Brother Zhu Youxiao

Chapter 422
"Jingle Bell--"

"Moo..."

Every July is the most difficult period in Northern Zhili. Even in the capital, the air is filled with a damp smell.

For the common people walking around, the unbearable weather seems to put people in a sauna, which is very uncomfortable.

In this season, Yanshan County in the Yanshan Mountains feels cool. Even wearing brown cloth clothes for farm work, pulling weeds between the fields does not feel tired.

"Dingguo, be careful, that cow doesn't know you, it's a bit wild."

"Hey! Dad, don't worry."

Outside a small village under the jurisdiction of Yanshan County, Li Dashou, who was working in the field, was wearing a bamboo hat and clothed in commoner clothes.

For his father's concern, Li Dingguo responded, and then continued to drive the cattle to reclaim the wasteland.

The "little master" of Prince Qi's mansion also recovered his nature as a farm child when he went to the fields.

Time passed, and half an hour passed quickly. Li Dashou stood up with his waist supported. After wiping his sweat with a thick cloth on his neck, he walked to the edge of the field and sat down. At the same time, he greeted Li Dingguo:

"Okay, the cow is panting from exhaustion, and you don't pant, let it eat some grass next to it, and your mother should bring the food soon."

"Hey!" Hearing his father's words, Li Dingguo stopped, and then helped the panting old scalper to lift off the yoke, and the old scalper also understood human nature and walked to the side to eat grass.

Li Dingguo followed, then went to the nearby forest, broke off a weed with relatively large leaves, rolled it up, and poured the water from the water hyacinth into it.

Then he walked to the scalper, and the scalper smelled the water, turned around quickly, and drank the water cleanly in two or three strokes.

Seeing this, Li Dingguo could only add more, and soon the gourd, which could hold three catties of water, was emptied. Seeing that there was no water, the ox also lowered his head and continued to eat the grass on the ground.

Li Dingguo pinned the gourd, and then walked towards Li Dashou, and sat on the ridge next to him.

During this period, Li Dashou kept looking at Li Dingguo with a smile, and Li Dingguo also asked curiously:
"Father, how long have you been here?"

"It's been a long time. It took two years to cut down trees, dig out roots, and remove stones." Li Dashou immediately started talking non-stop when he heard his son talk about this place.

While he was talking, Li Dingguo was listening, and behind them were thousands of acres of golden wheat fields.

The wheat fields are so spectacular that you can’t see the end at a glance, and the white walls and black tiles of the village houses in the distance are scattered in rows. Against the backdrop of the wheat fields, it is easy to mistake people for Jiangnan, but they feel that they are better than Jiangnan, and they are so beautiful.

The sun was hot at noon, the two father and son chatted for a while, then Li Dingguo looked at the village behind him and said curiously:
"It seems that there are many more people in the village."

"There are more than a dozen households." After answering, Li Dashou couldn't help sighing:
"When we first moved here, there were only seven or eight families in this valley, and thousands of acres of land were wasteland."

"After four or five years, the wasteland has been reclaimed, and there are more than [-] households in the village."

"I have no choice but to cut down the forest and open up wasteland."

As he spoke, he looked at Li Dingguo, and whispered secretly: "Our family has almost [-] acres of wasteland including these two acres of wasteland, and most people in the village only have more than [-] acres of land."

"The family saved two hundred shi of wheat last year, and you took one hundred shi with you when you left."

"No need..." Li Dingguo said helplessly: "All that is eaten in the palace is rice, and except for the occasional noodles, wheat is not used at other times."

"Isn't it the same..." Li Dashou complained a little:

"The wheat and rice in that mansion are grown by others, and the ones grown by others are not as delicious as those grown by the family."

"Besides, how can rice taste as good as wheat?"

Li Dashou spoke in a hurry, the words were both official and dialect, Li Dingguo couldn't help laughing and said:
"Then I'll take three stones with me. Everyone in the house likes to eat rice except for me. If I bring too much, I can't finish it."

"Three stones are not enough for you alone. You grow up and take five stones with you." Li Dashou pulled stubbornly:

"You also take some of the pigs and sheep in the backyard, and your mother is going to let you bring some eggs and duck eggs back."

"It really doesn't take that much..." Li Dingguo didn't know whether to laugh or cry:

"The food in the house is all tribute rice. If I eat too much, I also like to eat it. Didn't I bring five buckets for you when I came back this time? You eat it and see if it is delicious. I will ask someone to deliver it when I return to the house. Come."

"That tribute rice is too expensive, your mother and I are not used to it." Upon hearing the tribute rice, Li Dashou gasped.

He couldn't figure out that the price of tribute rice was thirty times that of ordinary rice for the same rice.

That five buckets of tribute rice can be exchanged for fifteen shi of rice.

"What are you talking about?!"

The two father and son were still chatting about gongmi, but a woman's voice came from not far behind.

Li Zhang, a stout figure, was wearing a maroon cloth and came from the ridge of the field with a basket on his back.

Seeing this, the two father and son got up one after another and stared at her as she came over, and then helped put down the basket.

Li Dingguo lifted the coarse cloth on the back basket, revealing several large bowls and two large water hyacinths piled up inside.

The big bowl was as big as Li Dingguo's face, there were three of them, and there was a small iron pot at the bottom.

Li Dashou put the water hyacinth aside, took out a large bowl, and opened the covered bowl, revealing wide noodles covered with meat and vegetables.

The meat dishes are quite rich, but the preparation method is very simple, basically stir-fried chicken with green chili, and some ordinary leek eggs and fried cabbage.

Underneath the meat and vegetables are wide noodles sprinkled with spicy oil, and this bowl weighs three catties.

Li Dingguo looked at his father's bowl, and then opened his own.

His bowl was richer than Li Dashou's, with fried pork, fried chicken, eggs with leeks, eggs with tomatoes, fried cabbage and two steamed buns.

The food in the bowl was so rich that it was impossible to see whether there was rice or pasta underneath, so that Li Dashou was stunned when he saw it, and the pasta that he wanted to put in his mouth was not delicious.

"Mom, I can't eat so much."

Li Dingguo felt that there was at least four catties of rice in his hand, and he couldn't laugh or cry in his heart, while Li Zhangshi snorted and said dissatisfiedly:

"Is there anything you can't eat? You are growing up now, so if you can't eat, I'll give it to your father."

As he said that, Li Zhang also took out his own bowl. The food was basically the same as Li Dashou's, and what was placed at the bottom was a small pot of chicken soup.

Mrs. Li Zhang opened the lid and signaled to them who would drink and who would serve it.

The family of three sat on the ridge of the field, and while eating, Li Dingguo realized that the bottom of the bowl was the tribute rice he had brought home. He was moved and somewhat embarrassed.

"The food is not as good as the palace, is it? Are you not used to it?"

Mrs. Li Zhang kept looking at her son, while Li Dingguo shook his head: "Each has its own taste. The food in the palace is delicious, but it's not as fragrant as mother's cooking."

"How can my craftsmanship compare with that of the palace..." Although Li Zhang's mouth was modest, she couldn't hide the smile on her face.

Li Dashou watched the conversation between the mother and the son, and smiled silly while eating.

The mother and son chatted for a long time, and after a while Li Zhang said:

"When I came here just now, I saw that the village official in the village issued a notice saying that in the future, our village will no longer move into new households, and if we want to move, we will move to the village in the north."

"It's good not to move, and there will be no barren land for them after moving here." Li Dashou said, and Li Zhangshi also nodded slightly in agreement.

Compared to the two, Li Dingguo thought about what the Chief Banner Officer of Tiance Guard had said that day, and also thought about what his father said just now, and felt that the per capita farmland in the south was saturated, so he moved north.

In the palace of Prince Qi, it was easy for Li Dingguo to want to read some memorials, because Zhu Youjian didn't let anyone stop him.

Therefore, Li Dingguo has read many memorials, among which the one he remembers most is the memorial written by Zhu Youjian to the emperor.

[Move the rich and powerful and go overseas, stay in the real farmers and return to the country, equalize the land, and make great achievements in science and agriculture...]

This is a sentence from the president. As for how to relocate the powerful to overseas?Where do you go overseas?Zhu Youjian didn't write it, and Li Dingguo didn't know it either.

But after reading so many memorials by Zhu Youjian, he can probably guess some in his heart.

The relocation of powerful people should be to places like South Asia and Levia, not places like Nanzhou and Old Port.

Because many of Zhu Youjian's policies are similar to those of Zhu Yuanzhang in the early Ming Dynasty, especially for the powerful.

In ancient times, there were actually no more than two kinds of migrations for powerful people.

One is to concentrate the powerful to guard the mausoleum of the first emperor like the Han Dynasty, and the other is to relocate the powerful to remote areas that are not easy to manage, just like the Tang and Ming dynasties, so that they can serve as solid borders for the court.

Because of this, there are so many chieftains left over from the Tang Dynasty in Guizhou, and the facts have also proved that no matter how barbaric these Han chieftains are, they are relatively obedient to the Central Plains Dynasty’s recruitment, which is in line with what most dynasties think "Frontier restraint" is based on the ideas of the border residents.

If Li Dingguo wanted to know how his Royal Highness wanted to immigrate, he had to understand Zhu Yuanzhang's immigration policy in the early Ming Dynasty.

Therefore, he went through a lot of historical materials deliberately, and finally got a relatively complete immigration policy in the early Ming Dynasty.

The reasons for Zhu Yuanzhang's emigration are very complicated, but they are mainly divided into two reasons, one is economic reasons, and the other is political reasons.

Li Dingguo once analyzed one by one that the so-called economic and political reasons of the Ming Dynasty at that time were actually related to the wars at the end of the Yuan Dynasty and the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, and the situation where a lot of waste was waiting for prosperity.

The immigration policy of the early Ming Dynasty may have been cruel from an individual point of view, but it was undoubtedly positive from a national point of view.

Since the entire Central Plains experienced protracted wars at the end of the Yuan Dynasty and the population was withered, the big hole of shortage of population resources was being filled in the early Ming Dynasty.

The Dragon and Phoenix regime in the north fought fiercely with the Yuan Dynasty. Although the South was also fighting the Yuan army in the early stage, it gradually began to incline to infighting in the later stage.

When the Ming Dynasty unified the world, there were not even 6000 million people in the whole world, and the entire land of Hebei had only 1809 million people.

The whole of Shaanxi has only 210 million people, especially Hexi and Ningxia have only 10,000+ people, and Liaodong has only more than 8 people.

Shandong and Shanxi had 520 million and 400 million people respectively, but even so, the total number of people in such a large area in the north in the early Ming Dynasty was only more than 100 million people. One can imagine what the north was like.

This is just the population. When it comes to arable land, there are only tens of millions of acres of arable land in the north, and the rest are grasslands and wasteland.

Not to mention the southwest, Yunnan, Guizhou, Guangdong, Guangxi, south of Dongting Lake, and south of the Chengdu Plain, Han people account for less than one-tenth of the local area.

Insufficient arable land, people's livelihood withered...

This is the normal state except in Jiangnan and Jiangbei areas, and at this time Daming is surrounded by danger.

The Yao people in Huguang rioted, the Tongyao people in Guangdong and Guangxi rioted, and the Dali Miao, Tong, and Yi people in Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan rioted.

In addition, the Beiyuan Khan Court in the desert was quite powerful and often harassed the northern border of Ming Dynasty.

Zhu Yuanzhang has always had a headache about this matter, so much so that he even wrote this in his letter to Yan Wang Zhu Di:
"If there are tens of thousands of Huma invaders on the border, it is not suitable to fight. Either enter the fortress, or reject the dangerous pass in the valley, and put the infantry in deep ambush to wait for them. When they see that I will not fight with them, they will spend money and plunder them. Its arrogance is lax in dispersing the team."

Therefore, it is inevitable to transfer human resources from provinces with relatively rich population resources to fill provinces with relatively short population resources.

In addition, at that time, only Nanzhili, Zhejiang, and Jiangxi were the major provinces of education, population, and economy. Therefore, in the early Ming Dynasty, the military settlements and immigrants were basically based on these three provinces, with Fujian, Shandong, and Shanxi as assistants.

Since most of the wealthy people were concentrated in the Jiangnan area at that time, and there were crowds of rich people here, they were particularly dissatisfied with Zhu Yuanzhang's rule, so Jiangnan was also the area that Zhu Yuanzhang focused on.

Therefore, the main purpose of Zhu Yuanzhang's migration was to "immigrate to strengthen the border", and secondly to dispel the wealth of the rich and eliminate the collusion between power and wealth, so that the court was stable and the world was peaceful.

This situation is actually similar to the current situation.

The territory of Daming to the north of the Great Wall and overseas is underpopulated and lacks strength. Not only can it not provide blood for Daming, but it also needs blood transfusion for Daming.

In this case, Zhu Yuanzhang's policy is the policy that is most in line with Ming Dynasty, and Zhu Yuanzhang's target migrants are mainly rich households, criminals and refugees.

Of these three groups, the wealthy were hit hardest, because criminals and refugees were inherently landless and unidentified.

No matter where this kind of people are moved, their life is actually the same as before or slightly better, but the wealthy households are different.

Because the wealthy households had lived a wealthy life before, and they had intersected with many dignitaries of the Ming Dynasty, they had a great influence in the local area.

Compared with rich households, the treasury situation of Daming was not good at that time, because in terms of immigration, Zhu Yuanzhang and Zhu Youjian experienced the same problem... food!
There is a lot of grain in the folk, but it is impossible for Zhu Yuanzhang to grab it. Instead, he chose to use banknotes and silver to buy grain, so as to stimulate the agricultural economy and prepare for immigration.

It's just that the treasure banknotes depreciated sharply due to credit problems not long after they were used, so Zhu Yuanzhang focused on wealthy households.

These wealthy households were implicated through the "Four Hongwu Cases", all their family properties were confiscated, and the nine ethnic groups were relocated.

Therefore, the reason why Jiangnan in Zhu Yuanzhang's period was not as powerful as in the middle and late Ming Dynasty was mainly because they were moved to new places.

Due to the unfamiliarity of the place of birth, many families will hold together, which makes the chieftains in many places afraid.

However, during this process, there were also families that soon declined after the outbreak of conflict with the chieftain.

Under the interference of external forces, even if they moved to other places, it would be difficult for these wealthy households to rise again, which ensured that there were no gentry and wealthy households in the world who could influence the government in the early Ming Dynasty.

For Zhu Yuanzhang, this series of policies is to consolidate the regime and the frontier.

Zhu Yuanzhang, who was born as a farmer, was very good at considering the rich and the poor. His immigration policy was unprecedented in ancient times.

The Tang Dynasty basically relied on the voluntary migration of the aristocratic family, while the Ming Dynasty relied on the violent migration of the court. The nature of the two is different.

Although the violent relocation caused many people to spend a period of "poverty and humiliation", the relocation policy brought stability to the Ming Dynasty.

Due to the reduction of wealthy households, the corresponding reduction in corruption continues, so the immigration policy is conducive to rectifying corruption in the imperial court.

For the immigrated places, a large amount of labor force was added, a lot of wasteland was reclaimed, and productivity was improved. At the same time, the flow of people also absorbed and integrated many minority cultures, making most minority people culturally similar to Han people.

Generally speaking, it is to relocate wealthy households to stabilize the interior, strengthen the Han people in the frontier, use the cultural advantages of the Han people to assimilate the other party, reduce corruption by the way, and create a relatively clean regime.

Zhu Yuanzhang's relocation of rich households and refugees and prisoners made it possible for the Ming Dynasty to basically avoid major rebellions during the 81 years of Hongwu, Jianwen, Yongle, Hongxi, Xuande, and Zhengtong.

Even the "Tang Sai'er Uprising", which was praised by later generations, was actually a religious incitement, and the number of people ranged from several thousand to ten thousand.

Compared with the uprisings in various dynasties, except for the late Ming Dynasty, there were only three uprisings of more than [-] people in the Ming Dynasty.

For Zhu Youjian, this policy is worth learning from, and through Zhu Yuanzhang's policy and his understanding of his highness, Li Dingguo can probably know what his highness's policy is.

To put it bluntly, it means "suppressing the equalization of wealth" and "immigrating to strengthen borders".

Suppressing wealth does not mean attacking all wealthy households, but attacking wealthy households that have too much collusion with the court, such as those gentry and powerful gentry in Sichuan who colluded with various yamen to resell the army and garrison land, they need to be targeted.

The gentry and tyrants occupy the vast majority of the land, and if one tyrant is moved out, hundreds of families can be equally rich.

For example, places such as Northern Zhili, Shanxi, Shaanxi, Shandong, Henan, as well as Yunnan, Guizhou, Duogan, Guangxi, and Liaodong at present, have allowed the imperial court to obtain tens of millions of acres of arable land by suppressing and relocating the powerful. Wealth was given to most commoners.

The tyrants involved often have dozens, even hundreds, or thousands of people in a family.

Moving them to Cochin, Old Port, and Nanzhou is the best real border.

From Li Dingguo's point of view, His Royal Highness may have to intensify the attack on the powerful gentry in the future, until no powerful gentry can control the officialdom.

"Can it really be done..."

Thinking about what Zhu Youjian was doing, Li Dingguo couldn't help but feel a little dreamy, or unrealistic.

He remembers very clearly that the lecturer in the political class of the government school once said that "it is never possible to equalize the rich and the poor."

The textbook was written by His Royal Highness, but the content on it is contrary to what His Royal Highness did...

At Li Dingguo's age, he really didn't understand why his highness would do such contradictory things.

"A contradiction?"

"contradiction……"

While Li Dingguo was thinking about things on the ridge with the food, Zhu Youjian who was in Dading Palace also asked Zhu Youxiao next to him, and Zhu Youxiao gave the same answer as Li Dingguo thought.

"The Theory of Equal Wealth and Poor"

This is a book compiled by Zhu Youjian held in Zhu Youxiao's hand, and the content of this book makes Zhu Youxiao feel very contradictory.

"My brother said that it is never possible to equalize the rich and the poor, but to maintain a permanent dynasty requires the equalization of the rich and the poor. Does that mean that no dynasty can exist forever?"

Zhu Youxiao closed the book, and asked Zhu Youjian with doubts, but Zhu Youjian did not answer in a hurry, but said after a long silence:
"The disadvantage of the dynasty is that in the whole world, our Zhu family is the biggest gentry and powerful, because we hold power."

"The burden of attaching the dynasty to one person is really too heavy, and many people cannot shoulder it."

"We can't expect everyone to be Emperor Taizu Gao. If there is another Yingzong in the meantime, can my Ming Dynasty still exist? Will there be someone as capable as Emperor Jing?"

Zhu Youjian commented on his "ancestor" indifferently, even though he believed that Zhu Qizhen did a good job before the Tumubao change, especially in the third and fourth expeditions to Luchuan after the death of Empress Dowager Zhang, which made the southwestern frontier of the Ming Dynasty It has been stable for a hundred years, but this still cannot wash away the fact that the fourth Northern Expedition "Cimubao Change" during the orthodox years was a disastrous failure.

When mentioning Ming Yingzong, even Zhu Youxiao was a little embarrassed to refute, after all, his ancestor was really not good at it.

"According to what my younger brother said, then I am Ming..." Zhu Youxiao asked hesitantly, while Zhu Youjian took a deep breath and said:
"The unified dynasty that lasted for 300 years has never appeared. If our dynasty follows the old system, it will follow the old path of other dynasties."

"Maybe the country can pass the 300-year mark, but can it pass the 400-year or 500-year mark?"

"Reuse civilians after official education, this is what the country should do."

"As long as the civilians trained by government schools ascend to the imperial court, it will not be a problem for me to prolong Ming Dynasty for another hundred years."

Zhu Youjian is very concerned about the civilians trained by government schools. Although he has the example of Yanshan, he also knows that officials from government schools can also be corrupt, but the difference is the issue of teaching materials.

No matter how corrupt the officials of Yanshan and government schools are, the bottom line is always higher than that of officials under feudal education. Zhu Youjian has carefully studied this point.

In the five years since Tianqi, most of the officials arrested in Yanshan were involved in corruption, and acquiescing to the gentry to resell the army and farm the land, but they dared not obey the law and violate it in some projects and political affairs.

On the other hand, Ming officials under the old system, from engineering cut corners to smuggling ordnance, to all kinds of examples of obedience and obedience are not uncommon.

Officials of the Yanshan faction knew very well that if the Ming Dynasty collapsed, their treatment would not be much better, and they would all face being purged eventually.

This is different from the belief of later generations that "it doesn't matter if the emperor is dead, and he will be a courtier to anyone anyway."

The officials used in the early Ming Dynasty were actually the officials who surrendered from the Yuan Dynasty, and most of them were implicated by Zhu Yuanzhang in various "major cases". In the end, it was the Guozijian disciples trained by Zhu Yuanzhang himself, a new interest group belonging to the Ming Dynasty. .

Yuan and Qing did not do badly in this regard, so this has nothing to do with nationality, but has something to do with class.

Even the subsequent regime has done a lot of things to clean up the former officials.

This essentially represents the experience of civilian officials after the demise of the dynasty after the demise of the aristocratic families in the Tang and Song Dynasties.

In the Yanshan textbooks, Zhu Youjian often uses the example of how the Ming Dynasty cleaned up the corrupt officials after the fall of the Yuan Dynasty to warn Yanshan officials, and he has no taboos at all.

Therefore, whether it is officials or other classes, when a dynasty falls, the new dynasty will not always treat them well, because there are new classes that want to squeeze their interests, so they must be purged.

When the Ming Dynasty is here, the interests of Yanshan officials and government officials will be there.

Therefore, in the corruption cases of Yanshan officials, most of them used bad rules to obtain illegal income.

Even if they resell disaster relief food in the same way, Yanshan officials can at least keep the victims alive, but the corrupt officials of the old system don't care.

This does not mean that corrupt officials in Yanshan are good, but that the education they receive actually affects them.

Zhu Youjian wants to overthrow the "gentry", even if a new one rises after the downfall, at least he has done this before, and for him, he has no regrets...

　The evening update is around nine o'clock

　　
　
(End of this chapter)