Wei School's Three Good Students

Chapter 255 Open Your Eyes to the World? No, Look at Modern China
One hundred days after arriving in this world, Xuan Chong began to see the world.

During this period, Xuan Chong met with his father, King Dongtu, several times; King Dongtu was busy with official duties and discussing matters with those guys in the council called "royal ministers".

These kings and their ministers, though nominally ministers, were in reality representatives of the vested interests of the local people. Naturally, their discussions were rife with bickering: "My king, we don't have enough food!" "My king, the coal mines over there are running out of coal for building the furnaces!" This prompted Xuan Chong, who occasionally overheard the discussions, to mutter, "These are the troublemakers of the Frost Age!"

After learning that Liu Haoxing had returned from the academy, Dongtu Wang Liu Dangzhen had been cold towards him for a while. But now, seeing his son acting so "energetically," his tone softened.

"Rising at the crowing of the rooster" and "studying diligently without ceasing" are both standards for being invigorated. "Indulging in playthings and losing one's ambition" and "indulging in excessive pleasure" are both signs of being listless and dispirited.

A strict father wouldn't easily express praise like a loving mother. Nor would he, like the grandmother in the family, hold him in his arms and say with heartache, "You've become so thin." When he saw Liu Haoxing, his first words were simply, "You're starting to look presentable now."

That being said, they kept a close eye on it every day. For example, they sent a martial arts master to teach Liu Haoxing how to improve his health; they invited the best teacher of natural philosophy; and they donated funds to nearby workshops so that Liu Haoxing could easily find a person in charge to accompany him to broaden his horizons.

The period around age twelve is when boys undergo the most significant changes; Xuan Chong's height started to increase dramatically from 1.5 meters, seemingly inheriting the physique of the northern climate, and he might reach 1.7 meters next year. In the south, that would already be the stature of a young adult.

...go for a walk...

Dongtu's industrial chain consists of whaling and marine fishing. The factory is filled with oil stains, and the walls are covered with black marks. The workers are far less attractive than the handsome men and beautiful women in the palace; they are all butchers with fleshy, cannibalistic faces.

As for these whale-dividing workers, it was common for them to drink heavily and beat women when they weren't working.

First impressions suggested that the lower-class workers toiling in the factory were hopeless scum. As they wielded knives and axes to cut flesh from a frozen whale carcass, the bodyguards immediately shielded Xuan Chong to the side.

However, Xuan Chong was well aware that if he had such a "first impression," it meant that some people had operated very successfully.

Since modernization, the structure of governance has become more sophisticated compared to the feudal era.

When rulers want to exploit a group of people with a clear conscience, they will "criminalize" them through public opinion and discourse. Once a group is "criminalized," the ruling structure at the top of the order can then comfortably enjoy the value created by these "criminals."
If it weren't for the concept of "reward for labor" instilled in Xuan Chong during history class, which was imprinted on his values ​​like a steel stamp, Xuan Chong would truly have been led astray by his senses of "sinification."

Xuan Chong's narration: "Camel Xiangzi is a good work because it portrays how an honest, hardworking ordinary person is transformed by seemingly fair officials into a gambling, aimless, and repulsive character. If the writers of 'Red Sorghum' were to describe it, they would undoubtedly depict how Xiangzi's innate evil springs from his pores, and how these 'pure' intellectuals painfully maintain their purity."

Xuan Chong: "Those who do not work have no right to stand on the moral high ground and criticize those who do work."

This is like a boss who takes care of himself every day suddenly pointing at a stressed-out worker who's working late into the night and saying, "Be nicer." It's just too hypocritical.

Looking at the "aloof" attitude of his companions in the factory, Xuan Chong was certain that his predecessor, and even the carnivores of this world, were unaware of his hypocrisy.

…treating the people like straw dogs…

Ten days later, Xuan Chong, guided by the logic of "discovering contradictions," learned about the technology and culture of this era and took a deep breath.

By the standards of my past life, the technology in this world is "cutting-edge technology".

Modern Chinese culture is the epitome of standard "imperialism." Compared to it, the "imperialism" that originated in Europe in the past was nothing short of barbaric.

The great Confucian scholars of the modern Han dynasty called their system of subduing both the internal and external worlds a "mixture of benevolent rule and hegemonic rule".

Xuan Chong suddenly understood why others had treated him like a child when they discussed government affairs with newspapers the other day. It was because he truly didn't understand this world.

The concept of dividing "factions" that existed in the previous life does not exist at all in the present Han timeline.

Because in the current historical timeline of the Han Dynasty, writing books and establishing works outside of the realms of the kings is too insignificant.

The terms "left" and "right" originate from the Seine River flowing through the city, dividing rural traditions and commercial freedom across the river. As for the concept of "joint operation," it comes from the culture of some nomadic ethnic groups skilled in business.

The familiar "concepts" of Xuan Chong were historically rare events. Their eventual rise was only possible because they coincided with a key historical condition: the "decline of the Ming Dynasty at the end of the Ming Dynasty."

After the collapse of the Ming Dynasty, the main task of Confucian scholars was no longer to develop Neo-Confucianism for the new era following the rise of industry and commerce. For the next few centuries, they spent their time trying to fit the doctrines of "small clans bullying large states" into a rigid framework. Eventually, the problems became too deep to overcome, and they were unable to manage industrialization. Faced with powerful ships and cannons, they had no choice but to resort to external theories to break the deadlock.

Just as a game development project can be halted if it's adapted to the preferences of a few investors, in short, after the late Ming Dynasty, Confucian scholars failed to meet the needs of this land. Yet, the need remains. It's not that imported "classical texts" possess enduring vitality, but rather that the needs of the millions of people of China give "a certain classic" its life.

It is also worth noting that the "scriptures" that were introduced from the West in the early days were not perfect. They only became perfect and usable after a sufficient amount of blood tax was paid. (The actions of early European utopians in order to "build a utopia" were as abstract as those of the white left during the Xuan Chong era).

As for the era in which Xuan Chong was born, why couldn't it produce as many groundbreaking theories as it did a hundred years ago? All that's left is abstract thinking, such as performing Smurfs or bizarre works like Three's Company.

Because there are no longer any civilized people willing to pay so much blood tax for the "practice of theory." (Xuan Chong: The success of the last century made the Europeans think they were the pioneers of the next era, when in reality they were just roadside figures. Without firewood, how can a spark be lit? Expecting the Arabs to listen and pay blood taxes?)

In other words, if Eastern civilization had been properly preserved and had no intention of adopting external theories, then there wouldn't be so many so-called foreign "truths" in the world.

"Truth" is not defined by its appearance in certain philosophically rich places; rather, it is only after a vibrant nation or civilization has paid tens of millions in blood taxes that it gradually becomes truth.

As the great writer once said: There were originally no roads in the world, but they are called roads only when people walk on them a lot.

…All philosophical ideas emerge in order to solve local problems…

In contemporary China, factions within the court are divided into "benevolent rule" and "hegemonic rule." The followers and their successors within these factions are like labels being affixed to left and right. In both the imperial court and the countryside, whenever matters concerning foreign vassals or trade are involved, both sides debate according to their respective "benevolent rule" and "hegemonic rule" positions.
The "benevolent way" lies in "governance," while the "hegemonic way" lies in "control."

Just as in the past, "left and right" became an adjective. In the present Han Dynasty, the "benevolent way" faction would criticize their allies for being too "domineering," while the "domineering way" faction would satirize the "benevolent way" for being too lenient, and the barbarians for being afraid of power but not grateful.

The emergence of left and right theories stems from the Western debate over whether the "binding of ordinary people by authoritarianism" is justified.

The West is concerned with "authoritarianism," while the East is concerned with the "cycle of order and chaos."

Whether it's the way of the king or the way of the tyrant, whether it's "governance" or "control," what needs to be resolved is the "struggle for the will of Heaven."

The philosophy of "the debate over the will of Heaven" is about whether people have a correct attitude towards the heavens and the state that support them.

Xuan Chong carefully read "The Debate on the Will of Heaven" and summarized it as a contradiction arising from the incompatibility between "personal idealism" and "materialism of the Way of Heaven".

This philosophical thought is a framework built around the continuous cycle of "order and chaos" in the five dynasties.

Modern scholars of the Han Dynasty believe that during the founding period of all dynasties, the will of Heaven was aligned from top to bottom, resulting in great order and prosperity. However, in the middle and later stages, a series of actions that contradicted the will of Heaven would lead to chaos and disorder.

Taking "Heng Han" as an example, this pattern of rise and fall is particularly clear.

Heng Han was restored by Liu Bei, but the power base of the local strongholds in the late Eastern Han Dynasty had long been frozen solid.

After Liu Bei founded the Han dynasty, he passed away seven years later. For the next twenty years, although he had the assistance of famous ministers, Emperor Taizong (Liu Shan) was benevolent and mostly reprimanded his ministers rather than resorting to ruthless killings.

Therefore, in the mid-to-late period of the Han Dynasty, it was still in the same state as the Wei and Jin Dynasties.

"Mind" refers to human thoughts, while "Heavenly Way" refers to objective laws, which are the possibilities that allow all things, including humans, to act.

In the later years of the Han Dynasty, powerful families used Five-Stone Powder and idle talk to pursue spiritual transcendence, while ordinary people sought solace in front of Buddhist statues, neglecting the concept of "Heaven." Subsequently, the world descended into chaos, a consequence of "the conflict between the will of Heaven and the will of Heaven."

Modern Confucian scholars criticized the strange phenomenon at the end of the Han Dynasty: from top to bottom, no one had developed a correct attitude towards the Way of Heaven and the state.

The standard for "harmony between Heaven and Man" is that the common people should carefully cultivate the land beneath their feet; the scholar-officials should uphold their proper duties; and the emperor and clan leaders in various regions should strictly adhere to rituals in their ancestral worship. They must always maintain a proper attitude to avoid contradicting the "land and its people," lest the stable system develop signs of "illness."

This dynasty has been governing the country according to the principle of "the struggle for the will of Heaven," and it has been four hundred years since then.

The great Confucian scholars summarized the world from top to bottom, attributing all human conflicts to "the contradiction between the will of Heaven." Therefore, Xuan Chong, looking at the world from the perspective of his previous life, saw "the contradiction between the masses and the elites"; but the common people and officials of this dynasty had no such concept at all, and their minds were only filled with "the contradiction between the will of Heaven."

The so-called "heart" means that whether one is a scholar-official or an ordinary person, everyone has their own responsibilities. However, in doing anything, one must not let one's "heart" go against "Heaven".

There is no concept of scholar-officials exploiting the common people. If someone were to explain exploitation to the common people, that would be deliberate instigation, an attempt to create a situation where "the will of Heaven is contrary to that of Heaven."

If ordinary people are fulfilling their "natural duty" of farming, but cannot survive due to exorbitant taxes and levies, the theory of "contradicting the will of Heaven" will place the blame on the ruling class.

…Xuan Chong suddenly realized: the core of this social theory is not justice, but rather "the sage is ruthless, treating the people like straw dogs," yet the "straw dogs" must be given a way to survive…

Take procreation, for example. This is something that both common people and officials must do. It is "the will of Heaven."

People only need to work hard in the factory and save enough money to start a family and build a career.

And what about the scholar-officials? They must not, like in the late Han dynasty, buy slaves and kill maids if they fail to persuade others to drink; instead, they should use their family wealth to "reduce the surplus and make up for the deficiency."

For example, when contemporary historians analyzed the fall of the "Heng Han" dynasty, they focused on one particular phenomenon.

For small families, raising a son is a good way to provide the main labor force; in contrast, raising a daughter is less economically valuable to the family, so female infants are often abandoned.

The people's "personal thoughts" did not conform to objective long-term development, which caused "the will of Heaven to be contrary to the will of Heaven." At the end of the Han Dynasty, the population expanded, but there were few wars that depleted the number of men. Therefore, with a thunderclap across the land, the Yellow River was stirred up and the world rebelled.

This dynasty has learned its lesson.

The tendency of men to avoid women in humble households is difficult to regulate with laws.

To prevent the consequences of "contrary to the will of Heaven," the law mandated that local officials and scholars take responsibility. One after another, public halls were established specifically to house female infants.

With industrialized food supplies, the people in the Gongyitang could be fully supported.

As for these girls after their coming-of-age ceremony, they would regard the Gongyi Hall as their parents, and in marriage, "the parents' orders and the matchmaker's words" meant that the Gongyi Hall had the final say.

As for the Gongyi Hall, since it was funded by local gentry, the women who married into it were all local young men.

The dowry that a man who marries a woman from the court must include a pig, a red cloth, and a huge loan.

Since the local laborers had been given loans, the local tycoons would inevitably scramble to provide them with employment. Even though whaling in Dongtu was a stable source of income, Liu Dangzhen still had to allocate funds to tinker with the steel industry and shipping business.

In the Han Dynasty, those aristocratic families that had been passed down for thousands of years were no longer like those in the Wei and Jin Dynasties, who would engage in idle talk when they had nothing to do, or seek profound truths when they couldn't sleep due to worries.

After entering the modern era, the Han dynasty maintained a clear performance evaluation system, ensuring that powerful families who controlled resources in various regions upheld the principle of "harmony brings prosperity" in their localities. No one could bear the heavy responsibility of "going against the will of Heaven."

In cases like peasant uprisings, it wasn't as simple as holding local officials accountable as in the Ming and Qing dynasties; rather, the sacrificial rites of the major clans presiding over the local "sacrifices" had to be stopped immediately! Anyone who dared to overstep the bounds was considered to be engaging in illicit worship and would be exiled to the frontier.

If a powerful local clan cannot hold ancestral rites, it loses its legitimacy to organize its able-bodied men, and its clan power will decline significantly. This is similar to Xuan Chong's previous life, when a university loses its "sanctity" due to scandal, its influence in academia and its ability to stir up trouble are greatly diminished.

Including Liu Haoxing's current Dongtu Prince's Mansion, the coal mines and fishing grounds he controls, the dividends he receives are 30 million silver coins, which, according to Xuan Chong's previous life, is a clear local monopoly.

However, this wealth, unlike that of the extremely wealthy in England and Greece, cannot be protected by the banner of "freedom".

According to the theory of "harmony between heaven and man," one must fulfill one's obligations.

In Dongtu Prefecture, at least ten million taels are spent annually on adopted daughters to ensure local harmony. —Of course, these adopted daughters want to freely move to big cities for employment? Don't even think about it. Local spending is for local benefit, not to cover up population imbalances caused by outsiders.

Xuan Chongrang used some concepts from his previous life to describe it, saying that the Han Dynasty had a terrifying ability to "extract surplus" from its internal workings.

In major cities, laborers work an average of five to six hours a day! In the countryside, farmers, in addition to tending their crops, also have to work on road construction, earning very low wages.

However, in the past two hundred years, no large-scale uprisings have occurred in this modern Han dynasty!
Every male member of the household was tied to his family, bearing heavy burdens like cattle and horses.

In the major cities of the present-day Hanjiang South region, it is not uncommon for ordinary people to die from overwork.

Apart from the well-developed waterways and railways of Jiangnan, the common people in other areas have no population movement; they are born and raised in their original places. The hostility towards outsiders in the rich and prosperous regions of Hanzhong is far worse than in Xuan Chong's previous life, on the level of Western Europe's attack on the East, and it has even affected the upper class. This is the reason why Liu Haoxing, Xuan Chong's predecessor, was bullied in Yandu.

Dongtu Island is a typical harsh and cold place, belonging to a vassal state governed under the standard "harmony between heaven and earth" system.

The above describes the compromise policies adopted by Eastern dynasties as they entered the modern era in order to maintain their vast territories.

Otherwise, according to the free movement system of Europe in my previous life, the people in Dongtu would have disappeared long ago.

What? Vassal states aren't considered territory? In Xuan Chong's previous life, the allied states of the Russian bear and the states of the American eagle each had more power than the vassal states of today. The eagle and the bear often pounded the table in front of their subordinate lords, while a small vassal state like Dongtu couldn't even sit on the table with the imperial court. Even its right to sell resources was restricted by the central government.

The Eastern Library spends ten million silver coins every year to build social security. Is this out of kindness? No, it's to protect its own "united front value."

Spending ten million yuan annually is enough to keep hundreds of thousands of cattle and horses tied up in Dongtu. This demonstrates that they can be in charge in this harsh and cold land.

Xuan Chong: "Placing people on the land is no different from confining members of a clan to the countryside. It's just a better-sounding name than the ancient practice of 'buying slaves,' but on a much larger scale."

After conducting a systematic investigation in the factory, Xuan Chong determined that overwork led to alcoholism, and alcoholism caused men to have shorter life expectancies.

Those women with children in tow? — Well, that depends on whether these unfortunate women can find a man from another place to marry while they still have some beauty. (Those who come to Dongtu, this wretched place, are all bankrupt exiles.)
But most of them still had to go to the women's workshops to support their families. As for the women, they would gather together to complain about their miserable lives during breaks from washing clothes, but they would not rebel.

If a female worker dies from overwork, she will receive a "Medal of Chastity" personally awarded by her own wife, and the orphans will be sent to the Hall of Justice.

After completing his investigation, Xuan Chong left the whale meat farm, leather factory, and other places.

Xuan Chong introduced the following logic to this world: the cycle of order and chaos is the main contradiction in Eastern history, so the Neo-Confucianism (philosophy) of scholars must serve this. This philosophical system, developed over two thousand years, possesses a highly complex operational mechanism and is by no means easily broken.

Xuan Chong recalled that filthy, chaotic shantytown: "If I ran into the factory and shouted, 'Arise, we cannot be slaves,' absolutely no one would follow my lead. They would just report me. A man with a wife and children is a conservative among conservatives."

…cutting-edge technology…

Meanwhile, Xuan Chong's adoptive father, King Dongtu, was discussing the construction of a steel mill with merchants from the south.

A foreman said, "Your Highness, this is the newest smelting furnace at the Huaizuo Steel Refining Bureau! If the plan goes smoothly, the steel plant will produce 570,000 tons of steel next year!"

In the slag industrial zone, molten steel rolls out.

Dongtu Wangdao said, "After the ironworks is built, 100,000 people here will live off the iron industry. Then, what about our food supply?"

Another merchant from the south said, "Your Highness, rest assured, as long as you can guarantee the production of iron, we can find representatives from the south to sign a 30-year grain supply agreement with you, guaranteeing a stable and low-priced supply to your region."

A merchant standing nearby added, "We have records from the Imperial Ancestral Temple in Jianye for all our business dealings, so there won't be any problems. (If there isn't enough food, and Heaven's will is against us, someone will take responsibility.)"

These southern tycoons are now planning their long-term expansion in the north.

Xuan Chong is thinking about selling oil and distributing welfare benefits in the future, but isn't Dongtu's abundant resources also being calculated by even smarter people?

(End of this chapter)