Several men kept putting the corn into the big tray, and Liu San'er personally observed the stars on the scale pole, reporting numbers one by one in his mouth. Another literate handyman had already moved a horse and sat on it, holding a small wooden board as a mat in his hand, with a piece of paper on it, and a tube of brush in his hand, which was constantly recording.

Looking at this scene, Wang Laoshi couldn't help but feel a lot of emotion in his heart.

He was not originally from the Northeast, in fact, this situation is not uncommon here, but it is very common, and none of these people around him, for thirty years, have a foundation in this place.

Wang Laoshi was born in Jinanfu, Shandong, which could have been called prosperous in the north, but it was the main battlefield at the end of the Yuan Dynasty and the beginning of the Ming Dynasty. Later, Emperor Taizu ascended the throne as the emperor, and then moved a large number of people from Huguang, Sichuan and other places to fill in Shandong, and after more than 30 years of recuperation, he recovered some vitality. However, within a few years, the battle of Jingyan started again, and the future Yongle Emperor Yan at that time fought with his own nephew for the throne and to save his life, and the dog's brain was beaten.

However, from Beiping at that time to the south of the capital Nanjing, Shandong is the only way to pass, so it has become the main battlefield, to fight thousands of miles of red land, and the people are in trouble.

After Emperor Yongle ascended the throne, he began to fill in Shandong.

Wang Laoshi's ancestor moved from Zhuanglang, Pingliangfu, Shaanxi, to Yucheng, Jinan, Shandong. Their entire village is made up of Shaanxi men, and this is a strong tradition. In Wang Laoshi's life, a mouth is still an ancient and thick Qin dialect.

It's a good life in Shandong, at least much better than in my hometown, since the end of the Tang Dynasty Zhu Wen turned the glorious Tang Chang'an into white land, the status of Guanzhong Shaanxi in the whole of China has been declining, and it has never risen again. It's not just political status, it's economic share. Even the climate became harsh during the Yuan and Ming dynasties. At the beginning, the water and grass were abundant and the land was fertile. The land of Shaanxi, where forests are everywhere and herds of cattle and sheep are gradually becoming arid, cold and barren. In particular, northern Shaanxi, which once nurtured an extremely prosperous civilization, has almost been reduced to a barren land.

But in Shandong, a family farming, in addition to the imperial grain handed over to the government, there is always a lot left, in addition to filling the stomach, there can also be some left, waiting for those big officials who open grain stores and rice stores in the city to go to the countryside to collect, go up to sell some silver, and cut two catties of pork during the New Year. Pull up the three-foot red cloth. It is also round and harmonious. For the little people, these days are enough to be happy.

In this way, it is a hundred years.

When it came to the Zhengde Dynasty, it didn't work out again. Exactly. For example, Wang Laoshi's family, these small farmers and self-cultivators, began to be unable to survive.

The cause, if it is a bit more academic, is called land annexation.

It has been said throughout the ages that the closer you get to the capital, the more intense the land annexation becomes. Guy is in the capital, where the core of national power is located, and there are many powerful people. The veteran heroes who followed the founding emperor to fight the world, the upstarts who have just risen to the throne, the civil servants who became officials and became officials, and even the family members and relatives of these powerful people, in the eyes of the small people, are also some big people who can't be provoked.

However, in the minds of the Chinese people, buying a house and buying land is the most important part after it is developed.

Adopting the principle of proximity, these magnates extended their claws to the closer place they could reach - Gyeonggi. However, the area around the capital is such a big land, and it didn't take long for it to be divided, so that later, with the financial resources of the Lian family, only a small amount of real estate was obtained. When Gyeonggi is finished, it is Beizhili, and when Beizhili is finished, it is Shandong. …,

Moreover, the local officials in Shandong are also extremely competitive, although the literary style of the entire northern land is indeed a lot worse than that of the south of the Yangtze River, but Shandong is the hometown of Confucius and Mencius after all, and the poetry and books have been handed down from generation to generation, and it is the province with the most literary style in the entire northern land and the most scholars every year. After these officials from Shandong became developed, they also thought about returning to their hometown to buy houses and land, and made plans for thousands of generations.

Therefore, in the Zhengde year of the middle of the Ming Dynasty, the intensity of land annexation in Jinan Prefecture, Shandong Province was not much worse than that of the capital.

At this time, the life of small farmers is becoming more and more difficult.

For example, in the village of Wang Laoshi, there are 500 households, all of whom were originally self-cultivated farmers, and if the government says that a total of 2,000 stone of grain is collected here a year, then one household is four stone of grain, but later, more than half of the families in the village, such as 300 households, were annexed by the officials and gentry, and due to the loopholes in the taxation of the dynasty, these people do not have to pay taxes, but the grain that the government wants to collect cannot be shortage. So the tax of these two thousand stone grain fell on the remaining 200 households, and an average of ten stone grain per household!

Such a heavy burden can be imagined how heavy it is, and the people in the Guannan are not as vast and sparsely populated as the Guanwai, a family is a hundred acres of land, and their family is only twenty or thirty acres of land.

On the contrary, those who had become tenants were much happier, and they only had to pay the lord's rent every year, which was much lower than the taxes of the imperial court.

Finally, on the day before the Chinese New Year's Eve of the 29th year of Zhengde, Wang Laoshi's family was arrested by the government because they failed to pay the imperial grain. On Chinese New Year's Eve, Wang Honest and his father shivered with cold at the entrance of the Ya, their faces were blue, and several officials sat in the door cave while pointing at them while stabbing the small wine, and let out bursts of ridicule.

Wang Laoshi's father is not young, he has already broken his leg, and after a severe torture, his body and bones can no longer hold it. And how cold is the winter in Shandong? In that low temperature of more than ten degrees below zero, the old man was frozen to death before he arrived, and Wang Laoshi could not forget the miserable situation of his own father and his own arms being frozen into a popsicle in his life.

This also developed his extreme fear of the government, and he has not changed it until now.

And Wang Laoshi was beaten again, and he was frostbitten and injured his vitality, and later when he returned home, he was sick in bed, and his family couldn't help it. I had to sell a lean cow that I regarded as the root of my life, and treat him with medicine. It will be raised for two months, but Rao is so. The right leg also fell the root of a lifelong disease, and it was always limping, and then people gave him a nickname called Wang Cripple.

And Daddy's body is not buried at all. Wang Laoshi was still a little glad in his heart that it was winter, and the corpse would not decompose, otherwise, everyone would really know it from all over the country, and people would not be able to raise their heads for the rest of their lives.

But the family really couldn't get a lot of money, and in the end there was no way, so they had to wrap the old man's body in a broken mat, move to the ancestral grave and hastily dig a nest to bury it.

Wang Laoshi's younger brother cried in front of the grave, scolded from the government to the gods and Buddhas, and then left home angrily. Tell the king honestly that when he comes out, he will definitely come back and kill all these corrupt officials.

The cowardly Wang Laoshi almost didn't faint, and hurriedly wanted to press his mouth, but his brother sneered twice and left. Never to be seen. …,

After a long time, there was no news, and Wang honestly knew that he must have died outside.

After understanding these things, Wang Laoshi discussed with his family or found a big family to donate the land.

The so-called dedication is also a special symbol of this era. It refers to the poor family who took the initiative to donate the land to a large family, and then under its protection, they did not need to pay the imperial grain and national tax, but only needed to pay rent. The goal of the dedication is generally the local scholarly door, this kind of portal, not for a long time, the main family has not been black-hearted, and the general person is still very good, and after all, it is a scholar, and he always needs some face.

As a result, I didn't expect it, and before I had time to contribute, I waited for the edict of Emperor Zhengde announcing the immigration to the Northeast from Shandong, Shaanxi, Henan and other places.

For these farmers in China who have a strong sense of the countryside, they are naturally very reluctant to leave, but this is the emperor's order, whether they want to or not, it is the emperor's order, if you want to go, you have to go, and if you don't want to go, you can't do it. The amount of immigrants is given from above, and the list depends on the local government, and those who have connections and power naturally spend money up and down, but Diao Min, who is poor and has a number in the government, has naturally become the target of attack.

So in May of the thirtieth year of Zhengde, Wang Laoshi took his daughter-in-law, the son who had just reached the full moon, and the old lady who was blind from crying because of his father's death, pushed a cart, pulled the few remaining belongings, joined the army of Haohao Tangtang, and came to the northeast.

In the next 20 years, every time I think about it, Wang Laoshi sighs at his luck.

When the government said that it would immigrate to the Northeast, no one came at all, in the folk saying, the Northeast is extremely cold and barren, and the grain that is beaten down is not as much as the seeds that are sown, and the heavy snow in winter can bury people, and there are more fierce and cruel Jurchens who haunt everywhere, horse thieves are rampant, killing people and stealing goods. In a word, to go is to die.

Therefore, everyone regarded it as a daunting path, but Wang Laoshi did not expect that when he arrived in the Northeast, he was like a new life.

If you are in Guannei, you will be a tenant in this life, and in the northeast, the family has divided more than 100 acres of land, and the land here is unimaginably fertile, although you can only harvest one season of grain a year, but this season, it is already higher than the yield in Shandong. With the hard work of Wang Laoshi, he got a bumper harvest in the first year of coming here, not only returned the grain of the government, but also paid enough for the emperor's grain, and there was still a lot left.

That year, for the first time in many years, the whole family was open to eating, eating as much as they wanted.

For Wang Laoshi, that was the happiest day. He had a child with his mother-in-law, and he also saved money to buy a cow, and lived a harmonious and beautiful life.

He originally thought that this kind of life could continue forever, but the good times did not last long, as more and more farmers came to reclaim the northeast, and the taxes collected by the imperial court became heavier and heavier, gradually, life was not so rich, but it was still good. If this continues, at least it will be a peaceful death.

Unexpectedly, the Jurchens came.

The Jurchens roared on their horses, their maces red with blood. Many people in Wang's village were killed, some were crushed in the head by maces, some were trampled into mud by the huge hooves of the Jurchens with their war horses, and even worse, they were tied to the back of the horses with ropes by the Jurchens, beat the horses and galloped wildly, and came back from the outside. The whole body of the man who was tied to the back of the war horse had been stabbed on the ground, and the flesh was blurred, and there was no longer an inch of good flesh. But the man was still alive, and he screamed miserably, and it was heard. It's just trembling.

Women are even more miserable, their beautiful ones are possessed by the officials, and transported back to the Jurchen homeland as trophies, and they may be spared death, but the rest of their lives will also be spent in pain and humiliation, and more women are directly raped by those beast-like Jurchen soldiers, and after venting, they will go down with a stick and their brains will burst! …,

People were also killed. The grain was also robbed and the house was burned, but Wang was honest and clever, and fled south with his wife and children as soon as he heard the news, escaping his life.

He had fled a long way. fled directly to the Zhubang Dacheng, fortunately, although Zhang Xiju, the prefect of the Zhubang Dacheng, was not responsible, but he was still a good official, and tried his best to relieve the victims, Wang Laoshi's family did not starve to death, but they were already skinny.

He didn't want to come back. This honest man was really scared, in his mind, even if he went back to the customs to ask for food, it was better than sending his life here. But later, after the news that Wu Yijun had regained all the lost ground and reconsolidated the ruling order, Wang Laoshi hesitated to come back with others.

Because they heard that the Wu Yi Army was as powerful as a heavenly soldier and a general, tens of thousands of people beat hundreds of thousands of Jurchen troops to the ground, and the Jurchens would never dare to come again. Moreover, Wu Yijun is benevolent and righteous, if he goes back now, he will be given grain to grow cattle, and if there is no grain for the winter, he can also manage the government to borrow grain, and the interest rate of three points is much stronger than those black-hearted businessmen who lend usury......

Wang was skeptical of these statements, but when he returned to his home in Photiwei, he was convinced of what he had seen and heard along the way. These Wu Yi troops are really too powerful, there is no movement at all during the march, and the body is strong, just like an iron arhat, even he can see that this is an elite soldier.

And when he returned to the village that had been reduced to ruins, Wu Yijun's actions confirmed those rumors.

The government lent Wang Laoshi grain seeds, grain for the winter, and sent people to help them build houses, and even began to redistribute land. Wang Laoshi gritted his teeth, and made a rare decision, borrowed a ploughing cow from the government, and thus allocated an extra fifty acres of land.

Even Wang Laoshi, he also felt that Wu Yijun's official mansion seemed to be a little different from the original official mansion, the big men above were not so arrogant, but they were very kind, and the yamen was not so difficult to enter.

After surviving this cold winter, before the beginning of spring, Wang Laoshi was thinking about farming. Naturally, he wanted to plant wheat, but before he could start working, an official from the county came and said that he could not grow wheat, and an order came from above, to plant something called corn.

Corn? What is this? I've never heard of it!

This is a big deal related to food, and the people in the village made a fuss at the moment, but they didn't expect the government to show rare toughness this time, and directly arrested a few troublemakers and put them in a flail at the gate of the county government for three days, almost not tossed to death, this time, they are all honest. Moreover, the government also promised that if the planting of this thing failed, it would definitely provide relief for another year, so that the boiling public resentment was suppressed.

Wang Laoshi was naturally extremely dissatisfied in his heart, but what he was more afraid of was the royal law of the government, where did he dare to show it?

However, despite his dissatisfaction, out of his duty as a farmer and his desire for food, he also served this crop called corn with all his heart.

This is the root of life.

Watching these yellow corn particles slowly develop into small green seedlings, growing taller and bigger, their doubts gradually faded away, and became full of hope - it seems that the old men of the government are right, this crop is not bad!

When the corn finally ripened, the entire Northeast was in a state of ecstasy. …,

It turns out that the government really didn't deceive people. Not only is the corn yielding high and surviving, but everyone tasted it and found that it was really delicious!

Wang Laoshi was even more excited and didn't sleep for more than half a month, thinking about how to take care of these grains all day long, when to harvest them, and when to put them in the warehouse. He also specially let his son go to the county seat. I heard that there are a lot of notices posted at the entrance of the county government, all of which teach the people how to clean up this corn.

Later, another official from the county came down, village by village. Personally handed over to the people how to pack this corn! At this time, they knew that this corn could be boiled and eaten, and it could be ground into noodles and steamed like steamed buns. You can also cook porridge and drink, fry and eat, and serve as a dish. The corn stalks were used as fodder for the animals, and when they were dried, they could be used as firewood, and when they were building houses, they could add them to make the adobe houses stronger and stronger, and the farmers were kind of eye-opening.

They didn't even know when it was time to harvest, so they dared to ask the officials, but they said they were not in a hurry, and they would harvest when it was almost yellow. That's when it's ripe.

Wang honestly secretly calculated, but this calculation shocked him - after calculating, one acre of land can actually make four stones of grain!

Wang Laoshi was stupid at that time, God, when I was in Shandong, one acre of land watered with good water was one stone and a half!

In the entire Northeast land, there are not a few 'smart people' like Wang Laoshi. When they had determined the yield of their corn, they were literally almost fainting -- overwhelmed by great happiness.

Because of this, the high yield, easy serving, and multi-purpose of corn have been accepted by countless farmers in Northeast China almost overnight.

All the peasants, the scholars, the gentry, the officials, in short, all the groups in the territory under the jurisdiction of the Wu Yi army. They all accepted it. Some people of insight who stand tall enough have realized that this year is undoubtedly a bumper year!

Wu Yijun, the second year of Wu Yibo's reign in the Northeast!

A bumper harvest is coming!

Wang Laoshi's thoughts were interrupted by Liu San'er's loud voice, it turned out that unconsciously, the large tun of grain had been weighed.

Liu San'er held the account book in his hand, walked up to the adult Zhang and said loudly: "Lord Zhang, let's finish weighing, a total of 1,160 catties of corn cobs and corn stalks of 2,300 catties." ”

"Drink!" As soon as Liu San'er's words fell, the green-robed official Lord Zhang didn't react, and the untouchables who were watching were already in an uproar!

More than 1,100 catties of grain per acre of land? More than 1,000 catties, this is more than five stones, almost six stones!

How much can we produce in a year on an acre of rice in the Jiangnan region? It's still two seasons! It's a season!

When will the Northeast be comparable to the land of fish and rice in the south of the Yangtze River?

Peng Shanhu was already numb at this time, and he came to the Northeast all the way, and he didn't know how many unbelievable things he had encountered, which was really jaw-dropping.

The Lord Zhang glanced at them, but he didn't pay attention to them, he also took out an account book, which was densely filled with numbers, Lord Zhang rummaged for a while, found the piece of Xiaowang Village, looked at it carefully for a while, and read in a deep voice: "Wang Laoshi, Zhengde 51 years of November 3rd registered in the Delunwei County Ya, there are four Ding men, two Ding women, a ploughing cow, a total of 330 acres of land!" Right? ”

Wang Laoshi hurriedly nodded: "What the adults said is right, it is three hundred and thirty acres." ”

"Hmm!" Master Zhang nodded: "Your acre of land, the corn cob does not go to the corn cob, a total of 1,160 catties have been produced, just now the official turned around, the land around your village is by the river, I think the situation is similar, therefore, the land of your village is calculated according to this output!" ”

"According to the tax rate set by Uncle Wu Yi, ten transactions are thirty percent." He calculated carefully for a while, and said, "Your land, one acre of land is three hundred and forty-eight catties!" 330 acres, a total of 114,840 catties, that is, 604 stone grain. In addition, last year, you borrowed a ploughing ox from the government, discounted 100 stone of grain, received relief grain and 10 stone of grain seeds, calculated as three cents of interest, and a total of 16 stone needs to be returned, a total of 720 stone! How's that, the official is not wrong, right? ”

For this, Wang Laoshi naturally had an account in his heart, and hurriedly said: "What the adults said is right. ”

The adult Zhang smiled and said: "One acre of real estate corn stalks is two thousand three hundred catties, this also has to be handed over, according to three percent, one acre of land is six hundred and ninety catties." In this way, your 330 acres of land are a total of 227,700 catties, a total of 1,200 stones! ”

The untouchables who were watching gasped in unison, a family, six people and a cow, actually handed over hundreds of stones of grain and thousands of stones of straw?

Are the Zhuang family in the Northeast gods?