Emperor Ming Dynasty

Chapter 520 Today's sea water is sweet
The prosperity of the market economy has made the city more and more lively. They have adapted to the changes and gradually got used to this era of changes.

For the vast rural areas, the static and conservative life has hardly changed for thousands of years.

In the Ming Dynasty or the Qing Dynasty, no matter which court came, they had to pay taxes and taxes, and there was no escape.

From the Xiuzhen River estuary at the junction of Su and Lu in the north to the Changjiang River estuary in the south, the oblique and narrow coastal belt has formed the foundation of Huaiyan salt in the Tang, Song, Yuan and Ming Dynasties for nearly a thousand years.

The newly established Tongzhou Prefecture is located here, split from Yangzhou Prefecture, and governs Tongzhou, Rugao, Taixing, and Haimen counties, with a population of less than 300,000.

Although it is a barren and sparsely populated place, there is more saline land along the coast than normal arable land.

Under such circumstances, many people's families are kitchen households, making a living by cooking sea salt. It is precisely because of this that the power of the prefect of Tongzhou's speech is not even as powerful as that of the salt transport envoy from the Huaihe River.

Before dawn, Han Dafa got up quickly, woke up his son, and after his wife cleaned up, ate a piece of vegetable cake, and asked his son to cut reeds by the river.

On the other hand, he carried a large frying pan, carefully came to the salt flat, and placed it on the stove that had been built earlier.

Immediately, several people took the stone lotus seeds and carefully rowed into the sea to test the concentration of the sea water.

Others began to scrape the soil and drench the brine, and the sand and soil at low tide piled up to make brine.

"Old Han, you're here." Zhang Wu, who was also in the same stove, had bad eyesight from the smoke and could only see clearly when he got close, shouted, came over with a jar of brine, and put it directly into the pot.

Afterwards, he plunged into the sea again and began to help and torment.

Immediately, the two families started today's busy work.

Smoke and fire, plus the hard work of cutting reeds, the kitchen household is busy day after day, and there is basically no longevity.

Han Dafa was working numbly. Under the sun for many years, his skin was black and cracked. However, in his forties, he already looked like an old man, with loose teeth, blurred eyes, and stiff limbs.

"This life after life, when will it be a head!"

No matter how numb he is, watching his two young sons repeat his old deeds like this makes him feel sad.

Han Wuze sighed on the side: "Who made us mean, our ancestors will not be able to escape for generations..."

"Father, didn't the emperor say that lowly households should be abolished as private households? Our Yanhu households are also lowly households!"

The eldest son on the side suddenly spoke.

"Hmph, that's the wishful thinking of the old man of the emperor." Han Wu raised his eyebrows, and said to the Yan Ding who was rampant over there: "With these officials and lords here, let's go, who will cook salt for them?"

After paying the salt tax, salt households usually keep a part of it, and they exchange salt for money and food, while salt officials forcibly buy and sell the surplus salt hidden by salt households, and resell it for big profits.

At the same time, they have to hide the salt households and make more profits.

"Oh, everyone is the same in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. Our kitchen households are all hard-working people, and this has been the case for lifetimes."

Han Wu sighed and continued to work.

And on the beach, there are hundreds of numb saltmen like them, who endure exposure, hunger, exploitation, just want to live.

Skinny, sallow, and blurry eyes, they are more pitiful than ordinary farmers, and the passage to ascend is completely blocked.

It is inevitable that the salt households will not be free. Since the Tang and Song Dynasties, the hereditary imprisonment of Yan households has been formed. By the end of the Qing Dynasty, the source was the imperial court's control of the production of salt.

The reason why the sun-drying salt method was not adopted, and torturing was the mainstream, is that the weather in coastal areas is unpredictable, and there are countless salt merchants who come to collect salt every day, and there is no room for delay.

In addition, the bureaucrats Xiao Gui Cao Sui, building salt fields required a lot of manpower, material and financial resources, and the imperial court had no spare energy to spend.

In the end, it is naturally the dissatisfaction of the kitchen households. The existence of the drying salt method and salt fields requires a lot of labor. In this way, the kitchen households who can only cook salt will not be able to live comfortably?
At noon, suddenly the ambassador of the salt class came with a group of people, which forced the stove owners to stop their actions.

I saw this fat, big-eared salt class ambassador facing a man with a flattering look on his face. Although it was not too subservient, it was not far away.

On the other side, the other man was far ignored, as if he was an unknown person, and followed behind embarrassingly.

And the only one who can make it so is Wei Kang, the salt transport envoy of the Lianghuai capital, and Wei Yanyun, who is from the third rank.

The embarrassing person is naturally the magistrate of Tongzhou, a fifth-rank official.

"Lüsichang is the largest salt field in this prefecture, with 630 kitchen households under its jurisdiction, more than [-] salt workers, [-] stoves, and a monthly production of Huai salt and ten thousand stones..."

The salt class ambassador reported seriously.

"Including the old and weak female relatives, I'm afraid there are three thousand."

The magistrate of Tongzhou on the side murmured, "It's almost caught up with a town."

"There are too many people."

Wei Kang sighed lightly: "Your Majesty's benevolence has abolished the system of lowly households, but for these salt households, although they no longer have the name of lowly households, they are still the reality of lowly households."

As he said that, he said to the magistrate of Tongzhou and the Yanke ambassador: "I am here at this time to pass on His Majesty's order to carry out reforms in Yanhu."

"Ah?" The prefect and the ambassador were surprised.

"As part of the reform of the salt government, most of the salt households will be converted into private households to reclaim the wasteland in Tongzhou Prefecture."

"However, most of the Tongzhou Prefecture is a salt flat, and it is difficult to grow any grass. If you can't grow food, it's better to gather these people together to boil salt."

The ambassador of the salt department couldn't wait to say: "If these salt households are lost, Huaiyan may not be able to survive!"

"Don't worry, the court has its own plans."

Wei Kanglang said: "The Salt Administration will use the salt field method to make salt. The output is several times, even ten times that of boiling, and the manpower consumption is nearly half less."

"Although it costs a lot at the moment, it is inevitable. Now Huai Salt produces too little salt, so we have to!"

At this time, the prefect of Tongzhou on the side began to make up his sword: "As far as I know, during the Hongwu period, there were more than [-] salt households in the Lusi Salt Field. How can there be only [-] more households after hundreds of years of breeding?"

"That's because Yanhu escaped—" the salt ambassador quibbled.

"Hmph!" The prefect of Tongzhou didn't believe it at all: "As far as I know, the salt farm has taken in dozens of families of refugees in the past two years, but the salt output is still the same. There must be tricks in it..."

"you--"

"All right!"

Wei Kang was too lazy to listen to the two people's arguments, so he said directly: "Each household takes a dime and puts it into the Yan Ding, which is specially in charge of managing the salt fields. They will be paid according to the soldiers and paid on a monthly basis, and the rest of the salt households will be distributed to the people and given to the court. Let's supplement the household registration Dingkou!"

"Yunsi Mingjian!"

The magistrate of Tongzhou was overjoyed.

As a result, these kitchen households, who had been busy for half their lives but penniless, suddenly learned the news of their liberation, and were stunned for a while.

They were able to divide the land, leave the wish wall of the saltworks, and even pass the imperial examination for their offspring, which was unimaginable for them for hundreds of years.

But it is true.

The numb Han Wu also knelt down at this moment, wept with joy, and kept slapping his mouth: "I'm such a rotten mouth, a rotten mouth, long live the emperor, long live, long live——"

At the end, he grabbed a handful and stuffed it into his mouth, yelling, "It's so sweet, today's sea water is sweet."

(End of this chapter)