Zhengyang Gate, Chongwen Gate and Xuanwu Gate, the three city gates to the south of the Nine City Gates in Jingshi.

There are nine cities on four sides in the inner city of Jingshi, and there is a corner in the northwest. There were two gates on the east and west sides and on the north wall, but three gates were opened on the south side.

Since the construction of the outer city in Jiajing, these three city gates have become the passage between the inner and outer cities of the capital division, and have become the city gates enclosed in the city. To the north of the three gates is the inner city, and to the south of the three cities is the outer city.

It is this city wall and three gates that separate the two worlds that are worlds apart.

Although the inner and outer cities are separated by only one wall, they are two completely different worlds. The outer city built at the time of Jiajing was originally called Chongcheng, which was intended to wrap the entire Beijing Division, but in the end, due to lack of financial resources, it finally only covered the south of the capital and converted the east and west corner towers.

But only the south side was built, and the outer city was twenty-eight miles long, with seven outer city gates.

Since then, the inner and outer cities of Beijing have been combined, and the area is larger than that of Nanjing, which is the accompanying capital. Among the capital cities of the Chinese dynasties, it is the third largest city in the past dynasties after Chang'an City of the Tang Dynasty and Luoyang City of the Northern Wei Dynasty.

The inner city of Beijing was rebuilt when the Ming Dynasty moved the capital to Beijing, when the Ming Dynasty was in full swing, and the buildings of the inner city also showed a broad and majestic, magnificent atmosphere of the Heavenly Empire.

The Forbidden City and the Imperial City with red walls and yellow tiles, painted with carved beams, are wrapped in the center of the inner city, dazzling.

The streets and alleys of the outer city are also straight and well-organized.

Those who can live in the Inner Nine Cities are all famous nobles, high-ranking officials, and the upper class and elite class of the Ming Dynasty. There are also a number of prosperous markets, department stores gathered, and merchants gathered, adding a lot of liveliness.

The outer city, separated by a wall, is completely different.

The outer city was built from the beginning. It wasn't really planned, and eventually because of poor planning, it had to be stopped after only the southern section was built, and then the rest of the sections were never completed. Moreover, the construction of the outer city was also to deal with the increasingly serious northern Tatars and southern Japanese pirates at that time, and the construction was very hasty and hasty.

The outer city is full of sloping alleys, low-slung bungalows, and squalid and cluttered markets.

The outer city, in fact, has been a slum area in Beijing since the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, and it is full of people and craftsmen who live at the bottom of the Beijing Division. Until now. The city outside the capital is full of shacks built haphazardly, and there are displaced people from all over the world.

There are several places in the outer city, and a large number of foreign refugees have gathered, they are the slums of the slums, there are the most secret prostitutes in Beijing, and the vast majority of thieves, hooligans, and liars in Beijing.

It is also the worst place in Beijing, where murders, thefts, and robberies often occur.

At the same time, the hygiene here is the worst. There are no public toilets and bathhouses, and even wells are scarce, and the poor who do not have enough to eat have little desire to do hygiene. Open defecation, garbage everywhere.

Dirty and messy, it's the outer city.

After arriving as the governor of Zhili and the governor of Shuntian, Liu Jun was already planning to clean up the outer city.

After this period of preparation. Liu Jun has just completed a census of Beijing, which includes a population census and an economic census. It took more than half a year to mobilize the joint actions of the Praetorian Guard, the Five Cities Soldiers and Horses, the Garrison Army, and the Jinyi Guard, Dongchang, the Five Cities Patrol Imperial History, and the Shuntian Mansion. The census has finally been completed.

The total population of Jingshi reached more than 1.28 million, of which 120,000 households in Shuntianfu reached more than 700,000 people. In addition, there are no less than 50,000 palace maids, eunuchs, and kabuki priests in the imperial court, and more than 100,000 Beijing troops. In addition, there are many foreign traders, monks, displaced people and other floating population.

In other words, among the more than 100,000 people in Beijing, only about half have a Beijing hukou, and if the Beijing army is removed, there will still be no less than 300,000 Beipiao.

The vast majority of these northern drifters are homeless people of three religions and nine streams, and they barely survive by working odds and working as domestic helpers, and even abducting, cheating, selling, singing, selling, and begging.

These 300,000 people, in fact, have little effect on the Beijing Division, but they have increased the consumption of various materials in the Beijing Division, and seriously damaged the public security and health of the Beijing Division.

In response to this situation, Liu Jun proposed a plan for the renovation of the outer city.

"Establish several large-scale factories in the suburbs to provide many daily necessities for Jingshi manufacturing, reduce Jingshi's dependence on outside goods, and at the same time provide many jobs to solve some of the displaced people. Initially, new charcoal mills, iron mills, steel mills, flour mills, textile mills, etc. will be built. ”

"For these streets, alleys, and shacks in the outer city, we must gradually renovate them in batches, and after the plan is completed, those shacks should be demolished, new alleys should be built, markets, commercial streets, and residential areas should be built, and the funds should be recouped through the sale of shops and stalls in the rental market, and some simple houses should be built to rent out to the poor people in Beijing at low prices, and properly resettle them."

In addition, Jingshi must also relocate some of the people to the surrounding Tongzhou, Changping, Jizhou, Yongping, Baoding and other places to relieve the population pressure of Jingshi. In short, we have to keep the population of Jingshi within one million. ”

Liu Jun proposed an amazing plan to his subordinates in the yamen of Shuntian Mansion. Comprehensively renovate the outer city, build many large-scale factories for people's livelihood commodities in the suburbs, and reduce the population of Beijing.

Many officials in the Shuntian Mansion never thought that the county king would have such a huge plan. In their opinion, this is even a somewhat unrealistic plan, and they don't even know how to start with such a big plan.

And most importantly, how much does such a big project cost? And where does the money come from?

Many officials persuaded Liu Jun that this plan was not advisable. It's a big construction project, laboring people and money.

Liu Jun only smiled at their shallow understanding, and later generations understood a concept, that is, the urban economy. In later generations, the government had long regarded the city as a commodity, and even an extremely advantageous commodity.

Running a city well is a huge benefit.

Of course, it will take a lot of money to start such a program, but the benefits of it in the future are enormous.

Just like people in later generations know that real estate is the most profitable business, and in the real estate business. Land is the most precious resource, and this resource has always been in the hands of the government.

If you can build a building, you can make a lot of money, and if you can build a market, it is even more profitable.

Renovating an old city and building a new city is full of unlimited business opportunities, and as long as it is done well, it is a great project for all parties. All kinds of taxes, all kinds of stimulating demand for goods. Various jobs and so on.

For the current stagnant scene of Beijing, a half-dead city of Beijing, a group of hungry and insensitive people, it is such a change that is needed.

And to change all that, all it takes is leverage.

What Liu Jun needs to do is to start this plan, and then take out a large amount of money from the Four Seas Bank to build many factories on the outskirts of Beijing, for a Beijing teacher with a population of more than 1 million. The variety of goods he needs is massive. Food, clothing, housing and transportation, everything is needed.

In addition, now that Liu Jun has taken control of Gyeonggi, the army also needs to change its outfit, and there are all kinds of military orders. Liu Jun can master it. It is also imperative to transfer part of the Jiangnan manufacturing plant and establish a branch factory in Beijing.

In particular, military industries such as iron smelting and steelmaking require a lot of manpower.

These factories were built on the outskirts of Beijing. It can attract a large number of people in Beijing to work. With a job, these people who were originally helpless will have the ability to support their families, and the law and order situation in Beijing will improve. With money, they can increase consumption, the market will prosper, and the tax revenue of the imperial court will increase.

All kinds of markets and merchants were set up in the inner and outer cities, and some large workshops were built outside the city. Liu Jun even made a plan to gather all the Qinglou casinos in Jingshi and move them to a specially designated outer city. At that time, this was the only area in Jingshi where Qinglou and gambling houses could be opened, and these businesses were no longer allowed in other places.

The imperial court will intensify its supervision of these industries, impose heavy taxes of at least 20 percent, issue them franchise licenses, and crack down on illegal operators who are not in the designated area without a license.

However, Liu Jun did not plan to achieve it overnight, and the road was also taken step by step.

Now what he has to do is to first build factories in the suburbs, and then recruit those homeless people from Beijing who have nothing to do and have become a hidden danger to the security of Beijing to work.

At the same time, Liu Jun also set up a special fund in Shuntianfu to take the lead in rectifying and cleaning up the poor public security and sanitary environment in the outer city.

It all started with the construction of public toilets, public baths, and cleaning.

"Every hundred paces in the streets of the outer city, a public toilet must be built, and it must be free. Every 100 steps on each street must also set up a garbage dumping point, and it is strictly forbidden to defecate on the street in the future, and it is also forbidden to litter everywhere. ”

"From today onwards, urban management bureaus will be set up in the inner and outer cities, and special personnel will be recruited to be responsible for the management of public toilets and street sanitation in each street.

"Send a special person to be responsible for inspection, and severely punish those who defecate and dump garbage in violation of regulations."

As soon as this order was given, the officials of Shuntian Mansion were even more surprised. A previous plan to renovate the outer city felt too large and unrealistic for them. But now this order is not too subtle for them.

It's really in charge of heaven and earth, do you still have to care about the people shit and fart?

A member of the Cabinet of the Vice-Chancellor, or a member of the Governor-General and Governor of Suncheon, who actually has to control the people to defecate everywhere and dump garbage?

But Liu Jun ignored their surprise, and he issued a strongly-worded order, demanding the immediate establishment of an urban management bureau and the recruitment of urban management and sanitation workers, which was unprecedented serious.

Everyone thought that Liu Jun had taken the wrong medicine, but no one knew that Liu Jun really attached importance to this matter, because just a few days ago, Liu Jun had just received a report.

At the junction of Shandong and Hebei, Linqing, one of the most prosperous cities on the Grand Canal, suddenly broke out of the plague. This plague, known in the report as the big head plague, rose from Henan, quickly flowed along the canal into Linqing, and broke out in full force.

In less than half a month, Linqing City was already shrouded in the plague. Thousands of people have died in Linqing, once infected, they will die in just one or two days, this disease is extremely contagious, overnight, than the house is infected, and the door is full of death.

Now Liu Jun has sent troops to blockade the surroundings of Linqing, prohibiting entry and exit, and blockading the canal, stopping the navigation of the North Canal, and temporarily blocking the news of the plague.

Among the few historical knowledge of the late Ming Dynasty that Liu Jun remembers in his previous life, one of them is about the plague at the end of the Ming Dynasty. The plague at the end of the Ming Dynasty can be said to be one of the important reasons for the destruction of the Ming Empire, such as the Xiaoice River, the Silver Crisis, and the corruption of officials.

As far as he remembers, at the end of the Ming Dynasty, plague broke out in various places, and the infection was serious, and finally a serious plague broke out in the city of Beijing. By the time Li Zicheng entered Beijing, more than 200,000 people had died in Beijing because of the plague, and it can be said that the entire capital was not captured by Li Zicheng, but that the plague destroyed Beijing's last defense.

In the past few days, Liu Jun has been ascertaining the information of the plague.

According to the information found, in the early Wanli period, there was a large-scale outbreak of plague in the northern region, when the plague swept through the north, and hundreds of people died of the plague.

And when it came to the Chongzhen Dynasty, due to the war, the plague broke out again.

Among them, Shanxi is the hardest hit area of the plague.

In the seventh and eighth years of Chongzhen, thieves in Xingxian County, Shanxi Province killed and injured the people, and the years were very serious. The plague of heaven and the sun and the evening of death. In one night, the whole family was dead, the people fled, and the city was empty

Ten years after Chongzhen, the plague began to break out in Datong Province, and the mortality rate of patients was very high, and the plague epidemic epidemic broke out in Lu'an Province,...... There are those who have closed the door and died, and there is no one to bury them.

This plague since the seventh year of Chongzhen has never been eradicated. By now, it has become more and more ferocious, and it has attacked violently.

The plague also spread from Shanxi to Hebei, Henan, and Shandong.

Since Linqing reported the epidemic, Shunde Mansion and Hejian Mansion in Zhili have also reported the epidemic successively. The plague was violent, spread very quickly, and the rate of deaths was extremely high.

Now this plague has begun to spread to Zhending, Baoding, and Shuntian anomalies to Jingshi.

Based on Liu Jun's understanding of these infectious diseases, he knows very well that the more populous the city, the more severe the infection. For a huge city with a population of more than one million people like Jingshi, once the plague spreads, it is really a huge disaster.

Think about the history of the Beijing epidemic, 200,000 people died, and this mortality rate has exceeded 10 percent, or even almost 20 percent.

Liu Jun didn't know how to treat the plague, and he didn't know what kind of plague was spreading now. But he knew that the black death of the plague that broke out in Europe in history killed tens of millions of people, and the population of Europe was halved at that time. In the history of the late Ming Dynasty that he remembered, the plague was rampant at the end of the Ming Dynasty, and 200,000 people died in the Beijing City Plague alone.

The first factory to be built in the suburbs of Beijing was a mask factory.

Liu Jun didn't know how to treat the plague, so he could only prevent it, so he stepped up to let doctors study prescriptions, and on the other hand, he rushed to make masks, and at the same time stepped up the cleaning and rectification of Jingshi's sanitation.

Now the slums outside the capital are dirty and messy, which is the hotbed of the plague, and before the plague reaches the capital, it must be cleaned up immediately.

Liu Jun didn't dare to imagine what a terrible contagion situation would be after the plague was introduced into Beijing.

In the face of this plague, even the invincible Chu army will be helpless.

"The mask factory has to work day and night, and within a month, I want everyone in Beijing to wear masks!"

"Notify the officials of the northern provinces, prefectures and counties, let them immediately carry out epidemic prevention work, carry out sanitation cleaning in their respective jurisdictions, and tell them that wearing masks can prevent the epidemic, the water they drink must be boiled first, and they must wash their hands and bathe frequently!"

Liu Jun worriedly confessed to his subordinates, he told all the knowledge of epidemic prevention that he knew, and then asked them to record it, and then compiled it into an epidemic prevention manual according to some suggestions from the imperial doctor. It was quickly transmitted to local governments and asked them to strengthen epidemic prevention work together.

"It's a fight, a tough fight, and we have to give it our all!" (To be continued.) )