New Shun 1730

But since it is a practical study, it still ends up changing "teaching and then getting rich" to "getting rich and then teaching".

When the young and vigorous members of the Xinghu School, such as Quan Zheshen, sneaked into the Central Plains to find the answer to save the nation, Li Ik also told them.

If they can find a way to "unify the Dao and the instrument", it would be the best.

If they can't find it, they have to learn the instrument. At most, the Dao and the instrument will be unified for the future generations.

The Kingdom of Korea is quite strict about the smuggling of these Confucian scholars, while the Dashun side is actually very loose, and even welcomes the Kingdom of Korea to learn some knowledge about growing rice.

Liu Yu also said that the Kingdom of Korea can be allowed to send students to study agriculture, improve planting technology, and provide more rice for the modernization of Jiangsu.

As for other technologies, Liu Yu's attitude is also indifferent, because there is no use in learning them.

So when the passenger ship arrived in Shanghai, the disembarkation inspection was very loose, and at most it was just a formality.

When Quan Zheshen came to Songjiang Prefecture, it was not the busiest time for Dashun's foreign trade.

Ships to Europe leave in the first month of the year; ships from Europe arrive after the Dragon Boat Festival.

However, the dock was not deserted at all, with a bustling crowd of people in a hurry.

However, he soon felt as if he had been offended.

After walking a few steps, someone shouted at him: "Brother, do you want to stay? Do you want to have fun and relax? The new Goryeo Jieyuhua..."

Quan Zheshen frowned and replied: "Goryeo is the old name. The previous Emperor Taizu named it Korea. How can it be named Goryeo again? This is a major event of alternation between the right and the wrong. How can it be misplaced?"

The solicitor was stunned. He had been working here for five or six years, and it was the first time he heard someone entangled in this issue. What the hell is this? He muttered a few curses and ignored Quan Zheshen.

Quan Zheshen glanced at the sky above the city shrouded in smoke in the distance, asked a little, and learned that the regular passenger ship to Nantong Tiansheng Port would not leave until the day after tomorrow.

He first found an inn to stay in.

He was born into a noble family of Yangban. He had studied Chinese since elementary school and had also learned the Mandarin of Jiaoliao in Incheon. The money in his hand was also a silver paper currency commonly used in Jiangsu Province.

If you have money, can read and speak Chinese, then in such a place, there will be no problem with food, clothing, housing and transportation. Even if you can't speak, as long as you have money, you can still do it.

The place where he lived was not far from the dock, it was very prosperous, and there was no curfew at night.

The place where he lived was a building with a brick and wood structure. It was installed with glass windows. He had naturally seen glass windows in the Kingdom of Korea. A few years ago, the Korean royal family exchanged more than 4,000 pieces of glass for rice at one time. Originally, this thing was banned as a luxury, but after the ban on luxury was lifted, no one followed it, and it was meaningless.

After all these years, he didn't see anything that surprised him for the time being.

The next morning, he got up and went out, and saw a flatbed cart pulled by a mule from a distance.

There was a rag behind the mule's buttocks, which was dirty and full of mule feces.

On the flatbed, there were some corpses in a mess.

Two strong men were probably loading corpses on the car, and they were carrying a curled up and stiff corpse.

The people carrying corpses were obviously used to it. The man who was carrying the legs had a cigarette in his mouth. Maybe because the smoke was a bit choking, he squinted his eyes and said something in the local dialect while carrying it.

Quan Zheshen never thought that he came to the Celestial Empire with the mentality of witnessing prosperity, and the first thing he saw after waking up after a night's sleep was such a scene.

There were many pedestrians on the road, and they looked hurried, but they didn't stop at all. Even when they passed by the mule cart full of corpses, they didn't even show a look of shaking their heads.

Just this short scene gave Quan Zheshen a feeling.

This Celestial Empire seemed to have changed from Xia to Yi. The people in this most prosperous area had become so morally corrupt? Didn't he have even a trace of compassion?

Although the teacher said that he often saw dozens or hundreds of people starving to death in the rural areas around Seoul, he still had compassion after all.

He would also write poems to express his sorrow.

However, looking at the people here, including those carrying the corpses, they are all numb to this point. Is this the future he is looking for?

With an indescribable emotion, he approached the flatbed truck carrying the corpses and took a look at the people on the truck. It seemed that they had frozen to death at night.

Although it was April, it was probably not warm at night.

The dead man was only wearing a pair of trousers that were torn into strips, and a torn bag was hanging on his body, which seemed to contain a little food.

Seeing this, Quan Zheshen couldn't help but sigh, and a few lines of poetry came out of his mouth.

"I don't know your surname or your name, where is Qingshanzi's hometown?"

"Flies eat rotten meat and make a lot of noise, crows call lonely souls to mourn the setting sun."

"A short jacket and a few grains of rice to beg for food..."

He was reciting halfway when someone behind him suddenly said, "This is the rich family with wine and meat, and there are frozen corpses on the road."

Quan Zhe turned around and saw a 27-8-year-old scholar standing behind him, wearing a Confucian scarf and a blue shirt.

He hurriedly bowed and said, "I just heard that you wrote a poem of compassion. I haven't heard such sentiments for several years. Everyone thinks it's normal. I guess this is your first time?"

When he saw that the person opposite was dressed as a Confucian scholar, Quan Zhe felt relaxed. The workers on the docks all speak dialect, and the shop owners are not very educated people. The Confucian scholars in the world are all from the same family, and they all know the Analects of Confucius. Whether in Yumen Pass or in Edo Castle, you can always find your friends.

"Exactly the first time."

"Oh, I can't complain. I'm Meng Songlu. From the accent of Xiongtai, it sounds like he's from Dengzhou Prefecture?"

Quan Zhe didn't dare to make any mistakes, so he had to answer with his fake identity first, saying only that his surname was Zhao and that he had no meritorious status.

"But I don't know why Brother Zhao came here? Is it to study? Or do business? This is not the place to talk. If Brother Zhao doesn't mind, there is a tea shop next to it."

Quan Zhe had a good impression of Meng Songlu, and when he saw that he was dressed as a Confucian scholar, he was even more unsuspicious, so he said something to him and went to a nearby tea shop together.

Although it was very early, the place was already bustling with people.

As soon as I entered, I saw a few children holding newspapers walking between the tables and chairs, shouting: "The Chinese Navy wiped out another group of pirates in Sulu and hanged more than 1,400 people. The British East India Company sent The evidence that the pirates provided weapons was conclusive, and the Governor of Nanyang asked the British Governor Bengkulu to strictly restrain them.”

"The canal from Funing to Nantong is progressing smoothly and is expected to be open to navigation before the Dragon Boat Festival. All ships are exempt from toll tax."

"The first batch of Liaodong bean futures this year has been delivered..."

"Starting from this year, all Sichuan salt will be used west of Ezhou. The last salt area in Huainan is reclaimed from waste salt..."

The people at the table were discussing something about trade, and Quan Zheshen couldn't understand much, so he had to follow Meng Songlu to a private room.

After sitting down, Quan Zhe said curiously: "I see how prosperous this place is, and I have always heard that southern Jiangsu is the richest in the world. Why is it so common for people to compete with dead bodies?"

Meng Songlu shook his head and sighed: "It's a long story. In a county in Shanghai, the population has increased several times since the reform of Xing Guogong. Big cities such as Yangzhou and Huai'an have been ruined, and tens of thousands of people have come here to make a living."

"Now that you're here, the easiest thing to do is to work as a hard worker on the dock. However, you don't know something."

"The hard workers at the wharf only start to get busy after the Dragon Boat Festival. After the first lunar month, there is sometimes work and sometimes no work."

"As the saying goes: When you are busy, you have nothing to do; when you are idle, there is nothing to do."

"Every year from the first lunar month to the end of April, there will always be a few people who die every day. They are new, have no connections, no connections, and no place to live. If the money has been spent, or stolen by thieves, If you leave, you will have to starve.”

"Otherwise, you can only go to the almshouse. However, going to the almshouse means going to Nanyang to work on the plantations, and not everyone is willing to go. After all, going to Nanyang is not a good thing. The climate It’s hot, the miasma is heavy. If we can survive until the Dragon Boat Festival, everything will be easy when the cargo ship arrives.”

"As soon as the Dragon Boat Festival is over, cargo ships will arrive in droves, from North Korea, Japan, Liaodong, Nanyang, and the West. There will be a lot of work. This kind of periodicity cannot be countered by human beings."

"Brother Zhao is new here and only sees the prosperity of this place. If you walk further inside and reach the Suzhou River, you will know what kind of livelihood the people who flock here have."

"They just built wooden shacks by the river as a place to live and work nearby. Then there was a fire last year that lasted for one day. The riverside in Suzhou was reduced to ashes, leaving more than 5,000 people homeless."

"Capital has now found that building houses is profitable. However, the most profitable ones are mostly those with large courtyards and houses. Only wealthy merchants and wealthy households from Yangzhou, Huainan and other places can afford them. Ordinary people can only build wooden houses. , or use cotton straw as a shed.”

There was an indescribable secret joy in Quan Zhe's body and mind, thinking that the kingdom of heaven actually had such darkness, far from the prosperous three generations he imagined.

This kind of secret joy was strange. In order to suppress it, he still sighed: "Du Gongbu's words are still ringing in his ears even though they are thousands of years apart."

When the name of Du Gongbu was mentioned, the two of them chanted in unison: "With tens of millions of mansions, it will protect the poor people all over the world and make them happy!"

However, after Meng Songlu finished reading this poem, he couldn't help but shook his head and said: "It's difficult! It's difficult! Now that Jiangsu's tax system has been reformed, taxes cannot be increased at will. All taxes should be returned to the public, and then divided into local treasury and national treasury."

"Gong Xingguo has always had objections to the gentry. In fact, he may not really want to solve this matter. However, after the Suzhou River slum fire last year, he summoned the gentry in the province and said that taxes should not be increased. If you really have compassion, In order to live up to the teachings of Confucius and Mencius, he should use the money from tax exemptions and rebates to renovate residential buildings. He also quoted Du Gongbu's poem at that time, which said that if you have thousands of buildings, you will be able to protect the poor people all over the world. "

"However...just like the Yangzhou salt incident that day, it was a big joke."

"When the reform of preferential exemptions and tax refunds was carried out, Mr. thought that this might happen, and said that sooner or later, Duke Xingguo would use tax refunds to humiliate the gentry. Now it seems that this is indeed the case."

"As for the financial revenue, they have been busy with business in the past few years. As Brother Zhao just heard, it was mentioned in the newspaper, the canal from Funing to Nantong."

"Nowadays, the finances of states and counties have to be concentrated on the province, and expenses have been quite tight in recent years. Fortunately, this year has passed, several major canals have been repaired, and seawalls have been completed. Will it be better in the future?"