The Ming Dynasty took an unconventional approach

China has a long coastline. No matter how powerful the Ming Dynasty navy was, it was impossible to guard every seaport. As long as you are determined, going to sea is not difficult. What is difficult is surviving in the vast ocean and returning.

The landlord is clearly a shrewd character.

Before he arrived, Pan Yun had already thoroughly investigated the man's family history for three generations.

When the landlord and his brother-in-law brought up the grilled fish, everyone tacitly changed the subject.

But what's so interesting about Chaozhou City?
Pan Yun and Xue Shao steered the conversation, and everyone poured out their hearts to the two of them about everything they had seen, heard, and even speculated about.

The people living in this courtyard included those who carried bags and did odd jobs for various shops, those who moved things for officials and gentry, and those who worked short-term jobs for landlords...

One of them even had a mother who worked as a wet nurse in the residence of a high-ranking official. After finishing his work in the fields, he thought of coming to the city to ask his mother to arrange a long-term job for him.

However, the magistrate's family was of modest means and he did not want to support another long-term laborer, so he could only rent a place in this courtyard and look for short-term jobs in the city with everyone else.

“I’ll go home after I finish working in December. My mother says that in this day and age, being a farmhand is not as good as farming at home. Taking good care of the land is much better than being out there where your life and death are at the mercy of your master. I think my mother is right, but I also need to get married and raise children in the future, so I need to earn more while I’m still young.”

Pan Jun peeled off a piece of fish belly meat and asked with a smile, "Besides getting married and raising children, haven't you thought about anything else?"

"Besides getting married and raising children, what else do you need to think about?"

Pan Yun: "After raising your children, what do you want to do?"

"Save money for the child so he can get married and have children."

Pan Yun paused with her chopsticks and pressed on, "What about after your son gives birth?"

His dark face relaxed, and he said with a smile, "If I were still alive back then, I would have handed over the farming to my son, and I would have come to the city to do odd jobs to save money for my grandson to get married and have children."

Looking at his cheerful smile, Pan Yun felt a sudden pang of sadness. She suppressed her melancholy, nodded slightly, and picked up the piece of fish she had peeled off, placing it in his bowl: "Eat up, eat more."

He ate happily: "Miss Pan, who were you trying to ask just now?"

"The Feng family, do you know them?"

"Of course I know, who in this city doesn't know? Half of the land in Chaozhou City belongs to the Feng family."

After making several trips back and forth, the landlord finally delivered all the grilled fish. Hearing this, he scoffed and said, "What Feng family? Those belong to the emperor. It's just that someone surnamed Feng took them and used them."

The laborers were completely bewildered and asked incredulously, "Huh, from the Emperor's family? The Emperor himself didn't care, and just let Master Feng take it and use it?"

"Master Feng and the Emperor have such a good relationship..."

“What a load of rubbish,” the landlord said. “Does the emperor even know who this Feng is? He probably hasn’t even heard of him.”

The laborers became anxious upon hearing this: "Even the emperor doesn't know about him, so isn't that stealing? So much land, and the old man just doesn't care?"

The landlord said, "The emperor, he's got a huge fortune. This little bit of land seems like a lot to us commoners, but in the emperor's eyes, it's just a hair on nine oxen, not worth mentioning." The laborers sighed, "This is too wasteful! Is the old man getting senile?"

Pan Yun couldn't help but say, "The emperor isn't that old; he hasn't even reached adulthood yet."

The day laborers thought, "Is it another little emperor? Will he be like the last one, keeping eunuchs around him?"

The landlord waved dismissively and said, "Even the emperor has eunuchs around him. This is the younger brother of the previous one, so he must be even younger."

"Didn't the last one grow up for a long time? Ten or more years ago, he was called the little emperor. After all these years, he must be old by now, right?"

Apart from the common people living near the capital who had a general idea of ​​the emperor's age, the rest of the common people, especially those living to the south and in the mountains, were illiterate and could not even remember the reign titles clearly, let alone know the emperor's age.

If it weren't for the fact that every time the emperor changed, the local government would have the village head and the head of the neighborhood announce it with gongs and drums, telling them to put away their red decorations and hang up white ones, they wouldn't even know the emperor had changed.

They didn't even know that the previous emperor had died on the battlefield.

Ordinary people in the North, Central Plains, and Jiangnan regions knew about it because they lived there, and because the region was economically developed, well-informed, and had fast communication.

After passing Fujian—or rather, after passing Quanzhou and going further south—ordinary people became increasingly isolated from the world. Unless the government specifically publicized this information, they were almost cut off from the world and knew nothing.

The information made public by the government was known to scholars, gentry, and people like landlords who knew many people from all over the country, but people like day laborers knew nothing about it.

After them, there were many farmers living in the mountains of Zhongshan Village. Some of them may have never left the village in their entire lives. In their memory, the emperor still seemed to be the Hongwu Emperor, who stood tall and upright in the mouths of the older generation and rescued the Han people from dire straits.

Unbeknownst to them, emperors outside had come and gone, and the current emperor was the great-great-grandson of the Hongwu Emperor.

Tonight's grilled fish feast has been passively turned into an information exchange meeting.

Pan Yun and Xue Shao learned from them that half of the land in Feng Bancheng's possession was military farmland, and the other half was fertile land, official land, and farmland that he had purchased, seized, or encroached upon.

They also learned that almost all the soldiers of the Chaozhou City Thousand Household Garrison had become Feng Bancheng's private army.

A day laborer clicked his tongue and said, "My home is in Xianlong Bay. My dad told me that the land east of Xianlong Bay used to be all our village's land. But Feng Bancheng just led his troops to fence it off, saying that the Thousand Households were going to train troops there. He put up a fence, pulled a rope, and all those hundred-plus acres of land became the Feng family's."

"Such a large piece of land, but there isn't even a village. People only go there every year for spring planting and autumn harvest. Those people are very thin. Several members of a family work for Feng Bancheng. I asked, and the head of the household is a military household. I know his son well. His son's name is Dachun. He said he wants to marry a fertile wife and have many sons. That way, only one will be left to join the army, and the rest will be sent out to do other things. Otherwise, like his father, he only has one child. He will have to wait to take over the position and farm for Feng Bancheng for the rest of his life. He is much more miserable than me."

Xue Shao: "Feng Bancheng occupied your village's fertile land, and your village didn't make a fuss at all?"

“They made a fuss, so the county government compensated us with the land north of Xianlong Bay. The land there was much worse, but we wouldn’t get anything out of it if we kept making a fuss, so my father and the others stopped making a fuss.”

Xue Shao narrowed his eyes slightly, instantly understanding: "That land to the north is official farmland, isn't it?"

"Yeah, how do you know?"

Pan Yun clicked his tongue and said, "If we investigate like this, will the person surnamed Feng have encroached on farmland belonging to the people or on government land? In the end, it will all be a muddled mess." (End of this chapter)