Lu Ming

Chapter 352 Opening of Port ([-])

The grade of the small courtyard of the Zuobao Liujia is pretty good.Although there are no blue bricks and green tiles, the outer layer of the rammed earth wall is also painted with white ash, and the gray tiles on the roof look neat.

However, it was all purchased during a good year, and the Zuo family has gone from bad to worse in the past few years, so even repairs are a bit powerless.

On the third day after Zuo Baoliu was carried home, his dilapidated lintel was kicked open.

Accompanied by the swaying door panel, several ferocious men walked in with all kinds of weapons, surrounded by a man who looked like a shopkeeper in a long robe.

"Are you out of breath, get out!"

Zuo Baoliu, who had been on tenterhooks for the past few days, couldn't help trembling when he heard the yelling in the room. He knew that the job was coming.Stretching out his hand to signal the woman to keep an eye on his baby, Zuo Baoliu sighed, then bowed his head and went out the door—hiding is impossible, he had already been mentally prepared.

Three days is enough time for Zuo Baoliu's eyes and throat to return to normal, but the trauma on his back and ass hasn't healed yet, so he walked on a stick today.

Seeing him staggering out of the house, the shopkeeper sneered at first: "This is an injury. Could it be that she was beaten by her wife when she went to see sister kiln?"

"Hahaha" Following the shopkeeper's teasing, the crowd around him burst into laughter at the same time.

At this moment, Zuo Baoliu could only lower his head, ignore the humiliation, and honestly wait for him to finish laughing.

"Does the mulberry garden in Beitou belong to you?" After laughing a few times, the shopkeeper asked about the business.

"Master, it belongs to the villain."

"Well, go to work tomorrow and dig up all the mulberry trees."

"Dig?" Zuo Baoliu was stupefied and couldn't speak for a while.

"Why, you have the energy to rebel against your boss, but you don't have the energy to dig up trees?" The shopkeeper looked at him with disdain, and squinted at him.

"No, little one." Zuo Baoliu was already a little incoherent: "Well, these are good mulberry leaves that are just emerging. Why did you dig them up?"

"I dug up something else." The shopkeeper was already very impatient.

But Zuo Baoliu didn't think so.For a fruit farmer who has been playing with mulberry trees for half his life, almost all the trees in the garden are his adopted sons, how can he just dig them?
"Master, this garden is tenanted to villains. If the tree is dug up, how can villains live!" Zuo Baoliu was already full of grief and indignation at this time—according to the ancient tenancy relationship, the owner has no right to ask the tenants to change the planting. structured.Therefore, in Zuo Baoliu's eyes, the shopkeeper's request is "out of bounds".

However, Zuo Baoliu forgot that what he was facing was not an ordinary boss at all.

So the shopkeeper was furious immediately after hearing the sound: "Call me!"

Before he could finish speaking, Zuo Baoliu was kicked to the ground and whipped.

"Master, please do me a favor and spare his life!" Seeing this scene, the woman in the house burst out crying and threw herself on Zuo Baoliu. The image is shown.

When the shopkeeper saw the grown-up crying, the fat on his face trembled.He first flipped through the ledger in his hand, then bent down and pointed at Zuo Baoliu and said, "You bastard, you still owe the bank 37 taels of silver."

"Hmph, you dare to take money even if you're in such a shabby household." Having said that, the shopkeeper raised his head to look at the slightly dilapidated courtyard: "Listen to me, if you don't go to work tomorrow, I will send you to the government. , You first became a slave, and then sold your wife and son to repay the debt, do you understand!?"

Zuo Baoliu, who worked hard to protect the mulberry garden, finally came to his senses after being whipped: Yes, it’s not the same now, he can’t even save his own life, so how can he care about those mulberry trees?
So amidst the woman's complaints, Zuo Baoliu went to the mulberry field with a hoe the next morning.

Walking on the sidewalk in the village, all he saw along the way was desolation.Dressed in hemp and filial piety, the weeping funeral procession is slowly walking towards the grave outside the village.

In the fight with weapons a few days ago, four or five people were killed by the wolf smoke on the spot, and several of them were trampled to death by their own people.In one day, dozens of villagers in Zuojia Village were seriously injured and dozens of people died.

After that, the officials broke into the big house, accused the village chief Zuo Hongwu of "resisting taxes and attacking officials", and put him in the county government jail.

What followed was a doomsday scene: the grain messenger and the white servant went through the sieve in the village and found out all the hidden fields.

Hundreds of acres of hidden fields were confiscated by the government without incident.What Zuo Baoliu didn't know was that after the measurement and registration were completed, the county government would re-issue the title deeds for these acres, and then sell them all to Xiongdao at the price of inferior land.

The county government has already made a lot of money on this: selling land is a windfall, and since it is registered after that, there will be a grain tax to be collected every year.

In feudal society, in fact, the only task of magistrates was to pay the grain and pay taxes—this was the first and overriding political task.Other things to educate the people, such as building bridges and paving roads, are all incidental. The bottom line of the court is not to rebel.

Therefore, in the case of land expropriation, the reason why the Jiading County Government acquiesced to Yu Bende's use of the official skin was not only because Xiong Dao asked someone to say hello, but the most important point was that Xiong Dao had made a promise beforehand: all the people who were pulled out All the hidden fields will be deeded, and all the outstanding debts recovered will be shared with the county government.
With this promise, Lai Da County Magistrate, who is extremely concerned about performance appraisal, will naturally support Xiong Dao silently.Anyway, you don't need to be your own boss, and there are some discords between businessmen and people, so why not give it a try?
The tacit understanding behind these is the fundamental reason why Yu Bende can be unscrupulous, forcefully "spare his life" during the spring sowing season, and mobilize a large number of official servants and white servants to collect taxes against the season.

And today, when Zuo Baoliu started working, Zuojia Village has changed because of that weapon fight—all hidden fields have been found out.

After finding Hidden Field, Hidden House will naturally appear.Of course, for a certain force that regards labor as extremely important, these hidden households do not need to register: the correct solution is to ship all of them overseas, and go quietly without taking a cloud. Anyway, the Ming Dynasty has always No accounts were registered for these people.

So when Zuo Baoliu went to work, he not only saw the funeral procession, but also the hermits in the fields who were moaning and plowing the ground.

"God, what kind of evil is this going to do?" Zuo Baoliu now knew that he was not fighting alone: ​​in the fields passing by along the way, everyone was plowing the ground.Yes, in the field where the seed has been sown, the ground is turned up again.

With deep doubts and despair about the future, Zuo Baoliu came to the mulberry garden.Not long after, the shopkeeper from yesterday also came with someone.

Behind the shopkeeper were not only thugs, but also ten hidden households from the same village.

"Dig up all the trees honestly, and if you dare to find any moths, you will all be sent to the government!" The shopkeeper left after a few threats, leaving Zuo Baoliu with a few hermits to start digging. Great cause.

The tree is not so easy to dig: Zuo Baoliu and the others have to trim the branches and leaves of the mulberry tree according to the requirements, then dig the tree out of the ground and the soil, and finally tie the semicircular soil and tree roots with hemp rope.

After that, they have to take the packed mulberry trees to Hebutou outside the village by cart—a boat is already waiting there.

It was very slow for a dozen or so people to dig and pack trees, so it took Zuo Baoliu and others a whole week to send away all the hundreds of trees in the mulberry garden.

Then they received a new task: go to the distance to pick up soil to fill the pit, and then connect the mulberry garden with the surrounding cotton fields to prepare for planting crops.

In fact, there are no cotton fields around the mulberry garden.Before this, most of the Zuojia Village was cotton fields, but in this week, all the land that was rented out had been plowed again, no matter whether it was cotton fields, rice fields or mulberry fields, all of them had now become virgins. Field, there are no crops in it.

And in this week, the villagers of Zuojia Village finally figured out the way of these outsiders.

The first is those hidden households.Those who are not on the list are the best to deal with, so most of them were sent to work in Zhangsu Beach by the river.

It is said that a large port is to be built, so these people dig sand and pick soil there every day.The good thing is that the host family pays wages and takes care of meals.Because the food is not bad, the hermits now say they are emotionally stable.

As for the fields they left behind, they have now joined other fields to form a large area.This kind of large field without dense ridges has not appeared in the Jiangnan area for a long time, and it was unexpectedly revived in Zuojia Village.

There are only a quarter of the number of people working the fields.We must know that in ancient times, with the labor force of a middle-aged family plus cattle, it is completely possible to manipulate [-] acres of land, so a lot of labor is saved in this way.

In addition, while the land was being consolidated, the landlord class in Zuojia Village was also rapidly disappearing—an action to call for tax arrears also began.

This will kill the landlords.After losing the last resort of violence, these rich peasants in the countryside are no different from chickens.

The wolf-like officials took a large sum of money from them easily: if they didn't pay, their land and houses would be confiscated, and then they would go to the county government.Whether caged or imprisoned, there is always a way to kill someone quickly.

This era is not the next generation, and the penalty point for tax evasion and payment of blanket stars has passed. This era has an unlimited liability system. If you don’t pay the bill, you have to use your wife and daughter to pay off the debt.

Therefore, in order not to be ruined, the landlords had to take out their wealth and pay the owed taxes first.However, it is easy to owe taxes, but not so easy to pay taxes.Yu Bende has all the ledgers for the arrears accumulated over the years.

Including programs that colluded with food messengers before, such as sly posting (using the taxes paid by ordinary people to offset the accounts of the landlords), the landlords now have to pay for the tax and grain that escaped.In this way, even if the confiscation action does not count interest, it will also empty out all the floating wealth of the landlords and take away some real estate.

So after the fourth-bedroom old man hanged himself, in just one week, two more landlords who had their property taken away hanged themselves.

However, the reality is so cruel: After paying the tax, the decimated landlords have to honestly sell the land to the leasehold with a knife. This time it is not so lucky, the purchase price of the land by the leasehold has already It has dropped to the parity level of the surrounding land, and the preferential period has passed.

(End of this chapter)