Life is a life, grass and trees are autumn.

In ancient times, the ancestors of human beings drank blood, and it was already difficult to obtain food, coupled with the extremely short life expectancy, the number of natural reproduction was small, and the population was not prosperous.

Later, there were Sui's fire, Shennong's Baicao, and Xuanyuan's cars to pass all over the country...... This is the basis for population gathering and trade.

But later Xia, Shang, and Zhou...... In essence, it is only a tribal city-state divided into different places, and even if the population is much richer than that of the primeval times, how many can there be?

It was not until the popularization of copper and iron farming tools that the production of rice, millet, millet, wheat and soybean increased, which was able to feed more people, and thus formed a population advantage in those areas where water and soil were abundant and easy to farm.

And these populations, which can be gathered in larger numbers than previous generations, have formed a "state" of the same nature as the Warring States period and the Qin and Han dynasties in China.

Naturally, the original feudal city-states could not survive in the face of such a more powerful opponent, so they were gradually destroyed and annexed, becoming part of various empires.

And the war has evolved from a scale of tens of thousands of people to a Shura field with hundreds of thousands, or even millions.

After the Qin and Han dynasties.

Although there have been frequent advances in the world's farming techniques, they have only been minor improvements.

The yield of rice is nothing more than a slight increase, and the agricultural tools and water conservancy are nothing more than cheaper and more detailed.

Therefore, until the end of the Ming Dynasty.

Every regime in China is still facing a round of turmoil every 300 years.

Some blame the fall of those empires on the unscrupulous, or the traitors of the witches, or the ambitions of some wolves.

But that's not the point.

Whether it is a single faint monarch, or a little palace concubine and a demon girl, or a rebel with heavy troops like An Lushan of Tang Zhi. If the state of society as a whole is good, it is extremely difficult to corrupt it by one's own strength.

Look at all these perishing nations.

There is only one essence, and that is to eat.

At the beginning of the new dynasty, whether it was the Han, Tang, Song, Ming, or Qing dynasties, it was essentially a re-distribution of spoils.

The imperial court, emperors, bureaucrats, landlords and gentry who had dominated the country in the past were either ruined or died in the turmoil. Large tracts of land were left vacant with the massive deaths of the population in the turmoil of the war.

A new order was established, with enough land to support the population distributed more evenly among the survivors.

And those who have endured the turmoil for too long, and those who yearn for peace and security have lost the idea of continuing the struggle and have opted for land and a stable life.

This is the beginning of every dynasty.

For example, when the Qing army entered the customs, as a foreign race, they ruled more with less, and their methods were cruel and bloody, barbarously destroying Chinese civilization and clothing, and trampling on the dignity of all people.

However, he will succeed.

Because, for most people, dignity and civilization are simply not comparable to sweet potatoes and corn.

After defeating the Yuan Empire.

The population of the Ming Dynasty withered after the war, so that many states and provinces entered a state of "no rooster crow for a hundred miles", so Zhu Yuanzhang forced people to arrest people everywhere to fill the areas where there was a lack of population.

There are even words such as "untie hands" that have been passed down for hundreds of years because of the escort of these people.

It is said that this was actually just because the people who were escorted wanted to go to the toilet, so they said to the officers and soldiers in charge of the escort, "Excuse me!" Untie my hands, I'm going to the toilet. And after a long evolution, it became "Untie the hand!" ”。

Over time.

The population began to recover.

However, the Ming Empire, like all previous empires, faced the same problem - that is, "the rich are destined to be a few".

Even if we do not consider natural and man-made disasters, people's wisdom, chance, and degree of effort are not the same.

Let's take the Ming Dynasty as an example.

The four of them, A, B, C, and D, survived the war at the end of the Yuan Dynasty and the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, and then were assigned to various places, obtained land from the government, or managed some kind of livelihood.

The four of them have experienced war and experienced the taste of hell, so they cherish life, love life, and are five good young people, working diligently every day to fill their stomachs and accumulate wealth to be prepared.

However.

Time flies, and the four of A, B, C and D gradually grow old and die.

At this time, the families and wealth of the four were completely different.

A, after the war, he was allocated 50 acres of land, cultivated diligently, and saved a lot of family funds because of the fertile land and diligent cultivation, blue brick and tile houses, oxen and plough carts, and even raised horses and long-term workers.

However, A gave birth to five sons, fifty acres of land were divided into five parts, the house was given to the eldest brother, the ox was given to the second brother, the plough was given to the third brother, the horse was acquired by the fourth son, who liked to travel, and the long-term worker took the grain and left. The old five divided the land, but did not get much else.

B, the situation is similar to A, but it is much worse than A in terms of having children, only two boys and one girl remain.

The two men were divided into 50 acres of land, tiled houses, oxen and plough carts......

In ancient times, a daughter only needed a small dowry to get married, and did not need land.

C, the situation is more extreme than B, there is only one son, not only inherited all the wealth, but also took out most of C's savings to buy ten acres of land.

Ding, similar to the situation of the A family, has a lot of children, but Ding's third son is a bastard, who bought the yamen when his father was confused, sold most of the property, and went to the city with the money to open a butcher shop. The rest of the children had to swallow the bitter fruit because they had no way to ask for help, and divided the remaining property, and in the end, one person was only allocated five acres of land, which was not enough to support the family.

Suppose, for many more years.

Four of A's five sons were free from sickness and disease, married and had children, worked so hard that ten acres of land became fifteen or twenty acres.

But one of the sons contracted a bad disease and was cured of it by selling his property, but because he had no land, he could only do long work or make a living as a slave.

B's two sons were unlucky, one was by the river, and one year was flooded and there was no harvest, so they borrowed money from the other and had to offset ten acres of land.

Therefore, by the time the two died, the son who suffered from the disaster had only 15 acres left in his home, and the other had 35 acres.

C's son inherited his father's hard work and flexible brain, and made some money by planting seasonal vegetables and raising pigs and sheep many times, so that by the time he died, the family's fertile land was close to 100 acres.

Because the sons of the Ding family did not have enough land, they gradually became poor households, and only the third son, who swallowed the property, sold meat in the city, and saved enough money to buy more than 100 acres of land and a large yard in just twenty or thirty years.

Although there are many twists and turns in the middle, the fate and environment of each generation are also different.

But that's how it goes.

Generations later.

came to the Chongzhen period of the Ming Dynasty.

At that time, the world was in turmoil, the northwest was plagued by famines, the government was corrupt and greedy, and a large number of displaced peasants were unwilling to starve to death under the basic motive of not being willing to starve to death.

This is a war where there is no right or wrong.

The peasants, who had lost everything, raised their butcher's knives in order to survive, and the government, which was also in order to survive and not to be destroyed in other areas.

At this time, A's descendants numbered in the hundreds.

There are rich and poor, but basically they are ordinary farmers or long-term workers who help people, craftsmen who do small crafts in the city, or merchants who walk the streets and alleys.

The two descendants developed by B's two sons have become wealthy local families after several generations of development without disaster, with thousands of acres of fertile land and countless slaves.

The other group, because it had lost its foundation from the beginning, had to borrow money every time it flooded, and after several generations, it had lost its land and joined the peasant rebellion when it was on the verge of starvation.

C's son inherited all his father's property, and for several generations, he was a hardworking and intelligent man, although he was not very rich, but he also accumulated hundreds of acres of fertile land, hired long-term laborers, and bought maids.

And C's son is quite eager to learn, and cultivated his son to read and write since he was a child, although he failed to get fame in the end, but the atmosphere of learning at home has been handed down.

After two or three generations, after all, he is smarter than ordinary people, so C's great-grandson still won the Xiucai fame, and after two generations, he became a master, an official, and finally became a seven-grade county magistrate.

At this time, the C family was already a model of "scholarly family" and "farming and reading heirlooms" in the mouths of the neighbors.

Finally, let's talk about the Ding family.

The generations after the three sons of the Ding family have made a living as butchers and have made huge profits, so they have a lot of spare money.

There was also an opportunity to meet a fallen martial artist, who had been supported for many years, and learned a good martial art from his hands, which has been passed down from generation to generation as a family heirloom.

……

The Qing army broke through the city, and because the people in the city did not want to shave their hair and become slaves, they were angry and issued an order to 'slaughter the city'.

All the descendants of A were in this city, so none of them were spared.

Hundreds of people were all turned into ghosts.

The two branches of B's descendants meet again on a wonderful occasion, but at this time they are far apart, and neither side knows each other.

It's just that when the spearman who participated in the army of the homeless people attacked the mansion of the big family, he said in his heart that this family had the same surname as himself!

Seeing that the general trend of the Ming Dynasty had gone, C's descendants wanted to throw themselves into the water to martyr the country, with the integrity of all Confucianism, but when the autumn was deep and the water was cold, he retracted his wet feet and ordered the officials to open the gate to the Qing army.

The generals of the Qing army saw that the city was taken without a single soldier, and wanted to set an example with him, so they promoted C's descendants to become officials.

Seeing this, the rest of the officials from all over the world followed suit, so more than 1,000 cities in the world rarely resisted, and were easily taken by the Qing army, which was short of troops.

The descendants of the Ding family's bullying and dominating the market, but the descendants of their sons who are short of catties are not like their ancestors.

Seeing that the Qing army entered the city and forced the *** woman, he immediately drew a knife and killed her, which attracted a large number of Qing troops and traitors to encircle and suppress, and finally relied on a martial arts to cut down several people and was stabbed to death by random guns.

The traitors skinned him and hung his bloody body from the city gates.

In the eyes of others, they only said that this person was "ignorant of current affairs".

Just many years later.

In the mouth of the local veteran storyteller, I don't know when there is an extra hero surnamed Ding!

It's just that there is no Qing army in this story, and he is not a butcher.

It's just that in this story, without the bloody ending, it became the last time he drank wine, rode a horse, and galloped away in the sunset......