On July 25th, in the Zhang Mansion in the west of Suzhou City, the servants of the Zhang family were waiting with their heads down, not daring to show their anger for fear of offending the angry master. Zhang Keli, who is in his sixties, was sitting in the main room, looking at the "Dali Temple Announcement" five days ago, his face was ashen, and his old face seemed to have turned into a piece of iron.
All the gentry in the world were fooled by Yang Peng. Where did Yang Peng go to Nanzhili to buy rice? Where to buy rice in Zhejiang, Fujian and Guangdong? It's all a lie. Yang Peng had already planted enough sweet potatoes in Xiaoliuqiu for Shandong people to survive the famine. The reason why Yang Peng released the news that he was going to buy rice was to trick the gentry and make money from them.
The "Dali Temple Announcement" picture shows that Yang Peng took advantage of the sharp rise in food prices in Shandong and the south and sold more than 2 million shi of food in various places, especially in Shandong. Yang Peng sold the grain he bought for 2 taels and 5 taels for more than 5 taels, making millions of taels of silver.
The "Dali Temple Announcement" seemed to want to piss off the gentry all over the world. It said in a grand manner: "With this seven million taels of silver, the hungry people of Shandong will have no worries. With this silver, King Yan can go to Taiwan to buy sweet potatoes, and the hungry people of Shandong will be safe." There is no need to worry about food rations for the whole year.”
Zhang Keli couldn't breathe when he saw this. Unexpectedly, I, Zhang Keli, have been in the business all my life and thought I was smart, but when I got old, I was severely deceived by Yang Peng, who was in his twenties. And after being deceived into being so speechless, who would let gentry like me want to make a fortune in a country that is in dire straits?
Stealing the chicken will end up losing the rice. You can't even tell anyone about this matter - the gentry wanted to hinder Yang Peng's disaster relief and almost let the people of Shandong starve to death. If the behavior of the gentry were known to the people, not only would no one sympathize with the gentry, but they would also be scolded to death by the people.
Zhang Keli continued to read the "Dali Temple Announcement" and saw the news below the front page: ""The Liu family's fleet arrived in Laizhou loaded with millions of stones of sweet potatoes, and the people of Shandong welcomed it with gongs and drums!"
Zhang Keli stayed for a long time before shaking his head. He sighed, put on the reading glasses he bought specially from the capital, and flipped through the ledger on the tea table. Zhang Keli wanted to calculate how much money the Zhang family lost this time. However, after watching it for a while, he became irritated and slapped the account book on the tea table angrily.
"Accountant Liu, how much did the Zhang family lose this time by hoarding 190,000 shi of grain?" Accountant Liu, who was standing next to him, looked at Zhang Keli's face and said carefully: "Sir, I've done the math. The average grain count is We bought it for three taels and three cents of silver. Now Yang Peng suddenly stopped buying rice, causing the price of grain in the market to plummet, and it has dropped to two taels and four cents. Calculated this way, we only have a floating loss on our books. , there are 170,000 taels.”
Hearing this astonishing number, Zhang Keli coughed violently. He quickly picked up the tea cup on his right and took a sip of tea, but he still couldn't stop coughing and even coughed up the tea. He bent over and coughed hard. It took him a long time to catch his breath.
After finally sitting up straight, Zhang Keli's face was already slumped, and his face turned a little pale. This time, the Suzhou Zhang family was really cheated by Yang Peng. The Zhang family's total savings of more than 700,000 taels in the past twenty years were lost by a quarter in one go.
The white money was sprinkled down, which benefited the poor peasants who pushed grain into the city to sell it. On weekdays, you can only exchange one, two or three yuan for a hundred pounds of rice. At that time, you could exchange it for one, two or eight yuan at the Zhang family's grain store. Thinking of those farmers who were overjoyed when they got the money, Zhang Keli felt his heart aching again.
This Yang Peng is really treating the gentry of the world like monkeys, and is really killing the gentry. Zhang Keli closed his eyes and thought, cursing Yang Peng a hundred times in his mind. It took a long time before he slowly stood up. He walked a few steps in the room with a cane and said slowly: "Silver is something external to the body. If you don't take it with you in life, you won't take it with you in death..."
However, before he could finish his words, his eldest son's wife suddenly rushed into the main room. When she rushed in, she walked too fast, twisted her feet and fell to the ground. However, on the ground, she didn't mind whether she was hurt by the fall, but shouted loudly to Zhang Keli: "Master, go to the side yard to save people! Mingxuan is going to hang himself!"
Zhang Mingxuan is Zhang Keli's eldest son and the actual head of the Zhang family. Zhang Keli is getting older, so Zhang Mingxuan takes care of the Zhang family's business and farm. This time, Zhang Mingxuan was actually doing the food hoarding.
Zhang Keli was stunned when he heard the news and thought to himself that his son could not bear the loss of 170,000 silver? He put away his anxiety and hurriedly walked to the side yard with a cane. When I arrived at the main room in the side yard, I saw that the eldest son's study was locked from the inside. Zhang Keli's three grandchildren and two granddaughters stood anxiously outside the study door, knocking hard on the door, asking Zhang Mingxuan not to commit suicide.
Seeing the master Zhang Keli coming, everyone got out of the way and looked at the master anxiously. Zhang Keli walked to the door, knocked hard, and said in a deep voice: "Mingxuan, open the door, I am your father!" However, there was no sound in the study. Zhang Keli lowered the door anxiously and shouted: "Open the door, a manly man, can't you bear this storm?" Zhang Mingxuan's voice came from the study: "Dad, I can't help you, I have no shame in living in this world!"
Zhang Keli frowned and shouted: "As for the money, should you take it with you or die? What's wrong with you? Your three sons are here, so show some dignity." Zhang Mingxuan inside heard this and remained silent for a long time. Zhang Keli became impatient and shouted: "Open the door!"
After Zhang Keli yelled this, there was a soft sound from the door knocker in the room. Zhang Keli knew that it was Zhang Mingxuan who opened the door, so he pushed the door open, only to see Zhang Mingxuan kneeling on the ground wearing a white middle coat.
Zhang Keli said loudly: "I asked you to hoard the food. I lost hundreds of thousands of taels of silver. I don't blame you!" Zhang Mingxuan knelt on the ground and cried, and said in a trembling voice: "Dad, I'm sorry for you. I'm sorry for Zhang Mingxuan." We are a family!" "I will hang myself in the room this time. Dad, please don't stop me." Zhang Keli felt that something was strange when he heard his son's tone, as if he suddenly realized something. He shook his body, held on to the door frame and asked, "Niezhang, how much food have you hoarded?"
Zhang Mingxuan raised his head, slapped him on the left cheek, and slapped him on the right cheek again, crying and shouting: "Dad! I didn't just hoard the 190,000 shi of grain. I thought it was Yang Peng who gave me the gift this time." We gave away money, thinking it was a sure-profit deal, so we borrowed two million taels of silver from outside and secretly stocked up 600,000 shi of grain in Hanjiazhuang. Now, the 600,000 shi of grain has lost 540,000 yuan. I lost all the family’s savings!”
Hearing this, the dozen or so members of the Zhang family standing at the door of the study felt as if they had been struck by lightning. Zhang Keli's face turned from white to red, and then from red to white. I went bankrupt, I went bankrupt. I had saved more than 700,000 yuan for more than 20 years, but it was all gone overnight. The free money was given to those farmers who could not read a single word.
His eyes were as big as copper coins, he suddenly raised his crutch and hit his son on the head!
"I'll beat you to death, you traitor!" However, as soon as the crutch was swung into the air, Zhang Keli's eyes rolled back and his whole body began to tremble. Finally, his body went limp and he fell to the ground. He tilted his head and fainted. The children of the Zhang family were stunned and rushed forward one by one. The Zhang family's status and privileges all depend on Zhang Keli. If Zhang Keli dies, the Zhang family will really collapse.
"Dad!! You have to hold on!" "Master!! Don't scare us!"
On August 11th, in Qingzhou Mansion, Shen Congdao was sitting on the Grand Master's chair in the second hall of Shen's residence, with a gloomy face. His wife and two concubines were sitting on the chairs next to him, crying profusely.
The rice seller "from the south" has notified the Shen family to move out, and the Shen family compound will be taken away soon. Last month, Shen Congdao thought that Yang Peng was going to purchase a large amount of grain, so he worked with the Qingzhou prefect to raise the price of rice in Qingzhou to sixty liang and one stone. In fact, there is not much idle grain on the market, and most of the grain in stock is in the homes of the gentry. Everyone thought that the gentry in Qingzhou would work together and stabilize grain prices at a high level without spending much money. Who knew that they would encounter a large-scale grain sell-off.
The gentry did not know what was going on at that time, thinking that stabilizing grain prices would trap Yang Peng to death, and desperately bought the high-priced grains sold by others. In Qingzhou Prefecture alone, the gentry bought more than 300,000 shi of grain at a high price of more than five taels.
Later, the gentry were a little afraid to take action. The prefect of Qingzhou stepped forward to coordinate and allocate shares to each gentry family to purchase the grain that was sold off on the market. Shen Congdao was favored by the prefect and was given more quotas. In the end, even his own house was mortgaged to a rice merchant.
At that time, when the rice merchant said that the house could be used as a mortgage, Shen Congdao felt inexplicably bad. Unexpectedly, it turned out to be true in the end. Last month, Xiaoliuqiu’s disaster relief sweet potatoes began to arrive in Shandong in large quantities. The "Dali Temple Announcement" said that the food needed for this disaster relief has been met, and there is no need to buy food on the market.
At first, the gentry did not believe it, thinking that King Yan could not bear the price of food, so he began to lie to lower the price of food. But when the food in the homes of Shandong people ran out this month and King Yan's disaster relief porridge sheds were all opened, the gentry in Shandong discovered that King Yan was not lying at all. Xiaoliuqiu’s sweet potatoes can indeed save 10 million Shandong people suffering from drought.
King Yan no longer needed to buy food for disaster relief. The victims had King Yan's relief, and they no longer needed to sell iron to buy life-saving food. The food hoarded by the gentry suddenly became useless. Not to mention that the gentry originally had a lot of grain reserves, the more than 200 shi of grain from other provinces that Yang Peng sold in Shandong alone was a huge trap for the Shandong gentry. The Shandong gentry's granaries were filled with rice noodles and rice.
As a result, within a few days, grain prices in Shandong plummeted. From the sky-high price of six liang and one stone, it dropped to the floor price of two liang and one stone. At this price, there is still no market for the grain. If it is sold in large quantities, it will not be sold at all.
When Yang Peng was selling grain, he played a trick and allowed the gentry who were hoarding grain to use their real estate as mortgage to buy on credit. At that time, the gentry only thought that if they persisted for a month, Yang Peng would definitely come to collect grain at a high price, and it would not be a big problem to mortgage their houses to grain merchants. As a result, now that the mortgage time limit has expired, the price of grain has become so low that at least seven or eight grain-hoarding gentry families in Qingzhou Prefecture are about to be expropriated. In order to raise money to redeem their mortgaged houses, these gentry desperately sold rice on the market, driving the already low grain prices even lower.
However, if grain is sold at this time, who will take over? There are only selling but no buying in the market, and the price of grain in Shandong is getting lower day by day. The mortgage period for Shen Congdao's house expired the day before yesterday. The southern grain merchants who sold rice to Shen Congdao said that if the two thousand taels of silver they bought on credit were not repaid today, the Shen family would be kicked out of the house. However, no one bought the rice Shen Congdao sold at low prices in his own grain store. The people in Shandong had no harvest last year and were very strapped for money. With King Yan's porridge shed guaranteed, the citizens were unwilling to spend their last bit of emergency money to buy rice.
Shen Congdao sat on the chair, sighed helplessly and said, "Forget it, just move to the countryside. This house can't be saved." Shen Congdao's first wife took his ten-year-old daughter to wipe her tears and sniffled. Said: "Master, when I married you, I brought a bride price of two thousand taels with me. Did you also lose all of it?"
Shen Congdao's face turned red, he slapped the table and shouted: "How did I know that the situation would be like this? Now your betrothal gifts have become rice and noodles that no one buys, and they are all in the granary in the countryside. If you want, just go to the granary to move them !”
When the principal heard this, he fell forward and burst into tears. Shen Congdao's second wife sat on the chair and gritted his teeth and said: "Master, we moved from the countryside to the city with gongs and drums. At that time, many farmers were optimistic about the master and brought their fields to donate. Now we move back to our hometown in despair. If we go down, those small farmers will probably look down on us and make trouble if they don't even think about it."
Shen Congdao sighed, curled up in his chair and was speechless. He was no longer as paternalistic as before. He hoarded grain to prevent the King of Yan from providing disaster relief. If he said this, he would be criticized by thousands of people. Now that I have lost my mansion and returned to the countryside, feeling dejected, will there be angry people looking for trouble?
Shen Congdao sighed. The second roommate said: "Master, why do we give up the house to those grain merchants so easily? If those grain merchants want to litigate, it will take him several months, and maybe grain prices will rise again by then."
Shen Congdao gave a wry smile and said: "The sweet potatoes from Xiaoliuqiu are being shipped continuously, and the price of grain may not rise. Stop talking and move. The "Dali Temple Announcement" said that the merchants who sell grain to us are Yan The king's men. If our arms can't twist our thighs, how can we fight against King Yan? When the time comes, we will be captured and beaten to death."
After hearing this, Shen Congdao's first wife stared and said, "You're going to move just when you say it? You were so grand when you moved to the city, and now you're moving back in such a dejected mood? I don't have the shame to live in the country! If you want to go back to the country, you have to do it yourself go!"
Shen Congdao was stunned and asked, "If you don't live in the country, where will you go?" The principal wife rolled her eyes, but couldn't think of a place to go. She fell to the ground and started crying again, shouting: "I I can’t live anymore!” The second roommate thought about it and started to cry. Wiping his tears, he said, “Master, can’t you borrow a few thousand taels of silver?”
Shen Congdao said with a sad face: "I don't know how much money the gentry of Qingzhou Prefecture has deposited in the grain storage this time. No one has any extra money. At this time, where do you want me to borrow it?"
"That's all, don't say any more, go to the countryside! If you take the opportunity to cause trouble, we will be patient and retreat! Now that Yang Peng has taken control of Shandong, no one can stop us. Our hard life It’s still to come! What does this little hardship mean?”
When the second room heard this, he burst into tears and sat on the chair unable to say a word. The Shen family was crying there when they heard footsteps coming from outside. The "grain merchant" who "came from the south" and sold grain to Shen Congdao walked into the Shen family yard with ten soldiers of the Huben Division and shouted loudly: "Shen Congdao, you still haven't handed over the house? Do you want to take advantage of the Dali Temple court?"
On August 20, Yang Peng's relief stations for disaster victims in Shandong were all opened. Yang Peng has set up relief stations in every town and city in Shandong. With the wooden waist tags issued by Yang Peng, the people received sweet potatoes every three days to relieve the disaster.
In July and August, Yang Peng had already hired tax personnel to collect business taxes in advance. However, the first thing the tax officials did after taking office was not to collect taxes. Instead, they went to the grassroots villages and city streets to register the identities of all people and create a unified register. In addition, Yang Peng also hired local carpenters to make waist badges for the heads of each household, which corresponded to the registered account books.
With these registration measures in place, Yang Peng can accurately distribute disaster relief food to the people. Each common person is given a daily quota of one catty and eight taels of sweet potatoes. In the Song Dynasty, one pound was sixteen taels, and one pound was eight taels, which was one and a half pounds. People go to the relief station to receive sweet potatoes every three days, and each time they receive four kilograms and eight taels for each person in the family.
With waist cards and account books, there is no such thing as claiming falsely or claiming too much. Every citizen can get their share of disaster relief food. Although one and a half pounds of sweet potatoes is only equivalent to the calories of half a pound of rice, which is far from full, it can also ensure that the people will not starve to death. Moreover, it is basically impossible to plant crops after September in Shandong, and farmers do not need to work. On the premise of reducing the amount of exercise, one and a half pounds of sweet potatoes can keep the victims alive through this period of time.
When Yang Peng distributed potatoes to the people, he repeatedly emphasized that sweet potatoes should not be eaten raw, otherwise they would be extremely difficult to digest. Generally speaking, sweet potatoes are best eaten cooked or roasted to get the most calories.
Sweet potatoes are not considered a good food. Eating too much sweet potatoes will not only cause abdominal distension and constant burping, but will also stimulate the secretion of gastric juice and cause acid water to flow back into the esophagus. However, for the people in Shandong, after a year of severe drought, the free sweet potatoes distributed for free are a life-saving treasure. Regardless of whether he feels good after eating it, at least he won't starve to death, right?
Some farmers had previously thought that they would not be able to survive this year and had made plans to escape. At this time, they suddenly heard that King Yang Peng of Yan had begun to distribute sweet potatoes for free. It was like a dying person seeing hope of life, and they were all very excited. After receiving their badges, the common people queued up near the relief station to receive sweet potatoes, praising the person who handed out the sweet potatoes as a living Bodhisattva.
Yang Peng took advantage of the situation and hung a high Yanwang flag on each relief station to let the people know that the life-saving kindness was given by him. After learning that Yang Peng was carrying out disaster relief in Shandong, Yang Tong volunteered after listening to Lin Qing'er's statement, and followed Yang Peng to Jinan Prefecture to distribute sweet potatoes to the victims of Jinan Prefecture.
Yang Tong took off her princess crown, put on a pair of coarse clothes, and took a carriage to the relief station in Hedong Township, south of Jinan Prefecture. She first looked aside to see how the staff at the relief station distributed sweet potatoes.
Distributing sweet potatoes is very simple. The person cutting the sweet potatoes has already cut the sweet potatoes into one-and-a-half kilogram portions and put them aside. When the person distributing the sweet potatoes comes up, he loudly asks for his name and checks his waistband. Then a person in charge of registration next to him found the name of the person in the account book and put a check mark on the account book to indicate that the family had received it today. The personnel distributing sweet potatoes will hand over a certain amount of sweet potatoes to the people according to the number of people in the household who receive the sweet potatoes.
The staff at the relief station are all Tianjing Xincheng citizens recruited by Yang Peng. In recent years, Tianjing New Town has vigorously promoted literacy classes. These citizens are all literate and can do these things easily.
Today is the first day of distribution of sweet potatoes, and the people who received the sweet potatoes were very excited. After receiving the sweet potatoes, these common people would never forget to say: "Thank you, Lord, for saving your life!" The citizens of Tianjing Xincheng who distributed the sweet potatoes would correct them: "Wrong! Thank you, King Yan!" "Yes! Thank you, King Yan!" !”
Yang Tong watched for a while and felt that this matter was simple, so he sent away a potato distributor and went up to distribute the sweet potatoes himself. Yang Tong was dressed simply, but the heavily armed guards around Yang Tong betrayed Yang Tong's identity. Twenty guards in chainmail stood aside with sharp swords in their hands, watching eagerly at the people who came up to receive the sweet potatoes. Behind these guards were thirty Tiger Division soldiers armed with rifles, on high alert.
The momentum was so frightening that the people who received the sweet potatoes did not dare to show their anger. They were respectful when they came to receive the sweet potatoes. Yang Tong's maid Ju'er stood aside in a silk dress and said to everyone who came up to receive the sweet potatoes: "Take it! These are the sweet potatoes given to you by Princess Yan."
It was okay for the two ignorant people at first, but they didn't understand what "Princess Yan" meant anyway. They were illiterate, so they only knew about the King of Yan who benefited the people. As for the words King Yan and Princess, they couldn't understand what it meant at once. They lowered their heads and took the sweet potatoes from Yang Tong, shouting "Thank you, Grandma Guan". Walk.
However, the third man who received the sweet potatoes from Yang Tong had heard the newspaper and knew what the words Princess Yan meant. As soon as he walked up to Yang Tong, he knelt down with a bang, kowtowed and shouted: "Thank you, Princess, for saving the sweet potatoes." ! We will never forget the kindness of the prince and princess in our lives!"
This was too much for them to kneel down. The hundreds of people behind them all realized what a great official lady Princess Yan was, and they all knelt down in front of the relief station.
"Young people have met the princess!" "The princess is so kind, God will bless the princess!" "The princess is like a fairy, and she is a perfect match for King Yan!" Yang Tong blushed at the people who knelt down and shouted, He stood there stunned for a while. Yang Tong's maid Ju'er reacted faster, and shouted: "Get up! Get up! Don't talk about these gossips, it's business to come up and get the sweet potatoes to save your life!"
After hearing Ju'er's words, the people gradually got up. They became more and more respectful and walked up to Yang Tong one by one to receive the sweet potatoes. The seventh one was handed out, and the person receiving the sweet potato was a little girl dressed in rags. The little girl held up the badge in her hand and showed it to Yang Tong, and then said: "Grandma Guan, I am Huan Laosi from Huanjia Village, Hedong Township, and I receive nine pounds of sweet potatoes."
Yang Tong looked at the girl who had very cute big eyes, but was skinny and skinny, and couldn't help but pity her. Cui He handed nine kilograms of sweet potatoes into her hand and said, "Is there only two people in your family? Why do you want to get the sweet potatoes?"
The little girl blinked her eyes and said: "Grandma Guan, my father and mother died of illness last year. My brother and I are the only ones left in my family. We survived because the adults in the village gave us some leftovers. Starting a few days ago , there is no leftover food for everyone in the village. We haven’t eaten for three days. If grandma Guan hadn’t given me sweet potatoes, we would have starved to death today.”
Hearing the girl's words, Yang Tong's nose felt sore and his eyes became moist. Yang Tong took out another three kilograms of sweet potatoes and stuffed them into the little girl, and said, "This is the ration for King Yan and Princess Yan today. We won't eat anything today, so we will give it to you and your brother. I hope you will have enough to eat today."
What happened after all, let’s see what happens next.
