March 5 of the seventh year of Guangxu. Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info

Time is like an arrow, six years have passed in a blink of an eye, the sideburns of young girls have been lined with silver threads, the teenagers have grown beards, the original jumping temperament, has also become calm, it seems that nothing has changed, the Qing Gate is still towering, the emperors and queens are still driving to the Old Summer Palace from the beginning of March every year, in March, the plums in the south of the Yangtze River have borne green fruits, the north is still the beginning of spring, the Qianmen Street is crowded, the two sides of the road are planted with willows and plane trees, under the shade of red walls and yellow tiles, it is extraordinarily good-looking.

Qianmen Street is more than doubled than the previous one, this is the handiwork of Shuntianfu, in order to make the Beijing Division neat and beautiful atmosphere, this kind of thing is called by many scholars to work the people and hurt money, why plant trees to expand the road, the reason is because of the enthronement ceremony of the Guangxu Emperor in the past.

After seeing the appearance of the city of Beijing, the Japanese envoy Yoyuki Tomita went back and published an article on the front page of the "Asahi Shimbun" newspaper entitled "Documentary of the Visit to the Qing Dynasty" describing it in detail:

“…… Although the Qing Kingdom claims to be the largest country in Asia, but in terms of the hygiene of their capital, it is really even the cleanliness of a township in the countryside of Osaka, which cannot be compared, the streets are full of garbage and horse manure, and there are many dead kittens and dogs, and sometimes there are abandoned babies who freeze to death and starve to death with purple and blue bodies, the smell is unbearable, flies and mosquitoes are flying all over the sky, and countless people die of infectious diseases every year, and there are even rumors that the emperors before the Qing Dynasty also died of infectious diseases...... I don't know if it's true...... Each merchant only cares about the cleanliness of their own doors, but they turn a deaf ear to the garbage on the street, and you can still watch the buildings of the Sifang Pavilion, but the streets are very crowded, everyone's clothes are extremely dirty, and the heads of the Qing people, I observed, often crawling with lice, it is really disgusting...... Except for the palace of the Qing Emperor, which is still complete and magnificent, other places are always in tatters, which can't help but make me wonder, where did the Qing Kingdom's financial revenue go, and did it all supply the royal family to squander? I heard that the Qing State is preparing to build a railway to Shengjing in the Northeast, which is completely to facilitate the Qing royal family to go to the Northeast to ask for ginseng mink skins and worship ancestors, and the rest of the functions are about nothing. At the end of the article, it is very easy to provoke the anger of the Chinese, "A country that does not pay attention to the demands of the people, only cares about its own pleasures, and wantonly develops armaments, has no future, and is far from being comparable with the country of the emperor whom we respect." ”

The article was passed back to China, others don't say, Prince Gong is the first to be angry, feel that he has lost a part in front of foreigners, if you talk about whether the government is satisfactory, whether the authority is grand, the current Prince Gong is about the ruling prince second only to Dolgon in the history of the dynasty, the "Yihai Change" in the old year not only cleared the way for the Queen Mother to hang the curtain again, but also gave Prince Gong the road to discuss the king again, reducing criticism and constraints. He immediately ordered the Ministry of Communications, the Ministry of Industry, and the Ministry of Households to complete the repair of the city of Beijing within three years, and to meet the standards of planting trees and building gray roads outside the Old Summer Palace. The fifth year of Guangxu happened to be the emperor's ten-year-old holy life, although he was only ten years old, and it was not suitable to operate it on a large scale, but the Ministry of Internal Affairs still took advantage of this reason to repair the Taoist temples and temple archways in various parts of the city, and rebuilt some ownerless wasteland and wasteland, and made it into a park with a good scenery, etc., but it was also criticized by Qingliu as "a waste of public affairs and fake empty political achievements." "Fortunately, it was made by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and it was spent on the Inner Treasury, which had nothing to do with the National Treasury, and no one paid attention to these flies.

People of insight are quite agreeable, firstly, many people are working in the renovation project, and there is a profit, and secondly, Shuntianfu has recruited a lot of poor people who clean up, and maintain the order of the road, and also set up a construction bureau, which will collect all the people who have studied architecture from studying in the West, these people are connected to China and the West, and use the Western French style and Chinese style to build houses and bridges, which are very beautiful and solid, and all over the country have followed suit for a while, and the architects who came back from abroad are in short supply. In addition to some people who will work in the Ministry of Industry and the Ministry of Communications, the salary outside is about more than 1,000 silver dollars a year, and there is also a commission.

After a few years of rectification, sure enough, the style of Beijing has been greatly changed, and the old dirty and messy situation has been swept away, although it is not enough to say that every household is full of flowers, but it is clean and tidy, and it is still good. In order to stop the mouths of foreigners, Bao Jun deliberately sat in an open-top carriage and invited envoys from various countries to browse and visit, thinking that there was always a word of praise, but others were okay, but the Japanese ambassador said in a salty and nonchalant manner, "The Qing people will only engage in these face-saving projects, but will not give the people well-being." "It's the angry Bao Jun who blows his beard and stares again. Later, it was rumored in various countries that "if the Qing people do not invest their money in armaments, how can they compete with other countries?" It seems that it is just like a pig, huge in size, but there is no force, so it can only be slaughtered by others. ”

On this day, the front-page article "Comparison between China and Foreign Countries" was published in the Daqing Daily:

"Recently, there have been a lot of rumors, and there are accusations that the transformation of the Beijing division is inappropriate, if you sincerely make suggestions, you will welcome them, and if you provoke them, you will ignore them, since the first year of Tongzhi, there have been many foreign affairs, as the Japanese ambassador said before, there are few people who benefit the people? Is this true? After the completion of the project, they joined the Construction Department as an errand boy, which is beneficial to the people. The ash plant needs to recruit workers due to the expansion of production capacity due to the renovation project, and the unemployed have salaries, and with salaries, they will naturally consume, and the rest of the hundreds of industries can benefit...... In this way, the whole body will be moved, not only the people will benefit, but the tax money can also be collected more, and after the tax is collected, the money can be taken out and put in the construction of factories, railways, official roads, and other industries, so that it can also drive the people to work, how can it be said that it is not good? ”

“…… The environment is beautiful, people's hearts are stable, and this is a good thing...... This newspaper advises the Japanese ambassador that it is better to do his errand honestly, because I am a country rich and omniscient, and I spend some money on making my subjects happy. At the end, he added a sentence to satirize Japan, "Japan is a small country with few people, why do you need to work so hard to build a navy, and in the old years, I heard that the whole country wants to buy warships, and the people need donations?" (To be continued.) )