Chapter 47 Talent Urgency

Looking at the land deed in his hand, Zhu Zaigui's heart was bleeding.

This place is so remote, it’s actually in Shunyi!
It's really unfair. This place is fifty miles away from Zhu Zaigui's current palace in a straight line. If you count some twists and turns, it would be almost sixty or seventy miles.

This distance of sixty or seventy miles may only take more than half an hour's drive given the traffic conditions and means of transportation in later generations, but for the Ming Dynasty where hardened roads were a luxury, it would take at least an hour or two to get there.

However, looking at the deed for the two thousand acres of land, Zhu Zaigui felt a lot calmer.

Originally, Zhu Zaigui thought that he could only buy eight or nine hundred acres of land with ten thousand taels of silver. Unexpectedly, the Xianning Marquis family sold the land in Shunyi at a low price, which surprised Zhu Zaigui.

After Zhu Zaigui got the land deed, he asked Meng Chong to find a simple map of the capital. After taking a rough look at the newly purchased land, Zhu Zaigui found that this place seemed to be the location of the Capital Airport in later generations.

Since it is a piece of land suitable for building an airport, its flatness is definitely beyond doubt.

Therefore, Zhu Zaigui also said to Meng Chong: "You go to the account and withdraw another two thousand taels of silver, and go to the officials of the Ministry of Industry to help with the planning. I want to build an industrial park on this land! It must be divided into three major areas: living area, work area, and entertainment area."

"In particular, the work area must be large enough. Our Yiran Sugar production base will take root here in the future, and the supporting upstream and downstream production will also be concentrated here. This will not only save us a lot of manpower and material resources, but also enable an integrated management of various industrial structures, and facilitate our industrial upgrading."

"You can see how simple our production equipment is. When the quantity is small at the beginning, there are not many problems. But once it is mass-produced, do you think those few clay pots can support it? Therefore, the production equipment must also be updated and evolved synchronously. We can't always use a makeshift team."

Meng Chong listened to the new words that came out of Zhu Zaigui's mouth, and seemed to understand them but also seemed not to understand them.

But since Zhu Zaigui has already given the order, Meng Chong will definitely not neglect it. Because of the success of Yiran Sugar, he now believes everything Zhu Zaigui says in front of him!

Now everything in the palace is commanded by Zhu Zaigui and he is the one executing it.

In this system, Meng Chong also deeply felt the charm of Zhu Zaigui's high-level vision. Sometimes things seemed irrelevant, but as long as he carried them out according to Zhu Zaigui's intentions, he would always reap unexpected results.

But at the same time, another disadvantage also arises, that is, there are not enough people. To put it more accurately, there are not enough talents.

Although there are more than a hundred people in the palace, most of them are "servants" of the palace. They have no management experience and not much subjective initiative.

So during this period, Zhu Zaigui was also thinking about talent cultivation.

However, talent cultivation cannot produce results overnight; it requires a long process, and the people cultivated in this process may not necessarily become talents.

Therefore, the most effective solution at present is to introduce talents.

But where do we get the talents from?
This also seems to be a problem.

Liu Yishou was just an attempt by Zhu Zaigui.

The reason why he was introduced was because he was indeed talented, and Meng Chong had dealt with him many times and knew him inside and out.

That's why Zhu Zaigui made a bold move and placed Liu Yishou in the extremely important position of "Yiran Hall".

Otherwise, how could Zhu Zaigui easily believe Cheng Yaojin who showed up halfway?

Although there are many talented people in the Hanlin Academy, the ownership of these talents belongs to his father, Taoist Jiajing.

Moreover, even if Zhu Zaigui wanted to poach people, it was not certain that anyone would really follow him to Shunyi to build an industrial park.

After all, these Hanlin scholars all hold the great ideal of "governing the country and pacifying the world", so how could they follow Zhu Zaigui to do such a shameless thing?
Therefore, Zhu Zaigui thought that his talent pool should still come from the inner study room, which is the place where high-level eunuchs are trained.

The political system of the Ming Dynasty is unique in the past 5,000 years.

Many dynasties were based on a dual political system, that is, the imperial power headed by the emperor and the prime ministerial power headed by the prime minister.

However, the Ming Dynasty unexpectedly came up with the Triune system.

Emperor - Prime Minister - Eunuch.

As the naturally powerful party, the emperor is naturally the undisputed head of state.

But when the emperor gave up power or was young, the eunuchs, a political force that depended on the emperor for survival, would exert great influence.

For example, Wang Zhen of the Yingzong Dynasty, Liu Jin of the Zhengde Dynasty, and in the future Feng Bao of the Wanli Dynasty, Wei Zhongxian of the Tianqi Dynasty, and so on.

Regardless of what these eunuchs did, just based on their influence, anyone who dared to ignore them would absolutely be disrespecting the history of the Ming Dynasty.

The reason why these eunuchs had such a great influence was all thanks to Emperor Xuande.

The wise and great Emperor Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang was an energetic workhorse who could work like crazy for thirty years without a prime minister.

But this is not the norm for everyone.

Most people’s energy is still relatively ordinary, and it is impossible for them to be as crazy and inward-looking as Lao Zhu.

Therefore, during the era of Jianwen, Zhu Yunwen's good grandson, Zhu Yunwen began to consciously rely on the famous "Three Fools of Jianwen" Fang Xiaoru, Huang Zicheng, and Qi Tai to formulate a plan to reduce the power of the princes in order to ensure the stability of the central authority.

It can be said that if Zhu Di had not succeeded in his rebellion, these three guys might have been the beginning of the cabinet.

But there are no "ifs" in history, so the cabinet system was Zhu Di's great power innovation, which solved the emperor's heavy government work.

At the same time, because Zhu Di was determined to prove himself, he spent his entire life on the journey of war.

He left Dapang and the cabinet to manage the central court for him, allowing him to devote more energy to the Five Expeditions to Mobei.

Everyone has seen the final result. Zhu Di got what he sought and died a worthy death, wrapped in his horse's hide.

But Dapang was exhausted from working so hard that he died after only ten months of hard work.

The young Emperor Xuande learned from the lessons of his grandfather and father, and he began to consciously cultivate eunuch talents. He set up an inner study, and had the Hanlin Academy teach some smart and capable eunuchs to read.

This opened the Pandora's box of eunuchs' involvement in politics, and from then on, every emperor of the Ming Dynasty would more or less rely on some eunuchs to get things done.

If you do it well, you will be remembered in history; if you do it badly, you will be infamous forever.

But for the eunuchs who have no eggs to begin with, whether they leave their names in history or are infamous for eternity, as long as they have the opportunity to prove their abilities, they will still be willing to become the sharp knives in the emperor's hands like moths to a flame, and create their own achievements in a grand manner.

So now Zhu Zaigui really wants to make up for the embarrassment of talent shortage, and the eunuchs in the inner study are his best choice.

(End of this chapter)

previouscatalognext