The empty streets, the closed doors and windows along the streets, the soldiers of the Guards Division patrolling with loaded guns and ammunition, and the stocky heavy tanks guarding the intersection really gave Guangwu and the 100 high-ranking and powerful families at the top of the pyramid of the Qing Dynasty a great sense of security. But the martial law that has been imposed for several days has led to a near-collapse of Beijing's economy. People are not allowed to go out and fend for themselves. The family ran out of food and could not go out to buy it. The entire city of Beijing is on the verge of man-made famine.

Guangwu's mind is very clear-headed, and he knows that a sense of security is a sense of security. It's safe for now, but it's only temporary. This mere "not allowing the people to go out on the streets" will be difficult to implement for a long time. In exchange for "safety" in the past ten days, Beijing has become a boiler on the verge of explosion. If nothing else, in a few days, when most families run out of food and starve to death, even machine guns and tanks will not stop the mob from pouring into the streets.

At this juncture, even a few close ministers who usually did not dare to give advice to themselves at all now have the audacity to say to themselves in a roundabout way: It is not a way to go on like this. Guangwu himself understands perfectly. He consulted with several close ministers and decided to take temporary, gradual relaxation measures, at least so that the people of Beijing would not take risks because of hunger.

So, on the front page of the "Daqing Daily" on the morning of the 12th, the whole page published the latest "love for the people and moral politics" of Emperor Guangwu: from now on, all eligible families can go to the street to buy vegetables with the end number of their ID cards!

The detailed regulations are as follows: Every Han citizen can freely buy the prescribed grain, oil and rapeseed products at the specified price at the specified price on the date corresponding to the last digit of his ID card, within the specified time period, at the prescribed vegetable market. For example, the last digit of Zhang San's ID number group is "7", so from now on, he can go out to purchase on the 7th, 17th, and 27th of each month. Of course, within the stipulated time period. Generally not more than an hour.

The Manchu citizens in Beijing only need to line up for the "odd and even" number on the streets. That is, the last digit of the ID number is the odd number, and you can go to the street to buy on the odd number, and if you have an even number, you can go out on the even number.

Foreigners in Beijing are not covered by martial law. As long as you are a foreigner, you can travel freely without restrictions.

……

A few small vegetable farms that were previously scattered throughout the city of Beijing are now almost completely closed. Only the four largest wet markets remained, which were under the unified control of the government, and were purchased and sold at official prices.

Guangwu This is a double win. First, the basic state of martial law was maintained, and secondly, the gold and silver of the people could be looted to the greatest extent. Now, Guangwu has no hope of preserving the foundation of the Qing Dynasty, and he is already planning to go into exile. Now, he wants to scavenge the wealth of the entire Qing Dynasty as much as possible, and then transfer it overseas.

The maximum looting of the people is also the common demand of the court officials below. Although they did not have to go into exile like Guangwu, the Southern Ming promised to guarantee the vested interests of the Northern Qing officials as long as they surrendered voluntarily. So now it's a little bit more to be able to catch a little more. Nanming can't fish when he comes.

The Daqing Daily, as usual, was crammed into every newspaper's box. The propaganda vehicles on the street also started slowly, and the loudspeakers broadcast His Majesty the Emperor's "love for the people and moral government". In addition to the content itself, there are also a number of letters from "foreign friends" in Beijing, all of which enthusiastically praise His Majesty the Emperor for this great act of loving the people. They said "enviously" that even in Europe and the United States, it is very rare for people to be allowed to go out on the streets under martial law. The "foreign friends" advised the people of the Qing Dynasty to live happily and calmly with gratitude. Because if it weren't for His Majesty the Emperor, how could everyone have the opportunity to go to the street to buy vegetables. And what they saw with their own eyes was that the people of Nanming could only starve to death in this situation...... It was His Majesty the Emperor Guangwu of the Great Qing Dynasty who saved the people of the city......

The people of Beijing were not very fond of this "Daqing Daily". It often takes days to open the newspaper box, take out a large stack of newspapers, and throw it there, to paste the windows, to wipe the buttocks, and generally not to read them anyway. It doesn't matter if the person who delivers the newspaper is poor, anyway, as long as you pay the money. But today, loudspeakers all over the street keep coming through the windows, as if they were talking about something in the newspaper. At this time, the newspapers that had been accumulated in the newspaper box for many days were taken out and read.

The people of Beijing, who had been locked up at home for more than 10 days and were about to run out of food, seemed to be in the middle of a long drought, and the whole city was suddenly jubilant. Many elderly people couldn't suppress their excitement, knelt down directly in the direction of the palace at home, kowtowed tremblingly, and said "Long live my emperor, long live, long live, long live". There were also many people shouting "Long live the emperor" from the window.

Of course, most of those elderly people are genuine. It is not known how many of those who lay on the window and shouted "Long live" were arranged and shouted to foreigners on the street.

At noon on the 12th, the first batch of citizens who were allowed to go to the streets to purchase appeared on the streets. They lined up in neat lines, waving neat banners and shouting neat slogans. The banner reads:

"Entong reconstruction", "Don't forget to dig wells", "Thank the emperor, thank the court", "Go to buy vegetables with a grateful heart", "The country has Guangwu, life is not bitter", "Eat meat, all rely on the Qing Dynasty"......

On the streets, sporadic foreigners and foreign journalists stood on the side of the road, looking at such processions with complicated eyes. Foreign journalists' photographs are strictly controlled, and nothing else can be taken except this kind of procession with thank-you banners. If you shoot something you shouldn't have taken, you will definitely rush out to the "hooligans" and snatch their cameras.

……

Citizens from all walks of life gradually marched into the four large vegetable fields. There are a total of 10 kinds of products in the market: green onion, ginger, garlic, Chinese cabbage, white flour, cornmeal, sorghum flour, salt, soybean oil, and honeycomb coal. The others don't. And the price is also set by the government: cornmeal two corners a catty, white flour seven corners and five cents a catty, Chinese cabbage one yuan a catty, salt two yuan a catty, soybean oil four yuan five pounds.

Of course, the few yuan and a few jiao mentioned here all refer to Qingyang, which is a silver dollar. "One dollar" is the kind of silver dollar that is seven dollars and four cents. "Dime" refers to a dime of silver, which is a small silver dollar, and ten millimeters is equal to a piece of ocean. Moreover, the officials and businessmen in the vegetable market clearly stipulated: no paper money will be collected, only cash will be accepted from the ocean.

The people who had just come here happily began to complain. It is not surprising that the government and businessmen do not accept paper money, but since they use the ocean, the price is still so high - a pound of soybean oil is equal to a month's living expenses of the whole family.

In the past year, the Jingshi Mint has been printing banknotes day and night, Qingyang's banknotes have been depreciating, and the prices of everything such as food, clothing, housing, and transportation have skyrocketed. However, if the current price is calculated, the increase is very limited. Many places have begun to reject banknotes, either explicitly or implicitly. In particular, although the major monopoly officials and businessmen still nominally accept paper money, ordinary people with no background have no ability to buy things from officials and businessmen with paper money, and they all have to cash out the ocean. Moreover, when officials and businessmen are looking for money, if the buyer is an ordinary person, they will definitely find him paper money, and it will not work if he does not accept it.

Because after the Guangwu coup came to power, he felt that the foundation was unstable, and he was afraid that the ruling machine below would be unstable and disloyal to himself, so in addition to being a big spies, semi-openly acquiescing in the sale of official beards, and using ** to win over military and political officials, he also resorted to a last resort of the major dictators to maintain their rule: to use the method of printing money to loot wealth from the common people, and then subsidize it to the ruling class.

The way to do this is to print more money and then give it priority to government officials, the military and police and other ruling classes under various names. When the ruling class spends these banknotes, these large quantities of banknotes flow into the market, depreciating the value of the banknotes and driving up prices in all walks of life. But by this time, the ruling class had already spent its money, and in exchange for real material wealth, they only made money and did not lose money. And the loss will be passed on to the people at the bottom. Because the money in the hands of ordinary people will depreciate at the same time, and they will get nothing. This process is equivalent to taking money directly from the pockets of the common people and then distributing it to the ruling class, so that the wealth of the whole society will quickly concentrate on the ruling class. The only difference with the Ming robbery is that the "currency devaluation" is just used in the middle. And the common people who lack information will only blame this on "their own bad life" and "their own inability".

……

On the west side of the Forbidden City in Beijing, from north to south, there are three connected royal gardens around the lake: Beihai, Zhonghai and Nanhai. Among them, there is a circular island in the middle of the South China Sea. The island is small, no more than a hundred meters in diameter. The island is lush with greenery and several palaces in the middle. In later generations, this island is very famous - Yingtai.

However, in this time and space, the Guangxu Wuxu Reform was successful, and he was not imprisoned in Yingtai by the Empress Dowager Cixi as in standard history. So now the word "Yingtai" has no special meaning, but it is just one of the names of countless scenic spots in the royal garden.

But just after Guangwu came to power, there was still a special "guest" in Yingtai. The identity of this "guest" is not inferior to that of Emperor Guangxu at all. He is the deposed Emperor Jiade, the current "Qingguo Gong".

After the Guangwu coup, the former emperor Jiade disappeared from the sight of the government and the opposition. Whether it is the two characters "Jiade" or "Qingguo Gong", like the four characters of "Fourteen Gege", they have become one of the many forbidden words in the Qing Dynasty, which have been sucked into a black hole and completely disappeared from broadcasting, printed materials, and people's public discourse. Many people are speculating that the first emperor may have been killed.

But in reality, Guangwu did not kill Guardian directly. He just secretly imprisoned Jiade on the Yingtai. It is no coincidence that Cixi in that time and space and Guangwu in this time and space both chose Yingtai. Yingtai, as a place where important people are imprisoned, does have unique conditions. First of all, it is surrounded by water on all sides, and there is a lake about 100 meters on the north side of the nearest offshore, and the lake is more than 200 meters wide on the other three sides of the east and west. You have to take a boat to get in and out. In addition, the size of Yingtai is just right, more than 10,000 square meters, which can not only arrange the necessary personnel and guards, but also not be too large to monitor. The most important thing is that Yingtai is located in the royal garden of the South China Sea, with strict guards, not to mention security, and next door is the imperial palace, and those who hold power in the palace can grasp the situation of Yingtai prisoners at any time.

Since Guangwu ascended to the throne, the entire South China Sea Garden has been heavily enclosed. The small round island in the middle of the lake has become the most mysterious forbidden place. In the entire Qing Empire, there were no more than thirty people allowed to set foot on Yingtai. The Praetorian Guards on the shore of the surrounding lake were heavily guarded, as if they were facing a great enemy, but those officers and soldiers held loaded guns and ammunition, and looked at the small green island in the distance of the blue waves all day long, but they did not know why they were guarding this island and what was born on the island.

……

In the center of the platform is a sturdy and low cement house, with no windows, only a dark and secluded doorway, like a blockhouse, which does not match the surrounding jade carved railings. There was a thick, small iron door in the doorway, and it was very sturdy.

At the door, two tall soldiers with cold faces stood by the sides. There is a small window in the iron door with several thick steel bars on the small window. In February, the cold wind of Beijing swished in. The pungent stench of the inside came out from time to time, sometimes accompanied by a few weak coughs.

A wooden sign was nailed to the iron door, with four small words on it:

- Qingguo Mansion.

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