Han Zuo Gaomen

Chapter 87

The name of Jiangnan Water Town has existed since ancient times. The jade belt flows eastward, and the rich rice on both sides is fragrant.

The natural geography of Wukang can be said to be the most typical and concrete embodiment of the name of the water town. In its territory, Qianxi, Panxi, Longxi, Tiaoxi, etc., are known as five streams converging, criss-crossing, or dividing or combining, interweaving on this vast plain. Form a magnificent network of water veins.However, the wonderful thing is that although there are many small rivers and streams, they do not overwhelm others, they go their own way, and there is no flood to flood the country.

Here, bamboo rafts with black canopies lightly outperform horses, and long punt poles step on the waves. Rafting on the blue waves, you can sit with your arms down, stand facing the wind, lie lazily, or hang on the side of the boat, stepping on the waves with your bare feet. .Looking at Mount Dai from a distance with the wind, watching the rice waves rolling in close up, and singing in a place where the love is at its most intoxicating, it can be described as pleasant and leisurely.

Ji Youju is more than a year old, and his heart is always sad. Now sitting on the light boat, all he can see is the fresh, lovely and vibrant picture of Jiangnan water town. The smile gradually spreads on his face, and the whole person becomes cheerful: " No wonder Weizhou you want to stay in the hometown, not the capital, this water town is timeless and peaceful, it is fascinating!"

"That's why I invite you, Literature, to come here. You can forget all your worries and live in this town for a long time."

Shen Zhezi patted Ji You who was sitting on the side of the boat, and then turned his head to look at Ge Hong who was admiring the scenery on both sides of the strait: "Mr. Ge thinks the scenery of Wukang is different from that of Danyang?"

Influenced by the beautiful scenery, Ge Hong was no longer indifferent to Shen Zhezi. He just frowned and muttered: "I came to Wukang in the past. It is indeed a little different from today. The waterway is much more convenient now."

Hearing Ge Hong talk about this, Shen Zhezi could not help but smile complacently.Water towns may not be convenient for boats and boats. This is a social reason.The enclosing land along the river is the next best thing, and the biggest disaster is to block the river and build dams to build water reels.Although the water reel saves manpower, once it floods, the rivers will be closed separately, and the river will be flooded, which is both beneficial and detrimental.

In the early years, the princes and princes of the Western Jin Dynasty competed to build dams to block the river and repair the water reeds, which caused frequent floods and even flooded the capital, which was no less harmful than military disasters.

Located in the water town of Wuzhong, the situation in Wukang is not much better, and even worse.If Ge Hong and the others had come here last year, what they would have seen would not have been the prosperous picture of unobstructed rivers and canals, boats and boats, and unimpeded traffic.

At that time, various families blocked the river to store water to store power. Some rivers flooded into swamps, while others had sparse water, making irrigation extremely inconvenient.

The big households benefit from it, and the small people suffer from it.Speaking of this kind of inequality, Shen Zhezi actually has no right to condemn others morally.As far as this kind of evil deeds of dominating the village and oppressing the common people, the Shen family has never fallen behind, and can be called the leader of Wukang.

However, after Shen Zhezi changed the flushing leaf water reel into a drum, the requirements for the impact of the water flow were no longer so great, so there was no need to block the river and water.For the Shen family alone, there are nearly [-] water reels in Wukang, covering almost half of the water network.After the reconstruction, the previous Henglan Dam was demolished, the hydraulic power was not damaged much, and water transportation was also facilitated.

In the past half a year, the drum water mill has become popular in Wukang, and various companies have followed suit. After all, the cost of damming the river is not small, and it needs to be maintained every year, and their own fields have to bear the risk of flooding.

With this improvement, the next thing will be a matter of course. Even without the call of the county government, each family will dredge the waterways within their own area. After all, the riverbed silt is also the best fertilizer for raising fields nowadays.In less than a year, the whole of Wukang has resumed the unimpeded situation of boats and boats, and all the people in the territory will benefit from it.

When Shen Zhezi and the others came up on the boat, they saw many villagers loading materials and goods for transshipment on bamboo rafts, and they were busy.

Even Ge Hong had to admit: "The folk customs of Wukang are simple and peaceful, and the scenery is indeed very different from that of Danyang."

Although Shen Zhezi was not good at boasting and showing off, he felt secretly refreshed when he heard Ge Hong's affirmation.

Danyang is where Gyeonggi is located, and its geographical environment, natural resources, and even prosperity are actually better than Wu Xing.But the battle to destroy Wu in the early years caused great damage to vitality.Before they had time to recover much, many surnames of overseas Chinese came to the south one after another, some disturbing policies were issued frequently, and the Wang family had been in chaos for many years, which had already made the villagers panic like a bird of fright.

In addition, Ge Gaomen, the king of Langya, who occupies a high political position, disregarded the grievances of the people, and set up Langya prefectures and counties near Jiankang.

This year alone, Shen Zhezi heard about seven or eight large-scale villager fights, the most serious one involving thousands of people, and the corruption spread to several counties.It even shook Gyeonggi, and the imperial court ordered Liyang Sujun to send troops to defend the stone city, lest rioters rush into Jiankang.

Ge Hong feels so emotional, probably because of the restlessness in his hometown, and the family is hard to make a home.In history, this old man did not return to his hometown, but went south to Lingnan to live in hiding for half his life. It may be that there is no such emotional loss factor.

It is a fluke that Shen Zhezi's current energy can benefit Wukang County. As for Danyang, even if he wants to, he has no power to interfere.

Sensing the dull atmosphere in the boat, Ji You changed the topic and asked, "Weizhou, I often hear people say that your family is Jiangdong Haoshou, and you don't know how many acres are in your house?"

Alas, I will be forced to show off my wealth again.

"Literature, since you set foot in the territory of Wukang, you have already entered my house. This Qianxi River goes forward, passes through Panxi River and turns to Longxi River, and looks east at Tiaoxi River. Everything in sight is my family's property."

"so much!"

When Ji You heard Shen Zhezi's words, he couldn't help gasping, he couldn't believe it: "In this way, the Zunfu's land alone has as many as ten thousand hectares?"

His family can be regarded as a big family in Danyang, and there are many industries in the village, but it is really hard to imagine, what is the concept of a family with tens of thousands of hectares of fertile land!
Shen Zhezi smiled and said, "Although we missed, it's not far away."

His family's land is indeed more than [-] hectares, especially in the middle of the year when it was merged, and the agricultural cooperatives in the late rice season brought some poor households into the village.If you count forest farms, mulberry forests, orchards, and ridgelands, the numbers will be even more astonishing.

Now in Wukang and even Wuxing, if there is a family with more acres than the Shen family, it can only be the official households directly controlled by the county government.These fields are directly under the control of the county government, and the official households and military households are responsible for farming, which is equivalent to farming in disguise, and is also the main source of taxes per mu of the imperial court.

Ge Hong snorted coldly on the other side: "The family of local tyrants loses the people and enriches the family, hum!"

Originally, his attitude towards Shen Zhezi had eased, but after hearing this, his disgust towards the young man and even the Shen family hit a new high.For a small family, the hectares of land are enough to make ends meet.But in Wuzhong, where there are many people and the land is narrow, it is very rare for the small people to have [-] to [-] acres of land.The Shen family has amassed such a fortune, and how much blood and tears of the Han family will be shed behind it!
Shen Zhezi just smiled and didn't respond to Ge Hong's strong feelings of class struggle.

At this time, the boat passed a shallow pond, where several children were picking up rice. Seeing the Shen family's recognizable black-peng boat passing by, they laughed and sang nursery rhymes on the shore: "Shen Lang, Shen Lang! My family has a lady, Bai Fu wears red makeup! The brocade spoon Wu Wa is clever, her shoulders are wide and her hips are curled up, so she is very healthy..."

The childish voice is innocent and scattered all over the world. Although it is only a vulgar song, it reveals a kind of admiration for the protagonist, and I would like to use it as a female wife.When Ji You heard these children's songs, he couldn't help laughing out loud.Ge Hong's expression was a little embarrassed. He had just commented that Shen's family lost all people and enriched himself, when a nursery rhyme slapped him in the face.

Shen Zhezi was a little embarrassed when he heard the ballad, but he was also happy.In the past half a year, because of the changes made by the Shen family, the people of Wukang have benefited a lot, so the township has also improved a lot.

Those cheap brother-in-laws on the shore can also be said to be sailors hired by the Shen family, after all, they have received real benefits.But this ballad is not his handwriting, but the spontaneous creation of the villagers.No matter how he has no bottom line, he is embarrassed to brazenly promote himself as a son-in-law of the nation that everyone wants to marry a daughter.

The smooth waterway is much better than the land way. Originally, it took more than half a day to travel, but now it only took more than half an hour. The boat sailed into Longxi, and the Shen family's manor was vaguely in sight.

Ji Youshang was in mourning, and Ge Hong was impatient to socialize. After asking the two people for their opinions, Shen Zhezi asked Xiao Zhou to go directly to Longxi Manor.

Longxi is the main dredging channel of the Shen family. It is several feet wide and the canal is deep.Today, it is also the main gathering point of Shenjia Tofu Workshop and other handicraft workshops. Every day, a large number of sampans gather nearby to transport the products produced in the workshop to Wukang and even Wuxing.

The boat turned into a dedicated waterway and soon entered Longxizhuang.

Ge Hong was so interested in tofu crafts that he even went ashore to have a look at Shen's tofu workshop regardless of the exhaustion of boats and cars.He is obsessed with alchemy, and the principle of alchemy is to supplement the body. The so-called gold and jade are handed down forever and become new over time.

Tofu was named Yuban by Shen Zhezi's ingenuity, and it is also suitable for people who take loose food. Probably in Ge Hong's concept, he can observe and learn from the process of making tofu, so as to make his alchemy skills reach new heights.

Shen Zhezi was not surprised that Ge Hong had such an idea.People in later generations even attributed the invention of tofu to Liu An, king of Huainan in the Western Han Dynasty, who was the senior in the world of cultivating immortals who was said to have attained Taoism and ascended to heaven alone.

But since Ge Hong is interested, Shen Zhezi can let him go.The origin of the knowledge of cultivating immortals passed down by this little immortal teacher's family, how could he be able to talk about it with a few words of popular science.It would be a good thing if he stopped making alchemy and switched to making tofu.

Shen Zhezi originally planned to accompany Ge Hong to visit the tofu workshop in person, but as soon as he entered the village, a servant reported that visitors had been waiting in the village for a long time.

So he sent someone to lead Ge Hong to visit the workshop on his behalf. Now that the workshop has grown into a large scale, the processes have been dismantled. The technical barriers that cannot be shown to others have been strictly protected, and he is not worried that it will be spread.

(End of this chapter)