At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty

Chapter 931. 940 One Guo's big data oppression

Earlier, some officials advised Guo Peng not to carry out such detailed and frequent censuses of population and land acres, which would put a lot of pressure on the grassroots.

Recording data requires a large number of record carriers, but these things are very scarce.

Bamboo slips, silk books, and paper are not cheap, and they cannot be used on such a large scale. If they are used too much, it is inconvenient to store them.

The bamboo slips used in the past can be reused. When you make a typo or need to update, you can use a carving knife to scrape off the words written before, and then continue to write.

Now in order to compare the authenticity of the data, such behavior is not allowed, so the department that makes the bamboo slips can only make the bamboo slips thinner and thinner to reduce costs.

But this will increase the time needed to make the bamboo slips, and make the bamboo slips manufacturing workshop overworked.

Tian Feng, who is also in charge of the Ministry of Industry, has repeatedly asked Guo Peng to consider this issue, but Guo Peng refused to listen, and instead reprimanded Tian Feng for not doing things well.

Whenever there is a war or when manpower and material resources need to be mobilized, it is still mandatory to conduct a detailed and comprehensive census of the population and the number of acres of land.In normal seasons, the three-year census is stipulated, and there must be no mistakes.

Tian Feng was worried about this,

This financial expenditure is very high, the Ministry of Industry is under a lot of pressure, the local government is also under a lot of pressure, and the grassroots officials are under even greater pressure.

However, Guo Peng said that population and land are of great significance to the empire's finances and military affairs. All materials come from population and land. If they cannot fully understand these, the imperial court will make mistakes when implementing policies.

Whether it is the emperor or the officials, they must know how many people and land they control, and they must not be confused.

Otherwise, once the decision-making is wrong, the whole country will suffer the loss, and it will even cause social unrest and starve to death.

Rather than letting the common people suffer and starve, shouldn't you officials with generous national salaries contribute something?

Did I give you so many benefits to make you feel like a lord?

Get out if you can't do it!

The government does not need to drink tea to provide for the elderly waste!

Guo Peng set strict rules for supervising and indolent administration, and used a large number of central government officials to conduct data statistics to come up with a very elementary and primitive concept of big data.

According to the comparison of the data of all parties, the data aggregated to the center can be judged.

The judgment method is also very simple.

Once there is a large difference between a certain data in a certain place and the average data in surrounding counties and villages, or if you compare the past data in your own area longitudinally and find a big difference, you can immediately judge that there is a problem in this place.

Once it was judged that there was a problem, Guo immediately ordered people from the Central Officials Department and Yushitai to form a picket team, and immediately set off to the local area to investigate the matter.

Basically, through this method of inspection, the problematic places are detected one by one, and the central picket team can surely find out a batch of rice bugs who are not doing their jobs or deliberately concealing the existence of problems.

This set of big data oppression from the central government is so powerful that it has never been seen before. It has allowed the central government's oppressive power to penetrate to the grassroots like never before, making grassroots officials in the Central Plains and Hebei areas with well-developed transportation miserable by the central government.

From their point of view, Mr. Guo is everywhere, and they can find out the problem no matter what, and they can't do anything if they want to be lazy.

They are really hard.

But it doesn't matter, Mr. Guo is very confident and never worried that this group of people will quit because they can't let go of the attractive power and benefits.

They know that there are still many people staring at them waiting to replace them. The eyeballs of those people staring at them are red. They can only be squeezed by the central government and someone like Guo.

That's wonderful.

This is what Guo Peng requested, but the consumption of bamboo slips is really high, the price of silk is too expensive, and the output of paper is very low, which really puts a lot of pressure on finances.

This is a fact. After each quarterly financial statement is reported, the expenditure on writing media is an astronomical figure. It is no wonder that Wang Can and Tian Feng always come to complain to Guo Peng.

Up to now, the management of the Shouyang Mountain Lecture Hall and the teaching scale of 500 people made the Ministry of Industry and the Ministry of Finance finally couldn't bear to raise this matter again.

Wang Can and Tian Feng jointly signed the petition, requesting Guo Peng to reduce the use of bamboo slips and reduce the frequency of using writing tools, so that everyone can take a breather. The local museums need to take a breather, and the central government also needs to take a breather.

That was too much money, and the finances were almost overwhelmed.

Well, it seems to be almost the same.

So someone Guo realized that the time had come.

It's time to start replacing bamboo slips with paper.

This is not something I forcefully ask for, it is you who begged me on your own initiative.

Don't blame me.

In fact, when Guo Peng went to Luoyang to study, he already found that the rich people in Luoyang at that time used a kind of paper produced in Qingzhou very popular.

Compared with Cai Lun's paper, this kind of paper has been greatly improved, but of course it is not very easy to use.

Guo Peng also used it back then. It was good for writing and painting ink and landscape paintings. The experience of using it was not very good.

Later, with the passage of time, the paper from Qingzhou has been greatly improved.

The quality is getting better and better, of course, the price is getting more expensive, and the people who can use it are still the upper class scholars and rich local tyrants.

Later, around the time of the Yellow Turban Rebellion, a kind of paper called Zuobo paper became inexplicably popular in Luoyang.

According to Guo Peng's inquiries, in Donglai County, Qingzhou, a papermaker named Zuo Bo stood out and mastered the excellent papermaking technology. The quality of the paper he made surpassed all local papers.

Therefore, it is naturally sought after by literati.

Cao Cao, who was an official in Luoyang at that time, once wrote a letter to Guo Peng on Zuo Bo paper. After Guo Peng read it, he felt that the Zuo Bo paper was not very different from the paper he made from bamboo.

Of course, it is still very expensive. Cao Cao specially used Zuo Bo's paper to write to Guo Peng to complain about the high price of Zuo Bo's paper.

But during this period, Guo Peng could clearly feel it.

After I arrived in Luoyang and before the Yellow Turban Rebellion, more and more people in Luoyang city used paper to write and the number of people using paper.

In those few years, the output and quality of paper have obviously made an extraordinary leap.

However, this leap was hit hard after the Yellow Turban Rebellion, especially after the second Yellow Turban Rebellion in the Zhongping period. The war and population loss caused the writing culture to go against the current, and bamboo slip writing became the mainstream again.

The reason is simple. Qingzhou was the hardest hit area during the two Yellow Turban Rebellions.

Especially during the second Yellow Turban Rebellion, the Qingxu Yellow Turbans almost occupied the entire Qingzhou. In a few years, the local life order was completely disrupted, and the paper industry was naturally interrupted, making it impossible to continue to produce paper.

Qingzhou was the papermaking center of the Eastern Han Dynasty. When Qingzhou was in chaos, the entire Eastern Han Empire began to lack paper on a large scale. Naturally, they had to pick up heavy bamboo slips and expensive silk again.

The historical process of paper writing was interrupted, and even began to go back.

After Guo Peng became the shepherd of Qingzhou, he spent more than a year mopping up the Yellow Turbans in Qingzhou, re-stabilizing Qingzhou, stabilizing the social order, rebuilding Qingzhou under his control, and gradually turning Qingzhou into a paradise in troubled times.

So since then, there have been people who fled Qingzhou and returned to their hometown to settle in Qingzhou.

Zuo Bo is one of them.

It was too late for him to return to his hometown, before the decisive battle between Guo Peng and Lu Bu. After Guo Peng defeated Lu Bu, Zuo Bo asked Guo Peng to allow him to start making Zuo Bo paper again.

Only then did Guo Peng think of this forgotten master of papermaking in the Eastern Han Dynasty.

Chapter 932 II The historical process of paper replacing bamboo slips

Zuo Bo can indeed be said to be a very famous paper maker in this era.

Having said that, Guo Peng is not interested in asking Uncle Zuo to use hemp to make Zuo Bo paper, which takes a long time, is cumbersome, expensive, and has a very limited output.

He directly took Uncle Zuo to his secret paper factory and showed him his bamboo paper production line.

Show him the cheap and efficient bamboo paper production technology he has.

Before occupying Hebei, Guo Peng secretly maintained the bamboo paper production line for a long time in order to mass-produce enough Zhentianlei to make enough Zhentianlei leads.

When Zuo Bo learned that Guo Peng's bamboo paper production technology was so efficient and cheap, he was very shocked and asked Guo Peng why he didn't expand production.

"Why expand production?"

Guo Peng asked Zuo Bo with a smile.

Uncle Zuo was full of doubts.

"Expanding production can sell more, and if you sell more, you can make more people use paper, earn a lot of money, buy more land and houses, leave a legacy for future generations, and even give future generations a chance Read to become a scholar."

Uncle Zuo's ideas and concepts are very simple, not at all beyond the times.

Guo Peng smiled and shook his head.

"I don't need any of these. I have them all. I make paper to make paper a cheap thing that an ordinary farmer can afford, instead of the luxury that is more expensive than gold. I want to make paper Everyone can use paper, not just scholars."

Uncle Zuo didn't understand, didn't understand.

"Ordinary people, Li and Shu, are illiterate and don't read, so what's the use of paper?"

"Without cheap paper, they'll never be able to read."

Guo Peng shook his head, and said: "My idea will not be recognized by scholars. In this case, it is better to take it easy. After I can do it, I will take out the bamboo paper. Everyone will be able to afford paper, and everyone can learn to read and write, now, bear with it."

After Guo Peng said this, he stopped explaining.

Uncle Zuo also didn't understand why Guo Peng wanted everyone to have access to paper and learn to read and write.

It's impossible, isn't it?

Guo Peng doesn't need Zuo Bo's understanding and understanding.

Of course, knowing these things, Uncle Zuo's personal freedom was also monitored by Guo in all directions. He was not allowed to leave the place designated by Guo, and he was not allowed to move freely.

He was included in his papermaking team by Guo Peng, and was ordered to concentrate on research, improve the bamboo paper production process, find ways to increase the output and quality of bamboo paper, and further reduce costs to prepare for the future explosion of production capacity.

At the same time, Guo Peng also sold some cheaply produced bamboo paper at high prices in the name of Zuo Bozhi.

Guo Peng set up a paper-making workshop in Qingzhou in the name of Uncle Zuo, started a series of paper-making handicraft workshops, and then conducted paper business in the name of Uncle Zuo, and completed the monopoly of Qingzhou’s paper industry and even the national paper industry.

Not only that, Guo Peng also deliberately controlled the sales volume of bamboo paper, turning cheaply produced bamboo paper into a terrible luxury, selling it exclusively to those who need it, and cutting off their leeks in large quantities.

The tyrants and scholars under his command are the focus of cutting leeks.

The money that the tyrants and the scholars spend on buying paper every year is really a lot of money, which can be called huge profits, and all the money was later used by someone Guo to raise soldiers.

It feels so good to steal from the rich and give to the poor.

It's a pity that you can't sell more, otherwise this business will be more profitable than war horse trading, and you don't need Mi's caravan tossing back and forth from north to south. Just selling paper in Qingzhou can recoup the spent military expenses, and you can also pay for it. Suck the powerful blood of the gentry.

Rare things are more expensive.

A piece of cheaply produced bamboo paper, as long as it bears the name of Zuo Bozhi, can sell for sky-high prices, and there are still a large number of orders, and scholars and powerful people flock to it.

From then until now, all the paper craftsmen in Qingzhou were recruited into the Taihang Mountains by someone from Guo, and they continued to secretly produce paper and books.

For a long time, Guo has also been secretly manipulating the so-called Zuo Bo paper trade to earn high profits.

Needless to say, this business is really profitable.

So sometimes Guo will smile wryly.

If I knew it earlier, I would have sold the paper earlier, and realized the accumulation of primitive capital as soon as possible, maybe I could get rich earlier and recruit more soldiers.

But it's okay now.

Now, some things have to be put into operation. After the operation is started, it will take time to slowly ferment. After the fermentation reaches a certain level, it is time for quantitative changes to lead to qualitative changes.

The popularity of paper is of great significance to the stability of his rule.

Big data is especially helpful for state governance.

Population data, land data, grain yield data per mu, grain production data, and repair and consumption data of various water conservancy projects, annual tax data, various product and storage data, and so on.

A certain Guo can rule the world and give orders without leaving home in Luoyang. He relies on analyzing the data of the world to find problems, find out the causes of the problems, and then solve them.

Data is the eyes and ears of the emperor. Without data, Mr. Guo would be deaf and blind. He would not be able to effectively and correctly govern the world, and his power would be emptied.

Without accurate population data and grain production data of a certain place, Mr. Guo cannot know whether the local officials are doing their duty and whether they are governing according to his requirements.

The growth of population data and the growth of food production are very indicative of the conscientiousness of local officials.

Similarly, such data can also determine whether Guo will reward or punish local officials, whether he will be promoted or dragged out and slaughtered.

Whether the data is detailed or not, someone in Guo can even spy on whether his power has expanded or shrunk.

So the data is really important, which is why he vigorously supported the accounting and official groups.

His accounting officials not only exist widely in the imperial court departments, but also in all states, counties and counties all over the world. They travel all over the world in the name of business trips to convey detailed local data for him.

One of the most important tasks of his grassroots officials all over the country and the accounting officials dispatched by the central government is to do their best to increase the frequency of data updates and ensure the correctness and authenticity of the data.