Fifteen Years of Wanli-Why Emperor Wanli didn't go to court for 28 years

On the morning of October 3rd, 215, during the National Day holiday, my friend drove me from Changping, Beijing to the Ming Tombs. Because it is early in the morning, there are few vehicles and all the way is unimpeded. In October, the weather in Beijing is cool, cloudy and sunny.

I stopped by the reservoir in the Ming Tombs area. I didn't believe in the theory of geomantic ghosts and gods before, but I believed a little when I saw the landscape in front of me. Surrounded by mountains, there is a large reservoir in the middle, and the water flow is steady and slow. In cloudy and cool weather, it will really make people admire this land of feng shui.

I drove to Dingling, which is the only excavated mausoleum in China. Perhaps people are curious about Wanli, the owner of Dingling, and want to explore his tomb after death. Enter the Dingling underground palace through the entrance, with four or five floors underground, and the side room is empty and large, with an estimated area of several hundred square meters; Follow the crowd into the main room, with a few red coffins in the middle, that is, Emperor Wanli and his queen's concubine. There is a dragon chair in the middle of the corridor out of the main room. The dragon chair is covered with a coin or fifty cents left by tourists. Will it be short of money to go to Wanli? It's really puzzling. It is estimated that Emperor Wanli never imagined that someone would throw money at him before his death.

Emperor Wanli is famous for not going to court for 28 years and being lazy. Everyone thinks that he only indulges in fun, decadent to the end, and lazy in politics for decades, which is simply a bottomless degeneration. The weakness of the Ming dynasty was also related to his lazy politics in the DPRK. There must be a reason why people are so decadent. The book "Fifteen Years of Wanli" tries to tell the whole politics and society during the Wanli period from the perspective of a great historical view, and also expounds the reasons why the emperor Wanli was decadent.

After reading Fifteen Years of Wanli, we can get a glimpse of the political and institutional ills of the Ming Dynasty. If we develop under this system, we can see the inevitability of its decline, and even if we are smart as Zhang Juzheng in the historical torrent, we can't change the fate of the whole dynasty's decline. Fifteen Years of Wanli also shows the activities and actions of many historical figures in this big framework.

Fifteen Years of Wanli describes the environment of the whole big system and some inevitability of social development, and the attitudes adopted by different figures in this big system environment deserve our study and vigilance. Emperor Wanli's personal wishes could not be realized in the whole environment of governing the country by morality, and finally he chose to compromise and be passive. It's like a graduate student who just left the society can't satisfy his own desires under the whole system of society, and finally he is extremely decadent.

The position of Emperor Wanli is like a symbol of the whole system, and we can only follow this system. Those who should be stamped and saluted should be saluted, and those who cannot be done should not be done. It is not allowed to have personality. If you want to give full play to your personality, it will conflict with people under the whole system, and you will receive great resistance. In the end, Emperor Wanli chose to go slow and govern by doing nothing, so he did not go to court for 28 years. Since it doesn't make me feel comfortable, I won't make the whole civil service group feel comfortable. This can reflect the fragility of their psychological endurance.

Zhang Juzheng's Reilly is popular and smart, but he doesn't realize the underlying structure of the whole system. Even if he can rule for a while by relying on strong government, he can't get good results.

Shen Shixing, on the other hand, has a profound understanding. Under this system, he shows his high emotional intelligence and acts as a mediator between the civil service group and the emperor. He seems to be mediocre, but he is a capable person.

Fifteen Years of Wanli is also extremely enlightening to us modern people. Many things are just like history. What kind of life do you choose in the whole social system environment? Maybe this book can enlighten us. For example, among the civil servants in the Fifteen Years of Wanli, there are fellow villagers, classmates who were recruited in the same year, and so on, which form various huge private interest groups. If one person loses, everyone loses. This is exactly the same as our alumni association and hometown association in modern times. I remember talking to my classmates before that there are various school gangs in their enterprises, and the leaders of each gang are even lighter to go to their alma mater to recruit younger brothers and sisters to expand their power and form various interest groups.

This is an enlightening book.