,!
Liu Ping was not a fool, and a fool could not stay in the ceremonial prison for a long time without being tortured to death, so he immediately swore and swore that "the elder of the palace has orders, and all slaves will obey them."
Of course, just listen to "obey everything". If Gao Pangzhi asked him to kill the king, this guy would be scared to death on the spot and would not do it no matter what.
Fortunately, Gao Pragmatic did not have such crazy ideas. He really pointed out a clear way to Liu Ping: "Suppose there is a gold mountain overseas, and the gold mountain comes from nowhere. Now I want to get the gold, I dare to ask if I can control the luck of the gold. Is a treasure ship more important, or is it more important to occupy a golden mountain?”
Liu Ping was stunned for a moment, and asked in surprise and envy: "Ah! Did Mr. Ge discover Jinshan Mountain overseas?"
Gao pragmatic frowned and thought to himself: It seems that this statement is more reliable to tell the emperor directly, at least the emperor will not misunderstand what I mean.
When he frowned, Liu Ping immediately realized that he had thought wrong, and he immediately realized that Mr. Gao Ge was just a metaphor, and immediately saved him: "Ah, I am stupid, and I thought wrong for a moment... Well, I think both of them are wrong." It is very important. If the golden mountain is not under my control, how can I get its gold? If the treasure ship is not under my control, how can I transport its gold?"
Gao Pragmatic then showed a smile and nodded: "That makes sense. Now here's the problem: there are enough gold-carrying ships on the market, and the people who control these gold-carrying ships are not only far inferior to me in status, but they are also counting on me." When I eat, I will definitely not refuse to help me transport money.
But if I just ignore this, I will build a new ship to transport gold. As a result, they originally thought they could help me transport gold and earn some hard-earned money, but now they have lost all hope... Do you think these people are willing to do it? "
This metaphor was really straightforward, and Liu Ping understood it now, and suddenly looked embarrassed: "This is... destroying people's wealth. I'm afraid they won't accept it."
"That's right." Gao Pingshi nodded repeatedly and said: "But these people don't control the gold mountain, especially they don't have the strength to dig such a big gold mountain. If I don't dig this gold mountain, they won't be able to make fortune. The remuneration... tell me, is there any way to get the best of both worlds?"
"Oh... I understand, slave!" Liu Ping said hurriedly: "This matter is easy to handle! Then you can dig up the Jinshan Mountain, and those people will help transport the gold. When the time comes, just give them a portion of the gold from the Jinshan Mountain as a reward. Everyone has gold to make, isn’t it wonderful?”
Gao Pingshi smiled and said, "Look, is this a fortune?"
"Uh..." Liu Ping hesitated for a moment and coughed dryly: "This is of course wealth for you, but what does this have to do with being a slave?"
"If you are 'my' confidant, this golden mountain is far away overseas. I can't lead people to dig it myself, right? Isn't this your chance? If such a big business is in your hands, even if you are high-spirited and elegant , but the power contained in it...doesn’t I need to explain it?”
Liu Ping suddenly took a deep breath, and his mind suddenly turned around: Come on, let's go and mention this matter to the Emperor. As long as the matter can be discussed, who will the Emperor send to take charge? Chen Linggang (Chen Ju) is the palm print, so it is impossible for him to hold an important position at the same time, and Dongchang and Yuma Supervisor can no longer take care of other things. So who else is more suitable besides our family?
But there is another question Liu Ping has to ask: "Mr. Ge is really a bodhisattva-hearted man, as if he doesn't want to see this slave suffer, which really makes me burst into tears of gratitude. But Mr. Ge, what exactly is this 'Golden Mountain' you are talking about..."
"Eighty thousand hectares of fertile land can be cultivated." Gao pragmatically said calmly.
"Eighty thousand hectares!" Liu Ping was so frightened that his eyes nearly popped out, and his voice trembled: "Eight...eight million acres?"
Gao pragmatically said "hmm" lightly, his expression calm.
Liu Ping took a sharp breath, but still felt that this number was too mysterious, and couldn't help but remind him: "Mr. Ge, at the time of Wumiao (Zhengde), the total number of imperial estates in the country was only 37,600 hectares... and the emperor a few years ago After the North Zhili Huangzhuang was transferred to the private sector, I am afraid that the Huangzhuang today is no longer half as good as the Wumiao Temple."
"We knew these numbers when we compiled the Ming Dynasty Conference." Gao Pragmatic waved his hand slightly: "If that's not the case, how can we use 'Golden Mountain' as a comparison?"
"There are so many fertile fields overseas?" Liu Ping still felt a little dizzy and asked, "Where is the land?"
"It's in the Xuanwei Department of Jiugang." Gao Pingshi smiled and said: "But you must listen carefully. What I said is 'cultivable good land', not mature land that has been cultivated."
"Oh, that's it..." If it's not mature land, it will be more troublesome, but Liu Ping is not discouraged. It can be cultivated if it is "cultivable". It's no big deal. As long as it can be cultivated into good land, it will be fine. With such good land I am still afraid that no one will be able to plant seeds in Ming Dynasty?
What's more, the Xuanwei Department of Jiugang doesn't seem to be very remote. I think it should be on the edge of the waterway, so even if you want to send people there, it shouldn't be too difficult. From this point of view, there is great potential for this matter.
Liu Ping was also a man who did what he said, and immediately said: "Mr. Ge, as long as the number you mentioned is correct, and most of it is indeed fertile land, then I will definitely go to this matter even if I have to give up more than a hundred kilograms." Tell the emperor clearly!"
"Eighty thousand hectares, I dare to guarantee that there will be no less than one acre. As for whether it is fertile land, I dare to issue a military order to the emperor, and ask the emperor to send someone to inspect it. At least 70% will be good, and the rest will be good. Medium, almost no field work.”
Liu Ping slapped his thigh: "Okay, since Mr. Ge has said so, what else can I not dare to do? Mr. Ge just leave this matter to me. I will return to Beijing now. Please wait for the good news!"
"It's a deal." Gao Pragmatic nodded with a smile.
Liu Ping said loudly: "It's a deal!"
After the matter was discussed, Liu Ping left immediately. He only had time to have a meal in Jinhai and didn't even spend the night. After he left, the three secretaries of the Gao family, uncle and nephew, came to see Gao pragmatically.
Gao Wuzheng looked very anxious and said: "Brother, why is this happening? Eighty thousand hectares of land, don't we, the Gao family, want these good fields ourselves?"
"Is 80,000 hectares a lot?" Gao Pingshi glanced at him, pointed at the Kanyu map of southern Xinjiang and said: "It's just the cultivated part of the southern corner of Sumatra Island that has been surveyed."
"But that's still 80,000 hectares! Didn't Liu Ping say that at its peak, Huangzhuang didn't even reach half of this number?" Gao Wuzheng still looked very reluctant to give up.
In fact, although the figure of 80,000 hectares is astonishing, Gao Pragmatic has already "kept it at home". The so-called "southern corner of Sumatra" he just planned would be roughly two provinces in later Indonesian administrative plans: South Sumatra and Lampung.
Here is a brief introduction to Indonesia’s agriculture in later generations—especially the situation in rice-producing areas.
In later generations, the world's rice production was ranked by country. The first place was naturally China, with an output of about 200 million tons per year; the second place was India, with an output of about 150 million tons; and the third place was Indonesia, with an output of about 65 million tons (Note : In recent years, it has dropped to about 55 million tons for some reason, but it should not be considered normal).
Further back in the top ten, there are roughly 48 million tons from Bangladesh, 39 million tons from Vietnam, 33 million tons from Myanmar, 31 million tons from Thailand, 16 million tons from the Philippines, 13 million tons from Brazil and 8.5 million tons from Japan. [Note: Note here that modern Thailand is smaller than Siam in this book. ]
This comparison shows that Indonesia's rice production is no joke. It is actually higher than the famous rice exporting countries Thailand, Vietnam, Myanmar, and Cambodia.
Of course, later generations of Indonesia also had a large population, with 266 million, but that is a story for another day. Anyway, in the current survey of southern Xinjiang, the "Nanyang Islands" are obviously vast and sparsely populated, and their production capacity is extremely low. , it can be said that it is in urgent need of development.
So what is the specific situation in these two provinces in the "southern corner of Sumatra" that Gao pragmatism comes from?
In fact, the area with the best and most arable land in Indonesia in later generations is Java Island, which is the island where its capital, Jakarta, is located. The area is not large, but it is the best land in Indonesia. It has a dense population, a lot of arable land, and rice production accounts for more than 60% of the country. .
Outside of Java, the largest grain-producing province is South Sulawesi, followed by South Sumatra and Lampung.
South Sumatra is the second largest rice-producing province in the outer islands. For example, in 2020, this South Sumatra province produced 2.74 million tons of rice. At the same time, in terms of rice harvest area, South Sumatra is actually declining almost year by year. It had 580,000 hectares in 2018, then dropped to 540,000 hectares in 2019, and recovered a little in 2020, returning to 550,000 hectares.
There is something unusual here that should be noted, that is, the area of hectare is actually much smaller than "hectare". The weight and measure of hectare is imported, and "qing" has been the unit of large area in China since ancient times. Specifically, one hectare is equal to 15 acres, but 100 acres is one hectare, so 1 hectare is only equivalent to 0.15 acres.
It becomes clear how big eighty thousand hectares is when you look at it this way - the reason why the ancients described wealthy families as "thousands of hectares of fertile land" is because "hectares" are really big, and one thousand hectares is equivalent to one hundred thousand acres.
The area of Lampung Province is much smaller than that of South Sumatra Province, but the cultivated land area is about the same. In 2020, it was also about 550,000 hectares, and its grain output was 2.65 million tons, slightly lower than the former.
Here we only talk about area. The cultivated land area of the two provinces in later generations was about 1.1 million hectares, which is equivalent to about 165,000 hectares. However, due to urbanization, industrialization, etc. in later generations, the area of cultivated land is actually not as large as it was in the agricultural era.
Even based on the 165,000 hectares of cultivated land, Gao Pragmatic actually only allocated less than half of the "cultivable land" to the emperor, and the remaining part was enough for him to make other arrangements.
Of course, this is not a top priority, because the top priority is actually the lack of people - the local indigenous people really look down on their pragmatism when it comes to farming. They are too lazy and completely in the eyes of the most typical farming people. It is a waste of land resources.
Therefore, the "Nanyang Islands" are seriously short of people, and it is clear that they are short of Ming people - regardless of whether they are Han people or some ethnic minorities with a higher degree of Hanization, going to Nanyang to farm is a dimensionality reduction attack.
The problem is that it is now very difficult for Gao Wu to "get people". He couldn't just pull people on the boat, he almost had to wait for the victims, who were the ones that the court couldn't help, and these victims often brought their families with them. Sometimes there were seven or eight people in a family, and the real labor force could have Two is considered good.
Of course, there are advantages to bringing up a family, that is, it is easier to take root in southern Xinjiang and Nanyang, and it is not easy to have the trouble of having to return to your hometown to buy a property.
The disadvantage is that the pressure of reclamation is not relieved fast enough. It will take at least two generations to have the ability to "expand production." Previously, they could only barely maintain the basic land allocated to them by Jinghua.
However, the reason why Gao Pingshi did this was full of problems. In the final analysis, he was a "minister" and could not send the emperor's subjects overseas at will and never come back. But it would not matter if the emperor did it himself - not to mention that the emperor did not have to do it. Ordinary people went there to farm.
The emperor had a lot of military households, and they were military households whose ancestors had lost their land for who knows how many generations. They were almost proletarian. If such military households were allowed to farm overseas, even if they were used as ordinary tenants, the emperor would still be lenient in collecting rent every year.
How many military households were there in the Ming Dynasty? To be honest, Gao Pingshi, the Minister of Household Affairs, doesn't even know about it, and even the Ministry of War and the Fifth Army Governor's Office don't know either.
Why? Because there are almost no statistics in the later period - the statistics are also unclear.
Judging from the list of guard posts alone, in the early Ming Dynasty, such as the Hongwu Dynasty, there were 325 guard posts for military households across the country, and the number of military households was approximately 1.8 million. Judging from the fact that one household sent one soldier, but it was basically impossible for one household to have only one person, how could the "military" There are also more than five million people in the Hujia military family.
What about Wanli Dynasty? There are 493 health centers in the country, nearly 500 of them. There are 2.76 million military households on the roster, which means there are probably 70,000 to 80,000 people.
Moreover, there is an obvious difference between the Wanli Dynasty and the Hongwu Dynasty, that is, there are also hidden households among the military households. In fact, they are serfs who became officers. Even Gao Pragmatic is not sure how many there are - in short, there is no way to do this thing. I understand, it's completely confusing.
The only thing that is certain is that there are many of them, and as long as the emperor can provide land, someone will definitely plant it.
80,000 hectares of land, 8 million acres, it would take Gao Pragmatic to recruit people, and it would take only the Year of the Monkey, the Horse and the Moon to fill up this pit. However, if it is the emperor's imperial palace, it can also reduce the pressure on the local guards who are overcrowded and lack arable land. In theory, Said it should be a win-win idea.
Of course, there may be other games here. For example, most of the military officers from various places will not be willing to give their best labor to the emperor. Those who are willing to give are either those with average or even poor physical fitness, or those with a bad temper and disobedience. of thorns.
But... it has nothing to do with him being taller than someone else. Anyway, even if they are thorns, they will have to be obedient when they arrive in Nanyang, otherwise the Nanyang fleet and the garrison will not tolerate them.
Oh, by the way, the Xuanwei Department of Old Port is now under the care of Annan. The current deputy Xuanwei Envoy of the Xuanwei Department of Old Port is Cen Ling who moved to the old land of the Kingdom of Aceh. The methods of King Cenyan are no joke. [Note: The Xuanwei envoy is in name only, and the deputy envoy, Cen Ling, actually presides over the work. ]
Nanyang is in urgent need of development. Gao Wuzheng really doesn't care about giving up some land when the land is vast and sparsely populated. As for Gao Wuzheng's mood, he can only enlighten him.
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