Ming Dynasty Gu Xiang

He was the youngest person to take the imperial examination since the founding of the Ming Dynasty. He was a scholar at the age of thirteen, passed the imperial examination at the age of fifteen, and entered the Imperial Academy at the age of twenty-three. It took him thirty years to climb to the top of power, and then six years to temporarily put an empire riddled with problems on its feet. The law of examination makes lazy officials unable to hide, the law of whip makes taxation simple and complex, and the order of landownership allows wealthy households to spit out their land that has been hidden for hundreds of years. The treasury was rich, and the border defense had food. Even Emperor Wanli in the palace called him "Mr. Zhang". But reform is offensive. He offended Qingliu, his nobles, his colleagues, and the scholars all over the world. In the end, even the emperor whom he taught began to think he was an eyesore. In the tenth year of Wanli, Zhang Juzheng died of illness at the age of fifty-eight. On the seventh day after his death, memorials to impeach him piled up on the desk of the General Affairs Department. The family was confiscated, the posthumous title was taken away, the eldest son committed suicide, and the whole family was exiled. The new laws he pushed for during his lifetime were repealed one by one, and the broken ship of Ming Dynasty continued to slide towards the abyss. Sixty years later, the last emperor named Chongzhen hanged Sheji on Meishan Mountain. Before he died, he said something that made the civil and military officials of the Manchu Dynasty silent for a long time: "I am not the king of the subjugation of the country, and all the ministers are the ministers of the subjugation of the country." At that time, someone thought of Zhang Juzheng. Unfortunately it's too late. From the thin boy who ate wheat cakes and memorized "The Analects of Confucius" at the foot of the city wall of Jiangling, to the iron-fisted chief minister in the Forbidden City who covered the sky with his hands; from the powerful traitor accused by many in the "love-stealing" scandal, to the guilty minister who was killed in an open coffin after his death, this book will unfold the magnificent and tragic life of Zhang Juzheng, describing the peak and abyss of a person, and the fate of a dynasty.