(Thank you for your monthly tickets for "Cola Add Some Ice" and "Book Friend 43075447"!)

The night is low and the lights are on, and the entire Nanjing city is shrouded in the night. Nanjing is probably the only city in the world that never sleeps in this era. The Confucius Temple area in Nanjing’s southern city has always been a place where literati and poets linger. It has not weakened in half because of the war. Instead, due to the war, the number of gentry fled in the Huaihe River Basin in the north and Huguang and Jiangxi has increased, bringing a large amount of property, so the Confucius Temple has become even more prosperous than more than ten years ago.

Nanjing was not massacred by the Qing Dynasty because Qian Qianyi surrendered. Later, Zhu Hongsan fought with Hong Chengchou outside the city, so the entire Nanjing city was not affected by war. It has been four years since Zhu Hongsan occupied Nanjing, and in these four years, Nanjing City has become more prosperous than before. All the streets in the city have been renovated, the main streets have been paved with stone slabs, and the ditches on both sides of the road have been newly excavated, and there will be no more mud on sunny days, gray and rainy days.

The lives of millions of citizens in Nanjing became happier and happier. Zhu Hongsan's arrival brought new policies. The country no longer concentrated foreign trade in the hands of the Maritime Bureau as before, but instead let all employees go. The country only charged 20-1 customs duties on the docks.

The country's relaxation of foreign trade has brought about the great development of overseas trade. Now Nanjing is filled with white rice, fragrant wood, coal, Qiongzhou ironware, Luzon's fish skin, fish glue, banana and other tropical fruits, as well as the strange-shaped wheat and sweet potatoes transported from Guangdong. Although this kind of thing is not delicious, it is better than cheap. So living in Nanjing, as long as you have money, you can live like an emperor. If you don't have money, there are still a few piles of wheat and sweet potatoes to eat, at least you won't starve to death.

If you are a refugee from the north, it is easier. Just go to the private camp outside the city to report, and you will have a job for you every day, and you will be sure to have two meals a day, one is sparse, and you can still eat meat every five days. If you don’t want to stay in the private camp, you can join the army if you want something. Zhu Hongsan’s new army treatment is excellent. He eats comparable to that of a small landlord in the local area. He can eat three dry meals a day and eats meat at every meal. In addition to this, the most important thing is that if you make military achievements on the battlefield, you can get ten acres of land anywhere in the country. The greater the merits, the more you make.

Of course, you can do it if you don’t want to go to the battlefield. As long as you can endure hardships, you can take the Guan family’s boat to cross the ocean to Luzon and Annan. The rice ripens four times a year, and each person can get 50 acres of land off the boat. This temptation is too great.

Thanks to the good national policies, Nanjing has not frozen to death in winter for two consecutive years, and rumors of peace and prosperity have begun among the people.

Of course, this kind of prosperity is inseparable from the emperor Zhu Hongsan. In fact, the reason is very simple. Zhu Hongsan knew that he was just a township cadre, so it might be good to be a little cautious, but it was really not good to govern the country. So when he was in Guangdong, Zhu Hongsan set a basic national policy, which was actually a reform and opening up by the chief designer of the later generations.

In addition to nationalizing the salt and iron, Zhu Hongsan will relax all other industries, and even foreign trade controlled by the formerly explicit ones will be liberalized. As long as you have funds and ships, you can go overseas and transport them back to the court. The court only sets up customs at the port and collects one-twentieth of the tariffs. And cancels the banknotes across the country and only collects taxes once at the source of logistics.

In this way, the price of goods has dropped significantly, but due to the expansion of the base, customs duties are still increasing by 10% each year.

According to the GDP of later generations, Zhu Hongsan now has an annual economic growth rate of more than 20% in his jurisdiction, which is very amazing.

One benefit of the increase in foreign trade is that the scholars in Nanzhili returned to their hearts. Although the scholars in Nanzhili were a little criticized by the emperor Zhu Hongsan because of Ma Mingyuan's new policy in the past few years, the subsequent full liberalization of foreign trade completely eliminated the dissatisfaction of these great gentry and landlords.

The foreign trade flagship products of Nanzhili are of course silk and porcelain. During the Wanli period, there were more than 100,000 weavers in Suzhou, and now it has grown to more than 300,000. There were 50,000 and 600,000 weavers in Suzhou and Hangzhou, monopolizing 70% of China's silk industry. With silver, the great gentry was of course very satisfied with the new emperor.

However, this kind of scholar-in-law is based on seizing the interests of the upstarts of the Huguang faction. The increase in foreign trade in Nanzhili will inevitably squeeze Guangdong's trade volume, and Guangdong's silk and porcelain are concentrated in the hands of the Huguang faction and the Guangdong faction. In the three years since Zhu Hongsan went to Guizhou to quell the rebellion, some people in the Huguang faction began to join forces with their former rivals, Guangdong faction, and were preparing to suppress the emerging forces of the Zhejiang faction.

In the past, the leader of the Guangdong faction was Chen Zizhuang, but he was framed and kicked out of the cabinet by Ma Mingyuan four years ago. Now the officials of the Guangdong faction in the court are all low- and middle officials, and the biggest one is Chen Bangyan, the governor of Guangxi. So these Guangdong gentry found another Guangdong native, which is Zhang Jiayu, who was born in Dongguan, Guangdong.

The Zhang family was originally a big landlord in Dongguan, and the basic interests of the Guangdong faction were consistent with those of the Guangdong faction. At the same time, because Zhang Jiayu was the prince's teacher and Tianran was an ally with Ma Mingyuan, the arduous task of restoring relations with the Huguang faction fell on Zhang Jiayu.

Zhang Jiayu was demoted to Jiujiang as the prefect for offending the governor of Huguang Liu Silai. However, because he spoke for the prince at the Wuchang wharf, Liu Silai finally said good things to Zhang Jiayu in front of the emperor. Therefore, when the emperor left Wuchang, he brought Zhang Jiayu back to Nanjing together.

After Zhang Jiayu returned to Nanjing, he immediately went to pay homage to Ma Mingyuan. After entering the house to pay homage, Ma Mingyuan asked, "Yuanzi, why did you have time to come to me today?"

"Yuan Fu, I'm here to report to Yuan Fu if I have something to do!"

Ma Mingyuan smiled indifferently: "Yuanzi, I am now idle at home and no longer a cabinet master, so the name Yuanfu is not right!"

"Haha, Yuan Fu's words are wrong. Your Majesty was forced to remove Yuan Fu from his post at home. All the knowledgeable people in the court know that Yuan Fu's re-activated is right in front of you!"

"Oh? Right in front of you? Yuanzi said it and listen!"

"Yuanfu, now His Majesty has turned to the capital and will be in the Northern Expedition in March next year! What does the Northern Expedition require? Of course it is money, but Yuanfu's elder brother is really not suitable to be the chief assistant. In the three years he was in power, his fiscal revenue has not been moved at all, and it is still several million less than in previous years. Yuanfu is familiar with finance, so he naturally knows that nothing can be done without money, so the official guesses that His Majesty will be in front of him to restore the Yuanfu!"

Ma Mingyuan laughed when he heard Zhang Jiayu say this. Of course he knew what finance is like now. He left Chen Zilong as the Minister of Finance for today.

Ma Jiyuan came to power under the banner of opposing Ma Mingyuan's new policy, so after he came to power, he immediately attracted scholars from Nanzhili and promised that he would definitely protect their rights. This would naturally have the benefits, that is, the entire Nanzhili scholars stood behind Ma Jiyuan, but there were many disadvantages. The biggest one was that the fiscal revenue that year immediately dropped.

The fiscal revenue of Zhu Hongsan Group is very strange now. 80% of the group's revenue comes from Guangdong, while Nanzhili and Zhejiang, which account for the seventh floor of foreign trade, pay less than 20% of the taxes. Among them, most of the taxes in Nanzhili are land taxes, and commercial taxes are not even a bit.

Most of the upstarts in Huguang are not scholars, so they naturally do not have the preferential treatment for scholars. However, the majority of the taxes are paid by the upstarts in Huguang, so naturally these upstarts are not satisfied. In the past three years, many people have come to Ma Mingyuan, hoping that as the head of the Huguang faction, he will stand up and strive for justice for his own people.

Although Ma Mingyuan was dismissed from office and returned home, his followers all held important positions in the court, so he knew very detailed about the matters in the court. However, he was not prepared to talk to Zhang Jiayu in a solid manner. It is true that Zhang Jiayu is a princeling, but his relationship with him, Ma Mingyuan, was not as good as he and Ma Mingyuan.

"Yuanzi, these are all issues that the pavilions should consider. I am no longer in office, so Yuanzi should ask him back!"

After Ma Mingyuan finished speaking, he wanted to serve tea and see the guests. But Zhang Jiayu said, "Yuanfu, Xiaguan just returned from Wuchang. Xiaguan heard something in Wuchang. He heard that Yuanfu's family occupied 100,000 acres of land around Wuchang?"

Ma Mingyuan was still smiling, but when he heard Zhang Jiayu say this, his face immediately sank: "Yuanzi, why are you threatening me?"

"How dare you? But not being a clerk dared not mean that others dared not!"

When Ma Mingyuan heard something from Zhang Jiayu's words, he asked, "Let's say it!"

"Yuan Fu, the lower official is in Wuchang and heard that the Wuchang County Magistrate denounced Huguang upstarts occupying land in Wuchang in front of His Ma family, and the Ma family occupied 100,000 acres!"

Ma Mingyuan was so scared that his face was as white as paper after hearing Zhang Jiayu's words. But he knew that the emperor opposed land annexation. The fundamental purpose of the new policy was to prevent land annexation for scholars. Now that someone sued him, can the emperor let him go?

"Yuanzi, tell me quickly, what did the emperor say?"

Seeing Ma Mingyuan so anxious, Zhang Jiayu smiled and said, "Don't worry, Yuanfu's family is still there. The emperor didn't say anything, but just whipped the royal relative Zhao Dequan!"

Ma Mingyuan felt relieved when he heard Zhang Jiayu say this. As long as the emperor didn't say anything, it would be fine. However, whipping Zhao Dequan means that the emperor was still disgusted with land annexation in his heart. It seemed that he had done something after a while. He sent someone back to his hometown and released tens of thousands of acres of land to avoid quarrel.

Only then did Ma Mingyuan remember that it was the bastard who said bad things about him in front of the emperor. Who was the magistrate of Wuchang? Why couldn't he get along with him?

"Yuanzi, who is the magistrate of Wuchang County? Why can't I get along with me?"
Chapter completed!