1635 Han style rises again

July 1675, 7, Penglai, Qilizhuang.

There used to be a village seven miles south of Penglai City, the prefecture of Dengzhou, which was called Qilizhuang.A few years ago, after the Great Ming conquered Denglai, the situation became more and more stable, government agencies at all levels were established one after another, and the war-torn people began to restore their former peaceful and peaceful lives.

Because the entire Denglei area was restored peacefully, the Qing local officials and garrisons in the area took the initiative to return to the Ming Dynasty anyway, so that there was basically no major war damage here, and the people's livelihood and economy naturally recovered very quickly.

Six years have passed, and the people of Qilizhuang seem to have forgotten the great war that swept across the entire north. The fields are full of rice paddies, and the cottages are full of chickens and dogs. The farmers are working hard, and the children are playing happily.

As everyone knows, when the Qing captives captured Denglai more than 20 years ago, a bloody massacre was carried out on this peaceful land.Emperor Yongchu died, and more than 20 innocent people and citizens died tragically under the butcher knife of the Qing captives. The world was full of blood, and bones were everywhere.

Of course, most of the people here today have migrated from outside. The refugees from Jianghuai, Southern Henan, Jizhou, and even Huguang have either never heard of the past tragedies, or have long forgotten them.The southern tune and the northern dialect, the Huai dialect and the Yu dialect, finally harmonize with the Jiaodong dialect here, forming a unique local language.

Surrounded by officials from Denglai, Qi Yuanshan, the special envoy of the State of Qi and vice-premier of the cabinet, looked at the crowd of people gathered in the village and couldn't help feeling deeply moved.

After leaving my hometown for more than [-] years, and returning here again, everything has changed.Qilizhuang is the place where His Majesty was born and grew up.Of course, as His Majesty's cousin, this is naturally his hometown.

Today, not to mention in Qilizhuang, even in the entire Penglai County, it is almost impossible to find a villager or old acquaintance who used to be familiar with His Majesty.There have been countless wars and massacres here, and the bones have been piled up layer by layer. From aristocratic families to ordinary people, many inheritances have long been severed.

After leaving Yunzhou, Qi Yuanshan did not go directly to Nanjing, but stopped in Nagasaki and Gengluo Island, and arrived in Denglai on May 5.Because, when starting from Hanzhou, entrusted by His Majesty, he will find the place where His Majesty's ancestors were buried in Denglai, and restore and expand it, making it the tomb of the Qi family's ancestors in Daming.

Local officials in Denglei were astonished and honored by Qi Yuanshan's visit.The relationship between Ming and Qi has always been close, they can be regarded as a brotherly state.Therefore, after hearing that the senior officials of the Qi State Cabinet came to visit, not only the governor of Denglai, the magistrate of Dengzhou, and the magistrate of Penglai County personally greeted them at the pier, but also the governor of Shandong and the general officers of the local garrison also rushed to Penglai one after another in the next few days. See Qi Yuanshan.

Knowing the purpose of Qi Yuanshan's visit, local officials in Shandong and Denglai immediately ordered to block Qilizhuang within a radius of ten miles, and mobilized tens of thousands of Ming army officers and soldiers and local handymen to help find the ancestral tomb of the emperor of Qi .

After more than half a month of searching and investigation, local officials in Denglai found more than a dozen suspected tombs of the emperor's ancestors near Qilizhuang, and then asked Qi Yuanshan to confirm it on the spot.

However, when Qi Yuanshan left Qilizhuang and came to Penglai, he was only about ten years old.Later, he went through the Dengzhou Incident, followed Cao Xiong to the sea, and finally traveled tens of thousands of miles to the Hanzhou Continent. His childhood memories are somewhat blurred.Therefore, after visiting more than a dozen tombs suspected to be His Majesty's ancestors, he was not sure which tomb was the real target.

In desperation, Qi Yuanshan issued an announcement through Denglai and Shandong local officials, looking for villagers who knew about Qilizhuang 40 years ago.For this reason, he also deliberately took out 1000 Hanzhou silver dollars as a reward for anyone who provided useful clues.

More than ten days later, a wandering Taoist priest who had stayed in Qilizhuang for several years visited Qiyuan Mountain and claimed that he knew the story of the tomb of His Majesty's ancestors.

This Taoist priest who is nearly seventy years old described in great detail several old events that happened in Qilizhuang, and also narrated the Dengzhou Change 40 years ago, when the officers and soldiers destroyed the surrounding villages and towns, and His Majesty's parents died tragically during the suppression of the rebellion hand.

After the officers and soldiers retreated, it was the Taoist priest who led the surviving villagers to collect the corpses of the murdered people, dig pits and bury them one by one, and write wooden plaques for the dead.Even though it's been a long time, I still have clearer memories.

Qi Yuanshan was overjoyed, and immediately asked Taoist priests to lead him to the place where His Majesty's ancestors' tombs are located.

Although the wooden signs carved on those tombs were lost, the Taoist priest accurately identified a low tomb after careful identification, which was the place where the bones of His Majesty's parents were buried.

After Qi Yuanshan knelt down to pay homage to the remains of His Majesty's parents, he told the governor of Denglai that the Qi State will build the Qi State Mausoleum in a radius of three miles from Qilizhuang, and please move it to the farm households in this area.The National Congress of Qi shall compensate three times for all the losses caused by this.

Regarding Qi State's plan to build an imperial mausoleum here, local officials in Shandong and Denglai dare not be self-confident, and immediately rushed to report to Nanjing with five hundred miles.

More than half a month later, the decree from His Majesty and the King of Qin came from Nanjing.The state of Qi responded to the construction of the imperial mausoleum in Denglai, and allocated all the people's and material resources needed, and made every effort to cooperate.

Qi Yuanshan expressed his sincere gratitude to Daming for his positive response.However, the construction of the imperial mausoleum of the State of Qi is, after all, their own business, so it is naturally not easy to expropriate local people's and material resources for free.For this reason, on behalf of the royal family of the Qi State, he handed over 20 Hanzhou silver dollars to the Denglai area for the land acquisition and foundation works of the early imperial mausoleum.Later, with the progress of the construction of the imperial mausoleum, the Qi Congress will continue to allocate funds to local governments and transfer necessary materials.

When local officials in Denglai heard that the royal family of Qi State had planned a construction period of five years and invested 200 million Hanzhou silver dollars in the construction of this imperial mausoleum, they were stunned.

You know, the annual taxes collected in the entire Shandong area are only more than 20 taels of silver, and the royal family of Qi State would spend 200 million Hanzhou silver dollars to build an imperial mausoleum here, which is equivalent to more than 240 million taels of silver.

Hey, I have a population of millions in Shandong. I don’t do anything, I just help Qi to build an imperial tomb, and I can earn nearly 50 taels of silver every year.It is said that in order to accumulate blessings for the royal family, the people of Qi State also stated that all the civilian husbands conscripted to build the imperial mausoleum will be provided with a free lunch.

Not to mention, after the imperial mausoleum is completed, it will cost a fixed sum of money to maintain and repair it every year.I still remember that hundreds of years ago, when Emperor Hongwu built the Fengyang Imperial Mausoleum, there were "palaces and palaces, magnificent and strict", with hundreds of halls of worship, fasting palaces, and official halls. Zhongdu City was also specially built nearby to defend the imperial mausoleum.

The Qi Kingdom Mausoleum was built near Penglai City, and a huge amount of gold, silver and supplies were spent. In the end, wouldn't it also benefit hundreds of thousands of local people!

In fact, in the whole territory of Ming Dynasty, Denglai is the most close area. More than 30 years ago, the Qi State occupied the Changshan Islands in the north of Denglai to gather and transfer refugees from the mainland.

Even though the Qing captives later occupied Denglai again, the Qi State defeated the Qing captives several times with its illustrious combat power. In addition, it had many extremely powerful gunboats in the coastal area of ​​Daming, and kept the Changshan Islands all the time. exert powerful influence.

For decades, countless refugees would float to Changshan Island in the summer and autumn, carrying a log or a wooden tub, to seek a chance of survival.And in winter, there will still be many refugees who take advantage of the freezing sea and rush to the sea ice several miles away to set off fireworks or shake the cloth to attract the attention of the Qi people on the island, and then they are picked up by boat. island.Countless people who escaped drowned or froze to death every year.

In the few years before the Northern Expedition of the Ming Dynasty, most of the Denglai local officials and local garrisons of the Qing Dynasty had secretly communicated with the Qi people on Changshan Island, and faced countless refugees fleeing to Changshan Island. , will turn a blind eye.The intelligence staff or businessmen of the Qi people sometimes walked in the Denglei area openly, and even received the protection of the local garrison, either overtly or covertly.

It's not that the slaves don't serve Da Qing wholeheartedly, it's because the Qi people give too much!

After the recovery of Denglai, it became the most important transit point for immigrants from Qi State to the north of Daming, and the connection became closer.The huge consumer demand generated by the export of immigrants has also abnormally promoted the development of people's livelihood in the Denglei area.

However, after the Qi State handed over the Changshan Islands to Daming two years ago, and transferred the transfer point of northern immigrants to Fushansuo (now Qingdao) in Jiaozhou, Denglai became quiet again.

Most of the farmhouses in Qilizhuang and several surrounding villages and towns are dilapidated. Some houses are built with half-fired bricks, some are built with mud, and the roofs are covered with straw or reeds. Reeds and sorghum stalks are enclosed.Each farmhouse, with two or three houses, is often the only place where two or three generations of seven or eight people (or even a dozen people) live together.

The clothes of the peasants are even more simple and monotonous. Those in better condition will wear a linen underwear. Most of them only have a pair of underpants, and some have bare legs.

Because it was the beginning of summer, almost all the men were bare-chested and only wore shorts with a small nose, but most of the children were running and playing around with their buttocks bare without any clothes.As for the women, although they are wearing clothes (the ancients wore clothes on the upper body and lower body), they are also coarse linen clothes, and they are covered with patches.

Everyone had an unhealthy sallow color on their faces and prominent cheekbones. They stood at the entrance of the village and looked eagerly at the people of Qi.But the officers and soldiers of the Ming army guarding all around kept them at the periphery and could not approach them.

"They probably want to get rewards from us again." Qi Zilun looked at it, felt a little unbearable, and turned around and ordered a few Qi officials who accompanied him to give money and goods to those villagers.

"Let's give it to them." Qi Yuanshan saw those officials staring at him, shook his head and said with a wry smile: "Every villager will give you five cents."

"Five horns? Is it too little?" Qi Zilun said.

"Your Highness, five cents is already quite a lot." Qi Yuanshan said: "The common people here earn no more than five or six taels of silver a year. We have been here for nearly two months, and almost every farmer has received more than five silver dollars. If No matter how many rewards there are, I'm afraid it will make him feel greedy!"

"What can five silver dollars be used for?" Qi Zilun was stunned. "I'm afraid that these silver coins can't even buy a few decent clothes! What's more, my royal family built the imperial mausoleum here, and all the houses and fields where they live here will be requisitioned." They don’t have any more money, how can they buy another property elsewhere? Hmph, as for the 20 land expropriation fees handed over by the Qi State to the Denglai government, it probably won’t fall on them.”

"Your Highness, there are countless poor families in Daming, and we cannot save them." Qi Yuanshan said rather helplessly.

"Da Ming Dynasty, Wuhua Tianbao, how could they look like this." Qi Zilun was stunned for a moment, then shook his head and sighed: "It has been five years since the large-scale war ended, how can the people's livelihood and economy of Ming Dynasty still be so... unbearable?!"

Qi Zilun is the No. 11 son of the royal family, born to a noble concubine (Princess Daming), who will turn [-] this year. He is a Lieutenant (Lieutenant) of the Navy and serves in the local fleet.After participating in the war against Japan, he accompanied Qi Yuanshan to visit Daming, and on behalf of the royal family, prepared to build the imperial mausoleum in Dengzhou.

Before coming to Daming, because of the influence of his mother and concubine, he was full of infinite expectations for this land of China.However, after landing at Penglai Port, all the beautiful illusions in my heart were shattered.

They took four warships and sailed into Penglai Port to anchor.At that time, many pigs, poultry and livestock on the ship died on the way, and the naval officers and soldiers threw the livestock into the sea. When the Ming people on the shore saw it, they jumped into the sea one after another, scrambling to catch them one by one.

After some inquiries, the common people replied that after taking it back, clean it up, and then pickle it with salt. After the Chinese New Year, the whole family can enjoy a sumptuous New Year meal.

When inspecting the ancestral tombs in Penglai County and Qilizhuang, I saw that the accompanying folks only ate two meals a day, a bowl of porridge in the morning, half a black steamed bun, a green onion, and a bowl of water for lunch.As for the officers and soldiers of the Ming army who guarded them, their food was a little better, but the porridge they drank was thicker, with one more steamed bun, and they could also drink two bowls of thick porridge at night.

You know, in Qi State, no matter it is the mainland of Hanzhou or several overseas territories, they have long formed the eating habit of eating three meals a day, and they can get some meat from time to time. Those who are close to the sea can often eat all kinds of fish. .In Qi State, it is rare to see such a scene where people generally look disheveled.

Seeing this, the delegation of the State of Qi felt deeply sympathetic, and often gave uneatable food to the accompanying civilian husbands and officers and soldiers of the Ming army.In addition to being grateful, they even came over to boil the leftover tea left by the people of Qi, boil it and drink it.

As for the sugar, coffee, tobacco, and all kinds of canned fruit and meat enjoyed by the people of Qi, it was even more strange, and their faces were full of envy.

"Our Qi State has developed for nearly 40 years, and it has also been gradually industrialized for 40 years. The amount of wealth created every year is unimaginable to ordinary people." A backward agricultural country. Japan, Korea, Annan, Cambodia, Siam, etc. are all like this in the entire eastern land. Even the distant India, Persia and Ottoman are also different."

"Then, do we in Qi need to help Daming develop industrialization?" Qi Zilun asked cautiously.

"That depends on what kind of attitude Daming will show towards our country of Qi." Qi Yuanshan said leisurely: "Strategic coordinated development? Or containment suppression? Everything is determined by Daming itself!"