Lu Ming

Chapter 673 Changes ([-])

In the afternoon, southeast of Hangzhou City, Minle Square, Zisu Street.

Two light sedan chairs stopped at the intersection.Immediately, the servant raised the bamboo curtain, and Du Shaowei and Ji Xiang walked out of the sedan chair.

After experiencing the Zaoyuan Poetry Club before, Du Shaowei had a good conversation with Wu Fazheng, a scholar from Shanxi who he met for the first time, and they hit it off right away.After that, the two parties went to another poetry meeting together as guests.After further confirming that each other's words and deeds are in harmony during the contact, Du Shaowei invited his friend Ji Xiang to look for Wu Fazheng together today. Everyone made an appointment in advance to go to the city to play.

The Jiangmen Inn at the entrance of Zisu Street is a traditional time-honored brand in Hangzhou, with a high grade.

Wu Fazheng settled here.

According to what Du Shaowei learned, Wu Fazheng was also from a wealthy family in Shanxi.After passing the scholar examination two years ago, Wu Fazheng had the idea of ​​going abroad to study, and then postponed the trip until this year.

Hangzhou City is already the third stop of Wu Fazheng's trip.He came to Hangzhou along the Grand Canal recently, and originally planned to make friends and study in this place where literary styles flourish, so as to lay the foundation for his future trials.

Du Ji and the two entered the inn with their front feet, and under the guidance of the staff, they found a single courtyard in the back.

The person who came to open the door was a middle-aged man in his forties with dark skin and well-dressed clothes.

Afterwards, the owner Wu Fazheng came out upon hearing the news, and rushed forward to greet the guests.

For a high-end hotel located in the city like Jiangmen Inn, the rent for its private courtyard is high.Even if it is not comparable to the presidential suite of later generations, it is still of the grade of an executive suite.

From this point, it can be seen that Wu Fazheng, a Shanxi scholar who came to live in Hangzhou, must have ample luggage.

And to a certain extent, a rich family background is also a necessary precondition for dealing fairly with rich local young masters like Du Shaowei. That's all.

When good friends meet, they are naturally polite.Immediately afterwards, Wu Fazheng called the drink service. The contents of the iced drinks were not different from those tasted in the algae garden.

In the summer of 1635, a new gas ice factory appeared in the Lingang Industrial Zone of Shanghai. While ice cubes, a summer resort product, caused a sensation, the speed of light spread to hangjiahu and other traditional Ming Dynasty gentleman settlements.

At the same time, some dessert recipes from later generations, such as strawberry sundae and poplar nectar, inevitably followed the footprints of canned food and spread to the hinterland of Ming Dynasty.

With cans, there is non-perishable milk and various seasonal fruits.

Among these desserts, Yangzhi Ganlu has become an Internet celebrity drink because of its unique taste and elegant name, which suits the tastes of gentlemen.Poplar nectar, which goes perfectly with ice cubes, has become an internet celebrity these days.If any master does not have these two enjoyments to cool off, he will lose his grade immediately.

As an established brand in the city, Jiangmen Inn is also the first batch of hotels to provide guests with high-end chilled services.

Inviting his friends to have a drink on the small stone table, Wu Fazheng made an apology and went inside to change his robes.

When Wu Fazheng changed into a light lake silk robe and came out, ready to stop, the three young masters took their respective servants and accompanied them, and went out for a wandering.

Originally, according to Du Shaowei's intention, today he wanted to invite his brothers to go to the West Lake to spend some time on a painting boat.

However, Wu Fazheng said that since he came to Hangzhou, he has always been in a hurry, either visiting his elders or rushing to the market, and he has never been able to experience the local customs.So he wants to walk around the city today.

They were just wandering around, since the newly-acquainted foreign friends wanted to take a look at Hangzhou, as landlords, Du Ji and his wife naturally followed suit.

So a group of people walked in the car after going out, and went to the bustling place at will.

This wandering is more than an hour.They set off from Caishi Bridge, first went to the Gong Yuan to pay homage to their ancestor Kong Sheng, then crossed the Xian Bridge and Guan Bridge, and went to the Longevity Palace.Finally tired from walking, everyone stopped at the tea stand in front of Guanmei Club.

As soon as he sat at the tea stall, his forehead was covered with sweat, and Wu Fazheng, who was considered a burly figure in the world of scholars, poured two cups of herbal tea vigorously, then took the sweat towel handed by him and wiped his face, and finally threw up the folding fan. Hangzhou’s urban civilization and spiritual construction gave a high evaluation: "Good! Good! The scenery is beautiful, the city is famous for its smoke and willows, without a trace of fireworks. Even ordinary people, the streets and alleys are so clean and tidy, which is worthy of the world's literary style. where the gathering takes place."

In order to hear the words, Du Shao and Ji Xiang looked at each other knowingly, and said with color: "Hehe, brother Changshi (Wu Fazheng's word) seems to have something?"

"Only one thing can be seen." Wu Fazheng raised his finger and said with emotion: "I have traveled all the way, but there is not a single beggar in the city. Only this one thing, even the capital is hard to come by. As expected, there is heaven above, and Su below." Hang!"

Hearing that scholars from other provinces praised their hometown so much, Du Shao felt very proud, and couldn't help laughing: "Brother, I don't know, those beggars are now 'piling dung' outside the city."

After laughing, Du Shaowei got up, and if he had any deep feelings, he led Wu Fazheng to the toilet at the street entrance for "one or two conveniences".

It was the first time for Wu Fazheng to enter a "public toilet" in Hangzhou.

As soon as he entered, he was shocked.The whole toilet is built with red bricks, and the neat pits are separated by brick walls.The entire latrine floor was clean, without any traces of excrement or maggots that are necessary in summer.

There are many people who come to the toilet.So although there was some stink, it soon dissipated with the hollow brick holes on the wall.Even though it is hot summer now, the smell of this latrine is enough to be bearable.

What surprised Wu Fazheng even more was that he saw a large iron box supported by iron pipes above the toilet roof.

Then, under Du Shaowei's signal, the boy went to the iron box and pulled it hard. The next moment, Wu Fazheng understood in seconds: the water rushing out of the iron box washed away all the traces of their convenience.

After hearing the sound of flushing water, a "Toilet Zhu" with pale beard and hair, hunched over and wearing an orange vest walked in.

Seeing that some young masters pulled the water tank, Brother Zhu didn't say anything, but muttered a few words: "There is a time for flushing!"

Young Master Du smiled when he heard the words, and winked so that the boy rewarded the toilet with a few copper coins.

Now that I went to the toilet, I wished to stop muttering. After thanking him, he went to the toilet and filled the water tank.

Wu Fazheng, who was very interested, hurriedly followed Du Shao to see what happened.

Behind the toilet is a river.In fact, the toilet wish only needs to pull an iron handle up and down, extend it into the pipe in the river, and the river water will be siphoned into the water tank on the partition wall.

In fact, this is a simple manpower casing pumping system, which can be seen everywhere in rural TV dramas of later generations.

"Unexpectedly, there is such a cleverness."

Seeing that Wu Fazheng was amazed, Du Shaowei led him to a place not far ahead.In the bushes, a brick "septic tank" finally explained the mystery of flushing toilets.

Afterwards, Du Shaowei, who went back to the tea stall and sat down, told Wu Fazheng in detail about the relationship between beggars and latrines in Hangzhou. In other words, a few years ago, a group of bandits went down the mountain and became a leader. Zhou Tong.

Later, due to his benevolent heart, Huazitou in Hangzhou took off his robe and abdicated, and the rest pushed Zhou Tong to take the top spot.

As the leader of Gangzhu Zhou, he began to find jobs for thousands of beggars under his command.Therefore, he first sorted out, perfected, and built a garbage collection system for the entire city of Hangzhou.

At the same time, the beggars built a dung dump outside the city.Over the past few years, Zhou Tong has turned a business that everyone hated into a profitable business.

Du Shaowei told Wu Fazheng that all the domestic garbage in Hangzhou, including the free latrines built everywhere, belonged to the Beggars' Gang.

Citizens have to pay a garbage removal fee on weekdays.And after these garbage and excrement are transported to the manure dump outside the city, after a while, they will be turned into high-quality fertilizer and sold to surrounding farmers.

Speaking of this, Du Shaowei couldn't help sighing: No one was interested in this kind of business at the beginning, until Zhou Tong came out, and some big families in the city who didn't care about face so much discovered that this business was "doing well", and deliberately got involved .

However, at that time, Zhou Tong was already full-fledged, coupled with the exclusive composting technology that no one could break, so Zhou Tong managed to make his business today.

In the end, Du Shaowei told Wu Fazheng: The reason why there is no refugee begging hungry in Hangzhou City is not only because of the removal of garbage.In fact, a few years ago, Zhou Tong openly took refuge in a certain unspeakable person after the battleship bombarded the county seat of Shanghai. All the extra beggars in the city were sold to Yizhou to farm by this guy.

Du Shaowei has a lot of information in this story.However, as he expected, Wu Fazheng only focused on two things in the end: composting and farming in Yizhou.

Seeing Wu Fazheng inquiring about his family's composting in detail, Du Shaowei showed a look on his face: "It turned out as I expected".

It's different from those second-generation ancestors who ate and waited to die every night.People like Du Shaowei can be said to be the elite among traditional scholar-bureaucrats.They aim at the court, and they are very concerned about state affairs and political affairs at a young age.

This type of scholar would not disdain to pay attention to composting, especially composting, because the excrement is filth. It involves farming, which is the focus of their attention.

This is also the reason why Du Shaowei guessed the focus of Wu Fazheng's focus in his previous interactions. He has confirmed that the other party is the same type of person as himself: everyone is a "new generation of young gentry" with ambition and strong acceptance.

"Forget it, it's still early, we've had enough rest."

Speaking of this, Du Shaowei got up: "Today, I've done what Brother Changshi wanted, and I'll take a walk outside the city and have a look at the composting field."

In the second half of the day, Brother Gongzi, who originally planned to swim in the lake, rented a boat and went to visit the dung field outside the city.

After the investigation, Wu Fazheng admired such an advanced ecological recycling industry.It was night, and the excited Wu Fazheng had a long talk with Du Gongzi all night long.He unabashedly called this project "benevolent governance" and imagined that one day the project would be promoted nationwide.

Du Shaowei felt the same way, after being impassioned, he simply made an appointment with Wu Fazheng, and planned to go to Shanghai Port for inspection tomorrow together.

Wu Fazheng readily agreed.

(End of this chapter)