The new era of chaos begins in the Song Dynasty

Chapter 350

Chapter 79: Literati and Wine

Just because the land is divided doesn't mean everything is over.

On the contrary, there are more questions next.

After the land is divided, the "small landowners" who farm the land must be given living areas - villages or towns!

This involves the preparation and division of household registration.

After demarcating villages and towns, you have to build houses and build infrastructure!
Of course, Ergou didn't have to worry about it in such detail, but with his past life memory and cognition, he couldn't just sit idly by.

Because Shenyang Realm is not safe, only the hunting team formed by Ergou and the Zhao'an Rebel Army temporarily kept those dangers away from people.

As time goes by, those dangers will still return. After all, the wilderness cannot stop the footsteps of indigenous creatures.

This requires people to have a shelter with excellent defense capabilities.

In the Song Dynasty, only those powerful families knew or had the ability to build manors and forts. Relying on ordinary people to build towns voluntarily would only be a collection of defenseless shacks.

As for the people of the original Song Dynasty who followed the rebel army into Shenyang Realm, it was naturally impossible for them to build a qualified Wubao by themselves.

Therefore, we can only rely on the rebel camp to come forward and organize manpower and material resources for infrastructure construction.

In addition to requiring a lot of manpower to build infrastructure, the most important thing is to have enough building materials.

It's just that the land where the rebels are located has no shortage of wood, but there is little rock. Therefore, if they want to build a semi-permanent dock, they have to burn bricks and green bricks for building cities.

Under normal circumstances, city bricks are a strategic building material that only the imperial court is qualified to bake. Ordinary people, including powerful families, are not qualified to use them.

But this does not mean that the technology of firing city bricks was unique to the imperial court.

In fact, in any city in the Song Dynasty, local officials had to repair damaged city walls every few years, that is, replace broken city bricks.

There is a very interesting phenomenon here.

If it is a normal and qualified city brick, as long as there is no man-made damage, such as a siege war or the like, it can generally be used for decades or even more than a hundred years without damage.

However, when the government is repairing the city wall, unless it is building a new city from scratch, the government will personally organize craftsmen to set up kilns to bake bricks.

Most of the time, they would only hand over small batches of urban brick orders to official and private cellar owners in various places, and in the end only pay a small fee or even a penny, euphemistically called bricks for tax.

You should know that a qualified city brick is two feet long, one foot wide, half a foot thick (about ten centimeters), and weighs thirty or forty kilograms.

It is extremely difficult to bake such city bricks, which requires high firing technology and experience, and consumes a lot of materials. If the blackmailed kiln owners honestly fired qualified city bricks, they would be finished just once or twice. It can make them bankrupt.

The kiln owners were not stupid, so they directly fired some fake city bricks that had only their appearance but were very different inside.

Such city bricks are fine when they are first fired, but after being exposed to wind, sun, rain and rain, they will rot like chaff in less than half a year.

Originally, the behavior of these cellar owners in exchanging defective city bricks, not only confiscating their homes and annihilating their clans, but also causing them to visit the food market.

Who would have thought that those officials not only didn't take it seriously, but even indulged in the cellar owner's behavior.

The reason is very simple. The city wall is broken down every year and repaired every year. How can they be so happy if they can make money every year?

Of course, this situation was only common in the south of the Song Dynasty, and was rare in the north where wars broke out relatively frequently.

Due to the special needs of city bricks, the technology of firing city bricks is not a secret. Every kiln-stoker with some qualifications knows something about it, but of course there are very few master craftsmen who are truly proficient.

For example, when Ergou and others built a fortress at the gateway between the two realms, they summoned craftsmen to bake city bricks. For this purpose, they also hired two master craftsmen who were proficient in brick-making from the Northwest Army.

In the entire Song Dynasty, there were only two places with the most master craftsmen who were proficient in burning city bricks. One was in the construction prison in Bianliang City, the most prosperous capital in the world.

As for the other place, it is the Northwest Army Center.

The Song Dynasty and Xixia fought for years. Among them, the Song Dynasty's most sharp method was to constantly build military fortresses at various strategic points, step by step, relying on the strong comprehensive national power to continuously consume the strength of Xixia.

When building a military stronghold, it is indispensable to use earth, wood, masonry, and stone.

Especially in some relatively important strategic locations, building a permanent walled city requires consuming a large amount of city bricks.

So much so that the craftsmanship and firing experience of the great craftsmen in the Northwest Army were even more exquisite and outstanding than those of their counterparts in Bianliang City.

Some officials of the Song Dynasty were worried that the people would build too strong forts to resist the imperial court, so they restricted the use of city bricks among the people.

But Ergou was not worried about this. He even wished that all the people's houses were as strong as fortresses.

So when Ergou was building a kiln to bake bricks, he directly transferred many experienced kiln-burning craftsmen from the construction site at the gateway of the two realms, and then gave people things to let them directly bake the best city bricks. The people built town houses.

Of course, the biggest difficulty in building brick houses in this era is not technology, but productivity.

At this time, there was no automated brick-making machine of later generations. Each brick required careful kneading by a craftsman. A craftsman could make hundreds of bricks in one day, plus the soil and mud taken from the front. Later, the manpower and material resources needed to install and burn the cellar, and to make bricks that could build a town, were gone.

Moreover, city-building bricks have high requirements for the main material clay, and the most convenient source of brick-making clay is those fertile fields that have been cultivated by the people for a long time.

And this is another reason why the imperial court banned city bricks for private use.

I would like to ask if the ban on the use of city bricks by the people was relaxed in the Song Dynasty, how could those powerful families let go of the livelihood of the common people in order to make it easier to burn bricks?
However, when it comes to burning bricks to build cities, the Song Dynasty also had some tricks.

For example, during the Zhenzong period of the Song Dynasty, Ding Wei used the method of "killing three birds with one stone" when building the palace.

During the Dazhong Xiangfu period, there was a fire in the palace and many palaces and pavilions were burned down.

At that time, Ding Wei was in charge of rebuilding the palace, but he was troubled by the distance to acquire the land.

Ding Wei ordered people to take soil from the street, and first open a large canal to divert water from the river. The soil dug out of the river was used to make bricks. The river could not only divert water but also transport materials.

After the project is completed, the cleared ruins will fill up the moat and restore it to its original state.

This is the origin of Ding's saying of "killing three birds with one stone".

Although Ding Wei's reputation and character are very bad, his abilities are recognized by the world.

From then on, officials in the Song Dynasty who built cities all learned from Ding Wei's method.

Although there are no great talents who can be called good ministers among the rebels, some of the frustrated scholars brought by the rebels are still able to shoulder the corresponding command responsibilities.

Of course, there must be various problems and fallacies in relying solely on these raw melons and eggs. But Ergou didn't care.

Make a mistake? It’s okay to make mistakes, and you’ll gain wisdom after learning from the mistakes. Who hasn’t come out of the stage of making mistakes? !
The key is not to be stubborn, deliberately conceal the truth, and not correct your mistakes.

For such people, Ergou will directly dismiss them and never use them again.

Among the scholars recruited by the rebels, at least half had this problem.

Ergou did not deal with them all, but temporarily killed the chickens to scare the monkeys, and severely dealt with the two literati who had gone too far. As for the rest, he gave them a warning and ordered them to wait for their crimes to be punished and meritorious service.

Of course, these are just Ergou's stopgap measures. These people are all on his blacklist. Even if they don't make mistakes in the future, their development prospects are no longer as good as those of the more pragmatic literati.

For those people who also made a lot of mistakes but still had the courage to take responsibility, Ergou happily promoted them and regarded them as the backbone of mankind's future work in the Shenyang world.

The one with the most outstanding talent among these people is called Wang Shu, whose courtesy name is Zishang. He is from Qingzhou on Huanqing Road.

This man was young but quite talented. When he was studying in Jingzhao Prefecture, he was captured by the rebels and pulled into the team.

After Wang Shu came to Shenyang Realm, he was a little depressed at first and had a mentality of "non-violent discord".

It's a pity that Ergou implemented the strategy of "Shenyang Realm does not raise idlers" in the rebel army. If Wang Shu and other scholars want to eat, they have to work, whether it is clearing wasteland or burning bricks to build cities, no one can exception.

This would cost the lives of those abducted scholars and literati.

Although the literati of the Song Dynasty were not as industrious and indifferent as the literati of the Ming and Qing Dynasties, there were very few people who could really do hard physical work like coolies. It cannot be said that they were rare, but they were not much different. .

At least among the scholars abducted by the rebels, there is no exception for the time being.

So, when these people were assigned to work, they immediately cried and complained, but they could not twist their arms over their thighs under the eaves, so everyone used their ingenuity to work hard and even refused to work. Things like living are not uncommon.

Ergou has many ways to deal with such a stinky old man.

Merely calculating merit and distributing food according to work ruined the petty calculations of these literati.

Of course Ergou would not starve them to death, but the coolie teams composed of literati were interspersed with the real coolie teams in their respective working areas.

Those coolies who have completed their work with high quality and quantity can show off their meat with big mouthfuls of meat, drink big bowls of broth, and look so happy.

But the literati, whose work performance was disastrous, could only hold the black and hard millet noodles steamed buns and eat them with cold white rice.

It's not that the literati didn't make a fuss about this, but in terms of force and fists, most of them were third-level disabled, so the aspect of violent resistance was directly abandoned.

As for talking by mouth, the leader of the team said directly: "A good man eats meat and drinks soup, and a good man eats meat and drinks cold water. This is a matter of course. If you want to eat meat, just work more! Why are you making so much noise? yeah?!"

Then the next meal will be cold water steamed buns.

As the saying goes, one cannot resist his own stomach.

Looking at the cold steamed buns in his hand, and then looking at those pickled and bitter men eating meat in big mouths, no one can feel mentally balanced.

So some were completely ruined for the time being, while others started to work really hard.

The labor measurement of the labor team includes both the overall evaluation of the team as a unit and the evaluation of individual labor performance.

Although in the following period, the overall judgment of the literati team did not improve much, the personal judgments of many smart literati showed some improvement.

And their efforts were immediately reflected in their diet.

The cold and hard steamed buns turned into soft and sweet rice cakes, the cold rice cakes turned into vegetable soup and egg drop soup, and there was even a small glass of rice wine as a reward.

Rice wine is a small privilege specially prepared by Ergou for the literati. The reality of the literati in the Song Dynasty is there, but Ergou cannot just ignore it, otherwise he will not be able to win people's hearts.

Regardless of whether they eat well or not, some literati can still comfort themselves with the words "poor and lowly cannot be moved away", but the influence brought by a small glass of rice wine is far away.

Kong Yiji, a poor and down-and-out scholar described by Master Lu in later generations, was a man who could skip food but must drink wine.

Kong Yiji's stealing of books was not considered stealing. To put it bluntly, it was not just to get some money for drinks.

In the Song Dynasty, drinking became popular all over the world.

Not to mention other things, the most important tax source for the Song Dynasty court was the wine tax.

Not only celebrities and sages like to drink, but also down-and-out literati, heroes, and ordinary people all like what is in the cup.

The most important law in Wang Anshi's reform, the Green Crops Law, was used by the opposition to toss up big problems with wine.

For example, some people went to the government to borrow Qingmiao Loan. As soon as they walked out of the government office with the money, they were dragged to a wine shop by people who opposed the official's secret arrangement and were lured with fine wine.

And this common man felt that he had some money in his hand. Although he had just borrowed it, the interest rate was relatively low, so he thought it would be okay to have a drink or two.

Once the addiction to alcohol got under way, and some people deliberately persuaded them to drink, all the people ended up drunk, and they only managed to get away after spending all the money they had just received.

In this way, in many places the "Green Seed Law" has become an evil law that harms the people.

To put it bluntly, the status of the alcohol tax in the Song Dynasty is no less than the status of the tobacco-grass-tax at a certain time in Ergou's previous life.

And these scholars who were abducted to Shenyang Realm may not care about whether they eat well or not, but they absolutely cannot bear to watch others drink while they do so.

Youdao means that literati should look down upon each other.

Some unbalanced scholars sneered at those drunken scholars, scolding them for being unjust and uncharacteristic, and even got into a lot of physical fights over this.

But when it came time to work, many literati who had been working as foreigners began to work seriously, and then they also obtained corresponding drinking privileges.

There are only a few literati who were originally in bad shape, but they still can't lose face, and they often play the role of rat excrement in the team.

Ergou was already prepared for such a "diehard". He directly brought all the "rat shit" out and arranged them into a team.

Come! "Rat shit" roll up!
Don't tell me, after being assigned to an unfamiliar team and surrounded by unfamiliar teammates, these "rat shit" immediately gave up their former dignity and turned into model workers one by one, working hard. Express yourself alive.

It's just that there is a ridiculous problem that these literati did not think of.

Humans have been exploring the Shenyang Realm for more than half a year. Since food was originally transported from the Great Song Dynasty, everyone basically ate meat as their main ration. No one would have thought that they would actually eat meat until they vomited. .

When the literati could finally eat meat and drink some wine, the millet noodle steamed buns that they had abandoned like worn-out shoes became the rarest "delicacy" for almost everyone.

(End of this chapter)