Early the next morning, all the newspapers in Taiyuan City, without exception, carried the news of Yan Xishan's return to Datong in the most prominent position on the front page. Of course, these newspapers all stated that their news came from Ta Kung Pao. Because the people they sent to Datong were still on their way, there was no further information in the newspapers.

However, the "Northern Morning Post" indirectly confirmed the news of Yan Xishan's return to Datong.

This is because, in addition to reprinting the news of Ta Kung Pao, the "Northern Morning Post" also mentioned a telegram sent by Chairman Chiang of the Nanjing Central Committee to Song Zhewu, saying that Chairman Chiang asked Song Zhewu to join Zhang Xueliang, Xu Yongchang, and Song Zheyuan to persuade Yan Xishan and Feng Yuxiang to go abroad and not stay in Shanxi. At the same time, the full text of Zhang Xueliang's telegram urging Yan Xishan and Feng Yuxiang to leave Shanxi and go overseas was also published in full for the first time. Both telegrams threatened that if Yan Xishan insisted on going his own way and refused to go abroad, he would not hesitate to use force to solve the problem.

People from all walks of life who bought newspapers were invariably a little worried.

Yan Xishan has been operating in Shanxi for more than 20 years, and his purpose when he returned to Shanxi at this time is self-evident.

Although Song Zhewu has only been in charge of the Taiyuan Administration for a short period of one year, from his efforts to stabilize the banknotes, carry out land reform, abolish agricultural taxes, vigorously establish industrial entities, encourage commerce, build railways, reclaim wasteland, and provide relief and resettlement to the disaster victims, it is clear that Song Zhewu has the intention of seriously running Shanxi and taking root in Shanxi, and will never agree to hand over the Taiyuan Administration again.

The Taiyuan region is now not only the essence of Shanxi, but also the essence of North China, and Yan Xishan wants to regain control of Shanxi, and he will never want to recapture the Taiyuan region. This makes it very likely that these two strongmen will end up facing each other by force.

Although the Central Plains War did not bring the flames of war to Shanxi, in order to fight this war, Yan Xishan had already scraped Shanxi very hard, and many peasants even wanted to sell their land in order to hand over the levy levied by Yan Xishan's surname once, and small businessmen even had to borrow usury to temporarily turn around, and the people complained a lot.

In the past year, Song Zhewu has reduced or exempted industrial and commercial and agricultural taxes, which has just relieved the people of the Taiyuan Administration, and the farmers who have been given land, the workers whose incomes have increased, and the business owners and businessmen who are thriving are all looking forward to their lives gradually getting better. If there is another fight in Shanxi, such a stable and hopeful life will inevitably be destroyed, which the vast majority of people do not want to see.

Therefore, although Yan Xishan has great prestige in Shanxi and has the support of some people, compared with the tangible benefits that Song Zhewu brought to the people of the Taiyuan Administration, Yan Xishan is still insufficient, and the vast majority of people from all walks of life hope that Yan Xishan will leave Shanxi as soon as possible.

It's just that under the influence of Yan Xishan's long-term exclusion of people from other provinces, he supported Song Zhewu, a native of other provinces, and opposed Yan Xishan, a native of Shanxi, which made many people unable to speak.

The reason why the vast majority of officials and civil servants opposed Yan Xishan's stay in Shanxi was that although Yan Xishan, like Song Zhewu, attached great importance to the ability of officials and civil servants to defend themselves and to select them from their talents. However, Yan Xishan was very strict in the treatment of officials and civil servants, and he could even be said to be stingy. The salaries of officials and civil servants are much lower than those in other provinces, and they are not even as high as those in some poor provinces.

Yan Xishan's reason for doing this is that Shanxi has hardly been damaged by the war in the past decade or so, the people's lives have always been very stable, and the policies implemented by Yan Xishan are relatively correct and appropriate, and prices in Shanxi are very stable and very low. Therefore, it is enough for a low-level civil servant to be able to feed a family of five per person, and then it will be adjusted upwards gradually.

For example, Yan asked engineering graduates from Shanxi University and industrial colleges to start as trainees with a monthly salary of 8 yuan in the factory, and then rise to 15 yuan after becoming regulars. The monthly salary of a patrol officer is 8 to 10 yuan, and that of a patrol officer is 16 to 18 yuan. The general staff of the department is 10 to 18 yuan, the section chief is 20 yuan, the division chief is 80 to 100 yuan, and the department director is only 150 to 2-180 yuan.

At this time in Shanghai, the monthly salary of a female spinning worker was also 12 to 14 yuan.

Fortunately, the price of rice in Shanxi is very low, such as 6 yuan per kilogram of rice. 44 catties of 1 pack of flour 3.30 yuan, 1 catty of cut noodles 0.07 yuan, 1 kg of pork 0.28 yuan, 1 kg of cotton 0.48 yuan, 1 quintal of coal 0.14 yuan, 1 kg of kerosene 0.06 yuan, 1 piece of soap 0.05 yuan, 1 box of cigarettes 0.036 yuan, 1 kg of tea 0.23 yuan, 1 kg of live chicken 0.37 yuan, 1 fresh egg 0.027 yuan, 1 kg of soybean oil 0.19 yuan, 1 kg of salt 0.043 yuan, 1 kg of sugar 0.096 yuan, 1 foot of muslin 0.107 yuan.

Although Yan Xishan's salary standard is very low, there is no problem for ordinary civil servants to support their families at such prices, but if they want to save surplus money, they have to be frugal.

After Song Zhewu took charge of Taiyuan, he doubled the salaries of officials and civil servants at all levels after the rectification, although they were still inferior to the salaries of officers at all levels of the Fourth Route Army, but their treatment had exceeded the treatment of personnel in the central system, and they were naturally unwilling to let Yan Xishan come back.

The reason why the industrialists and businessmen opposed Yan Xishan's return was also a matter of money.

Yan Xishan and Song Zhewu are both people who really want to make a difference in Shanxi, but if they want to make a difference, they need money.

Although Song Zhewu was engaged in large-scale construction in Shanxi and spent a huge amount of money, Song Zhewu was good at dancing with long sleeves and was able to raise sufficient funds, and did not need to increase taxes to raise money. Even in order to encourage and support the development of industry and commerce, the tax rates of Taiyuan Administration, Suiyuan, and North and South Mongolia were lowered.

Yan Xishan is different, Yan Xishan does not have as much money as Song Zhewu, and if he wants to expand the army and build, he can only increase taxes, such as the aborted deed tax that year.

Yan Xishan wants to take more money out of their pockets, Song Zhewu wants to help them become bigger and stronger, and it is obvious who business owners and businessmen like to support whom.

In particular, Yan Xishan's narrow-minded concept of crowding out people from other provinces was troubled, and it was not easy for people from other provinces to survive in Shanxi, and the business owners who moved to Taiyuan from other places, or the businessmen and capitalists who came to Taiyuan from other places to invest and build factories, were even more determined to oppose Yan Xishan's return.

Due to the Taiyuan Administration area, especially the Taiyuan area, a large number of new and expanded factories, absorbing a large number of local population and disaster victims, the number of workers in the Taiyuan Administration has surged, and there are more than 1 million workers, and only dozens of large factories of Xinghua Company and North Machinery and Equipment Company have more than 300,000 employees, and they have become a force to be reckoned with.

Now that Song Zhewu has implemented the minimum wage system, their treatment has not only been guaranteed, but also greatly improved.

If Yan Xishan insists on staying in Shanxi, it is very likely that there will be a war, and once the war breaks out and is affected by the war, not to mention that their income will decline, it is inevitable that many enterprises will go bankrupt. In that case, it is inevitable that a large number of workers will lose their jobs, and they do not want such a change in their good lives.

As for the peasants, it goes without saying that Song Zhewu not only abolished the agricultural tax that had been practiced by all dynasties for thousands of years, but also forced the landlords to sell their land and give them loans to buy land. If this is the case next year, then they can repay the loan, and the land will be completely theirs.

And if Yan Xishan came back at this time, it would be difficult to say whether these lands would still belong to them.

Therefore, none of the above people hope that the news of Yan Xishan's return to Datong is true, even if Yan Xishan really returns to Datong, they also hope that he will leave as soon as possible, not only will they not support Yan Xishan to stay in Shanxi, but they will not support Yan Xishan to regain power in Shanxi.

With the exception of a few landless landlords and frustrated bureaucrats of the Yan Xishan period, the vast majority of the people were anxiously and nervously awaiting further news.

Later that day, the "Jinyang Evening News", whose sales had increased significantly, confirmed that Yan Xishan had indeed returned to Datong by plane, but he didn't know where the plane was, and now Yan Xishan lived in Yang Aiyuan's military headquarters.

At the same time, it was revealed that the Jin Sui army in the northeast of Jin Province had been banned from vacation, starting from Shanyin, although it had not yet been banned from the public, but the Jin Sui army was strictly guarded along the road; In Datong, the Jin Sui army surrounded and searched the Fourth Route Army's military station outside Datong, and it is said that the people from the Fourth Route Army military station kidnapped an officer of the Jin Sui Army. No one was found afterwards, and the people at the station were released, but the weapons were confiscated.

According to another well-informed source, as soon as Yan Xishan returned to Datong, he bypassed Xu Yongchang and directly recruited the senior generals of the Jin Sui Army in Jinnan and Suiyuan to Datong, and secretly deployed Song Zhewu and his Fourth Route Army in Taiyuan to expel him by force, as well as Song Zheyuan's 29th Army stationed in Jinnan.

For fear of being detained by Song Zhewu at the Taiyuan Administration when he returned to Jinnan, the generals of the Jin Sui Army stationed in Jinnan had already ridden fast horses this afternoon and made a detour from the Taihang Mountains to rush back to Jinnan to control the troops. Fu Zuoyi has also returned to Suiyuan to stand by.

As soon as the news spread, it was like a scoop of cold water being poured into a hot oil pot, and the pot was immediately fried outside the city of Taiyuan. This shows that Yan Xishan is going to use force, and the good peaceful environment in Shanxi will be destroyed immediately, how can this make people not in a hurry.

That night, not only were the streets and alleys full of people talking about it, but some people with status and status rushed to the Taiyuan Administration and the Northern Construction and Development Committee to inquire about the news.

Because there were so many people anxiously inquiring about the news in places such as teahouses and restaurants, all the teahouses and taverns in Taiyuan City extended their business hours until midnight, when the people gradually dispersed, and then closed their doors.

(To be continued)