Anthony's eyes said reverently as if he was pilgrimage: "That's right, this is the capital of the Ming Dynasty!" ”

In the 17th century, although Beijing was not the most populous and economically developed city in the Ming Dynasty, it would be overshadowed by the cities in the world except for Jinzhou.

The capital of the Netherlands is Amsterdam, which is now the largest city in the Netherlands, and a well-known big city in Europe.

However, in Anthony's opinion, Amsterdam has a smell of local tyrants, and the people of Amsterdam can't wait to write "I'm rich!" on their faces! In addition to showing off wealth, Amsterdam has no other characteristics.

Beijing is the ideal capital of Antony, and since the burning of Constantinople, no other city in the world has been as majestic as Beijing.

Since Emperor Chongzhen's Northern Expedition, found that there was a lot of turmoil near the city of Beijing, especially in the area of Chaoyangmen, as well as in the south of the city, the shantytowns of the city were almost destroyed by the war, after the establishment of the Dingxin Dynasty, a new plan was carried out for the original Sijiu City, the original narrow streets were widened, and the low houses were demolished.

Although there are still many old buildings and houses in Beijing, there are no low shacks outside the city, almost all of them are houses made of steel and concrete, not much luxurious, but very strong, at least once the war comes, these houses outside the city can be used as a stronghold.

In Cheng Shijie's view, this is purely taking off his pants and farting, the one hundred and eight squares of Chang'an City in the Tang Dynasty were designed as a fortress, once the enemy hit Chang'an City, he could defend the city, in fact, Chang'an, the capital of the Tang Dynasty, was broken six times, and none of them were based on the city.

If a country is beaten to the capital, it will be a big blow to the morale of the people, and it will be difficult to hold on, and if that day comes, Beijing will definitely fall easily.

However, looking at the re-planned Beijing City, Cheng Shijie is quite satisfied. Almost like Golden State, the whole city is drained by culverts, and a manhole cover can be seen every twenty or thirty steps, and the scene of sewage flowing cross-stream no longer exists, and the whole city is neat and clean.

Spex looked at the clean streets, which were cleaner than the castles of many dukes or marquis in Europe, and compared to the stinking city of Amsterdam, Beijing was the ideal kingdom of heaven. And Amsterdam is a huge pigsty.

"Compared with the Dutch, the Ming people are civilized people, and the Dutch are country barbarians!"

Spex looked at the people of Beijing and threw the garbage in the trash can not far away, even if he accidentally dropped a rotten vegetable leaf, he would consciously pick up the rotten vegetable leaf and put it in the trash can.

There are also countless mules and horses on the streets, and these mules and horses have a dung bag hanging behind their buttocks, so that not a drop of dung will fall, even if it is a child, and will not drop garbage casually.

Of course, Sparks didn't know that at the beginning, the people in Beijing did not love cleanliness so much, nor did they love hygiene so much, and the first to deal with Beijing's sanitation problems was the heart of the Dongchang Admiral Wang, and later these powers were attributed to the city management.

The urban management will collect sanitation management fees from each household, this fee is not high, only a few dozen dollars a month, but there are many people in Beijing, and there are many merchants, so the sanitation management fees collected are more, and some people can be hired to be responsible for cleaning up the garbage and cleaning, and there are two or three thousand sanitation workers responsible for cleaning in the whole Beijing city, and these two or three thousand people make the whole Beijing city tidy and clean.

Anthony looked at the shops on the street, all of them were open, breakfast shops, restaurants, medical halls, pharmacies, gold and silver shops, pawn shops, tea shops, inns, and inns.

In addition to the shops along the street, you can also see alleys extending deep in, the streets are full of all kinds of stalls, everywhere people from all over the country and eight miles to get up early to go shopping, there are sturdy soldiers, long shirts fluttering scholars, oily businessmen, there are also women wearing red and green, shouting and the call of pack horses, mules and donkeys one after another, so lively.

"It's a lot busier than Amsterdam!"

"There's no comparison at all!"

Anthony smiled faintly: "The one we just came over, hundreds of shops, all selling all kinds of food, come to Daming, taste a few kinds of food every day, it is estimated that we will not be able to eat it in ten years!" ”

The officer in charge of protecting Anthony and his party smiled: "If you just pursue eating, you won't be able to finish eating the food of Daming in your lifetime!" ”

"How is this possible?"

Spex expressed disbelief.

The officer laughed: "Because every day new food is invented, you look at this cuisine, it is said that it came from South America!" ”

The officer was talking about eel soup, a food that is not common in Daming, in fact, it is a soup made with lemon and eel, and it has a special taste.

With the more and more developed navigation of the Ming Dynasty, the amount of seafood for all kinds of seafood has also increased greatly, of course, the northerners of the Ming Dynasty still prefer mutton, although the restrictions on eating beef have been relaxed, but the common people are still reluctant to kill cattle, and they are not willing to eat.

Anthony looked at the dazzling array of goods, or more food, which made him linger, Anthony hoped that he could succeed this time, and from then on the Dutch East Indies could become the vassal state of the Ming Dynasty, and the Dutch East Indies would not have another war with the Ming Dynasty, and everyone would earn money together, and everyone would enjoy peace together.

As for the interests of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, this was not within Anthony's consideration, and after suffering from Maria's betrayal, and the unwarranted accusations of the gentlemen at home, Anthony had such an idea, which would have felt a little inconceivable in the Ming Dynasty.

But the question is, in the eyes of the Dutch, this is very normal, businessmen? In the end, it is the interests that are considered, and if the interests are sufficient, let alone the betrayal of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, what about the betrayal of the Pope?

If it weren't for the strong rise of the Ming Dynasty, Anthony would never have such pedantic ideas, but in recent years, the Netherlands and Spain have been fighting. The common people grow some food, the merchants make some money, and they all use it to fight, agriculture declines, commerce withers, and infighting endlessly, and the most critical problem is that the Ming Dynasty is an existence that they cannot defeat.

Cheng Shijie actually didn't care about Anthony's arrival, and now he is having a headache for another thing, that is, grain pricing, now Daming's grain production is getting higher and higher, plus the civil war has stopped, and even the bandits have been almost eliminated.

But the problem is that the grain production of the Ming Dynasty is getting higher and higher, even if the restrictions on wine-making are lifted, it is still impossible to consume too much food, and the people are encouraged to breed, and too much food is consumed by raising livestock and poultry, but the food is still not able to be eaten.

Now in the place where rice is produced in the south of the Yangtze River, the price of rice has fallen to 30 yuan a bucket, and a stone of grain is only 3 yuan of silver, which is only equivalent to one-tenth of the seven years of Chongzhen.

In fact, food prices can be regulated and controlled at the national level, such as the standing liquidation system that has been implemented in all dynasties, in the words of Cheng Shijie, this is called grain strategic reserves, so far, in the north of Beizhili, Shanxi, Shaanxi, Henan, Gansu. Ning has established more than 100 large and small positions.

Perennial grain reserves of more than 30 million stones, but for this year's grain output, this is only an insignificant fraction, if the statistics of the land of the 26 provinces of the Ming Dynasty, now the planting area of the Ming Dynasty is more than 1.2 billion mu, even if it is calculated according to two stones per mu, the annual grain output will be more than 2.4 billion stones.

But in fact, the grain output of the Ming Dynasty is generally between two stones and five buckets to three stones, and if you count the two or three seasons of rice in Jiangnan or Luzon, this output is almost between three stones and five buckets.

Now the Ming Dynasty has fallen into a virtuous circle, because there is enough grain, and the price of selling grain cannot be sold, the people have to raise livestock and poultry, because raising poultry and livestock will produce a large amount of manure, which is used to fertilize the land and produce higher grain production.

Because there are enough livestock and poultry, the common people also have a lot of meat on the table, because eating meat and sufficient oil and water, the people will find that the amount of food is slowly decreasing, in the past lack of oil and water, an adult people eat three liters of rice at a meal is a normal amount of food.

Now people who can eat three small bowls of rice are considered to be big-bellied men, even if the training volume is very strong in the Ming army, the average consumption of rice by ordinary soldiers is only thirty-nine catties per month, which is equivalent to more than one catty a day on average, which is unimaginable in the past, you must know that when Cheng Shijie just established the Ning Navy, the food supply of the army was one stone and two buckets per person, which was equivalent to four liters of food per day.

Now the soldiers consume only one-third of the food they used to, which is still a real happy trouble.

"Your Majesty, the minister thinks that the imperial court should not regulate the price of grain, go with the flow, and rule by inaction!"

Although through land reform, there are no big landlords in the Ming Dynasty who own hundreds of thousands of acres of land, and it is impossible for a family to control tens of thousands of acres of land, even if the meritorious soldiers who have been rewarded for their military merits, the land they own is only a few thousand acres of land.

But the problem is that with the superiority of the Ming weapons and equipment, it turned out that decapitation became easier, just like not long ago, it was discovered that in a battle near Yangon on the sea, in the battle, because the Donghu people took the method of poisoning, so that a company of the Annam army lost its combat effectiveness.

The only five soldiers who were not poisoned were the cooks, who operated a hand-cranked machine gun and two rocket launchers, and wiped out more than 1,300 Donghu troops who came to attack in one fell swoo.

Five against more than 1,300 people, even if Li Yuanba is reborn, Xiang Yu is alive, and Lu Bu is alive, it is impossible to do it, but the problem is that this is a real battle, five cooking soldiers, consuming more than 680 machine gun bullets, plus 24 rocket shells, inflicting a devastating blow on more than 1,300 Burmese troops, of which more than 800 were directly killed.

More than 250 people were seriously injured, and more than 200 people were scared crazy.

According to the previous military merit system, if the two cooks in charge of operating the rocket artillery killed an average of 243 people each, according to the scale of the reward on the Indochina Peninsula, each person would be rewarded with 50 acres of land, and one person would be rewarded with 12,150 acres.

Sun Zhili and the cabinet once suggested that Cheng Shijie revise the standard of rewards for military merits, but Cheng Shijie refused, so why should the standards be reduced, is it because the enemy is poorly equipped and has weak combat effectiveness to revise the reward standards?

How can there be such a truth in the world?

Besides, rewarding meritorious soldiers with land in the Indochina Peninsula is conducive to boosting morale, but in Sun Zhili's view, the Ming Dynasty has now eliminated the gentry and landlords, and the future Ming Royal Army or Royal Navy officers will become the new landlords, although Chen Qiaoen, a cooking soldier, has created the highest record of beheadings in the Ming Royal Army, with 257 individual kills.

In fact, this is far from the top combat effectiveness of the Ming Dynasty, if it is the sharpshooter of the Ming Dynasty, there are many people who have a personal record of thirty or fifty kills, especially in the navy: the current highest record of the "Haizhou" battleship is 0 to fifty-two, this is not fifty-two people, but fifty-two ships of all sizes.

Because potential landlords have appeared, in order to prevent large-scale land annexation, Sun Zhili means that the price of grain will go with the flow, as long as farming is no longer as profitable as before, the Ming Dynasty will not find the situation of serious land annexation and poor livelihood of the people as in the previous dynasty.

Cheng Shijie shook his head and said: "The state must interfere, the grain is cheap and hurts the peasants, the peasants face the loess with their backs to the sky, work hard for a year, and grow grain at a loss, isn't that a big joke in the world?" ”

Such a funny thing is a relatively common phenomenon in later generations, and in many places there is a phenomenon that no one wants cabbage, radish, pepper, and even green onions, and you can buy cabbage for two cents and a penny in the supermarket, and chili peppers for eight cents a pound (the author's own experience) shows that farmers are actually losing money in farming.

"But the imperial court doesn't have that much money to buy these grains!"

"We're interfering, not just buying!"

Cheng Shijie said lightly: "We can guide the people to plant cash crops, such as flax, now our Daming textile industry is more and more developed, the production of cotton and linen is getting higher and higher, these produced cloth can be exported, can be dumped to Europe, so as to increase the income of farmers!" ”

Sun Zhili said: "If that's the case, it's okay!" ”

"Also, a lot of sake brewing, a lot of exports!"

Cheng Shijie said: "Don't Europeans like to drink beer? We can introduce hops, brew beer and wine in large quantities, and the state will subsidize and rebate the liquor court to reduce the price of alcohol. ”

Just when Cheng Shijie and Sun Zhili were discussing how to increase farmers' incomes, the cabinet received a report, and Anthony, the governor of the Dutch East India Company, requested to be attached!

"What the hell is this!" (End of chapter)