"Sell newspapers, sell newspapers! King Qi hunted on behalf of the Son of Heaven and patrolled the three provinces of Shanxi! ”

"Sell newspapers, sell newspapers!"

"Give me one!"

"I want it too!"

After a short rest, Zhu Youzhen chose to hunt the three western provinces on behalf of the Son of Heaven on the seventeenth day of the first month.

Almost in the early morning of the day he chose to set off, the State Newspaper Bureau, which had been prepared early, ordered the "Daming Daily" to publish the matter of Zhu You's inspection.

Such a publication seems stupid, because it exposes Zhu Youzhen's itinerary, but such a thing was ordered by Zhu Youzhen.

One of the reasons why he made such a high profile was that he wanted to tell the officials of the three provinces that he was going on patrol, and you should all be careful for me.

The second is to tell the people that he is going on patrol, and he is "hunting on behalf of the Son of Heaven", and the emperor cares about the people very much.

Third, it is also to attract the attention of the officials of the DPRK and China, and to share the attention of the Yanshan faction above the temple in disguise.

After all, there are not a few Yanshan officials in the three provinces, and if someone makes a mistake and makes any scandal, then the Yanshan faction will have to be unlucky.

Therefore, although the officials of Yanshan in the DPRK and China were in the capital, their attention had to be paid to the various prefectures and counties where Zhu Youzhen was about to go on patrol.

"King Qi hunted on behalf of the Son of Heaven, and I don't know if he will pass by us."

"It should be, Pingyang Mansion is the closest place to Shaanxi."

"I can't say for sure, what if His Highness takes the Beijing-West Railway to the north?"

"Anyway, just wait, let His Highness come and see, the price of this grain is so high, how can we survive?"

"That's it!"

The people of Pingyang Prefecture in Shanxi Province complained bitterly in various counties, and like them, there were people from all over the three provinces of Shanxi.

They all think that they are having a hard time, because this is also the case.

Man is a creature of ecleciment, but he is also a creature of inches.

Perhaps in the eyes of others, the three provinces of Shanxi have been in drought for many years, and it is good to have food to eat at the moment.

However, for the people of the three provinces of Shanxi, due to the household registration system and the liberalization of the railway, many people have gone to the next province to work and beg for a living, so they have tasted the sweetness of low prices in other places, so they feel that they are living hard.

In the final analysis, it was the people who wanted Zhu Youzhen to see their lives.

However, to the disappointment of the people of Binh Duong Province, Binh Duong Province was not at the first few stops of Zhu You's inspection site.

"Xuanfu, Shuofangfu, Ningxiafu, Lintaofu, Liangzhoufu, Ganzhoufu, Suzhou, Fengxiangfu, Xi'an, Pingyangfu, Taiyuanfu, Datongfu, Shuntianfu......"

"Dad, is this the way we're going?"

On the buzzing train, when Zhu Cihong took his three younger brothers and pointed to the words on the map to ask Zhu Youzhen, Zhu Youzhen, who was sitting next to him and reading the newspaper, also put down the newspaper and smiled at them: "Well......"

Maybe it's because he's been working for too long, and when Zhu Youzhen doesn't need to work anymore, he doesn't know what to do.

This feeling is somewhat similar to the confusion after the resignation carnival in his previous life, the difference is that Zhu Youzhen knows that he has a short rest, and there is still a long way for him to go in the future.

"Woo-"

The sudden sound of the whistle pulled Zhu Youzhen back to reality, and he looked at the four boys lying on the table looking at the map, and the smile on his face was difficult to hide.

He was just about to continue reading the newspaper when Zhou Sujie, who was dressed in regular clothes, also walked over from the door of another carriage.

She took two maidservants with her, and the maidservants carried a wooden plate in their hands, on which they held several bowls of rice balls.

"Your Highness, breakfast is shabby......

Zhou Sujie saluted respectfully, but Zhu Youzhen smiled when he heard this, and helped her sit beside him.

"I want to eat rice balls!"

"I want it too!"

"Leave me a bowl!"

When the four little ones heard that there were rice balls, they quickly got up and took the rice balls, and ate them sweetly.

Zhou Sujie and Zhu Youzhen also enjoyed the dumplings, but they both looked at the regressing scenery outside the car window.

Eighty miles per hour is not a fast speed, but the smoothness of the train and the glass windows provide a chance to enjoy the scenery.

The train moved slowly on the wilderness to Zhangjiakou, and Zhu Youzhen and Zhou Sujie sat by the window, with endless mountains in their eyes.

After the order of the fourth year of the Apocalypse prohibiting the large-scale felling of trees, and replacing some punishments that required and whipping with planting trees, some sparse trees and groves began to appear in the northern Ming Dynasty.

Such scenes became even more after the northern captives were completely driven to Mobei.

Many cities have planted many small saplings outside the bare city, but unfortunately due to the drought that lasted for nearly ten years, many small saplings could not survive after planting.

Of course, that is Shanxi and Shaanxi, and Xuanfu is slightly more "humid" compared to these two places.

The water brought down from Yanshan is stored in the reservoir, and the water flow is increased from time to time according to local conditions to ensure that the local people have access to water.

Tiny trees have grown on both sides of the once bare river, and some of the hills in the distance have grown green weeds due to a spring rain.

From the Han Dynasty to the fifties of the twentieth century, the climate in the north was basically in a period of continuous degradation of green plants, but at present, Zhu Youzhen has stabilized the green plants in the Xuanfu area.

In modern times, the Saihan Dam is still a sandy land, and in this era it is still a grassland with fertile grass and beautiful water, and after the restoration of Xuanfu, it is also similar to the Saihan Dam.

However, this is not to say that the Ming Dynasty's tree planting is very successful, so successful that it has conquered the sandstorm, but the afforestation of Xuanfu and Yanshan has made the possibility of the capital encountering sandstorms smaller.

In later generations, many places that have become sandy lands are still grasslands in this era,

"Dad, is it true that if you plant trees here, there will be no sandstorms in the capital?"

Zhu Cihong asked curiously while eating the rice balls, which caused others to look at Zhu Youzhen.

In this regard, Zhu Youzhen explained with a smile the relationship between the desert and sand, grassland, and woods, and quoted classics to explain the origin of the sandstorm in Beijing.

To put it simply, the earliest time when the city of Beijing encountered a sandstorm was in April of the third year of the Zhenyuan Dynasty of the Jin Kingdom, that is, around May 1155 AD.

At that time, the northern part of Hebei entered a state of "fog and fog, and the sun was without light", which lasted for a total of 17 days.

Before this, the northern part of Hebei Province had not experienced any sandstorms, and after that, sandstorms appeared from time to time, but they were not frequent.

It was only after entering the Yuan Dynasty that due to the crazy consumption of the forests in the surrounding areas of Beijing during the construction of the Yuan Dynasty, the forest vegetation in the surrounding areas of Beijing underwent a significant turn and the number plummeted.

This consumption continued until the third year of the reign of Emperor Yingzong of the Yuan Dynasty (1323), and from this time onwards, the Beijing area began to experience sandstorms every few years.

This phenomenon was not curbed until the Ming Dynasty recovered the north during the Hongwu period and established a military guard outside the Guan.

However, in the Zhu Di period, due to the construction of the Imperial Palace in Beijing, the trees around the capital were hit again, and the sandstorms in Beijing were more serious than those of the Jin and Yuan dynasties.

After Zhu Di, the emperors of the Ming Dynasty continued to build large-scale construction, and the two emperors with the most crazy felling were Jiajing and Wanli.

Jiajing alone transported no less than 30,000 big nanmu from Yunnan, Guizhou and other places.

As the main ingredient, 30,000 large nan trees are needed, not to mention other trees as regular wood, so the trees around the capital have plummeted to the point that there is not a single forest for more than ten miles out of the city.

The frenzied felling brought about by the unbridled use of power even affected the border security of the Ming Dynasty.

During the Longqing period, the minister Pang Shangpeng said that the Jizhou and Changping areas around Beijing were "open and dangerous" because of the uncontrolled logging during the Jiajing period.

The disappearance of the forest resulted in the Mongol cavalry being able to drive straight in.

Therefore, the cabinet ministers headed by Gao Gong and Zhang Juzheng at that time also approved Pang Shangpeng's recital, and mobilized the military and civilians in Shanxi and Beizhili to plant trees and forests to consolidate border defenses.

Although years of afforestation and the peace of Ming and Mongolia after the Longqing Peace Conference brought a forest to the capital, after Zhang Juzheng's death, Wanli also ordered the construction of palaces and indiscriminate felling of trees around the capital.

As a result, starting from the 26th year of Wanli, almost every spring, the city of Beijing will encounter severe sandstorms.

If we count from the "Ming Shilu", the Ming Dynasty counted from the first recorded sandstorm to the fall of the Ming Dynasty, Beijing experienced a total of 97 sandstorms.

It can be said that Zhu Youzhen not only has to wipe his ass politically and militarily for his imperial grandfather Wanli, but also has to wipe his ass for him in the environment.

Every time he thought of this, Zhu Youzhen gritted his teeth with hatred.

"Thanks to the good progress of tree planting over the years, the concubine remembers that there were only three sandstorms in the Apocalypse, right?"

Zhou Sujie's words made Zhu Youzhen's attention shift to her, and continued:

"Well, if I'm not mistaken, it should be the first year of the Apocalypse, the sixth year of the Apocalypse, and the fourteenth year of the Apocalypse."

Saying that, Zhu Youzhen looked at Zhu Cihong and said: "If you go to Qi Country in the future, you can't indiscriminately cut down and deforestate the palace, otherwise you will be blown by the wind and sand every year, and you will smell the smell of dirt." ”

"Then I'll live in a stone house......" Hearing that it was going to be blown by the wind and sand every year, Zhu Cihong's face was full of resistance.

His appearance made Zhu Youzhen smile from ear to ear.

While he was laughing, the train whistle sounded again, and at this time, a young Jinyi guard walked into the carriage and said to Zhu Youzhen:

"Your Highness, there is less than a cup of tea left from Yanqing County Station, do you need to take a look at the parking area and industrial area?"

"Huh?" Hearing Jin Yiwei's report, Zhu Youzhen glanced at this person.

This man is seventeen or eighteen years old, a little burly, with a high nose and a wide face, thick eyebrows and big eyes, and it seems that he is a loyal servant of iron and iron from the point of view of appearance, but if people are employed only by their faces, then there will not be so much turmoil in the world.

"No need, go directly to Zhangjiakou, Lu Baihu ......"

Zhu Youzhen emphasized the three words of Lu Baihu, which made the young man a little unnatural.

"Retirement ......"

The young man known as Lu Baihu hurriedly retreated, but Zhu Youzhen kept looking at his back.

At this time, Zhou Sujie next to him also noticed his gaze and couldn't help asking, "This is Lu Yuangao, the eldest son of Commander Lu, right?" How do you feel that His Highness doesn't like him very much? ”

"Am I so obvious?" Zhu Youzhen smiled, but when he smiled, Zhou Sujie realized that he had said the wrong thing.

"I just think His Highness seems to like teasing him." Zhou Sujie changed her tone, and Zhu Youzhen also bowed his head slightly when he heard this, but he didn't say anything.

The harem is not allowed to interfere in politics, this is not a rule only in the palace, and the same is true for the Qi Palace.

However, Zhou Sujie's words do show that Zhu Youzhen's attitude towards Lu Yuangao is too eccentric, and it is not as good as treating others, like a spring breeze.

Of course, there is a reason why Zhu Youzhen has this attitude.

When he heard Lu Yuangao's words from Zhu Ciran's mouth last time, Zhu Youzhen sent someone to check the details of this kid.

After this investigation, Zhu Youzhen found out that when Lu Wenzhao took Shen Lian and others to arrest corrupt officials in various provinces, Lu Yuangao, who was only eight years old, used Lu Wenzhao's connections to send himself to the official school where Li Dingguo was, and became classmates with Li Dingguo.

In the past five years, he has tried to establish a good relationship with Li Dingguo, but Li Dingguo is wary of Lu Yuangao's appearance, so the relationship between the two is just a nodding acquaintance.

It seems that he found that Li Dingguo's road did not work, Lu Yuangao simply found Zhu Ciran, and got along well with Zhu Ciran.

This is not surprising, after all, Lu Yuangao is a few years older than Zhu Ciran, and what Zhu Ciran has experienced and wants to have is what he once fantasized about, so he knows how to do what he likes.

After two years like this, the relationship between Lu Yuangao and Zhu Ciran was leaked by Zhu Ciran, and Zhu Youzhen also touched this kid out along the way.

This kid is ready to enter the official career after graduation, and even on the eve of Lu Wenzhao's return to the capital, he used his good relationship and prepared to send himself to Dading Town, Yanshan County as the mayor, and behind Dading Town is Dading Palace.

Obviously, this kid feels that his father's choice is not good, and he is ready to directly rely on the emperor to double bet.

If the King of Qi usurped the throne, he would not be implicated by virtue of his identity as the son of Lu Wenzhao.

If the King of Qi becomes a vassal, he will successfully squeeze into the power center of the Ming Dynasty by virtue of his status as a prince, and he will not lose at all.

With such a thoughtful person, Zhu Youzhen naturally couldn't let him get his wish, so he simply took a salary from the bottom of the kettle and assigned Lu Yuangao to Jinyiwei as a hundred household officials of Jinyiwei.

From the mayor of the ninth grade to the hundred household officials of the sixth grade, this seems to be a grace, but in fact it is a bright rise and a dark fall.

In the face of such a change, Lu Yuangao could only pretend to be stupid to avoid offending the King of Qi, and Zhu Youzhen also pretended not to know, as if he had taken a fancy to Lu Yuangao's identity, so he deliberately made Lu Yuangao a member of the hundred households.

He wants to see what Lu Yuangao will do in the face of such a situation......

"It's here!"

"A lot of people ......"

Just when Zhu Youzhen was thinking about how to clean up Lu Yuangao so that Lu Yuangao could recognize himself, Zhu Ciran in the south and the others also hurried into the Zhejiang territory after half a month of traveling to Fujian.

When they entered Zhejiang, the first thing they felt was the dense population that was different from other provinces.

Because the road from Fujian to Zhejiang was too winding, Zhu Ciran and his family chose to cross the sea by boat in Qinyu Town, Funing Prefecture, in northern Fujian, to Pumen Town, which was under the command of Wenzhou Prefecture in Zhejiang Province, more than ten miles away.

The boat hadn't docked yet, but Zhu Ciran and the others had already seen the dense crowd on the dock in Pumen Town.

Although it is only a market town, it has become the southernmost coastal port in Zhejiang due to its proximity to the sea, so many merchants live here.

When the ship docked, Zhu Ciran and others pushed the four-wheeled cart and got off the ship and came to the dock.

Standing on the wharf, compared with the number of people in Qinyu Town, Fujian Province, who only had one or two thousand people, the population of Pumen Town was almost tens of thousands, and it was not inferior to some small towns in later generations.

On the wharf, the people who came and went almost filled the wharf, which had been newly built with cement, and Zhu Ciran and them could only be squeezed by the crowd.

Finally pushed the cart out of the dock, they thought that there would be fewer people outside the dock, but the fact was that after coming to the country road on the edge of the market town, the country road was almost crowded with people.

The carriages that came and went occupied the two-zhang wide country road, and the cars were blocked for several miles, and there was no movement for half a day.

Some of the laborers who came to work were caught by some men in silk and satin, hired as their own laborers, and dragged to unload the goods before they could be identified.

"The population of this Pumen town is more than that of many counties in Shaanxi, Sichuan, Yunnan and Guizhou."

Liu Shun looked at the slowly hurrying convoy, and while slowly pedaling the bicycle, he couldn't help but sigh.

"Pumen Town has more than 3,900 people on the Yellow Book, but when I look at it now, I'm afraid there are no more than 10,000."

Compared with Liu Shun, Zhu Ciran's sigh is full of indescribable and unclear things.

Realizing that Zhu Ciran was not very happy, Liu Shun did not speak, and the two slightly more well-proportioned brocade guards behind him saw that the two in front of him did not speak, so they naturally did not dare to speak.

In this way, Zhu Ciran and they marched with Pumen Town, the main township of the convoy.

They thought that the convoy would drive all the way into Pumen Town, but they didn't want them to turn a corner in front of the town and drive onto the county road.

Since then, the road ahead has suddenly opened up, and Zhu Ciran and others can't help but speed up the frequency of pedaling, and they rode into the city walls of Pumen Town in a short time.

"Sell newspapers, sell newspapers!"

"Selling buns...... Freshly baked meat buns! ”

"New books have arrived!"

"Let's go! Let's make a little! ”

"Jingle bell—"

The moment Zhu Ciran and the others entered Pumen Town, if no one told them, they might think of it as a small county town with a good economy.

As soon as they entered the city wall, they came directly to the commercial street of the market town, where there were bookstores, steamed bun shops, butcher shops, flower shops, tea shops, theaters, storytelling tables and other shop facilities......

There were pedestrians walking on the two-zhang wide main road, and everyone's pace was very fast, which made Zhu Ciran and others, who had adapted to the slow life, feel like they had returned to Beizhili.

They couldn't help but be a little restrained, and after entering the city, they found a post house where they could park, put their luggage, and then went out to shop.

Pumen is obviously just a town, but its population is far more than the size of the Yellow Book.

This six-mile-long town is crowded with more than 10,000 people, and there are even temples, pavilions, arched bridges, small gardens and many other facilities for entertainment and relaxation.

The scale of the Huangdian in the town is also built according to the scale of the county, and the price of which is about 10% more expensive than that of Fujian, but even if the price is so expensive, there are more people shopping in the Huangdian than many people in the county.

From time to time, you can see one or two bicycles on the streets, and the people riding them are all dressed in silk and wearing jade belts around their waists, and they look rich and expensive.

It is hard to imagine that in an ordinary market town, you can see such a large number of bicycles, you must know that even this year, Daming's annual production of bicycles is only 50,000, and the sale is less than 200,000.

200,000 vehicles sounds like a lot, but it is not too much for Daming, which has more than 1,700 counties and more than 15,000 towns.

Zhu Ciran and his family walked for ten months, and most of the bicycles they saw in the nine provinces along the road appeared in the county seats, and very few appeared in the market towns, let alone the scene of more than 20 bicycles ridden by different people in a quarter of an hour, like Pumen Town.

However, the fact is that such a scene not only appeared, but even the number rose to the scale of more than 30 subsequently.

In this way, it can be seen how popular bicycles are in Zhejiang, and how rich and prosperous the gentry and businessmen in Zhejiang are.

Although the price of bicycles is not expensive, the sales index of bicycles in each royal store is limited.

The more goods sold, the more independent choice of goods can be obtained in the Royal Store.

"Wharf recruiters! Twenty Wen a day! Twenty a day! ”

As we walked, the crowd suddenly heard the news of recruitment.

Zhu Ciran and the others looked back, only to see a bookkeeper on a bicycle holding an iron microphone, shouting while riding.

"Twenty Wen?!" Hearing the price of the recruitment, Zhu Ciran was a little stunned.

As far as he knows, the price of recruiting workers in Guangzhou City is like this, and the normal wage rate in market towns ranges from 8 to 10 wen, and the county town is slightly higher, but it will not exceed 12 wen.

Some prefectures may reach 15 wen, but a small town like Pumen Town dares to give a wage of 20 wen, which is enough to show what Zhejiang's economic environment is.

"No wonder people from all provinces came to Jiangnan to work before......"

Zhu Ciran couldn't help but sigh a little, and said some of the things he heard from the people along the way.

During the Wanli period, many people would ignore the road guide and go to the three provinces south of the Yangtze River to work.

Before, Zhu Ciran thought that it was because the people did not have enough to eat that they left their hometowns to work, but now it seems that I am afraid that if I find a few jobs in Zhejiang for a year, the harvest can exceed the output of more than a dozen acres of cultivated land.

"How can there be so much demand for labor in Jiangnan?"

Zhu Ciran opened his mouth curiously, and Liu Shun hurriedly went to inquire.

Soon, he came back with news: "Mainly the tenants of mulberry fields and cultivated land, and then the wharf of the wharf, and the work of all kinds of shops. ”

"Your Highness, the people of this Pumen town themselves say that the population in the town is nearly 10,000, and there are only less than 4,000 on the "Yellow Book", which is ......"

"Okay......" Liu Shun wanted to continue, but was interrupted by Zhu Ciran:

"There is no need to worry about the population of the Yellow Book, we just need to know it in our hearts."

After that, Zhu Ciran glanced at Pumen Town, which was as prosperous as a small county town.

He really didn't dare to imagine that a small town could hide thousands of people, so how many people in the entire Zhejiang and Jiangnan who did not know about the imperial court were operating in private......