In fact, the process of collecting information in Dali City (now Beixizhou Town, Dali, Yunnan) by the horse caravans traveling far away in Nanzhao Kingdom was not as difficult as expected; they were even unexpectedly popular.

Because Dali City is located in the upper part of the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau, it is suitable for large-scale farming and settlement of two major plain river areas - the Erhai River Basin. The main local population is the Baiman (now Bai people) and the Han Shangman (known as the old Pingnan part of Zhuge Wuhou); in terms of clothing and language, there is actually no big difference from the southwestern prefectures of the Tang land, and some are even from the Tang family and their descendants from Xichuan, Guizhou and other places.

(This also provided some convenience for the development and management of Yunnan in later dynasties. The Song Dynasty, which had the highest winning rate of foreign wars, was exceptional.)

On the other hand, it is due to local political reasons. To be honest, it is related to the achievements of Gao Pian, who was captured and locked in the Convenience Courtyard, who prepared border management more than 20 years ago. For example, he personally led the army to lead the expedition to regain Annan; he also broke through the Yanbian tribes who were invaded by Nanzhao, killed tens of thousands of them, and killed Duan Chief, and was a little more fragile. Nuomei waited for the great chief, but only the leader of the Qingping official Yang Jisi fled alone.

Later, when he was the governor of Xichuan, he defeated Nanzhao's spy and invasion on the Dadu River many times; since then, he repaired Qionglai Pass, Zhuchengzha of Dadu River, and built a city in Mahu Town, Rongzhou, which was called the Pingyi Army; he also built a city in Muyuan River, which was all located in the important places between Nanzhao and Xichuan, and each set up thousands of troops to guard it, causing Nanzhao to lose the courage and evidence to fight again. (The Taiping Army would not kill them casually because of these deeds alone.)

Therefore, since the Zhenyuan Dynasty, the Nanzhao Kingdom, which had been in a continuous decline, suffered a series of defeats of soldiers and generals ("repeatedly overwhelmed the masses, and the country was exhausted"), and men over 15 years old were pulled out to serve as soldiers and prepare for war, resulting in the fields being all over the elderly, weak, women and children working. This had a great subsequent impact on the local economic production and even complained to the subjects whose interests were damaged.

This series of defeats also seriously damaged the power and authority of the Meng family of the Nanzhao royal family. A large number of experienced and loyal soldiers were either killed or disappeared. As the capital of Yang (Yang) Zhume City (near Dali, Yunnan), as the capital, was as if every family was mourning and every household lost their family, and the political conflicts and disputes in Nanzhao were once intensified.

This is related to the national system of Nanzhao. Since the leader of Mengshezhao during the Zhenguan period, Xinuluo, unified many small countries (tribes) in the Erhai River Basin to establish the "Great Mongol Kingdom", he also followed the Tang Dynasty's rules and regulations; established a 19th-level civil and military bureaucracy system headed by the Six Qingping officials (prime ministers), 12 military generals (maids), and six chiefs of the six Caos (six ministries) in the center.

Since then, the country has been divided into ten places: Yunnan (now Xiangyun, Binchuan), Pindan (now Xiangyun County), Baiya (now Midu Hongjing), Zhaochuan (now Fengyi, Dali), Mengshe (now Weishan), Mengqin (now Yangbi), Guichuan (now Dengchuan), Dahe (also known as Yihe, now Taihe Village), Dali (now Dali Ancient City), Zhume (now Dali Ancient City), Dali Ancient (also known as Shixian, now Dali Xizhou).

In the local area, there are 100 companies with one chief officer, 10,000 companies with one supervisor, and 10,000 companies with one governor. In the Tang Dynasty, the government soldiers and renting and resident systems were established. Civil and military officials and free people were all under arable land and they also had the obligation to serve in the military. The young and brave men were used as war soldiers, and those with horses were used as horse soldiers. Each soldier prepared his own equipment.

The military organization is mainly composed of rural soldiers. According to the distance of the residence, it is organized into four armies, southeast, west and northeast, with one general in each army, leading one thousand or five hundred people. The officers who lead the four armies are called military generals. The population of each place varies from the number of army to the number of army organized. Therefore, the governments in charge of the army include four levels: the main government, the central government, the lower government, and the small government. Six major military governors were established at critical places, and they were stationed in key areas of the periphery to rule the tribes outside the Six Divines.

However, as the leader of the Mengshan Wuman tribal alliance, Nanzhao has a large number of residual influences left by the early clan alliances in the state system. Therefore, in Nanzhao, there are also many nobles from the gentry who are affiliated with tribal leaders, or the Wang family of ministers who have widely occupied the Tiantu tribe with military achievements, playing an important role in the country's political life.

For example, Duan Keiqian, who was killed during the invasion of Annan, was the ancestor of the Duan clan in Dali, who was well-known for Jin Yong's novels in later generations. It is said that it can be traced back to the southward branch of the Duan clan in Wuwei, Northern Dynasties. It was also the grandfather of Duan Siping, the founding emperor of the Dali Kingdom decades later. Dali City is the traditional settlement of the Duan clan.

Although the Qingping official Yang Jisi, who was defeated and fled, was quickly severely punished and died of illness. However, he also continued to pass the position of Qingping official to his nephew, Yang Deng, who also came from Yang, one of the great families in China, to become the leader. It can be said that it is a kind of variation of the aristocratic politics in the southwest since the Northern and Southern Dynasties.

Nanzhao is also a country dominated by agriculture. It cultivates paddy fields among the plains and rivers, plants rice, and plants beans, hemp, millet, and sorghum. The rice is ripe every year, and after harvesting, barley is planted, and wheat is planted on the hills. The wheat and barley are harvested at the same time. In addition to farmland production, it also plants mulberry, zuru, hemp, bamboo, peach, plum, orange, kapok, lychee, betel nut, coconut, etc. "There are many families in the village, and there are many hectares of zuru forests, which are thousands of feet tall. "The silkworms are used to raise silkworms and weave silk cloth.

Therefore, although the self-sufficiency of the small peasant economy can be achieved in daily production activities, for those rich families whose middle and upper classes are already quite civilized in China, they need to import a large amount of foreign Tang Dynasty products to maintain matching daily living standards and needs, and even the basic needs of the operation of the regime. Not to mention anything else, just pens, inks, paper, inkstones, books, etc., it is not something that Nanzhao can produce and provide.

However, one of the long-term impacts of the war with the Tang Dynasty and the cost of Houxi was the disguised economic sanctions that had been cut off for a long time. Although there was no obvious concept, it was the most basic operation to cut off the circulation of salt, iron, and other materials sent to Nanzhao. Therefore, this was also one of the common methods used by the Tang court to make reciprocity and negotiate with Nanzhao in history.

After the failure of his attempt to invade Annan by the previous king Shilong, the successor King Longshun of Nanzhao changed the country's name to "Da Fengmin" in order to negotiate peace with the Tang Dynasty. As a result, his prestige in China further declined and aroused more conflicts. Therefore, he had to rely more on the high-ranking surnames such as Yang, Zheng, Wang, and Zhao in the court to reconcile and maintain the situation and hand over more rights.

The result of this kind of operation is that the current Nanzhao King Longshun has gradually been controlled by the powerful ministers Zheng Maisi and others in the military and national affairs. This Qingping official, Zheng Maisi, is not an idiot. He is the seventh-generation grandson of Zheng Hui, the magistrate of Xilu County, captured in the Tianbao War. He has been a Qingping official (i.e., the prime minister) of Nanzhao for generations since Zheng Hui, and is also one of the few high-ranking surnames in the Nanzhao Kingdom.

According to Zhou Huaian's vague online memory, if there was nothing unexpected happening in this time and space, Zheng Maisi would join forces with another Qingping official, Yang Deng, to kill Longshun, the King of Nanzhao, and establish his son Shun Huazhen as a puppet. Then a few years later, Zheng Maisi launched a mutiny to destroy the powerful ministers Yang Deng, Shun Huazhen and 800 other people in the Nanzhao royal family, proclaimed himself emperor and established the Dachanghe regime.

Then, the Wuman forces, which established Nanzhao in history, would withdraw from the historical stage and hide in the deep mountains, and become the ancestors of the Black Yi in Liangshan. They continued to usher in the liberation and transformation movement of the New China in the wilderness and ignorance of the slave clans. Therefore, the strange news about Liangshan in the new era actually had some ancient historical origins.

But no matter what, the horse-drawn caravans that arrived in Dali City after a long journey were warmly welcomed by the military and civilian officials led by the Duan family under some unspeakable rigid demand. Almost all the goods brought there were taken away by these people according to their status share, and there was no chance to get the opportunity to sell them on the streets.

Moreover, because of the serious delay in the border news, the other party seemed to directly regard the cavalry sent by the Taiping Army as a private representative of a vassal force in the Tang Dynasty. Under the involvement of some direct interest, most people also answered many indirect questions.

Even the local manager Duan Baolong proposed whether he could stay in the local area for a long time to communicate. Even if his father Duan Qiaoqian died at the hands of the Tang people in Annan, he still showed enough interest and praise for the poetry, books, rituals and music in the Tang people, and even hoped to have channels for communication with scholars in Jinghu and other places.

This is the basic principle that after getting used to the baptism of Tang-style values ​​and lifestyles in the upper reaches of contemporary civilization, it is difficult to return to the original waste and ignorance. It is also the basic motivation for later European and American countries to spare no effort to export values ​​in backward countries and regions after the decline of the colonial wave, because they can cultivate corresponding interest markets and potential middle and upper-level leaders.

Although Duan, the first local force in Dali City, is not as good as the Yang family and Zheng family, who have served as the top officials of Qingping for generations, they are also one of the most prominent local officials. Since his ancestor Duan Jianwei served as generals and governors of Nanzhao, they can be said to be a family of officials with lush branches and leaves. Therefore, with the warm invitation of the other party, hundreds of caravans who went to the caravan had to stay in the local area for more time before they could send back the first batch of news.

This is mainly because they commissioned Duan's family and other families to purchase various light, expensive and rare special local goods; at the same time, they collected information on various mountains, rivers, geographies, hydrology and various resource outputs in the Erhai Lake Basin on the grounds of investigating the terroirs that can be managed later.

This also discovered a local trend that could not be concealed. As the powerful minister Zheng's family gradually overpowered the royal power to undermine it, the Duan family, represented by these local heroic families, inevitably felt the crisis and pressure, and began to hoard food and gather young men, and actively sought the possibility of foreign exchanges and profits and obtaining foreign aid. Of course, after learning about this, Zhou Huaian remembered another case about Duan.

Probably in the second year of Tianying (928), after the Zheng family destroyed the Nanzhao royal family, the powerful minister Yang Ganzhen killed Dachanghe Emperor Zheng Longtan, destroyed Dachanghe, and supported the Qingping official Zhao Shanzheng as a puppet monarch. The next year, Yang Ganzhen abolished Zhao Shanzheng and proclaimed himself emperor, changed the country's name to Dayining, and the reign of the reign of Xingsheng. However, Yang Ganzhen was only one year old and was deposed by his younger brother Yang Zhao. In the seventh year of Daming (937), Duan Siping, the governor of Tonghai, rose up to rebel, Yang Zhao committed suicide, and Dayining was destroyed.

Then the legend of becoming a monk in Tianlong Temple and the Six-Meridian Divine Sword was opened... Oh no, it was the two hundred years when the Duan clan of Dali and the powerful Gao clan family fell in love and killed each other until they were defeated by the conquerors of the Yuan Dynasty. Then, as the loyal Yunnan general steward family of the Yuan Dynasty, they continued to resist the Ming army until the family was destroyed. The so-called model of the high degree of sinicization and the ultimate Taoism.

During this period, the local government in Yunnan could be said to have always been circulating among several powerful ministers and surnames, and never became a scalypse on the border like Nanzhao, who was born in the wild. Perhaps, Zhou Huaian felt that he could do something, such as pushing the Duan family to the stage of history in advance through some operation, and in disguisedly getting a share of the Nanzhao civil strife initiated by Zheng several years later?
Chapter completed!