Can you live forever

Chapter 39 A bowl of porridge, a wisp of cooking smoke

To work in the city, you have to have a place to live in the city, right?
Similar to these porters who help out, dental dealers will not go to the residence one by one to call for people, but need you to squat in front of the dental dealer, wait for work when there is work, greet you, and follow after the roll call.

If you don't squat in front of the dental clinic and wait for work, you will never have anything to do.

This is the case in a market where supply exceeds demand. Even a job has to be queued. Those who live outside the city will wait until the city gate opens in the morning and arrive at the dental store. one day.

Instead of waiting so helplessly, many poor people living outside the city will work on the docks.

Doing the hardest work, earning the lowest wages, paying a penny, and being lucky if you can get five cents, this is the hardship of a big city.

On the contrary, it is a small place in Guixi, where everyone from the village has to take care of face.

Even if there is a guild on the wharf that collects offerings, at most [-]% is charged. If you collect too much, the food will not look good. Naturally, there will be village sages to ask for explanations. The larger village clans can pull out thousands of males.

Gangs in small places dare to run amok.

That is to say, in Yingtian Mansion, those poor people who have left their hometown and have no "roots" should be bullied, so that there will be room for the gang to grow up.

Zhang Zhixiang chatted with Zhao Yazi for a while, then walked out of the Ya's shop, came to the gate of the Ya's shop, looked at the hundreds of idlers squatting in the sun in groups, walked over to talk to the nearest person.

"What is the last name of a good man?"

This is a dull and honest man, he didn't want to talk to the child at first, but Wang Jiangque and the two maids followed behind and watched, knowing that this is a young master, they dare not neglect.

"My name is Chen Wu."

After Wun answered, Chen Wu waited for the young master to ask questions.

"It turned out to be Uncle Chen. Please excuse me a little bit, because the elders in the family let me know the sufferings of the people so that I can learn to be diligent and thrifty, so I went around and asked."

Chen Wu nodded, agreeing with this statement.

I think this young master's family should be scholars, so he will pay attention to character cultivation.

"Dare to ask Uncle Chen, how much money does ordinary work make per day, how much is the sum of one month and one year, is there any money left on weekdays, and is there any labor?" He asked several times in a row, Chen Wu digested it, and finally sort out.

These are very common questions, nothing difficult to answer.

"It's not like there's work all the time. Most of the people who hire us are merchants, rice shops, wood warehouses, etc., all of which are labor-intensive work. The big families have their own servants, and they rarely use us. .”

"As for wages, they are basically four or five cents."

"If you remove the water from the dental shop, you can get three cents of the silver in your hand. After a month, you can earn about eight cents of silver. As for whether you can have the rest of the money throughout the year..."

"If there is no rent, it should be possible."

"For those of us who work, the pumping of water in the dental shop on weekdays includes taxation, and labor includes repairing city walls, shoveling snow in winter, and cleaning river ditches. It looks like more than ten days a year, and we don't leave home, and food is also included. , it’s actually not bad.”

It turns out that there are taxes in the pumped water of dental shops.

This is also the reason if you think about it carefully. If you don’t go to a dental office, can you pay taxes for each family?Daming's collection of land taxes was also directly apportioned to Lijia, and the grain chief was responsible for the collection.

"How many people are in Uncle Chen's family?"

"There is an old mother at home."

"Then... can I hire Uncle Chen for a day, and stop by Uncle Chen's house for a meal, uh, just want to experience life, we can eat whatever Uncle Chen usually eats, and the wages are calculated at two cents a day, okay?"

"It's too much, I don't work hard, I just accept three cents."

"There were four of us after all."

"They're all dolls... well, I'll charge five cents for the meal. It's already sunset, and I have no work today. It's the young master who takes care of me so that I get a day's wages for nothing. There must be no more, young master If you don't feel right, go find someone else."

"Then five cents."

Zhang Zhixiang sighed quietly, not knowing what to say, he stood up, and then remembered that he hadn't asked Wang Jiangque, and didn't know her...

"Go."

She didn't show any dissatisfaction, and turned around to get in the car. Zhang Zhixiang asked Chen Wu to sit with the driver, and showed the driver the way. After driving for more than ten miles, he stopped at a poor area near the south gate of Waikou. .

Yingtianfu is prosperous, with a book population of more than 6 households, about 40 to [-] people.

However, considering that Bianliang City in the Northern Song Dynasty was only 52 square kilometers, but had a population of 20 million, Nanjing City in the Ming Dynasty had 220 square kilometers, and its prosperity was not inferior to that of Bianliang, with a population of at least 70 million.

There are row upon row of houses in the inner city, and every inch of land is expensive.

The outer city is relatively loose, but it is not a shack built casually. After all, where is the land without an owner?The owner's family builds a simple and durable house, and then sits on the ground to collect rent.

Although the location in the slums is poor and the houses are dilapidated, the rent is still high.

Chen Wu's house is less than [-] square meters, with two houses and a small courtyard. The rent is three silver coins per month. It can be said that most of Chen Wu's income is consumed on this rent.

As for buying a house and real estate in Yingtian Mansion.

That will never be possible. "Yutang Congyu" records that there are more than 30 people under Xie Duo in Nanjing Guozijian Jijiu Xie Duo, but all of them are homeless households. Xie Duo gave him the government office because he couldn't pay the rent of his subordinates. The servants, grooms, cooks, doormen, etc. who were assigned were all dismissed.

This shows how expensive Yingtianfu real estate is.

On the way, she asked about the rent of the real estate, and unknowingly arrived at Chen Wu's house. Chen Wu's old mother was a little nervous when she saw a few young men and women. After listening to her son's explanation of her visit, she smiled and said a few words of thanks.

When I turned back to the kitchen, I was working hard to clean the dishes and boiled water several times.

He took out the green vegetables that he was reluctant to eat at home, and scooped up an extra scoop when scooping rice. On weekdays, he would not eat or eat gruel at night. How could he eat dry food...

"Ma'am, I told Uncle Chen that we will eat whatever you usually eat."

"You show the etiquette of hospitality, but we can't learn anything, but it also hurts us. I don't know the suffering of the people, I don't know the food on the plate, and every grain is hard work. That's wrong."

Zhang Zhixiang seemed to have expected it a long time ago, so he came to the kitchen specially.

The aunt was stunned for a moment, and then she exaggerated that Zhixiang is a good boy. In the future, she will definitely be nominated on the gold list to be a high-ranking official and a master of the blue sky. Then she dared to ask, is it really done in the usual way?

After Zhang Zhixiang firmly affirmed, she started.

So, Zhang Zhixiang saw that the old man only scooped up about one or two meters, sprinkled a handful of corn kernels, and took some wild vegetables and weeds picked outside the city from a cloth bag beside him.

At sunset, the smoke rises.

When the old man handed the bowl to Zhang Zhixiang, looking at the porridge in the bowl, he fell silent.

(PS: In "Jin Ping Mei", Pan Jinlian encouraged Wu Dalang to rent a house for more than ten years. After the expiration, the house will be returned to the owner, and the money will be returned to the tenant. In Qinghe County, there is a house with two floors and four rooms. Pan It is enough for Jinlian to add more than ten taels of silver after selling the jewelry, and the deposit is about two or two years. As for the house by the Qinhuai River, one room, note that it is one room, and the price has reached 600 taels of silver during the Hongzhi period.)
(End of this chapter)