(a)

Several years have passed since Yang Biao and his traitorous party heads were in different places and bloody in the market.

Yang Biao's rebellion proved that having an excessively strong military in the peaceful era was not necessarily a good thing for the subjects of the world. Seeing the exiled rebels and their family members and servants being escorted out of Beijing in droves, weeping and crying, and embarking on the arduous road to the desolate frontiers, all kinds of controversies about disarmament suddenly subsided overnight. No one dared to speak out against the purge of the army. Yang Biao was bent on preventing disarmament, but in the end, not only was his head in a different place, his family was ruined, but also contributed to the unification of the government and the opposition and resolutely disarmed, which was probably the last thing he wanted to see in his life.

After Yang Biao's betrayal was dealt with, Liu Shen announced the edict of disarmament, which categorically reduced more than half of the huge Han army and dismissed 2/3 of the soldiers. A large number of young and strong laborers have returned to their hometowns, injecting new vitality into the local economy. These newly returned laborers, with capital, physical strength, knowledge, connections, and craftsmanship, were soon integrated into local agriculture, handicraft production, and commercial trade, and a large amount of new wasteland was reclaimed throughout the country, and the output per acre of agriculture was further increased, and a large number of military technologies were transformed and used for people's livelihood, better agricultural tools appeared, and a chain of large businesses and business alliances was formed throughout the country. The country and its people have become richer, and the cries of more newborns have resounded in cities and villages across the country, making it a gratifying scene of vitality.

However, this world is like this, and when a good is generated, the accompanying disadvantages also appear.

When the economy of the whole country was prosperous, the treasury was full, and the prosperity of the people was at its peak, a ghost quietly appeared in the officialdom. This spectre is corruption.

In the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China, the officialdom style of being honest and honest, loving the people and working diligently, unconsciously changed. After the increase in the number of officials, they began to pursue luxury and enjoyment, and competed with the local gentry to show off their wealth and fight for wealth, which drove the entire social atmosphere to become drunk and gold-obsessed.

However, one's greed never ends. Whenever he has something better, the satisfaction only lasts for a short time, and then he longs for those better things, and never has enough. A person is greedy like a thirsty man who drinks salt water, and the more he drinks, the more thirsty he feels.

Along with the increase in the number of money, the sense of shyness among the officials has become stronger and stronger. More and more officials, lost Wei Guoqing, and even Yan Guanxin, these old ministers of the year, on the surface, benevolence, righteousness and morality do not leave the mouth, loyal to the monarch and patriotism for the people, the great principle is the first to speak, in front of Liu Shen, one is more shrewd and capable, selfless and undemanding, and in private are trying to scrape the ground, goose plucking, want to make more money by being an official, so that future generations will be prosperous from now on!

In this situation, corruption has become an unspoken rule of officialdom. Honest and honest officials at the bottom who are not corrupt are secretly excluded and it is difficult for them to be reused and promoted, and many people are unwilling to join the corrupt officials, so they angrily hang up their posts and go home to farm. There are also some honest scholars who would rather stay in the private sector to do business, teach, and practice medicine than participate in the imperial examination.

(b)

Liu Shen was also aware of this subtle change and took a series of measures to curb the spread of corruption. One of the most important measures was that the entire court took the lead in promoting frugality and routine economy.

The word "advocacy" is actually not quite accurate. Liu Shen's court has always been quite frugal. As the empress of the middle palace, one of the important tasks of my daily work since the time when I was the lady of the king was to try to save money for Liu Shen, so as not to increase the expenditure of the treasury as much as possible, and to maintain the normal operation of the palace. Saving is the eternal theme of harem management. And this point has always been understood and supported by the Empress Dowager Wang during her lifetime.

The palace city of Yunjing is renovated and established on the basis of the Fuwang Mansion of the previous dynasty that overturned, and is used to confer the grand ceremony and receive the palace gate tower of the foreign world and the three major halls that deal with the government affairs, after several expansions, the gold is splendid, the style is extraordinary, and it can quite show the national prestige and national strength of the new dynasty, however, the palace where the emperor and concubine live daily is quite low-key, which is in sharp contrast with the front hall. Except for the Zhaoyang Palace, which is often used for harem ceremonies, the area of the other palaces is relatively small, although the courtyard is arranged exquisitely and neatly, but there are not many precious flowers and trees, finely carved, whether it is building materials, decorative utensils or craft technology, it is very simple. In some respects, it may not be as good as the vassals and the rich of the people.

There are many young concubines who have newly entered the palace, after entering the courtyard assigned to them for the first time, they are disappointed in what they have seen and heard, and they complain to me every day when they ask for peace, saying that they can't imagine that the courtyard in the palace is so simple and shabby, and it is less colorful than their mother's residence, and they are really not worthy of the royal style.

Whenever these young concubines talk about the rise, I will take these concubines to climb the Wenyuan Pavilion, to overlook the extraordinary Yunjing City, Wenyuan Pavilion is the tallest building in Yunjing, and it is also the only building that can overlook the panoramic view of Yunjing without obstacles. The concubines were all very surprised.

Therefore, I told them: since ancient times, "success is due to frugality, defeat is due to luxury", without the hard work and hard work of the civil and military officials led by His Majesty, without the thrifty home of those of us women who entered the palace earlier, if we were to admire vanity, advocate royal luxury, and did not spend every penny of silver and every copper coin on the construction of the country, the dilapidated and desolate Yunzhou would not have become this huge city with many pavilions, prosperous shops and famous in just a few decades.

On the Wenyuan Pavilion, with my back to the cloudless sky of Yunjing and the majestic sea of heavy buildings and cornices, I said to the concubines: "Do you want to be the mistress of the big city behind me, admired and praised by all the people of all ethnic groups in the world, so that your husbands and sons will be honorably recorded in history, or to be the mistress of a small golden courtyard, although you are envied by your girlfriends and relatives, but you are despised by all the people, ridiculed and sighed by future generations, you make your own good choices." (To be continued.) )