315 [A large area of ??farmland in the south of the Yangtze River has been abandoned]
Nanjing, Qinhuai Flower Street.
Zhu Yuanzhang built the Fule Yuan here, and captured the wives and daughters of enemies or criminal officials to be official prostitutes in the Fule Yuan.
It is specially used for the entertainment of wealthy businessmen to obtain money, and officials are prohibited from entering.
In Fule Yuan, men must wear green headscarves, red waistbands, and furry boots. Women must wear black hats and black regular pants, and are not allowed to wear fancy clothes. When they walk, they can only walk on both sides of the street.
Walk in the middle of the street.
Fule Yuan was moved to the vicinity of Wuding Bridge. From this center, various Qinlou and Chu pavilions began to appear, and eventually it evolved into an entertainment street.
That is, Qinhuai Flower Street.
The funniest thing is Huiguang Temple. This temple was built with leftover materials from the Dabaoen Temple. During the Wanli period, it was surrounded by numerous brothels, which tested the willpower of the monks all day long. In desperation, they had no choice but to move the temple.
Go somewhere else.
Li Xiangjun returned to Flower Street, where she had lived for many years.
This time, Li Xiangjun was accompanied by a team of officials.
"Sister, are you just calling me from the street?" Li Xiangjun asked.
Li Wanchun said with a smile: "You don't have to shout all the time, just take turns, otherwise your voice will become hoarse in just one day."
Two-thirds of the 108 female generals in "The Records of Datong Female Generals" are already married. After getting married, most of them choose to raise their husbands and raise their children. If they are unable to have children, they adopt the children. A few even acquiesce to their husbands taking concubines.
Li Wanchun is one of the few who is not married, she is almost thirty years old, because she has a relatively high vision.
It has been delayed until now.
"Then...then I'll shout." Li Xiangjun said.
Li Wanchun smiled and said: "Shout."
When the official went to post the notice along the street, Li Xiangjun picked up the tin trumpet and shouted: "Sisters and brothers on Qinhuaihua Street, the world is unified, the good and the bad are equal. If you want to be good, don't be afraid of the madam stopping you. If you say you want to stop, you can report it to the official immediately...
…”
It was mid-morning at this time, and many brothels had not yet opened for business.
Li Xiangjun's voice came out, and instantly many windows opened, and then the door was opened, and more than twenty men and women rushed out one after another.
Not only prostitutes, but also turtle teapots.
A man stood on the street, lit a green turban with a candle, took off his red trousers, and walked quickly to Li Xiangjun: "Sisters, I have already heard that King Zhao has good governance, and these days I have been thinking about how to be good.
Woolen cloth."
Li Wanchun said with a smile: "You can go to the county government to settle down first. Once you register, you will be a good man. Even if you still stay in the brothel, you will still be a good man. There are no untouchables under Mr. Zhao's rule."
"It's really good," the man said with a smile, "I don't know what I will do after I become a good man. I can write and do calculations, but I don't understand the Four Books and Five Classics."
Li Wanchun said: "Since I can write and do calculations, I will sign up to take the police officer's exam. Maybe I can become a police officer at the police station."
There are government offices and county offices in Nanjing. These officials have long been rotten. They are gangsters with official status. Many of them will be thrown into mining.
Public security, fire protection, sanitation and other tasks are all handled by the Five City Military and Horse Division. But this organization is also terrible. Many streets in the prosperous and prosperous Nanjing city are dirty and messy, and it is completely up to the neighbors to clean them.
The first thing Zhao Han had to do was to free the slaves and eliminate the distinction between good and bad. Then he recruited local people from lowly backgrounds as servants to improve public security and sanitation in the city.
Li Xiangjun continued to promote along the street, and when he reached a place, Kou Baimen suddenly opened the door and ran out.
"Can prostitutes who have been prostitutes for generations be able to practice good deeds?" Kou Baimen asked anxiously.
Li Xiangjun smiled and said: "Under Mr. Zhao's rule, there is no distinction between good and bad."
Kou Baimen immediately turned around and shouted to the brothel: "Father, mother, come out quickly, so that you can live a serious life from now on!"
My mother is my biological mother, and my father may be my biological father.
Kou Baimen was even worse than Li Xiangjun. Li Xiangjun was born in a family of military officers, while Kou Baimen was a prostitute for generations.
Her father is a musician and her mother is a prostitute. Her registered permanent residence is registered in the Jiaofang Division. Her work in the brothel is an outsourcing business, and she also accepts door-to-door service orders from big customers.
Kou Baimen is fifteen years old this year. She works as a maid for prostitutes. In another year, she should open her business.
Not long after, Kou Baimen's parents came out together.
Li Wanru asked about the situation and said: "You only need to go to the county government to settle down. Once you have the household registration, you will be a good husband. If you want to continue business, you can apply for a singing house and dance pavilion license..."
"No need!" Kou's father said quickly, "I can continue to be a musician to support the family, and my wife and daughter have to make a living."
"It's up to you." Li Wanru said.
Nanjing's urban population is too large and there are a large number of unemployed people. It is impossible for Zhao Han to allocate land to them, and he is temporarily unable to find employment.
We can only clean up the officials who have done many evil things, clean up the local gangsters, and send them all to the mountains to mine. Then the government recruits some civil servants. If you can read a few words, you can take the exam.
As for those who are illiterate, those who have accompanied the soldiers and civilians have returned to their hometowns. Next, they need to transport food from Hunan to provide disaster relief. For the time being, homeless people can be recruited as coolies to transport food.
To be honest, many domestic slaves were good at their jobs but could not find a job for a while. After all, only a few could become civil servants.
Nanjing's Qinhuai Flower Street cannot be banned directly, but each shop must be ordered to apply for a karaoke license. In principle, it is no longer allowed to engage in skin sex business, and the personal freedom of employees is not allowed to be restricted.
Of course, the changes are still obvious.
A large number of prostitutes who have made money, especially those who are famous, choose to live a good life. They have no worries about life, they just want to be decent people.
The propaganda team left, and the Kou family discussed behind closed doors.
Kou's mother said: "I heard from people that the atmosphere in Jiangxi is open-minded and does not dislike being from a lowly family. My daughter is only fifteen years old and is still a virgin, so she will definitely find her husband's family. Senior officials should not expect it, and go find a matchmaker and inquire about the officials.
Or a military officer, playing matchmaker to make a marriage happen."
"If you marry an official, don't you have to live a hard life?" Kou's father disagreed.
Kou's mother said: "The officials of King Zhao are different. They can be officials in the future. We are specifically looking for those officials from Jiangxi. Maybe they can be county magistrates in the future. By then, my daughter will be the county magistrate's wife. Our family also has some savings.
When the time comes, I will give you more dowry. My son-in-law is just a minor official, so I will definitely be happy. We must take a long-term view, and we will not lose to today's officials and tomorrow's officials."
There are quite a few people who have this idea, and the matchmaking business in Nanjing is booming.
These matchmakers were stationed near the yamen. When they heard officials speaking foreign languages, they came forward to inquire about marriage. They also swore that although the girl came from a prostitute family, she was definitely a virgin.
Not only that, the matchmakers also went to chat with the soldiers guarding the city and asked which soldiers had not yet married. As long as they had a military rank of more than 10 years, the daughters of prostitutes were willing to marry.
Bian Yujing, one of the Eight Beauties of Qinhuai, was only thirteen years old at this time, and her parents were trying to find someone to match her.
Bian Yujing is also the daughter of a prostitute.
The idea of coming from a family of eunuchs is always glorified by literati. Wu Weiye's article was evasive, but Zou Shu was much more straightforward, making it clear that Bian Yujing was from a "kagi family".
No matter whether it was the Le households in Qinhuai Hua Street becoming good or the slaves in the city being liberated, there was actually not much commotion.
For most people, although their humble status has become a good one, their work content has not actually changed.
Because prices in Nanjing were too high and jobs were hard to find, domestic slaves became servants and continued to work as servants.
During the British Industrial Revolution, agricultural reforms and land enclosures were first carried out, forcing farmers to move to cities before they could develop industry. In the Ming Dynasty, this step could be skipped. The population in big cities was exploding. There was only a shortage of jobs, not a shortage of people.
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The urban household registration campaign was quickly implemented.
Zhao Han took some of the newly released data and suddenly felt a headache. There were too many unemployed people in Nanjing!
Outside the city, the land belonging to nobles and officers was being distributed to tenant farmers and military households, and the number of acres was not enough.
Wu Yingji said: "In the main town, there is a lot of wasteland in the south of the Yangtze River, but the land tax needs to be treated differently."
"There are actually a lot of wastelands in the south of the Yangtze River?" Zhao Han found it difficult to understand.
Wu Yingji explained in detail: "The taxes in the south of the Yangtze River were too heavy. After the Yongle Dynasty, a large number of farmers fled, and a large number of cultivated land was abandoned. Powerful and powerful families took the opportunity to seize the abandoned land. Emperor Xuande's reforms invited refugees to cultivate the wasteland to prevent powerful and powerful people from annexing the land."
"During the Jiajing period, there was another land equalization reform in Jiangnan, which was very effective at that time. However, during the Wanli period, a large amount of land was abandoned again. First, the land tax was too heavy, and second, the water conservancy was in disrepair."
"There is also the matter of grain supply. There are many cotton fields in the south of the Yangtze River, but grain must be collected from the grain. Initially, farmers had to sell cotton to buy rice and hand it over to the government. During this period, they suffered multiple exploitations. It took many years before they could sell cotton and pay money."
"During this period, a large amount of farmland was abandoned. The government could only recruit refugees to reclaim the wasteland. As long as the wasteland was reclaimed, local farmers would be exempted from taxes for five years, and farmers from other places would be exempted from taxes for ten years. Guess what kind of trouble this will cause?"
Zhao Han thought for a while and said: "The gentry, a large family, colluded with officials to use mature fields as uncultivated fields in order to evade taxes."
"Exactly," Wu Yingji said with a smile, "but there is something even more confusing. As soon as the tax exemption period comes, the farmers immediately abandon the land again!"
Zhao Han was shocked when he heard this, then shook his head and smiled bitterly.
That's the farmer's own land. Homeowners are not suitable for it. They take the initiative to abandon their land and flee to other places to become refugees or vagrants. You can imagine how heavy the taxes are!
Not only were the taxes collected by the imperial court too heavy, but large households would also send swindles, making these homesteaders have to pay taxes multiple times. Moreover, the land they could allocate was not good land, so even if they only paid taxes, it would be too much.
What’s more, the tax-free period set by the government can almost turn uncultivated fields into mature fields. At this time, powerful men will come out to seize the fields. After taking away the fields, these self-cultivators will continue to serve as slaves, and the self-cultivators will definitely run away.
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In addition, the land reclamation refugees are outsiders and are often bullied by the locals. This is also one of the reasons why they tend to farm for a few days and then run away.
Local officials continued to introduce new policies in an attempt to retain the farmers and crack down on the powerful gentry. However, these policies were initially effective, but loopholes were taken advantage of after a few years or more than ten years.
This poor place in Jiangnan is very strange. On the one hand, there are many people but little land, and on the other hand, a lot of land has been abandoned.
The rich families are also very interesting. Whenever there is a disaster, half of the land they farm will be abandoned and the remaining half will be cultivated intensively.
What is home-grown land?
That is, instead of renting to tenants and letting hired workers do the farming, these hired workers are actually domestic slaves who are paid a small salary every month to take care of the food. Sometimes they are also called "hired slaves."
This farming method of abandoning half of the land and cultivating the other half has been written into family mottos and rules by many wealthy families, who regard it as a classic operation like a heirloom secret.
Wu Yingji said: "There are still many wasteland fields in the south of the Yangtze River, which belong to the salt brine land. In fact, some salt brine lands have gradually improved with the support of good officials. But if they change to a mediocre official, they will be abandoned immediately, because the mediocre official does not reduce the land tax."
"The main town should collect land taxes as appropriate, build a large number of water conservancy projects, and encourage people to open up wasteland and rehabilitate it. In this way, Jiangnan will not be short of land."
Zhao Han paid more and more attention to Wu Yingji, nodded and said: "Write down all your ideas, and I will leave them to officials at all levels to implement policies as appropriate."
