast estates, drove sea merchants and sea bandits, and swallowed the goods and silver brought back by maritime trade—without the slightest softness of hand!

It was just that, at this moment, the Zhejiang Provincial Administration Commissioner, the highest official of the entire province of Zhejiang, saying this to him, a descendant of sea merchants who had only with great difficulty clawed his way up to the rank of juren—what weight did those words carry?! To directly define maritime trade as "the source of chaos"—what did that imply as a warning and a beating of the drum?!...

"Hmm? Si Cheng, is there something you do not understand?..."

"Ah... This student... This student, hearing the instruction of Your Excellency, suddenly feels the thatch blocking his mind split open!... The sage Zhu Xi once said... what matters most to the living people is filling their bellies... and the state is the same..."

Shi Wende stammered out a few phrases of the "agriculture as the root" rhetoric he had once heard