Lack of emotional intelligence, slight social impairment, lack of self-confidence, lack of positive motivation from childhood to adulthood, so that deep down in his heart he urgently needs the recognition of others, this is Fan Jin's evaluation of Gu Shi. Although Gu Shi himself is famous and comes from a famous family, he has not suffered any real hardships since he was a child, and he is an absolutely successful person compared to those farmers who work hard in the fields. But in his heart, he is actually quite inferior.

His talent is average, and even the talents are very reluctant, especially in a place like Jiangning, where the literary style is flourishing, and the Gu family, a scholarly family, his fame is actually not recognized by his peers, and he will be blamed behind his back. He can't read books, he is not good at business, and he is also very lame socially. Although he has a humble temperament and good popularity, he has few real friends.

He became a widower at a young age, and finally got a chance to repair the embankment, but failed because of the destruction of the neighboring village. It can be said that he has not been very successful since he was a child, and he belongs to the standard unlucky guy. After entering Beijing, it is inevitable that there is a feeling of being under the fence, although he is open-minded and does not take this matter seriously, but as a man, relying on the future father-in-law to enjoy food, his heart is always uncomfortable. Even when he promised marriage, he first told him that Zhang Shunqing was not complete, which shows that in the eyes of the Zhang family, he is not very important.

What's even more hurtful is that even if such a marriage can't be maintained, he can back down and tolerate his wife, but his wife doesn't want to tolerate him. After being sent back to the countryside by the Zhang family, although he got back part of the family property by relying on Zhang Juzheng's interference, he was actually more inferior in his heart than in the past.

Controlling water is the only thing he can do. This talent is also his only strength. It's just that at present, readers pay attention to articles, and the practical ability of water control is not taken seriously, and no one takes it seriously when they say it on weekdays. In Zhang Juzheng's place, this kind of talent is a family item, but it is a pity that his three passes through the door and do not enter the spirit, but it is obviously not in line with Zhang Juzheng's heart. The original intention of looking for him to be a pick-up man was to make his daughter comfortable, and she could rest assured that she would not be bullied if she didn't bully people.

The only chance he has to show his talents is now, and the success of water control is not only for the benefit of his hometown, but more importantly, to prove that he is not a waste. Prove that you can make a career with your hands. Fan Jin can understand his thoughts and spirit, and he uses his talents to listen to him, and he doesn't mind giving him more good things to listen to.

Gu Shi is not Liu Kanzhi, he lacks the latter's wisdom and ease, hastily marrying is not so much letting go as giving up on himself, just find someone to marry, as long as he gets married in front of Zhang Shunqing. As for with whom, it doesn't matter. Such people are not destined to become friends, even after last night's singing.

However, partners do not have to be friends, for the sake of common goals or interests, even enemies can cooperate happily. Fan Jin promised all the conditions put forward by Gu Shi, and solemnly gave him a salute, and asked Gu Jun to control the water on behalf of the people of Shangyuan.

Immediately afterwards, he threw a grand prospect to him, if Shangyuan County succeeded in controlling the water, the future of Tianfu, the southeastern provinces, and finally to one of the biggest financial gaps in the Ming Dynasty: the Yellow River Water Conservancy Project, there will be Gu Shi's credit. At that time, he will be the Buddha of the Ten Thousand Families, the Dragon King of the world, maybe the imperial court will be specially promoted, because Gu Shi will be awarded an official position because of his ability in this area.

Although Gu Shi was still cold on the surface, from his rapid breathing and faintly red face, Fan Jin dared to guarantee that he was definitely tempted. Such a good person who lacks love and recognition can sacrifice his life for honor. With his kind words and compliments, he will not hesitate to die on the embankment, and he will also repair the Shangyuan Water Conservancy to the best.

It's a pity that his emotional intelligence is still not enough, and he has never understood the crux of the problem. No matter how well he manages the water and how strong the embankment is, Zhang Shunqing will not care. At most, I will only say that this person has some talents, and he will not regret missing such a man.

Liu Kanzhi is far smarter than Gu Shi, and the joints can be seen, but there is no need to say it. After all, if the Shangyuan water control is done, it will be a good thing for the local people, and it will also be a good thing for the Ming Dynasty. Fan Jin's plan for compound farming is being carried out in the countryside of Zhejiang, but due to the backwardness of the dissemination of information, not many people here know about it, and even if they do, they can't do it because of the threat of floods. If it can really be widely implemented, it can indeed benefit the people, and he will naturally not destroy all this.

He pointed to the field, where a few feathers were up and down, sometimes visible, sometimes vanishing. "The work of controlling the water is a great work, and it should not be rushed. From asking for publicity to raising funds to purchase materials, it is not an overnight achievement. Things are slow and round, and it is always good to take them step by step, and there is no need to be in a hurry. But it's the current thing that interests me a little. Now that he is thinking about what he has done, it is a big obstacle to his humble family business, and I still want you to ask him to stop clearing the fields. ”

Gu Shi said: "Why did Brother Yuan Ding say this? Ploughing the land and receiving endowments is a truth that is not easy for the ages. Since the fields are planted, they should pay the national tax on the imperial grain. It is the grace of the court that should be exempted, and the fields outside the grace should be paid. Gu Shoushan colluded with the grain officials in the past, did a lot of tricks and tricks from it, and changed the fields, I don't know anything, otherwise I would be the first to explain the truth to the government. What the county is doing now is exactly what my Gu family should have done a long time ago, we have dragged on for so long, and now the people of the yamen are affected, and the little brother is uneasy. It's too late to be grateful, how can it be stopped. ”

Those undulating feathers were the ornaments on the heads of the county yamen dukes, and when Fan Jin, Liu and Gu were chatting under the tree, these dukes had already taken off their shoes and rolled up their pants and walked around in the muddy water.

They weren't wandering around meaninglessly, of course, but they were doing something very important, but few people were willing to do: measuring the land.

Although weights and measures were unified in the Qin Dynasty, in the Ming Dynasty, the various units of measurement were not a constant value, but had different standards according to the specific situation.

Take the ruler as an example, the "one ruler" in the Ming Dynasty was not a fixed length. It is divided into three types: tailoring ruler, construction ruler and measuring ruler, and different standards are used according to different occasions. The length regulations are all based on the treasure banknote paper, and the length of the three rulers is not the same in the standard of one ruler.

For the land, which is the most important means of production for the people, the concept of mu is not a constant value. One "acre" of land is not a fixed size, and in different provinces, the size of one acre of land varies. In some areas, the grain output is taken as the constant standard per mu to ensure that the amount of grain produced per mu of land is approximate.

Shangyuan County's current standard for counting mu is 360 bows per mu, which requires someone to measure in order to get an accurate result. Otherwise, pointing to a field and casually saying the number of acres, as long as there is not too much deviation, it will not be visible to the naked eye at all. And this statistical difference is the source of income for some squires and officials at present.

The gentry's preferential exemption was not unlimited, and the claim of tax exemption for the land of later generations was not accurate. The reason why people can get a large amount of money is because of their status as an official and the qualification to negotiate with the local government. In order to maintain his dignity, no one measured the fields under his name, and only needed him to report a number. As much as you say, no one will pursue it.

The barren land opened by the village itself must be reported, and when the number is reported, just say a number, as long as there are people in the yamen, they will recognize it as such, and revise it to the fish scale album to become the tax collection standard, and the extra land is the source of income. In places like Shangyuan, where floods occur frequently, after a flood swept away, some of the original cultivated fields became Zeguo and could no longer be cultivated as fields. When reported to the imperial court, this figure is an important source of income.

An important reason for the decreasing number of acres of land, which is the basis of the imperial court's financial revenue, is that no one measures the land. In each count, the local grain chief counts the amount of arable land under his control. For the sake of their own interests or the interests of the whole village, reporting the number of acres of land smaller than the actual number is something that all grain chiefs will do. And the fields under the control of the Ming court were eaten away little by little. Of course, the factors of the gentry's preferential exemption and the vassal king's land are more important, but this kind of private disadvantage in measuring the land cannot be ignored either.

As for why the government didn't come forward to measure, the reason is also very simple, and it is not pleasing to be affected. Clearing the fields is a very hard work, and it is destined to be impossible for officials to walk and count in the fields under the sun. Zhu Yuanzhang formulated the system of officials not going to the countryside for nothing, because he had really seen how the wolf-like officials persecuted the people and did misdeeds in the countryside. The behavior of those people will cause the people to resent the imperial court, and once the resentment accumulates to a certain extent, it may lead to civil unrest.

Even normal work has to take the opportunity to oppress the people, and the servants who fill their own pockets are even more impossible to do such drudgery. The land of Qingzhang will attract the suspicion of the people, and if these people are oppressed, a civil uprising may occur at any time. If the person is held accountable after the fact, the chief officer will not be able to escape the responsibility. Moreover, those people who inspected the land were actually the same people who were in charge of the account books, and when the time came, they accepted bribes, or could they report them according to the number of the squire, so what is the point of this kind of land inspection?

Even if you meet the obedient officer, the land is not so easy to inspect. At the moment, there are no tools, and they all rely on their own steps to measure. Everyone is of different height, and the steps are not the same, and this survey method is definitely not standard. Afterwards, the squire made a fuss, and the numbers must be different for the two measurements, and the chief officer still has to take the blame.

In this year, the officialdom of Daming has entered the stage of being passable, and no one wants to be a backstabber, so they simply go with him.

The gentry evaded taxes, and then apportioned the taxes to ordinary people who had no money or power through means such as "trickery" and "flying". If a conscientious official is encountered, the behavior may be exposed. In order to ensure that their own interests are not violated, the squires will also deliberately provoke conflicts between the common people and the Qingzhang personnel. After all, there are many people and few officials, and once an armed conflict occurs, it will definitely end with the public being injured. It is because the officials do not dare to check the fields of large households, and it is meaningless to check the land of small people, and there may be a big incident, and in the end, no one cares about this matter at all.

Fan Jin didn't want the Gu family's money this time, and the request he put forward was to measure the Gu family's land, and the Gu family must not obstruct it. Although Gu Shoushan will not be arrested and beheaded, he has already been detained, and Gu Shi is a rare honest person, who strongly supports the behavior of the government, and agrees to Fan Jin's request.

In the fields of the entire Daode Township, the Gu family's land property accounts for a relatively large proportion, and if he nods, it is difficult for other squires to refuse. Moreover, Fan Jin finally relented and no longer pursued the matter, and no one wanted to offend Fan Jin for this matter, and when the time came, he would be hated and implicated in the assassination incident.

While Fan Jin was recuperating here, Xu Weizhi in the city got the news of his sister-in-law, and he angrily ordered a horse team and almost went out of the city to arrest people here. Although the matter did not work out in the end, public opinion had spread, and the squires and landlords of Daode Township did not dare to provoke the Guogong Mansion no matter what they wanted, so they all expressed their cooperative attitude.

Mung bean soup was prepared for the public to drink. Fan Jin hired a few peasant women from the village to be responsible for cooking, and the government paid the full amount of rice, grain, and firewood instead of sending conscripts to recruit husbands. He already has a broad mass base in Jiangning, and this thing is done beautifully, so the people are not disgusted by the behavior of the public servants, but some bold village girls are looking for excuses to sneak out and peek at these scholars.

Three handsome scholars looked at the fields under the trees, and this situation was a little weird. A few local gentlemen came with their servants to bring them tea, and invited a few people to sit in their homes, and as for the inventory of the fields, it was enough to leave it to the people below, and there was no need for a few people to do it themselves.

Jiangning's land merger is not as intense as outside, because the crops grown are grain, the land income is not high, and people's demand for land is not strong. Like Zhejiang, the rich Tian Lianqian Mo sang Ma Wan Qing, which does not exist in Shangyuan (note). When it comes to land inventory, there is much less resistance.

Originally, the people were only worried that the public would take the opportunity to extort and insult the woman, or that they would be big and exploit the innocent. Now seeing Fan Jin sitting here to supervise, the public is holding a knotted rope in their hands, carefully checking the appearance of the fields, not only do they dare not report more, but even try not to destroy the crops, this heart is also put down.

The fast catches that carried out the measurement were all from the Fan family in Guangdong, and those who walked with Hu Er during this time. Because of Hu Er's disappearance, these people's hearts were full of tension and uneasiness, and they believed that Fan Jin was ruthless and secretly killed Hu Er's life. Even his brother-in-law said that he would kill him, such a ruthless person is naturally not something that a countryman dares to provoke. Although this work is hard, it will not lose your life, and besides, it is easier than farming, so I am willing to do it.

Fortunately, they are farmers in the field, and measuring the land is their own housekeeping ability. Since you can't get rich, you have to enjoy the pleasure of dominating the lives of others. Looking at the appearance of those people bowing their eyebrows in front of them, the mood of these people gradually improved. Seeing Fan Jinye's group of non-staff scholars also being exposed to the sun under the tree, they didn't complain.

There are more and more sweats, and their bodies are getting hotter and hotter, but these people don't dare to be presumptuous when they think of Hu Er's disappearance. No matter how hot the weather is, he doesn't dare to take off his upper body clothes, and even Xiao Xie has to deliberately avoid people, for fear of bumping into a woman. Fan Jin spoke, and those who dared to offend women were castrated directly. It is not the woman who is afraid of tolerance at the moment, but the tolerance who is afraid of the woman.

As they reported the results of the inspection one by one, the officials who traveled with them recorded the numbers in their account books and handed them to Fan Jin. Wait until noon, and then check with these cleaners.

Looking at the work attitude of these people, several squires couldn't help nodding, praising in their hearts that although Fan Jin was young, he was very disciplined in doing things, and he was worthy of being the person who was favored by Zhang Juzheng. But for the matter of Qingzhang land, it is a bit of a fuss, even if there is a difference in the amount of land, how much grain can there be in a year, and it is so prosperous?