Zhenjiang Mansion, Dantu Town.

When the New Year of Chongzhen's seventeenth year approached, this commercial town located at the confluence of the Grand Canal and the Yangtze River ushered in a prosperous atmosphere that had not been seen for many years.

This year was undoubtedly disastrous for the Ming Dynasty and for the whole of China. Beijing fell, and the East was taken over. The good end of the big tomorrow has come to the situation of confrontation between the Southern Han and the Northern Prisoners. It seems that the partial security situation of the Eastern Jin Dynasty and the Southern Song Dynasty is the best future for the Ming Dynasty.

Anyone who has insight, who does not know the truth of partiality and anxiety? Since ancient times, the dynasties that have favored the left of the Jiangbian River have not all been bulldozed by the Central Plains Dynasty? And the "exception" of Taizu of this dynasty actually arose in the southeast, not in the southeast, and the nature is completely different!

Could it be that dozens of hundreds of years later, Huaxia Shenzhou is about to usher in another tilt?

However, the tilt of the future will have no impact on the ordinary people living in the present. They only care about the firewood, rice, oil and salt in front of them, and they will just survive in this calamitous world.

For the small people of Zhenjiang Prefecture under the direct rule of the Ming Dynasty who moved south, the decree of "exempting arrears, abolishing three salaries, and exempting land for five years" gave them a hope that they could finally breathe a sigh of relief.

To be honest, it is not heavy at all. However, the premise of "not heavy" is to spread the land on all the farmland, and everyone will bear it together. Before the chaos in the world, there were more than 700 million mu of farmland on the books of the Ming Dynasty, and the actual number must have exceeded one billion mu!

With one billion mu of land, it bears 26 million stone rice noodles, and each mu is only two liters of rice flour, but only three and a half catties...... The tax rate is so low that it is insignificant.

However, in the middle and late Ming Dynasty, most of the land belonged to the gentry bureaucrats, or was placed in the name of the gentry bureaucrats, and did not need to pay taxes. But no matter how much the imperial court reduces, there must always be an income of one or two hundred million a year!

So the magistrates couldn't do without taxes altogether, but they couldn't collect taxes from the gentry. As a result, taxes can only be levied on the few small peasants who still own land and on tenant farmers who are actually landless, but still nominally own!

In addition, there is a cost to collecting taxes! You have to let the corrupt officials collect it, they have to be greedy for ink from it...... The court has one tael, why do the people below have to be greedy for two taels, right?

Therefore, one or two million Tian Fu and Jia Pai (which is the actual amount) will become fifty or sixty million at the grassroots level!

Moreover, the Ming Dynasty began to reform Zhang Juzheng, and increased the proportion of "levying silver". And this process gave the gentry who monopolized the township an opportunity to buy and sell profitably - if the Ming Dynasty could have a normal business environment, there would be nothing. The price of rice in Jiangnan is high, and there is a lot of silver. Folding the color and levying silver should be a policy that benefits the people and benefits the people.

The problem is that from the mid-to-late Ming Dynasty, the gentry's tax-free privileges were extended to commercial activities. Not only are they exempt from paying taxes, but they can also make huge profits by evading commercial taxes.

In this case, the commercial activities in the countryside were easily monopolized by the gentry - without their consent, foreign merchants could not go to the countryside without their permission. Monopoly is definitely not a good thing. So the burden on the shoulders of the peasants has been increased again!

And in Jiangnan, which has always been "heavily taxed", the nominal land endowment of only a little more than three buckets per mu has already exceeded one stone when it falls on the shoulders of ordinary small farmers after several increases!

For the poor peasants, who were practically landless but still had nominal burdens, the pressure on taxes was even greater. It is precisely because of this that Li Zicheng's slogan of "no levy for three years" will have such a huge inflammation.

And Zhu Cihong also knew this, so at the beginning of December of the seventeenth year of Chongzhen, he issued an edict to the southern Zhili, Jiangxi, Zhejiang and other areas directly under the imperial court, announcing the "five-year non-levy", which is two years longer than Li Zicheng's "three-year non-levy", and at the same time, it also exempted the arrears of the past many years, and also canceled all additional levies.

As soon as the decree came out, all the people cheered!

His Royal Highness the Prince of Fujun really loves the people like a son, and it must be Emperor Taizu Gao who is alive!

Because the tax burden has been greatly reduced, the farmers around Dantu Town also have a little purchasing power, and they can go to Dantu Town, which they dare not think of on weekdays, to take a look at this year, buy a few New Year's goods, add a few clothes, and watch a few free dramas - free dramas, of course, are not Chinese New Year dramas, but anti-Qing dramas funded and sponsored by the Generalissimo's Office Propaganda and Education Department.

In a somewhat dilapidated theater garden in Dantu Town, at this time the performance of "Dagukou Prince Shows His Might" is being performed, and a "Prince Xiaosheng" with a golden helmet and golden armor on the stage is holding a green dragon glaive knife and a painted face, so that the two sledgehammers will come and go, and it is called a lively, and the gongs and drums are accompanied there!

The stage is lively, and the audience is also lively. In the place closest to the stage, there was a graceful girl in green clothes sitting at a square table, this girl was about fifteen or sixteen years old, her eyebrows were picturesque, her appearance was delicate, and there was a kind of Jiangnan Yue girl's water spirit and clarity. Looking at her dress, she is a lady, from head to toe, all of them are boutiques, and I don't know which lady went out for a stroll. But there were three or five big black men, standing around with their arms crossed, everyone with straight faces, with firearms stuck in their belts and waist knives! The villagers who came to watch the white opera together flashed far away.

There is also a child dressed as a Confucian next to this girl, in his early tens, obviously an innocent age, but like a little adult, shaking his little head with a look of disdain.

The girl was so happy to see that she slapped her face hard, and shouted in a voice like a silver bell: "The prince is so majestic! The prince is the most powerful......"

The young man shook his head and said, "How can you use a Guan knife?" It should be a firecracker! ”

"Xiaohua! What do you know as a child? The girl glanced at the young man, "The prince's martial arts are more powerful than Guan Erye, of course he uses the Guan knife...... she pointed to the stage, "See no, that general has been defeated." ”

"Hmph, it's all fake." The young man named Xiaohua snorted, "When you become the prince's concubine, just ask him yourself." ”

The girl's face flushed with shame, and she lowered her head and muttered: "Who said I was going to be his concubine......"

The young man nodded and said, "Sister Tea, it's true!" When I was on the boat the day before yesterday, my father and your father were talking about it...... They brought you into Beijing this time, just to send you to the palace, then it must be for the prince to sleep! ”

"Don't say it, don't say it......" The girl suddenly found that there were a lot of people around her, and said how embarrassing it was.

But Daddy really wants to marry himself...... Give the prince of the wise and martial arts to sleep? No, I'll have to ask.

Thinking of this, the young man stood up abruptly and said to the young man, "Xiaohua, let's go!" ”

"Let's go?" The young man was stunned, "The play is not over yet!" ”

"Don't look at it, go to the official ship." The girl bit her red lip, "Go and ask!" ”

The boy waved his hand, "Hey, what's there to ask?" You can't go wrong...... When did I miss what Chen Yonghua said? ”

This young man is actually Chen Yonghua! is the helmsman of Chen Jinnan Chen who "doesn't know Chen Jinnan in his life, so it's useless to call him a hero"!

Oh, he is not the helmsman yet, but the son of Zheng Zhilong's staff Chen Ding, who is only 11 years old this year.

And the girl who was with him was Zheng Sen's half-sister Zheng Chagu, and she was also the waiter that Zhu Cihong was about to enter the door.

Just when the two children were watching the play, Zheng Zhilong, the richest man in the Ming Dynasty, a man in his forties, tall and mighty, dressed as a military attaché, was on a large and luxurious official ship, holding a letter he had just received, frowning.

His confidant, Chen Ding, who was five short and a little obese, spread out a map and wrote and drew on it with a brush.

After a while, Chen Ding put down the brush in his hand and said to Zheng Zhilong with a smile: "Zong Rong, it seems that the Tartars will not go south for the time being...... Half of the Chitose Lord has stabilized! ”