After Qiu Moyan came back from the northwest, she entered the palace and became a female official.
As for Jinbao and Yuying, the Yang family members will take care of them on their behalf. Both of them now have titles and have taken back Yang Yuxuan's property, so their future lives will be fine.
Female officials in the inner court are also called palace officials. They have a certain rank and receive a salary. Their scope of work includes managing lower-level maids, training new maids entering the palace, and taking care of princesses, princes, etc.
The system of female officials has a long history and has been recorded in "The Rites of Zhou". In subsequent dynasties, there were female officials in the palace.
The origins of female officials are also different. Either they were recommended to serve in the palace, or they were promoted by palace maids. Zhu Yuanzhang, the emperor of the Ming Dynasty, also repeatedly recruited widows who were determined to observe integrity to serve in the palace.
Qiu Moyan, as a civilian girl, if she wants to enter the palace, in addition to drafting girls, she can also choose to be a female official or a palace maid, etc.
However, the age of draft girls in the Ming Dynasty was set at thirteen to sixteen years old, and she was obviously beyond her age. And being a palace maid is naturally not as good as being a female official.
And given her status as a well-known family, she is absolutely qualified to be a female official in the palace.
After Qiu Moyan entered the palace, he was arranged to serve in Xiangnan Palace.
Ten days later, Xiang Nan came to congratulate her, and then named her Jieyu.
The harem system of the Ming Dynasty was formulated by Zhu Yuanzhang, which included one queen, one imperial concubine, four noble concubines, six concubines, and eight concubines. As for Zhaoyi, Jieyu, Guiren, Meiren, etc., the number is uncertain.
The harem of the Ming Dynasty was much larger than that of the Qing Dynasty. During the Jiajing period, there were more than 10,000 eunuchs and more than 2,000 maids in the harem.
Zhengde, Wanli, Longqing, etc. were all greedy and lustful people. They not only recruited girls in private broadcasts to enrich the harem, but even went out to search for beauties.
For example, according to historical records, Emperor Zhengde walked every night. When he saw a large house, he rushed into it and either asked for a drink or searched for its women. The people suffered. Emperor Jingtai in history also took Li Xi'er, a popular concubine, as his concubine, and named her brother Li Shu the title of Jinyiwei Baihu.
Compared with them, Xiang Nan Linxing was a female official and was accepted as Jieyu, so it does not seem so out of the ordinary.
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After Qiu Moyan entered the palace, she also enjoyed exclusive favor. She was quickly promoted from Jieyu to Xian Concubine, and to Xian Concubine half a year later. When it comes to the fastest promotion in the harem, it must be her.
In the past six months, Xiang Nan has continued to make moves.
On the one hand, the palace maids and eunuchs were sent out to save palace expenses. There were over 10,000 eunuchs and over 1,000 maids in the palace of the Ming Dynasty. The expenses for so many people were huge.
In comparison, the number of eunuchs in the Qing Dynasty palace was only three thousand at most, and the number of maids was only five hundred. The number alone was a lot less.
Therefore, during the Kangxi period of the Qing Dynasty, they practiced frugality, and the palace's annual expenses were only more than 200,000 taels. In comparison, the current monthly expenses of the Ming Dynasty palace are more than this amount. This also led to huge expenses in the palace, so that the national treasury was in deficit all year round.
So Xiang Nan had to drive people out, and the **** gave him severance pay and allowed him to make a living on his own. Palace maids over twenty-five years old were allowed to leave the palace and get married.
On the one hand, unnecessary expenses such as meals, clothing, spices, accessories, headdress, etc. for the emperor and concubines were reduced.
There are twenty-four dishes for lunch, such as shrimps with pepper and vinegar, roast goose, roasted sheep head and hooves, goose meat dumplings, salted drum and mustard lamb tripe plate, garlic vinegar white blood soup, five-flavor steamed chicken, yuan juice lamb bones, spicy vinegar paste Kidneys, steamed fresh fish, steamed gluten with five flavors, mutton crystal horns, silk goose noodle soup, three delicacies soup, black bean noodles, minced pepper mutton, fragrant rice, garlic cheese, bean soup, bubble tea, etc.
In comparison, Emperor Kangxi was much more frugal. He only ate one dish at a meal, and only one flavor for each meal. For example, if he ate chicken, he would get chicken, if he ate sheep, he would get sheep. Under his vigorous promotion of frugality, the palace's expenses were reduced by more than half. It originally cost two million taels of silver a year, but after some frugality, the annual cost has been reduced to 800,000 taels.
Xiang Nan plans to catch silverfish in the palace again and strive to reduce the amount to about 500,000 taels per year.
In addition, he set up the Nan Study Room to provide strict education to his sons.
The education of the emperor in the Ming Dynasty was not legal because the Ming Dynasty adopted the system of establishing direct descendants.
Even though Zhu Di was so willing to let his second son Zhu Gaoxu take over, he had to choose his eldest son Zhu Gaochi due to ancestral etiquette and the advice of ministers.
Even though Emperor Wanli liked Prince Fu Zhu Changxun so much and argued with the cabinet for more than ten years, in the end he could not withstand the pressure of the cabinet and was forced to make his eldest son Zhu Changluo the crown prince.
Therefore, only the prince can receive the best education, and the other princes are not controlled very much. Because of this, there were so many foolish kings in the Ming Dynasty.
After all, no matter how wise and capable you are, if you are not as good as getting a good child, then who will work hard? And now that he has been reborn and established as a prince, who will continue to struggle?
What Xiang Nan is doing now is to let all the princes receive education. And they all received a very strict education. They got up at six in the morning, read until twelve o'clock, and then learned riding and shooting in the afternoon... just like the princes of the Qing Dynasty.
The reason why the Qing Dynasty did not have too stupid kings is also inseparable from such a high-intensity education. After all, this is how I survived as a child.
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The courtiers quite appreciated Xiang Nan's strict frugality.
After all, the wise kings of all dynasties have always behaved in this way, abstaining from extravagance but practicing frugality and practicing frugality.
For example, during the reign of Emperor Wen of the Han Dynasty, he wanted to build a high-rise building. Later, he learned that building this high-rise building would cost the property of ten families, so he stopped building it. Hence the Wen-Jing rule.
Another example is Yang Jian, Emperor Wen of the Sui Dynasty. He did not wear silk or gold or silver jewelry. He only wore linen clothes and copper and iron ornaments, so he could rule the world.
In addition, there are Emperor Wu of the Northern Zhou Dynasty, Yu Wenyong, Taizu of the Later Zhou Dynasty, Guo Wei, Emperor Xiaozong of the Southern Song Dynasty, Zhao He, Emperor Guang of the Han Dynasty, Liu Yuan, Emperor Wu of the Southern Song Dynasty, Liu Yu, etc. They are also famous sage monarchs in history, and without exception, they are all known for their frugality.
So the emperor set an example and refrained from extravagance but was frugal, which seemed to them to be a good thing. Since it didn’t happen to them anyway, they naturally didn’t care.
Moreover, in order to save money, Xiang Nan expelled the eunuchs from the palace, which greatly reduced the number of eunuchs and the power of the eunuchs also greatly declined.
It is no longer possible to imagine forming cliques and controlling government affairs as before.
As courtiers, they are naturally happy to see the **** party's power being damaged, so how can they say anything to stop it.
As for the fact that all princes receive education, there is no problem in their opinion.
After all, it is also a good thing for these courtiers that the prince receives a Confucian education and will become a wise emperor and a loyal and filial prince in the future.
So they also highly praised this, but no one expected that Xiang Nan's idea of playing the game was actually Li Xian.