New Shun 1730

After bringing the horse, Tian Ping still didn't dare to ride a horse and just took a car. The two of them went to a nearby restaurant and casually ordered a table of dishes without ordering any of the waiters to accompany them.

After sitting down, Tian Ping smiled and threw a book to Liu Yu and said: "My sister asked me to bring it to you."

Liu Yu glanced at it and knew that there must be letters inside, so he put the book away first.

Tian Ping was not polite. After drinking a drink, he said: "My good sister mentioned it to my father about my return to Beijing. I just said it was inappropriate to avoid being criticized for anything in the future. Besides, Songjiang is now There are more and more things to do on the side and more and more money to be collected. My level is not suitable for taking care of so much. "

"However, in the past few years, stamp duties, customs duties, and stock taxes have been collected. Thanks to Brother Shouchang, my contribution is also included in this. Think about it, Songjiang is just a big money bag now, and its status is not what it used to be."

"Father also thinks so. If you stay there for a long time, you will inevitably get into trouble. It will be a troubled place in the future. There is too much money, and if you can't control it even a little bit, big trouble will happen."

Liu Yu toasted with a toast and said with a smile: "It's a fertile place, but it's also easy to get into trouble. Now that you've been promoted, it's better to come back and stay away from that place of right and wrong."

Now that Tian Ping has returned from Songjiang, this should not just be what Tian Zhenyi and Qi Guogong said, but it is inevitable under the current situation. It's just that since he took the initiative to propose it, the emperor could also take this opportunity to make some adjustments.

Songjiang has been booming in recent years. With the advantages of silk and cotton production areas, the advantages of foreign trade have gradually emerged. This money bag will only get bigger in the future, and the emperor himself should have realized it, so since the Duke of Qi also received customs duties, Tian Ping had no choice but to leave.

It seems that the emperor is full of confidence in the future trade income. He is afraid that in the future, Songjiang customs, transaction tax and other departments will have to arrange officials at the Jiedushi level to manage them, and they must be the emperor's confidants.

Whether it is yourself or the Qi Guogong family who are about to become relatives, it may be difficult to reach out to this big money bag in the eyes of the emperor in the future.

"Now that Brother Tian is back, what position will he be given?"

When he mentioned this, Tian Ping's face turned ugly, and he said distressedly: "The old position has gone, but the new position has not been granted. But I may be thrown to Europa to be the resident envoy."

Liu Yu laughed and said, "You can't, right? There were a lot of people who followed your father to Europe back then. You should choose talents from there, right? Besides, you avoid suspicion in Songjiang, but you don't avoid suspicion in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs?"

Tian Ping smiled bitterly and said: "Diplomatic envoy, why should we avoid suspicion? There are several people selected together with me. In a few days we will learn some Western etiquette. Besides, Western countries are not just Rakshasa and France, those Even if people have been there, it’s not like they just take a quick look at it. I’m still familiar with things like tariffs and the market conditions in Songjiang.”

"Your Majesty told another story."

At the beginning of the reign of Duke Boqin of Lu, he was granted the title of Lu, and three years later he served as the Duke of Zhou. Zhou Gong said: "How late?" Bo Qin said: "Change the customs, reform the rituals, mourn for three years and then get rid of them, so it is too late." The Taigong was also granted the title of Qi, and reported to the Duke of Zhou in the fifth month. Zhou Gong asked: "What's the problem?" He said: "I simplified the etiquette of the king and his ministers and followed the customs."

After saying that, Tian Ping said: "Your Majesty thinks that if an imperial minister is appointed to be stationed in the West, he will be resentful. He will think that the Celestial Empire has no dignity at all, so he will not do his best, and will mostly think of it as humiliation and exile. Moreover, his generation values ​​courtesy and cannot be followed. "It's vulgar, I'm afraid I'll be unhappy because of etiquette."

"I am waiting for those who have come out of the Wude Palace and have come into contact with Western barbarians. They are not so paranoid themselves. In addition, when it comes to major affairs abroad, they must put their own country first. Your Majesty believes that it is not easy to accept noble children who take care of their families. Western bribery, or telling the whole story.”

Liu Yu nodded, thinking that half of what the emperor thought made sense and half didn't.

Since the Song Dynasty, Chinese scholar-bureaucrats have been immersed in the habit of writing chapters and sentences in small regular script, and they really take some things very seriously.

It's no wonder that under the confidence that the Chinese system has not collapsed, proactive diplomacy is undoubtedly a great shame and humiliation.

At that time, Macau was occupied by Catholic countries such as Portugal. The first people to open their eyes to the world in the late Ming Dynasty must have been Catholics. Before Dashun, those who were able to see the outside world were still Catholics, but issues of faith and religion made this path impossible.

At this time, Dashun did not have as strong a military force as Mongolia. Not to mention forcing the Holy See to issue the 1258 Pardon, allowing Catholics to worship ancestors, etc., it did not even have the ability to force the Pope to dig this document out of the pile of old papers.

Historically, it was not until the Catholics in Japan were punished by heaven for not worshiping the emperor, and the puppet Manchukuo needed to worship Confucius, that the Catholic Church allowed East Asian Christians to worship their ancestors and worship Confucius - the name of God. It was only then that it was allowed Used because "God" is the "Eastern pagan evil god" and cannot be called Doosi.

The current situation is for Catholics. After the Pope started the etiquette dispute, it is basically over: you Catholics cannot worship your ancestors, Confucius, Zhou Gong, and the emperor, then you are still Chinese. ?

Fortunately, in Xu Guangqi's time, there were still some smart people in the Society of Jesus. If the etiquette dispute had been so intense back then, in the environment of the late Ming Dynasty, every Catholic would have been sprayed to death.

Nowadays, the scholar-bureaucrats are quite dissatisfied with Dashun's devolution of imperial status and diplomacy with the Western Yi.

Sending them to serve as envoys abroad... Regardless of whether they can accomplish the task, it is very likely that they were appointed today and wrote a desperate poem that night and hanged themselves to avoid humiliation.

Just like when Guo Songtao served as the minister to Britain in the late Manchu Qing Dynasty, one of the three major crimes against Guo Songtao was that because of the cold weather, the British put a coat on Guo Songtao, so he was impeached, thinking that "it would be better to freeze to death than to wear a coat". ".

There are too many things involved here. The Romans would not think that they should become completely nomadic because of the Battle of Calle; nor would China turn themselves into Huns because of the Siege of Baideng. This is the confidence and arrogance accumulated by thousands of years of civilization.

As for the West at this time...what did the scholar-bureaucrats think they could learn? Xu Guangqi himself had not learned the last few volumes of Elements of Geometry. How could he expect the scholar-bureaucrats at this time to understand the "Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy" that later Fields Medal winners found difficult to understand, and then exclaim that they were invincible?

Or would you still think that the East India Company model, the bloody accumulation of slaves, the massacres in Southeast Asia to ensure supply fell short of demand and stable spice prices, the workhouses and the enclosure movement were the "rule of three generations" and "benevolence was better than civil and military affairs"?

At this time, the East still had cultural self-confidence and a sense of superiority. The ideal country template conceived by the French Enlightenment also had a place for Chinese Confucian benevolence and righteousness.

Liu Yu did not think that the scholar-officials at this time did anything wrong. As a native civilization, these scholar-officials maintained the civilization.

But nowadays, the position of envoys stationed abroad is indeed not suitable for Confucian scholar-bureaucrats.

Besides, Dashun's foreign exchanges valued "practical learning" rather than "Western learning." Those who came from Wude Palace and had studied geometry and arithmetic at least had some foundation and a certain basis in Latin.

The division between "practical learning" and "Western learning", coupled with the arrival of Western envoys, caused Liu Yu's opportunity to "monopolize" the right to interpret Western situations to be lost.

It is estimated that the emperor was also afraid of some Confucian scholar-bureaucrats, who felt that the British model "parliament is the method of election, and the whole country is public, and it is the legacy of almost three generations." Basically, the most conservative, reactionary and most supportive of the imperial power descended.

Now it seems that this can be considered a good thing. It is the time when you are ambitious and open your eyes to see the world. Don't just open your eyes and see the things that the emperor is afraid of, and just become a tortoise with your head buried in an ostrich.

"Brother Tian, ​​do you have any news? Which country are you going to?"

"Well...Britain. His Majesty said that those in the DPRK and China understand Western languages ​​anyway, which is Latin, and at most French. No one in the DPRK and China understands this English-Guinean language. It doesn't matter who goes there."

Hearing that Tian Ping might go to the UK, Liu Yu couldn't help but laugh and said: "Hahahaha...Brother Tian has suffered. In ancient times, there was Suwu shepherding sheep in the North Sea with wind and snow, but now there is Brother Tian, ​​who is the North Sea with wet rain and ocean. This North Sea is not the other North Sea, and the weather is bad. It’s so tight.”

Tian Ping slapped the table with his hand and said: "That's right! I heard in Songjiang that the weather in England is cold and cold. My father went to Paris once and said that Paris is not a place where hair and blood are eaten. Although it is not as good as the capital, it still has a different flavor. But... However, the relationship between France and this country is very strong, and the post of stationing in France is extremely important, and Your Majesty has other candidates."

Having heard about the bad weather in the UK, Tian Ping didn't want to leave, but I'm afraid this matter would be difficult to change.

"Brother Tian, ​​from what I see, the Duke of Qi also takes you as an example. Envoys stationed abroad consider it a humiliation for the scholar-bureaucrats, and think it is a hard life for us people. The Duke is now in charge of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and His Majesty has designated him as If you, a noble disciple, go to practice, he can only throw you out first."

"I think this is a good place to go."

Tian Ping could probably guess what his father meant, but he didn't agree with Liu Yu's statement that "this is a good place."

"A good place to go? Brother Shouchang, there is no need to be so comforting."

"Although England is a big Western country, it has little contact with our country and has no disputes around it. At this time, it is far inferior to Sweden, Rakshasa, France, and the Netherlands. I don't think this place is a good place to go."

Liu Yu chuckled and did not explain.

Tian Ping's view is absolutely correct now. The ambassador to Britain may not be as important in the eyes of the court as he was in Sweden.

Sweden can at least contain Russia. The Netherlands has intersects with Dashun in Southeast Asia. Needless to mention France, Britain has not even bought Malacca in addition to some trade at this time.

Whoever said that the ambassador to the UK would be an extremely important position in the future would definitely be considered a comfort to those who heard it. How could a country with which we have nothing in common be important?

Liu Yu knew that it would be very important in the future, but he couldn't say anything at this time. He just advised: "Brother Tian, ​​there is a way, but the law of heaven is impermanent. No one in the DPRK can speak the English language, and they don't know much about England. When you come back in the future, you will be the one who knows the most about Britain. Maybe one day Britain will be so powerful that it will have an intersection with this dynasty, and you will be better off."

Tian Ping smiled helplessly and said: "You are talking about relying on foreign countries for self-respect. According to your statement, I should hope that Britain will become stronger and stronger, so that there will be conflicts with this dynasty in the future? Come on... this matter is over It’s been decided, so don’t mention it. Today is a gathering of friends.”

"Firstly, I came to deliver a message to my sister, and secondly, I came to know that you have always supported the diplomatic envoy. For me, this is a hard job, but I know that you will like it, so I came here to tell you."