The highest official of the Ministry of Internal Affairs is the Minister of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, with a second-class official position, equivalent to the local governor of the provincial government and higher than the governor. Although they are at the same level, the Governor and the Governor have to be polite when they meet the Minister of the Interior, and they have to do something from time to time. If you offend this gentleman, you will be ruined in front of the emperor sooner or later.
Although he is in charge of palace affairs, the minister of internal affairs is not a eunuch. He was basically selected from Mongolian princes, guards, or ministers and assistant ministers. Yang Lishan, Minister of Interior during Guangxu period, was from Zhenghuang Banner of Mongolia.
The Ministry of Internal Affairs has a huge organization. How big is it? I'm as shocked as I don't know. There are about 100 people in various departments of the imperial court, the largest number, so there are more than 300 people, but compared with the Ministry of Internal Affairs, it is far from enough. There are as many as 3,000 full-time staff in the Internal Affairs Department, plus various temporary staff, which has exceeded 1 10,000. Impossible, the emperor Lao Tzu is the biggest in the world!
If you want to ask which yamen has the most oil and water in the world, everyone will say it is the internal affairs office. At that time, there was a folk song, "It is not ancient to paint a small house with a new tree. This person must be the office of the interior." That is to say, the house is newly bought and the trees have just been planted, and they are still very small. "Paintings are not ancient" is because people in the Ministry of Internal Affairs don't have much ink in their bellies, but they always like to be arty and spend money everywhere to buy ancient paintings to decorate the facade. Therefore, they often buy fakes.
How corrupt is the Ministry of Internal Affairs? In the late Qing Dynasty, various corruption phenomena were absorbed in the body of the Qing Empire, and the degree of corruption in the Ministry of Internal Affairs was really "the first".
The Ministry of Internal Affairs is in charge of the emperor's finance, and no yamen dares to manage it. The suggestion also turned a blind eye and was in power. The emperor stayed in the palace for a long time and didn't know that rice was expensive, so he changed into a pattern pit emperor. The historical material "A Spring Tour in the Ice Room" recorded one thing. Once again, Emperor Daoguang, who was thrifty all his life, suddenly wanted to eat the folk snack "Pian Er Tang", so he asked the internal affairs office to make it. Obviously, it is a bowl of ordinary dishes, and the cost of back office work comes out: it costs 16200 silver a year to buy ingredients and call a cook. Daoguang Emperor once ate a piece of soup and knew it was cheap. Internal affairs wants to blackmail so much for a bowl of soup. The angry Daoguang Emperor was speechless and gave up the idea of eating a piece of soup.
Such a wonderful thing, Emperor Xianfeng, the son of Emperor Daoguang, also ran into it. It is recorded in "Notes on Nanting" that when Emperor Xianfeng saw the door pivot of Shangshufang, the lion in the government dared to ask for 5200 maintenance fees. Emperor Xianfeng was not as easy to fool as his father, and immediately became angry. The office was scared and quickly changed its mouth, and 5200 became 520.
Emperor Guangxu ate three boiled eggs every day, and the budget of the imperial dining hall was 320 taels of silver. One day, the minister of military affairs Wang Youdun came to see him, and Emperor Guangxu asked him what he was eating. Wang Youdun said, "Our family is poor. We only ate four eggs in the morning." Emperor Guangxu asked in surprise, "One egg costs ten gold, and four is forty gold. I dare not indulge so much. Does Chennai say my family is poor? " Wang Youdun is a clever man. He had heard of the tactics of the Office of the Interior, and immediately knew that he had put my foot in my mouth when he looked at the eunuch eyeing up next to him. He quickly explained that "the emperor ate good eggs, and ten gold was really not expensive, but I ate rotten eggs, and I could buy one for three pence."
The original Office of the Interior was a very ethical department, and the officials of the Office of the Interior in the early years of Kangxi were quite clean. Emperor Kangxi once praised that "I paid my salary to the head of the government office today, and the money I spent was five or six hundred and twenty yuan in January", but most government officials in the late Qing Dynasty became this official through "donation" and went to make money after taking office.
Zhang Xiaode, a great eunuch in the late Qing Dynasty, once said in his memoirs: The daily living expenses of Empress Dowager Cixi are 42,000. What is the concept of 42,000? This means that Cixi can buy a Japanese warship "Yoshino" with half a month's living expenses. Most of what the old lady can eat falls into the hands of eunuchs in the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
According to "Derun Fold in the Fifth Week of Guangxu on February 9", the annual gray income of officials at the doctor level in the Ministry of Internal Affairs is more than 2 million taels of silver. Under the emperor's eyes, the chefs can buy houses and land in Beijing and live a rich life.
It's really "petty officials are greedy", and so on. The anti-corruption level of the General Administration of Internal Affairs is even more alarming. Small Shenyang, known as the biggest greed in China feudal society, once served as the interior minister of the head office. When he went to the property, he saw a large number of foreign tribute treasures and palace items in the warehouse in Xiao Shenyang. At the end of the Qing Dynasty, Wei Xiao, the Minister of the Interior, and other ministers also made corruption scandals, which went away.