Han Shizu

Chapter 1616 Open treasure today

The 18th year of Kaibao's Jiaqing celebration was held in the Long Live Hall, and the reason is the name of the hall.Among the many palaces in Bian Palace, the Chongyuan Hall is the most majestic and magnificent, followed by the Longevity Hall. For a while, it was also used as the bedroom of Emperor Liu. The great ancestor Liu Zhiyuan also passed away in this hall.

On the day of the celebration, the wind was sunny and the spring was bright, as if the heaven wanted to celebrate Emperor Liu's birthday through a warm weather.The entire city of Tokyo was obviously more noisy than usual. The sounds of people and firecrackers interspersed, and the whole city was immersed in a sea of ​​joy.

The Long Live Hall is already full of guests, full of distinguished guests, clansmen, nobles, and meritorious ministers of the big man gathered together, all well-dressed and full of smiles.

There were a lot of guests, and the Long Live Hall definitely couldn't hold it. Five hundred tables were set up for the banquet, from the inside of the hall to the outside of the hall, occupying the altar and the square.

In order to meet the employment needs of this celebration banquet, the Ministry of Internal Affairs dispatched a large number of maids and eunuchs from the palace, and there were thousands of servants and maidservants serving at the banquet alone.As for guards of honor, bodyguards, rites and music, and singing and dancing, there are also hundreds of people in the team, highlighting a grand event.

Across a palace wall, a new row of stoves was built, with smoke curling up and heat rising, and more than 200 chefs were dispatched from inside and outside the palace, who were busy chopping vegetables, blowing fire, and cooking.

Even if it's a royal banquet, this kind of big pot meal will lose some of its fineness, but at least it can make the nobles eat a hot meal as much as possible.

The atmosphere in the Long Live Hall is equally festive, but with a more serious and solemn flavor.Emperor Liu and Empress Fu sat together, dressed in Boguan Huafu. He was probably the most festively dressed in the whole hall. He was dressed in a bright red gown with vivid dragon patterns embroidered on it. Obviously, this gown was specially made and even made I don't know how much thought and ingenuity of the Weaver Girl from the Shangyi Bureau was spent.

This year's Jiaqing Festival Royal Banquet is probably the most ceremonial. Zhao Pu and others have come up with a series of procedures, the most indispensable of which is the praise of Emperor Liu and the achievements he has made over thirty years. To sum up boast.

Ji Guogong Xue Juzheng personally completed a congratulatory speech with tens of thousands of words, eloquent and eloquent, and he personally read it in the hall.

Although the Long Live Hall was overcrowded, Xue Juzheng's voice echoed throughout it, piercing into the ears of everyone in the hall.To read this matter, a young man could have been hired to do it, but Xue Juzheng thought it was an honor, and since it was his job as a Minister of Rituals, he refused to let anyone else do it.

However, after reading this passage aloud, Xue Guogong was exhausted.Emperor Liu seemed to have regained his previous patience and listened very carefully. Of course, Xue Juzheng's articles were gorgeous in rhetoric, and his words and sentences were profound. You can't go wrong if you think about it.

However, Emperor Liu could still hear some key points very clearly.In the middle paragraph, Xue Juzheng listed a series of data, which is especially gratifying.

By the 18th year of Kaibao, the registered population of Dahan has reached 9007839 households, exceeding 60 million. This is only the registered population. Due to the limitation of statistical methods, population concealment is inevitable. Coupled with the large number of mobile and special population, The actual population of Dahan is even greater, more than 10 million households, that's for sure.

You must know that in the early days of the founding of the Han Dynasty, the population under the jurisdiction of the imperial court was only a little over 10 million. Even if the households of many separatist forces were counted, the whole country was only about 30 million.

After more than 30 years of development, the population has finally doubled. This is still accompanied by long-term and frequent wars. Otherwise, due to the developmental ability of the Han people, the threshold of 10 million households has already been broken through.

And how to feed such a large population is not a small challenge. Of course, this is also a problem that the court has always paid attention to for so many years. Although the business of the big man is becoming more and more prosperous, farming will always be fundamental.

The achievements in land reclamation are naturally remarkable. By the 18th year of Kaibao, there were nearly 8 million hectares of cultivated land in the country, which was far more than that in the heyday of Tang Dynasty.According to calculations, an average of about ten mu of land can support one person, and in places with fertile land and developed agriculture, even two mu of land can support one person.

The development of agricultural technology is always moving forward, and after more than 20 years of promotion, the high-yield Champa rice has also been rolled out on a large scale, and it is no longer limited to the Huaidong area.

In addition to food crops, the development of some economic crops is equally rapid, the most prominent being the large-scale promotion and application of cotton.This is a systematic development, not only the cultivation of cotton, but also the development of cotton spinning technology.

The development of the Dahan cotton industry can be said to be promoted under the strong support of Emperor Liu, and there is a process of accelerating it. He knows the significance of this thing and its great impact on people's livelihood.

Therefore, for a long time in the past, he has been actively doing things that are beneficial to the development of the cotton industry, and he is even more generous with those who have made contributions in this regard.

The Anxi cotton farmers who returned to the east with Lu Duoxun were treated as heroes in the promotion of cotton planting, and now they have a fifth-rank official title.

Five years ago, Zhou Renjun, the magistrate of Qiongzhou, reported to the imperial court a cotton spinning technology that combined the local Li nationality brocade weaving, and attached specially improved cotton spinning tools, which attracted the attention of the imperial court. After testing, those tools can greatly improve the The efficiency of cotton spinning.

In this regard, Emperor Liu gave a highly affirmative evaluation, and out of joy, he directly promoted Zhou Renjun to be the prefect of Guangzhou.With the promotion of new cotton spinning technology and tools, Dahan's cotton industry has also entered a fast lane. The progress in just a few years is comparable to the development of the previous 20 years. Of course, without the accumulation and foreshadowing of the previous 20 years, There is no such leap as it is today.

Up to now, all kinds of cotton products, from cotton to quilts, from cotton cloth to cotton clothes, have begun to appear on the market in large quantities, and have become necessities in the daily life of the Han people. It is no longer like the past, requiring the government to pay the bill to promote development.

In the same few years, cotton planting and cotton spinning technology also spread from the Central Plains to the Yangtze River Basin and developed rapidly.As far as the imperial court is concerned, it is time to reap the fruits, not only the positive significance of food, clothing and warmth for the Han people, but also more intuitive economic benefits. The imperial court has also begun to have tax revenue in the cotton industry.

When it comes to taxation, Xue Juzheng also mentioned a series of data that can stimulate people's eardrums.By the 18th year of Kaibao, the imperial court's annual tax had reached more than 6349 million guan, which was almost double that of 20 years ago.

Among them, the spring and autumn taxes are still the big ones, but the commercial tax and the proportion of the profits of various imperial exclusive industries have also increased significantly, especially the city tax, which has exploded. Of course, the basis of all this lies in the fact that there are big men The common people have created massive social resources and wealth with their hard work.

Xue Juzheng's congratulatory speech, aside from the flamboyant rhetoric to praise Emperor Liu, the rest can be regarded as a summary report on the development of the great man over the past few decades. From time to time, he discussed with Empress Fu beside him, as if he was telling his pride.

Back then, when the Yuan was changed to Kaiyuan, Emperor Liu met with his officials and set a goal of catching up with Shanda Kaiyuan and Tianbao.Today, after 18 years of unifying the world, this goal has been preliminarily achieved.

No matter in terms of population, arable land or taxation, it has already surpassed it. In terms of economy, it is all-round coverage.The culture is also brilliant, and the major categories of books edited by the imperial court are one of the symbols. As for the long and short sentences of Chinese words, they have gradually become the cultural symbols of an era.

Another thing I have to mention is the military achievements. Li Longji kept pushing, and in the end not only was the enemy hard to control, but also led to the waste of the treasury, heavy casualties, exhaustion of the army and the people, and gained a reputation for being aggressive.

The big man is not the case. It can only be described as invincible all over the world. Of course, the surrounding environment and situation of the big man today are indeed much better than those in the heyday of the Tang Dynasty.

(End of this chapter)