On this day 143 years ago, February 2, 1882 (December 14, 1881 lunar calendar), Zhang Zhidong took charge of Shanxi: starting from the rectification of official governance and work style. On December 24, the seventh year of the Qing Dynasty (1881), Zhang Zhidong, then 44 years old, served as governor of Shanxi. As soon as he arrived in Shanxi, Zhang Zhidong found it completely unexpected. The originally prosperous Shanxi, affected by Sino-Russian trade and other reasons, Shanxi merchants have shown a decline trend. In 1877, the whole territory of Shanxi suffered a severe drought, and the grain was not harvested. The people generally relied on grass roots and bark to make a living. In some places, they even "changed their children and ate them". However, the imperial court was unable to provide disaster relief, and the disaster relief grain was embezzled and misappropriated for lending, and the vitality of the people has not been restored. The so-called Shanxi "simple political clearance" was actually an excuse for the officials themselves to be lazy and dim. The previous governors either ignored political affairs, or were incompetent and corrupt, or were honest but cowardly, which led to corruption and laziness in the official management of the province. The two diseases of "laziness" and "loose" caused by years of accumulated habits have spread throughout Shanxi Province, and the officials and people have the same disease. "If you are lazy and scattered to the extreme, you will have the worry of fish rotting and disintegrating." In addition to the laziness of the province, Zhang Zhidong was also deeply worried that "Jin's troubles are not in disasters but in smoke." At that time, the people of Shanxi generally smoked opium. "There were people who were addicted to it. There were ten people in the four townships and six people, ten people in the city and nine people, and officials, servants, and soldiers. Almost ten people and ten people. Everyone was barren, and the family was up. In the dignified Jinyang, a faction of yin was fiercely defeated and fell into the weather, like a ghost country." In addition to smoking opium, the province also cultivated opium on a large scale. In the 1877 drought in Shanxi, a large number of people starved to death. Part of the reason was that there were many kinds of poppies in the land in Shanxi instead of food, and farmers had money and no food in their hands after the disaster. Faced with this situation, Zhang Zhidong, who was based on the Confucian thought of saving the world and the people, was not afraid of public criticism, and started by rectifying the governance and style of officials. Zhang Zhidong's first order, issued as a governor, was to inspect the cadres, requiring officials at all levels in the province to submit the rewards and punishments of their subordinates to the governor's yamen within half a month, and specially emphasized that they must be practical and cannot deal with it with official clichés. At the same time, Zhang Zhidong played his role as an example, insisting that "his body is upright, and he does not obey orders; his body is not upright, although he does not obey orders", he gets up at two o'clock every day (2:30 in the morning), reviews documents at Yinchu (3:00), interviews subordinate officials at Chenshi (7:00), and learns about officials according to the evaluation of superiors and his own judgment. In addition, Zhang Zhidong also reduced the number of servants from three to two, responsible for all the management of document sending and receiving, introducing and receiving guests, and going out to follow and other chores to reduce financial expenses. In the face of Zhang Zhidong's measures to rectify his style of work, in the event of an earthquake in Shanxi's officialdom, officials at all levels who are used to being in charge of the corpse and do not care about the work of the corpse "In the situation of the provincial capital, there are many connections as one, and there is a tendency to speak out and I am outnumbered." Mingli accused Zhang Zhidong of not being in line with Confucian governance ideas. In addition, the government envoy Bao Heng, Daoist King Ding'an of Jining and others secretly corrected the resistance of cronies and caused stumbling to shoot horizontal cannons, which made Zhang Zhidong's first step in governance and rectification face a severe test. In the face of the pressure of unanimous words, Zhang Zhidong "insisted that Qingshan would not relax", and "Heaven and man overcome, and watch this month or two" to strengthen his confidence and unswervingly promote rectification. In response to the resistance in the dark, Zhang Zhidong used Li Bingheng, Ma Piyao and other honest officials to entrust important tasks, "one person and two things, or even three things," to vigorously promote his own governance measures. Within 4 months of Zhang Zhidong taking office, a total of 59 virtuous talents were promoted by the imperial court. The officials who were honest, diligent and loving the people, and effective in disaster relief were directly reported to the imperial court for praise, and the correct guidance of selecting cadres was used to assist in rectification. At the same time, Zhang Zhidong identified 9 officials who had been corrupt, deducted, disturbing the people, and fainted since the drought, and the imperial court gave different punishments from dismissal to demotion, which greatly deterred the arrogance of small groups such as Baoheng who had secretly sabotaged the rectification. After less than half a year of hard work, Zhang Zhidong gradually reversed the lazy style of officials, walked out of the most difficult period of hardship, and realized that "there is much to be done in the promotion of the country". "Today's promotion, although it cannot be a strong country, it can be enough to govern the country, and it will never be like the previous decadent walls." If the imperial court takes three years, it will be governed by the country, showing strong confidence in governing the country. After the initial rectification, Zhang Zhidong served for half a year, and he sent five memorials and eight appendices to the imperial court, including "Rectification and Governance", to systematically report his governance ideas in Shanxi, including 20 specific measures in six aspects, including nourishing the people, nourishing honest officials, removing beetles and managing money, assisting farmers and making profits, emphasizing good customs, and strengthening public affairs, showing the characteristics of "governing the country and leveling the world". In terms of cleaning up the governance of officials, Zhang Zhidong found that officials were corrupt and did not perform their duties, and he was investigated and punished regardless of their official positions. In response to the messy financial accounts of Shanxi Province, Zhang Zhidong selected Qingming clean officials to be responsible for establishing the Qingyuan Bureau to clean up the financial accounts that had not been cleaned up for more than 30 years. During the investigation, it was found that Fan Si Baoheng and Jining Dao King Ding'an had corrupt behavior. Zhang Zhidong had no scruples that the two were the cronies of Zeng Guoquan, the governor of the imperial court at that time, and the court dismissed them and exiled them from the army. There was Liu Dingbang, a grain and oil merchant from the underworld forces (who received the guerrilla title from the third rank, but had no real job). Zhang Zhidong found out that he hired thugs to buy and sell and other illegal acts, and ordered him to be secretly arrested. After the crime was found out, he was dismissed and exiled from the army, and the underworld forces were eliminated. In addition, Zhang Zhidong went to the imperial court one after another, and severely punished 11 current and former civil and military officials in the place who repeatedly committed theft and failed to solve the case with due diligence; three officials who were fired and investigated for embezzling taxes privately; and four illegal green camp military attachés were demoted. For the illegal officials found, even if they had been transferred to other provinces, Zhang Zhidong went to the imperial court together, asking his province to cooperate in arresting and returning to Jin for punishment. In response to the tobacco epidemic in Shanxi Province, Zhang Zhidong specially studied and formulated systematic anti-smoking measures: First, help smokers quit smoking. Following Li Hongzhang's practice of setting up a smoking cessation bureau in Tianjin, a large number of smoking cessation drugs were purchased and distributed free of charge. Second, cultivation was strictly prohibited. While the cultivation of opium poppy was clearly prohibited, farmers could choose to grow grain, cotton or cash crops according to the situation in various places, and provide grain seeds to farmers who were particularly disadvantaged for free. The third is to personally implement it. Review the reports of each county one by one, issue instructions one by one, and repeatedly organize mutual inspections between counties. If there is a discrepancy between the report of the county and the state to which it belongs, Zhang Zhidong requires the county magistrate to visit in person, and cannot simply trust the guarantee of the township security, and points out that "the order has always been a habit, and it is a smart disease, so I don't want to try it again." Another example is the case of the Fanzhi county newspaper planting only a few acres, instructing that "the order is not shrewd, and it is used to deceive the boss. Now we have commissioned Yanping Road to investigate, and it has been done realistically. The order should take good care of itself, and do not abandon the words'faint and lazy 'to the officials who have studied hard for many years." From the above instructions, Zhang Zhidong's understanding of the character of the county magistrates of each county can also be seen. Fourth, reward and punish both. Zhang Zhidong gave priority to officials who had achieved outstanding results in banning seeds, warned them if they were not active at the beginning and tried their best after supervision, retained them for probation if they were not effective in undertaking, and asked them to withdraw from office if they made false reports and concealed reports. Fifth, based on reality, do not rush for quick success. Zhang Zhidong's court pointed out that based on the comprehensive judgment of the situation reported by various places, the sales of smoking cessation drugs in the province and the amount of opium entering Shanxi from other provinces, the province's total ban on seeds is 80%. If we can work together and insist, "after three years, we can expect this harm to be eliminated forever." Regarding the measures to govern Shanxi, Zhang Zhidong claims to be "the regular rules of Confucianism," which means the governance method that has been tested by history. After actual implementation, Shanxi Province's finance increased by more than 70,000 silver taels and verification arrears by more than 500,000 taels. The disadvantages of account confusion should be swept away, and the financial burden should be greatly reduced. The later imperial history suggested that the court promote the constitutional practice of Shanxi's inventory and silver in the whole country. In terms of work style rectification and construction, Zhang Zhidong cut the bad rules, reformed the public expense reimbursement system, prohibited the feeding of water gifts to officials, etc., only once a year to cut the office expenses of the governor's office more than 19,000 taels and the food subsidy of 6,000 taels, cut the province's office funds item by item, and abolish the bad habits such as "checking the door bag". Poor states and counties are exempt from the original public expenses of Shanxi Province, and non-poor states and counties will halve the share of public expenses. According to statistics, only one public expense reduction across the province saved more than 78,000 taels in annual expenses. In terms of nourishing the people and supporting farmers, Zhang Zhidong surveyed the land in the province with fish scale books according to the situation of Shanxi's burden of poor harvesting and donations, and played the situation of former local officials of the imperial court falsely reporting the number of reclaimed fields and acres, in order to reduce the money and grain difference of the people; cleaned up the province's burden of various imperial court apportionments, and asked the imperial court to allow the local tax discount to be paid to Shanxi's flat iron for five years, and no longer apportioned silk and paper that was no longer produced locally to Shanxi. With the joint efforts of Zhang Zhidong and Shanxi officials and people, the burden of Shanxi people was greatly reduced, and the vitality of the people injured by the drought was gradually restored.