There is heaven above, and Suzhou and Hangzhou below.

The most beautiful place in the world is Hangzhou, and the most beautiful place in Hangzhou is in the picturesque West Lake. This painting, naturally, refers to the Chinese literati landscape painting.

How many literati who are proud of the spring breeze or have a bumpy career wander around the West Lake, linger and forget to return, and find their spiritual home among the mountains and rivers.

The sophistication and elegance of West Lake have become the blueprint for many places to build gardens and camps. But the cultural heritage and anecdotes she precipitated are imitations from other places that are difficult to follow.

She perfectly interprets the definition of traditional Chinese landscape: the perfect combination of humanity and nature. The scenery without humanity can only be called poor mountains and bad waters, and such natural landscapes are innumerable in the west of the city where Zhu Pingjin lives, and they can never be finished. They are like women who only have looks but no connotation, stunning at first glance, and disgusted at first glance.

Therefore, Su Shi, a great writer who was the official of Hangzhou's parents, drank a large pot of rice wine during working hours, and left the most affectionate memory of Hangzhou West Lake on a chartered luxury cruise ship when his eyes were blurred and his body and mind were derailed, which became the most appropriate description of the beauty of West Lake:

Drink the lake after the first sunny day

Second

The water is shining and the sun is good,

The mountains are empty and rainy.

If you want to compare the West Lake to the West,

Light makeup is always suitable

……

During the New Year, it is always a time for people to help the old and the young and travel with their families.

Lingyin Temple, under the north peak of the West Lake, has just recovered from the fire of the previous year (Note 1). Zhengdan is the first day when it reopens the mountain gate to welcome pilgrims, so there are many people who offer incense.

In the early morning, countless good men and women who burned incense and kowtowed had gathered in front of the mountain gate, waiting for the temple gate to be opened, so that they could rush in and burn a stick of incense. The monks saw that there were too many pilgrims, and the road was slippery in the cold weather, in order to prevent people from squeezing into the stream under the cliff statue of Feilai Peak, and causing a lawsuit for life in Zhengdan, so they did not dare to open the mountain gate rashly, but sent the monk to ride a horse to report to the Qiantang County Ya.

Lingyin Temple is known as the head of the Zen forest in the south of the Yangtze River, and it is well-known among the temples in the world. Emperor Taizu Gao once summoned the abbot of Lingyin Temple to Nanjing to say the Dharma, and awarded him a gold robe (LAN). When the magistrate of Qiantang received the news from Lingyin Temple, he did not dare to delay, and hurriedly sent a dozen officials to maintain order.

The ancient temple is ringing bells, and the mountain gate is open left and right.

The mountain gate was opened, and the monks of the two lines of the temple came out chanting scriptures. When the pilgrims, who had stiff hands and feet, became happy, it seemed that they would soon be released into the temple.

At this moment, a young scholar stepped on the snow, was dragged by a child, and with the foul smell of alcohol, he stumbled and rushed into the group of pilgrims who had just been in order. The woman in the crowd let out a scream, followed by a few sharp and caustic scoldings. The boy apologized to the surroundings again and again, saying that his son-in-law was drunk, and he apologized to everyone on behalf of his son. Everyone saw that the child knew the etiquette, and saw the scholar dressed up, and knew that most of them were the talents who were going to take the exam this year's autumn, so they moved stupidly and got out of the way, so that the plague god could hurry over, so as not to smoke everyone with the smell of wine.

More than a mile west of the mountain gate of Lingyin Temple, the crooked path led the two to a clean small mountain gate.

The mountain gate reads: "Yongfu Zen Temple".

The welcoming monk in front of the temple saw the scholar walking and stumbling, and his heart was extremely unhappy, so he hurriedly took advantage of their arrival and took the lead in closing the mountain gate. When the scholars and children arrived, they couldn't open the mountain gate no matter what.

At this time, a warm sedan chair came from the direction of Lingyin Temple, and there were several guards with knives in strong suits around them. As soon as the child saw the sedan chair coming, he hurriedly helped the son to sit on the stone ridge in front of the mountain gate, and stepped forward to salute himself.

The sedan chair fell to the ground, and a middle-aged official came out. He wore a velvet satin diagonal square scarf, a fox collar and a long fur placket, his face was delicate, his expression was kind, and a sparse beard hung under his chin. At first sight, you can see that this person is either expensive or rich.

"Sir, my son-in-law discussed poetry with others yesterday and drank a few more glasses. The monks were afraid that the prince would defile the purity of the Buddha and refused to open the door. The villain is afraid that his son will freeze, so he asks the gentleman to knock on the door so that my son can go in......"

The gentleman listened with a smile, and called the old man to his side. The master muttered a few words to the gentleman in a dialect that the child did not understand, and the gentleman nodded and motioned for the master to come forward and knock on the door.

Hearing the name reported outside the door, the welcoming monk hiding behind the door hurriedly opened a narrow slit. Seeing that it was not the drunken ghost just now, he opened the mountain gate and invited the distinguished guests to go up the mountain. But in a blink of an eye, the welcoming monk saw the boy supporting the scholar and following the guest into the mountain temple. He couldn't force it in front of the guests, so he glared at the child. Who knows, the two angry eyes of the welcoming monk collided with the white eyes of the little boy.

……

In the guest hall on the left side of the Puyuan Quiet Temple, a fat-faced monk smiled and offered a cup of fragrant tea to the gentleman with an extraordinary appearance.

"Listening to Qiu Shizhu's accent, it must be someone from Shuzhong?"

"Master Jingzhao is very knowledgeable, and the contemptible person is the Sichuan people."

"I don't know if Master Qiu went to the temple, whether it was incense, whether it was Buddha, or whether it was to enjoy and play?"

"Neither. The students heard that the tea of Yongfu Temple is better and the water is better, but they just ask for a tea. ”

Oh? Monk Jingzhao was happy.

The monk is also a good tea person, so he smiled and said: "Lord Qiu has a Buddha fate." Tea people, the closest to Zen. Drinking tea quietly is to participate in Zen. The tea of the temple is planted by the monks themselves; The water of the temple comes from the two springs of Jinsha and Baisha in the temple. It is the tea of this temple, and it does not touch the slightest bit of vulgar dust. Unlike the Lingyin Temple under the mountain, the people burned incense to the Buddha and made a wish, and they also took the opportunity to make dozens of incense money! ”

The fat monk used tea and Zen to openly demean the next-door neighbor Lingyin Temple, which made Qiu Shizhu laugh. The fat monk asked: "I heard that a noble relative of the Heavenly Family in Shu came to Hangzhou and opened a money bank. This person is kind and generous, and he helps the people with boats and rice in Suzhou and Hangzhou......"

"Master Jingzhao has an overreputation. The student was ordered by the prince of Shu to escort Huang Shangshu to Nanjing. When he arrived in Nanjing, he sold the rice stored in the Shu Wangfu for a long time, and used it as the principal of Huitong Money. Who knew that when I arrived in Jiangnan, I saw that all living beings were in such hardship...... Ah...... That is, a stone of grain is sold for three or five dollars of silver......"

"Oops! Snubbed Lord Qiu! ”

The fat monk looked surprised, and hurriedly saluted, "One stone of rice is five coins of silver, and one hundred thousand stones is fifty thousand taels of silver!" It is said in the market that the price of grain will rise to five or six taels during the spring famine, so the wealthy gentry are covering the grain and not selling it. Who knew that the Shu clan had this benevolent heart, and transported rice thousands of miles away. Regardless of the high shipping cost, it is five dollars less than the local price! The Buddha said, compassion is cherished! Shu Shizi and Qiu Shizhu are righteous and wealthy, love and selflessness, and save all sentient beings, which is the great mercy and compassion of Nanwu Guanyin Bodhisattva! ”

Master Qiu Shizhu was blushing by the monk's words, and was about to return the salute, but he heard a knock on the door, and a person broke into the guest hall.

THE MAN WAS DRESSED IN A LONG COTTON ROBE, WITH A TAO-SASH AROUND HIS WAIST, A JADE PENDANT HANGING FROM HIS WAIST, AND HIS WET HAIR TIED WITH A SILVER HOOP. He fixed his eyes and saw that it was the scholar who was drunk just now. So he smiled and asked, "Is the scholar still drunk?" ”

The scholar bowed and bowed, a little embarrassed.

"The student took a cool shower! I'm awake! Rashly broke in, just for Mr. Xie's grace to open the door. Disturb Mr. and Master Yaxing, don't blame it! ”

The scholar's accent is very strange, with some taste of the north and some taste of Jiangsu and Zhejiang. Master Qiu Shi didn't really hear it, and waved his hand to let the master come over to translate. Hearing him, he smiled and said: "It's okay, since the scholar comes, it is fate, how about everyone drink a pot of fragrant tea?" ”

……

This Qiu Shizhu is Qiu Zigong, the only uncle of Zhu Pingjian, the son of Ba County, Chongqing.

In late September, Qiu Zigong led the largest fleet in Shu for 300 years to leave Chengdu and sail down the river to the south of the Yangtze River.

Before leaving Chengdu, Qiu Zigong had two secret conversations with his nephew. His nephew said that he went to Jiangnan this time with two basic tasks: Budian and Buren. As for the money, it is a secondary and secondary matter.

The distribution point is to penetrate the power of the Shu Wangfu into the provinces in the south of the Yangtze River, waiting for the opportunity to move; Buren is to win the hearts and minds of the people and prepare for the great changes in the future. His nephew also said that the face of the Ming Dynasty was fully revealed, and as the king of the Ming Dynasty, he had nowhere to escape, and he was not ready to escape. He wants to use the power of the whole Sichuan to save the fate of himself, his family and the country. He hoped that Qiu Zigong, as his closest elder and his most trusted person, would take up the heavy responsibility of Budian Buren and even the future management of Jiangnan.

It was with such hope and entrustment that Qiu Zigong left Sichuan. Passing through the treacherous Three Gorges of the Yangtze River, passing through the calamitous Huguang Jiangxi, and coming to the boundary of Nanzhili.

In the wind and snow at the wharf on the banks of the Anqing River, Qiu Zigong saw thousands of ghosts starving to the bone. Most of these victims fled from Henan and have been hungry for a long time. Without help, most of them would never have survived this winter.

Qiu Zigong then began to sell grain, using the vacant space to transport these poor victims to Yiling for a while, and then let them travel overland through the Three Gorges to Wushan and Fengjie, and then re-embark on the ship to the west or make other arrangements.

Qiu Zigong knew Zhu Pingjian's thoughts, Shu Shizi only wanted the strength of the homeless people, and the battlements were gathered as the source of soldiers for the battalion; Or a craftsman or a scholar. When these people arrived in Shudi, they were of great use, but the burden of food increased but not much. However, Qiu Zigong encountered the same problem as his nephew in Dongmen City. Those victims took the initiative to sell themselves into slavery, without any money, and the only thing they begged for was to eat and bring their whole family and even dozens of people from the same clan and village.

Qiu Zigong looked at the tragic situation of the separation of flesh and blood of the homeless people, and couldn't bear it, so he boldly made a decision for Zhu Pingjin: everyone who is healthy and can walk on their own needs it! More than ten empty ships of 3,500 stones, which could only carry 1,000 people in the sky, were forced to squeeze 2,000 people in the end. In order to go to Yiling a day earlier to eat a full meal, those people invariably asked to be a lugman and a slender man!

The rest of the victims had no boat to carry, but fortunately there was Huang Jin, the messenger.

Mr. Huang was extremely supportive of Qiu Zigong's benevolent and righteous actions, decisively aborted the trip, and personally went ashore to find Zheng Eryang, the governor of An (Qingfu), Lu (Zhoufu, Fuzhi Hefei County), Chi (Zhoufu), Tai (Pingfu, Fuzhi Dangtu County) (that is, the later governor of Anhui), and asked the local government for assistance.

Huang Shangshu came forward, and Governor Zheng and the Anqing government were eager to transport away the source of these troubles, so they immediately agreed to come down and requisitioned dozens of large ships to participate in the transportation in the name of the military. The Shu Wangfu only needs to take care of the food for the requisitioned boatman, and even the rent can not be paid. Of course, in order to have a safe journey, Qiu Zigong still privately promised the boatman to pay a little food before returning to talk about compensation.

The big ships on the Yangtze River are much larger than the 300 stone boats commonly used on the Sichuan River. The big ship is 500 stones, and the largest can reach 3,000 or even 5,000. Most of the styles are flat-headed square-bottomed sand boats, with the most double masts, and very few three-masted and four-masted. The reason for the lack of masts is said to be because the imperial court ordered that sailing ships should have a maximum of two masts, and an extra mast would be a rebellion. So these three-masted or four-masted ships have a feature, that is, the extra mast can be lowered or even disassembled.

The big boats and the small boats moved together, men, women and children all got on board. With enough boats, nearly 20,000 victims disappeared from Anqing Mansion and its counties along the river in an instant, and Zheng Eryang praised Huang Lao's merits in a flash.

He told Huang Jin that if Shu needed displaced people to open up wasteland, there would be more displaced people in Chizhou, Luzhou, Taiping, Huizhou and other state capitals under his rule. As long as the Shu Wangfu was willing to sell grain in Anhui, he was willing to immediately fly to the prefectures and counties, so that the local government could organize the displaced people, and then they would be responsible for transporting them to Yiling. When Huang Jin asked Zheng Eryang what the total number of displaced people was, Governor Zheng hesitated, saying that he had no way to verify, and there were about tens of thousands.

Tens of thousands!

Even if you drink dry porridge every day, one person needs three stone of grain a year. Tens of thousands of people, the food consumed is three tens of thousands of stones, not including the consumption on the road!

This matter is too big, of course Huang Jin can't make decisions for Zhu Pingjin, and even Qiu Zigong is hesitating. Qiu Zigong agreed to Zheng Eryang to sell grain, and the grain was to be sold anyway, and the price of grain here was also good, and the empty space could be used to transport the displaced people. But to accept more displaced people, Qiu Zigong told the Anhui government through Huang Jin that he could not call the shots and asked the prince of Shu to be informed.

One insisted on giving, and the other half-pushed and half-refused. Between the two sides going back and forth, Qiu Zigong's vanguard grain ships had arrived at Wuwei Prefecture, which was under the jurisdiction of Chizhou and Luzhou. After receiving the report from his subordinates, Qiu Zigong suddenly realized:

Why did the governor Zheng Eryang and the local government behind him prefer to post money and boats, but also send the displaced people to Shu.

Because they lied.

The homeless people are not tens of thousands, but hundreds of thousands!

The displaced people in Jiangbei are mainly from the war-torn places of Henan and Shandong, and a small number from Fengyang and Luzhou;

And the displaced people in the south of the Yangtze River are mainly from Huizhou, which is rich in the first place!

Note 1: The fire of Lingyin Temple is seen in history.

Note 2: Hefei County, Luzhou Prefecture.