Brother Zhu Youxiao

Chapter 556
"Inciting people to rebel? Hehe..."

"King Qi is probably suffering from madness..."

"It is said that wisdom is too early to die. Although King Qi doesn't have it, but now it seems..."

On the 29th day of the first month, when the new issue of "Da Ming Pao" was released, everyone from the emperor to the traffickers and pawns, from the government and the public, was in the column of "people's livelihood". Zhu Youjian was stunned by his bold speech in Fengzhou County. .

Early in the morning, there were many mocking officials who were not afraid of death in the Wenhua Palace.

Faced with these ridicules, passing Chengde and Yanshan officials frowned, but did not say anything.

After all, even people like them who have received a new type of education feel that His Royal Highness King Qi's words are a bit too much.

There are also pages about loyalty to the emperor and patriotism in the government textbooks, which shows that Zhu Youjian wanted to maintain the Ming Dynasty.

But after he said this, what would the officials below think.

Indeed, from the perspective of honest officials, it is not impossible to let the people rebel and bring corrupt officials to justice. As long as the people are not used by those who want to, it will be fine from "telling people's grievances" to "pulling the flag to rebel".

But the problem is that in the world of the Ming Dynasty, few officials dare to say that they are clean, and it can even be said that even the emperor himself dare not say that he is clean.

In this situation, Zhu Youjian, as the king of Qi in the Ming Dynasty, the biggest landlords of this era, actually encouraged his own "cow and horse tenants" to rebel?

Fortunately, the emperor and the Beijing officials said that what Zhu Youjian said was to put the grassroots officials on fire, which was more fatal than Zhu Yuanzhang's "Da Gao".

If the common people rebelled after being wronged, then judging from the situation of grassroots officials, it would be no wonder that they were all hanged from the gates of the city.

Therefore, when many officials came to the Wenhua Palace to be on duty, the first thing they did today was to write impeachment memorials and collectively impeach King Qi.

"Long live, the memorials are here, and they are all impeaching His Royal Highness King Qi and the "Da Ming Pao"..."

When the memorials were sent to the Hall of Mental Cultivation in the Qianqing Palace, Wei Zhongxian spoke cautiously, for fear of offending the emperor.

What he didn't expect was that Zhu Youxiao didn't mean to be angry, but glanced at the memorial and said:

"Save the fire for the winter."

Obviously, he did not intend to read these memorials, but his doing so did not mean that he supported his brother's remarks.

After all, his first identity is the emperor, and his second is Zhu Youjian's elder brother.

The reason why he is not angry is because such remarks do not offend him at all.

Recently, he read "On the Fate of Nations" and "On Economics" written by his younger brother, coupled with his own experience as an emperor, and references from history books, he basically figured out his younger brother's policies.

Consolidating the imperial power of the Ming Dynasty is absolute, but this does not mean that Zhu Youjian will exploit the people.

In fact, the conflict between the interests of the emperor and the people is not that big, but not as great as the conflict between the emperor and the ministers, and the ministers and the people.

What are the emperor's needs?
It is nothing more than establishing his prestige as the emperor and making the dynasty stronger.

All of this is the word "continuation".

Zhu Youjian has seen through it. He believes that all dynasties cannot last forever, and the collapse of Ming Dynasty will happen sooner or later.

With the size of Daming, if you want to collapse, you can only start from the inside first, and internal collapse is often due to the uneven distribution of internal benefits.

Whether it is the Liu family's Han dynasty, the Sima family's Jin dynasty, the Yang family's Sui dynasty, the Li family's Tang dynasty, or the Zhao family's Song dynasty, they often collapse first within themselves.

As long as the internal order collapses, coupled with the invasion of foreign enemies, regardless of whether the invasion is successful or not, the dynasty will basically come to the end of its life.

Xianbei in the Han Dynasty, Wuhu in the Jin Dynasty, Huihe, Tubo, and Nanzhao in the Tang Dynasty, Liao, Jin, and Yuan in the Song Dynasty, and Houjin in the Ming Dynasty...

Some of these foreign enemies were successful, some were not, but in any case, they all consumed a great deal of the power of the dynasty itself.

The difference in this point is whether the dynasty can drag down foreign enemies in a short period of time and give the next dynasty time to develop.

Before the Yellow Turban Uprising, the Han Dynasty boiled the sandalwood locust trees of Xianbei to death, and the Tang Dynasty boiled Huihe, Tubo, and Nanzhao to death.

The Song Dynasty boiled Liao to death, but an internal uprising broke out and the Kingdom of Jin went south, while the Ming Dynasty faced more difficult problems than the Song Dynasty.

The Ming Dynasty was an internal rebellion and an external rebellion. The environment also included severe drought in the north and floods in the south.

The difference between these four dynasties plus the Jin Dynasty is that the Song and Ming dynasties failed to kill several heroes of an external regime, but the Han and Tang dynasties did.

If Tan Shihuai hadn't died of illness at the age of 45, what would the Three Kingdoms have to face during the Yellow Turban Rebellion at the end of Han Dynasty?
One fought against Dingling in the north, retreated to Fuyu in the east, and attacked Wusun in the west. County", rejected Emperor Huan of the Han Dynasty's "king and marriage", and the powerful Xianbei who controlled 40 strings.

If such a powerful force goes south while taking advantage of the Yellow Turban Rebellion, judging from the previous disastrous defeats of the Han army, even if Wuhuluanhua does not appear, the Central Plains will remain chaotic for a long time.

Every dynasty will encounter internal and external troubles at the end. Only when it can resist the foreign troubles, solve the internal troubles, and then integrate its forces to deal with the foreign troubles can the dynasty continue.

However, at this point, even the Han and Tang Dynasties only achieved the first step, and to a large extent they relied on the see-saw to end foreign enemies.

The long-term external see-saw has also led to greater internal troubles, and in the future it is not strong enough to solve internal troubles.

The Han Dynasty could not resolve internal conflicts with Xianbei, and the Tang Dynasty could not resolve internal conflicts with Hebei.

Daming is very strong right now, not only has solved most of the foreign enemies, but also entered the first industrial revolution.

Relying on the tractors of the industrial revolution, it seems that the amount of arable land in Ming Dynasty will increase endlessly in hundreds of years, but does this mean that Ming Dynasty has no internal conflicts?
The internal contradictions of the past dynasties are land annexation, and land annexation is the uneven distribution of benefits.

Although Ming Dynasty will own more land after entering the industrial revolution, the problem is that different eras have different interests and needs.

In feudal times, land was the means of production, but when land and food were sufficient, people would pursue other things.

With the progress of the times, people themselves have become the means of production, and then money will replace land and become a conflict of interests in the new era.

Therefore, in the new era, when the gap between the rich and the poor is too large, the Ming Dynasty will also encounter what it has encountered in the past dynasties, that is, the uneven distribution of benefits.

It is impossible to solve this problem, and Zhu Youxiao may not have time to live to the stage of uneven distribution of benefits, so Zhu Youxiao can only accept his fate.

As far as Zhu Youjian's current territory is used with tractors, Daming will not encounter land mergers and excessive gaps between rich and poor for at least 50 years.

As long as there are no external enemies and internal conflicts, it is difficult to fail with Daming's size.

Since there is food to eat, it is naturally impossible for the people to rebel.

The people will not rebel, and there will be no internal conflicts.

Since there were no internal conflicts, Zhu Youxiao didn't have to stop his younger brother's remarks, because there was no soil for rebellion in Daming right now.

Besides, he didn't have the ability to take back and destroy some of his brother's words.

Not to mention the "Daming Daily", among the government textbooks alone, some textbooks compiled by Zhu Youjian are very unfavorable to the rule of Ming Dynasty.

Thinking of this, Zhu Youxiao thought of Zhu Ciran, his big brother.

According to his character, I am afraid that after a hundred years, he will not destroy some words of his respected uncle.

If father and son can't do it, then this matter can only be left to his grandson.

"Ugh……"

Zhu Youxiao sighed, bowed his head and continued to deal with the memorial.

It's just that while he was dealing with the memorial, far away in Fangshi, Yiwu County, Jinhua Prefecture, Zhejiang, the slightly fairer Zhu Ciran was holding a bowl of morning tea on the street of Fangshi, squatting on the side of the road and drinking.

He squatted down and looked at the pedestrians on the street, and the antique streets of Yiwu became the background board.

There are still traditional morning tea stalls on this long street with a sense of age. Many people sit and drink tea in the shops, but Zhu Ciran can only squat on the side of the road with Liu Shun because he can't grab a seat.

"In charge! Another bowl of tea and two pastries!"

After drinking the tea in his hand, Zhu Ciran turned his head and shouted towards the shop.

"I'm coming!"

The owner of the store responded loudly, but the whole person was busy making tea and making pastries.

Seeing this, Zhu Ciran could only yell "I'll do it myself", then got up and walked into the shop.

It is said that this morning tea shop has been open for more than 400 years, and its ancestors were Han people who fled south when the Northern Song Dynasty fell.

Although Zhu Ciran didn't know whether the news was true or not, judging from the "rusty" whitewashed walls in the store and the shadowed walls caused by piles of firewood, all of this seemed to be a long time ago.

After taking morning tea and a plate of pastries, Zhu Ciran took the chair of a guest who had just got up, wiped it with a cloth, then carried the chair back to the door and squatted down.

After placing the chair, he put a plate of pastries in his hand on the chair, and continued eating while looking around.

On the street, the rows of residential houses were built at some unknown time. It has been passed down to this day, and the horse-head walls on the roof have been smoothed and less ostentatious.

On the opposite side of Zhu Ciran, through the walking pedestrians, he saw an old man walking out of a wonton shop with breakfast, sitting on the street by the door with a chair, and simply and quietly eating breakfast .

Right now is Chenshi, and Chenshi is also the busiest time in Yiwu's street market.

Looking along the street, the shops on both sides of the old street are full of people, and the shops and streets are full of people.

The sound of tea tasting, bird chirping, iron hammering, and coal-burning stove sounds in an endless stream, which is very pleasant to listen to.

Although Yiwu is a small county, Zhejiang is a large province with a large number of merchants, so there are many tourists and merchants passing through Yiwu.

Many merchants often brought their goods to the city for trading before dawn, discussing whose goods were better and who made more money today. In short, the "information" exchanged every day was at the dinner table in the morning.

Also because of their chatting behavior, sometimes there are not enough tables in some shops.

Faced with this situation, some shopkeepers removed a few old wooden door panels to make a shop, pulled up a few benches, and opened another table.

Even if the environment is like this, no one dislikes it.

For example, where Zhu Ciran lives, those old tea lovers drink morning tea and make teahouses as usual, and the environment is not too simple.

Some people, like Zhu Ciran, simply sat on a row of stone piers under the eaves and drank tea leisurely.

The teahouses here don't have specific names, they just hang "teahouse" canvas as a signboard, but they all have their own loyal fans.

In the face of old teahouses, old tea drinkers often choose one or two as their favorite, and then like to bring their own cups and add water to make tea by themselves.

In the steam of tea, Liu Shun thought the cakes were too sweet, so he went to other shops to buy a pair of sesame seed cakes with deep-fried dough sticks, and some other spicy snacks.

Even so, the head of the teahouse didn't say anything to them, but kindly asked if they wanted more tea.

Zhu Ciran has already adapted to such an attitude. It seems that many merchants and hawkers in Zhejiang like to do business with regular customers and cultivate their own regular customers.

Such an attitude makes the market less utilitarian and more serene and leisurely.

Also because of the friendliness of the shopkeeper, here, Zhu Ciran can listen to the important national affairs in the mouths of the tea drinkers, listen to them chat about interesting things in the village and town, and deal with small things in the homeland.

"You say that King Qi is also powerful, and dare to make us mud-legged rebels."

"Hehe... I don't believe there will be rebellion. Who can have nothing to eat these days."

"But the newspapers say that there is not enough food in the north, and we in Zhejiang don't have enough either."

"That's all exaggeration. The government just likes to scare people."

"Those northern barbarians have allocated so much land. As long as they rent out the family's ten mu of land and do odd jobs every year, I don't believe that ten taels of silver is not enough for food."

"That's true... I guess it was written by the court to scare people."

"Hahaha……"

In the teahouse, several men in silk and satin were joking about what Zhu Youjian said in the "Da Ming Pao".

Regarding this, Zhu Ciran and Liu Shun, who were squatting at the door, did not even look at them, nor did they make any moves.

Zhu Ciran really didn't bother to talk to them, while Liu Shun was already used to such ignorant people after such a year.

As long as Zhu Ciran doesn't open his mouth, he won't bother to fix these short-sighted and arrogant villagers.

"Master, you said that Yiwu has been crying for decades, and keeps saying that there is no one left, so what are these guys doing?"

Liu Shun glanced at the group of village folks who were eager to compare and buy silk to wear, and Zhu Ciran also took a look.

"Since the 38th year of Jiajing, Guochao has recruited soldiers in Yiwu more than [-] times, with a total of more than [-] soldiers. Yiwu in the Wanli period was indeed rare in men."

"However, Yiwu has been recuperating for more than [-] years since Yiwu officials went to the shuffle, and it is common to restore the population."

"If you look closely, you can see that the population of Yiwu is indeed smaller than that of other counties in Zhejiang."

Zhu Ciran explained the problem of Yiwu's population, and at the same time finished what he had.

He got up and patted the residue of the pastry on his hands, then walked towards the street.

For Zhu Ciran, he likes to hang out among the people not because he is bored, nor because he thinks it is fun, but because he enjoys the fireworks in the world that cannot be enjoyed in the court.

For a strange tourist like him, if he wants to eliminate the sense of alienation from a strange place, sometimes all he needs is a special shop, a kind smile, or a verbal chat with the local people.

Listen to the gossip of the people’s parents in the alleys, taste the ups and downs of the world in the teahouses and restaurants, taste the rise and fall of the millennium in the gourmet cakes...

All of these made his trip to the south more interesting, and the information he got from it also made him feel that the trip was worthwhile.

As a county, Yiwu also has profound historical and cultural heritage. For example, the morning tea he drank just now originated from Yiwu's nearly thousand-year wharf culture.

Since the Qin Dynasty, Yiwu has become a port town relying on the Yiwu River.

Compared with the street market, the streets with waterways in Yiwu City are full of shops, full of various commodities.

The waterways and boats come and go, and they row towards the Yiwu River where merchants gather.

Zhu Ciran stood on a small bridge. On the bridge, he saw the boatmen passing by, the old man who made the scales, and the bamboo strip maker who sat at the door and weaved bamboo ware...

Regarding these people, he went forward to inquire and chat with them one by one, but compared to the people in the northwest and southwest, the Yiwu dialect and official dialect gave Zhu Ciran a headache.

He couldn't get some things he cared about through normal communication, so he could only find some thirteen or fourteen-year-old teenagers to understand what he wanted to know.

Fortunately, what he wants to know is nothing more than the basic necessities of life of the people and the governance of the local government.

The latter may be a bit embarrassing for this group of teenagers who are one or two years younger than Zhu Ciran, but for the former, they know everything and talk endlessly.

Zhu Ciran quickly got what he wanted, and he also used this to leave Yiwu County, and found more than ten Jinyiwei guarding his bicycle in a teahouse in a market town outside the city.

"Let's go."

Following Zhu Ciran's greeting, the Jinyi guards got on their horses and their cars, and their journey will continue. Zhu Ciran also spent almost a month to understand the situation in Chuzhou and Jinhua. I understand.

The first is the population issue. The paper populations of the two prefectures are 89 and 86 respectively, but after so many days of walking around by Zhu Ciran, he can conclude that the population of the two prefectures is no less than 300 million.

In addition, in terms of the land situation, the land that can be reclaimed as arable land in the two prefectures has already been reclaimed, and most of them are planting cash crops, and the land for growing food is less than half of the total.

If Zhejiang only had more than 1000 million people, it would definitely not be able to achieve this level, so Zhu Ciran made a more certain guess that the population of Zhejiang is around 3000 million.

In addition, from an economic point of view, Zhejiang's wealth is far beyond Zhu Ciran's imagination. This kind of wealth is not the wealth of the common people, but the wealth of the local gentry and the local wealth gap.

Zhejiang has a total of more than 300 million mu of arable land in Daming's "Fish Scale Atlas", but the actual situation is probably 800 million mu.

Although there is so much land, most of it is used by Zhejiang people to plant mulberry trees and cotton.

These mulberry trees were used to raise silkworms, and the silk and cotton were sold by the country gentry to cloth factories all over the country.

The reason why they don't sell to the Huangdian is because once the item enters the Huangdian, 10% tax will be deducted automatically.

In order to avoid the 10% tax, the gentry sold silk and cotton to cloth houses one after another.

As a result, the cotton and silk in the market are insufficient, Huangdian can only increase the purchase price, while Buzhuang sells these silk and cotton to Huangdian at a high price.

It might sound like you're not making any money, but it's clear if you show the specifics.

According to Zhu Ciran's knowledge, the country gentry sold silk and cotton to the cloth shop at the price of three taels per load of silk and two taels per load of cotton, and the cloth shop paid three taels for silk and two taels for cotton Sold to the imperial store.

In this way, even if a tax of [-]% has to be paid, the cloth village can still earn [-] Wen for each load of cotton and silk.

The extra one hundred cash became the cost of the imperial store, and the imperial store had nothing to do with the gentry.

Since the fields of these gentry have been revised as low-grade grain fields in the "Fish Scale Atlas", they only need to pay a symbolic amount of one or two taels of grain and silver after getting a few dozen taels of profit.

These are just some small squires. If they are large squires with hundreds of thousands of acres of land, their annual tax avoidance can reach thousands or tens of thousands of taels.

Adding up these gentry, big and small, Da Ming lost at least one or two million taels a year from them.

If the 200 million taels are collected, they can be 10,000+ teaching salaries, pensions for tens of thousands of retired soldiers, or capital for railway construction...

But the problem is that although the money exists, the court cannot accept it.

Such a situation is irritating, and this is only the tip of the iceberg that Zhu Ciran can see.

Where he can't see, where he can't understand, there are many ways for the squires to avoid taxes.

In addition to tax avoidance, they also violated the law by obtaining a large amount of cement through relationships, or directly asking officials to repair the roads in the countryside to smooth the roads in front of their homes.

Of course, it has more uses than that.

At a cheap price, some people use it to build houses, some use it to build ancestral halls, and some use it to pave ancestral village roads.

Zhu Ciran has seen such a situation more than once.

You must know that Jinhua and Chuzhou are still the middle and lower reaches of the [-] prefectures in Zhejiang. One can imagine what the more prosperous Hangzhou, Ningbo, Shaoxing, Jiaxing, Huzhou and other prefectures will look like.

Of course, in addition to the above, the more important thing is the land merger in Zhejiang.

People in Zhejiang have been working part-time, not because they like it, but because they have no land to cultivate.

The number of military farms in Zhejiang is just that, which is insignificant compared with the huge population.

Over the years of land mergers, nearly [-]% of the land in Zhejiang has been monopolized, and [-]% of the people can only control [-]% of the land in Zhejiang.

In order to survive, they can only become tenants of the gentry.

Those who cannot become tenants can only go to work in the city, because when the land is merged to a certain extent, many gentry who are not satisfied with the present will get involved in business.

They monopolized cloth houses, teahouses, wharves, and mines in the south of the Yangtze River, and countless people without land could only work for them to earn a meager profit.

Such a situation has formed a closed loop, which is very difficult to deal with.

Because of this, Zhu Ciran understood why his uncle asked him to go to the three provinces of Shanxi first, then the three provinces of Southwest China, then Guangdong, Guangxi, Fujian, and finally Jiangnan.

From poor to rich, from easy to difficult...

It may be easy to govern Shanxi, but if you want to govern Jiangnan, which is full of gentry, you need to weigh whether you are qualified enough.

Once the squires in the south of the Yangtze River are cornered, they will jump over the wall in a hurry.

If only in terms of civil uprisings, their influence is not too great. The Sixth Battalion of the Eastern Army Governor's Mansion in Zhejiang alone can suppress all civil uprisings.

The problem is that they not only have appeal and influence among the people, but also have their own spokespersons in temples and even in the army.

If you want to clean them up, you have to think about cleaning up the inside first.

Thinking of this, Zhu Ciran couldn't help doubting himself.

He raised his head and looked at the country road ahead that could not be seen at a glance. Although the bicycle under his feet was walking all the time, compared with this road, he seemed to be standing still.

Should he be like his uncle, a person who deals with the gentry, or a person who compromises with the gentry, so as to maintain the stability of the Ming Dynasty?

Facing this decision, he frowned, and at the same time he couldn't help but think of Zhu Youjian's words in "Da Ming Pao" this morning.

"what should I do……"

　Afternoon update around six o'clock
　　
　
(End of this chapter)