Lu Ming

Chapter 353 Opening of Port (XIX)

The Zuojia Village in the traditional sense just died out.

Those self-cultivating farmers and rich peasants were the happiest.Not only did they escape the blow, but they also expanded their family business a bit, and now they have started a new life.

However, they were handsome for only three seconds. Under the impact of the extinction climate in the late Ming Dynasty, this group of people was estimated to face bankruptcy again in two or three years.When the time comes, they will have to sell the land to the farms set up by the passers-by next to them, and then take a boat to the vast new world to start a truly happy life.

The middle class escaped a catastrophe for the time being, but the landlords in Zuojia Village were faced with a catastrophe.Even if they honestly only pursued the tax arrears over the years, it would be enough to shrink the family property of these people by more than half.

After being forced to sell the land, these landlords lost the means of production that they relied on to exploit others, and became people who were sitting and eating.

So after going around in a big circle, this group of people started to migrate again: they need to buy land elsewhere to survive.In fact, some of them have become rich peasants, and the title of landlord can no longer be worn.

Naturally, Xiong Dao and the Land Acquisition Office under his leadership would not take care of the life and death of these people, it would be best to get out of the way, and it would be too troublesome to find a way to deal with them if they stayed.

After crowding out the upper class and luring the middle class away, what is left is the lower proletariat, which occupies most of the population.This part is the favorite population of a certain force: revolutionary bricks, you can move anywhere you want.

Thousands of tenant farmers in Zuojia Village have already started the transformation process: two-thirds of the strong labor force and some women are driven to Zhangsu Beach, where the men build the port and the women cook.They have actually changed from tenant farmers to hired workers, and in the future, after these people are transported away one after another, they will be transformed into industrial workers.

The old, weak, sick and disabled and some of the labor force left in the village began to re-level the land and prepare to sow the new crops brought by the master's family - the surrounding area has become a rare contiguous large farm in the Ming Dynasty, so the remaining people are enough to cope farm work.

These people who stayed behind lost the right to manage the land, and also lost the right of the tenants to make independent accounts.In fact, they are now in the same nature as those workers in Taiwan. They are all paid employees in the "state farm".

Although they are very uncomfortable and can't figure out the stakes, but for the poor and the bottom, they have no choice right now-if they don't do things according to the new owner's wishes, they will be driven out and become refugees , or be captured and turned into slaves to pay off debts.

But this confusion will disappear sooner or later: although farmers are illiterate, they can feel the improvement of living conditions in the future.Not to mention that at the end of the year, when they see the miserable appearance of the tenants around them, they will turn around and brag about the new owners.

Due to the slow expansion of the port construction, adjacent fields like the Zuojia Farm will still exist for a while.Exactly when this area will be turned into a residential area and an industrial site will depend on the development speed of the port.

In short, after spending a lot of resources, the land acquisition work on the "experimental site" of Zuojia Village has achieved initial results.

This is the first time in the history of the crossing forces to transform the original ecological social environment in the hinterland of the Ming Dynasty, and the whole thing is of great significance.So even though this matter seems to be presided over by the natives of the Ming Dynasty, the transversal people hidden in the dark are still very concerned about the development of the situation.

Throughout the transformation process, the spirit of resistance and strength of resistance embodied by various classes in the Ming Dynasty were the focus of some people's research.

Xiong Dao has collected a lot of information and sent it back.In the future, according to the development of the situation, there will be continuous social information to be summarized. These are the basic information that will be used in the large-scale social transformation of the Ming Dynasty in the future, and are very precious.

Of course, the transformation of Zuojia Village is only the first step in the Long March.This ordinary village does not represent the whole of the Ming Empire, and there are still problems such as gentry and urbanization waiting for the traversers to overcome.

In addition, because the speed of information dissemination in the Middle Ages was quite slow, Xiong Dao didn't dare to be careless.The follow-up impact of the land expropriation incident is currently fermenting. He must keep his eyes open to keep an eye on the public opinion to prevent the situation from rebounding—a large farm has been opened in the hinterland of the Ming Dynasty. This news is bound to attract the attention of interested people.

Before I knew it, the time had come to the end of April.When Zuojia Village came to an end for the time being, the confrontation between Master Xiong and Deng's gang in the county was about to come to an end.

To be honest, from the bottom of my heart, Mr. Deng is unwilling to be right with Mr. Xiong.The hostility between the two parties, in the eyes of the big shopkeeper Deng Hu, is purely a misunderstanding + laying a gun.

Yes, Daxing received Zhang Sutan and Wu Meng's order to send people to set fire to Xiong's house, but isn't this a normal business transaction?There shouldn't be any personal grievances involved here, right?If you, Mr. Xiong, pay for it, we men will do it for you like Wu Meng! Shopkeeper Deng thinks this is a simple business, and Xiong Dao shouldn't keep his grudge on Da Xing, let alone hold on to it—Wu Meng has already fled to Taihu Lake, and the thieves have also been copied from their lair , isn't that enough?
However, Master Xiong said: Not enough.

For Xiong, who has a comprehensive plan, since he wants to open a local port and establish a state of China, any forces that may pose a threat to the new area in the future are on his clean-up list.So now it's not a question of whether Deng Hu wants to stop, but a question of whether Master Xiong will let him go: want to run after pretending to be aggressive?

So the follow-up of this matter was deliberately made bigger by Xiong Dao.

When Wu Meng ran to Taihu Lake and Deng Hu once again asked the middleman to come to the door with a gift to make peace, the request made by Mr. Xiong was still so vicious-the thief who set the fire on that day stole the heirloom glazed bicycle from the master. He was carried to Taihu Lake by Wu Meng.Since you shopkeeper Deng wants to make peace, you should either bring a car or pay 1 taels of silver in compensation.

Deng Hu didn't know what Lao Shizi's glazed bicycle was, but he knew that Xiong Zhai didn't lose anything that night.So shopkeeper Deng completely discarded his illusions, and started a stalemate with the people in Xiong's house.

In the beginning, the two sides still had offense and defense against each other.There were a lot of idle people around Xiong's house overnight, and people began to throw torches and incense sticks into the walls to harass them at night.

However, those who went to make trouble at night never returned.When the secret sentry on the wall identified all the outsiders, even in the daytime, these people all disappeared.

What frightened Deng Hu the most was that these people disappeared without a sound, without making any noise at all, and even the secret whistle specially arranged by him could not be found. It stopped, he sealed the news tightly, then suspended all business, and began to prepare for the other party's revenge.

The tense confrontation between the two sides lasted for nearly a month, and then Deng's Daxing couldn't hold on.

It is said that underworld organizations like Daxing must start working after all. What will the brothers eat if they don't start working?So after fighting for a month, Deng Hu finally couldn't hold back the voices from below when he found that his opponent hadn't taken any excessive actions, so the brothers started to pick up orders again.

This time the order was very ordinary: Butcher Zhang in the west of the city and Yuanwai Xie were fighting for the "pig way", and both sides recruited troops to prepare for a big battle, so Butcher Zhang invited his acquaintance Deng's to fight for the fight.

According to the words of later generations, "pig road" is "the channel for buying and selling live pigs".In a super-rich county like Jiading, the annual sales of live pigs are over [-], so this is a big business.

Guilds were everywhere in the Middle Ages, and pig trading was no exception.Butcher Zhang is the head of the "Meat Stall Alliance" in the west of the city.He and his dozens of meat stalls monopolized nearly a quarter of the slaughter and sales of pigs and sheep in the west of the city.

And Xie Yuanwai is the proprietor of the "Yan Ke Lou" in the west of the city.Xie Yuanwai is a professional restaurant chain owner, not only has business in the county, but also opened several branches in Suzhou and Hangzhou. He is the leader of the local catering industry and can be regarded as a wealthy man.

The quarrel between the two parties because of the "pig way" is an old contradiction: the restaurant alliance wants to lower the price of live pigs, and the butcher alliance will naturally fight hard.

Such commercial disputes are common.Just like the NBA's labor negotiations, the supply and demand sides must show their horses and horses every once in a while, use all means, and fight while negotiating until an agreement is reached.

So this time, in the "anti-restaurant alliance price reduction operation", Zhang Tuhu invited the familiar Deng's gang to back him up, and was going to play a big game with the surnamed Xie.

Why play bigger this year?Because this time Xie Yuanwai put forward an idea: the restaurant alliance will set up an internal pig-killing organization, and from now on, it will get rid of Zhang Butcher and his gang as channels.

This kind of idea of ​​drawing salary from the bottom of the pot is naturally unbearable to the channel business, so Zhang Tuhu is going to make a few tough moves in this negotiation, and let the surname Xie know how powerful it is.

The plan went well.

When the shopkeeper Deng Hu Deng took the order, he first brought his brothers and the butchers under Zhang Butcher together to fight twice with the thugs invited by Xie Yuanwai.

Both sides suffered casualties during this period.But this is all expected, and the employer has money to settle the family and the government, so the morale of both sides is still high, and the fight will continue.

The next thing is the butcher's stroke of genius: after Deng's people got the accurate information, they accurately intercepted the restaurant alliance's team returning from buying pigs from the east of the city on a night when they couldn't see their fingers.

After hacking dozens of live pigs to death and throwing them into the stinky mud pond, and then breaking the legs of all the villagers and guys who transported the pigs and throwing them on the official road, the elites of the Deng family's fighting business were victorious.

After returning to the west of the city, they were warmly received by Butcher Zhang. Not only were they rewarded with large sums of money, but they were also served with fine wine and braised pork knuckles.

Then the next morning, Zhang Tuhu and Deng Hu were stunned by a shocking news: Yuanwai Xie died.

(End of this chapter)