When Xia Yunyi braved the wind and snow to walk out of the palace gate, a restaurant in Jindai Hutong at the west end of Chaoyang Street in the east of the capital city was gradually becoming lively.

The center of the courtyard is a three-story wooden building, with several other courtyards on the north and south sides of the wooden building, a front yard for horse-drawn carriages and cattle on the east side of the wooden building, and three larger gardens separated on the west side of the wooden building.

The wooden building in the center is divided into two floors, inside and outside, just like a hollow word. In the middle of the wooden building is a bluestone platform, which is also the patio for daytime lighting in the building. In the past, in such a cold winter, in order to keep warm, the lighting had to be sacrificed, and the ceiling and cotton curtains were used to close the patio, so that the lobby on the first floor was extremely dark and not suitable for hospitality, and winter became the off-season for restaurants.

However, with the development of the glass industry in Beijing, the price of today's large pieces of translucent ground glass has been extremely low, and ordinary people's doors and windows can already use glass to replace the old window paper.

Coupled with the kerosene lamps hanging from the wooden pillars throughout the building, the light in the hall on this floor is much brighter than outside. There are also several large coal stoves for heating throughout the hall, on which large pots of tea are boiled, and above there is a chimney made of iron sheet leading to the roof of the building, which is used to exhaust the smoke. This makes the hall warm and clean, and makes this restaurant, called Chunshui Lou, a favorite place for nearby residents and scholars to spend time in winter.

Unlike other restaurants and teahouses, there are no storytellers in the lobby of Lee's Restaurant, but it is not a quiet place. On the north side of the hall on the first floor, although a wooden platform about three steps high is arranged, it is not a storyteller standing on this wooden platform, but a scholar from the north and south of the river.

These scholars did not stand on the wooden platform to tell a story, but to express their opinions on the current situation in the court and the policies issued by the state. Most of the people sitting near this wooden platform are also unemployed scholars and some low-level officials in the capital. If the scholars on the stage speak insightfully, the audience below will inevitably applaud them, and when the scholars who have finished their speeches step down, someone will come forward to make friends. But if all the words are clichés without any new ideas, then the audience will talk to their friends and bother to pay attention to the speeches of the people on the stage.

This new way of socializing between scholars not only brought great popularity to this restaurant, but also made this restaurant break away from the general food and entertainment industry, and became a very famous place in Beijing for political exchanges and speeches, and it is also one of the several places where non-local scholars must come to report after entering Beijing.

Naturally, this way of exchanging political opinions is not a product created by the owner of this restaurant, but is imitated and established by the young owner of this restaurant after the operation of the debate hall of Yenching University.

The reason why this young owner came up with such an idea is that in addition to being a lover of the Yenching University debate hall himself, he has to go to Yenching University two or three times a week to listen to the students' debates in order to broaden his own knowledge, and he also sees the opportunities hidden in it.

Although the debate hall established by Yenching University gives students and scholars from other places a place to argue and reason, most of the topics used in the debate hall are mainly natural sciences, and it is forbidden to question national policies and court officials, which makes it difficult for scholars from other places to excel in debates, and it is difficult to connect their knowledge with political opinions, after all, this is still a place prepared by Yenching University for its students.

As a result, these scholars who came to Beijing from other places to take the examination urgently needed such a place for speech and exchange led by them, so as to facilitate the spread of their reputation in the capital. If the imperial examination is a single-plank bridge to enter the office, then reputation determines how far these scholars can go in the future career.

Even, even if he fails to pass the imperial examination continuously, but his reputation can be known to the world, the next time the examiner will have to read his article for fear of wind evaluation, which will increase the probability of admission for these celebrities.

Of course, there is not only one Li restaurant in the capital that provides scholars with such a place to speak and communicate, but it is the only one with the greatest reputation among scholars from other places.

The reason for this situation is that the non-local scholars who can rent near the restaurant are basically the sons of families with considerable wealth and prestige in their hometowns. After all, those who can rent a set or a room in the inner city of the capital will definitely not be a poor scholar, and the eastern city is a place where the families of the powerful gather, except for a few lots, not ordinary people can settle down. Therefore, if you want to borrow money in Dongcheng, you must not only have money, but also be innocent, and even be quite famous in the local area.

In other words, the scholars who can live in Dongcheng can be regarded as the children of the gentry, that is, the family with the right to speak in the local area. Therefore, being able to make like-minded friends here at Li's Restaurant can not only expand their fame for these outsiders, but also help them after joining the restaurant in the future. Therefore, the scholars who enter Beijing from other places will naturally not miss this place.

The second is that Li's Restaurant not only exists such a place for scholars to communicate and speak, but also in the three gardens in the backyard of the restaurant, there is also a garden that has been contracted by Qian Qianyi for many years and is used as a fixed place for the regular meeting of the Xindonglin Party members in Beijing.

Since the imperial court opened the ban on the party, the Scientific Democratic Progressive Party and the New Donglin Party were established separately. At first, Qian Qianyi still managed the New Donglin Party in the same way as the scholars and doctors formed associations in the past, but after the Scientific Democratic Progressive Party formulated the rules of party deliberation such as organizational discipline and regular meetings under the intervention of the emperor, Qian Qianyi soon found that the New Donglin Party he led and established was too loose.

In addition, as the head of the Ming Dynasty and the leader of the New Donglin Party, he simply couldn't refuse those party members who ran to his mansion to ask for a meeting. As the first assistant of the cabinet, Qian Qianyi's daily affairs are already very busy, and now he has to constantly entertain these idle scholars, which makes him quite irritable.

What made him even more depressed was that when Qian Qianyi began to get used to the change in his identity, these party members in the new Donglin Party still regarded him as the original leader of the Jiangnan literary circle, and still treated him, the holder of the highest power in the empire, with the exchanges between literati.

In the past, as the leader of the Jiangnan literary circle, Qian Qianyi needed the praise of literati and scholars, and naturally responded to these people's needs, even if it was a sour and rotten literati who came to him to fight the autumn wind, Qian Qianyi, who had a rich family, would also give them a sum of Cheng Yi to make them satisfied, so that they could say something good to him in the local area after they returned.

But as the leader of today's Ming civil officials, Qian Qianyi no longer needs to use such low-level means to make a name for himself. He didn't want to waste his precious time entertaining these boring literati and scholars, listening to their uniform compliments. I don't want to admit that these people are never-ending greed** and growing appetites.

Qian Qianyi found that some people not only respected themselves in private, but also regarded themselves as a tool they could use to accumulate wealth and seize power. Relying on their acquaintances in the past, these people made high-profile promises to officials who tried to be promoted and transferred, and if they were willing to pay for them, they would refer them to meet with them, or help them get promoted or transferred to American posts.

The high-profile actions of these people outside even attracted the emperor's admonition to him. And when he approached these old friends for questioning, he was ridiculed by them, saying that he couldn't recognize his old friends after he took one step to the sky. Some people even ridiculed him outside, saying that he was a hypocrite who only loved his mother and didn't recognize the past.

After these incidents, Qian Qianyi, at the suggestion of the students and Liu Ruye, simply imitated the method of the Scientific Democratic Progressive Party and rectified the New Donglin Party. The first is to divide the party members into core members and ordinary members, and some important party affairs can only be heard of by the core members; The second is to rent a garden in Li's restaurant for regular party meetings, thus preventing ordinary party members from running to his house without scruples to pull connections.

After Qian Qianyi's rectification and the expulsion of the most egregious people, the atmosphere of the New Donglin Party finally improved slightly. However, the members of the New Donglin Party, who were accustomed to loose and non-binding organizational discipline in the past, did not approve of Qian Qianyi's rectification of party discipline, and some even linked his move to the current reform, believing that both deviated from the right path advocated by the master.

However, after the Li Restaurant set up this regular meeting venue, it was not without benefits for the New Donglin Party. Through such regular gatherings, many members of the party have further strengthened communication among internal members. And it is precisely because members of the New Donglin Party often go in and out of Li's Restaurant that scholars from other places who come to Beijing to give speeches here, and if their views are quite meritorious, they will naturally attract the attention of the members of the New Donglin Party, and they will even be invited to participate in the regular meetings of the New Donglin Party.

Although it is nothing to participate in one or two regular meetings of the New Donglin Party, in today's court, scholars from local gentry families, as long as they do not advocate new learning and practical learning, it is the most correct move to get close to the New Donglin Party. Because most of the members of the New Donglin Party are from former Donglin Party members, they are similar to these scholars in terms of political tendencies and family backgrounds. And Qian Qianyi, the leader of the New Donglin Party, is the current first assistant, and is a very powerful backer for the members of the New Donglin Party.

As a result, Li's Restaurant has an extraordinary status in the eyes of scholars who enter Beijing for the examination from other places. In addition, the current entrance examination has changed from once every three years to once a year, although the number of admission places has decreased, but the non-local scholars who stay in the capital have become a relatively stable group, and this place of exchange of scholars is in the ascendant.