Three Kingdoms: The Kingdom Cannot Be Partial

Chapter 179 Digging the Roots
Xiangfu.

Candlelight flickers.

The entire room was brightly lit.

The emperor and the prime minister sat at the same table.

After exchanging pleasantries and inquiring about the Prime Minister's health, Liu Shan ordered Long Xianglang to bring in two wooden boxes.

Long Xianglang opened one of the boxes, picked out the contents one by one, and arranged them on the table in front of the emperor and the prime minister.

"Prime Minister, this is Chaoyi silk."

"This is a cloth made of caltrop from the sand garden."

"This is lacquerware from Qi County."

"This is Huayin pickled bamboo shoots."

"This is Linjin Shiao Cake."

"This is Heyang Huang Gui Thick Wine."

"..."

Liu Shan named more than thirty kinds of local specialties from Fengyi, and explained their advantages one by one.

Some of the gifts came from ordinary people, while others were collected from powerful clans and wealthy families.

Apart from a few local specialties, all the dishes were made with ingredients sourced locally by the local people. They were of excellent quality and craftsmanship, and were inexpensive. Liu Shan and his generals were certain that these products would sell well in both Shu and Wu regions.

Although not as precious as Shu brocade, if local officials could centrally purchase from local residents, it could indeed solve the livelihood problems of the local people to some extent.

Unlike the traditional, conservative Wei and Wu dynasties that emphasized agriculture and suppressed commerce, the Han dynasty now values ​​both commerce and agriculture, and has legitimate state-owned capital.

For example, Jin Guan and Yan Guan.

When the Prime Minister built the "Jin Guan City" in the southwest of Chengdu, he said, "Now the people are poor and the country is weak. We can only rely on Jin Guan City for our resources to defeat the enemy."

Relying on the official Shu brocade production and the "Shu brocade-Zhibaiqian" trade system, the Han Dynasty exported a large amount of Shu brocade to Cao Wei and Sun Wu, and imported a large amount of strategic materials, such as copper, horses, and grain.

As for the so-called "Shu brocade-Zhibai" trade system, it was almost identical to the later "oil-dollar" system.

Shu brocade was linked to Zhibai coins. If Cao Wei and Eastern Wu wanted to buy Shu brocade, they had to bring goods to the Han Dynasty to exchange for Zhibai coins, and then use the Zhibai coins to exchange for Shu brocade with the brocade official of the Han Dynasty.

The Han Dynasty obtained the strategic resources it wanted.

Merchants who had connections to the Han Dynasty to purchase Shu brocade earned more money and provisions from powerful families and clans in Cao Wei and Sun Wu, and then came to the Han Dynasty to buy even more Shu brocade.

The powerful clans of Cao Wei and Sun Wu not only wore luxurious clothes worth "one tael of Shu brocade and one tael of gold," but also continued to engage in entrepot trade by taking advantage of information gaps, selling their goods to the borders of their countries and even to merchants from the Kushan, Persia, and Sogdian regions in the Western Regions, thus expanding their family assets.

It's a win-win situation for everyone.

The only ones who suffered were the courts of Cao Wei and Sun Wu.

Even though Cao Cao and Cao Pi knew that the powerful families in their own country were "aiding the enemy," they did not issue a ban on the circulation of Shu brocade within their own country.

Not only that, sometimes even when rewarding officials, they would be given Shu brocade.

The "Xiangyi Brocade" and "Dongwu Silk" produced locally by Cao Wei and Sun Wu were simply not presentable.

After the decree was bestowed, the officials and officers were not pleased at all; in fact, they might even have mocked the court for being stingy.

At this time, textiles such as silk, satin, and brocade could be used as commodity currency. A piece of Shu brocade of the same length would have a higher fair value than Xiangyi brocade or Dongwu silk.

Besides Shu brocade, the salt of the Han Dynasty was also controlled by the salt officials of the imperial court. Relying on the four or five hundred inexhaustible natural gas fire wells in Ba County, as well as the inexhaustible natural brine underground, Ba salt was sold in large quantities to various places in Shu and Jingzhou with extremely low salt production costs and extremely high salt production efficiency.

Even Nanyang, which borders Jingzhou, and parts of Yuzhou and Yangzhou, purchased salt from Sichuan.

Dong Yun, Fei Yi, Zhuge Qiao, Huo Yi, and others were surprised that His Majesty had brought back so many cash crops from his trip, and they gathered around to look at them.

"Is this... Zuo Bo paper?" Dong Yun's gaze was quickly drawn to the stack of white papers on the table, and he reached out to pick up a sheet.

It has a fine texture and a smooth surface.

It is of uniform thickness and has a moderate firmness.

However... its whiteness is still not as good as "Zuo Bo paper", and it is slightly yellowish.

Zuo Bo paper was produced in Qingzhou. Its production process was unknown to outsiders. It was a tribute paper for the imperial court and was very famous in Cao Wei. It was known as one of the three wonders of the scholar's studio, along with Zhang Zhi's brush and Wei Dan's ink.

After pondering for a moment, Dong Yun laid the slightly yellowed paper on the table, took out a brush and ink, and began to write on the paper.

"The ink doesn't bleed; this is excellent paper," Fei Yi exclaimed.

After Dong Yun wrote more than thirty characters, the ink had dried, but there was no sign of the ink spreading and damaging the paper.

Dong Yun placed the brush on the brush holder, then picked up the slightly yellowed paper, examined it carefully, and after a moment asked:
"Your Majesty, we wonder whose paper this is from, and whether it can be mass-produced?"

The Prime Minister, Fei Yi, Huo Yi, and others all turned their gazes toward the Emperor.

Since the emperor brought this paper back to Chang'an along with those marketable cash crops, there must be a reason for his actions.

Liu Shan picked up a piece of paper and said:

"This paper comes from the Wei family of Chongquan, a small but powerful family with only thirty-odd members. The family has only one small workshop with no more than ten papermakers, producing two hundred sheets of this paper per day."

"However, the Wei family has already presented the method of papermaking. Considering their contributions to the country, I have exempted their clan from corvée labor and taxes for twenty years, bestowed upon them a thousand bolts of Shu brocade, and appointed their eldest son as a Longxiang Lang (a high-ranking official).

For twenty years, the entire clan was exempted from corvée labor and taxes?

A thousand bolts of Shu brocade bestowed upon him?
Even Fei Yi was somewhat surprised, and he exchanged glances with the Prime Minister and Dong Yun.

The same applies to Zhuge Qiao, Huo Yi, and others.

It's understandable that he was named Longxianglang, as the powerful figures of Guanzhong would have some martial arts skills. However, the reward of being exempted from corvée labor and taxes for twenty years and receiving five hundred bolts of Shu brocade was undoubtedly substantial.

Liu Shan smiled and said:
"This paper is made from bamboo bark mixed with a small amount of mulberry bark. Compared to Qingzhou Zuo Bo paper and Sichuan yellow and white hemp paper, its cost is extremely low, and the process is not complicated."

"What my great Han Dynasty has the least shortage of is bamboo. I have roughly calculated that if we employ 500 craftsmen, we can produce more than 10,000 sheets of paper a day."

"If so, then the quantity of paper will be greater than that of bamboo slips produced by our Great Han, and the cost will be lower. In the future, we may be able to gradually replace bamboo slips with paper."

"Silk is expensive and bamboo slips are heavy, making them inconvenient for people. If paper could replace silk and bamboo slips, a mere thousand bolts of Shu brocade and the exemption of a clan from twenty years of corvée labor and taxes would be nothing at all."

Nowadays, during festivals, let alone suitable paper for writing, even bamboo slips used for writing in ordinary times are a luxury.

Taking grain as an example, as long as it is not a year of famine and goods can circulate, a shi (a unit of dry measure) of grain is only worth about 30 to 200 coins.

A single bamboo slip was priced at 3 to 5 qian.

A sheet of paper suitable for writing costs between 10 and 30 coins, depending on its quality.

A good sheet of paper is equivalent to thirty kilograms of grain.

This is one of the reasons why knowledge was difficult to spread in this era. Even the imperial court used bamboo slips sparingly, valuing words as if they were gold, for fear of wasting precious bamboo slips, let alone paper.

Historical records state that after Cai Hou improved paper, "everyone used it," depicting a scene of widespread popularity. However, in reality, more than a hundred years later, during Liu Shan's time, paper was still a scarce and precious commodity, and only princes and nobles were willing to use it to practice calligraphy.

Zhuge Qiao also picked up a piece of paper and said blankly:

"Your Majesty... more than 10,000 sheets of this paper are produced daily. I'm afraid that the entire Han Dynasty's document paper usage in a single day would not even be half of that."

Beside Zhuge Qiao, the Prime Minister was also somewhat curious:
"Your Majesty said this paper is inexpensive. Just how inexpensive is it?"

Liu Shan held up two fingers: "About three coins per sheet. Once the papermakers are skilled, I think we can reduce the cost by another 20%."

Three dollars a piece?!

The same price as a bamboo slip?!

Upon hearing the Emperor's words, everyone in the Prime Minister's residence immediately understood why the Emperor had bestowed such a generous reward upon the minor Wei clan.

The amount of writing that can be done on a single sheet of paper is roughly equivalent to that on a dozen or so bamboo slips. Now, the cost of a sheet of paper is almost the same as that of a single bamboo slip.

This is not paper.

This is gold!
Today, knowledge is carried on bamboo and wooden slips. For example, a single volume of the Book of Han, containing 800,000 to 900,000 characters, requires bamboo and wooden slips weighing three to four thousand catties, enough to fill half a room. Moving such slips is no easy task, and learning from them is equally challenging. Regardless of social status, the desire for a lighter and more convenient medium for knowledge has never ceased.

Although paper is prone to mold and difficult to preserve, if it costs only two or three yuan per sheet, it can carry the same amount of text, but the cost is only one-third to one-half that of bamboo slips.

Its disadvantages will be completely ignored, while its advantages of being lightweight and inexpensive will be magnified.

I'm afraid a large number of intellectuals will rush to buy it.

Especially since Cao Wei was located in the north, where the climate was dry and paper was not prone to mold, if such high-quality and inexpensive paper could be sold to Cao Wei, a country with a penchant for luxury and many powerful families, it would probably become a pillar industry of the country, just like Shu brocade and Ba salt!

Seeing the surprised and delighted expressions on everyone's faces, Liu Shan was also filled with emotion.

The fundamental differences between the Han and Cao Wei dynasties led to a stark difference in the thought processes of Han officials compared to Cao Wei officials.

It should be noted that paper was difficult to circulate in the world at that time not only because it was expensive, prone to mold, and had limited production and inconsistent quality, but also because...
The main reason is that the established families who have the ability to expand paper production scale, optimize production processes, and improve paper quality lack the motivation to do these things.

Firstly, although paper was cheaper than silk, compared to bamboo slips, which had already formed an industry, its overall cost, such as the collection of raw materials, the investment in tools, and the training of craftsmen, may not have had an overwhelming advantage in the early stages.

The second, and more crucial, factor is...

Aristocratic families who possessed a large number of bamboo and wooden slips and had achieved a monopoly on knowledge were unwilling to allow inexpensive and high-quality tools for carrying knowledge to become available to the world.

Only by monopolizing the circulation of written language and knowledge can powerful families maintain their status and voice in the cultural sphere, and only in this way can they maintain their position in the political arena.

In a word.

Only those who are in opposition to the powerful families who monopolize knowledge have the motivation to promote cheap paper and spread knowledge.

That is, imperial power, the poor and the powerful.

Poor families and powerful families may have papermaking skills and the idea of ​​making money and spreading knowledge through it, but they do not have the ability to compete with aristocratic families. If they are not careful, they may die without a burial place.

Imperial power might be able to rival powerful clans, but it did not possess the technology of papermaking.

Or perhaps, those who held imperial power never imagined that one day the cost of papermaking would be lower than that of bamboo slips, so much so that even small tycoons and landlords could keep dozens or hundreds of books in their homes.

Thus, they had no choice but to share the rule of the world with the powerful clans that monopolized knowledge.

Without these intellectuals, the imperial court had no way to govern the grassroots, and the reach of imperial power could not extend to the grassroots level.

But regardless of whether it was the Liu Han, Cao Wei, or Sima Jin dynasties, any ruler who held imperial power and was clear-headed would definitely try to spread knowledge to the larger number of lower-class families and powerful clans in order to cut off the lifeline of aristocratic families and dismantle their foundation.

The Hongdu School established by Emperor Ling, and the Xiping Stone Classics engraved by Lu Zhi, Cai Yong and others for all to copy, are the second example of Emperor Ling's struggle against the monopoly of knowledge by powerful clans, which has been criticized.

The students of Hongdu were not students of the Imperial Academy, nor did they study the Four Books and Five Classics with great Confucian scholars. However, they were recruited by Emperor Ling to enter the Attendant-in-Ordinary Temple, participate in central decision-making, and take up important local administrative positions. Ultimately, they encountered fierce resistance from the literati and were declared defeated.

The Xiping Stone Classics, by carving the texts into stone, made the texts public to the world, causing a sensation. After the stone classics were carved, they were erected in front of the Imperial Academy. More than a thousand carriages and vehicles came daily to view and copy them, filling the streets and blocking the roads.

The reforms of the Hongdu School were too radical. Emperor Ling failed to distinguish between his enemies and his friends, and failed to make more friends and fewer enemies, ultimately leading to his failure.

The Xiping Stone Classics successfully won over a large number of impoverished scholars who had no access to education and powerful families who desperately wanted to change their fate through knowledge, causing the aristocratic families, who had lost the protection of scholars, to suffer a setback.

These scholars and clansmen, who looked like great sages and spoke of teaching without discrimination, had no choice but to publicly admit that the Stone Classics were a great virtue, even though they were unwilling and reluctant to part with them. They were caught in a collective and forced state of "it smells so good."

After all, openly opposing the Stone Classics is tantamount to questioning the Way of the Sages, which in an era where Confucianism reigns supreme is undoubtedly political suicide.

For example, the Yuan family passed down the Mengshi Yi, but the Xiping Stone Classics adopted the Liangqiu Yi as the standard. Yuan Wei was initially very displeased, but in the end, when faced with the fact that scholars all over the country praised it, he could only smile on the surface but curse in his heart.

Therefore, given the existence of advanced productive forces and the existence of seekers of knowledge, once high-quality and inexpensive paper is discovered, its spread will be unstoppable.

Once the government discovers that a high-quality and inexpensive paper has appeared, it will actively promote its use throughout society until the cumbersome and expensive medium of knowledge, such as bamboo and wooden slips, finally disappears.

Currently, various books, collections, and official documents still commonly use bamboo slips as a medium, but several decades later in the Jin Dynasty, this medium had already begun to be replaced by paper.

After Zuo Si completed his "Rhapsody on the Three Capitals," wealthy and powerful families competed to copy it, causing a paper shortage in Luoyang.

The shift from bamboo slips to paper was closely related to the Sima regime's vigorous promotion of paper, aiming to reduce the cost of knowledge dissemination and thus weaken the power of aristocratic families.

After all, the Sima family was a powerful clan, and they understood best where their strength came from, the source of their rise to power and their ability to overthrow the Cao Wei regime.

If the Han Dynasty dumped large quantities of paper suitable for writing onto Cao Wei at relatively low prices.

Even knowing that the Han Dynasty could use this to seize strategic resources from Cao Wei, Cao Rui, who was still somewhat capable, would not prohibit the circulation of paper produced by the Han Dynasty, or even handwritten copies, within Cao Wei territory.

With the massive dumping of cheap and high-quality paper, the power of so-called aristocratic families seemed insignificant compared to the countless people across the world seeking cheap knowledge and those who used it to make money.

(End of this chapter)