Some people wonder that the imperial power in ancient times was not lower than that of the county, even if the Tang State carried out institutional reform, there was no way to change some major tones.

100 counties need tens of thousands of officials, which is too much and unrealistic, and reducing it by half is too much.

In fact, there are several major misunderstandings in this, and the first misunderstanding is that 'the imperial power does not go down to the county', which is not correct.

Under normal circumstances, the imperial court's rule over the grassroots is very deep, at least directly at the village level.

Taking the Qin, Han, Wei and Jin dynasties as an example, the number of rural cadres is jaw-dropping.

The officials in the township include the township sifu, the township minister, the three elders of the township, the township cadre, the township secretary, the you, the lizheng, the lixu, the lieutenant, the likui, the lizhizhong, the li's father, the li's sacrificial wine, the li's worship, the lichangshi, the president, the pavilion chief, the drum history, etc.

There are also cadres at the village group level, such as neighborhood chiefs and Wu chiefs.

Among them, the three elders of the township and the elders of the village, looking at the name will make people mistakenly think that it is the elder of the family, but in fact it is not the case, it is the name of the country's administrative position.

It's the same as the county magistrate is called the county magistrate, and the three elders of the township and the elder of the li are just names, and the person who holds this position is likely to be a young man of one or twenty years old.

The reason why everyone has such a misunderstanding stems from another greater misunderstanding.

We are accustomed to thinking that China's countryside has been gathered on the basis of blood and surnames since ancient times, but in fact this is not the case at all.

In other words, the history of forming villages by surname and blood is not as long as we imagined.

According to archaeological data, before the Song Dynasty, the state strictly forbade people to live together on a large scale with blood and surnames.

Nobles of the family could live in the same vast area with the same surname, but the common people could not, because they were afraid that the common people would not be able to rule.

Whether it is the court or the local nobles, the interests are the same in this regard.

For the sake of their rule, they will artificially adjust the living place of the common people, and scatter some large families to different villages.

A village of 100 households often has more than a dozen or twenty different surnames.

According to the Hanshu Food and Goods Chronicle, the village was walled at that time.

The village cadres, that is, the neighbor chief, Li Xu and others, sat at the door to supervise the people.

Check in the morning to see if anyone hasn't gone out to work, and in the evening to see who hasn't come back. And when you come back from a day's work, you can't go empty-handed, you have to chop some firewood.

In the winter, the people could not be idle, and the women's monthly textile workload was equivalent to the work of 45 days during the busy agricultural period, and they also had to exchange technical experience with each other.

Do you think this system is familiar? Don't get me wrong, this is not a collective system, but a reflection of how strict the state's supervision of the countryside has become.

Ordinary people are not prisoners, and the fields are also their own homes, so it stands to reason that I can do what I want, and if I don't want to do it, I can rest at home for a day.

But no, whether you work or not is not up to you, but the state.

Want to go shopping in the market? Wait, there are more people who buy things together, and they also have to issue a certificate from the village cadres, otherwise they will be easily arrested as outcasts.

According to the unearthed Dunhuang documents, until the end of the Tang Dynasty, China's countryside was still mixed with many surnames, and the mixture was very strong, often a dozen or twenty surnames mixed.

It was not until the Song Dynasty that the state's personal imprisonment of the common people was further relaxed because of the progress of the productive forces, the changes in the relations of production and the gradual development of commerce.

Only then did the people have relative freedom, and they could move freely in the nearby villages and towns, without having to be supervised and constrained by others as before.

With the popularization of seowons, the number of people who read the knowledge flow to the private sector increased. Scholars need to travel to study, which further promotes the relaxation of the state's personal confinement.

With the progress of productive forces and the reclamation of more land, the family-based model of production gradually became mainstream, and the state no longer forcibly broke up the family.

Slowly, villages and towns formed by the same surname or blood ties appeared.

But the imperial court's control over the people has not diminished in the slightest. For example, the Baojia system is a village group structure that was re-set after the Song Dynasty in order to adapt to the rural situation at that time.

Several households are jointly insured, and one family is punished for making mistakes, so that the people can supervise each other.

Even so, it was not until the Ming and Qing dynasties that villages formed by the same surname or blood relationship were widespread.

And the above knowledge misunderstandings were formed in the late Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China.

The reason is also very simple, people at that time lacked understanding of history, and many things could only be reasoned based on the social status quo in the late Qing Dynasty, and errors were inevitable.

Later, the country became rich and strong, and it had the ability to conduct scientific research on ancient history, coupled with the unearthing of a large number of ancient books, to restore the true situation of ancient times.

It is now the Eastern Jin Dynasty, although the state's control over the countryside has weakened due to the expansion and turmoil of the scholars, but there are still things that should be in the system.

Wenyi's system reform did not come out of thin air, but was adjusted according to the existing system, so the number of officials in each county was very large.

In 105 counties, 27 prefectures in Funan, more than 10,000 officials are not many. Even for better management, the local government has to use some village sages to assist in management.

Of course, as a traverser, Wen Yi will not seal the village with a wall and forcibly stipulate what the people should and should not do.

At this point, he admired Lao Tzu's idea of non-action, delineated a scope, let the people decide what they wanted to do, and gave full play to the subjective initiative of the people.

It is also known as doing nothing and doing nothing.

But this system can only be implemented in places where rule is stable, such as Tung Nin, Luzon and the Ryukyus.

In order to facilitate the management of this newly occupied land in Funan, a conservative method was adopted for the time being. That is, to build a wall, and the government forcibly organizes production.

The advantage of this is that it can concentrate on solving major problems and quickly restore social order.

It is not enough to dispatch officials, but the best way to govern is to immigrate, so as to complete the exchange of local populations and promote the integration of populations and customs.

Therefore, after the imperial court initially gained a firm foothold in Funan, the three major newspapers jointly published an edict of the emperor, calling on people with lofty ideals to take the initiative to go to difficult places and better build their homes.

This difficult place is naturally Funan.

Originally, everyone did not expect much from this edict, after all, no one wanted to leave the peaceful and stable environment and go to Funan, a newly occupied place, to suffer.

However, the real reaction of the people once again exceeded everyone's expectations, and many people responded positively.

The people who are willing to go here on Dongning Island are all young people, which is very understandable, hot-blooded young people.

Moreover, Tang Guo treats this kind of reclamation personnel very well, and the follow-up selection officials will also give priority to them.

Many people who do not have satisfactory results in the imperial examination and have no way to become soldiers and want to become a military officer will choose to take this path.

The situation on the other side of Luzon and Ryukyu Island is laughable.