1195,Beicheng has become prosperous without realizing it.
The next day was another day for the platform to listen to political affairs. Chongzhen was very diligent and had to listen to political affairs almost every two days.
Because it is a morning court, it starts at around five o'clock in the morning in the summer and at around seven o'clock in the morning in the winter. Basically, the emperor is already sitting there at dawn. How dare the ministers be late.
Many of them live in Nancheng. Living in Beijing has been difficult since ancient times. Not only is rice expensive, but housing prices are also very high. Many people rent houses in Nancheng just to get a bargain.
I have to go to court in the morning and have to get up in the middle of the night. It would be a lie to say that the feeling is not uncomfortable.
In the square in front of Qianqing Gate, there is a breakfast stall made by the eunuchs. They can eat breakfast here. They can also eat instant noodles. Hot water is provided here.
There are now more than 20 types of instant noodles, and the price has dropped from one tael of silver to five cents a bowl. After all, there are too many new foods now. The sales of instant noodles have also increased dozens of times.
After all, the royal family has already started having breakfast, and the imperial kitchen has to get up early to cook anyway, so it is better to let the ministers have a place to eat. For the tight finances, a few thousand taels a year is not a huge amount of income.
Precisely because it was very hard to get up in the middle of the night and rush to Beicheng in the morning. Therefore, Yang Fan developed a large number of six- and seven-story unit building residential complexes outside Di'anmen.
Buildings in this kind of community occupy less space and have lower unit prices. After all, the biggest cost of a house is the price of land.
The price of a three-bedroom apartment is only about a hundred taels of silver. If you don't have enough money, you can also get a loan. This makes it affordable for many middle- and lower-class officials. So sales are very hot.
Many officials of third rank and above also found an advantage. It was just outside the north gate of the imperial city, so close to the imperial court. No matter what era, the value of a house is always determined by location, location, location.
Transportation here in Beicheng is inconvenient, and the poorest people in the capital live here.
The capital emphasizes the rich in the east, the rich in the west, the noble in the south, the poor in the north, and the humble in the north. The people in the east city are rich businessmen. Most of the people in the west city are nobles and high-ranking civil servants. Most of the people in the south city are poor, and there are many people who work as drivers and sell pulp. There are many family members of eunuchs in the north city. , slums where untouchables and some of the lowest level coolies gather.
When Yang Fan developed Huangcheng North Street, he first built roads and then demolished them on a large scale. He moved the poor to the newly developed Tongzilou community in Nancheng. He also prioritized the recruitment and resettlement of workers.
The roads here have been repaired, and facilities such as sewers and street lights have also been added. In addition, public transportation facilities, police officers patrolling the streets, street cleaning personnel, supporting commercial streets, leisure and entertainment facilities, bustling dining streets, etc. directly transform Beicheng into It has become the most comfortable high-end residential area in Beijing.
Moreover, the community here is as green as a garden, with lakes, rockeries, pavilions and landscaping. The environment is beautiful.
In particular, it is equipped with water supply, central heating in winter, plate glass doors and windows, indoor dry and wet toilets and shower rooms, a kerosene stove, a kitchen with cabinets and stone decoration, etc. It is really comfortable to live here.
The community still has 12-hour security patrols and access checks, and high barbed wire walls. Safety is not to mention.
The community is also equipped with a small supermarket and shops along the street outside. Life is also very convenient. In addition, the road cement is hardened and the road sewer drainage system will never cause waterlogging in heavy rains.
Outside the gate of the community, there are even horse-drawn carriage taxis and single-car steam engine rail buses. It is easy to go anywhere. The quality of life has simply reached the top in this era.
By comparison, several courtyards are not very nice. After all, people still like animals to enjoy a comfortable life.
Especially on Di'anmenwai Street, the newly built theaters, sports venues, libraries, etc. have enriched cultural life. As a result, many officials of third rank or above have spent huge sums of money to buy villas and small single-family buildings here.
In this era, large families lived together. Some families directly bought an entire building in the community and enclosed it with a wall for the whole family to live in.
Some large families from out of town even put forward the request to customize a single-family house because their children have been in Beijing for a long time.
Therefore, when I go to work every day, the flow of people to the court appears in two directions. Some are from Nancheng and enter through Zhengyang Gate. The other part enters the Imperial City from Di'anmen and then enters the Forbidden City from Dong'anmen.
Nowadays, anyone who does not own a new-style house on Huangcheng North Street would be embarrassed to say hello to others.
Compared with courtyard houses with low land utilization rates, the unit price of these new-style buildings is actually very expensive.
But the living experience here is also very good. Yang Fan can control the area sold, causing the price to rise slowly. It gives people a feeling that the value of the property will increase after buying it.
Many officials, relatives of the emperor, eunuchs, and military generals have privately invested their money in real estate projects on the North Street of the Imperial City. Not only has the price of these houses been rising slowly, they can also be rented to young officials and those studying in Beijing to prepare for exams.
Students taking the imperial examination.
In this era, those who can study and can take up martial arts are all children of wealthy families.
There are too many rich people in the capital. Although the source of their money is not clear, the amount of money is staggering.
Yang Fan's idea was to find a way to take out their money and recirculate it on the market. This would cure the serious problem of hoarding silver in the Ming Dynasty. Deflation is the biggest problem in the Ming Dynasty. It directly led to financial bankruptcy.
Yang Fan's large-scale renovation of the old city has provided hundreds of thousands of job opportunities to the poor in the capital.
From the first year of Chongzhen, Yang Fan began to develop North Street. The huge scale of the project required a huge number of laborers. This enabled almost all of them to find jobs.
In addition to those building railways and roads outside the city, hundreds of thousands of people were here in Yang Fan, receiving food and wages. In almost two years, a class of workers was created.
Their presence has stimulated consumption.
After all, their families also need to buy firewood, rice, oil, salt, sauce, vinegar, tea, and make clothes and bedding. After saving enough money, they plan to buy a tube building and a small residential building in Nancheng.
With some money, the demand for education has also increased. They believe that their children should go to school and learn some common words and arithmetic. The next generation can also find a good job that does not require hard labor.
Therefore, with the development of the consumer market, the military households, which accounted for one third of the population in the capital, also had job opportunities.
They delivered briquettes and drove donkey carts from outside the city into the city to sell vegetables. Women washed and mended clothes, did needlework, and made clothes and bedding for them.
In the face of a severe drought, a large amount of land in North China's rural areas became extinct, and disaster victims were everywhere, the capital city actually appeared to be prosperous.
Many of the various products that Yang Fan launched in department stores and supermarkets were not available in this era. They were all sold as luxury goods at high prices. For example, thermos bottles, Stirling engine fans driven by kerosene lamps, four-wheeled light carriages, and down jackets,
Various candies, fine horses from the prairie, prairie beef approved by the emperor for sale...
The civil servants and nobles of the Ming Dynasty used all the money they could to collect money to buy a large amount of luxury goods. They had no resistance to these luxury goods.
People often move from frugality to luxury. Once you get used to these material enjoyments, it is difficult to quit.
A steady stream of money flowed from their hands to Yang Fan's. Yang Fan used the money to open factories, invest in education and scientific research, and carry out large-scale infrastructure construction to increase employment opportunities for the people in the capital and surrounding areas.
When this money comes into the hands of the people, they will spend it again to buy various daily necessities for household expenses, save money to buy a house, or open a small business.
The capital has almost become a unique place in the North. There are two completely different worlds inside and outside the city walls.
Chongzhen often paid private visits incognito, taking his concubines out of the palace to go around Beicheng, and learn about the people's livelihood. He was surprised to find that, unknowingly, Beicheng had become the most prosperous area in the capital.
