Episode 165: The Prisoner of Yingtai

The empty streets, closed doors and windows along the street, the soldiers of the Guard Division patrolling with guns and live ammunition, and the solid heavy tanks guarding the intersection have indeed given Guangwu and the hundreds of high-ranking and powerful families at the top of the Qing Dynasty pyramid. However, the martial law over the past few days has caused the economy in Beijing to collapse. People are not allowed to go out and cannot make a living on their own. The surplus food at home is exhausted and they cannot go out to buy it. The entire Beijing city is on the verge of man-made famine.

Guangwu's mind is very clear. He knows that the sense of security is a sense of security. Although it is safe at the moment, it is only temporary. Just because of the "not allowing the people to go out to the streets", it will be difficult to implement it for a long time. What has been earned in the past ten days is that Beijing has become a boiler on the verge of explosion. Not to mention anything else, in a few days, when most families are exhausted from their surplus food and face starvation, even machine gun tanks cannot stop the mob from rushing to the streets.

At this critical moment, even the close ministers who usually dared not give advice to him were now bold and said to him in a roundabout way: This is not a solution. Guangwu himself fully understood. He discussed with several close ministers and decided to take temporary and gradual relaxation measures to at least prevent the people of Beijing from taking risks due to hunger.

Therefore, on the front page of the "Da Qing Daily" on the morning of the 12th, the full version of Emperor Guangwu's latest "Love the People and the Politics" was published: From now on, all families who meet the conditions can go out to buy vegetables with their ID number!

The detailed regulations are as follows: Every Han citizen can go to the specified vegetable market at the date corresponding to the last digit of his ID card, and freely purchase the specified grain, oil and vegetables at the specified price at the specified price. For example, Zhang San's ID card number grouped with a digit of "7", then from now on, he can go out to purchase three days on the 7th, 17th and 27th of each month. Of course, it must be within the specified time period. Generally, it cannot exceed one hour.

Manchu citizens in Beijing only need to line up "odd and even numbers" to go out. That is, the last digit of the ID number is an odd number, so they can go out on the street to purchase on the odd date. If the even number is an even number, go out on the even date.

Foreigners in Beijing are not within the scope of martial law. As long as they are foreigners, they can travel freely without restrictions.

...

Several small vegetable markets scattered throughout Beijing have now been almost closed. Only four largest vegetable markets are left, controlled by the official, purchased and sold at the official price.

Guangwu beat two birds with one stone. On the one hand, he maintained the basic state of martial law, and on the other hand, he could also plunder the gold and silver of the people to the greatest extent. Now, Guangwu no longer has hope for protecting the Qing Dynasty's foundation, and he is already planning to go out to exile. Now, he wants to plunder the entire Qing Dynasty's wealth as much as possible and then transfer it overseas.

The maximum plunder of the people is also the common need of the officials below. Although they do not have to go into exile overseas like Guangwu, Nanming promised that as long as they voluntarily surrendered, they would guarantee the vested interests of the officials of the Qing Dynasty. Then it would be a little more to make. Now that Nanming is coming, it would be impossible to make any profit.

The Qing Daily was stuffed into the newspaper box of every house as usual. The propaganda car on the street was also slowly moving, and the loudspeaker played the Emperor's "love the people and dominate the people". In addition to the content itself, there were also several letters from "foreign friends" who were stamped in Beijing, all of which were enthusiastically praised His Majesty's great measures to love the people. They said with envy that even in Europe and the United States, it was very rare that people could still be allowed to take to the streets under martial law. "Foreign friends" advised the Qing people 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 out to buy vegetables? And as they saw with their own eyes, the people of the Southern Ming Dynasty could only starve to death in this situation... It was His Majesty Emperor Guangwu who saved the people of the whole city...

The people in Beijing were not very fond of this "Da Qing Daily". It often took several days to open the newspaper box, took out a large stack of newspapers, and threw it there. It should be pasted on the windows and wiped the butts. Anyway, people who are not sick will not go to see it. The police who deliver the newspaper don't care. Anyway, they just need to pay the money. But today, the loudspeakers on the street kept broadcasting into the windows, as if they were talking about the newspaper. At this moment, the newspapers that had been accumulated in the newspaper box for many days were taken out and looked through.

The people of Beijing who were locked up at home for more than ten days and were about to lose food, seemed to be a long drought and the whole city was filled with joy. Many elderly people could not suppress their excitement and knelt down directly at home in the direction of the palace, kowtowed tremblingly, saying, "Long live my emperor." Many people shouted out from the window, "Long live my emperor."

Of course, most of the elderly have true feelings. It is unknown how many of them are arranged to show foreigners on the street.

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

"Give me a rebuild", "don't forget to dig wells when you eat water", "kill my emperor, thank the court", "go buy vegetables with a grateful heart", "the state owns Guangwu, life is not hard", "eat meat and fish, all depends on the Qing Dynasty"...

On the street, scattered foreigners and foreign journalists stood by the roadside, looking at this team with complex eyes. Foreign journalists’ photos are strictly regulated. Others cannot be taken, but they can only take a team with thank-you banners. If they are not supposed to be taken, a "rogue" will surely rush out from the side and snatch their cameras.

...

Citizens from all walks of life gradually entered four major vegetable markets. There are ten kinds of products in the vegetable market: onion, ginger, garlic, cabbage, white flour, corn flour, sorghum noodles, salt, soybean oil, honeycomb coal. There are no other ones. And the prices are also set by the government: two kilograms of corn flour, seven kilograms of white flour, five cents of cabbage, one kilograms of salt, two kilograms of soybean oil.

Of course, the few yuan and some cents mentioned here refer to Qingyang, which is silver dollars. "One yuan" is the type of silver dollar with seven cents and four cents. "One dime" refers to a silver nugget, which is a small silver dollar, and ten hair nuggets are equal to a piece of ocean. Moreover, the officials and businessmen in the vegetable market clearly stipulate that they do not collect paper money, but only oceans are collected.

The common people who just arrived here happily are now complaining. Officials and businessmen do not accept banknotes, which is as expected, but since they use the real ocean, it is still so high - a pound of soybean oil is equivalent to the living expenses of the whole family for a month.

In the past year, the Mint of the Capital has been working hard to print banknotes day and night, and the banknotes of Qingyang have been depreciating, and the prices of food, clothing, housing and transportation have soared. But if the price is calculated based on the current foreign price, the increase will be very limited. Many places have begun to refuse to accept banknotes, especially major monopoly officials and businessmen. Although they still accept banknotes in name only, ordinary people without backgrounds have no ability to buy things from official and businessmen with paper money, they have to take them to the banknotes. Moreover, when officials and businessmen are looking for money, if the buyer is a commoner, they will definitely find papernotes, and it will not be enough not to collect them.

Because after Guangwu came to power, he felt that the foundation was unstable and feared that the ruling machine below would be unstable and unfaithful to himself. So in addition to the big spies, he semi-publicly acquiesced to sell official positions and titles, and used corruption to win over military and political officials, he also used a last resort for the major dictators to maintain their rule: by printing money, plundering wealth from the people, and then subsidizing it to the ruling class.

The specific method is to print more money, and then give these money to government officials, military and police systems and other ruling classes in various terms. When the ruling class spends these money, these large amounts of money will flow into the market, depreciating the banknotes, and at the same time raise the prices of all walks of life. However, at this time, the ruling class's money has been spent, and they have returned real material wealth, and they only make money but not lose money. The losses will be passed on to the lower class people. Because the money in the hands of the people will depreciate at the same time, and they get nothing. This process is equivalent to taking money directly from the pockets of the people and then distributing it to the ruling class, so that the wealth of the whole society will quickly concentrate the ruling class. The only difference between robbing is that the trick of "currency depreciation" is used in the middle. The people who lack information will only blame this on "their own life is not good" and "their own ability".

...

On the west side of the Forbidden City in Beijing, there are three connected royal gardens surrounding the lake from north to south: North Sea, Central Sea, and South Sea. Among them, there is a circular island in the center of the lake in the South Sea. This island is very small, with a diameter of only more than 100 meters. The island is green and has several palaces in the middle. In later generations, this island was famous - Yingtai.

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

But just after Guangwu came to power, a special "guest" lived in Yingtai. The identity of this "guest" was not inferior to that of Emperor Guangxu. He was the deposed Emperor Jiade and the current "Duke of Qing".

After the Guangwu coup, the former emperor Jiade disappeared from the perspective of the court and the country. Whether it was the two words "Jiade" or the three words "Qingguo Duke", they all became one of the many prohibited words in the Qing Dynasty, sucked into a black hole, completely disappeared from radio, prints, and people's public discussions. Many people speculated that the late emperor had probably been killed.

But in fact, Guangwu did not directly kill Jiade. He just secretly imprisoned Jiade on Yingtai. It is not a coincidence that Cixi and Guangwu in this time and space both chose Yingtai. As an important place for imprisonment, Yingtai does have unique conditions. First of all, there is a lake about 100 meters on all sides, and the north side of the nearest to the shore. On the other side of the east and south sides, the lake is more than 200 meters wide. You have to take a boat to enter and exit. In addition, the area of ​​Yingtai is just right, more than 10,000 square meters, which can not only arrange necessary personnel and guards, but also not be too large to monitor. The most important thing is that Yingtai is in the royal garden of the South China Sea, with strict security and lack of safety. Moreover, the palace next door is the palace, and those who hold power in the palace can grasp the situation of Yingtai prisoners at any time.

Since Guangwu took office, the entire Nanhai garden has been closed by heavy troops. The small circular island in the center of the lake has become the most mysterious forbidden area. The entire Qing Empire allowed no more than thirty people to step onto Yingtai. The surrounding imperial guards guarded it as if they were facing a great enemy, but the officers and soldiers held guns and were looking at the small island surrounded by green trees all day long, but they didn't know why they had to guard this island and what happened on the island.

...

A solid and low concrete house was built in the center of Yingtai. There were no windows and only a dark and faint door hole, like a bunker, which was very inconsistent with the jade carved railings around it. There was a thick and small iron door on the door hole, locking very strongly.

At the door, two tall soldiers had cold faces and were guarding both sides. There was a small window on the iron door, which contained several thick steel bars. In February, the cold wind from Beijing squirted in. The pungent smell inside was emitted from time to time, and sometimes accompanied by a few weak coughs.

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

——Duke Qingguo Mansion.
Chapter completed!