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Chapter 216 The turnaround song of this era is hard to sing

Chapter 216 The song of “turning over” in this era is difficult to sing

When Zhao Xin returned to the square in the town, it was almost dusk, and he happened to see Shen Jingdan walking over. At this time, Shen Jingdan became more and more respectful to Zhao Xin because Beihai Town had another great victory over the Qing army.

He made a special trip to see Zhao Xin and wanted to invite him to a banquet at his home tomorrow.

"Master Zhao, Ah Quan hasn't seen you for a few days. You've been feeling depressed lately. Can you tell me?"

Zhao Xin thought that no matter how busy he was, he still had time for a meal. Besides, he missed the little beauty after not seeing her for a long time, so he happily agreed. Shen Jingdan was overjoyed when he heard that, knowing that the other party still had something to do, he handed her over. Farewell.

Looking at Shen Jingdan's leaving figure, Zhao Xin smiled and shook his head. He could clearly see what Shen Jingdan was thinking, it was just that he wanted to use Shen Xuan to hug his thigh.

When Zhao Xin saw Chen Qingsong, he had just come back from school. It seemed that he was very tired and his voice was hoarse. Zhao Xin was about to take Chen Qingsong to have a meal together in the cafeteria, when he heard something coming from outside the door. A woman's voice.

"Mr. Chen is back?"

Zhao Xin curiously opened the door and saw that it was the Qinghe girl, holding a food box in her hand. This girl is sixteen years old, very handsome, and her beauty is rated 85 points according to modern aesthetic standards. Qinghe He doesn't know how to play music, chess, calligraphy or painting, but he has learned a good skill in cooking.

However, the aesthetics of the Qing Dynasty people are very different from those of modern people. A woman must have a sad look on her face, a delicate flower that shines on the water, and a weak willow that supports the wind. Beauty in the eyes of modern people, such as Qing He, ranks second among thin horses. Second class. Mainly because she is not as thin and weak as Sister Lin.

When Qing He saw that it was Zhao Xin who had opened the door, his face turned slightly red. He put down the food box in his hand and said with a blessing: "I didn't know that you are here, sir. Qing He is rude."

Zhao Xin smiled and said: "Miss Qinghe, are you bringing dinner to Lao Chen? Is it enough for two people?"

Qing He replied cheerfully: "This is not easy. Now that Mr. Zhao is here, I will go back and prepare another one."

Zhao Xindao: "Don't bother me, just help me get a bowl of noodles."

Qing He said: "It's not too much trouble. It's just two more dishes to stir-fry, and the rice is all ready-made. Sir, I'll bring it over in a moment." After saying that, he quickly turned around and left.

I don’t know since when, Chen Qingsong’s three meals a day have been handed over to Qing He. He also likes to eat Qing He’s cooking, so when he is too busy at work, Qing He will prepare meals and deliver them to him.

Zhao Xin carried the food box into the house, put it on the table and opened it. Sure enough, it was a bowl of braised pork, a plate of fried cabbage, and a bowl of rice. Zhao Xin was surprised and said: "The living standard is pretty good!"

"Don't come here! If you want to eat, there are plenty of girls vying to cook it for you." Chen Qingsong washed his hands and wiped his face with a towel.

"Forget it, it's the hardest to bear the kindness of a beauty. I won't provoke you if I can." Even if the kindness of a beauty is easy to bear, Zhao Xin's waist can't bear it.

The two chatted for a quarter of an hour. When they heard someone knocking on the door, Zhao Xin smiled and said, "It's really fast." He got up and went to open the door. When he opened the door, he saw that it was Tang Xiao carrying a food box.

"Hey? Miss Tang, why are you here?"

Tang Xiao's dimples twitched, his face turned red, and he smiled and said: "I happened to meet Qing He just now. She was busy over there, so she asked me to deliver it to you, sir."

Zhao Xin took a closer look through the light at the door and saw that Tang Xiao had actually become more beautiful. This girl was originally a beauty. In the past few months since she came to Beihai Town, she no longer had three meals a day as controlled as her mother-in-law did before. The whole person is no longer so thin, and the face is plump.

When Tang Xiao saw Zhao Xin staring at him, he lost his composure. He lowered his head and handed the food box in his hand to Zhao Xin, and said coquettishly: "If you don't want to delay the adults' talk, I'll leave first." After that, he leaned on a wooden stick. , turned around and left.

Zhao Xin returned to the house and opened the food box. In addition to the three items that were the same as those of Chen Qingsong, there was also an extra bowl of braised fish. Chen Qingsong laughed at it and said, "Sure, the treatment is indeed different. It seems that Tang Xiao is right." You have had your thoughts moved."

Zhao Xin didn't know whether to laugh or cry, and said: "Pull it over. I think Qing He has some thoughts about you, right?"

Chen Qingsong shook his head and said: "She is only sixteen, what nonsense are you talking about! Hey, how is the matter between you and Teacher Xiao Shen? Her father Shen Jingdan has asked me insinuatingly several times."

"What did he ask?"

"I asked you if you have any thoughts about getting married. He also said that he is worried all the time now, and that Teacher Xiao Shen is almost eighteen. Even a fool can tell what he wants to do."

Zhao Xindao: "He wants to invite me to his house for dinner tomorrow."

Chen Qingsong said: "How about this? After the New Year, let Teacher You or someone else help you propose marriage to the Shen family."

It is said that Shen Xuan will be seventeen this year, and she is considered an "old girl" in this era. However, Zhao Xin has always been worried about whether to take root in the eighteenth century. In short, it is all kinds of hypocrisy. He said casually: "Let's talk about it. "

The two of them ate in a hurry and then started talking about business. Zhao Xin asked about the meeting for the refugees in the afternoon, and Chen Qingsong said: "The problem of domestic refugees is far more complicated than we thought. Originally, I wanted to wait for you to come back and organize a meeting. At the conference, we took out all the deeds of betrayal of these people and burned them, so that we can also ‘turn over and become the masters’. Now it seems that we have to wait and see.”

"Oh?" Zhao Xin took out a cigarette and gave one to Chen Qingsong. After the two lit it, he asked: "How do you say it?"

Chen Qingsong said: "The production methods under the small-scale farmer economy are fundamentally different from those here. I picked a dozen of them and had a rough chat in the afternoon. After knowing how they farmed in detail, I felt that this personal attachment The control must be maintained for a while, otherwise once they let loose, this black land will be plagued by them."

You won’t know if you don’t ask, but you’ll be shocked if you ask. Floods and droughts are certainly a major reason why Henan is poor in this era, but the corruption of officials and oppression by landlords is not the main problem as Chen Qingsong imagined before. The reason why the refugees in Henan are poor , the most important problem is that agricultural production technology is too backward!

Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, due to the frequent occurrence of various natural disasters in Henan, local farmers basically relied on God for harvests. However, the reality of frequent floods and droughts meant that the possibility of relying on God for food was extremely slim. Occasionally, there were a few The weather has been good, and it has been a rare year for a good harvest.

For these refugees from Henan, relying on the weather for a living is precisely the agricultural production method they are accustomed to, and they must be corrected through coercive means.

Through conversations with refugee representatives, Chen Qingsong learned that these people had previously adopted extensive management practices in agricultural production. The main problem was that they did not pay attention to fertilization when farming was not farming; after sowing, they did not know how to manage the land and waited for harvest.

One word, lazy!

"Let me give you the simplest example. I asked them how they plowed the land after the autumn harvest every year. As a result, no one knew that they plowed the land after the autumn harvest. These people told me that they never plowed the land after the autumn. They only plowed the land in the spring.

start."

"Ah?" After two years, even Zhao Xin, who doesn't understand agriculture, now knows that after the autumn harvest, he must plow the land as soon as possible. As the saying goes, "Plowing an inch deep in autumn will bring up a pile of dung."

Chen Qingsong shook his head helplessly and sighed: "This situation is very common. The land is not planted according to the time of the day, nor according to the physical properties. I don't even bother to accumulate manure. Only good land can be called fresh! As the old saying goes, 'You never tire of hoeing'. I

After asking many people, they generally cultivated millet and sorghum, but very little wheat.

To grow these crops, it is said that the ground should be hoeed at least three times in the spring, whether there is grass or not. But when I asked you, guess what, they would hoe the ground once or twice at most. A few people from Wuyang said that they never hoe the ground.

.I was shocked when I heard it!”

Zhao Xin said in surprise: "I'll go! This is so damn lazy!"

Chen Qingsong said: "There are even lazier ones, which will make you dumbfounded."

A team leader from Linzhang told Chen Qingsong that after plowing the ground and sowing seeds in the spring, their farmers just sit and wait for the summer harvest, watering and fertilizing without doing anything. If there is a drought, they just wait for rain, and even water is not available.

It was nonchalant. When Chen Qingsong heard this, he was completely confused. This is the Central Plains region. Is there such a kind of farming?

The Linzhang man explained at the time that floods have occurred in Henan in recent years. After the floods, there will be drought and grasshoppers. No one can take care of the land. As time goes by, those good crops have been moved away;

The remaining farmers in the local area did not know how to do many crop tasks, and gradually came to rely solely on God's blessings for food.

"I asked them whether the government had built water conservancy projects to facilitate field irrigation. What they said was that the Manchu and Qing court, oh, that is, the river governor's office, invested a lot of manpower and material resources in the maintenance of the Yellow River every year. As for the other dozen

No one cares about the tributaries at all. So as long as there is a heavy rain, some rivers will burst."

For Chinese officials of all dynasties, the maintenance of the Yellow River was ranked first, and the same was true for the Manchu and Qing Dynasties. Kangxi and Qianlong even inspected it many times. However, the Qing court and the local officials in Henan focused all their attention on

On the Yellow River, the water conservancy improvement of more than a dozen other rivers in Henan has been completely ignored. Therefore, even though there are many rivers in the province, few can provide irrigation in a timely manner.

Zhao Xindao: "This is a vicious cycle. As soon as there is a famine, Henan farmers begin to migrate to surrounding provinces, either renting land or reclaiming wasteland, or looking for other industries. The agricultural technical talents are exhausted, and production is increasing.

behind."

Chen Qingsong said: "Besides, even in years without famines, their way of clearing wasteland is full of problems. Do you know how they open up wasteland? These people go into the mountains to clear up wasteland, cut down big trees, and throw the trunks aside.

Instead, the branches were cut down and dried in the sun to make firewood, and the leaves were dried and burned into plant ash as fertilizer. In this way, they only cultivated without caring for moisture, and a mountain was completely destroyed in a few years."

Zhao Xin was also shocked when he heard this. According to this theory, the soil of Sanjiang Plain will turn into desert in a few years.

Historically, Henan has experienced the three dynasties of Kangxi, Yongzong and Qianlong. Since there were no wars, the population has grown rapidly, but the per capita cultivated land area has been declining. In addition, the grain output per mu is low, and it is difficult to meet people's basic food needs, leading to the contradiction between man and land.

The situation is becoming increasingly acute. Due to the pressure of survival, many farmers who have been squeezed out of the land have moved to the mountainous areas and penetrated into the deep mountains and old forests with severe terrain to engage in land reclamation from deforestation.

Chen Qingsong said: "My opinion is that the master-slave relationship formed by the sales contract cannot be dissolved. As the largest landlord, we must forcefully order them how to work, and we must not follow their temper!"

Zhao Xindao: "I agree. After they have tasted the benefits of working for two years, they will naturally abide by our system. When everything is on track, we will abolish the personal dependence system. It will take at least four to five years to form a habit.

That’s all.”

It is said that the agricultural production model currently implemented in Beihai Town is actually a reference to the "collective farm system" of later generations, and at the same time combines the four characteristics of the feudal personal dependence system.

Families who have been allocated land have permanent use rights. Production materials such as seeds, large agricultural machinery, horses, livestock, etc. are provided by Zhao Xin, a large landowner, and organized by Chen Qingsong. What to plant and how to plant it are decided by the civil affairs department.

Farmers have the final say and have no decision-making power.

In addition, Chen Qingsong also has to formulate annual agricultural production plans. For example, planning total output, output per unit area, sowing area and structure, etc. At the same time, with the assistance of large agricultural machinery and equipment, only some people in Beihai Town are now organized

Farming, the rest of the people are either migrant workers or soldiers.

After making various necessary deductions for each family's field output (such as large agricultural machinery, water conservancy facilities), the remaining harvest goes directly to the farmer. Farmers can keep small tools and a certain number of livestock and poultry, and operate prescribed fields next to their homes and household sideline businesses.

As auxiliary income, such as growing vegetables in front of and behind the house, and household production of tobacco and matches.

However, although the harvest was said to belong to the farmers, Zhao Xin took back the grain through unissued currency as part of the grain reserves of the entire Beihai Town.

Because the first refugee families in the island country who followed Zhao Xin absolutely trusted people like Zhao Xin, no one disbelieved in Zhao Xin’s promise and willingly handed over the food to the public. This was not only because the early refugees regarded Zhao Xin as a "immortal descended to earth"

, the more important thing is that Beihai Town is still practicing a physical rationing system, and currency has not entered the circulation field.

"The issue of currency cannot be delayed any longer. The mint has completed the minting plan you mentioned before. Our question now is, how to determine the price of food?"

Zhao Xindao: "This is a simple matter." After that, he took a pen and paper and a calculator and started to calculate.

Corresponding to the metric system, the weight of grain in the Qing Dynasty would be very complicated. The density of grain particles determines the weight of the grain in a wooden bucket. One stone equals one hundred and twenty kilograms, which is a system of measurement, not a system of measurement. The system of measurement is

It is Shi, Dendrobium, Dou, Sheng, Hehe. One stone is equal to two Dendrobiums, which is equal to ten Dou, which is equal to one hundred liters, which is equal to one thousand He.

To put it simply, one standard warehouse of stone indica brown rice is equal to about 120 jins, which is equivalent to about 143 city jins in later generations; one standard warehouse of stone japonica brown rice is equal to about 130 jins, which is about 155 city jins; one standard warehouse of stone white rice is approximately equal to 138.25

Jin, equivalent to approximately 165 city jins; one standard warehouse stone of japonica rice is equal to 100 jins, approximately equivalent to 120 city jins; one standard warehouse stone of corn is equal to 137.2 jins, approximately equivalent to the current 164 city jins; one standard warehouse stone of unground wheat is equal to 125

It weighs about 150 pounds.

At present, the price of wheat in the pass is mainly based on the Jinan Prefecture Grain Market. The price of one stone of wheat fluctuates around 1.5 taels of silver, and in disaster years it will exceed 1.7 taels.

If calculated based on the average price of 1.5 taels, one kilogram of wheat is worth 1 cent of silver. Farmers in Beihai Town grow wheat, and the output is 400 kilograms per mu, then the harvest is 4 taels of silver. A farmer has 50 acres of land, and one mu per year.

The output is 20,000 catties, and the gross income is 200 taels of silver.

After deducting necessary expenses and folding them in half, such as agricultural machinery, irrigation, seeds, etc., there is still 10,000 kilograms left.

In the Qing Dynasty, a rural laborer's daily ration was one liter of rice. If the white flour was calculated as 1.5 kilograms, it would be 548 kilograms per year. If calculated as a family of four, it would be about 2,000 kilograms. This would leave eight thousand kilograms.

Sell ​​half of the eight thousand catties and keep half, the income is 40 taels of silver, which is equivalent to Beihai 200 silver dollars (five Beihai dollars to one tael of silver), and the island country's Douding silver is 32 pieces (one Beihai dollar to four days of taels).

This income is already terrifying! Many small and medium-sized landowners in the Qing Dynasty could not earn dozens of taels of silver a year just from farming.

Zhao Xin and others originally planned to launch currency in the middle of this year and open shops and restaurants in residential areas at the same time. However, due to the Qing court's attack, all materials needed to be centralized and unified, so the issue of currency has been delayed.

Chen Qingsong said: "It seems that the currency issue cannot be delayed any longer."

Zhao Xindao: "Then it will be decided before the Spring Festival. The currency will be one. The refugees in the island country will change their Chinese surnames and give them one name. The two things should not be later than February next year."

Chen Qingsong said: "Are you really planning to turn all these island people into Han people?"

Zhao Xin's eyes became sharper and he said to Chen Qingsong: "This matter cannot be delayed. Let's start with the army first. Since we have arrived in this land, we must become naturalized. The Manchus in later generations can change their surnames to Han, and the islanders must also give

I will change. Next year I plan to use troops against the shogunate. If I don’t do this, I will never be at ease.”

After the two said this, Zhao Xin finally asked: "How do you plan to deal with the problem of the refugees in Henan?"

Chen Qingsong said: "Let's take a few steps. We must first let these people understand our production methods. First, open an agricultural training class and allocate some people to attend classes. Then allocate some people to work in the iron mines. This winter we will all

We can’t be idle, otherwise people will become lazy. In addition, I am also planning to build a large brick kiln. It was okay before we had a small number of people, but now that there are more people, it would be a waste of resources to cut down trees and build houses."

Zhao Xin nodded and said: "Teach classes, build roads, bake bricks, dig dry docks, open mines, and build a few more bridges on the Xila River. I'll be busy this winter, so that's it."

(End of chapter)


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