"First of all, the city is really bustling. On my way from Castile to the Timurid Khanate, I passed through Syria, Iraq, Persia, and finally Samarkand. Samarkand also has a population of hundreds of thousands, and people from the East, West, South and North come to Samarkand to do business, and the dazzling variety of things are traded in the market, so that Alonso and I are reluctant to leave, and the locals ridicule us as hillbillies in the countryside. ”

"But when I arrived in Yingtian, I realized that the city of Samarkand was nothing, and the people of Samarkand were only hillbillies. After leaving Yiwu, Alonso was going to return to China through the Central Asian steppes, the Eastern European Plain, and the Black Sea, passing through the city of Samarkand, and asked the Ming vassal state 'Qin' to send me a message mentioning the city of Samarkand, which was ruled by Qin, because many of the local residents were killed, and most of the rest were driven out of the city, and replaced by a small number of Seris, who lived with most of the Turks and Mongols in the area of Lake Balkhash who were not so devout in their belief in the Celestial Sect. The Seris also gave a new name to these unreligious Turkic peoples: the Serabs, which is said to be the name of a people in Central Asia during the Roman Empire. ……”

"I'm sorry my master, I suddenly digressed. I would like to say that even the city of Samarkand before it was destroyed was far from having to go to the heavenly city. The city, because of its location in the easternmost part of the continent, rarely saw Europeans, even the barbarians of Eastern Europe; But the variety of its goods was far greater than that of Samarkand: innumerable goods which I had never seen were sold in the market, and at extremely cheap prices, even those which were native to the heavens or Asia Minor or Europe, were sold from the West by great food or Indian merchants, and although they were more expensive, they were far from being affordable to the aristocracy or officials; And in Toledo, even the Count was reluctant to buy goods from the Ming Kingdom of the East. ”

"In Yingtian City, countless people pass through the city gate every day to come to the market in the city to sell their goods, or send their goods to the shops in the city, sell them to the shops at a fixed price, and then buy some things from the city and go back. Many of these people are ordinary residents living outside the city of Yingtiancheng, but their lives are more affluent than the ordinary residents of our country who live in the city. ”

"The size of the market here, even those that sell only one commodity, is unusually large. Before coming to this city, I never imagined that a city could sell so much meat, so many vegetables, so much tea, and so much porcelain in one day! ”

"I sold everything I had in exchange for the currency used in the area, and the Ming government gave me a small amount of money every month. I use this money to buy things in the market, especially all kinds of food. The food of the Ming Kingdom is too rich, and they can make dozens of different foods with the same raw material, and the taste is different. ”

"At the same time, they also use a lot of spices extravagantly! Yes, many spices, which are worth as much as gold in China, are affordable here, and it is with the help of these spices that they make so many delicious foods. I used to eat because the food they made was so delicious that my stomach was bloated and I couldn't hold anything anymore. As a result, I gained twenty pounds in the first three months before I learned moderation. ”

"After learning to be in moderation, I started buying all kinds of other goods in the market. Not only is the variety and ingenuity of the goods here, but they are also inexpensive. Of course, at the beginning, because I didn't speak the Seris well and didn't understand the general price of goods, I bought a lot of things at a high price. But in my opinion, even if you buy these things at a high price, they are not expensive. ”

"At the beginning of this year (the beginning of the year of the Seris, the calendar of the Seris is different from that of Europe, as I told you before, about the middle of February of the year 1405 of the Lord), the Emperor of the Ming Kingdom promised me that he would send me and my retinue to the place of the Great Cannibals, and I planned to have them send me to Basra and return from Basra. So I prepared a lot of goods that Ming Guo was not afraid of bumps to bring back to China and give to my master. ”

"But now I'm not going back. I've only been in Yingtian City, and I haven't been to any other part of the Ming Kingdom, which is a very large area. I plan to spend 5-7 years walking around the country and then returning to China. ”

At this point, Claviyo suddenly felt that something was wrong, crossed out the entire paragraph with a pen, and continued to write the letter after confirming that the key words were unrecognizable.

"After talking about the developed commerce of the Ming Kingdom, let's talk about others. In the beginning, a lot of people here looked at me with disgust and refused to sell me anything, and their attitude was very bad, very different from the way they treated the local guests. At first, I thought it was the contempt of the Seris for foreigners, but I learned from the officials in charge of foreign affairs in the Ming Kingdom that they hated me because I looked similar to the Semu people, and the Semu people held many official positions that allowed them to have direct contact with ordinary people during the Mongol rule, and they suppressed the Seris people as much as possible, so they hated the Semu people more than the Mongols. ”

"After learning about this, every time I went to the market to buy something, I would bring a certificate issued by the Ming government to prove that I was a foreign envoy and show it to the merchants. When they learned that I wasn't a native of the country, they became hospitable to me. ”

"At the same time, I also learned another thing because of this incident: the Ming government almost did not allow foreigners to enter the Ming Kingdom except for two special cities, except for foreign envoys or mercenaries (he regarded the Japanese soldiers of Baiyiwei as mercenaries). I inquired and learned that only one merchant from Siam (a small eastern country) had been granted permission to enter the Ming realm. ”

"But it's not very strict. As far as I know, there are people from other countries in the northern, western and southern border areas who secretly entered the territory of the Ming Kingdom to work as farmers or small traders, and after learning the Seris language, they became Ming nationals and obtained the Ming household registration. ”

Claviyo wrote a lot more, and suddenly felt that he was a little hungry, looked sideways at Ke Leak, and found that it was already two o'clock in the afternoon of the Ming Kingdom, and suddenly realized that he had been in the palace for a long time.

'Will the emperor of the Ming Kingdom still receive me?' He muttered to himself.

But even though he suspected that the emperor of the Ming Kingdom had forgotten about him, he did not dare to leave this palace without permission. He had already learned the majesty of the emperor of the Ming Kingdom, and he could be punished very severely if he left without permission; What's more, he doesn't know the road either, and even if he knows the road, the subordinates who guard the palace gate won't let him go.

He asked the subordinate who was half-serving and half-watching if he could prepare lunch for himself, but the eunuch did not dare to make a decision on his own, so he let the other person continue to watch him here, and went to the Qianqing Palace to ask for instructions.

But Claviyo got up late this morning, and because he had not eaten breakfast because he had come to see Yun Xi, he was really hungry at this time, and asked the eunuch in the palace to give him something to eat. The eunuch thought about it and brought him snacks prepared for Lian Zining.

Claviyo devoured all the snacks, and the eunuch who watched it felt distressed, felt a little less hungry, and picked up his pen and continued to write.

"Your Majesty, my master, the next thing I want to tell you about the Emperor of the Ming Kingdom and the Imperial Palace."

"There were also rumors in Castile about the enormous power of the monarchs of the Eastern countries, but everyone was only skeptical. But after my observation in the Ming Kingdom for seven months, I found that the emperor of the Ming Kingdom did have very great power. ”

"The emperor of the Ming kingdom could revoke the title of a nobleman for any reason, and even put him to death along with his family and vassals. Just twenty-five years ago, when the Ming Kingdom had only been established for more than ten years, the emperor at that time killed the first duke of the country, and many marquises, earls, and their families and vassals, killing tens of thousands of people in total; A few years later, because of a trivial matter, he killed more than 1,000 magistrates across the country. Oh my lord, the Ming state practiced a provincial system similar to that of the Byzantines, under which there was an administrative apparatus, and officials were appointed by the central government. ”

"The person who now serves as the emperor of the Ming Kingdom is the grandson of the previous emperor and the only legitimate heir of the original crown prince. According to the inheritance rules of the Ming Kingdom, at this time, the emperor can choose his second legitimate heir, or the original legal heir of the crown prince as the new crown prince, there is no doubt that he chose the current emperor. ”

"Oh, my master, I have to explain to you again. The Ming State practiced a marriage system between monogamy and polygamy, in which one of all wives was regarded as the main wife, and the son born was the legal heir to most of the property, and the other sons could only share a small amount of property, and the married daughter could not inherit the property and title of her biological parents, and the unmarried could only get the dowry needed for future marriage, nor could she inherit the title. ”

"But this rule is not well enforced at the level of the emperor's heir. The attitude of the previous emperor was even more important – arguably decisive – and it was also an aspect of the great power of the Ming emperor – that he could not only choose from among the sons born to the main wife, but even the sons born to the non-legitimate wife as the heirs to the vast empire. However, both the current and previous emperors have enforced the rules of succession well. ”

"The reason why the Ming Emperor was able to have so much power, after I have studied the history of other countries that the Seris people have established in this land, I believe that the biggest reason is the separation of officials and nobles."

"In Castile, and in all other European countries, the state is governed by the granting of a certain place to a certain nobleman, and the agreement on how much tax the nobleman pays to the state each year, and how the nobleman governs the local central government is not concerned, and it is difficult to control; Even the territories under the direct jurisdiction of the monarch were given to many minor nobles or knights, who administered them on their behalf. ”

"This is not the case with Mingguo. The officials of the Ming Kingdom may have been of noble origin, but whether or not they could serve as officials other than generals had nothing to do with the titles they were given, and they had to compete with those selected by the monarch from among the commoners. And the position of an official cannot be hereditary. ”

"And the Emperor of the Ming Kingdom used a very novel method to select officials. They are selected by examination, and all those in the immediate family who have never been convicted of a crime are able to participate. The format and content of the exam is to write an essay or calculate the problem, which is divided into three parts, one part is based on the books written by several famous sages in the history of the Seris people to demonstrate the questions issued by the official, one part is to calculate the mathematics test questions, and the other part is to propose a solution to a real problem faced by the country. ”

"There are six exams to go from the local to the central, and those who pass the last exam can become officials, or even directly become middle-level officials in the country. I once heard that there was a person who was promoted to the prefect in half a year after passing the final exam, managing more than 500,000 people. ”

Of course, only the smartest people could pass these six examinations, and these smartest people were not enough to hold all the official positions of the state, and the emperor of the Ming State was unwilling to directly appoint nobles as magistrates, so he summoned those who passed the third and fourth examinations to a school established by the state, and those who graduated from this school could hold official positions. But although I call this institution a school, it is not the same as a church school, or a school in the free cities of Italy, and it is difficult for me to define it exactly. ”

"My lord, I believe that if you want the king to have great power like the Ming Kingdom, you must implement a system similar to that of the Ming Kingdom, gradually reducing the fiefdoms of the nobles, expanding the land and population under your direct jurisdiction, and at the same time not establishing nobles in the lands under your direct jurisdiction, but appointing non-hereditary officials to administer them. According to some historical records, such a system was practiced in ancient Rome, and the Byzantines still practiced such a system in some places, which shows that such a system must be implemented if you want to restore the glory of ancient Rome. Therefore, my lord, your servant, beseeches you to study the Ming Kingdom and select officials by examination. ”

"Of course, there are also prerequisites for the Ming Kingdom to be able to implement the current system. The appointed magistrates needed to know at least how to read, and the imperial examinations of the Ming Kingdom also required reading and literacy. The Ming Kingdom used two technologies to reduce the cost of books to incredible proportions, so that the average resident could also be literate and able to take the imperial examinations. ”

"These two techniques are ......" Claviyo was about to continue writing, when suddenly a voice came from the door: "Castilian messenger Claviyo!" ”

"I'm here!" Claviyo put down his pen and stood up and spoke in Chinese.

"Your Majesty will summon you now." Lu Yi said a word to him, turned his head, and began to walk out slowly. Claviyo hesitated, folded up his letter and tucked it into his arms, and followed him.