Han Zuo Gaomen

Chapter 516
When I came to Taicheng again, although the interval was not long, the appearance was quite different.

The original messy and dilapidated scene has disappeared, replaced by open and smooth roads, majestic and orderly buildings.Large blocks of stepping stones were mined from the mountains near the suburbs of Beijing, carved and then polished with fine sand to make them smooth.Walking on it, you can see a high wall made of blue bricks. The blue bricks are carved with clearly visible lines, stacked together to outline an elegant and simple image.

Inside the high walls are the official offices of various palaces and temples, each of which has a different shape, some with stacked eaves and tiles, as thick as a mountain, or high pavilions with strange shapes, like jade pillars, and high-altitude hanging corridors with deep door openings, square permanent doors, and shadow walls. Eye-catching.The different architectural styles of the north and the south are integrated in one furnace, which is neither overwhelming nor out of place. Many buildings complement each other with brilliance and interest.Undiminished majesty, full of elegance and interest, full of grandeur and grandeur, and all-encompassing collections.

Of course, some places have not yet been completed, and there are tall bamboo fences raised to surround and separate that place. There are guards outside the fence, and craftsmen are busy inside the fence.Occasionally, officials in Taicheng stood inside and outside the bamboo fence, either monitoring the progress, or watching and thinking, and sharing their aesthetic gains with the craftsmen who worked.

Walking in Taicheng, Wen Qiao also subconsciously looked around, and couldn't help but sigh with emotion: "The boy is always so poor and troublesome, it's really annoying. But I really have to say, hard work, hard work, can overcome others' difficulty Great work! Taicheng now has a new look and is completely different from the cramped and cramped old town. You, Weizhou, have contributed a lot! What’s more rare is that the fortifications are quick and fast, but they don’t exhaust the people. It is to be praised!"

The amount of engineering work in the entire Taicheng is huge, because many palaces, temples and government offices are concentrated here to provide not only office space, but also living space for these ministers, so the scale of the entire Taicheng is not inferior to a Ordinary city.In terms of project volume, Shen Zhezi's overall vision for Jiankang New City is already grand, and Taicheng City still accounts for at least one-fifth of the proportion.

Taicheng is not only a place for offices, but also occupies a certain military role. It surrounds Yuancheng and is the core of the entire Jiankang City, as well as the last line of defense.Su Jun was the first to break through the defense of Taicheng last year, and then caused the fall of the entire Jiankang City. Therefore, whether Taicheng is stable or not, to a certain extent, determines the stability of the entire Jiankang City and even the entire Jiangdong.

With such a large amount of labor, the entire framework has been erected in just half a year, and the construction progress in other places has not been delayed.Although the main credit goes to Ji Mu and Shen Ke, the front-line supervisors who dispatched well, but Shen Zhezi also contributed to the overall planning and distribution of manpower and material resources and the construction of the operation mode in the early stage.

Hearing Wen Qiao's emotion, Shen Zhezi said with a smile: "The living people have their own initiative. As long as they can protect their safety and provide for their affairs, it is not inferior to the virtuous government of Yao and Shun. It's a pity that there are sages in this world. There are too few people, but there are too many people with sage ambitions. They are always eager to establish their lives for the people and plan for eternal peace. Such people should not be lazy in action, but diligent in thinking. Living people know their fate, Not everything depends on the sage.”

The quickest and most effective way to bring a chaotic world to peace quickly is to let everyone have something to do, and everyone to perform their duties.Relatively speaking, the impact of the employment rate on the stability of the world is far more important in later generations than in ancient farming societies.

Because in ancient times, there was an eternal industry, which was to let people farm the land.No matter how chaotic the world is, once the world is unified, the politics is clear, there is no threat of military disasters, the common people work hard, and the court allows the development of productive forces without interfering, the vitality of the whole society will quickly recover and usher in the new era again. A flourishing age.

But the era of the Eastern Jin Dynasty has its own paradoxes, and the effective methods of other eras will not work in this era.The problem is simple, the imperial court simply does not have enough arable land to house refugees.Once there is not enough arable land, a large number of people cannot be attributed to the fields, productivity cannot be fully developed, and vitality will naturally be difficult to recover for a long time.

Shen Zhezi advocated the rebuilding plan of the entire Jiankang City almost against all opinions, but it was actually not in line with the usual way of dealing with the chaos.From the point of view of ordinary people, a big war has caused the entire Jiangdong vitality to be greatly lost, and it is too much to squeeze the people's power to carry out large-scale construction projects at this time of year.

But if the old method is used, where can the imperial court find so much arable land?Once the resettlement is not timely, the survival of a large number of refugees will be threatened.Then there will be rich families who own the land and will jump out and use a way of survival as bait to compete with the imperial court for these refugee labor.

As a result, as a large number of people were shaded, the court could control less and less manpower, and it was increasingly restrained by aristocratic families.And those aristocratic families who have a lot of manpower and material resources can't abandon their prejudices and sincerely cooperate with each other, so these manpower and material resources that should be used to do great things are wasted in mutual disputes.

Therefore, the first principle of Shen Zhezi's disaster relief earlier was to seize the vitality of these refugees and prevent them from being scattered outside the rule of the court.It is indeed not a good choice to rebuild Cannes in such a season, but the problem is, if this is not done, the imperial court simply does not have the means and ability to retain these people!

In fact, whenever troubled times are about to break out, those in power will always engage in large-scale civil construction. In a sense, it is actually a means of strengthening personal control.Because it is about to get out of control, it is necessary to strengthen control. However, the keynote of the dynastic crisis is that land acquisition is serious. There is no land resettlement, and the only choice is construction. However, this untimely and tough method will often cause a violent rebound, which will make the turmoil even more intense.

But this is actually not an unsolvable problem. If we can find a target to launch a war while strengthening the personal control of the people, on the one hand, we can use war to divert conflicts and strengthen our personal control; It is feasible to plunder wealth to supplement oneself.And in later generations, there was more than one fairly successful template.

However, in ancient times, there was a quite helpless restriction, that is, in the external environment of the region, there was no one that could be used or worth plundering. The biggest fat sheep was Huaxia itself.So whenever this method is used, it is often the time when civil strife begins.

The reason why Shen Zhezi dared to do this was because there was a ready-made object right now, and that was Jiehu who occupied the Central Plains.Although it is not enough to launch a large-scale war against Jiehu at the moment, the existence of Jiehu itself is a kind of reverse deterrent, so that people like Jiangdong dare not blatantly flip the table.Once there is a large-scale civil war again, everyone will finish it together.

Wen Qiao felt that such a large fortification did not cause a waste of money and people, but in Shen Zhezi's view, it was a matter of course.

First of all, laboring people and wasting money is an inaccurate concept. Without a standard, it is often used by opponents as an excuse to suppress opponents, and once it rises to military confrontation, the labor injury will definitely be greater.But at that time, no one will mention this again. The winner has a way, and the loser has no way.But now, even if some people shouted loudly, no one dared to provoke a war.

The second is what do the people need after the chaos?They need a job, they need a good meal.If the imperial court has enough arable land, it is of course the best way to choose reclamation.But the problem is that there is not enough arable land, so as long as they can meet their survival needs, why bother with the different forms?
The third is that any kind of labor is valuable.As long as people can be organized for production, even if they cannot produce food themselves, they can exchange the fruits of their labor.

Perhaps Jiankang City was not self-sufficient in the process of construction. If someone used it to block Jiankang's food imports, Shen Zhezi would be dead.But the problem is, the Wuzhong granary is the basic disk of his family, so there is no such hidden danger at all.

Instead, he can use this exchange of interests to break Jiangdong's long-standing regional barriers, such as attracting a large number of Wu people to Jiankang, and letting Jiangzhou people join the current situation.Not only is it not a bad thing, but it can strengthen exchanges between various regions in Jiangdong, complement each other, and become a closer whole.

People have jobs and a way to live, and their hearts will naturally settle down.As for laboring the people, it is really difficult to compare whether the workload of land reclamation is heavy or the workload of city construction is heavy.Basic necessities of life, food, housing, and transportation are the four major things in life. If you grasp any point, hard work will pay off.

Compared with reclaiming wasteland from scratch and seeing no harvest for a long time, Jiankang City was built to perfection, thereby attracting resources from all directions.From the current point of view, the latter is more operable, while the former is the real waste of money and people, because even if the imperial court organizes reclamation, it may not even distribute the agricultural tools and grains, but once the matter of farming is established, it will follow. In the end, it was a tax added to the acres of land.Empty hands and no food to sow, this is what really drives people to a dead end.

Shen Zhezi just used a more roundabout method to achieve the purpose of relief, and through orderly scheduling and clear division of labor arrangements, these people have the experience of obeying discipline in life and production.If there is a need to bind them into an army in the future, then there is already a preliminary foreshadowing.

To be honest, he did plan to organize a huge engineer regiment to cross the river.Because if you are fighting in the wild, there is not a large number of cavalry formations, which is an extremely fatal flaw.If you can step by step and advance layer by layer, the effect will be far better than that of surprise soldiers, and it will be more beneficial to the control of the recovered land.

With Jiehu's power structure, when facing an opponent who is full of resilience, always aggressive and invincible, even if he does not lose on the battlefield, he is likely to collapse himself.

But this idea also has a flaw, that is, it is too dependent on logistics and Jiangbei local support.In this regard, Shen Zhezi did not have a good idea, and the negotiation with Tu Zhongren was also a test of the water. It remains to be seen how effective it will be.

(End of this chapter)