Brother Zhu Youxiao

"Clang... clang... clang..."

In the early morning of March, accompanied by the yellow sand in the northwest, the bells of Baishui Village, Jiuyuan County, Shuofang Prefecture, Shaanxi Province were ringing.

When the bell was rung, the originally quiet Baishui Village became lively, and the villagers of each household started a new day.

Those who pull manure, those who plow, those who sow seeds, those who smash clods, those who slip fertilizer, those who accumulate manure, those who cut grass for animals, those who raise manure, those who lead animals, those who water the ground, those who mow...

In a small village that has only been newly established for six years, there are many things to do.

Although it's already March, it's still a bit chilly in this Hetao land.

Outside the village, unlike the green mountains and green waters in the south, the whole world is actually a hazy yellow turbidity, which is even more difficult to see around than the smog of later generations.

"Hurry up, the second team! This year it's your job to plant trees, don't be lazy!"

"Stealing chickens is lazy! They are all looking for work guys!"

"As long as you are dawdling like this, you will be knocked down by a dog if you eat shit..."

"Ha ha ha ha……"

The vulgar words resounded in the drying yard in the village, but no one cared, even those who were scolded raised their voices and laughed in response.

The reason why it is so peaceful, in the final analysis, is because of the comfortable life.

Although Baishui Village belongs to Shaanxi, but because it is outside the customs, the policy is to use the collective reclamation policy stipulated by the imperial court.

The whole village is based on the production team, with one team in each village, one team with ten groups, and each group with ten households.

In terms of policy, such production teams control the means of production in the village, which is simply the land, while the village officials control the animal power.

Although it is said to be mastered, the village official is actually responsible for counting the livestock power such as cattle, draft horses, mules, and mules every day. It is the members of the production team who actually lead the animal power to work.

There are a total of 96 households in Baishui Village, with 530 seven people in the village, and 55 seven males who are adults but under the age of 210.

What the seven men in 210 have to do is to wait for the captain to ring the clock every day, and then follow the blackboard at the door of the village official's office to participate in today's collective labor.

The labor in the village can be said to be more or less.

The number of people in each group is different, and the things responsible are also different.

Those with a large number of people are responsible for reclaiming raw land, and those with few people are responsible for dredging water conservancy facilities, dredging silted canals, and cleaning up sediment.

The men are mainly responsible for doing these things, while the women are responsible for growing vegetables. In addition, after the production team goes to work, they prepare pots and stoves in the drying yard at the entrance of the village, and deliver meals to the men after warming up.

Just like today's Baishui Village, the men put on horse-drawn carts, pulled up working tools, large and small flat carts, drove the cattle, and set off to the cultivated land outside the village.

Baishui Village is located on the north bank of the Yellow River in the south of Baotou in later generations, and lives by the Xiaobai River, a tributary of the Yellow River.

The Xiaobai River is not wide, only more than ten meters wide and more than ten miles long, but it feeds two villages, Baishui Village and Baihe Village.

Baishui Village is on the west bank, and Baihe Village is on the east bank, and the two villages do not interfere with each other.

Outside the customs, there is no such thing as grabbing water, because all the water conservancy facilities are basically built by local government employees, and how to divide the water is a matter for the government, and the people only care about farming.

The villagers of Baishui Village came out of the village in mighty force, and what appeared before their eyes were three different pieces of land.

The land at the entrance of the village has been reclaimed by the villagers of Baishui Village over the years. Although the villagers of Baishui Village moved the village from Yan'an Mansion to Shuofang Mansion only ten years after Tianqi, they are not slow to work.

In four years, they have developed more than 400 mu of cultivated land in this Hetao land.

Although in this land of Hetao, due to the cooling problem of the small glacier, the production of food crops has been severely reduced, but the yield of the field can reach eight buckets of rice per mu, and the yield of sweet potatoes can also be about six stones per mu.

Although the villagers of Baishui Village can't eat rice every meal, at least they won't go hungry.

As long as you don't starve and live with a head, no one is willing to rebel, and the so-called head is the second of the three pieces of land.

On the south side of Shudi, the second piece of land is a plowed land with an area of ​​more than [-] mu.

This is the raw land reclaimed by the villagers of Baishui Village before winter. This year, what the villagers have to do is to pile up manure for two months, and then wait until May to plant crops on it.

As for the land further south, there are stretches of grasslands.

These grasslands are the objects that Baishui Village will reclaim, and they are collectively called habitats.

The endless grassland is enough to reclaim tens of thousands of acres of land, but judging from the current situation of Baishui Village, if the population does not increase, the entire village can only plant [-] acres of arable land at most. Ten thousand mu is absolutely out of control.

But these words are far away. For the villagers of Baishui Village, what they have to do now is to cultivate land and open up wasteland.

When they came to the intersection of the turned land and the raw land, the three groups with the largest number of people first set up camp, set up pots and stoves, set up a grass hut for this year's rest, spread last year's wheat straw inside, and then started to work.

There are a total of [-] cattle and [-] horses in Baishui Village. In Baishui Village without machinery, these animals are the best helpers for farming and land reclamation.

The captain of Baishui Village divided the cattle, fifty to those who planted ripe land, twenty to those who plowed the land, and the remaining ten cattle and sixteen horses were given to Kai. habitat.

This is not to say that raw land needs less animal power, but that for the villagers, when sowing in spring, ripe land is more important than plowing land, and plowing land is more important than raw land.

Therefore, the raw land has the least animal power.

But when the busy farming season is over, all the animal power will be used to reclaim the raw land, and it is already May and June.

On the raw land, since there is no machinery, the reclamation of the land is all done manually, and the turf and gravel cleared from the raw land are pulled away entirely by flatbed trucks powered by animals.

The gravel and turf are loaded separately, and the gravel is generally not thrown away, but is pulled to the vicinity of the village for use when a family needs to build a new house.

As for the turf, they will be pulled not far away to be piled up and burned to become the most affordable plant fertilizer.

In this way, the whole field is crowded with people, it can be said that it is in full swing.

"Eat, eat!"

After all, it was farm work. Although it was only an hour, many people were already hungry because most of them hadn't eaten when they went out.

When it was time for Chen, the women of the village came to the field with drawers of breakfast in carts pulled by horse-drawn horses.

In this age when there is not much oil and meat, people who want to fill their stomachs have to eat more food, and farming is very labor-intensive, so people who farm the land naturally eat a lot.

It took three horse-drawn carts to bring the meals for more than 200 men. Seeing this, the men also consciously lined up.

But where there are people, there are classes, and where there are classes, there are privileges.

As the captain and team leader of the production team, they are naturally privileged people.

Just like when the team members are all working now, only the captain can sit in the tent, and the captain of Baishui Village is also a person with prestige in the whole village.

It's just that compared to other villages where the captains are all older village elders, the captain of the production team in Baishui Village is particularly young.

"Captain Sun, it's time to eat!"

When a team leader opened the tent, what appeared in front of him was a young man sitting in a shaded tent reading a book.

The man raised his head upon hearing the sound, his appearance was very ordinary, but even though he was in the countryside, he combed his hair meticulously.

"You bring the food over here."

"okay!"

As soon as Captain Sun opened his mouth, the group leader left the tent with a smile. After a while, he returned to the tent with the breakfast covered with a wooden plate of rough cloth. After putting the breakfast away, he pulled away the thick cloth.

Although Daming's productivity has improved a lot due to the industrial revolution, for Baishui Village, refined grains are not something that can be eaten every day, so when the coarse cloth is pulled away, what appears in front of their eyes are two boiled eggs and a fist-sized boiled sweet potatoes, and four sweet potato steamed buns.

"..." Looking at the food on this plate, the young man frowned, and then said:

"Okay, you go and eat yours, I will settle the accounts with the village first."

"Hey!" The team leader retreated after hearing this, and the young man in the tent also picked up a sweet potato bun and squinted his eyes after he left.

"My grandson Kewang won't eat this kind of miscellaneous grains for the rest of his life..."

A sentence from the young man exposed his identity, and he was also one of the few figures in the peasant uprising army in the late Ming Dynasty who were good at governing the country.

Although in the current Ming Dynasty, Sun Kewang did not rebel and followed the migration team to the north to Hetao, but those who want to get ahead will always find ways to find opportunities.

The opportunity that Sun Kewang was eyeing was Enke, and to participate in Enke, he had to read and write, buy teaching materials, and raise travel expenses.

For a hungry person who moved north, these things basically have nothing to do with Sun Kewang, but the method is thought up by people, and the opportunities are also found by people.

After moving to the north, when everyone was working step by step to cultivate land, Sun Kewang had already started fishing in the Baishui River, cultivating the fields, and buying books to learn to read.

Although he missed the official school, his literacy status also made him the leader of the production team.

Later, as he led the team to reclaim more and more land, and he himself was considered strong, he soon became the captain of Baishui Village, leading the villagers to reclaim wasteland.

The reason why Baishui Village is well-organized in reclamation is because he arranged it properly, and he also used his status as the captain of the production team to sell grain, and even withheld part of the money to buy teaching materials.

In two years, he took advantage of his status as the captain to obtain many cornerstones on his way forward.

It's just that as time goes by, his age is also increasing.

He was 14 years old in the 22th year of Apocalypse, and it would not be his style to wait any longer.

Therefore, this year will also be the day when he prepares to participate in ENCO.

It is now February, and there are only less than eight months before Enke in October. Sun Kewang must absorb all the knowledge in Yanshan textbooks before he can pass the exam.

Enke has been developing for ten years, and various rules have gradually improved.

In the past, Enke could only be carried out in Beijing City, but since the tenth year of Tianqi, Enke began to be carried out in provincial capitals.

Of course, if students want to go to Beijing to participate in Enke in Beijing, that is also possible.

However, for students from poor backgrounds, most of them choose to participate in Enke in their own province.

Sun Kewang knew very well that if he wanted to get ahead, he could only go to the capital to participate in Enke, and the distance from Baishui Village to the capital was [-] li. Even if he rented the village's draft horse to go there, it would take him at least a month.

Including the preparation time, he will have to be on the road and the capital for at least two months, so the time left for him is only half a year.

After the autumn harvest, he had to set off immediately, and he had to be prepared to burn the boat.

His current hard study is for the sake of getting ahead in the future, and he has eaten enough of these miscellaneous grains!

Thinking of this, Sun Kewang tightened his grip on the sweet potato buns in his hand.

At the same time, on the first day of February, Li Dingguo also went to the Shuntian Bingjiafu School in Beijing to study.

Since the Bingjiafu School is managed like a military camp, it is inevitable that Li Dingguo needs to live on campus.

In this way, Zhu Youjian will not see him for more than half a year.

Therefore, on the way to school, Zhu Youjian spared time and personally sent Li Dingguo to the gate of the school.

"After entering the government school, don't be arrogant and arrogant. You must know that there are people beyond others and others beyond others."

"After all, the school term is five years, of which the first three years are to study theory, and the last two years are to practice in the army."

"Now you are 14 years old, you have to learn to take care of yourself."

On the carriage, Zhu Youjian tidied up the bookcase for Li Dingguo, and seeing him carrying the bookcase on his back and saluting, he couldn't help nodding his head slightly.

Li Dingguo is very similar to Zhu Youjian in temperament, not as stubborn and reckless as in history, but very calm.

"Your Highness, remember to rest more."

Facing Zhu Youjian's satisfied eyes, Li Dingguo smiled, but he couldn't say much comfort, he could only tell Zhu Youjian to rest more.

Zhu Youjian didn't say anything when he saw this, but turned his head to signal that he should get out of the car.

"Retire, kid..."

Li Dingguo carried the bookcase on his back, bowed deeply to express his gratitude, and then turned around and got out of the car to leave.

Zhu Youjian sat by the window of the carriage, watching Li Dingguo get out of the carriage, and walked towards the gate of the Bingjiafu School where the crowd was sparse. He didn't turn his head until his back disappeared completely, and while drawing the curtains, he used the bed The iron buckle on the side knocked on the carriage.

The coachman who felt the vibration and sound started to drive back, and Zhu Youjian also turned his attention to the mountain of memorials on the table in front of him.

14 years after the time entered the apocalypse, the drought in the world was out of control as Zhu Youjian expected.

During the first month, the number of rains in the northern provinces can be counted on the fingers, while the southern provinces are experiencing disasters such as typhoons and floods.

On the first day of February in the 14th year of the Apocalypse, Shaanxi, Hexi, Shanxi, Henan, Huguang, Nanzhili, Shandong and other six provinces in Beijing had early frost in autumn last year, no snow in winter, no rain this spring, and drought began to appear.

Speaking of provinces alone, I feel that the scale of the drought is not small, but fortunately, among the six provinces in Beijing, only Henan and Shaanxi are in drought in the whole province, while Shanxi and Hexi are half of the provinces experiencing drought, and the remaining Nanzhili and Shandong , Huguang, and those state capitals adjacent to Henan suffered from drought.

Despite the severe drought, Zhu Youjian didn't have to worry about them because the people in Henan and Shandong had food reserves. Even Chen Qiyu, the chief minister of Henan, and Wang Wei, the chief minister of Shandong, said that there were plenty of food in Changping and they could help other provinces.

As for Shaanxi, Mei Zhihuan, the chief envoy of Shaanxi, also said that the Weihe River, Jinghe River, Yellow River, and Han River will not be hindered, and the spring farming in Hetao, Guanzhong, and Hanzhong in Shaanxi will not be affected, and they will be self-sufficient this year.

Huguang and Nanzhili also indicated that they could provide disaster relief on their own without the imperial court distributing money and food. Therefore, it is Hexi and Shanxi provinces that really need the attention of Zhu Youjian and the Ming court.

The drought-stricken places in Hexi are mainly in Longxi and Xining, where there are millions of victims, and most of them are the gathering places where the victims from Shaanxi moved to Hexi in recent years.

As for Shanxi, the good news is that Datong and Taiyuan were not affected by the disaster. The bad news is that except for these two prefectures, all others were affected.

Compared with the drought situation in Shanxi province last year, the situation this year is a bit more optimistic, not only the drought situation, but also the population.

After a year of migration last year, the population of Shanxi dropped from 800 million to 680 million, and it is still migrating.

Although the food consumed is the same, the better news is the repair of the train.

As of the first day of February, among the ten railways currently under construction in Ming Dynasty, the Beijing-Liaoning Railway has been repaired to Daningfu in Liaodong, the Beijing-Hangzhou Railway and the Beijing-Guangzhou Railway have been completed, and the railway from Beijing to Kaifeng, Henan is already in operation.

In addition, the Beijing-West Railway, the Jinglong Railway, and the Jingcheng-Xi'an section of the Jingjia Railway have been repaired and put into operation.

In addition, Apocalypse began construction in 12, and the railway from Lushun to Shenyang was completed, and the railway from Shenyang to Jilin, Songjiangfu, Beishan, and Modong has just started.

In layman's terms, within the Great Wall, all railway sections north of the Huaihe River in the Qinling Mountains run through.

Overseas grain can be shipped to the four Beijing provinces of Beizhili, Liaodong, Shanxi, Henan, and Shaanxi through the two ports of Lushun and Tianjin.

Daming's railways were piled up by manpower. There is no way to do this, but its effect has already appeared.

After the grain from Yingzhou arrived in Tianjin last year, it only took six days for Daming to transport 200 million shi of grain from Yingzhou to Taiyuan, Shanxi and Xi'an, Shaanxi.

As for the 400 million stone grains sent to Lushun, it took less than three days to transport them all to Liaoyang, where the railway was built at that time.

If calculated according to the construction progress of other railways in Northeast China, Songhua County will be connected to the Beijing railway network by the 18th year of the Apocalypse at most.

The complete point is the 18th year of the apocalypse, but in fact, when the railway is built to Jilin, the grain in the Songnen Plain can be fed back to the customs, so the fastest is the 16th year of the apocalypse.

The use of railways has greatly reduced the loss of grain transportation in Daming. Zhu Youjian has prepared different plans for the drought in Hexi and Shanxi this time.

First of all, Hexi has received more than 200 million people who migrated from Shaanxi, and with the migration of Uzbek people, the current number of people in Hexi is as many as 500 million.

For these more than 500 million people, Zhu Youjian will not encourage them to move before recovering the Western Regions.

Fortunately, in Zhu Youjian's memory, Hexi belongs to the fringe provinces of severe drought in the late Ming Dynasty. If it hadn't been for the migration of 200 million Shaanxi residents from Shaanxi to Hexi, of which 100 million lived in Longyou, the local disaster would not have been so severe. .

The disaster situation in Hexi is not yet apparent. Judging from the price of food, the people still have some food in reserve, but it should not be much.

Judging from the progress of the Jingxi and Jingjia railways, around October this year, the railway will reach the area of ​​Mei County in Guanzhong.

There is a total of more than 600 miles from Mei County to Longxi. The loss of food by land is certain, but not too much.

When in October, the food from Yingzhou arrives in Tianjin, is transported by railway to Mei County, and then transported from Mei County to Longyou, then the famine in Hexi can be suppressed.

Therefore, for Hexi, the main focus is on disaster relief and immunity, while for Shanxi it is the old rule...relocation.

Sitting in the carriage, Zhu Youjian wrote down his thoughts with pen and ink.

While writing, he also opened the yellow books handed in by the four northeastern provinces in the first month of this year.

"Modong Province, more than 140 people, more than 290 acres of farmland..."

"Beishan Province, more than 32 people, farming... more than 56 mu."

"In Donghai Province, there are more than 180 million people, and more than 530 million mu of farmland."

"In Liaodong Province, there are more than 620 million and [-] people, and more than [-] million mu of cultivated land."

"The four provinces have a total of about 90 million people and about 100 million acres of arable land..."

Zhu You checked the situation of the provinces at the beginning of the year and closed the file with satisfaction.

In general, Zhu Youjian's most satisfactory policy was his feat of moving 200 million refugees from the Central Plains to Liaodong in the first and second years of Tianqi.

If he hadn't moved these people to Liaodong, the Northeast might still have a population of less than 200 million and arable land of only 500 million.

Regardless of the population and cultivated land, the situation in the Northeast is very good. The only limitation is the reduced grain production under the low temperature of the Little Glacier.

Of the 100 million mu of cultivated land, nearly 600 million mu of cultivated land has been cultivated for less than three years, and the yield per mu is no more than four buckets, while the yield of the other 500 million mu of cultivated land is no more than seven buckets per mu.

Therefore, the four northeastern provinces seem to have a lot of arable land, but there is still a big gap in food.

Yingzhou had to supply at least 400 million shimi wheat to the Northeast every year, otherwise famine would break out in the area.

Not only that, as the people in Shanxi continue to migrate to the Northeast, the food gap in the Northeast will continue to increase.

However, judging from the situation in Shanxi, at most 200 million people will be relocated to the Northeast. The remaining population, even if there is a severe drought, will be enough to feed the people of Shanxi unless the land is far away.

"The population of each province must be well controlled, especially the four provinces in the south of the Yangtze River..."

Zhu Youjian dealt with the disaster in the north, and then set his sights on a booklet marking the four provinces in the south of the Yangtze River.

In one year, more than [-] million hidden households were found in the four southern provinces of Zhili, Zhejiang, Jiangxi, and Huguang in the south.

The paper population of the four provinces reached 13 million at the end of the 900th year of Tianqi, but Zhu Youjian knew that this was only a part.

The population peak of the four provinces should be about six years after the apocalypse, with at least 8000 million people, accounting for six tenths of the real population of Ming Dynasty.

Subsequent droughts and floods have led to a decline in the number of migrants. However, based on the fact that less than 400 million people have moved out of the four provinces in the past ten years, the population of the four provinces is still at least [-] million.

According to future generations, the peak population of the two capitals and thirteen provinces of the Ming Dynasty was 5000 million. The current four provinces in the south of the Yangtze River still account for more than [-]% of the population of the Ming Dynasty, which is only [-]% lower than the [-]% in the Hongwu period.

Zhu Youjian wanted to further relocate the local population, supplementing the population of Nanzhou, Luchuan, Jiaozhi, Jiugang, Yingzhou, as well as the population of overseas feudal clans and Qi State with the population of Jiangnan.

If you want to migrate, you must find the right opportunity, and this opportunity is a severe drought.

Relying on the drought in the south of the Yangtze River in the past two years, Zhu Youjian moved many people away, and he will still have to rely on severe drought in the following days.

Although the floods in the south of the Yangtze River this year have greatly affected, only Nanzhili and Zhejiang were affected, while Huguang and Jiangxi, which are major grain-producing provinces, were not affected.

This year, the population migration of the four provinces in the south of the Yangtze River will inevitably decline, but starting next year, the south of the Yangtze River will encounter rounds of droughts.

Seize this window period, and then move enough people, this is what Zhu Youjian has to do.

Thinking of this, Zhu Youjian found out the memorials of Daming Tianjin Shipyard.

On it, he really saw the progress of steam engine ship manufacturing reported by Tianjin Shipyard.

Since the steam engine ship has been successfully tested, Tianjin Shipyard placed an order for thirty [-]-ton cargo ships in one go.

Thirty steam cargo ships, loaded with coal and water, can transport at most 3 to 10,000 people at one time. Even if they can make four trips to Southeast Asia in a year, they can only transport [-]+ people. This capacity is far from enough.

The first sign of the drought in the south of the Yangtze River will be next year, and the full outbreak will be the year after next. The time given to Zhu Youjian is only two years, so we must hurry up.

"Build [-] more ships..."

Feeling the lack of time, Zhu Youjian took up his pen and wrote these five characters on the memorial to Tianjin Shipyard, then closed the memorial and continued to deal with other memorials.

For Zhu Youjian, the time he can stay in Daming is running out.

In this limited time, he had to finish everything he had to do, and then go to Qi State to explore how to create a new system in line with Ming Dynasty.

The second update is at 05:30 pm, and the countdown to the end of the book is one month