Liu Xu squinted his eyes and looked at the city gate with the three big characters "Suzhou Mansion" written in the distance, and his heart was full of emotion. Pen @ fun @ pavilion wWw. ｂｉｑUｇE。 ｉｎｆｏ

This Suzhou Mansion is the essence of the entire Jiangnan region, and the fashion industry is the best in the world, which can be called the fashion capital of the Ming Dynasty and even the entire East Asian region, which is much better than Paris and Rome in later generations. Originally, Zhu Yuanzhang, the founding ancestor of the Ming Dynasty, was born as a peasant, and the most unaccustomed thing was extravagance and corruption and bribery. But this human being is a person who likes to eat and wear, loves food and clothes and hates clothes and food, not to mention the Suzhou people who are known for their good food, dexterity, frivolity and luxury. After the death of Taizu, the various systems he set up gradually existed in name only, and the scholars and doctors took the meager income of the imperial court, and their families opened shops and factories, and their hands gradually became rich, and they began to think about how to eat and how to wear. Since the beginning of the Wanli Dynasty, this extravagant wind has gradually flourished, and it is still the most prosperous areas such as Suzhou and Hangzhou, Songjiang and Nanjing.

And along the way, Liu Xu saw many "demon suits" walking around the road in a grand manner, and passers-by didn't think it was strange, obviously commonplace. The so-called "serving demons" is "there must be demons when things go wrong", which is unusual dressing, such as many scholars wear clothes made of silk, huluo, and yarn in late autumn weather, and dye their clothes into red, bright red, dark purple and other colors that women often wear.

When the Wanli Dynasty "Serving Demons" first appeared, there was an old master named Li Le who said indignantly that it was a phenomenon of troubled times, and also made a poem to Chen Youxue, the Taishou of Huzhou:

When I arrived at the city yesterday, I returned with tears in my eyes.

Those who are dressed in women's clothes are all scholars.

It's a pity that no one listened to Li Fuzi's prosperous words, everyone still wore their own clothes, and the more chaotic they were, the more strange they were, and there were regulations on the usual dresses, ordinary people couldn't use them at all, otherwise it would be a crime of trespassing, but at the moment, no one cares about the system or not, as long as it is good-looking, extravagant, and novel, they will all be worn on their bodies. For example, at the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, there was a kind of square scarf, and now there are 100 kinds of names such as Han scarf, Jin scarf, Tang scarf, Zhuge scarf, pure yang scarf, Dongpo scarf, and Yangming scarf.

In addition to the square head, short face, sneakers, arhats, monk shoes and countless other names, the shoes were also dyed into water red, bean green, eagle color, pine yellow and various colors, with their wide variety of headdresses and clothes, it is simply to move the fashion week to the street, which can be described as a poor luxury, to the extreme. This culture of advocating luxury is so popular that even the nuns who have escaped into the empty door are not exempt from vulgarity, and they have contributed to the country's GDP with "beautiful clothes and fragrant ribbons".

Speaking of this color, there is also a joke about a man's father's nose turning red and someone asking him, "Does your father's nose turn red?" The man replied, "Don't dare, don't dare, water-red nose." "The questioner was overjoyed when he heard this: water red is good, water red is light, it is the popular color of the moment!" It can be seen that this Jiangnan people are vassally elegant and chase popularity.

The fashion industry is a kind of high-end in various industries, its development needs the support of many elements, a large enough middle class and even the wealthy class, a large number of skilled craftsmen, a stable social environment, a developed commodity economy, advocating luxury social atmosphere, enough cultural accumulation are the basis for its development, want to play this fashion industry, in addition to Suzhou, the whole of China is really not a second city to think. This kind of fashion industry developed to the extreme in the late Ming Dynasty, and it was recorded in Zhang Dai's "Dream of the Pine Window": "From Jinling down to control the ruins of the old Wu, the east leads to pine and Chang, and the middle is Gusu." Its people's benefits are fishy and rice, extremely artificial, and clothing and utensils are enough to dazzle people's eyes, and those who are determined to be rich compete for the effect of it", which is completely the Paris of the Ming Dynasty.

If it weren't for the great achievements of the Qing Dynasty, if you gave enough time for the development of the fashion industry in Suzhou, it is estimated that in a few hundred years, there will be a group of demons dancing in Suzhou every year, and a large group of little girls and young men walking around with feather dusters on their heads to show off their popularity.

In addition to this fashion industry, Suzhou's publishing and printing industry is extremely developed, for example, Mr. Feng Menglong, who wrote "Three Words and Two Beats", is a native of Suzhou, and he has created a lot of works in his life, which can be called a full-time writer in the Ming Dynasty, and the reason why he can write so many books is not unrelated to the pursuit of this Suzhou bookseller. It is precisely for this reason that when commenting on the publishing industry, the Ming people said that "there are three places where books are carved: Wu (Suzhou), Yue, and Fujian", and "what Yu has seen today's engraved books, Su and Chang are the first, Jinling is second, and Hangzhou is second".

In short, the local people of Suzhou, who have developed culture and prosperous commerce, are a good place for Liu Xu to play his acting skills.

He walked from Jiading City to Suzhou City along the way, because he took care of the body of the scholars, and in order not to kill the city of Nanjing too early, he just walked ten miles every day, so from Jiading to Suzhou he walked for three or four days.

As for the peasants who followed the brigade, he instructed Li Fengtian not to give money except for taking care of food, after all, when he was looking for someone, he had already paid more than half a penny, and if he couldn't keep up, it was because they didn't have the ability to take money, and they couldn't complain about it. Fortunately, because the Chinese peasants were trained in heavy physical labor, although their strength may be insufficient, their endurance and tenacity were of the same rank, and they maintained their size at eight or nine thousand and kept increasing, except for a few who were left behind due to illness and laziness. However, Liu Xu doesn't pay attention to the number of peasants now, because he now has more than 1,300 scholars under his command, which is comparable to the number of students in Jiangnan Province, which gives him enough confidence that he no longer needs to hire peasants to stand on the field.

"My buddy is now one of the number one people in Jiangnan, how can he be an 'opinion leader' or 'public opinion representative' or something in modern times, considering the high quality of buddy fans, it has to be the kind of big V with millions of fans, and it takes hundreds of thousands of dollars to forward a Weibo! It's a pity that it's a prostitute now. Prostitution is legal, and the almighty people of Chaoyang District are estimated to have no way to take buddies. Liu Xu rode on a tall yellow horse and looked at a student wearing a lake-gauze robe with a white fish belly and a rhinoceros horn belt who was promoting the program of the Jimin Party to the people of Suzhou, and thought proudly.

In his previous life, he learned to ride a horse in the grasslands of Inner Mongolia, although he did not dare to gallop, but it was no problem to ride a horse, and he came to the end of the Ming Dynasty to adapt to it for a period of time, and finally became a horse family.

"Master, now we have more than 9,000 peasants following, this city is absolutely unable to live, even the arrangement of students is very stressful, I sent someone to ask in the city yesterday for a long time, and a number of dental shops to contact, only to barely ensure that every scholar has a place to live." Zhou Jun rode a white horse and walked over slowly, he had just begun to learn to ride a horse, he was not very good at riding, and he was afraid that the horse would hurt people, so he walked very slowly.

But he is indeed riding a good horse, this horse is not fully developed, and Zhou Jun is still a child, not tall, but better than the stride, the whole body is pure white, only the horse has two spiral hairs under the abdomen, symmetrical left and right, not bad, like a pair of breasts.

"Soma Law" says: "The one who spins his hair under the abdomen like milk is called a thousand miles." Although this horse may not be able to travel thousands of miles a day, it is not a big problem to run five or six hundred miles a day. It's just that Zhou Jun didn't dare to let go of the ride, which made the horse a little impatient, and it snorted from time to time, as if urging the owner to let himself pull out his feet and gallop.

Now Zhou Jun has become Liu Xu's full-time secretary, who is responsible for conveying information between Liu Xu and others. This position can allow a person to be familiar with the affairs of a collective, accumulate enough contacts, and train people very well, and Zhou Jun is also very energetic.

"In that case, except for the three hundred people I specially singled out, it's better to let them go back, we don't need it anyway-" Halfway through speaking, Liu Xu suddenly stopped his mouth, and there were words in his mouth: "Since you followed your buddy and took your buddy's salary, buddy can't make it too easy for you." ”

"Master, what do you mean?"

An evil smile appeared on Liu Xu's face: "I have a good plan here, which can put these farmers to better use, I have my own arrangements for this, and you will listen to my arrangements later." ”

"Okay" Zhou Jun responded, and then thought of one more thing: "Li Fengtian just told me that we brought a total of 10,000 taels of silver, and the people along the way ate horses and chewed fruits, spent more than 2,000 taels, and gave 2,000 taels to those two Hongmaoyi people, and now they have used almost half of it, do you want to ask those three for some?" ”

"So much left?" Liu Xu was a little surprised, he was more imaginative, he always didn't care about these details, he only thought that 10,000 taels of silver was about to be spent, but he didn't expect that there would be more than 5,000 taels left. However, after thinking about it, he realized that he did not have any troops at present, no military salary expenditure at all, and no need to manufacture ordnance to ensure logistics, but only provided three meals a day for thousands of people and the carriage and horse expenses of the soldiers, of course, it did not cost a few dollars.

"This is not in a hurry, you take the list of materials I wrote, first buy 100 catties for me in an emergency, and then send two people Pegasus home to find your wife, and let her pay another 20,000 or 30,000 taels of silver, I see that there is a tough battle to fight, and I can't say that I want to make a big fight." As he spoke, Liu Xu took out a piece of paper from his sleeve and handed it to Zhou Jun.

"This-" Zhou Jun looked at the piece of paper, but it said saltpeter but not sulfur, and couldn't help but be surprised: "Master, although this saltpeter is a military material and is mostly produced in the northwest, but no one cares about it now, and it is not difficult to buy it ordinarily, but why is there saltpeter but no sulfur, how can gunpowder be made?" ”

"What is the use of making gunpowder now? Could it be that I still use gunpowder to blow up the city of Nanjing? ”

Zhou Jun was a little speechless when he heard this, he looked at the saltpeter, and subconsciously thought that his master wanted to make gunpowder to blow up the city, but when he thought about it, it was no different from rebellion. And they are only led by a group of soldiers, usually slow marching and there are still people who fall behind because they are impatient with cars and horses, so they can only stay in place to recuperate, and slowly chase after the large army in the future, these people are only afraid that they can't even kill a chicken on weekdays, how can they be used to rebel? Thinking of this, he couldn't help but be a little puzzled, and couldn't help asking: "Dare to ask Master, what is this saltpeter used for?" ”

"Hehe, the secret of heaven must not be leaked." Liu Xu looked up at Suzhou City and laughed: "Since this Suzhou City loves luxury, novelty, and liveliness, as a teacher, let's make this Suzhou City more lively!" ”