Chapter 283 Education
Autumn.

The climate is cool and pleasant.

The wheat has been harvested.

It’s the perfect time for a wedding.

Regarding the prince’s marriage.

Different people certainly have different opinions.

People like Sima Guang would definitely disagree.

Some even said that if the government did not listen to him, he should be removed from his post.

Since the officials don’t listen to what I say, it seems there is no point in me being an official.

Of course Zhao Xin would not indulge the other party.

Ouyang Xiu also advised.

However, in doing so, Sima Guang also scolded Ouyang Xiu.

It is said that over the years, Ouyang Xiu has become less and less like the Ouyang Xiu he used to be, and has become a lackey of the government.

That’s a bit too much!

However, Ouyang Xiu did not share Sima Guang’s opinion.

Zhao Xin did not want to make the relationship too awkward, so he said to the ministers, “Wei Zheng once said that since the death of Empress Changsun, Emperor Taizong Wen became less and less willing to listen to the advice of the ministers, and would get angry at the slightest provocation. As a result, the ministers dared not speak.”

“I can’t learn from him.”

“Sima Guang, your point is very good. Marrying Yelu Hongji’s daughter may not necessarily bring peace.”

“But… in interactions between people and between countries, if you don’t express your desire to live in peace with others first, but instead are hostile to them from the beginning, how can you become friends?”

“To be honest! I am very tired of war.”

“Even though I’ve fought so many battles and recovered so much lost territory.”

“But what I hope most is that there is no war in the world.”

“The Khitan population is at least 1.5 million.”

“If you don’t marry Yelu Hongji’s eldest daughter, what are you going to do?”

“Do you want to kill them all?”

“Do you want to learn from the Han Dynasty’s northern attack on the Xiongnu, causing more than half of the people to flee, or do you want to learn from the Tang Dynasty’s control of the country, which could only last for a few decades? But then it had to fall into war again?”

“I think their approach is wrong.”

“I hope to try to change the relationship with the surrounding ethnic groups in a new way.”

“Moreover, the Liao Kingdom was willing to introduce Han system and wear Han clothes. You regard yourselves as people who understand etiquette, but you laugh at a person who is trying hard to learn Han culture, calling him a barbarian, discriminating against him, and saying that he is not worthy of standing on the same side as you.”

“Can you still be called people who understand etiquette and observe manners?”

“What’s the difference between you and the people in the market, the people living in the city, who laugh at people from the countryside and call them country bumpkins?”

“Is this what you call etiquette?”

“Since ancient times, all dynasties have certainly tried to civilize foreign races.”

“only……”

“Most of them failed.”

“Because it has long been said in ancient books, ‘When the granaries are full, people know etiquette; when they have enough food and clothing, they know honor and disgrace.’ The Liao people were not wealthy, so it is estimated that they certainly could not know etiquette, and of course they could not know honor and disgrace.”

“But… ever since the Liao Kingdom acquired the Sixteen Prefectures of Yanyun and the Liaodong region, the food from these areas can be continuously supplied to the grasslands.”

“Look again, why was the Liao Kingdom able to maintain peace with the Song Dynasty for such a long time?”

“It’s because our life, which used to be one day without food, has suddenly changed.”

“Barbarians can actually be educated.”

“It’s just that…the way you used to teach them etiquette was not the right one.”

“People need to fill their stomachs before they can talk about etiquette!”

“Even in the Song Dynasty, there are still people who turn to banditry and thieves. Once there is no food on the grassland, the situation will only get worse.”

“Besides…you can’t kill all the people on the grassland.”

“The Han Dynasty had the Xiongnu, and the Sui and Tang Dynasties had the Turks.”

“If you cannot become friends and relatives with the northern barbarians who are your neighbors, then you will definitely become enemies and enemies.”

“I let the crown prince marry Yelu Hongji’s daughter. This is not really necessary, but it can send a signal to the people of the world.”

“That’s our willingness to accommodate them.”

“Rather than viewing them as enemies.”

“In the past, the Han and Tang dynasties had no way to feed the grasslands, so even if they killed the Xiongnu and forced them to flee westwards and made the Turks surrender, it would only take a few decades.”

“Once they recover, they will still become a major threat to the north.”

“However……”

“Times have changed. In the future, we will have steam locomotives, and we can quickly transport food from anywhere in the world to its destination.”

“The Khitans will become our friends and relatives, and they will become our wall in the north, protecting us from the threats from the north.”

“You drove away the Khitan today, but the Jurchens might come tomorrow, and others might come the day after tomorrow.”

“Do you still think that being hostile to the Khitans and driving them back is really a good thing?”

“It’s just that we drove the Khitans away today, and tomorrow we will face a new enemy.”

“Anyway…”

“Sooner or later, there will be a nation of horsemen occupying the grasslands in the north.”

“Whether it was the system or the clothing, the Liao Dynasty had already become very Chinese.”

“They even have institutions like the Privy Council, just like us.”

“It can be said that there is no other foreign race that is easier to manage than this.”

“Yet you have repeatedly tried to get them to take off their Han clothes and go back to the grasslands.”

“Are you acting as gravediggers for the Song Dynasty, or are you really protecting it?”

“Have you ever had even a little bit of a sense of the overall situation?”

“Or… you want me and our soldiers to keep going out to the grasslands, keep fighting and keep winning, while you just need to stay in a safe place, talk a lot, appreciate flowers and write poems every day?”

“As long as you win, you can confidently curse that the people on the grassland are really barbarians.”

“After you lose the battle, you start to blame the soldiers for being useless. You are such a bunch of wimps.”

“In short, you will always be invincible.”

“Do you know that with just one word from you, soldiers may have to go to war every year and not be able to see their wives?”

Sima Guang finally stared at Zhao Xin with his eyes wide open for a long time, unable to respond.

then……

The wedding was also held as scheduled.

Zhao Xin also asked Su Shi to publicize on the grassland that the Han people and the Khitan people were one family, and the fifty-six ethnic groups were one family. At the same time, all taxes were exempted in the autumn of that year.

There was also tribute from other dependent tribes.

When the other affiliated tribes saw this, they all looked at their own daughters.

One thing to say!

Her face was tanned, like a wild girl, she was not pretty, and she spoke only vulgar words, which was not presentable at all.

One month after the wedding…

Zhao Xin then asked Zhao Zhe to try to handle the affairs of the Northern Dynasty.

It also helped Zhao Xin a little bit and shared some of the pressure of reading memorials.

at the same time……

Zhao Xin also had to ask the prince, if he were to govern the Liao Kingdom now, how should he govern it?
Maybe it’s because I played sandbox games with Zhao Zhe when I was a child.

and so……

Zhao Zhe is very different from those princes who were trained in traditional Confucianism.

If you are a prince who has been trained in traditional Confucianism, then he will definitely tell you some nonsense like selecting virtuous and capable people, listening more to the opinions of your ministers, and that it would be best if you could rule the country without having to do anything.

But Zhao Zhe was different. He was not really poisoned by Confucianism.

Instead, he said to Zhao Xin: “Dad, I remember when you were a kid, you said there were iron mines in Liaodong in the Liao Kingdom. Why didn’t you let people mine them?”

Zhao Xin said, “Go on.”

Zhao Zhe said: “I think that if we want our country to be rich, we need to see how much iron we can produce.”

“The more iron there is, the more steam engines we can build, and the more food we can produce.”

“I heard that there are still large tracts of land in the north of Liao that have not been cultivated.”

“Now that we have horses and technology, we can open up large tracts of fertile land in the north.”

Zhao Xin also said: “But it’s hundreds of miles away to the north, and there is no human habitation anywhere.”

Zhao Zhe said, “We can build a railway. As long as we have food and railways, we can feed a large number of people.”

Zhao Xin also asked: “What will happen after feeding a large number of people?”

Zhao Zhe: “I have not thought that far yet. But I am sure that by that time, the Liao Kingdom will become very prosperous.”

Zhao Xin said, “How can there be prosperity with only food? The weather is cold, and it is just a granary at best. But after developing technology, we can sell all this food to other places.”

Yes! That place can only be used as a granary at best.

It would be a miracle if the city could be prosperous at a temperature of dozens of degrees below zero!

After a pause, Zhao Xin said to Zhao Zhe: “When you get a piece of land, you have to first see if this land can make money and how to make money.”

“And then develop it as best you can.”

“So how do you tell if a piece of land can make money, and how do you make money?”

“First, we need to see if we can grow crops. Second, we need to see if we have any mines, whether they are iron ore, coal or other mines.”

“If we can find these things and the transportation is convenient, then the development potential will generally not be too bad.”

“If you want to govern this place, you have to get all these grains and minerals out. As long as you can control these things in your own hands, then the only thing left is how to distribute them.”

“It’s also a question of how to govern the population.”

“There are usually some problems with population. One, there are too few people. If there are too few people, you will not be able to live comfortably because there will be no one to serve you as a slave.”

“Another one, there are too many people.”

“When there are too many people, all kinds of problems will arise. For example, there won’t be enough food and drink.”

“You have to think about how to better feed these people since you only have so much food and minerals.”

“Even…if there are too many people, you have to start family planning.”

Zhao Zhe also asked: “What is family planning?”

Zhao Xin said, “It’s the abandonment and drowning of babies. Those who can’t be raised should be abandoned as soon as possible. If possible, you should try to grasp the accurate population of your land as much as possible, and then you can do arithmetic problems.”

“What is the total annual grain output of this land and how many people are there?”

“Once the weight of grain per capita is less than a certain number of stones, rebellion will occur. If you can get this number, you can use mathematics to govern the country.”

“Even if the numbers are sometimes underreported, at least after you calculate it, you will have a rough idea in your mind.”

“You can use math to estimate the current health status of your own country.”

“Then, you can adjust the national policy to get it back on track.”

Zhao Zhe also asked: “Dad, do you know how many people there are in Song Dynasty now?”

Zhao Xin said, “About 100 million. This can only be estimated, because the household registration information is completely wrong and random.”

Zhao Zhe then said, “Then why don’t you have someone re-investigate the household registration population?”

Zhao Xin said: “If you do this, then won’t all the officials who work for you rebel? Do you think there are people like Ouyang Xiu and Fu Bi everywhere in the court?”

“In fact, there are a lot of corrupt officials in the court. Sometimes, they even help the people and conceal their true population. If you ask them to re-investigate, can they do it well? Is it possible for them to help you do it?”

Zhao Zhe also said: “Can we just watch like this?”

Zhao Xin said, “Things like this have existed since ancient times. Dynasties often perished in less than three hundred years because of people like this.”

“The Great Song Dynasty has been established for nearly 110 years. If it weren’t for your father, the Great Song Dynasty would have continued to move forward, and how could it have expanded its territory like this?”

“You can’t just sit there and watch!”

“But it is really difficult to get an exact number nowadays.”

“There can’t be any big moves, and even if there are, there’s a lack of people to seriously execute them.”

“In fact… for the Song Dynasty, the population size is of no significance.”

“As long as commercial taxes can be collected steadily and continuously, that’s fine.”

“But you can’t let the household registration system become too corrupt, so you have to send people to investigate corrupt officials from time to time to slow down the rate at which the system decays and prevent them from going too far.”

“People like Sima Guang are used to intimidate corrupt officials.”

“It’s just that… sometimes, they are annoying. I use them to deter corrupt officials. But sometimes, they just like to go against you. They only supervise you, not those corrupt officials.”

“In terms of employing people, although people like Sima Guang are very annoying, we also have to see the benefits they bring to the court.”

“This is why Emperor Taizong Wen of the Tang Dynasty used Wei Zheng and why he would not kill Wei Zheng even if he was very angry.”

“After all… if I kill him, no one will dare to speak out. If I keep him, even if I feel a little uncomfortable, this family business can be well preserved.”

“It’s the same when you’re handling Northern Dynasty affairs. Even though some people’s words may be unpleasant to hear, as long as it’s good for the continuation of our Zhao family and for our Zhao family to stand at the top of the world, you should make good use of such people as much as possible.”

“Of course! Don’t listen to the other person on everything.”

“You should treat what the other person says as a reference, and then weigh the pros and cons yourself.”

At last……

Zhao Xin also asked: “Have you ever thought about how you and Yelu Sa Gezhi will get along in the future?”

(End of this chapter)