It’s almost the Xiaoshu solar term, but it will take about ten days for the plum blossoms to appear.
The locals in Zhenjiang were fine, but the foreigners from the north, whether they were delicate officials and businessmen in beautiful robes or poor men in ragged clothes, could not stand the sultry heat that felt like a wet cloth covering their faces.
Among the trackers by the canal, there are many Shandong men who are not afraid of the scorching sun, but are afraid of the yellow plum weather, so they will inevitably complain and curse.
At this time, although the local trackers remained silent, they wished in their hearts that more outsiders would be suffocated to death so that there would be fewer people stealing jobs.
However, this time, not only were the men in Shandong not in danger of heatstroke, they were also lucky.
A wealthy family came to Su Song's side, recruiting young people to protect the courtyard, and named young refugees who had escaped from Shandong.
Those who take a fancy will be given two new clothes and a new pair of shoes to each person. After arriving in Songjiang, they will be given one tael of silver per month, and they will be given food and accommodation in the master's house. Those who don't like it will be given a reward of one denarius as a reward for delaying the drawing.
After the news spread, Qingzhou and Yanzhou trackers from several docks flocked to the recruitment point, and there were more than 200 people in total.
When a local loader passed by, he was surprised that there were so many Shandong people among the trackers in Zhenjiang. He couldn't help but curiously chatted with the tea stall man.
"Brother, I heard that there have been constant floods and locust plagues in Shandong Prefecture in the past few years, but didn't I tell you from above that long live my benevolence and righteousness, the rent and taxes have either been reduced or exempted, so how come there are still so many refugees who have escaped?"
The tea stall man said: "I asked them, and they said that it was because the court reduced rents and taxes that they had no way of living."
The salesman was surprised: "Huh? Why is this?"
The tea stall boy was used to welcoming people with a smile, and explained patiently: "For example, in the same place, five wealthy and noble families have a total of 8,000 acres of land, and a hundred poor families also have a total of 8,000 acres of land. During the previous dynasty, Ten taxes are one, and each mu of land is taxed one bushel. The rich households pay a total tax of 800 shi, and the poor also pay 800 shi. Now, benevolent government has come, and it has been changed to thirty tax one. Brother, do the math, How much tax do five wealthy families pay and a hundred poor families pay respectively?”
The salesman blurted out: "It's so simple. Five rich households pay 270 dan, and 100 poor households also pay 270 dan."
The clerk sneered: "However, this place has to support so many officials, and the cost of welcoming and transporting them to the state capital is huge. The court often imposes various taxes, and the tax of 1,600 dan is still indispensable. However, rich households often either have someone in their family who is an official, or they usually do not pay enough filial piety to the officials and tax collectors. Therefore, they still have to force the poor to come up with the missing one thousand and sixty kilograms in taxes. Brother, do the math again, poor people How many extra dou do each household pay?”
Sellers, when have they ever been afraid of mental arithmetic, they quickly gave the answer: "What? Each household pays ten shi and five or six dou more, and each household has to pay a total of thirteen shi and three dou? This, this is better than no tax reduction. I paid almost twice as much as I paid!"
The man nodded, shook his head, and sighed: "You pay more in lean years than in poor years. If it were you and me, wouldn't we have to run away too?"
The salesman and clerk stopped talking and stared at the trackers by the river beach with squinted eyes.
I just saw a young man kneeling down and kowtow to the man and woman in front of him.
…
"Don't kowtow, just take this sweat towel. In three days, you can board my ship with my sweat towel."
Zheng Haizhu signaled the young tracker to stand up, then stopped looking at him, staring at the man in the blue cloth shirt behind him and said, "You, come here."
The man in blue cloth hurriedly stepped forward, bowed and said: "Hello, girl, I'm turning 20 this year, so I came here for weight loss at the beginning of the year. With only one penis, my mother and I are starving to death, and I don't have a wife. Our village , I haven’t been able to say that I’m a wife in the past few years, so which family’s daughter would be willing to marry her and starve to death?”
The man in the blue cloth shirt kept his ears open to listen to the previous fellow's answer to Zheng Haizhu's question. When he saw that he had finished answering, he was attracted. When it was his turn, he responded smartly and directly.
Zheng Haizhu turned his head and gave Wu Bond a look.
Wu Bond understood, walked up to the blue cloth shirt, and suddenly pulled his clothes gently.
"Hey, hey, sir, what are you doing?"
The blue shirt struggled.
Zheng Haizhu walked up and pointed at his shoulder: "Brother, do you have a bronze head and an iron arm? After half a year of stretching, not only are there no calluses on your shoulders, but the skin is not even broken."
The man in blue cloth fell silent for a moment, his eyes complex.
Wu Bondang let him go and said coldly, "Let's go."
The man in the blue cloth shirt is indeed not a tracker, but a rat who was tricked and abducted in Zhenjiang. Because he thought that he was also from Yanzhou and had a dark face, he wanted to try to see if he could sneak in. If he was selected, he would go to the house of a wealthy family in Songjiang to take advantage of the opportunity. Wouldn't it be great to just steal and run away?
Unexpectedly, it was revealed so quickly.
The man in the blue cloth shirt was so angry that he stepped back four or five feet and yelled at Zheng Haizhu at the top of his lungs: "You stinky bitch, you shameless fox, look at the way you are dressed, you are a widow, right? You are getting so horny. , In the clear sky, in front of your concubine, I have to look at a man’s body!”
Wu Bangde kept a low profile in Zhenjiang on weekdays. Except for the aides of the military camp and the prefecture, the merchants and people in the city did not recognize him as Qi Jin's adopted son, let alone a stranger like Lan Bushan.
At this moment, Wu Bangde, who had walked back to Zheng Haizhu, could not turn a deaf ear to such filthy words. He was about to turn around and beat the blue shirt, but Zheng Haizhu grabbed him and whispered, " A good opportunity to get to know people.”
In just a moment, six or seven trackers jumped out of the queue waiting for the interview.
After the blue cloth man had finished his addiction, he still cherished his life and fled towards the city like a rat.
However, in order to claim credit for Zheng Haizhu, the financial backer, the trackers quickly caught up with the blue cloth man and pinned him to the ground.
Zheng Haizhu quickly glanced at the trackers in front of him who were not chasing him. There were quite a few of them, with faces full of excitement about watching a show, and he shouted: "Hit him, beat him to death."
Some people also came to advise Zheng Haizhu: "Girl, please don't kill anyone. It's not worth getting a lawsuit for this kind of person."
After Zheng Haizhu noticed the different behavior, he quickly walked over and scolded: "Don't hit him, let him go."
Among the several trackers in their early years, they also had different reactions. Some stopped obediently, while others punched him unwillingly and cursed, "I wish I could beat you to death, you bastard" before letting go of the blue shirt.
Regarding the latter, Zheng Haizhu silently crossed them off from his mental selection list.
Compassion does not have the power to control soldiers, it is only suitable for commanders to exercise it.
How can the soldiers be included in the team if they don't obey orders and only vent their anger?
…
This interview by the canal was actually the highlight of Zheng Haizhu's trip to Zhenjiang that he had planned for a long time.
After the Shen family committed suicide, the eldest son of the Gu family rushed back to Songjiang after receiving a letter from his family. Although he said that he supported Mu Atai, the concubine's righteous act of annihilating her relatives, and thanked her for cleaning the back house of the Gu family, he actually expressed his gratitude to his second sister-in-law, Mrs. Lu. , and then to his nephew Gu Shouqian, he was quite indifferent. He didn't even wait for his second brother to come back to see him, and he didn't even bother to attend the wedding between Gu Shouqian and Han Ximeng. He used his busy official duties as an excuse to serve his concubine and returned to his post. .
Li, the third daughter-in-law who was originally friends with Mrs. Shen in the inner house, was always jealous of Mrs. Lu for giving birth to the Gu family's first grandson. She was even more of a gossip, talking about this strange incident with the family members, and she was talking about other things. It is hinted that if the old lady had not refused to pass on her skills to the Shen family, why would she have caused such an uproar and made the Gu family a joke in Songjiang? I couldn't hold my head up during the set.
Miao Atai clearly saw the situation at home. One day, he put on his royal robes and went to see the patriarch of the Gu family. He brought back the patriarch's permission: to divide another half of the Gu family's property, Wenzhe Academy, and open a new one. The gate serves as an independent courtyard for the second house and grandchildren. Gu Shouqian and Han Ximeng, together with their mother-in-law Mrs. Lu, moved out of the Gu family's current Luxiangyuan mansion and lived in Wenzhe Academy.
This decision not only made Gu and his wife feel the joy of gaining a free world, but also made Zheng Haizhu excited.
Wenzhe Academy and his own Shoukuan School are not too far apart. Poor students from the three counties of Songjiang often came to the Wenzhe Academy to exchange experiences in the imperial examinations, and there were many talents with open minds and nonconformist ideas.
If Shoukuan School is a compulsory basic education for children and teenagers, then Wenzhe Academy can help Zheng Haizhu get closer to future civil servants who are from Songjiang.
More importantly, Wenzhe Academy is close to Shanghai County and surrounded by many abandoned and abandoned fields. If several batches of young men were recruited from other places under the pretext of recruiting nurses, Han Ximeng and Zheng Haizhu could gradually have their own weapons.
At the end of the Ming Dynasty, public funds were embezzled, and there was not much military spending left. Therefore, many of the guards raised by the imperial court were waste. Even the later national regular army "Guanning Iron Cavalry" was still a buyer trying to disappoint the seller.
Looking at the teams that can really fight, the warlords take free money from the imperial court, and then add part of their own property to support elite servants as their own military capital.
Even though the Sichuan White Guards, Qin Liangyu and Ma Xianglin did not take any free money and relied on their own internal financial support from Shili Tusi, they were essentially still servants.
Zheng Haizhu's philosophy is different.
Based in Shanghai County, what she wants to try is not only to establish an international shipping and trade center, not only a modern financial and insurance headquarters, but also a modern armed force that does not simply stay at the level of field soldiers or mercenaries.
Things in the future can be taken advantage of and adjusted at any time.
Now, since the reason proposed by Zheng Haizhu is the nursing home, the Gu family and his wife certainly agree. The first batch of fifty people will cost about a thousand taels a year, and the imperial court gives it to officials and gentry families like the Gu family and the Han family. Taxes are more than that.
Atta Mu was even more supportive.
Jiang is still old and hot, and Miao Atai told Zheng Haizhu to pick a bachelor to come back, marry a wife and have children in Songjiang, and gradually localize the descendants of the blood.
So, after the Gu couple and Fan Polu returned to Songjiang, Lu Xiangsheng and Zheng Haizhu stayed behind. The former went to Danyang to look for craftsmen related to the casting of bronze and ironware, and the latter carried out the investigation with the information from the open and secret visits, accompanied by Wu Bondang. , interview and select people.
Selecting people from trackers was Zheng Haizhu's plan from the beginning.
The group of trackers is very similar to the miners that Qi Jiguang was attracted to back then. They have good physical fitness and are more collaborative. They do not have a strong desire for personal expression and obey orders. They are like hard-working worker ants in the collective.
The choice of the Shandong refugees in the team of trackers was the idea given to Zheng Haizhu by Wu Bangdang after a conversation at a tea stall by the river that day.
Wu Bondang told Zheng Haizhu that the intensity of natural disasters in Shandong, the eastern coastal provinces of the Ming Dynasty, was far greater than that of South Zhili and Zhejiang and Fujian.
The Shandong people who were affected by the disaster had three main options. One was to go to relatives and friends to do business, or even go to sea to smuggle goods; the other was to go south and work as coolies in the south of the Yangtze River; the third was to imitate the rebellion in Shaanxi.
Therefore, with a high probability, the Shandong people who work as trackers in Zhenjiang have neither the agility to do business and make profits, nor the back of their heads, so they will not bring danger to their owners. Moreover, the fact that these people were able to make it all the way to the south of the Yangtze River despite extreme hunger and fatigue also shows that they are very strong and will not eat the food of their masters and be unable to work due to illness.
Zheng Haizhu feels that Wu Bondang's analysis is very reasonable. In short, this is a group that is very suitable for entering the institutional discipline.
After three days of interviews, fifty strong and honest young trackers were finally selected.
After paying lost work wages to the unsuccessful ones, Zheng Haizhu looked at the trackers' retreating figures, turned to look at Wu Bond, and smiled meaningfully.
"Master Wu, have you written down the other ten people?"
"Don't worry, girl. It's hard for me to brag if there are many people, but I can still remember just ten faces."
The two of them were talking about ten trackers with wives and children.
Unlike the fifty bachelors who were kept in a nursing home at the expense of Gu and Han, Zheng Haizhu planned to have his shipping insurance company pay to keep these ten people in Zhenjiang.
They have no performance indicators for insurance. Their mission, apart from checking whether the shipowner and ship owner in danger have colluded to defraud the insurance money, is mainly trained by Wu Bondang as a spy.
"Master Wu, in order to spy on all kinds of information or even kill people in the Jurchens' lair, you can't just rely on hard-boiled scouts or absent-minded caravans. Since Mr. Qi and you both feel that, in a few years it will be Being transferred to Liaodong by the imperial court, we deserve to spend some money to support our own intelligence brothers. With more than a hundred taels of silver a year, if I sell silk goods, cotton clothes and pants, and sell insurance, I will definitely be able to afford it."
This was what Zheng Haizhu told Wu Bangdang when they were drinking mung bean soup by the river that day.
The people selected by Wu Bondang were different from the people selected by Zheng Haizhu. They all had families in Zhenjiang, just like the former small country in the Western Regions that had hostages in Chang'an.
"When I fled, I was able to take my wife and children with me, and I didn't let other refugees capture and eat me. It shows that I am quite capable and not a waste. The fact that my family is small is their weakness. Mr. Wu is easy to control."
Zheng Haizhu said calmly.
Wu Bond glanced at her.
This woman is quite strange. Even her adoptive father Qi Jin can say that she has the heart of a Bodhisattva, but sometimes, the words she spits out are cold.
The two were about to leave the river beach when they heard a group of calls behind them.
"Girl, son, stay, stay."
Looking back, I saw five or six women.
Their faces are dark and the whites of their eyes are particularly obvious.
His hair was dry and messy, and his clothes were so dirty that the original color could not be seen.
Judging from the firm skin texture, they are all women of the same age as Zheng Haizhu.
The leading woman came forward and asked timidly: "Two noblemen, we are also trackers, our strength is no less than that of men, and we don't eat much. We only need five taels of monthly silver, or three taels will be fine. Can we go to Songjiang?"
