Great Warriors of Sui and Tang Dynasties

Chapter 1056 Dynasty Cycle 200 Years

The autumn wind is gentle.

The emperor changed into a white Confucian shirt today, and took Monk Xu to the Shaolin Temple, accompanied by dozens of guards, and the other Habayashi riders followed ten miles away.

"Why are you in the mood to go to Songshan today, Your Majesty?" Monk Xu asked doubtfully.

"When you come out, just call me Goro."

"Yes, Goro."

"Actually, I just want to go out and have a look. In the past few years, I have been so busy that I can't keep my feet on the ground. I think I have done a lot of things that should be done, but Ma Zhou told me that many things I do are not what I am doing now. It’s something to do, and I also said that some things have already offended everyone, so I wanted to come out and have a look, to see the real situation below.”

The reform of Buddhism and Taoism is also a relatively urgent matter for the emperor. Now he wants to see how the Shaolin Temple has changed, whether it has changed, and how the local people think about it.

From Luoyang to Songshan, the official road is very wide and flat. Luo Cheng rides a horse all the way and observes the road very carefully. Sometimes, the development and governance of a place can be seen just by looking at the road.

This road was widened a few years ago, but after a few years, the road surface is still very smooth, and it can be seen that the ditches beside the road have not been maintained regularly.

"Goro, the road is dusty, why don't you change the carriage?"

"No, a little dust is nothing." Luo Cheng didn't care. No matter how good the road is these days, dust is always inevitable, especially after a long time of fine weather, the road surface is dusty, and when a little wind blows, people will be covered in dust. Soil, so there is a saying.

And in the rainy season, the road may be muddy.

If the road is not repaired in time, there will be potholes, and some roads can even cover the calf when the road is muddy.But along this road, along the way, there are no potholes, and it is obvious that there are newly filled gravel and sand in many places. These are obviously the holes that were filled later.

The fields beside the road did not appear barren.

Even after the autumn harvest, you can still see the stubble left in those fields.

Even in some fields, winter wheat has been planted, and a layer of green can be seen.

There are also kinds of radish and rapeseed.

"The land is so well planted, can the fertility keep up?" Luo Cheng asked.

"Goro, after all, this is around Luoyang, near Gyeonggi. Therefore, the field and water conservancy facilities here are better, and the agricultural products here are easy to sell and transport, so everyone will try to use the land as much as possible. As for the soil, the common people will also compost and retting."

"It's just the Taipu Temple in Luoyang City, which sells horse manure for hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. This money is put into the small treasury of the Taipu Temple. They are the richest of all the temple supervisors. "The one who was dressed as a housekeeper next to Luo Cheng was Li Xian, the admiral of the Imperial City Division.

Taipu Temple manages the horses all over the world, and Luoyang, as the capital, has a large number of horses and many horse farms, so these horse manures have become a big extra income for them.

The imperial court has also attached great importance to agricultural technology in recent years. For example, Quyuan plow and retting method have gradually become popular. In the fields around Luoyang, there are very few fields that are cultivated in rotation and fallow. Generally, there are two seasons a year, or intermittently. combination to maximize production.

However, there is no chemical fertilizer these days. To improve soil fertility, we can only rely on relatively primitive methods. For example, manure is the most effective method. There are also plant ash, pond mud, etc., which are also very fertile.

Because of this, the horse dung from Taipu Temple is sold to dung merchants or ordinary people around Luoyang, and it can be sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.

And there are even many specialized excrement merchants in Luoyang City. They divide their operations into sub-districts, take the initiative to build and contract public toilets in the streets and squares, and pay for people to collect Yexiang and empty the toilets every morning. Actually dig a latrine for Luoyang for free.

And to do this business, you have to pay taxes to the court, but there are still many people who want to rush to do it, so they can only contract it, and there is competition every two or three years.

Of course, it's too early to get started without profit, and no one will do business without profit.

The industry known as Yexiang is not low in profits.

The common people have a high demand for fertilizer. Fertilizer can increase food production, and there is no need for fallow and crop rotation. Therefore, fertilizer means food means money.

The manure collected by the manure collection will be transported to the fertilizer processing factory outside the city, after fermentation, drying, and then mixed with plant ash, yellow mud, etc., and finally made into bags of dry loose fertilizer. It is easy to transport and fertilize, it will not burn roots or the like, and it can be used directly, and the effect is extremely strong.

The common people will also settle accounts. Although it costs money to buy fertilizer, the yield of the fertilized land is far higher than the input, so everyone is happy to buy fertilizer, and they usually find ways to retting and composting, and buy it if there is not enough.

Because of the high demand for manure, even a single manure is hard to find in Luoyang.

Now at the gate of Luoyang City, there are even special people who distribute dung bags to the horses and horses entering the city free of charge to collect animal dung.

Even the garbage such as fish offal, livestock offal, etc. in the vegetable market are collected by someone, and then taken back to cook, and then add a lot of seasoning, and finally processed into fertilizer.

In addition, rapeseed oil cake residue, soybean oil cake residue, and the residue cakes left after juicing have also become good materials for making fertilizer.

Luo Cheng observed carefully and found that even on this rural official road, there would be a public toilet every other section of the road, which was completely free and even provided toilet tickets.

These are all built by the people on their own initiative to collect excrement, but even this public toilet does not have to be repaired if they want to, because this official road is managed by a special person. Unified standard repairs, not just a shed.

"Goro, you may not know that those Yexiang businesses now, in order to gain the support of the people, so that they can compete for contracting rights in the coming year, they will go to the toilet once every ten days, and it is absolutely clean, and they even bring some melons every time. Fruits and vegetables are given to the residents.”

Luo Cheng smiled, "This is a good thing. The common people get the convenience, so they don't have to clean it up by themselves, which is inconvenient, but those who practice Yexiang get the Yexiang they want. It's a win-win situation."

On the way, Luo Cheng deliberately found a public toilet to use, and found that it was quite clean.

"It seems that the people are starting to work hard in the direction of intensive farming, which is a good thing." Luo Chengda lamented that in a place like Luoyang, even though the imperial court has repeatedly introduced various policies such as restrictions on mergers, it still has less land and more people.

"Nowadays, for the common people in Luoyang and its surrounding areas, an ordinary family has only thirty or forty mu of land, while Fubing families have more land."

Thirty to forty acres of land, if traditional farming methods are used, they can barely support their families. This is because the traditional methods are only extensive planting and low harvesting, extensive farming, and depending on the sky for food.

But now, the people began to cultivate intensively. First, there were cattle and horses that could plow and plow deeply. Second, there was a method of fertilizing the fields. In addition, Luoyang’s field water conservancy facilities were better, so the output was greatly increased.

Originally, one acre of land yielded about one stone, but now one acre of land can produce about two stones, and it is even possible to interplant other crops, such as millet, soybeans, or radishes, etc., and the actual yield has increased a lot.

Generally speaking, now we invest more and spend more energy, but one mu of land is almost as profitable as the previous two mu or even three mu.

However, when Luo Cheng heard that ordinary people, with a family of [-] to [-] mu of land, it was quite complicated.

In history, there is a theory of dynasty cycles. It is said that a dynasty is 300 years, and there will be a cycle, the old dynasty collapses and the new dynasty is born.

This periodicity is not a matter of destiny or luck. The biggest problem is that after 300 years, the population of the dynasty will increase greatly, but the land will be merged severely. Land will eventually become the biggest fundamental contradiction, and the court is unable to solve it. Some natural disasters or major wars will completely collapse and perish, and then until a new dynasty is born, a new round of land distribution adjustments will start, and then it will last for another two to three hundred years.

"Thirty to forty mu of land per household is still a little less, but if the intensive cultivation method here in Luoyang can be promoted, it can greatly reduce some land conflicts."

(End of this chapter)