On August 15, the Mid-Autumn Festival, the Chinese gave a special meaning to the full moon in August. Pen? Interesting? Pavilion wWw. ｂiquge。 ｉｎfo

On such days, every family member returns home to be reunited. The people are busy preparing the reunion dinner, and the hotels outside are also closed, and Suiyuan is no exception.

Only the Guiyan Tower by the Baojing Lake is still magnificently decorated with lights, opening the door to welcome visitors from all directions. The competition is at noon, and it does not affect the people who come to watch the showdown of the century to reunite with their families in the evening.

Also busy is the palace, where Empress Dowager Gao plans to entertain envoys from various countries today to show them the prosperity of the Great Song Dynasty.

Zhao Xi, who was the protagonist of this palace banquet, seemed to be not very satisfied with his grandmother's arrangement, and he didn't like those so-called envoys from various countries in his heart.

The wolves around the Great Song Dynasty were fed, and the Liao Kingdom, Jurchen, and Western Xia in the north, these fierce nomads had long been coveted for a long time in the fertile land and rich products of the Great Song Dynasty in the south.

The Liao State and the Great Song Dynasty have been brothers' countries since the Tanyuan Alliance was formed in the first year of Jingde of the Zhenzong Dynasty. But this so-called "brother" does not have much real brotherhood, for nearly a hundred years, according to the agreement, the Great Song Dynasty has to pay this "brother" every year to pay 100,000 taels of silver and 200,000 horses of silk.

The Great Song Dynasty was considered the richest dynasty in ancient China, and the tax layer was as high as 130 million guan during the reign of Renzong Jiayou, and even in the current Yuan Yu period, the annual tax revenue was as high as 80 million guan.

It can be said that at that time, the Chinese used 30% of the world's population to create 70% of the world's wealth.

It sounds like the Great Song Dynasty is so rich, and there seems to be nothing wrong with paying two percent of the tax every year in exchange for peace, and so many talented ministers in the court even feel happy.

But this sounds like a joke to a modern person like Yang Huairen. What a great humiliation it is to think that I have to pay tribute every year to the northern barbarians, whose population is only one-tenth of that of the Great Song Dynasty.

The envoys of the Liao State were stationed in the city of Tokyo, and their only job was to urge the Great Song Dynasty to pay the New Year's currency every year.

Jurchen was originally a vassal state of the Liao State, with the continuous growth of the tribe, in recent years there is a heart of anti-Liao self-reliance, history records that the Jurchen to the Huizong Dynasty and the period of the establishment of the country, in fact, in the early years of Yuan You, the Jurchens have secretly established the country, set the name of the country as Dajin, and secretly prepared to oppose the Liao.

The Jin State does not border with the Great Song Dynasty, and their status as a vassal state of the Liao State is not qualified to send envoys, this time they came to the Great Song Dynasty as a business representative, and actually wanted to connect them through a certain court official, so that they could contact the Empress Dowager Gao and discuss the matter of jointly resisting the Liao.

The purpose of the Western Xia is very direct, although the Western Xia is a vassal to the Great Song Dynasty, but never really put himself in the position of a subordinate, and the large-scale wars that occurred during the Northern Song Dynasty were mostly with the Western Xia.

Every time they fought and combined, although the Western Xia won more and lost less, they did not get the actual benefits like the Liao State.

The purpose of this Western Xia envoy was to establish a new peace agreement with the Great Song Dynasty to emulate the Song Liao Tanyuan Alliance, and the Western Xia promised not to invade the territory of the Great Song Dynasty again, and the Great Song Dynasty wanted to pay the New Year's coin to the Western Xia like paying the New Year's coin to the Liao State, and they brazenly claimed that they did not ask for much, as long as half of the Liao's New Year's coin.

The Hui, Tubo, and Dali in the west, although not as powerful as the northern powers, did not follow suit, or hoped to increase trade efforts, or exchange their worthless specialties for grain and other resources of the Great Song Dynasty.

There were also several small states overseas in the south and east, such as the Wa Kingdom, Goryeo, Annam, Siam, Luzon and other small states, which also sent envoys to the Great Song Dynasty, each with different purposes.

Therefore, this time, the Empress Dowager Gao invited envoys from various countries to the Mid-Autumn Festival, and I don't know how much gold, silver, and grain it will cost to send away these greedy hungry wolves, snakes, insects, rats and ants.

As the emperor, although Zhao Xu sat on the dragon chair that symbolized the supreme ruler of the Great Song Dynasty, he could not be the lord of the Great Song Dynasty.

He admired his father in his heart, and wanted to learn from Shenzong to change the law and reform the system, so as to change the situation that the Great Song Dynasty was economically strong on the surface, but there were many hidden dangers in reality.

Perhaps, from his point of view, reform of the law is a feasible path. But there were two huge mountain-like obstacles in front of him, which he could not overcome.

The first mountain is that in order to ensure the stability of the rule of the Zhao royal family, Empress Dowager Gao abolished all the new laws of the Shenzong Dynasty and continued to use the old system.

Although it has stabilized after the restoration of the old system, it can only allow those hidden dangers to continue to expand, just like termites biting the beams and pillars of the house, which cannot be seen on the surface, in fact, the giant mansion of the Great Song Dynasty is gradually decaying, but I don't know what day it collapsed.

The second mountain is the limitations of the new law, the reform of Shenzong Yuanfeng, although it has achieved some results, it is actually a symptom but not a cure, the new system is too idealistic in the first place, and there is no other auxiliary supporting measures in the implementation, resulting in the failure of the order.

The second is that the goal of the new law is to solve internal problems, but it does not pay attention to external problems. Now it seems that the current external troubles are the biggest factor that will really shake the foundation of the Great Song Dynasty in the future.

Empress Dowager Gao always used Zhao Xu's young age as an excuse to refuse to exchange power for the emperor. Zhao Xu became a puppet sitting on the dragon chair, at the mercy of his grandmother.

At the age of fifteen, it was the time when young people were heroic, but Zhao Xu was depressed.

The palace was busy preparing for the evening dinner, and no one had time to pay attention to the mood of the depressed emperor.

Only Su Gui, the eunuch he was serving, looked at Zhao Xu, who was becoming more and more depressed, and he couldn't say anything uncomfortable in his heart.

"Official, why don't we sneak out of the palace with you, the palace is full of smoke and miasma."

Zhao Xu lazily raised his eyes and glanced at Su Gui, who was smiling and smiling, thinking that he had been unwell for several days in the past few days, and the Empress Dowager Gao had never asked, let alone cared about him, and his queen and several concubines in the harem also looked at the face of the Empress Dowager Gao, and they were submissive in front of him, and there was never anyone who could make him open his heart.

His own grandmother is not as considerate as a eunuch, which inevitably makes him, the emperor, lament the lack of royal affection.

"Alas, I am tired today and don't want to leave the palace."

Zhao Xu dragged his cheeks and thought about it again, and asked, "Is there anything interesting outside the palace recently?" ”

Su Gui noticed that although Zhao Xu said that he didn't want to go out, he cared about things outside the palace, and secretly felt that Zhao Xu was actually moved, so he hurriedly replied: "Do you remember the last time Yang Huairen, the owner of Suiyuan who didn't know how to lift?"

He and Wei Cai, the owner of Wei's main shop, tried their cooking skills at Jia Wangye's Guiyan Building at noon today. This matter has recently caused a stir in Kaifeng Mansion.

Since you are bored in the palace, it is better to go out of the palace to relax and take a look at what is going on in this cooking competition. ”