Take the hospital back to ancient times

Chapter 321
In every disaster year, a large number of people fleeing famine from other places must flock to Bianliang City.

The victims are just hungry, not stupid. They know where there is food, where there is food, and where they can survive.

To put it more harshly, even if you have to sell yourself as a slave, it is more cost-effective to be a servant of a big family in Bianliang than to be a cow or a horse for a landlord in the countryside, right?
Therefore, when the north encounters a drought, the victims will try their best to cross the Yellow River and run south.

This year's drought was particularly severe. The Yellow River stopped flowing directly. There was no sign of the promised spring flood. A large number of victims walked directly from the bottom of the Yellow River, blocking more than a dozen gates of Bianliang City.

If you can take aerial photos at this time, the scene must be spectacular, just like the sci-fi movie Zombie Rising.

After Chen Jinbai came back from a medical meeting, he said that there were at least 50 victims outside the city.

This number terrified the Bianliang people in the city. You must know that there are only more than 100 million people in Bianliang City, and the number of people outside the city is half of that in the city. The key is that the victims outside the city are all proletarians, waiting for food.

At this time, if anyone stuffs a piece of yellow cloth in the carp of the Yellow River, or digs out a stone from the bottom of the Yellow River, and then says that it is the guidance of the heavens, come and say, "The princes and generals have a kindness", that is a proper civil uprising.

This kind of rebel team composed of disaster victims has no discipline or organization at all.

Leaving aside, let’s just talk about the Huangchao Uprising with golden armor all over the city. They were all cannibals and used human flesh as military food. This period of history has not passed many years.

So the more than 100 million people in Bianliang City began to tremble, the emperor trembled, the high officials trembled, and the wealthy households trembled too.

Of course, the biggest shakers are those big grain merchants. They are just too excited and happy, because the opportunity to make big money has arrived. They have been preparing for half a year, and they are just waiting for this day.

The unit of measurement in Dazhou, a stone of rice, is about 59.2 kilograms in later generations, and the value in Yuanjing was about 1000 yuan.

The price of rice has been rising slowly since last year, and by the time of the Chinese New Year, it was about 1800 yuan for a stone of rice.

Spring plowing is the end of the new year, but because there is almost no rain, it is impossible to cultivate, and the price of rice continues to rise. By March, it has risen to 3 yuan.

As a result, during the siege of the victims, the price of rice has risen to 4000 yuan per stone, which is a full increase of 4 times.

But this is not a gimmick. All grain stores in the city have begun to restrict sales. One person is only allowed to buy one liter of rice at most, which is equivalent to 1.5 catties in later generations.

You must know that the monthly income of ordinary Bianliang people is only 4 or 5 guan, which is equivalent to a monthly income that can only buy a stone of rice, which is about 60kg. If the family has a larger population, it will immediately run out of food.

People in the city have surplus money and food, and they can last for a while. Farmers outside the city have worked hard for a lifetime, but in the end they found that their rice tanks were all empty, and the bark and weeds were all eaten up. In the end, they had to flee to other places.

The so-called prosperity, a drought, a plague, all exposed.

The court of the Great Zhou Dynasty was still relatively benevolent. As soon as the victims arrived, the court immediately began to distribute porridge outside the city. Unfortunately, facing 50 victims was just a drop in the bucket.

At this time, the major commercial firms and wealthy households in the city will go to open their own porridge shops outside the city to do things to accumulate virtue and good deeds.

The porridge shop of the Medical Bank was built outside the Guangli Gate on the southern city wall.

The medical clinic is just an organization, and the porridge shops inside are handed over to the medical clinics to operate themselves, and they have to provide as much food, grass and firewood as they need.

As a result, the medical clinics of each family don't care about opening at this time, and the whole family, men, women and children, all want to accumulate virtue, don't they?In particular, the Jingshitang Medical Center, which was born as a Taoist priest, is more active in this kind of charity activities.

Jing Shitang took out 4 taels of silver in one bite. He originally planned to buy [-] shi of grain, but in the end he only bought [-] shi.

As for this, it was released because of the extensive network of people in the medical center, and a certain big grain merchant gave extra face.

A thousand stones is a thousand stones, it's better than nothing, Jing Shitang quickly set up four large pots and started cooking porridge, and he could only cook porridge. If it was cooking, there would probably be no rice in two days.

There is a rule in the novel that the porridge must be kept standing up with chopsticks, otherwise the disaster relief officials will be knocked down.

But in reality, how can there be such a good thing?In the porridge factory run by the government, not to mention that the standing chopsticks will not fall down, if you can fill a few grains of rice from the pot, you will be the master of Qingtian.

The normal operation is that the imperial court allocates [-] shi of grain, and [-] shi will be good enough to reach the porridge factory. Most of them are embezzled by officials at all levels, and then appear in the rice shop opened by themselves in the city.

Relatively speaking, porridge shops organized by the people are more conscientious. After all, this is a good time to earn a good name and accumulate blessings. No one dares to be sloppy, and they are all doing it seriously.

In front of Jingshitang's porridge shop, there were already four long queues, the two on the left were men, and the two on the right were women and children.

The advantage of this is that it can give disadvantaged women and children a fair chance to get a bite. After all, human nature is often not so glorious in the face of hunger.

The old lady of the Chen family took all the female relatives in the family, and all changed into rough blue cloth shirts, and a piece of blue cloth was also wrapped around their heads. This outfit was the overalls of the Jingshishan workshop girls.

The men of the Chen family also took off their Lan shirts, all of them were short-sleeved and short jackets, which were convenient for work.

Strong young people do heavy physical work such as carrying rice, washing rice, splitting wood, and carrying water, while women are engaged in relatively easy porridge.

Chen Buer is more like a chicken thief, he just guards a big stove and burns a fire. The heat is a bit hot, but the advantage is that the work is easy, and the firewood stove is different from the straw stove, so there is no need to add firewood all the time.

Next to Jingshitang Medical Center is Quanmingtang, which used to be Baoyaolin, Xuanxingtang, Gushengtang and other major medical centers in Bianliang City.

Chen Buer was still interested in saying hello to friends from other medical centers not far away, and saw him throw a small piece of firewood on Pan Mingguang:

"Hey, Brother Pan, I haven't seen you in the past few days. Are you going to gamble again? How much of the 500 taels of gold I gave you is left?"

Pan Mingguang raised his head with a black face:
"Don't talk about it. After I got home, I saw that my father was pitiful. I gave him 100 taels of gold, and then went to gamble a few times. I already won, but I don't know what happened. I lost it all at once the night before yesterday. gone."

"Damn, you prodigal son, four hundred gold is enough to raise a concubine and have a mistress in Bianliang City. You lost all in one night. Why didn't your wife beat you to death?"

"I didn't dare to go back to my room to sleep. I always avoided her when I saw her."

The two chatted enthusiastically, but they didn't know that Pan Mingyue, who was behind the rice pile, just overheard her, and all the little girl was thinking about was:
"Chen Buer gave his brother 500 taels of gold? How much gold does he have?"

(End of this chapter)