The Shiliang River in the east of Shiliang County, Dongyang Prefecture, winds and flows long. In the early morning of late October, the first frost had just fallen. Wheat fields were stretching along the bank. A small black boat cut through the river and dragged out long water marks.
There was no wind in the early morning, and there was a thin mist flowing on the river in the distance. The waves were as flat as a mirror. Lin Fu stood on the bow of the boat and looked at the large plum grove with slanting branches on the west bank. He subconsciously clenched his fists and walked forward.
After passing Meilin, you will reach Shanglin Village.
Although I can only live as Lin Fu in this world, and I still have the memory of Lin Fu in this world, the sense of alienation that is separated by a layer of veil can never be removed. When I see Shanglin Village just ahead, my heart can't help but tighten.
Air float.
"Brother Lin, you are so timid when you are close to home," Zhou Pu came out wearing an open shirt. When he saw Lin Fu standing on the bow of the ship, looking at Merlin from a distance, he subconsciously clenched his fists and said jokingly. Seeing Lin Fu turn around in confusion, he hurriedly
Explained, "I heard Cao Zi'ang said that these four words are like bird shit. Seeing Mr. Lin like this, I think these four words are very useful. Mr. Lin, don't look at Cao Zi'ang like this now. Back then, he and Mr. Qin were both bitter.
He was a scholar who fell into the trap of being a horse thief and dropped his book bag every day. In those days, if you could hear him scolding you, you would have been happy for a long time - isn't he just like us now? You can tell
How is he different from us?"
"I can't tell!" Lin Fu said with a smile, and he could still see obvious traces of being a scholar on Cao Zi'ang, "I just thought that Master Zhou was talking about Master Cao behind his back, and Master Cao and the others might also be talking about you, Master Zhou, behind your back.
"The hired boatman is rowing at the stern, and he is not afraid that he will hear what is said here.
"Let them chew their tongues, but they won't die." Zhou Pu said angrily.
Zhou Pu could not accompany Qin Chengzu, Fu Qinghe and the others to the sea because of seasickness. Before they parted, Cao Ziang and Wu Qi made fun of him. Zhou Pu was angry and had no choice but to do anything. He was always a bad mouthed person.
The young man Chen Enze had just practiced a set of boxing techniques taught to him by Zhou Pu on the bow of the boat. He wiped his sweat with a sweat towel and came over to Zhou Pu and Lin Fu. He saluted and asked Zhou Pu: "Master, how is my boxing practice?"
"
"You have to be sweaty and hearty after a punch to get started. You're still early! We're already at the front. You pack your things and we're ready to go ashore." Zhou Pu smiled and patted Chen Enze again.
He raised his head and said, "Also, when you get to the end of the field, you have to call me uncle! Be careful not to let anything slip."
"It's not too much of a contradiction to call me uncle or master. Can't uncle be master?" Chen Enze replied, then walked into the cabin to pack up and salute.
Lin Fu looked at the back of the young man Chen Enze getting into the cabin and smiled. The other boys followed Fu Qinghe and Qin Chengzu and the others went out to sea. Lin Fu only took Chen Enze with him. Although Lin Fu was also proficient in close combat and fighting.
, but still let Chen Enze learn basic boxing skills from Zhou Pu as his teacher, but in order to get Zhou Pu and Chen Enze to register in Shiliang County, he asked them to pretend to be his uncle and nephew who had escaped from the northern Hebei area.
In the past ten years, the Donghu people have pushed their battle line from the Bohai Sea to northern Hebei. Northern Hebei has fallen into enemy hands many times. Prefectures and counties have disappeared, and the people have been displaced and taken refuge in all directions. Moreover, the dialect of northern Hebei is very close to the official dialect. Zhou Pu and Chen
Enze pretended to be a refugee from Northern Hebei, and the government could not check it, so he could only be treated as a refugee. If Lin Fu used his identity as a judge as a guarantee to allow them to naturalize in Shiliang County, it would be impossible.
Zhou Pu's straightforward temper and bravery were beyond the reach of Qin Chengzu, Cao Zi'ang and others. According to Qin Chengzu's evaluation, only Fu Qinghe in his prime could be as brave as Zhou Pu.
Zhou Pu, who fought bravely, was not as murderous as Cao Ziang and others. What is even more rare is that he joined the army when he was young, left the army and became a horse thief. He fought more than a hundred times in more than 20 years, but nothing was left on his body.
He took off his armor and put on coarse clothes. It would be difficult for ordinary people to connect him with the famous Fuma bandits.
Past Meilin is Shanglin Village, and Shanglin Creek flows into Shiliang River about a mile ahead.
The water surface at the mouth of the river is vast, and boats are intertwined. The wharf is located on the west bank of Shiliang River and on the north bank of Shanglin River. The wharf is so crowded with boats that Lin Fu and the others managed to find space for the light boat they hired to squeeze in and dock.
The dock yard used to be a row of shops with blue bricks and black tiles. The shop street is three to four hundred meters long. Behind the shops are rows of roof ridges. I don’t know how many are hidden in the courtyard. A rammed earth avenue extends from the end of the stone street. Over there
It is the direction of Shiliang County.
Every shop is open, breakfast shop, restaurant, medical shop, drug shop, gold and silver shop, pawn shop, tea shop, warehouse, inn, if you count them carefully, there are more than a hundred. In addition to the shop street in front of you,
You can also see that there are alleys extending deep inside, and the streets are lined with various selling stalls. The shop streets and in front of the pier are full of people who get up early from all over the country to go to the market, as well as sailing merchants or porters working hard on the pier.
, there were also women in red and green, shouting and braying of pack horses, mules and donkeys, making it very lively.
The boatman jumped on the shore to tie the mooring rope, and Lin Fu followed him to help and settled the ship's payment to him. Zhou Pu jumped on the shore and looked at the prosperity in front of him, smacking his lips and shouting: "Where is this still a village? There are no county governments in the counties in Huaishang.
It’s so lively!” He jumped onto the pier and realized that he had said the wrong thing. He slapped his mouth and said, “I can’t talk about Huai anymore, and I have to change my name to Brother Lin and call him master!”
Lin Fu settled the ship fare and came over and said with a smile: "It's awkward for you to shout, and it sounds even more awkward to me - I'm going to make up something to tell my tribe later that you saved my life, so I think you'd better call me
I, Brother Lin, there is nothing wrong with me calling you Brother Zhou instead!"
"I think it's okay." Zhou Pu agreed without hesitation. Although he was very convinced by Lin Fu, he was really not used to opening his mouth and keeping his mouth shut. He also felt that there was no need to strictly follow the details of Qin Chengzu's plan.
Do.
Chen Enze also came ashore with a package and was surprised by the prosperity of Shanglin Village. He was much more thoughtful than Zhou Pu. He lowered his voice and exclaimed in Lin Fu's ear: "The streets in Chongzhou County are so lively!
"
Chongzhou has a short history of becoming a land. The current location of Chongzhou County has been a tidal flat for more than two hundred years, and land reclamation is not sufficient. Compared with big cities such as Hailing, Weiyang, Jiangning, and Pingjiang, it is not prosperous. Lin Fu smiled and said
Zhou Pu and Chen Enze introduced the history of Shanglin Village: "There are some reasons why Shanglin Village can be so lively..."
The Lin family is considered a large clan in Dongyang Prefecture, and the Lin family's ancestral temple is built in Shanglin Village. However, the prosperity of Shanglin Village can be attributed to Lin Dengfu, the previous head of the Lin family.
When Lin Dengfu served as the Minister of Industry in Jiangning, the Jiangdong Xuanfu Envoy decided to make great efforts to dredge the Shiliang River, making the Shiliang River connected to Hongzepu the main waterway connecting the Huaihe River and the Yangtze River in Dongyang Prefecture. The original Shiliang River started from Shiliang River.
Bypassing outside the city of Liang County, Lin Dengfu took advantage of his position in the Jiangning Ministry of Industry and cleverly made the straightened Shiliang River pass through Shangcunlin when dredging the Shiliang River.
Shiliang County is where the north and the south meet. In the old days, it was prosperous because of the river. Although the prosperity of the official market is far from that of Jiangning City, it is incomparable to Dongyang Fucheng. After the river was straightened, the official market of Shiliang County became
Gradually declining, the grass market in Shangcunlin (a market formed by spontaneous gatherings of people) took advantage of the situation to rise. The Lin family joined forces with several other large clans in Shiliang County to prevent Shiliang County from setting up an inspection department in Shangcunlin to collect taxes.
The city tax, the city tax on the grass market fell into the pockets of the local wealthy families headed by the Lin family.
Zhou Pu opened his eyes wide, licked his lips and said: "They say horse thieves are great at robbing money. I think these rich people are much more ferocious than horse thieves, but they only steal money without blood!"
"It's not bloodless," Lin Fu said. "The grass market was developed in a place with convenient traffic. There was no city, and it was protected by officers and soldiers. It was often attacked by bandits. In the early years, the grass market in Shanglin Village was often attacked by bandits. Later, the Lin family and several other companies jointly funded
By recruiting village warriors to protect the village, the banditry in the grass market in Shanglin Village has been basically eliminated. The township camp in Shanglin Village has suppressed bandits several times, and its reputation has shocked Dongyang Prefecture. However, the banditry in other grass markets along the Shiliang River has become even more serious.
It’s serious… This is also the reason why we didn’t see Youcao Market in other places after entering Dongyang Prefecture.”
Zhou Pu smacked his lips for a long time, really not knowing how to evaluate it. After a while, he smiled and said: "Brother Lin is also a member of the Lin family. These words are really merciless."
Even the previous Lin Fu didn't have much affection for the Lin family. Lin Fu smiled and said: "Be honest, what else can you say in front of Brother Zhou?"
Zhou Pu looked at a group of rural warriors patrolling at the end of the stone street. He saw that their equipment was much better than the sword archers in ordinary counties. He followed the direction of Lin Fu's finger and saw two fast boats parked at the dock.
Boat, I want to smack my lips again out of habit.
These days, there is no peace everywhere, the town army is destroyed, and the number of sword archers under the direct jurisdiction of each prefecture and county is limited. It is difficult to protect the vast countryside, so the local government recruits rural braves to protect themselves, also known as rural soldiers. Planning
The funds for the Xiangyong were all raised by the private sector, and they were nominally under the command of the military and horse departments of each prefecture, but in fact they were controlled by the local tycoons.
Zhou Pu has traveled to many places in his life, and has seen many rural soldiers and warriors. In most places, the rural soldiers are busy farming, practicing in their spare time, and gathering to resist or pursue bandits when they encounter them, like in Shanglin Village.
It is very rare to set up a camp with five hundred rural soldiers. Although Zhou Pu is not good at economics, he still knows how much money it costs to raise more than five hundred well-equipped and well-trained rural soldiers every year. This shows that the grass market
How great is the benefit.
This dynasty set the city tax for merchants at a ratio of 1 in 30, and the official city collected city tax at a ratio of 1 in 30. In addition, with tax collectors' exploitation and the government's additional allocation to merchants, the actual taxes borne by merchants in the official city were
There is far no industry higher than the ratio of one in thirty.
The grass market is a private market that is not officially recognized by the government. The reason why the grass market can arise is that it is located in a place with convenient transportation, which facilitates the collection and circulation of products from various places. On the other hand, the rural gentry who control the grass market collect city taxes.
Most of the ratio is less than 30:1. In this case, even if it does not receive much strong protection from the government and is often plundered by official bandits, the private grass market still thrives.
Shanglin Village is located at the fork of Shiliang River and Shanglin River, with north-south canals. The local tycoons headed by the Lin family deliberately run the village and recruited local braves to protect the market. In other places, grass markets are held every ten days or every five days.
In the more prosperous ones, there is either a market every three days, or a market every other day. Boats travel from north to south at the Shanglin Village Ferry, and vehicles and horses cross each other inside and outside the county. The city is a city day and night, forming a lively and prosperous market town that is not comparable to ordinary county towns.
Even if the city tax collected from merchants is lower than the official ratio of 1 in 30, rural warriors must be raised, and part of the city tax revenue must be paid to the government symbolically in the form of a "tax package" - even if
In this way, the Lin family's annual dividends from the grass market in Shanglin Village are several times more than the Lin family's land rent. Although the Lin family is among the top ten big landowners in Dongyang Prefecture, the land rent of 400 hectares of fertile land in good years is only four.
In addition to more than a thousand taels of silver, the Lin family also has warehouses, workshops and other profit-making businesses in Shiliang County.
"...Lin...Lin Fu!"
Lin Fu and Zhou Pu stood side by side in front of the pier and lamented the prosperity of Shanglin Village Ferry. A big calloused hand put on his shoulder and he shouted in surprise.