Chapter Twelve: Reading Enlightens the Mind
Ordinarily, Zhu Xiaoqi’s lascivious demeanor upon seeing Baozhu was enough to make any girl weary of him. But this time, witnessing the boy’s boldness in rebuking someone who seemed as powerful as a high official, with reason and righteous indignation, entirely changed her impression of him. Especially when he left without so much as a glance in her direction, it only deepened her favorable feelings; a shadow of Zhu Xiaoqi had quietly lodged itself in her heart. Thus, it’s clear: no matter how much you like a girl, you needn’t always display it. Occasionally feigning indifference might yield unexpected rewards.
Upon returning to the palace, Zhu Xiaoqi carefully inquired about Li Sancai. Li Jinzhong knew the details well. Li Sancai, it turned out, was a close confidant of Gu Xiancheng, the principal leader of the Donglin Party. He was known for criticizing people and discussing state affairs. He governed the river transport and served as the provincial inspector in the Huai and Xu regions for thirteen years, fiercely suppressing the arrogance of tax supervisors like Chen Zeng, and implementing many benevolent policies, winning the people's support and gradually gaining fame, eventually rising to Minister of the Board of Revenue. Later, he was impeached, resigned, and retired to his hometown in Tongzhou.
This man was notorious for scolding eunuchs, but even more so for berating the emperor. When the Wanli Emperor refused to attend certain ceremonies, Li Sancai accused him of indulging in women and feigning lameness. Hearing this, Zhu Xiaoqi felt that today’s rebuke had been justified; he had seen the emperor himself—his legs were of unequal length, making his gait unstable. Li Sancai surely had met the emperor, so for a scholar to accuse the emperor of feigning lameness was perhaps understandable, but for a high official, knowing the emperor’s condition yet still making such accusations spoke poorly of his character—at the very least, he couldn’t escape the suspicion of seeking fame through false righteousness. That the Donglin leader Gu Xiancheng befriended such a man was truly blind indeed.
Huiming, under Li Jinzhong’s arrangements, was settled in a temple within the imperial city—a true ancestral shrine, the Zhu family’s own. Zhu Xiaoqi sought his instruction in martial arts; Huiming taught him a method of breath regulation and internal cultivation, a practice for strengthening the body. As for hand-to-hand combat, Huiming admitted he only knew spear techniques, supposedly inherited from the Song Dynasty’s Yang family spear—capable of both thrusting and sweeping, fit for the military. How a monk learned such martial skills was anyone’s guess. These techniques were clearly unsuitable for the heir apparent, so Zhu Xiaoqi focused on the breathing method, which had the advantage of being practicable anytime. After several days of training, he felt he had found a treasure; not only was it effective in daily practice, but it enhanced his performance in other exercises, yielding twice the result with half the effort. Even when running, he felt lighter and less exhausted, improving both speed and endurance; where once two quarters of an hour left him spent, now he finished with energy to spare. Truly, Shaolin’s arts lived up to their reputation.
On one routine excursion to replenish snacks for Ti Ti, he found himself once more at the Wan Book Pavilion. Finding no new works in the military section, he browsed elsewhere and stumbled upon "The Complete Works of Lord Wang Wencheng," the writings of Wang Yangming. He leafed through the three volumes—the first being "The Record of Transmission and Practice"—and, intrigued by its content, purchased it.
Now, between martial practice and reading, he achieved a balance of cultivation in both body and mind. Soon, he was captivated by Wang Yangming’s ideas. For instance, Yangming posited that “perfect goodness is the true nature of the mind,” and “the mind itself is principle; when it is unobscured by selfish desires, it is the heavenly principle, needing no external addition.” This perspective gave his interpretation of "The Great Learning" a marked difference from the prevailing Zhu Xi school. Zhu Xi taught that the investigation of things and the extension of knowledge required students to understand external objects before grasping the full power of the human mind. Wang Yangming, however, believed that the investigation of things meant rectifying the mind to preserve its inherent goodness. The essence of intention is knowledge; where intention is, there is the object. Knowledge is innate, not acquired through exposure to external things. This knowledge is moral intuition.
In his view, Zhu Xi’s doctrine of investigating things and understanding principle divided mind and principle, while Wang Yangming saw them as one. He wrote: “Seeking principle outside the mind is why knowledge and action become two. Seeking principle within the mind is the teaching of the sages—the unity of knowing and acting.” The unity of knowledge and action means that knowing and doing are two facets of the same matter. He said: “There has never been knowledge without action. Knowing without acting is simply not knowing. For instance, to know pain, one must have felt pain; to know cold, one must have felt cold; to know hunger, one must have felt hunger. How can knowledge and action be separated? This is the essence of their unity, unobstructed by selfish motives. Only thus can the sage’s teaching be called true knowledge; otherwise, it is merely not knowing. Knowledge is the intention of action; action is the effort of knowledge. Knowledge is the beginning of action; action is the completion of knowledge. When one truly understands, speaking of knowledge implies action, and speaking of action implies knowledge.” Reading this, Zhu Xiaoqi could not help but exclaim in admiration. He had heard of the unity of knowledge and action before, but only now did he grasp its true meaning.
Wang Yangming’s philosophy is classic idealism. Teachers had always claimed idealism was erroneous, yet from this book, he saw it had its merits. Besides, to preach Marxist materialism in Ming times would have been deemed heretical, and he himself barely understood materialism. Since Wang’s thought differed from Zhu Xi’s, vigorously promoting the School of Mind could stir up the stagnant waters of Zhu Xi’s Rationalism, preventing future moralists from becoming synonymous with hypocrisy.
Thus, his days passed in a rhythm of agricultural inspections, military reviews, physical training, reading for clarity of mind, and occasional strolls through the city. One day, Wang Tiqian invited him to the Directorate of Gardens to inspect the harvest of sweet potatoes and potatoes. Thanks to the heir apparent’s emphasis, special staff had been assigned to tend them, employing intensive cultivation. The potato yield per mu reached a remarkable six sheng and three dou, while sweet potatoes yielded ten sheng—far surpassing wheat’s two sheng and maize’s one and a half. Seeing the jubilant crowd at the Directorate, Zhu Xiaoqi could only smirk; in later times, a mu of sweet potatoes could easily yield six thousand jin, potatoes two thousand jin. Such modest yields eliciting such celebration—what provincial thinking! Yet, despite his contempt, he understood these results were hard-won; the varieties were different, and it was unfair to compare modern, selectively bred crops with those of the Ming. Still, it showed great potential for improvement—a promising sign.
Especially noteworthy were Wang Tiqian’s rigorously conducted comparative experiments. Maize monoculture yielded one sheng and three dou, but intercropping with soybeans and peanuts raised it to one sheng and five dou. Even disregarding the extra yield of beans and peanuts, the mixed planting proved more productive, demonstrating its effectiveness and making it worthy of promotion.
Zhu Xiaoqi rewarded Wang Tiqian with two hundred taels of silver—a significant prize, considering that Wang Yangming, after quelling the Prince of Ning’s rebellion, had received only fifty taels from the court. Zhu Xiaoqi instructed Wang Tiqian to use all the harvested sweet potatoes and potatoes as seed stock, dispatching them to his imperial estate in Tongzhou. He selected some of the Directorate’s staff to guide next year’s planting, aiming to propagate as many seeds as possible for future nationwide promotion. He also ordered a simple selection of maize, instructing that one hundred mu be planted at the imperial estate, and through comparative trials, assess the drought resistance of various crops, choosing the most resilient for future use.
On another day at the Bureau of Armaments, Li Chaoqin presented the production regulations, which meticulously specified requirements, procedures, and inspection standards for each component made by the craftsmen. Safety measures, steps, and record-keeping for test-firing were all detailed. According to him, these were distilled from the experience of skilled workers, refined by the young eunuchs, and proved highly effective for training novices, boosting efficiency, and enhancing safety. Now, the Bureau produced twenty flintlock muskets and fifty matchlock guns per day, all rigorously tested, with not a single barrel explosion thus far. Zhu Xiaoqi ordered some matchlock craftsmen transferred to the flintlock department to increase output.
From the second of May to the second of November, after half a year of training, Zhu Xiaoqi had transformed from a rather ordinary, short boy of about five feet into a robust youth, just shy of six feet. He kept up with daily running, steadily increasing both duration and speed. Where he once could barely handle a twenty-jin stone lock for less than five minutes, now he could manage thirty jin for nearly fifteen minutes. Most telling was his sparring with Li Jinzhong (which demanded genuine combat—though only Li Jinzhong knew if it truly was); where once three rounds exhausted him, now he could last over twenty. Those boys, Xiao Deng and Xiao Li, who once accompanied his training, he could now easily best.
His progress owed much to three factors: first, his body, though healthy, had been under-exercised and thus full of potential; second, he persisted in training whenever time allowed; third, the breathing method taught by Huiming was genuinely effective. He believed that relying on others was risky; only self-reliance was safe, and his own body was his greatest support.
To cultivate the body, one must also refine the mind. He had finished "The Record of Transmission and Practice," and was now reading it a second time, along with selections from "The Collected Works of Lu Jiuyuan." Though Wang Yangming claimed to have no teacher, his philosophy drew heavily from others—chiefly Lu Jiuyuan, founder of the School of Mind, while Yangming was its most accomplished exponent. Thus, reading Lu’s works helped him understand the development of mind theory. Through these studies, he gained a thorough grasp of its main thread, and could count himself something of a disciple.