Late Tang Dynasty Floating Life

Chapter 1013 "Tuntian"

Wang Shilu calmly walked through the Tixiang Gate.

He found that the gate tower had already been built.Not only the Tixiang Gate, but also the Chán Gate in the north has been completed. There are two gates on the east side of Shangyang Palace City, the Tixiang Gate in the south and the Xingfu Gate in the north. The overall architectural concept is consistent.

The city wall between the two gates has been built, and a lot of bricks have been piled up in the city, and the servants are wrapping the city wall with bricks under the guidance of the craftsmen.

Brick wrapping has existed since ancient times, but it has only been in the past ten or twenty years that it has really become popular, and it is limited to some prefectural cities or important state cities and military towns.

Brick and tile wheel kilns around Luoyang have been erected one by one, and the output of brick and tile is huge.King Xia is also a picky person, so it is normal for Luoyang city walls to be covered with bricks.Anyway, he is not in a hurry, he would rather slow down and work carefully.

Even some houses in the city have changed the traditional style of being built entirely of wood, and a large number of bricks and stones have been used, so that so many wheel kilns have been built, and it is still difficult to find a brick in Luoyang.

The public reason given by King Xia is that wood is not fireproof, and cutting wood will also leave the surrounding forests bare, which will easily cause floods, destroy farmland, deposit silt, and block ditches.

Anyway, he is a martial artist, he can do whatever he says, and if he is unreasonable, what else can you do?

Passing through the Tixiang Gate, as far as the eye can see, it is still a bit messy, with a lot of building materials piled up.The scenery on the grass is very disorderly, but some big trees have been transplanted, and it seems that it is gradually being transformed.

Going straight to the west, there is another brick wall with a door called "Guanfengmen".

There are already many sergeants on duty inside and outside Guanfeng Gate.Wang Shilu knew that the origins of these palace guards were very complicated.

Those who can speak the official language are generally the children of officials and generals.

The official language is not good, but they can speak various local dialects, and those who are older are usually old soldiers who have retired from the Xia army.

Those who can only speak nonsense and have a weird accent in Mandarin—the most common type of people—are usually members of the former bodyguards, and they are all young men in King Xia's slave tribe on the grassland.

After careful interrogation by the guard officer, Wang Shilu was let in.

Wang Shilu looked left and right, but saw that there were two buildings standing between the doors. The south was called "Yuri Building" and the north was called "Qibao Pavilion".

Standing on it, you can climb high and look far away, overlook the whole city, and enjoy the scenery far and near, which is refreshing and full of pride.

Or the family will enjoy it.

After entering the Guanfeng Gate, it is the boundary of Guanfeng Palace.

Lichun Terrace, Yaozhang Pavilion, and Jiuzhou Pavilion are arranged in a well-arranged manner to guard the Guanfeng Hall.

These three places are all independent small courtyards, all of which have been completed, the debris has been cleaned up, and the landscape has begun to be restored.

Especially in the Jiuzhou Pavilion, there are many bamboos and trees in the courtyard. I don't know whether they were left over from the original or transplanted nearby.Wang Shilu felt that during the scorching heat, Xia Wang could enjoy the cool air in the pavilion, listen to the waves of bamboo, and watch the green pines and cypresses, which is really a great pleasure in life.

Immediately he was envious again.

Just one Kyushu Pavilion is already a magnificent garden scene only for rich and noble families.The Kyushu Pavilion is only a small part of Guanfeng Palace, the entire Shangyang Palace, and many other palaces, not to mention the larger Ziwei City.

No wonder everyone wants to be rich, it's good to be rich, it's so enjoyable.And the one who is extremely rich is the Son of Heaven.

If you don't see the emperor's residence, you will know that the emperor is respected.Sincerely!

The Guanfeng Hall will arrive soon.After waiting outside the hall for a while, Wang Shilu was called over.

"See Your Highness." After the ceremony, Wang Shilu glanced secretly. Fortunately, King Xia did not sit on the dragon chair, but sat opposite Zhao Guangfeng and Xie Tong, drinking tea and chatting.

"Brother Ling is okay in Chang'an?" Shao Shude asked casually.

"Everything is fine." Wang Shilu replied.

What's so good about being an idle official?Just travel around the mountains and rivers all day.

"I'm looking for you today about Ziqing." After Shao Shude finished speaking, he clapped his hands.

A strange eunuch immediately walked over holding a model ship.

The vessel appeared to be a fishing boat as there were a lot of tackle dangling from the sides.The hull structure seems to be different too. Judging from the size ratio of the fishing rod to the hull, it should not be small, far larger than the average fishing boat.The bottom of the boat is a sharp-bottomed structure. Using soft sails, the handling and anti-wave capabilities should be good.

Wang Shilu was born in Qingzhou, so he knows something about fishing boats.

The fishing boat of Guochao is very small, and it is not worth mentioning when walking next to the cargo ship, as if it can be overturned by a wave.

There are also very few fishermen in Ziqing Town who use simple tools such as hooks, harpoons, hanging baskets and hand-operated fishing nets.

The boats are small and the tools are simple, so they can only move around the sea and near the islands, and their income is limited. Therefore, fish in the ocean are rarely a commodity commonly consumed by coastal residents.

Taking Denglai as an example, the locals mainly eat mutton, and sea fish is rarely seen, because the output is extremely small, which is abnormal.

Of course, from an economic and political point of view, this phenomenon is normal.

Gein is here, there are indeed people who go fishing, but not too many.The reason is that there are so few people.As long as they can barely make ends meet on land, there will definitely not be too many people going out to sea to fish.

Don't look at Chishanpu and Pimapu, there are often boats coming in and out, and they are very busy.But how many tragedies of shipwreck and loss of life were there along the way?The book will only record that so-and-so went to sea and where so-and-so landed. These are the people who survived.There are very few records of those who died in shipwrecks, and the numbers are often extremely large.

In addition, there are obstacles from the government.

As far as Jiedu envoys are concerned, they are not very happy to rule the people to go fishing at sea. After all, who knows if you ran away as soon as you went to sea?It is difficult to manage and difficult to control.

Of course, as far as their management level is concerned, there is a high probability that they can't control the fishermen's going to sea to fish, so this is not the main reason. The core is that the risk is not proportional to the harvest.

In short, it is dangerous to go out to sea with small boats, rafts, and hanging basket boats, let alone go to farther places.

The reason behind it is the lack of long-term investment in marine fisheries, and it can even be said that no one invests.

Shao Shude has thought about it, no matter from which point of view, investing in marine fisheries is neither economical nor politically correct.The government has no motivation to do this, and the private households do not have so much capital. Therefore, those broken boats have been engaged in very small-scale ocean fishing for thousands of years, even until the end of the Qing Dynasty, with little change.

But consider it from another angle?
In the 17th and 18th centuries, Britain encouraged fishermen engaged in ocean fishing, and registered each person's detailed information in alphabetical order.In the era of sailing warships, these fishermen were the reserve force of the navy.However, war consumption has never been a small amount. Without sufficient supply of troops, it is impossible to persist.

"Your Highness, is this a fishing boat?" Wang Shilu asked.

"Exactly." Shao Shude said: "It hasn't been officially built yet, but I just made a model according to my idea."

Having said that, he stood up and said while pacing: "The benefits of shipbuilding are not only in business, but fishing is also a great harvest."

"Your Highness, if there is a choice, the common people are not willing to go fishing at sea." Wang Shilu said: "When you go out to sea, life and death are unpredictable. Who would want to?"

"This is really something to worry about." Shao Shude agreed with this opinion: "In the end, going to sea is still too dangerous. But after the world is peaceful, there will be more people and less land, and then it will be different."

"What Your Highness said is very true." Wang Shilu said: "However, there is no land in the Central Plains, isn't there other places?"

Shao Shude glanced at Wang Shilu in surprise.

These days, is there still such a person with a global vision?Do you know how to expand outward and ease the conflict between people and land?

"Your Highness, the towns in the south of the Yangtze River are sparsely populated." Wang Shilu explained.

Shao Shude suddenly realized that he thought he was talking about Liaodong.

But it is true that the territory in ancient times was very large, but it was not actually controlled.It may be said that the map has opened up borders, but the past dynasties in the south are really a bit like a colonial empire. Starting from scattered settlements, they are slowly strung together to transform the environment, actively or passively immigrate, and assimilate the indigenous people.

This process lasted for more than 1000 years, and finally completely digested the vast south. Isn't this a different kind of colonial expansion?It's just that the ancestors were more civilized than Europeans, and the assimilated natives were all regarded as Han Chinese, and gradually merged away.

"Developing the south of the Yangtze River is not much safer than fishing in the sea." Shao Shude said with a wry smile: "Someone was relegated to a remote place to be an official, and he wanted to commit suicide. Is this still an official, what about the common people? Made of piles of bones."

He thought of the Dutch East India Company in history.

Colonial East Indies (Indonesia) had a very high mortality rate.The mercenaries recruited from the German region died one by one, and the sailors recruited in the seven provinces of the Netherlands also died frighteningly. In the end, they had to deceive and kidnap people to go to sea. The salary is very high, and many people are deceived, and then they are directly kidnapped and put on the ship as sailors, whether they are willing or not.

The East India Company did everything possible to recruit people to the Far East. As a result, their European employees (including soldiers and sailors) in the East were only 1.1 at most, and the number could not increase.An epidemic in Batavia, the capital, killed half of the population until the survivors adapted to the local environment.

Jiangnan may not be as scary as the tropics, but it is not easy to get along with.

During Xuanzong's reign, the captured Tubo captives were exiled to Wuyue.Wuyue is the essence of China in later generations, but it was still a place of exile a few decades ago. How better do you think it can be?

The prosperity of the south was built by the bones of the waves of immigrants from the Central Plains caused by the wars in the north.History does not record the painful past of these ancestors who overcame obstacles and transformed the environment, but only wrote about the scene of prosperity in the south. This Spring and Autumn style of writing made future generations think that this process was easy.

"The islands between Deng and Liao are sparsely populated. I heard that there are only a few fishermen hunting fur seals and sea lions?" Shao Shude asked.

In the Changshan Islands, until the Qing Dynasty, there were still a large number of fur seals and sea lions living.This is what fishermen hunt for.

In the Bohai Sea area, until the end of the Qing Dynasty, whales were often seen, but no one hunted them.

Fur seals, sea lions, but the Age of Discovery was big business.Tsarist Russia’s Russian and American companies have suffered losses in other businesses, and they have lost one place in the colonies. They are all supported by high-profit businesses such as hunting sea lions and fur dogs, otherwise they would have gone bankrupt.

"Yes." Wang Shilu replied, but he didn't understand his meaning.

"Ping Haijun has recruited more than [-] people. I plan to let them fish in the offshore first to support themselves." Shao Shude said.

Wang Shilu opened his mouth wide.Isn't this bullying Silla people to be honest?What is the difference between the navy's going out to sea to fish and the land's farming?

At this time, is there any martial artist who is willing to farm?I dare not say that there is no such thing, but it is definitely rare.

"I have mobilized more than [-] capable personnel from the Yellow River Navy to join the Ping Navy, making up a total of [-] troops." Shao Shude continued: "Let these 'landlubbers' adapt to the waves of the sea first, and then serve as the backbone of the Ping Navy. "

Wang Shilu listened silently.

"The families of Silla soldiers scattered in various states moved to Dengzhou. I want you to be a pacifier to comfort these Silla immigrants." Shao Shude finally revealed his purpose: "You go to the treasury to raise [-] horses. Silk, [-] grains of dendrobium, and Denglai Ranch will also distribute some cattle and sheep, so that these Silla people can support themselves. From now on, all the people will be under my control."

Wang Shilu understood.

This is because they were worried that the Silla sergeants in the Ping Navy would run away, so they were rewarded and their family members were treated better.This is certainly a reward, but at the same time it also took hostages and increased the cost of the Xinluo people's defection, which is indeed very comprehensive.

"Of order." Wang Shilu replied.

He was very emotional, King Xia's "skinning" really didn't suffer at all, and he didn't know what to say for letting the navy do all the work of "garrisoning the fields".

(End of this chapter)