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 of another great victory over the Qing army in Beihai Town.
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, I haven't seen the little beauty for a long time, and I miss her a little, so I happily agreed. When Shen Jingdan heard this, he was overjoyed and knew that the other party still had something to do, so he said goodbye.
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. There are not many Qing Dynasty businessmen cooperating with Beihai Town now, so they will never treat Shen Jingdan badly.
When Zhao Xin met Chen Qingsong, he had just returned from school. It seemed that he was very tired and his voice was hoarse when he spoke. Zhao Xin was about to take Chen Qingsong to the cafeteria to have a meal when he heard a woman's voice coming from outside the door.
"Mr. Chen is back?"
Zhao Xin opened the door curiously 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 scores 85 points according to modern aesthetic standards. Qinghe didn't know how to play music, chess, calligraphy or painting, but he 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 be beautiful with a sad look on her face, a delicate flower that shines on the water, and a weak willow supporting the wind. Qing He, a beauty in the eyes of modern people, ranks second among thin horses. Mainly because she is not as thin and weak as Sister Lin.
Qinghe couldn't help but blush when he saw that it was Zhao Xin who opened the door. Putting down the food box, he said a blessing and said, "I didn't know that the master is here. 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 Qinghe. He also likes to eat meals cooked by Qing He, so whenever 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 said in surprise: "The living standard is pretty good!"
"Stop coming! 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 accept the kindness of a beauty. I won't provoke her if I can."
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 used the light at the door to take a closer look and found that Tang Xiao had become more beautiful. This girl was originally a beauty. In the past few months since she came to Beihai Town, she no longer controlled her three meals a day like her mother-in-law did before. She was no longer so thin, and her face became plumper.
When Tang Xiao saw Zhao Xin staring at him, he couldn't help it. He lowered his head and handed the food box in his hand to Zhao Xin, and said coquettishly: "I won't 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 same three items as Chen Qingsong's, there was also an extra bowl of braised fish. Chen Qingsong laughed at the sight and said, "Sure, the treatment is indeed different. It seems that Tang Xiao is interested in you."
Zhao Xin didn't know whether to laugh or cry, and said: "Pull it. I take it that Qing He has something in mind for 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 marrying. 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 pretentiousness. He said casually: "Let's talk about it later."
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 the refugees is far more complicated than we thought. Originally, I wanted to wait for you to come back, hold a conference, and then take out all the prostitution contracts of these people. Now that the fire is over, let’s ‘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, "What do you say?"
Chen Qingsong said: "The production methods under the small-scale farmer economy are fundamentally different from those here. I had a rough chat with a dozen of them in the afternoon. When I knew how they farmed, I felt that this person The dependency system must be maintained for a while, otherwise once they make a big move, this black land will have to be harmed by them."
If you don’t ask, you won’t know. If you ask, you will be shocked. Floods and droughts were certainly a major reason why Henan was poor in this era, but the corruption of officials and oppression by landlords that Chen Qingsong imagined before were the main problems. The most important reason why the refugees in Henan are poor 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 heaven for harvests. The reality of frequent floods and droughts means that the possibility of relying on the weather for survival is extremely slim. Occasionally, there are a few years when the rains are favorable, and it is already a rare year of good harvests.
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 farming practices. The main problem is that when farming is not focused on agriculture, fertilization is not paid attention to; after sowing, people do not know how to manage the land and just wait for the harvest.
In 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 autumn. They only plowed the land in the spring. start."
"Huh?" After two years of farming, 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, "An inch of deep plowing in autumn will be topped by a stubble of manure."
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 when I can cultivate good land is it 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.
When planting these crops, it is said that the ground must be hoeed at least three times in the beginning of spring, whether there is grass or not. When I asked, guess what, they would hoe the ground once or twice at most. A few people from Wuyang said 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 his farmers finished plowing the ground and sowing seeds in the spring, then just waited for the summer harvest and did nothing else, watering or fertilizing. If there is a drought, just wait for rain and don't even carry water. Chen Qingsong was stunned when he heard this. This is the Central Plains region. Is there such a place for farming?
The Linzhang man explained at the time that floods occurred frequently in Henan in recent years. After the floods, there would be drought and grasshoppers, and no one could take advantage of the land. Over time, those good crops were all moved away; and the farmers who remained in the 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 or so 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 made multiple inspections. But with all the attention focused 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 territory, few can provide irrigation in a timely manner.
Zhao Xindao: "This is a vicious cycle. As soon as there is a famine, farmers in Henan begin to migrate to surrounding provinces, either renting land or reclaiming wasteland, or looking for other businesses. As agricultural technical talents are exhausted, production becomes more and more difficult. 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 stunned after hearing this. According to this path, the soil of the Sanjiang Plain will turn into sand within a few years.
Henan, which has experienced the three dynasties of Kangxi, Yongzong and Qianlong in history, has experienced rapid population growth due to the absence of war, but the per capita cultivated land area has continued to decline. In addition, the grain yield per acre is low, making it difficult to meet people's basic food needs, resulting in an increasingly acute conflict between man and land. Due to the pressure of survival, many farmers who were squeezed out of the land went to the mountains one after another, and went deep into the old forests in the mountains with severe terrain to engage in land reclamation by destroying forests.
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 a year, they will naturally abide by our system. When everything is on track, we will abolish the personal dependence system. I think this will take at least two or three years."
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, and production materials such as seeds, large agricultural machinery, horses, livestock, etc. are provided by Zhao Xin, a large landowner, and organized by Chen Qingsong. The civil affairs department has the final say on what to plant and how to plant it, and farmers have no decision-making power.
In addition, Chen Qingsong also has to formulate annual agricultural production plans. For example, planning total production, production 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 to farm, and the rest are either migrant workers or soldiers.
After making various necessary deductions from each family's field output (such as large agricultural machinery and 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. For example, growing vegetables in front of and behind the house, and producing tobacco and matches at home.
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 from 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 is not only because the early refugees regarded Zhao Xin as an "immortal descended to earth", but more importantly because Beihai Town still operates 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 the weight of grain in the Qing Dynasty to the metric system would be very complicated. The density of grain particles determines the weight of grain placed in a wooden bucket. And one stone equals one hundred and twenty kilograms, which is a system of balance, not quantity. The measurement system is Shi, Dendrobium, Dou, Sheng, and He. One stone is equal to two husks of dendrobium, equal to ten buckets, equal to one hundred liters, equal to one thousand hehe.
For example, one stone of soybeans weighs 430 kilograms, one stone of mung beans weighs 440 kilograms, one stone of japonica rice weighs 410 kilograms, one stone of corn weighs 380 kilograms, and so on.
Specifically speaking of wheat (not ground), one stone is 500 kilograms. Corresponding to the price of silver, it is five-two-two-five. Corresponding to Beihai Town's 1 yuan silver coin (each silver coin weighs 7.46 grams and contains 92.5% silver.), that is 25.13 yuan, which is 5 cents per pound.
In other words, if a farmer grows wheat, with an output of 600 kilograms per mu, the harvest will be 30 yuan, which is 6 taels of silver at the official price, and 120 taels of silver in the island country (one yuan to four taels per day). A farmer's family has fifty acres of land. If calculated roughly, the annual gross income is one thousand five hundred yuan, which is equivalent to three hundred taels of silver.
Even after deducting necessary expenses and discounting it in half, this income is already scary! Many small and medium-sized landowners in the Qing Dynasty could not earn so much money in a year.
Zhao Xin and others originally planned to launch the 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, and the issue of currency has been delayed.
Chen Qingsong said: "It seems that the currency matter cannot be delayed any longer."
Zhao Xindao: "Then it will be before the Spring Festival. The currency will be the same, and the refugees in the island country will change their Chinese surnames and names. 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 be 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 have to let these people understand our production methods first. First, open an agricultural training class and assign some people to attend classes. Then assign 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. Before, it was okay for us to have 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: "Teaching classes, building roads, burning bricks, digging dry docks, mining, and building a few more bridges on the Xila River... Haha, I'm busy enough this winter, so that's it."
The error-free chapters of "The Forty-Eight Years of Qianlong" will continue to be updated. There are no advertisements on the site. Please bookmark and recommend it!
If you like The Forty-Eight Years of Qianlong, please collect it: () The Forty-Eight Years of Qianlong is the fastest updated.
