Daming Yinghua

Chapter 109
Seeing that the solar term of Xiaoshu is approaching, it will take about ten days for the plum blossoms to emerge.

The locals in Zhenjiang are okay, but the foreigners from the north, no matter the delicate and elegant officials and merchants in beautiful robes, or the poor and rough men in ragged clothes, can't stand the sweltering heat like a wet cloth covering their faces.

Among the trackers by the canal, there are quite a few Shandong men who are not afraid of the scorching sun, but are afraid of Huang Meitian, so they will inevitably complain and curse.

At this time, although the local trackers were silent, they wished that more outsiders would be smothered to death, and that there would be fewer people grabbing jobs.

However, this time, not only did the Shandong men not suffer from heatstroke, they also had shit luck.

A rich family came from Su Song's side, recruiting Ding Nuyuan, and calling out the young and strong refugees who escaped from Shandong.

For those who like it, each person will be given two new clothes and a pair of new shoes. After arriving in Songjiang, they will receive one tael of silver per month and live in the host's house.Those who don't like it will be rewarded with a silver coin, which will be regarded as the reward for delaying the stretching.

After the news spread, trackers from Qingzhou and Yanzhou from several wharves flocked to the recruitment point, and there were more than 200 people in Wuyangyang.

Local bearers passed by and saw that there were so many Shandong people among the trackers in Zhenjiang, so they struck up a conversation with the tea stand clerk out of curiosity.

"My little brother, I heard that there have been floods and locust plagues in Shandong Province in recent years, but didn't the above say that the Lord Long Live is benevolent and righteous, and the rent and tax will be reduced or exempted. Why are there so many refugees who escaped?"

The waiter at the tea stand said: "I asked them, and they said that it was because of the imperial court's reduction of rent and tax that they lost their way of life."

The salesman was surprised: "Huh? Why is this?"

The waiter at the tea stall was used to welcoming people with a smiling face, and he explained patiently: "For example, in the same place, five noble and rich families have a total of [-] mu of land, and a hundred poor families have a total of [-] mu of land. Ten taxes are one, and each mu of land is taxed by one bucket. The rich pay a total of [-] shi, and the poor also pay [-] shi. Now, Ba Chi, the benevolent government has come, and it will be changed to [-] taxes. Dude, do the math, How much tax do five rich families and one hundred poor families pay respectively?"

The salesman blurted out: "It's so simple, five rich families pay 270 shi, and one hundred poor families also pay 270 shi."

The waiter sneered: "However, this place has to support so many officials, and the state government has to spend a lot of money to welcome and send them. The imperial court often allocates various taxes, and the tax of [-] shi is still indispensable. However, rich households often either have someone in their family who is an official, or they are not less filial to officials and tax collectors. Therefore, the lack of tax of [-] shi still has to be forced to come from the poor households. Do the math again, the poor How much dou does each household pay?"

Sellers, when are they afraid of mental arithmetic, they quickly give an answer: "What? Each household pays an extra ten shi and five or six dou, and each household has to pay a total of thirteen shi and three dou? This, this is better than the one without tax reduction. It’s almost double the time!”

The clerk nodded, shook his head again, and sighed, "You pay more in a year of famine than in a year of debt. If it were you and me, would you have to run away too?"

The shopkeeper and the man, both of whom were hurt by the same kind, stopped talking and squinted at the trackers by the river beach.

Just saw a young man knelt down and kowtowed to a man and a woman in front of him.

……

"Don't kowtow, just take this sweat towel. After three days, you can board my family's boat with my sweat towel."

Zheng Haizhu signaled the young tracker to stand up, then stopped looking at him, and stared at the man in the blue blouse behind him and said, "You, come."

The blue cloth shirt hurriedly stepped forward, bowed and said, "Hi girl, I'm [-] this year, and I've come to stretch fiber at the beginning of the year. I only have a small mouth, and my mother and father are starving to death, and the villain has no wife. Our village , I can’t be called a daughter-in-law in recent years, which family’s daughter is willing to marry and starve to death?”

This blue cloth shirt kept his ears open all the time, listening to the previous fellow answer Zheng Haizhu's question, and when he saw that he had finished answering, he was spotted.

Zheng Haizhu turned his head sideways and gave Wu Bangde a look.

Wu Bangde understood, walked to the blue cloth shirt, and suddenly pulled his clothes lightly.

"Hey, hey, what are you doing, son?"

The blue cloth shirt struggled.

Zheng Haizhu walked up and pointed to his shoulder: "Brother, are you a brazen head and iron arm? After half a year of stretching, the shoulders are not only free of calluses, but even the skin is not broken."

Lan Shirt was silent for a moment, his eyes complicated.

Wu Bangde let go of him and said coldly "Let's go".

The blue cloth shirt is indeed not a tracker, but a rat who was kidnapped in Zhenjiang. Because he thought that he also came from Yanzhou, and his face was dark, he wanted to see if he could get in. If he was selected, he would go to the house of a big family in Songjiang to take the opportunity Wouldn't it be great to steal and run away?

Unexpectedly, it was worn out so quickly.

The blue cloth shirt was furious, backed away four or five feet, and yelled at Zheng Haizhu: "Stinky bitch, shameless coquettish fox, look at your clothes, you are a widow, right? You're showing off your strength!" , the sky is bright and bright, in front of your concubine, you have to look at the man's body!"

Wu Bangde kept a low profile in Zhenjiang on weekdays. Except for the military camp and the prefect's aides, the merchants and common people in the city did not recognize him as Qi Jin's adopted son, let alone a foreigner like Lan Bushan.

At this moment, Wu Bangde, who had walked back to Zheng Haizhu's side, how could he turn a deaf ear to such obscenities, and was about to turn around to beat the blue shirt, but Zheng Haizhu grabbed him and said in a low voice, " A great opportunity to meet people."

In a short while, six or seven trackers jumped out of the queue waiting for the interview.

After finishing his mouth-feeding, Lanbushanzi still regretted his life, fleeing like a mouse in the direction of Zhoucheng.

But in order to claim credit for Zheng Haizhu, the benefactor, the trackers became more energetic, and quickly caught up with the blue cloth shirt and pinned it to the ground.

Zheng Haizhu quickly glanced at the trackers who were not chasing before him. There were quite a few of them, and with the excitement of watching a show on their faces, he booed, "Hit him, kill him."

Someone also came to persuade Zheng Haizhu: "Girl, don't take your life, it's not worth bringing a lawsuit for this kind of person."

Zheng Haizhu saw the people who behaved differently, walked over quickly, and shouted: "Don't hit him, let him go."

Among the early trackers, there were also different reactions, some obediently withdrew their hands, while others punched a few times unwillingly, cursing "I wish I could kill you bastard", before letting go of the blue cloth shirt.

For the latter, Zheng Haizhu silently crossed them off the shortlist in his heart.

Compassion does not have the power to control soldiers, but only to be exercised by commanders.

How can the little soldiers be included in the team if they don't obey the command and just vent their anger.

……

The interview by the canal was actually the highlight of Zheng Haizhu's long-planned trip to Zhenjiang.

After Shen's suicide, the elder of the Gu family received a letter from his family and rushed back to Songjiang. Although he said he expressed support for Miao Atai, the concubine's righteous mother-in-law, and thanked her for cleaning the back house of Gu's house, he actually expressed his gratitude to the second room's sister-in-law, Lu Shi. , and then his nephew Gu Shouqian was rather indifferent, he didn't even wait for his second brother to come back to meet him, and he didn't even bother to attend the wedding ceremony between Gu Shouqian and Han Ximeng, so he used his busy schedule as an excuse to be served by his concubine, and returned to his post. .

And Li Shi, the third-bedroom daughter-in-law who had been friends with Shen Shi in the inner house, has always been jealous of Lu Shi giving birth to the Gu family's first grandson. It hinted that if it wasn't for the old lady's refusal to pass on the art to the Shen family, why would such an uproar have been caused, making the dignified Gu's mansion a joke in Songjiang, and making the female family members of the Gu's mansion, for a long time, in the elegant gatherings of the ladies? Up, can't lift my head up.

Miao Atai saw the situation of the family clearly, so one day she put on her imperial clothes and went to see the patriarch of the Gu family, and brought back the patriarch's permission: divide half of another property of the Gu family, Wenzhe Academy, and open another The gate serves as an independent courtyard for the grandson of the second house.Gu Shouqian, Han Ximeng, and their mother-in-law, Lu Shi, moved out of the Gu family's current Luxiangyuan mansion and lived in Wenzhe Academy.

This decision not only made the young couple of the Gu family feel the joy of gaining a small world of freedom, but also made Zheng Haizhu excited.

Wenzhe Academy and his own Shoukuan School are not far away.The impoverished students from the three counties of Songjiang often came to the Academy of Culture and Philosophy to exchange their experience in the imperial examinations. There are many talents who are open-minded and not old-fashioned.

If Shoukuan School is a compulsory basic education for children and teenagers, then Wenzhe Academy can help Zheng Haizhu get close to the future civil servants of Songjiang's hometown.

More importantly, Wenzhe Academy is close to Shanghai County, surrounded by many registered abandoned fields.If they use the excuse of recruiting nursing homes, and get a few batches of young men from other places, Han Ximeng and Zheng Haizhu, they can gradually have their own armed forces.

At the end of the Ming Dynasty, public funds were embezzled, and there was not much military expenditure left in the local area. Therefore, many of the guards supported by the imperial court were waste. Even the later national regular army "Guanning Iron Cavalry" belonged to the buyer and I am sorry for the seller.

Looking at the teams that can really fight, the warlords are all paid by the court, and then add part of their own belongings to support the elite servants as their military capital.

Even though the white-armed soldiers in Sichuan, Qin Liangyu and Ma Xianglin did not eat empty wages and relied on the internal economic support of their own chieftain Shijie, they were essentially like family members.

Zheng Haizhu's philosophy is different.

Based in Shanghai County, what she wants to try is not only to establish an international shipping and trade center, not only a modern financial and insurance headquarters, but also a modern armed force that does not simply stay at the level of garrison soldiers or mercenaries.

Things in the future can follow the trend and be modified at any time.

Right now, since Zheng Haizhu's reason is to recruit nursing homes, the young couple of the Gu family naturally agree that the first batch of 50 people will cost about [-] taels a year, and the imperial court will exempt officials and gentry like Gu's and Han's from taxes. , not only that.

Miao Atai is even more supportive.

Jiang is still old and hot, and Mrs. Miao told Zheng Haizhu that she must bring back a bachelor, marry a wife and have children in Songjiang, and gradually localize the descendants of blood.

Therefore, after the Gu couple and Fan Polu returned to Songjiang, Lu Xiangsheng and Zheng Haizhu stayed behind. The former went to Danyang to look for craftsmen related to casting bronze and iron ware, and the latter took the information of these days of overt and unannounced visits to investigate, accompanied by Wu Bangde , interview candidates.

Picking people from the trackers was Zheng Haizhu's plan from the very beginning.

The group of trackers is very similar to the miners that Qi Jiguang had in mind in those days. They have good physical fitness, more outstanding cooperation, less desire for personal performance, obey orders, and endure hardships like worker ants in the group.

The choice of Shandong refugees in the team of trackers was Wu Bangde's idea to Zheng Haizhu after a conversation at the tea stall by the river that day.

Wu Bangde told Zheng Haizhu that in the eastern coastal provinces of Daming, the intensity of natural disasters in Shandong is far greater than that in southern Zhili and Zhejiang and Fujian.

There are three main ways out for the Shandong people affected by the disaster. One is to go to Denglai to join relatives and friends to do business, or even go to sea to smuggle and sell goods.

Therefore, there is a high probability that the Shandong people who work as trackers in Zhenjiang have neither a quick mind for business and profit, nor a rebellious bone in the back of their heads, and will not bring danger to their owners.Moreover, these people were able to survive all the way to the south of the Yangtze River in the midst of extreme hunger and exhaustion, which in itself shows that their bodies are very strong, and they will not eat the food of the master's family for nothing and be unable to work due to illness.

Zheng Haizhu feels that Wu Bangde's analysis is very reasonable. In short, this is a group that is very suitable for entering the discipline of the system.

After three days of interviews, finally, fifty strong and honest young trackers were selected.

After paying the lost wages to those who were not selected, Zheng Haizhu looked at the backs of the trackers going away one after another, turned his head to look at Wu Bangde, and showed a meaningful smile.

"Mr. Wu, did you remember all the other ten people?"

"Don't worry, girl. If there are many people, I'm not good at bragging, but I can still remember ten faces in my memory."

They were talking about ten trackers with wives and children.

Unlike the fifty bachelors who were funded by Gu and Han as a nursing home, Zheng Haizhu planned to have his shipping insurance company pay for these ten people to be raised in Zhenjiang.

They didn't have insurance performance indicators, and their mission, apart from seeing if the shippers and ship bosses who were in danger had any tricks in colluding to defraud the insurance money, was mainly trained by Wu Bangde as a spy.

"Mr. Wu, it's not enough to spy on all kinds of information in the Jurchen's old lair, and even to kill people, relying on hard-boiled scouts or absent-minded caravans. Since Qi Zongbing and you both feel it, it will happen in a few years." Being transferred to Liaodong by the imperial court, we deserve to spend some money to support our intelligence brothers. More than 100 taels of silver a year, I will sell silk goods, cotton clothes and insurance, and I will definitely be able to afford it.”

This is what Zheng Haizhu told Wu Bangde when he was drinking mung bean soup by the river that day.

The people selected by Wu Bangde are different from those selected by Zheng Haizhu. They all have families in Zhenjiang, just like the hostages in Chang'an in a small country in the Western Regions.

"When I was fleeing, I was able to take my wife and children with me, and I didn't ask other refugees to catch them and eat them. It shows that I am quite capable, and I am not a waste. The small family is their weakness, and Mr. Wu is easy to control."

Zheng Haizhu said lightly.

Wu Bangde glanced at her.

This woman is quite strange, even her adoptive father Qi Jin can say that she has the heart of a bodhisattva, but sometimes, the words she utters are ruthless.

The two were about to leave the river beach, but they heard calls from behind them.

"Girl, young master, stay a step, stay a step."

Looking back, there are five or six women.

Their faces are dark, and the whites of their eyes are particularly prominent.

His hair was dry and messy, and his clothes were so dirty that they couldn't see their original color.

Judging from the tight skin texture, they are all women of the same age as Zheng Haizhu.

The leading woman came forward and asked timidly: "You two gentlemen, we are also trackers, our strength is not weaker than men, and we don't eat much. We only need five yuan a month, or three yuan. Can we go to Songjiang?"

(End of this chapter)