Two hundred and fifty chapters remove the old and cloth the new (thirteen)
"No, this thing must be kept, as well as the yellow cloth cover and seal. All of them must be kept. This is the best weapon to educate the people." Shen Ruiming said, "Let them see this so-called 'imperial seal'. What is Tuantou’s true face?”
Cui Hantang was not interested in such things as "enlightenment". He had watched "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" and was very curious about this Guangzhou version of "Beggars' Kingdom", so he started to explore around.
On both sides of this "lobby", there are long rows of corridors. Push the door and go inside, which is where the masters work. At this time, the room is empty, but the four treasures of the study and various account books are still on the table. In some houses, there are cabinets where files and account books are stored. There are people who handle money and rice; there are people who handle the "registration and deregistration" of beggars; there are people who are responsible for contacting the government... It has the style of the six rooms of the county yamen. .
Turning around the public seat in the "main hall", there is a small shrine in the back hall. The incense candles have been extinguished by the search team, but it can be seen from the thick ashes in the incense burner and the wax tears accumulated on the candlesticks. It has been worshiped for a long time.
The statue in the shrine is crudely made, and it can only be seen that it is an old man holding a baby. Cui Hantang knows a lot about Chinese Taoism and the folk god system. It can be said that he can probably know just by seeing the statue, combined with the specific image, decoration, and magic weapon. Which one is it? But he still couldn't figure out this one after looking at it for a long time.
Looking at the statue, it seems to mean the orphan of the Zhao family. However, this story has little to do with beggars.
Judging from the enshrinement, this should be the "ancestor" of the beggars. All walks of life in China have the custom of worshiping the "ancestor" of the industry god, even low-level actors and prostitutes are no exception. Naturally, there are beggars as well.
Cui Hantang saw people who worshiped Fan Dan in the Spring and Autumn Period - it is said that when Confucius traveled around the country, Fan Dan lent food to Confucius and his disciples; there were also people who worshiped Lu Mengzheng in the Song Dynasty. It is said that Lu Mengzheng once became a beggar when he was young... In short, it is nothing more than They are people who cling to famous people, and most of them have a legend that cannot be recorded in history.
But Cui Hantang had never seen this person before. Fortunately, the beggar who was responsible for the daily affairs of the Jinhua Temple was still here to "assist in the search", so he immediately called one.
After asking, I found out that this person was called "Dou Lao". It was said that he was the prime minister during the reign of Emperor Ping of the Han Dynasty. He once fled with the prince in his arms and relied on begging to make a living. After the prince succeeded to the throne, he was named the beggar's head in the world.
Based on Cui's limited historical knowledge of the Han and Tang Dynasties, he probably knew that the Dou family, as a relative of the Eastern Han Dynasty, was once extremely powerful, but Emperor Ping of the Han Dynasty was the emperor of the Western Han Dynasty, and he could not live up to the historical figure no matter how he thought about it.
It was so true that Cui Hantang didn't bother to pay attention, so he asked the beggar in charge to lead the way and started visiting the Golden Flower Temple.
After a quick look, I realized that the beggars' den of the Jinhua Temple was really amazing. It not only had a "court", "six rooms", and even a "prison". There was another side courtyard right next to the main courtyard. , there are more than a dozen low, damp little rooms, with iron chains fixed with iron rings on the walls. The person in charge said that beggars who make mistakes will be taken here with iron chains around their necks and locked up for a day. It can last for several days, during which time the feces and urine can only be dealt with on the spot, and food and drink are all dependent on the kindness of others - what the beggars call "wearing iron chains". This is the lightest punishment among beggars.
There were more than a dozen "prisoners" in the hut, but they were all released by the police and taken away. It was dark and humid here, and because of the urine and feces on the ground, not only was there a stench, but Cui Hantang watched as they disappeared. The rusty iron chains and iron shackles in the dark and humid "cell" made me feel a sense of terror.
Shen Ruiming muttered: "This is simply a private court."
"This old society is so damn dark..." Cui Hantang came out of the small dark room, stood under the blue sky and took a deep breath. He felt that he had never been so convinced of the invincibility of justice of the Senate.
"If the sky does not descend on the Senate, eternity will be like a long night," he said suddenly. Shen Ruiming couldn't help but be startled, why did this rough guy wearing a Taoist robe suddenly say such a sentence?
"It's nothing, I just felt it." Cui Hantang said, "Let's go to the Gao family's private residence and see what their blood has become after hundreds of years of sucking blood."
Both he and Shen Ruiming had a strong curiosity about the private life of the Gao family and wanted to see the private life of this famous "local prefect". The Gao family's private residence is in the second half of the Jinhua Temple. From the courtyard behind the main hall, Just walk through the Moon Cave Gate. When you walk in, you will see that it looks like an ordinary mansion of a wealthy family. Although it has green tiles and red eaves and carved beams and embroidered doors, it does not exceed Cui Hantang's imagination.
If there is anything special, it is that the Gao family has not succeeded in Guangzhou's "Australian fashion" at all, such as glass windows, glass mirrors, various glass daily necessities, "Guo Shi Wushuang" wine... basically purple-branded products All kinds of "Australian" delicacies sold can be found in high-end residences.
Just when I was feeling disappointed, someone suddenly came to report: "Chief, we found a cellar!"
Now both Cui Hantang and Shen Ruiming became interested. Since ancient times, rich and powerful families have kept secret cellars in their homes to store money and valuables. Once the wealthy families fell into decline and the years passed, the cellars they left behind would become legends. Often in society, There is a story about someone who bought an old house and renovated it. When demolishing the house and digging the ground, he found a "hidden" and it exploded overnight.
Although the senators do not seek to "get rich overnight", they also have a strong interest in the "hoards" of the local tycoons. In the past few years, the Senate has made a lot of windfall by digging out "hoards" during various wars and social transformations. .How much wealth has the Gao family accumulated in Guangzhou for hundreds of years?
The silver cellar is in Gao Lingxiang's study. The study at the head of the Guangzhou Headquarters is called the "Study." In fact, there is no book except the calendar. It's not that the Gao family is uneducated, but this is not a place for studying. It is the place where the principals of the Gao family do business. It can be called the "study room" for the people of Guandi Temple.
The secret cellar is in the corner of the study room, and there were originally several large boxes on it. The boxes were filled with copper coins handed over by the big bones.
These copper coins are definitely not "small money" or "bad money" such as the common sand shell films outside. They are all good money. It is said that people from the Planning Institute estimate that there are nearly a thousand copper coins in these boxes alone. According to the market conditions in the late Ming Dynasty, there were six to seven hundred taels of silver.
The special search team of the Planning Institute poured out the copper coins and moved the box away, and found that the bluestone slab underneath was loose. They were all old people and knew that there must be something fishy under the slab, so they immediately moved it away.
A dark cave entrance was exposed under the stone slab, with steps to go down. The search team lit up torches and went down to take a look. There was a stone chamber underneath. The ground was dug one foot deep and five feet square. The sides and bottom were made of glutinous rice lime juice and lined with stone. The bottom
A thick layer of charcoal ash was piled up, which was strong and moisture-proof.
Countless amounts of silver are piled in this stone room. There is no silver box or silver scabbard here, and the silver has not been re-smelted into ingots in the furnace room. It seems that the silver here is just in the state when it was received, and was thrown into the cellar at will.
Inside, there are silver ingots and nuggets of various sizes and colors, and there are even various silverwares and jewelry.
It seems that this silver cellar has been stored a lot for a long time but has been used less. Most of the silver ingots and silverware have been oxidized and blackened, losing their shiny color. Some of the scattered silver at the bottom has turned black.
Blocks. Members of the search team could only carry them out in bags and boxes and weigh them, regardless of quality.
"This is a bit like the king of the mountain." Cui Hantang recalled that when he suppressed bandits in Hainan Island, the "trophies" captured by the bandits were also so messy and casual.
Seeing the team members constantly moving and weighing, and sealing the registration numbers, he asked: "How much silver is there?"
"Reporting to the chief, the initial estimate is 112,000 taels."
Cui Hantang nodded. Now Mayor Liu and the comrades in the financial department can breathe a sigh of relief again. The banknotes circulating in the market have more credit support.
"A beggar has a hundred thousand taels of silver hidden in his head, and there is no telling how much money is hidden in the homes of the wealthy gentry families in Guangzhou..." Cui Hantang couldn't help but sigh, "If we all -"
Shen Ruiming coughed twice quickly to signal him not to talk nonsense in front of the naturalized people - even if it was a "time-tested" one like the special search team.
Although no key figures were captured in the raid on the Golden Flower Temple, a large amount of money was seized. Gao Ling and others fled in a hurry. The Gao family had exploited beggars in Guangzhou for three hundred years and extorted the people, except for a small amount of soft goods.
Being able to move in time was a bit of comfort to Cui Hantang and others.
Of course it is a good thing to have a large sum of money confiscated, especially since it was not just the Gao family's residence where large sums of money were confiscated. Various amounts of money were seized from the residences of Dagu in each Doukou area, as little as dozens of taels.
So much so that some even have savings of thousands of taels.
Although the arrested people without exception claimed that this was "public money" used to help beggars in their hometown, whether they were sick or when it rained, in fact, this kind of "care"
The cost is extremely meager, and the amount of the so-called "official money" and where it is spent are all determined by the big bones, which is like a private pocket. The beggars of the lower class will not hesitate to ask, and they will be beaten severely if they even ask.
The big-boned beggars from all walks of life have rich private pockets, but the beggars live a life of hunger and cold. They have to "pay tribute" to the beggars for the few small coins they can get by running around for a day.
What they get are just some leftovers, and they have to be handed over to the big bones to be used as feed for raising the "three birds" for profit. This level of exploitation is called beating the bones and sucking the marrow. Liu Xiang looked at the cleaning report of each sinus and felt in his heart
Secretly sighing.
This time the whole city took a unified action, and although Gao Lingxiang and a few of his capable men were lost, the work of sheltering the beggars and homeless people in the city was quite smooth.