Chongzhen revived the Ming Dynasty

The influence of the gentry in Suzhou and Songjiang was considerable, even if only a portion of them transitioned into business.

Qian Qianyi, a native of Changshu, received the request. Some of his clansmen who had been separated from the main branch of the clan had invested in businesses in the new district.

Qian Qianyi himself supported this, having invested in a car dealership in Beijing. Furthermore, upon learning of the construction of cement roads in the new district, he sent people back to his hometown to invest.

Upon learning that merchants from his hometown did not want the wartime situation to end and wanted the imperial court to continue purchasing supplies, Qian Qianyi chuckled to himself, finding the whole affair truly bizarre.

The civil officials in the imperial court, under the banner of "pleading for the people and relieving their burdens," urged the end of the state of war.

Unexpectedly, the people they were protecting wanted the court to continue fighting.

This is something that has never happened before; the people are making their voices heard.

In particular, the Chamber of Commerce and Industry formed by these people, modeled after the workers' association, reminded Qian Qianyi of the Industrial Committee and the Commerce Committee established by Congress.

Once Congress is formed, will their current voices be able to be transformed into public opinion through special committees of Congress?

This greatly interested Qian Qianyi, who understood why the emperor insisted on establishing a national assembly:

"Officials in the imperial court claim to be 'speaking out for the people,' but they don't realize that they don't represent the will of the people."

"The parliament is the institution that truly represents the people, and the emperor's vision of a triangle between the monarch, his subjects, and the people can indeed be established."

In the emperor's plan, associations like the Chamber of Commerce and Industry were to be overseen by a special committee of the National Assembly. Their members came from the common people and were indeed more representative of public opinion than the officials who governed them.

However, these people's attempts to influence court policies did indeed annoy some officials. They were used to governing the people and never considered that the people would oppose them.

Qu Shisi said with a smile:

"This is going to be a headache for Prime Minister Han!"

"I wonder how he will respond?"

The one most enthusiastic about ending the state of war was, of course, Han Kuang.

As long as the state of war continues, he will not be able to regain the power of the chief minister.

His term as prime minister is only three years, and this year has been mostly spent in a state of war. If it extends to next year, how can he claim to have completed a full term as prime minister?
Therefore, Han Kuang was in a great hurry during this period, repeatedly urging the completion of the inspection so that the wartime state could be ended as soon as possible.

Unexpectedly, at this moment, they were betrayed by the merchants of Suzhou and Songjiang: they demanded that the state of war continue.

Qian Qianyi was pleased with this, because after clearly replacing the theory of moral history with empirical history, a rift had already formed between him and the Donglin Party members who believed in Neo-Confucianism.

He himself also wanted to shed the "Donglin" label in order to compete for a position among the Nine Ministers next year.

The emperor only gave two ministerial positions to members of the Donglin Party; now everyone can see that.

Cheng Jiming has already secured one position as an Associate Grand Secretary. If Han Kuang remains in office next year, it means that no Donglin Party member will be able to become one of the Nine Ministers.

Qian Qianyi didn't want to be blocked by them, so of course he wanted to break away from Donglin.

Therefore, he mostly viewed this matter as a joke. He even wanted to use his Suzhou identity to bolster the reputation of his hometown.

What he's really focused on now is something else entirely: the publication of the Hanlin Academy Journal.
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This project had been brewing since the beginning of the year, and by the end of this year, we had finally accumulated enough works.

Taking out several sample copies, Qian Qianyi addressed his disciples, including Qu Shisi, saying:
"Take a look, everyone. Do you think these articles are substantial enough to make a splash?"

Qu Shisi and others reached out and took it. On the cover of the sample copy, there were two large characters: "Hanlin".

This is the official name of the Hanlin Academy Journal, which is simply referred to as Hanlin.

Qu Shisi looked at the two characters and praised them:

"Magnificent and graceful."

"This calligraphy has reached a high level, comparable to any calligrapher!"

Others also praised it and asked Qian Qianyi who had written the two characters.

These two characters are clearly large-character calligraphy, which they believe is sufficient to be made into a plaque to be hung in the Hanlin Academy.

Qian Qianyi stroked his beard and smiled:
"These are the words written by His Majesty the present."

"And all the major subsidiary journals also use these two words in their main titles."

"From now on, the Hanlin Academy Journal will be the premier academic publication."

These words were directed at someone, because the Imperial Academy, under the leadership of Liu Zongzhou, had already established the Imperial Academy Journal with the help of the Ming Dynasty Journal.

He led a group of students to study classical texts, and published their findings in academic journals, which garnered considerable popularity. Other schools followed suit, establishing more formal academic journals based on their previous work.

If the Hanlin Academy Journal wanted to establish its authority, it had to suppress these publications in terms of its momentum.

Requesting the emperor to inscribe a message was one part of the process.

Qian Qianyi was initially worried that the emperor's calligraphy was not good enough and that some people might criticize him for being too obsequious.

Unexpectedly, the current emperor's calligraphy skills far exceeded expectations, and he considered his writing to be unsurpassable.

He wrote the words "Hanlin" in private many times, but he still felt that he was inferior to the emperor.

This made him marvel at Dong Qichang's teaching skills, which enabled the emperor's calligraphy to improve so much in just a few years.

In the realm of large-character calligraphy alone, the current emperor can rival any calligrapher—

This assessment is actually somewhat overestimated.

Because Zhu Youjian's calligraphy skills were not actually that high, but he had extremely strong control over his body and could improve with each repetition.

The character "福" (fortune) that he bestowed was considered superior to that of calligraphers throughout history because it was written so many times that it was included in the standard character list as a model.

The two characters "翰林" that I wrote today were also the result of countless practices before they earned praise from Qian Qianyi and others.

(Emperor Chongzhen's handwritten "Nine Thoughts"; his large characters were quite good.)

However, what Qian Qianyi didn't know was that Zhu Youjian had specially practiced the two characters "science" and bestowed them upon the Royal Academy of Sciences, allowing Zhang Pu to establish the journal "Science".

These two journals have different focuses, but there is some overlap. In the future, *Hanlin* and *Science* will compete for the title of the leading academic journal.

However, before the journal *Science* was founded, *Hanlin*, as a publication with inscriptions by the emperor, held an unquestionable position.

Qian Qianyi carefully selected articles and discussed them extensively with the Hanlin scholars, all in order to make a name for himself and claim it as an achievement.

Qu Shisi and others opened the catalog and found only nine articles.

The first article was written collectively by the Hanlin scholars, and its title is quite straightforward: "Standards for Academic Papers".

This was a standard developed by Zhu Youjian, modeled after the rules for writing academic papers in later generations, and had the Hanlin Academy combine it with papers from various academic journals and publications at the time.

From now on, the academic journal "Hanlin" will publish articles like this, requiring contributors to write in this manner.

Qu Shisi and others found it quite interesting, because they also wanted to publish articles in "Hanlin" and win praise from the academic community.

However, now was not the time to examine it closely; they turned to the second article in the table of contents.

This is an article from the Confucian Classics Institute, titled "A Study of the Ancient Text of the Book of Documents" written by Liu Zongzhou.

The article discusses in detail the origins and versions of the ancient text of the Book of Documents, as well as the doubts surrounding it. It proposes various methods for textual collation and authentication, and introduces the progress in the collation of classics such as the Four Books and Five Classics.

When Qu Shisi and others saw this, they knew that the academic journal *Hanlin* would surely sell very well.

After all, the Four Books and Five Classics are what all students have to study, so they must care about the progress in this area.

The third article is on history. The historical essay in the first issue of "Hanlin" was naturally written by Qian Qianyi, who was in charge of collating the "Spring and Autumn Annals" and advocating empirical history.

His book, *Positive Historiography and the Spring and Autumn Annals View of History*, details what positive historiography is and how it differs from moralistic historiography. He also advocates replacing the moralistic historiography of Song Dynasty Confucian scholars with Confucius's view of history based on the Spring and Autumn Annals.

This article is also a summary of the viewpoints presented at the beginning of the year, which was praised by Qu Shisi and others.

With this article, their pragmatic school of thought was truly established, at least in the field of history, where they had a solid foothold.

As students, they naturally wanted to support their teacher, and some even believed that this paper could win first place among all the papers.

However, Qian Qianyi repeatedly said he "did not dare to accept such praise," because the philosophical essay following his article was "On Yin and Yang" written by the emperor.

This is a masterpiece written by Zhu Youjian with great care. Starting from the Yin-Yang viewpoints of Taoism and Yin-Yang School, it expounds the core of dialectics, namely the law of unity of opposites.

He used the concepts of yin and yang, their opposition and transformation, to explain the movement, change, and development of things. He pointed out that "change" is the constant state of things, and that "when things reach an extreme, they change; when they change, they become fluid; when they become fluid, they endure." The Book of Changes is considered the foremost of all classics.

Furthermore, it is clearly pointed out that the law of unity of opposites is the inherent driving force for the change and development of things.

It also proposed the laws of quantitative change leading to qualitative change and the negation of negation, revealing the state, process, and trend of the change and development of things. It demonstrates that the change and development of things is a unified process of gradualism and leaps, progress and setbacks.

The introduction of dialectics into the Ming Dynasty reshaped its philosophical system. (End of Chapter)