"No, this thing must be kept, as well as the yellow cloth cover and seal. All must be kept well. This is the best weapon to educate the people. Tianlai Novelｗｗｗ． ⒉" Shen Ruiming said, "Let them see this. What is the true identity of the so-called 'Emperor-Feminated Tuantou'?"
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. .
There are long rows of corridors on both sides of this "lobby". Pushing the door open, you will find the place where the masters work. The room is now empty, but the Four Treasures of the Study and various account books on the table are still there. Some rooms even have cabinets for storing files and account books. There are people who handle the money and rice coming in and out; 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 sixth room 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 is 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 in his arms. Cui Hantang knows a lot about Chinese Taoism and the system of folk gods. It can be said that just by looking at the statues of gods, combined with the specific images, decorations, and magical instruments, you can probably know which one it is. But after studying this for a long time, he still didn't see it.
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 offerings, 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. Of course there are beggars too.
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 clinging 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 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 first beggar in the world.
Based on Cui's limited historical knowledge of the Han and Tang Dynasties, he probably knew that the Dou family, as relatives 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 figures 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.
At first glance, I realized that the beggars' den of the Golden Flower Temple was really amazing. It not only had a "court", "six rooms", and even a "prison". There was another side courtyard 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 one to several days. During this period, they have to deal with their excrement and urine on the spot, and they have to rely on the kindness of others for food and drink - the beggars said. It's called "wearing iron chains". This is the lightest punishment among beggars.
There were a dozen "prisoners" in the hut, but they were all released by the police and taken away. It's dark and humid here, and there's a stench of feces and urine on the ground. Cui Hantang looked at the rusty iron chains and iron shackles in this dark and damp "cell" where the sun was out, and he couldn't help but feel a sense of terror.
Shen Ruiming muttered: "This is simply a private court."
"This old society is so fucking 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 heaven does not descend on the Senate, eternity will be like a long night," he suddenly said. Shen Ruiming couldn't help but be startled, why did this rough man wearing a Taoist robe suddenly say such a thing?
"It's nothing, I just feel it." Cui Hantang said, "Let's go to the Gao family's private residence and see what their family has done 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 private residence of the Gao family is located in the second half of the Golden Flower Temple, just past the Moon Cave Gate from the courtyard behind the main hall. When you walk in, you will see that it looks like an ordinary mansion of a wealthy family. Although the green tiles and vermilion eaves, the carved beams and embroidered doors, it did not exceed the imagination of Cui, Han and Tang Dynasties.
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 sold under the purple brand All kinds of "Australian" delicacies can be seen in high-end residences.
Just when I was feeling disappointed, someone suddenly came to report: "Chief, it's been hidden in the cellar!"
Now both Cui Hantang and Shen Ruiming became interested. Since ancient times, wealthy families have kept secret vaults in their homes to store money and valuables. Once the big families decline, the hoards they leave behind will become legends as time goes by. There are often stories in society 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 elders do not seek to "get rich overnight", they still have a strong interest in the "hoards" of local tycoons. In the past few years, the Senate has made a lot of "hidden" windfalls from various wars and social transformations. How much wealth has the Gao family, a rich man who has been running rampant in Guangzhou for hundreds of years, accumulated?
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 are no books 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 head of the Gao family does business. It can be called the "study room" for the people of Guandi Temple.
The secret cellar is in the corner of the study, and there were originally several large boxes on it. The box is filled with copper coins handed over by the big bones.
These copper coins are definitely not the "little money" or "bad money" like 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 after moving the box away, they found that the bluestone slab underneath was loose. They were all old people and knew that there must be something fishy under the stone slab, so they immediately moved the stone slab 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 built with grained stones made of glutinous rice lime juice. A thick layer of charcoal ash is piled at the bottom, which is strong and moisture-proof.
Countless silver is piled in this stone room. There is no silver box or silver sheath 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. Silver ingots and nuggets come in various sizes and colors, and there are even various types of silverware and jewelry.
It seems that this silver cellar has been kept too much for a long time and used less. Most of the various silver ingots and silverware have been oxidized black and lost their shiny color. Some of the scattered silver pressed at the bottom had turned into a large black mass. The members of the search team could only carry it out in bags and boxes and weigh it, 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 number, he asked: "How much silver is there?"
"Reporter, the preliminary 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 and signaled 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 was seized. Gundam Ling and others fled in a hurry. The Gao family exploited beggars in Guangzhou for three hundred years and extorted the people. Except for a small amount of soft goods, none of the savings they had had time to transfer. It can be regarded as a little comfort to Cui Hantang and others.
Of course it is a good thing to seize a large amount of money, especially since it was not just the Gao family's residence where a large amount of money was confiscated. Various amounts of silver 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 the beggars in their hometown, whether they were sick or when it rained, in fact, this kind of "care" was not 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 are not allowed to question, they will be beaten severely if they even ask a question.
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 from running around for a day, even by mutilating their bodies. Even if all he gets is scraps of food, he still has to hand them over to Da Gu to feed 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 secretly sighed in his heart.
This time the whole city took a unified action. 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.
