With the introduction of a new batch of grain from the Grain Industry Bureau into Beijing, the problem of grain shortage in Beijing has also been completely resolved.

Yan Song, the secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture, began to promote sweet potatoes to Baoding and Zhendingfu.

In addition, the central court and local governments at all levels also began to open fertilizer factories to sell the manufactured fertilizers to farmers at the most reasonable prices, so as to promote grain production.

Zhu Houzhao believes that with the promotion of sweet potatoes, the people of the empire will no longer have problems due to famine, and the population will usher in a big explosion.

What's more, now, Zhu Houzhao has also been exempted from forced labor, which has undoubtedly increased the ability of yeoman farmers to raise more children.

Zhang Yousan got out of bed, tied his belt, and looked back at his new daughter-in-law's two 0 wives, his eyes full of satisfaction.

Like most Ming civilians of this era, his income is now different from ten years ago, and he now earns four or five silver dollars a month even when he works in the city's newly opened coal factory.

In addition, his three acres of land that could only be planted with vegetables can now be planted once a year, and he can also rely on sweet potatoes to raise one or two fat pigs at the end of the year.

Now that the family's income is growing, the demand for meat is getting higher and higher, and the price of pork is getting higher and higher, Zhang Yousan has also sold a lot of money because of selling pigs, and it is precisely because of this money that he finally married a daughter-in-law after being single for 30 years.

Although he married a widow, fortunately, he was beautiful, and Zhang Yousan didn't feel bad.

Of course, now he has also learned some words in the study classes run by the county, and he knows that some gentlemen in the city have begun to advocate the remarriage of widows, saying that widowhood of young women is equivalent to the extinction of human reproduction.

And he himself doesn't care about widows or not, he only thinks now that he can have a son in the future, he can also enroll in the hall to study, like his cousin, he can also be admitted to the Jinshi all the way, enter Jingshi University, and he can also be put in the local area to become a county master.

Zhang Yousan's cousin Gao Jian didn't expect that he was originally just an apprentice who followed Mr. Feng Shui to learn to give people a good reputation, and because he had no money to follow the study anymore, he had to go home and enter social studies.

Of course, Gao Jian's ability to be an official is also related to Zhu Houzhao's reform of the imperial examination system.

As more and more scholars received new education, especially those who graduated from higher education, most of them were studying because of poor performance in the imperial examination and the fact that the imperial court subsidized the new education.

The imperial court had to make changes in the social promotion system.

These scholars from poor families now have a large scale, and these scholars have to continue to participate in the imperial examinations because they are still selected by the imperial examination, or stay in school to become teachers in the new school, or enter the low-level officials of the Ming Dynasty through the civil official selection examination.

However, if these poor students who have received a new education want to become high-ranking officials, they still have to go through the scientific examination to become Jinshi.

In order to reduce the number of scholars who received new education and re-study Bagu Wen in order to become Jinshi, the head of the cabinet was instructed by Zhu Houzhao to announce that from the sixteenth year of Zhengde, the Ming imperial examination system would be divided into two ways to take scholars, one was still based on the original model of taking scholars, that is, going through the palace examination and taking the Bagu article, so as to facilitate the students who received the old-style Confucian education to take the exam.

This category of candidates is mainly the children of bureaucrats.

The other changed the content of the examination, no longer using eight strands to take scholars, but to divide the examination into two subjects of arts and sciences, the liberal arts to test five subjects: Chinese studies, arithmetic, money and law theory, history, and geography, while the science subjects were tested in five subjects: Chinese studies, arithmetic, physics, chemistry, and biology.

This type of candidates is mainly from poor families.

Zhu Houzhao was pleased with these scholars, because the Ming Dynasty was still the center of world civilization in this era, and still represented the most advanced productive forces and ideas, so they did not need to learn foreign languages, unlike later generations, even if they studied the history and literature of their country, they also had to learn foreign languages, both undergraduate and graduate students.

Because the two methods of selecting scholars in parallel with the imperial examinations were parallel, this reform did not arouse great opposition from the conservatives, after all, it did not stand in their way.

For students from poor families who are eager to realize their ideals, being able to obtain a more convenient step into the body is undoubtedly like a long drought.

Zhu Houzhao prefers to call the latter imperial examination method the Daming version of the college entrance examination, because the latter imperial examination is completely based on the score line of each province to admit whether you can become a jinshi, and it is also divided into three grades, but there are no longer only three first-class jinshi, but according to a certain proportion of the number of people in each province, the top score is the first-class, of course, there are still champions on the list, but only the provincial champions and lists.

However, from the 16th year of Zhengdeok, all Jinshi admitted to the old-style education or the new-style education were admitted to the university, and the Jinshi admitted to the old-style education were uniformly transferred to the liberal arts studies of various universities.

The Jinshi admitted by the new education is selected by themselves from the central to the local provincial level of various universities, according to the score and the number of places in each school, and after four years of graduation, can officially obtain the Jinshi's dress and official documents, that is, after graduating from the university, you can become a real Jinshi.

And this is the responsibility of the Division.

Zhang Xuan, the secretary of the ministry, was responsible for the work distribution of these old and new education graduates after admission.

Now the Ming Dynasty is still in the early stage of education reform, and there are still a few people receiving higher education, so it is still distributed by the imperial court.

Most jinshi will still be appointed as officials.

Today, the officials of the Ming Dynasty not only cover the military and administration, but also cover the official positions of the managers of government-run enterprises.

Therefore, the Ming Dynasty still shows a relatively large shortage of officials in the utilization of human resources

Basically, because the Jinshi admitted to the old-style education were mainly Confucian scholars, they were mainly sent to colonies, Guanwai, or places where there were more Tusi in the southwest.

The Jinshi admitted to the new education are more likely to stay in the Guannai as officials, especially the Jinshi in the two mature schools of Beijing Normal University and Nanjing Central University, who are basically kept in Beijing as Beijing officials.

Of course, this educational reform was presided over by Kang Hai, and Zhu Houzhao, the emperor, has now largely retreated into the background.

That's why.

Many Confucian ministers were extremely dissatisfied with Kanghai's reforms, after all, although the imperial court did not completely abandon Confucianism to prevent them from advancing to the top, it also greatly reduced the chances of these Confucian ministers advancing to high-ranking officials.

Therefore, many people are scolding Kang Hai as a national thief, and even Kang Hai has been attacked by angry Confucian scholars.

But as long as Emperor Zhu Houzhao didn't want to touch Kang Hai, no matter how hard the Confucian scholars scolded Kang Hai, it would be useless.

The reason why Kang Hai is willing to change like this.

The main reason is that after Zhu Houzhao popularized education for all and the development of capitalism, the participation of the common people and the merchant class in politics became more and more intense, which made education reform imperative.

Besides.

Although Kang Hai was a science official from the top of the ranks, he was not a self-styled conservative, he studied at Beijing Normal University for a period of time, and like Xia Yan and other officials, he advocated science as the body and sacred learning as the application.

In other words, it is necessary not only to make Confucianism the mainstream ideology of the state, but also to improve production according to the theory of sacred learning.

Zhang Xuan, the secretary of the Ministry of Officials, was also an official of this kind, and he also supported Kang Hai's behavior, basically granting real power and official positions that required actual administrative ability to Jinshi who were good at making use of sacred learning and receiving a new type of education, while Confucian scholars were sent to positions with relatively little real power such as education and cultural management and diplomacy.

Zhu Houzhao also did not expect that after he established the first natural science development base in the Ming Dynasty, namely the Royal Industrial Experimental Base and later the Beijing Normal University, the elites of the Ming Dynasty would summarize a set of governing concepts of "science as the body, holy learning as the application".

"Use a kind of steel, think about whether you can use a boring machine to directly boring out a cylinder, which may ensure the air tightness of the cylinder, if you can, maybe you can use the power of this steam to promote the movement of the linkage rod, and then you can use the water pump and spinning machine!"

Zhu Houzhao was at the Daming Academy of Engineering, telling several high-tech Daming people who were wearing bullfighting suits his suggestions for the development of steam engines.

At present, Zhu Houzhao has basically handed over the affairs of internal affairs to the cabinet, and is only responsible for the judiciary and the military, so much of his energy is focused on the scientific and technological revolution.

Therefore, Zhu Houzhao also specially set up a Ministry of Science and Technology, with Wang Wensu as the secretary of the Ministry of Science and Technology, and was specifically responsible for the management of Daming's scientific undertakings.

The industrialization of the Ming Dynasty has basically begun to get on the right track, and the basic industrial system has been established.

From iron and steel smelting to the preparation of chemical raw materials, two acids and alkalis, as well as auxiliary machinery and chemical products, there are corresponding factories.

And they are basically large-scale government-run factories.

The reason why it is mainly a government-run factory is mainly because Zhu Houzhao is the emperor, and he can directly exert the power of the state to directly establish a government-run factory before the merchants and inventors of this era realize new things.

Then, the state-run factories used their political advantage to directly control the entire industrial economy.

Of course, this is also related to the fact that the Ming Dynasty itself is a centralized country, and in this period when the agricultural civilization is still very developed, the merchants of the empire cannot afford to establish such a huge industrial system.

This also determines that the Ming Dynasty has now inadvertently become an empire with public ownership as the main body, and invisibly, the main wealth and industrial manufacturing of the Ming Dynasty have been controlled by the state!

This is very different from the economic structure of the capitalist empires that rose in the West in the late part of history, and perhaps this is also the characteristic of the Ming Dynasty itself.

Of course.

This also leads to the fact that Zhu Houzhao is still an emperor whose imperial power is not restricted, and the imperial power can still be guaranteed.

Because no Ming Dynasty capitalist dared to confront him, the emperor, in terms of financial and manufacturing power.

Even the army now had to rely on the Royal Industries under his control to provide the most advanced rifled firearms and cylindrical bullets that only the Royal Industries could produce.

Any vassal kings and warlords who wanted to rebel, Zhu Houzhao could paralyze his army by cutting off their supply of guns and ammunition.

Rubber began to become an important raw material in the Ming industry, and under the guidance of Zhu Houzhao, the scientists of the empire found that if this material was made into tires, it could indeed reduce the vibration caused by the carriage when driving, and it could also be used as a conveyor belt in the industry.

This also made the demand for rubber in the Ming Dynasty more and more large, which led to the acceleration of the pace of colonization in the Ming Dynasty.

Now the merchants of the Ming Dynasty can only conduct foreign trade.

Because their production technology and political advantages could not compete with the state-run factories at home, and the large demand for raw materials in the state-run factories provided them with a lot of living space, the merchants in the Ming Dynasty rushed to join the foreign trade activities, which can also be called foreign plunder.

They shipped a large amount of foreign ore, rubber, coal, and oil (in history, oil had indeed begun to be used in the Zhengde period, and Leshan, Sichuan Province also dug an oil shaft in the 16th year of Zhengde), and they also shipped domestic high-tech products out of the country, and obtained huge profits through import and export trade.

It can be said that these merchants of the Ming Dynasty have become the coachmen of the Ming Dynasty's foreign trade, and their merchant ships have begun to spread all over the world, and some have even established colonies abroad.

If it weren't for the purpose of being the people of the Ming Dynasty, and therefore continuing to obtain the benefits of the Ming Dynasty's foreign trade surplus, they would have already established their own national name, but there were many people who asked for themselves to be appointed governors of a certain place overseas, and they said that they had discovered the New World for the imperial court.

The Ming court naturally didn't bother to pursue it, after all, this was also a good thing for the imperial court, and appointing a governor could get a long-term tax revenue from a place.

Zhu Houzhao knew that the Ming Dynasty had now entered an era of national expansion.

Neither the emperor nor the officials of the entire court could stop this trend, and the only thing he could do as an emperor was to maintain the continuous development momentum within the empire.

The Ming Empire was like a huge black hole at this time, frantically sucking the wealth of the world into the empire.

And in this process, there are more and more businessmen who make money, and almost every day Daming is creating a millionaire with an annual income of millions of silver dollars.

At the same time, it also led to many court officials beginning to resign and go to sea on their own initiative.

After all, the main industrial economy of the Ming Dynasty is now in the hands of the imperial court, as an official, even if he manages the Royal Industrial Company with advanced production technology, he is only a part-time worker, and most of the value created is still only national income, if he wants to have more wealth instead of corruption and bribery, he can only resign from the official position and start business.

What's more, the laws of the Ming Dynasty have become very strict, especially for the punishment of corruption, so these officials who want to pursue wealth can only resign and go to the sea to do business.

Moreover, if these officials go to sea to go into business, they can use their connections in officialdom to become super-rich overnight.

"You really want to quit"

Zhu Houzhao asked Yuwen Zhong, who was demoted to Fujian City because of his poor guarding of the grain.

Yuwen Zhong nodded: "Please forgive your majesty, although the minister has the heart to serve the society, but the minister knows that his ability is limited, the city department is an important position in local taxation, and the minister is afraid that he will still miss the court at that time, so it is better to resign and run another business." ”

"In this case, I will not force me to stay, and the Ministry of Officials will approve Yuwen Zhong's resignation!"

Zhu Houzhao has now received no less than ten letters of resignation, and even many of them are third- and fourth-grade officials such as governors and servants, and there are naturally more officials of the fifth rank and below, but Zhu Houzhao knows that this is the general trend of the world, and he is not easy to stop.

After all, now the Ming Dynasty has long lost the idea of light business and heavy agriculture, and seeing that his fellow villagers and friends have become rich for a while, these officials from the department are inevitably envious, and they also began to compete to go to the sea.

Zhu Houzhao now has to admit that historical development really has its inevitability, and the phenomena of the times he experienced in later generations do not seem to be an accident of history.

Today's Daming makes Zhu Houzhao feel both strange and familiar, and the strange thing is that he found that the current Daming has begun to become less and less like the feudal society that he knows after opening up the country, only knows that the monarch and the people, the ministers and the virtuous are all inferior and only have high reading, and what is familiar is that he seems to have not crossed over, but just changed an identity, in his previous life, he was not at the helm, he was just an ordinary citizen of this country, and in this life, he became the helmsman.

Zhu Houzhao also didn't know if the Ming Dynasty would encounter some problems encountered in later generations, such as the corrosion of the national quality by the idea of the supremacy of money, and the blindness and selfishness brought about by the pursuit of interests, and even hurt each other and hurt each other, and disregarded conscience.

Sometimes, Zhu Houzhao feels that even if he is an emperor, he still seems a little powerless to control the country, all kinds of forces are developing, all kinds of ideas are developing, and all kinds of people are appearing.

In March of the 17th year of Zhengde, Zhu Houzhao convened a gathering of the emperor's relatives and cabinet ministers, officials of various departments of the Guards, officials of the Three Law Divisions and secretaries of various ministries in the Imperial West Garden.

Although it was just an ordinary gathering, only Zhu Houzhao himself knew that the appearance of the seventeenth year of Zhengde meant that the history of the Ming Dynasty had really changed.

The historical Emperor Zhengde died in March of the sixteenth year of Zhengde, and then the Ming Dynasty entered the Jiajing period.

And now, the seventeenth year of Zhengde in the Ming Dynasty has arrived, and the historical Jiajing Emperor Zhu Houxi is still a young prince who stayed in the capital to study.

It seems that many people have ignored him, and there are not even officials who persuaded Emperor Zhu Houzhao to let Zhu Houxi return to his hometown to become a vassal.

Only Zhu Hou glanced at Zhu Houxi, called him to him, picked up a glass of wine that had risen recently, and took a sip: "I heard that you like Taoism."

Zhu Houxi didn't expect His Majesty the Emperor to suddenly ask himself this, so he only replied truthfully: "Back to Your Majesty, Taoism is prosperous in the minister's hometown, and the minister's father believes in it, so the minister also believes in it!" ”

"There is nothing wrong with the channel! Just don't miss the business! ”

Zhu Houzhao feels that this kind of arrangement may be the best arrangement for Zhu Houxi, this person who is almost a demon in history, in this life, he may be able to make a greater contribution to the Ming Dynasty by not focusing on power and infighting.

"Remember Your Majesty's teachings!"

Zhu Houxi didn't know why the emperor suddenly said such a sentence to himself, he thought about it alone in his heart.

The other officials present also glanced at Zhu Houxi meaningfully, and they didn't understand why the emperor would suddenly talk to a vassal king like this.

Zhu Houzhao himself couldn't help but smile, he knew that from the seventeenth year of Zhengde, he would not be able to control history through familiarity with the history of the Ming Dynasty to cover up his disadvantages in strategy.

But on the contrary, he knew that according to the trajectory of the original history, after that, there would be all kinds of wise and almost demonic characters in the Ming Dynasty, and there were more and more, Xu Jie, Gao Gong, Zhang Juzheng, and even, such characters have begun to appear in the court now, Wang Qiong, Wang Shouren, Yan Song, as well as Xia Yan in Nanyang and Yang Yiqing in Hetao.

Zhu Houzhao doesn't know how to rule these so-called heroes, and he doesn't know if he can control these characters, and now he has to admit that he is not ruling these characters, but these characters are operating the world, and his emperor seems to be becoming more and more an inspirer of history, rather than a leader.

For example, the idea of "the holy use of science," which has now become the mainstream of thought from the central government to the position, was not what he Zhu Houzhao thought of in advance, nor did he want it to happen in this way.

Even the Zhongjun Society he built has changed its flavor in the concept of governing the country, and has even become the base camp of the mainstream of this ideology.

The only thing that makes Zhu Houzhao happy is that the current mainstream of social thinking is still beneficial to him, the emperor, otherwise, Zhu Houzhao believes that he is only afraid that he has been pushed to the guillotine!

Zhu Houzhao admitted that this is because this era still needs his own emperor.

But what about the future.

After more and more chaebols form an alliance and begin to monopolize all the resources of the country, will he, the emperor, also be limited in power, and sit back and watch them force the people at the bottom to rebel, but then he will be pushed out of the black pot and sent to the guillotine.

"It's all gone!"

Zhu Hou glanced at the full hall of ministers and nobles, as if he saw many evil wolves who might force him to revise the constitution in the future.

"Prince, why did you say that Your Majesty looked at us with vigilance just now!" Ye Heng, the secretary of the Ministry of Labor, couldn't help but ask Wang Shouren, the secretary of the Ministry of War.

Wang Shouren smiled faintly: "Because I look at things with my heart, I see things that I can't see without seeing from my heart!" ”

Ye Heng didn't understand Wang Shouren's words.

And Yan Song understood, and only sighed in his heart: "Your Majesty is not like a king, but he is more suitable to be the king of today, if Your Majesty can't deal with the current situation, but I don't know if the new monarch can properly handle the ever-changing situation after a hundred years!" ”

Zhu Houzhao is now moving on a woman's body, and he is in his prime of life, and he can pick up all kinds of beautiful women at any time, so that he has strong energy to vent and satisfy his most natural nature.

The messy sheets, the naked delicate body, and the continuous gasping sound seem to confirm the chaos and complexity he brought to this era, as if he planted vitality, and as if he brought sin to a deeper layer.

Zhu Houzhao put his hand on the snow-colored long legs of the new concubine Zhang Xuanzhi, looking at her slightly red face after menstruation, as if looking at a flower in bloom in spring, he couldn't help but smile for a while, and then turned around again, lay flat on the couch, looking at the portrait Raphael painted for himself, he didn't know what kind of new things would happen tomorrow.