Chapter 206 The Queen’s New Career and the Emperor’s Troubles
Even for breakfast, the royal breakfast must be unique and colorful. Fresh varieties from all over the world must appear on the royal dining table as quickly as possible.
At this time, looking at the Western bread dotted with sesame cheese, Zhu Houzhao couldn't help but smile: "When did the palace also have this white bread?"
"The people in the imperial dining room said it was the newly imported Western bread from Lin Tingxuan of Guangdong and Guangxi. This is the first time we have met. Your Majesty, you have known it for a long time." Queen Xia pursed her lips and looked at Zhu Houzhao, with her big dark eyes still showing The playfulness of a girl, Concubine Su reacted when she saw this He also smiled slightly and put the milk in a glass specially provided by Royal Industrial Company to the royal family into his mouth. A stream of white lotion leached out from his red lips. Zhu Houzhao, who had just eaten half a piece of bread, couldn't help but think of some of the bliss he had experienced with Concubine Su. The picture comes.
Zhu Houzhao shook his head and gave up this obscene and inappropriate thought, and only asked Queen Xia: "Is this milk from the dairy farm in Xihua Mountain?"
In order to improve the quality of life of the people of the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Houzhao decided that it was necessary to popularize protein-rich drinks like milk in the Ming Dynasty in advance. Therefore, he specially asked Luo Xiang, the eunuch in charge of procurement, to find a way to introduce cows and let Yu Ma Supervise the establishment of a cattle ranch in Xihua Mountain and pilot milk production.
"Exactly, since Your Majesty asked us to use the new sterilization method (pasteurization method), this milk can also be sterilized at low temperature and can be flown into ordinary people's homes. At the same time, the temperature used for sterilization is not high, so the milk can be preserved With its high quality and nutrition, the princes are all white and fat now, and all the princes’ families are rushing to order it!”
Queen Xia talked about it with great interest, and the overflowing charm when she spoke made Zhu Houzhao feel a little hot in his heart, as if someone was tickling a beautiful woman's hand. He wished he could press this young and beautiful queen under him and make love to her.
Although Zhu Houzhao thought so in his heart, he didn't really do it. He didn't understand what was going on with him recently. His desire was always very strong after every meal. Now it was like this even after eating breakfast. He didn't know if it was because of his age. It was because he was in his prime, and as an emperor, there were too many beauties around him.
So much so that he couldn't control himself for several days, and he visited many palace ladies, causing all the civil servants to start talking about his debauchery, and even the officials below began to choose more beautiful women to enter the palace.
Zhu Houzhao had to reprimand him several times. He did not want to end up as a young man who indulged in lust and died young.
Zhu Houzhao restrained his inner desires and continued to ask the queen about the Xihuashan Dairy Farm.
As a time traveler, Zhu Houzhao always uses the knowledge he knows in later generations to influence the people around him, and Queen Xia, who has been sleeping with Zhu Houzhao since she was fourteen years old, is no exception.
Empress Xia was initially interested in Zhu Houzhao's Dream of the Red Chamber and the romance novels about women. She was even angry for a while and felt that Zhu Houzhao was not as caring and devoted as the male protagonist in the novel. However, after being executed on the spot by Zhu Houzhao many times, she had to accept the reality. Later, I became interested in life sciences, and my maternal love was so overwhelming that I wanted to use myself as a queen to be the mother of all the children in the world, and to make all children happy.
Zhu Houzhao wanted to develop the Ming Dynasty dairy industry, and Queen Xia also promoted it.
When Zhu Houzhao accidentally mentioned that the cheese, that is, milk, that Zhang Qian brought back from the Western Regions was a valuable nutritional product, Queen Xia often blew the pillow wind, hoping that all the children of the Ming Dynasty could drink milk.
Zhu Houzhao thought that although the ancestral precepts of the Ming Dynasty were that the harem was not allowed to engage in politics, it did not say that the harem was not allowed to engage in business or scientific research, so he did not stop him. After asking the queen to agree to play a few new tricks with him, Zhu Houzhao asked Luo Xiang, the imperial eunuch, to accompany the queen. I started a Xihuashan dairy farm and registered it with the Ministry of Household Affairs as Royal Xihuashan Dairy Company. The legal representative is Xia Xiang'er.
The Ministry of Household Affairs has now established a new Commerce Bureau in the Provincial Department of Civil Affairs, which is responsible for managing customs duties, trademarks, enterprise registration and other matters in each province, so as to achieve the purpose of rationally managing business in the Ming Dynasty.
But the civil servants of the Ministry of Household Affairs were shocked when they saw the Royal Xihuashan Dairy Company. What shocked them was not the opening of a Royal store. After all, this was common in the Zhengde Dynasty. What shocked them was the opening of this company. The host family is the queen!
It is the consensus of this civil servant group that the harem should not interfere with politics.
Regardless of whether they are reformist or conservative civil servants, reformist officials with a Zhongjun Society background are only loyal to the emperor, not to the empress.
Therefore, when the queen opened a company, the entire civil servant class faced a new problem, that is, whether the harem could open a company and do business.
According to convention, not to mention the queen, the emperor and even the entire royal family are not allowed to open a store because they cannot compete with the people for profit.
But now His Majesty the Emperor has opened a store, and there is even support from powerful dignitaries behind it, because the cunning Emperor originally divided some profits from the royal industry in the form of a joint-stock system.
These powerful gentry even hired a group of literati to put forward the new idea that the royal family was different from the imperial government. Members of the royal family were also common people of the Ming Dynasty and could own wealth and operate industries in their own names. They just needed to pay taxes as well.
Even if some people point out that the royal family cannot compete with the people for profit, some people refute it on the grounds that the royal industry also employs people, or even hires more people, so that the food and clothing problems of a large number of refugees can be solved. In the eighth year of Zhengde's reign, Zuo Tongzheng, the Minister of General Affairs, Yu Fengshu said that the imperial shop should be closed down, and even suggested the dismantling of the weaving bureaus in Nanjing, Suzhou and other places. As a result, tens of thousands of weaving bureau craftsmen demonstrated, and hundreds of people related to royal interests also Officials petitioned for impeachment, and Yu Feng finally committed suicide to prove that he was truly public-minded.
The traditional gentry has always been resistant to business and social and economic changes, and they are naturally resistant to the royal family's opening of stores and even the business and profit-making behaviors. Therefore, Yu Feng's behavior is normal even if it is out of public interest.
However, Yu Feng's suicide also forced some gentry who were afraid that the royal family would infringe on their commercial interests under the guise of not competing with the people to stop their activities and sit back and watch the royal family enter the commercial field.
So much so that the constitution only stipulates that court officials themselves are not allowed to engage in business, and it does not stipulate that members of the royal family are not allowed to engage in business.
After Zhu Houzhao issued an edict to approve the proposal of Wang Qiong, the Minister of Household Affairs, to deliver 50% of the tax revenue of the Royal Taxation Bureau to Taicang, the court officials became even more unwilling to prevent the royal family from doing business, because the tax revenue contributed by the royal industry every year was an inexhaustible amount. With such a small income, if the royal industry is shut down, it will not only produce hundreds of thousands of homeless people who have no food to rely on, but also lose a large amount of tax revenue.
"Now times have changed, and the Queen has also opened a company. A few years ago, Wang didn't even know what a company was."
Wang Qiong, the Secretary of the Ministry of Revenue, only said this when faced with this problem. He was not an official willing to offend the emperor in order to uphold certain principles. He could see that the emperor must have given permission for the queen to open a company. So he passed the registration of Xihuashan Dairy.
And other officials can only choose to accept it now, because they have not been able to find a theoretical basis to judge whether the Queen's behavior is detrimental to the country.
But in any case, the first Daming dairy farm, Xihuashan Dairy Farm, which originally appeared in the Chongzhen period, finally appeared in advance in the Zhengde Dynasty.
The empress of Emperor Zhengde obviously began to behave differently from the empress in the traditional sense. She no longer just followed etiquette and became a virtuous and virtuous empress, but began to carry out her own career, leading a group of maids and eunuchs to start taking care of Zhu Houzhao. The successful application of the so-called pasteurization method in milk production, coupled with the emergence of the glass, made the sale of milk possible.
But in fact, what Queen Xia said about letting milk fly into the homes of ordinary people has not yet been realized, because the cost of glass is still not low, and the only container for sterile milk can only be high-temperature-resistant glass cups, so enjoy it now Basically, those who make milk are the royal family and the gentry families.
But no matter what, milk just began to appear on a large scale in the daily lives of Ming Dynasty people.
Zhu Houzhao wanted to tell the Queen how to make yogurt again, but his evil thoughts became more and more serious. For a moment, he had an uncontrollable impulse, so he had to resign to the Queen Mother Zhang, and glanced at the Queen Xia Xiang'er to signal her to follow him. After going back, Queen Xia was only focused on feeding her prince and did not notice Zhu Houzhao's fire-breathing eyes.
The same is true for Concubine Su and Concubine Liu.
Zhu Houzhao had no choice but to walk out of the palace, thinking of letting the cold wind blow away the fire in his heart. However, at this time, a palace maid who looked like an orchid from the Western Regions happened to attract Zhu Houzhao's attention. Zhu Houzhao saw that she was tall and tall. , standing under the Zhumen banana leaves, he was dragged directly into his arms.
Seeing this, the eunuch on duty knew that His Majesty was suffering from hunger and lust again, so he hurriedly stepped back and closed the doors and windows.
After a long time, Zhu Houzhao's hairpin had fallen off, his clothes were disheveled, and Hu Ji's palace maid on the ground didn't know whether she was happy or sad. There were still tears in her beautiful eyes, but there was a smile on the corner of her mouth: "Thank you, Your Majesty!"
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Zhu Houzhao stood up from the cold gold brick floor, hurriedly put on his shoes and clothes like a cat that had stolen something, and then ran out in a panic. He was absent-minded all morning.
Wang Hua, the chief minister of the cabinet, knew that the emperor Zhu Houzhao had been like this for several days and was in a daze. He even heard that Zhu Houzhao often made peace with the female family members in the palace recently, so that the Ministry of Rites had named more than 20 palace maidens.
Therefore, at this time, Wang Hua saw that Zhu Houzhao looked tired because of this, and could only persuade him: "Your Majesty, although the pink and white in the Sixth Palace are not just for viewing, it is because of restraint."
"I know, but I have been very strange in recent days. I am very obsessed with this way, and gradually I can't control it." Zhu Houzhao said, and he had to say: "I will go back to rest for a while, and you can discuss things first."
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(End of chapter)