Zhao Bing's account was settled in this way. He wanted to use the "way" of the Otu merchants to open a passage to the mainland. Currently, the coast of Guangdong and Guangxi was set up by the Mongolian Yuan, and it became a paradise for all kinds of smugglers and bandits within this range. However, there was only relative freedom. The Yuan government set up an isolation area to strengthen the blockade of Qiongzhou, so it would naturally not allow smugglers to be rampant. Therefore, it would send troops into the isolation area from time to time to initiate a clearance. The smugglers and bandits like mobs are not their opponents, and they often cause great losses every time they clear.

Even though the Bureau of Affairs can always escape the Yuan army's clearance and avoid major losses with convenient conditions, their armed forces still find it difficult to confront the Yuan army head-on. But these people are doing business in Qiongzhou, so the biggest loss is Qiongzhou in the final analysis. In addition, as the blockade becomes more tight, it is more difficult to penetrate into the mainland. A batch of goods often loses more than 50%, resulting in a decline in profits. This is also one of the reasons why Huang Hua had to join forces with Chen Diaoyan and use the road to pass.

The Yuan army now surrounded Chen Diaoyan's parable, cut off the path, causing damage to the private salt business, and they had to open up other paths. The Otu merchants were like flies, and could find any smell of copper. However, they had the privileges and could enter and exit freely, and they would also use the Yuan army to attack all forces to seek the greatest benefit from it. On the contrary, they made a lot of profits from it.

Zhao Bing's intention this time was to buy ways from the Otu merchants by "Shien" them. After all, the sea trade business is much more profitable than the small profit of private transactions. As long as they want to make money, they will not worry about not getting into the trap. And he will also grasp the pricing power by defending the strait. When he talked to Zheng Huchen, Zhuang Shilin and Zhou Xiang, they all lit up their eyes.

In this way, the caravan of the Bureau of Affairs can walk unimpededly in the south of the Yangtze River. After the salt is sold, the money will naturally come back. The big head is also put into the treasury, solving the problem of spending money. At the same time, the supervisor can also obtain urgently needed materials through the way of the Otu merchants. Although these comprehensive calculations are not faster than the "robbery", they are not less than the money they buy. Moreover, "robbery" is a one-time transaction, and people can get nothing if they don't come. Three cobblers are better than Zhuge Liang, and the four of them set the principles of negotiations together:

The merchants of Otu were asked to assist Qiongzhou in opening up the four commercial routes in Qinzhou, Leizhou, Chaozhou and Fuzhou, corresponding to the Huguang Province, Jiangxi Province, Fujian Province and Jianghuai Province set up along the coast of the Mongol Yuan. There are inland rivers connected to the sea everywhere, and ships can go directly to the inland areas; the merchants of Otu agreed to purchase war horses, copper and iron and other embargo materials for Qiongzhou and transported them to Qiongzhou; and the provincial prefectures along the coast relax the supervision of inland smuggling ships so that they can arrive in Qiongzhou for transactions, etc. In this way, their ships can be sent to the straits.

Zhao Bing knew that these requirements were not incapable of the Otu merchants, but were just bribery and profits. In addition, the Mongolian rulers had no good way to solve economic problems. Their principle was that whoever could get money for them would be good, and they didn't care what method they used. These Otu merchants had already figured out their pulse. Besides, merchants value profit and could do whatever they could do for money. And for these Otu, the Mongols were just tools for making money by themselves, and whoever could give them benefits was the master.

However, the opening of these "private roads" is not just about obtaining materials and money for Qiongzhou, but it is of great significance. Zhao Bing can further infiltrate the inland, send personnel, and troops into the inland development of forces, and establish bases. Once the time is ripe, launch the war to restore the country, these places can become the internal responses of the Song army, and the war will be responded to together...

September was soon in a hurry. The court opened the imperial examination in March to collect the ranks. After two rounds of elimination of the provincial examination and the prefecture examination, more than 500 scholars who returned to the court gathered in the prefecture city to prepare for the ministry examination. The opening of the examination was a major event for every dynasty, not to mention that it was the first time that the founding of the dynasty was opened. Zhao Bing sent someone to expand and repair the examination field, with the left prime minister Lu Xiufu as the president, the deputy chief political affairs officer Liu Fu, the Minister of Rites Xu Zongren, and the Minister of Personnel Chen Zhongwei as the vice president; Ying Jieyan and Wen Tianxiang as the imperial examination. He also appointed examiners of the 18th floor and a number of officials in the matter, including the supervision, search, receipt, seal, transcription, and reading.

When everything is done, the exam is about to start, a scholar suddenly caused trouble and said that the imperial examination was unfair. Zhao Bing was shocked when he heard this. He did not know the financial, material and human resources he used to open the exam every time the country opened the exam. The Song Dynasty set it as a major competition every three years during the reign of Emperor Yingzong, which is the so-called major competition year, which means that there was an examination of the Ministry of Rites this year.

In the early Song Dynasty, there was only a two-level examination system. The first level was a test of the examination held by each state, and the first level was a provincial examination held by the Ministry of Rites. In order to select people who were truly down-to-earth in feudal rule and had talent to serve them, Song Taizu implemented the palace examination in the sixth year of Kaibao. Since then, the palace examination has become the highest level of the imperial examination system, and the third-level imperial examination system of the state examination, the provincial examination and the palace examination were officially established. The examination time was in autumn, and each state conducted the examination. The examination was held in the spring of the second year, and the palace examination was held.

At that time, Zhao Bing considered that the Song Dynasty had not held the imperial examination for many years and that there were few scholars in Qiongzhou, so he added provincial examinations to select local talents so that more people could take the examinations. The place in Qiongzhou was not big and did not require candidates to travel long distances, so the time of the examination was adjusted very differently from the old system. When he proposed it, all the ministers did not object, so they implemented it accordingly, but at the last moment, they had trouble.

At first, Zhao Bing thought that the scholars who failed to be elected in the government examination caused trouble, but after careful questioning, it was not the case. It turned out that after the court decided to open a vocational examination last year, not only did the scholars in Qiongzhou know about this, but the incident spread to the inland with the business and the population of Qiongzhou, and quickly spread. Therefore, many scholars from the mainland also wanted to take the vocational examination, but many people heard about it and missed the exam time without knowing the details and lost the qualification to take the vocational examination.

At first, there were few scholars from the mainland, so they could only sigh that they were unlucky. It was not so easy to go back, so they could only temporarily settle down and wait for the examination again. However, as the news spreaded, there were more and more scholars coming across the sea without fear of danger. Finally, more than a thousand people gathered in the city. The three of them became tigers, and the lost scholars gathered to cause trouble, saying that the imperial examination was unfair, and the scholars of the Song Dynasty broke the rules!

When Zhao Bing learned the truth, he could only sigh and sigh that the world was impermanent, and these scholars were also pitiful. I remember that the Song Dynasty treated scholars well and cared for them very much, but who would have thought that the Song Dynasty would finish it. However, the new master was not interested in scholars. He has not opened a single subject for twenty years since the founding of the country and changing the title, which made the lives of these scholars extremely difficult...

As Zhao Bing knew, when Kublai Khan was the king of the clan, his Confucian ministers and counselors did help him a lot. He also pretended to do some measures such as "the Confucian scholars captured in the army listened to the redemption for the people", which was nothing more than to win people's hearts. The main hawks and dogs he had in-laws in the Southern Song Dynasty were all Han generals in the north. However, after the Li Yu rebellion, Kublai Khan killed Wang Wentong, a Han official who had a marriage relationship with Li Yu, and was suspicious of the Han people. With the pacification of Jiangnan, Han Confucian scholars lost any value of use in the eyes of the Emperor of the Great Yuan.

In the second year of Zhiyuan, Kublai Khan issued an edict: "The Mongols were used as Dalu Wachi, the Han people were appointed as the general manager, and the Hui people were the co-magistrates, and the Hui people were always customized." In addition, the censors and officials "don't give the country's surname", and the various integrity departments also had to choose the Mongols as envoys, and the real local emperors were able to set up their sects. Therefore, a strange phenomenon occurred in the Yuan Dynasty. After the southerners finished their court, they would have to carry their hands behind their backs. The outsiders who did not know the truth thought that southern Chinese people liked to stand behind their backs to show their grace, but in fact they were forced to do the back-cut quilts and tie them to express their obedience to the Mongols.

Politically, the rulers of the Yuan Dynasty strictly prevented the Han and Southerners, who accounted for the majority of the population, from many aspects. Even the Han people who joined the ruling group and the upper class of the southerners had many restrictions. Among the central ruling institutions of the Yuan Dynasty, the Secretariat, which was in charge of national administration, the Privy Council, which was in charge of military affairs, and the Censorate, which was the chief officials of the Censorate, who was in charge of military affairs, were not granted the title of the Censorate. The right and left prime ministers of the Secretariat were the six ministries and led the highest administrative officers of the hundreds of departments. In the Yuan Dynasty, the Han people, and the southerners were given this position only Shi Tianze, who was the "Yuanxun Su Wang" during the time of Emperor Shun, and He Weiyi, who was specially granted the Mongolian surname during Emperor Shun.

In religion, Mongolian nobles also had different scholars. At first, they believed in the shamanism of the gods, and later converted to Lamaism, respected Tubo monks as imperial teachers, and worshiped them frantically. The emperor personally received the precepts. In the middle of the Yuan Dynasty, the imperial teacher's temple was built in various places, and the first imperial teacher Basiba was worshipped, and the scale and system of the Confucius Temple was beyond the Confucius Temple. In contrast, Confucianism had a much inferior position in the minds of Mongolian rulers. Due to differences in social and cultural background, they found it difficult to understand the concept and system of Confucianism. Kublai Khan had some interest in Confucianism in his early years, but his understanding was very shallow. Later, he had a disagreement with Confucian ministers on financial management, believing that the latter did not know the opportunity and gradually became alienated from him.

In terms of language and writing, Kublai Khan ordered Basiba to imitate Tibetan alphabets to create the "Mongolian New Characters" and promulgate them all over the world. All official documents must be written in their writing and then attached to them in local characters, which also expelled a large number of scholars. In order to instill Confucianism in the emperor, the Confucian ministers of the Yuan Dynasty had to translate scriptures, historical books and related explanations into Mongolian languages, and spent a lot of effort. The sweet and bitterness between them was hard to describe. In Mongolia, the ministers of Semu were also a few. In order to promote this kind of text, the court set up Mongolian characters to teach locally. In order to gain the level of advancement, a large number of Han people had to re-enter Mongolian schools.

After the Yuan Dynasty was unified, naked ethnic classification was implemented nationwide. The first-class Mongolians were the victors, and the ruling factions were naturally the leader; the second-class were the Semu people; the third-class was the "Han people", which mainly refers to the people in northern China, especially the former Jin Dynasty, including the Han people, Jurchens, Khitans, Goryeo, etc. In addition, it also includes the people in Yunnan and most areas of Sichuan that were conquered by the Mongols earlier. The fourth-class and the last-class were the "Southern people", which generally refers to the people under the jurisdiction of the Southern Song Dynasty, which were finally captured by the Yuan Dynasty. They were despised as "barbarians" by the rulers of the Yuan Dynasty and the first three people.

Burning bridges across the river is a common trick used by emperors, not to mention that Kublai Khan himself was a king who did not understand benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom and trustworthiness. Under this policy of high political pressure and national discrimination, it was almost a fantasy that Han officials wanted to seek cooperation with the Mongolian regime and demonstrate their own talent and strategy. As soon as a year after the Jiangnan pacified, Kublai Khan took the pretext of "excluding redundant officials in Jiangnan" and claimed the old Song Dynasty officials and cleared out a large number of old Song Confucian officials.

To put it bluntly, this discrimination and national oppression of the Yuan Dynasty is also a sign of inner weakness. The Mongolians used grassland thinking or the concept of primitive society-slave society to manage more advanced areas than it, which could only corrode these areas, reduce productivity, increase public dissatisfaction, and destroy ideas and culture. This determines their attitude towards Confucian scholars from the superstructure.

These former prides of heaven, literati and poets suddenly became untouchables, there was no more golden house in books, no more beautiful or jade in books, and no more sages, and craftsmen were worse than those of craftsmen. The broad road of Han scholars, who had been promoted by imperial examinations since the Sui and Tang Dynasties, suddenly became a dead end. The yearning for spring breeze, with the sound of horse hooves and the whirlwind, all turned into crying at the end of the road.

Therefore, the "best" way out for Confucian scholars in the Yuan Dynasty was to be officials, and the other was to take the teaching position. The civilized officials were also obscene and had to seek positions, because in the Yuan Dynasty, officials were corruption and honest but perverted. In terms of teaching positions, there were even more monks, fewer monks, and fewer scholars, teaching, academic masters, and mountain chiefs, and other positions were limited, which was even scarce than the current "academicians" of the two academys, but their treatment was extremely low. As for the prefecture-level professors, they were just quasi-ranked officials. The seventh rank was considered sesame, so what was this nine rank?

Zhao Bing knew that not all the scholars who came across the sea came to Qiongzhou at the desperate situation. They must have also been loyal and kind-hearted people who were still grateful to the Song Dynasty and hoped to restore the country, but they were a hundred times stronger than those unscrupulous scholars who were willing to be the minions of the Mongols and gave advice for them. Furthermore, he knew that the continuation of a nation was first of all the inheritance of culture. These scholars were the inheritance and disseminators of culture, and the country's destiny of less than a hundred years in the Mongols was because they failed to integrate into it.
Chapter completed!