Chapter 4: The Dawn of Kaifeng
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Of course, Guo Jing and Guo Daxian's destruction of the temple did not cause any trouble or accusation.
- At this time, when the war is in danger, everything must make way for war. Even the Taihu Lake stone in the imperial garden of the Great Song Dynasty was smashed by the officers and soldiers defending the city as a stone bullet, and was loaded with a catapult to bombard the Jin people outside the city...... Therefore, Guo Jing just casually said perfunctorily that he was just practicing the "Maoshan Five Thunder Rectification" and was about to bombard the Jinren, but who knew that one accidentally blew up the house, so everyone dispersed with admiration.
At this moment, it is already whitening in the east, looking up, I saw a row of crystal clear ice cubes hanging under the eaves, and the yard is full of jade trees and flowers, pavilions, flowers and trees, ponds and rockeries, all evenly covered with a layer of fine snow, like a slim fairyland.
Immediately afterwards, with the morning bell of the Great Xiangguo Temple, the brilliant and gorgeous, flowery Kaifeng Mansion ushered in another dawn.
Surrounded by snow, this legendary city with a population of one million people is on full display to visitors thousands of years later:
From Xuande Gate to Nanxun Gate, it is a royal street that is ten miles long and two hundred and twenty steps wide, even in the besieged city, it is still a continuous stream of pedestrians at present, countless merchants sit in Jia, and peddlers and pawns are mixed in the meantime. Even though the sky has just dawned, it is already full of excitement.
On both sides of the road are all kinds of restaurants frequented by small people, with braised pigs and sheep's heads and roast chickens and ducks hanging on the counters, and large iron pots for boiling porridge or soup at the door, emitting a strong smoke and the smell of sweat and dust. Not to mention breakfast, it is lunch and dinner, and many ordinary residents of Tokyo City will also solve it outside, and they do not make a fire to cook, which is as convenient as the life of urban office workers in later generations. At the same time, there is also a shop that sells washing noodles soup - that is, it sells boiled water. The ancients had inconvenient fires, and those who were too lazy to light the stove to boil water in the morning would go to these stalls to wash their faces and rinse their mouths...... In short, it is a thriving society that is highly commercialized and citizenized.
On both sides of the royal street are two ribbon-shaped rivers with a width of five zhang, and the jade banks are shining. There are also peach and plum pears and apricots planted on both sides of the river, although it is a cold winter at this time, and the plants and trees are withering, but you can still imagine the enchanting scene of thousands of flowers on both sides of the royal street, peach red and apricot white.
This is the Tokyo Bianliang of the Great Song Dynasty, the Kaifeng Mansion where countless legends and stories were born, and the place where the prosperous and rich world gathered.
Standing on the pagoda of Tianqing Temple, overlooking the vibrant Song Dynasty Kaifeng, Wang Qiu couldn't help but be fascinated for a while, as if he saw the picture scroll of "Qingming Riverside Map", "Bao Qingtian", "Water Margin", "Quanmei Case", "Five Rats in Tokyo" stories, appeared vividly around him.
However, this prosperous and prosperous atmosphere will disappear in just one or two months!
β¦β¦ Although he was not a savior, Wang Qiu still did not want this prosperity and civilization to be ruined by death and barbarism.
At this moment, there was a sudden commotion at the door of Tianqing Temple, which turned out to be a servant who was waiting for Guo Jing, and he bought it from the street and came back early.
I saw them holding their hands full of food, carrying large and small lotus leaf bags, and they could smell the aroma from afar. By the time Wang Qiu walked down the pagoda and came to the temple hall, the table was already full of steaming miscellaneous chews and sweets. And Doraemon and Nobi Nobita are already sitting at the table very unceremoniously, grabbing these fragrant delicacies and stuffing them into their mouths with a chirp!
As for the political commissar Guo Jing, he also sat next to him with a smile, and while eating seas, he introduced these Song Dynasty foods to the guests: "...... This is a fragrant candy seed...... It's a pity that there is less sugar; There are also fried tongs...... Sure enough, it's still hot and delicious; This is a spin-roasted pork rind, which is quite famous...... In addition, there is also this Granny Cao meatloaf, which is a famous product in Bianliang, Tokyo, and people have to wait in a long line to buy it......"
Looking at the appearance of a few of them gobbling up, Wang Qiu was stunned at first, and then shouted, "Why don't you leave some for me", and quickly pounced, snatched those liver and flour porridge, braised duck eggs, sprinklers, donkey meat and other breakfasts, and unceremoniously chewed according to the case, and after taking a bite, it really deserved to be a pure natural and pollution-free good thing, much stronger than the unchanged soybean milk fritters in later generations.
In a short time, the few of them ate all the sumptuous breakfast they had just bought, and then wiped their mouths and drank a bowl of pepper soup teaβit felt slightly similar to the Hu spicy soup of later generations, and it was really a great pleasure to drink it in the cold winter.
After the sumptuous breakfast, Tianqing Temple gradually became noisy, and there were idlers in the market who came to sign up for Guo Jing's "Liujia Regular Soldiers", as well as several documents sent by the government, and registered their resumes for the "Liujia Regular Soldiers" who had been recruited into the army...... For these miscellaneous matters, Wang Qiu, Doraemon and others couldn't interfere, and Guo Jing was also not interested in it, so he asked people to set up a carriage and go to the most lively Daxiangguo Temple in Tokyo.
This Daxiangguo Temple, although it is called a temple, is actually divided into eight branches, each of which has its own abbot. Two Zen Temples and Six Law Temples. It covers an extremely large area, spanning several streets, and there are several miles on one side. In Xiangguo Temple, the 300-foot Paiyun Treasure Pavilion towers into the clouds, and the murals of Wu Daozi and the statue of Yang Huiwen are dizzying. There is also a stone with the inscription of Jinshi, a row of stone tablets engraved with the name of Jinshi, which has been arranged from the time of Taizu to the present.
The market in front of Daxiangguo Temple is the most famous commercial street in Bianliang, Tokyo, just like Nanjing Road in Shanghai and Wangfujing in Beijing...... The bazaar is generally open five times a month, and "there are hundreds of clever and unscrupulous columns; The treasures of the Quartet are all in the process", "All business and travel transactions are all in it, and those who seek to sell and resell other things in the Quartet will be because of this". As the distribution center of the national commodity trade at that time, the prosperity of the Great Xiangguo Temple was specially recorded in the "Tokyo Menghualu" as the "transaction of ten thousand surnames in the Xiangguo Temple".
Although most of the shops in Beijing have to close their doors due to martial law and fierce warfare, you can still feel the bustling prosperity in the meantime. Even the few shops that are still open here and there are almost everything from cloth and silk, jade ornaments, pastries and meals to miscellaneous goods from the north and south. The shops and streets are also quite clean and orderly, almost not much different from the shopping streets of small cities in later generations. There were even many immigrants from places such as Northern Liao, Western Xia, Tianzhu and even Dashi who moved to Bianliang, and most of them made a living as merchants in the city, which brought colorful foreign customs to the Song people, and made Bianliang, the political, economic and cultural center of China at that time, a world-famous international metropolis.
Of course, the traces of the war on the city are also unusually obvious - on the snow-covered street corners, there are homeless people who have died of cold and starvation, and every corpse is frozen blue. There are many more people living on the streets, struggling with hunger and cold...... Although they desperately fled into Kaifeng City, temporarily avoiding the butcher's knives of the Jin soldiers, they still died of hunger and cold after their belongings were exhausted.
Even the old residents of Kaifeng are now very difficult, because with the siege of the city by the Jin soldiers, the water 6 traffic has been cut off, industry and commerce have come to a standstill, countless citizens have lost their jobs and income, and the prices in the city are soaring: a bucket of rice is 800 Wen, a bucket of wheat is 700 Wen, donkey meat is 1,000 Wen, mutton is 1,200 Wen, and pork is 1,100 Wen...... It can be said that there is no most expensive, only more expensive; There is no outrageous, only more outrageous!
What's even worse is that it seems that God is going to destroy the Great Song Dynasty, and this year's Central Plains has encountered a cold weather that has not been encountered in a century.
As the Jin soldiers besieged the city for a long time, the millions of residents in the city lacked not only food for their stomachs, but also firewood and coal for heating......
Right now, in this Bianliang City, at least hundreds of people are dying of cold and starvation every day. Although the imperial court has provided relief, it is a drop in the bucket.
ββ¦β¦ At present, all industries in the city are withering, but prices are soaring every day, and the cost of the breakfast we just ate is enough to hold the best banquet in normal times! Looking at those poor men who were half-buried in the snow and were now lifeless, Guo Jing couldn't help but sigh and said, "...... The reason why my more than 7,000 Rokkaku Divine Soldiers were recruited so easily was also because everyone was having a hard time and was anxious to mix a mouthful of military rations......"
ββ¦β¦ In that case, should I find a way to raise a batch of grain to sell? Not only can you earn several times the huge profits, but you can also get the gratitude of the military and the people! After Wang Qiu thought about it, he suddenly had an idea of making money, "...... In the midst of the siege, grain should be the most popular commodity! β
However, Guo Jing expressed his disapproval of this construction: "...... I advise you not to do this, you will offend a large group of people to death. β
ββ¦β¦ What the? Kaifeng, which was besieged by Jin soldiers, was unwilling to bring in grain from the outside world? How is this possible? Wang Qiu exclaimed in surprise.
ββ¦β¦ This one...... How so? Do you think that there is a real shortage of food in this city? Guo Jing blinked meaningfully.