Brother Zhu Youxiao

Chapter 504
"Call me big brother!"

"Big brother!"

"Big brother!"

"Okay! Big Brother treats you to some sweets!"

On the third day of February in the 12th year of Tianqi, when the students in the north had already started school, Zhu Youxiao still took his family to escape the winter in Fangshan because the cold winter had not subsided.

As the prince, Zhu Ciran was in Fangshan. Since he had no playmates, he naturally started to make fun of himself.

When Zhu Ciran on the slope sprinkled candy to a dozen or so five or six-year-old children below the slope, the fifteen or six children all bowed their heads and ate the candy while shouting for elder brother.

Zhu Ciran, who has been called "Prince, Your Highness" all the year round, can't help but find it a little strange to hear another title by chance.

Using the candy in his hand, he bought a group of children from Heishi Village, Fangshan County in an instant, and took them to play while walking.

As a nine-year-old person, running around with a group of five- and six-year-old kids, it's really dumbfounding.

People in Heishi Village had never seen Zhu Ciran, but they could tell from the silk and satin Zhu Ciran was wearing that he was a son of a rich family, so they didn't stop him.

Just like that, Zhu Ciran walked towards the outside of Heishi Village with a dozen younger brothers bragging about.

On the way, a younger brother picked up a straight and smooth wooden stick. He was about to play with it, but when Zhu Ciran saw it, Zhu Ciran immediately shouted:
"Show me that stick."

As he said that, he took out a handful of candy, and when he saw sucrose, the child immediately handed the stick to Zhu Ciran as if offering a treasure.

Zhu Ciran took the wooden stick, imitating the appearance of Li Dingguo in his memory in an instant, playing a set of half-baked stick techniques.

"Big brother is amazing!"

"Brother knows kung fu!"

"Of course!" Zhu Ciran was flattered by the praise, and he couldn't help puffing out his chest proudly, then raised his stick and shouted: "Starting from today, you are members of my stick gang."

A group of little kids were playing on the concrete road. When the passing coal-carrying carriage drivers saw them, they all shouted at them, "Don't play on the road, it's dangerous."

"Okay!" Zhu Ciran obediently led a dozen children down the concrete road and walked on the dirt road, beating the weeds with sticks.

"Where are we going, brother?"

"Where?"

A kid asked, Zhu Ciran scratched his chin: "Is there any interesting place nearby?"

"The coal yard, there is nothing interesting except the coal yard." A child sniffed.

"Okay! Then let's go to the coal yard to play!" Zhu Ciran immediately ran to the coal yard with a dozen children after hearing that, and six or seven sturdy men followed behind them not far away.

"The prince is going to play in the coal yard? His Majesty the Palace knows that he is going to blame us."

"That's right, I'll go talk to the prince..."

The identities of these men are of course Jin Yiwei, and their job is to protect Zhu Ciran.

Zhu Ciran was playing in the village, and they thought it was all right, but going to the coal yard was a no-brainer.

Their mission today is to send Zhu Ciran to the train station, then take him back to the capital, and send him to the Metropolitan Procuratorate to study.

It's just that Zhu Ciran said on the way that he would play for half an hour before leaving, but it was delayed.

Looking at this posture now, if he is really asked to go to the coal yard to play with coal, it is a question of whether the heads of five or six of them can be kept.

Therefore, a man took the initiative to step forward, blocked Zhu Ciran's way, and bowed:
"Your Highness, Long Live's will is to return to the capital today. You have been playing for half an hour."

"So fast?" Hearing Jin Yiwei's words, Zhu Ciran twitched his lips. Although he was skinny, he was still quite sensible, so he returned the wooden stick to the previous child, and then shared the candy with them point:

"Okay, you can go find other big brothers."

After finishing speaking, Zhu Ciran walked back to the concrete road, and a four-wheeled carriage drove out at the corner at the end of the road.

"Leave two of you to send these children home. Although the soldiers, horses and yamen servants are investigating the case very closely, the traffickers are hard to guard against."

"Yes!"

The man ordered people to take the children home, and at the same time got into the carriage to protect Zhu Ciran's safety in the carriage.

According to the instructions of the man, two of the royal guards left behind to escort the children back, while the others followed the carriage and walked towards the station.

It is less than sixty miles from Fangshan to the capital, and the Fangshan Railway Station is built not far outside the city. In fact, it is only seven or eight miles away from the coal area.

As long as you get on the train, you can return to the capital in basically an hour.

Feeling the jolt of the carriage, Zhu Ciran, the little black fat man, kept looking at the wilderness outside the window.

Especially when they passed a river, Zhu Ciran stuck his face to the glass:
"Why is the river water much higher than when we came here?"

Zhu Ciran looked at the river with a higher water level than when they came, and was puzzled. The Jin Yiwei next to him could only explain:
"This year, spring rains have fallen all over the north. Officials at Qintianjian deduce that it may be the retreat of the Little Ice Age, so the drought in the north has shrunk."

"However, there is no spring rain in Huguang, Nanzhili and Jiangxi in the south this year. I don't know if there will be drought."

As Zhu Youjian expected, the drought in the north subsided, but the drought in the south expanded.

However, thanks to the anti-corruption and work-for-relief efforts in the past few years, as well as the intensity of taxation supervision and the abolition of some miscellaneous items, the people in the south have at least saved a lot of money and food.

Maybe the money and food can't last for a few years, but it can still reduce the pressure on the court.

Zhu Ciran didn't quite understand these things, so he just said to the coal carts coming and going: "How much are the daily wages of these coal carters?"

"They are all employees of Huangdian. According to the wages of Huangdian to Fangshan, it should be [-] Wen per day." Jin Yiwei said, explaining by the way: "It is [-] Wen higher than the market price."

"Oh..." Hearing Jin Yiwei's words, Zhu Ciran also calmed down.

In this way, after two quarters of an hour, they arrived at Fangshan Station.

Unlike Yanshan Station, Fangshan Station covers an area of ​​five or six acres, and there are more trains, because this is the main production area of ​​coal in North Zhili.

For Zhu Ciran's safety, Jin Yiwei rented a carriage, so Zhu Ciran had no contact with the people, so he could only return to the capital on the train he had taken several times.

After arriving in the capital, he was escorted back to the Eastern Palace of the Outer Court by the Jinyi Guards.

Not surprisingly, he will take a day off today, and then go to the Metropolitan Procuratorate to study tomorrow, but...

"Has His Highness returned?"

"Wang Daban! I'm back!"

When Wang Chengen's voice sounded outside the Ciqing Palace in the East Palace, Zhu Ciran ran out without even wearing shoes, and shouted as he ran, "Has Li Dingguo finished school yet?"

He ran out of the palace and saw Wang Chengen wearing a bullfighting suit. Wang Chengen also smiled back:

"I haven't finished school yet, but today's class is to watch Chunzhong. The king of Qi asked the servants to come to the East Palace. Please go down and look at Chunzhong."

"Okay! I'll clean it up now!" Zhu Ciran immediately regained his energy when he heard that he could go out to play.

He quickly changed into a set of blue clothes and blue trousers, the standard farm work attire of ordinary people.

After all, I played with Li Dingguo at his house for more than half a month last summer. Although Zhu Ciran didn't do much work, he still knew what clothes to wear when going to the fields.

Seeing Zhu Ciran's appearance, Wang Chengen couldn't help but smiled, and then led him into the carriage of Prince Qi's Mansion, and drove towards the east city.

Through the glass, Zhu Ciran looked out the window excitedly.

For Daming, Zhu Youjian brought many changes, but for Beijing, the main changes Zhu Youjian brought to it were health and infrastructure.

The four cities of the capital are paved with masonry roads and cement roads, and the roads are extremely wide. Each city has its own square city. After the flow of people is evacuated, there is not much garbage, but it seems that it is not as lively as before.

However, as a political center, what the capital needs is not an economy, but a climate that represents the atmosphere of the Ming Dynasty.

Wide roads, wide houses, and clean streets are the atmosphere of the capital.

This kind of hygienic aspect is staggering in this era. Even Daming, which is known as the state of etiquette, actually has only mediocre hygiene in the city.

When Westerners came to Daming, they felt that Daming was clean and tidy, mainly because their place was extremely dirty.

The current Daming, in terms of the sanitation in the city, has almost reached the level of later generations.

Many officials felt that Zhu Youjian arranged for sanitation workers to solve the work problems of the orphans, widows, old and weak, but Zhu Youjian's real idea was actually to prevent the plague.

The population dropped sharply in the late Ming Dynasty, mainly due to hunger caused by the reduction in food production, followed by war, then various diseases, and finally various problems.

Zhu Youjian had been preparing for the plague in the late Ming Dynasty since he found Wu Youxing, and even popularized many epidemic prevention standards and tools for Wu Youxing.

Under his arrangements, it may be because the local area has received disaster relief, or it may be that there has been no war. In short, in the current Ming Dynasty, various epidemics have not broken out, at least not for the time being.

In Zhu Ciran's memory, Daming seemed to have always been so clean and tidy. He had never seen how hygienic Daming was before, so he naturally felt that it was nothing.

Therefore, he seemed extremely bored during the fast-paced journey.

Fortunately, the distance out of the city was not far, and the carriage arrived at the Ten Mile Plain outside the east city two quarters of an hour later.

Stepping off the carriage, what greeted my eyes was the endless cultivated land and many people working in the fields.

Walking down the field slope, Zhu Ciran scanned his surroundings.

Spring is the season for sowing, hard work in spring will surely lead to a bumper harvest in autumn, so thousands of people are bending over and pulling their trouser legs to work in the fields.

Although it was very hard work, Zhu Ciran could still feel the joyful smiles on their faces.

Although it is not autumn, for them, the heavy harvest seems to be just around the corner.

"How did you come?"

Zhu Ciran felt that he was being dragged by someone, turned his head away, and he immediately showed a funny smile: "Of course it's Qi...uncle called me!"

There are only a few people in the entire capital who dare to pull Zhu Ciran and are fine, and among them, Li Dingguo is the only one who can call him this way.

"Your Highness?" Zhu Ciran's words made Li Dingguo stunned when he heard the words, and then he looked up and looked around.

Sure enough, he saw many Confucian scholars wearing Taoist robes on a field ridge, and the leader was Zhu Youjian who was wearing Taoist robes, wearing a net scarf on his forehead, and a square flat scarf on his head.

Around Zhu Youjian, the huge crowd, if nothing unexpected happened, they were some important ministers in the court.

"Today is the day when tractors demonstrate farming in the capital, so be careful."

Li Dingguo looked away and reminded Zhu Ciran, and Zhu Ciran nodded frantically.

"Li Dingguo, Teacher Zhou told us to follow those adults."

Before the conversation between Li Dingguo and Zhu Ciran was over, Zhou Boqian's voice sounded from a distance.

Zhu Ciran looked over, and saw government school students in coarse sackcloth lined up on the road in the field, closely following the team of important officials in the distance.

The team of students was so long that it stretched for several miles, and the edge could not be seen at a glance.

"Who is this?"

Zhou Boqian looked at the little black fat man standing next to Li Dingguo, feeling a little puzzled.

"My uncle's nephew." Li Dingguo scribbled an explanation, and then changed the topic: "Let's go, I won't be able to keep up later."

After finishing speaking, he signaled Zhu Ciran to follow, and then returned to the student team with Zhou Boqian.

Since today's students are all wearing coarse linen clothes, Zhu Ciran, a little black fat man, blends in perfectly, and even looks more like a farmer than some farmer students.

Their every move is under the observation of Jin Yiwei, especially Wang Chengen has been watching them.

Compared with these people, Zhu Youjian was not worried. He was leading many civil officials to the front at the moment, and what appeared in front of him was a huge trial plowing field composed of hundreds of tractors.

"There are [-] tractors here, and three people are required to control them. Each tractor can cultivate [-] acres of land every day. It consumes a thousand catties of coal and two thousand catties of water. If it is used for reclamation..."

In the distance, the sound of "clang-clang" from tractors kept ringing. These tractors were placed on the road and connected with iron cables. One person was responsible for adjusting the horsepower of the tractor, and two people used plows to plow the land.

This may seem a bit dangerous, but as long as the horsepower is properly controlled, even if the iron chain breaks, it will not hurt anyone.

Since the tractor needs to be placed on a flat road, many ministers walked by this boxy machine and looked at it in amazement, especially after learning that it can cultivate twenty acres of land a day.

Needless to say, what twenty acres of arable land a day represents, a thousand catties of coal is only one tael of silver at the current price of coal, and water is basically free.

That is to say, if a tractor is used to simply cultivate land, excluding the cost of purchasing it, it only takes half a month to cultivate [-] mu of land.

Half a month is only 15 taels of silver, and as long as it solves the most difficult arable land, the remaining sowing work requires less than a hundred people to plant [-] mu of land in a few days .

After that, the management became easier. It used to take at least [-] people to manage the land, but now it may only need [-] people to maintain it.

For many gentry and landlord class officials, the first thing that comes to mind is cost.

The [-] mu of land needs to be leased to [-] households, and [-]% of the harvest is given to these [-] tenant farmers every year.

The 250 mu of land in the south normally has at least 120 shi meters, [-]% means [-] shi, at least [-] taels of silver.

Judging from the two plowings in spring and winter, the monthly cost of this thing is only 30 taels of silver, and ten people will be hired to manage the 30 mu of land.

The sum of the front and back is 60 taels of silver, that is to say, excluding the money to buy the machine, once they have a machine, the gentry can save at least 60 taels of silver every year.

Thinking about it this way, many officials knew the importance of tractors in their hearts, and one official even bowed to Zhu Youjian:
"Your Highness, if this is the case, the country must promote this product to reduce the burden on the people."

When the official stood up and said, everyone cheered up, but Zhu Youjian glanced at him, too lazy to talk nonsense with him.

He walked right past the official, embarrassing the official, and some Yanshan officials taunted him:

"I'm afraid it's not the relief of the common people's burden? Liu Yuanwailang..."

"Hehehe..."

Yanshan officials laughed at his thoughts, and Zhu Youjian's attitude made many officials feel burning pain on their faces and couldn't help feeling uncomfortable in their hearts.

"Your Highness, if this thing is used in the pass, I am afraid that tens of millions of tenant farmers will have to be turned into refugees."

Dong Yingju from the Ministry of Households bowed to Zhu Youjian and told the reason why Zhu Youjian did not want to promote tractors in the customs.

To put it bluntly, landlords are more powerful than capitalists. This is like slavery than feudalism. If we say that progress is definitely feudalism, because slavery blatantly treats people as livestock, feudalism will cover it up a bit.

In different social systems, replacement is the trend of history.

In the world, the poorest and longest-running system is family public ownership in primitive society, followed by slavery and feudalism, capitalism, and finally communism.

In the family public ownership system, everything belongs to the leader, including everyone in the tribe. The defeated tribe will be killed, and there is no other way to choose.

When it comes to slavery, although things still belong to the lord, the system at this time has begun to keep the defeated captives, and the nobles appear, and the nobles will not execute all the defeated people, but give them a chance to live as slaves.

The nobles who surpassed the primitive clan held the land as a means of production, and let the peasants attach themselves to the land.

Afterwards, the feudal system emerged, the rising bureaucrats overthrew the nobility, the country was no longer divided into citizens and slaves, and slaves began to be slowly abolished. Everyone's life had the most basic guarantee, but it was still oppression.

The Ming and Qing Dynasties were typical feudal countries, and they were more sound than the systems of the Qin, Han, Tang and Song Dynasties, so they were also known as the most sound period of the feudal system.

However, when the Ming and Qing Dynasties were still playing with the feudal system, the Western capital system rose.

Compared with the feudal system, the capital system breaks geographical restrictions and introduces citizenship and private ownership, advocating that capital has no borders, but anyway, under capitalism, common people have their own voice, even if it is very weak.

As for the final communism, it transcends the concept of the country and the people, emphasizing the collection of natural rights and natural persons, using "equality" to break the limitations of private ownership, and endowing democracy and freedom to everyone.

These systems are coherent. True feudalism will eventually lead to capitalism, and true capitalism will lead to communism. No one can know what lies behind communism.

The Ming Dynasty had the limitations of the feudal system, that is, most of the gentry and tycoons were staring at the land as the means of production instead of creating new means of production.

Fortunately, there are still a small number of people in the Jiangnan area who are creating new means of production, so the capital system has sprouted.

However, whether it was the Song Dynasty or the Ming Dynasty, it seemed that whenever capitalism sprouted in the East, it would be interrupted by the nomads. Among them, the interruption at the end of the Song Dynasty is not worth regretting, but the end of the Ming Dynasty is the most regrettable.

What is not regrettable at the end of the Song Dynasty is that before and after its demise, no one proposed how to improve its system, but at the end of the Ming Dynasty, some people were improving it.

Although it is easy to startle people's eyes, the person who follows Zhu Yuanzhang's system and improves it is actually Dashun who is also a Han influence.

However, Li Zicheng did not have Zhu Yuanzhang's courage, nor did Zhu Yuanzhang's ambition and ability.

Although he made improvements based on Zhu Yuanzhang's system and allowed Dashun to take a step forward on the basis of Ming Dynasty, this step was very limited, and his strategic vision was seriously insufficient, so that he directly failed in the Shun Qing War.

Every time he thinks of this, Zhu Youjian feels very sorry.

He doesn't think that Dashun will enter the capital system, but at least Dashun can become a dynasty that transitions from feudalism to capitalism.

When the Dashun dynasty came to an end, it would most likely be a capitalist political group that would take over it, and the Han people would not be so humiliated in modern times.

But in any case, no matter what kind of system a country emerges in the end, they will eventually move towards communism.

Zhu Youjian has been in Daming for a long time, and he often repeatedly recalls some world political events he experienced in his previous life and ponders over and over again.

There is no problem with the road of communism. The problem lies in how Ming Dynasty or Qi State, or even the Han people in the future, should go.

Zhu Youjian doesn't expect a macho man to fall from the sky a few hundred years later, after all, the chances of this are too small and full of uncertainties.

So he had to learn some lessons to make Qi Guo and Daming go more smoothly.

but……

Zhu Youjian glanced at the group of gentry, powerful, and landlord-born officials behind him, feeling a little annoyed.

To discuss institutional issues with insects from these interest groups, it is better to go back to the Qi Palace and ask the huskies sent by Guo Sangdai of Beishan if they can become vegetarians.

The gentry and landlord class will not honestly hand over their means of production. In terms of system, they are destined to have ideological collisions with the future Ming system.

After learning about the function of the tractor, all the officials' thoughts were to use it on their own fields, the family's fields, regardless of how many tenants would lose their jobs and how many families would go bankrupt if these things were used in the customs.

Seeing their appearance like insects, Zhu Youjian wondered if this group of people would secretly intercept the tractor for his family if he left.

Thinking of this, Zhu Youjian's face darkened.

He took a deep glance at the group of officials, and his thoughts were almost confirmed by him.

He was sure, even before he left, this group of people would engage in stealing and stealing.

Now the annual output of tractors is still small, and people can still order them, but when the annual output of tractors increases in the future and they cannot be ordered, will this group of people still be so honest?
Honesty has never been a word that can appear in this group of people. The reason why they are honest is that they are scared by themselves.

To solve this problem, Zhu Youjian can only do his best to turn the tenants into self-cultivated farmers, run small and medium-sized farms and pastures by themselves, or transform them into skilled workers.

To put it bluntly, it is to "eliminate" the poor and turn the poor into the middle class that is the mainstay of the country.

At present, in the actual control territory directly under the Ming Dynasty, excluding the two supervisors, Xiaoxiyang and Levia, in the territory of more than 2000 million square kilometers in the Ming Dynasty, the amount of cultivated land that can be developed and utilized is close to 24 billion mu, and the grassland is close to 120 billion mu.

If such a huge amount of grassland and cultivated land were developed and distributed to the bottom class, then they would definitely be able to rise to the middle class. As long as the cultivated land and grassland were not allowed to be bought and sold, it was enough that the property rights belonged to the Ming court.

But the problem now is that nearly 70 billion mu of grassland and more than one billion mu of undeveloped cultivated land are distributed in the three provinces outside the customs, Nanzhou, Jiugang and other places.

If the three most densely populated provinces in the south of the Yangtze River do not move, the rise of the bottom will never be possible.

Thinking of this, Zhu Youjian became ruthless.

If the people in the south of the Yangtze River did not migrate under the severe drought, then he could only resort to violent means to migrate.

All parties in the world are guilty, and the crime can be done by prosecuting him...

　The afternoon update is still at 05:30

　　
　
(End of this chapter)