Chapter 142: Harvesting and Cutting

Author: Fat Bird Goes First

Chapter 142: Harvesting and Cutting

Su Ze thought for a moment and said, "Eunuch Hu, can I arrange for a few students to come to your place to help?"

"Help? Want to learn weaving and dyeing?"

Su Ze nodded and said, "I want the children in the health center to learn some crafts."

Eunuch Hu said nonchalantly: "What's the difficulty? Even if Mr. Su sends people over, the miscellaneous family will not hide their personal interests and give everything to everyone!"

Su Ze talked with Eunuch Hu about the method of extracting dyes. Both of them felt that they still had unfinished business and made an appointment to discuss it next time.

It was not safe to travel at night with a child like Lin Liangjun, so Su Ze stayed in the mine prison for another night before sending Lin Liangjun back to the guardhouse the next day.

These days, Lin Cainiang has taken on the work of the family temple.

Aunt Ninth, like my grandpa, gets tired easily as she gets older. Lin Cainiang has learned the rituals of temple celebrations. Now, except for large-scale rituals such as sacrificing sacrifices at the ancestral hall and other large-scale ceremonies, Lin Cainiang is competent.

But what is strange is that since Su Ze came to Changning Guards, the guardhouse has become increasingly wealthy, and after winning several battles, fewer and fewer guardsmen come to the family temple.

Aunt Ninth was not surprised by this. The more difficult the life was, the more people came to the family temple.

Now that the health center is getting better, who can come to the family temple to pray?

Children from every household take advantage of the good weather to sun salt on the beach. As long as the sky is clear, the beach is full of people.

Lin Liangjun, the little carrot head, has become the general contractor of the salt drying business. He distributed marked shells to the children participating in the salt drying to calculate their contribution to the salt drying. After handing over the salt, he will then follow the instructions.

Shell cents.

Even these shells have become currency among the children of Changningwei.

The scale of the textile workshop managed by Mr. Lu is getting bigger and bigger. Not only the widows in the nursing home, but also some old women also participate in the weaving workshop.

Mrs. Lu suggested that Su Ze place another loom in an abandoned barn and let nearby women work in the barn. Su Ze also asked craftsmen from the shipyard to make a few more looms.

Su Ze soon discovered that Lin Xianyang's sister-in-law was indeed very handy. Although she did not understand mechanical principles, she was self-taught and could repair most of the faults in the loom. Su Ze could only sigh that this is the wisdom of the working people.

ah.

Cotton from Beishan Village has begun to be supplied to Changningwei. Since the Jianxi River was dredged, Su Ze has planned several new irrigation facilities for Beishan Village and added dozens of acres of paddy fields for the Chen family.

Su Ze also improved the irrigation method. Cotton does not need a lot of water in all growth cycles. Su Ze re-planned Beishan Village and designed a movable sluice, which only opens the gate for irrigation when water is needed most, while also providing

Beishan Village saves irrigation water.

After Beishan Chen defeated the mining thieves in Changning Guard, he was even more firmly tied to Changning Guard's chariot.

These days, nothing is more important than feeling safe.

Sun Dianshi's village also sent people to ask Su Ze to help them organize the water conservancy settings. Su Ze looked at the water conservancy skill level 4, 380/400 experience points, and decided to go to Sun Dianshi's farm to gain experience after returning from the county.

The crew of the New World has been quarantined. Except for some crew members with bad records who were left on the island by Su Ze, the rest of the crew can go ashore and live under the supervision of the residents of the guard station.

Su Ze had promised to let them leave as long as the Japanese rebellion was over and the sea area was no longer blocked.

Such a promise made most of the crew settle down. Those who go out to sea to fight these days are, at best, adventurers, and at worst, those who cannot survive on land.

Malacca is not their hometown. Anyway, they can have enough food in Changningwei, and no one is clamoring to go home.

Lin Mojun became interested in maneuvering the Manila galleon. She hired several crew members who could speak Chinese and asked them for tips on how to maneuver the Spanish galleon.

The engraving craftsman Yao Chun went to the county seat, while his wife and children stayed in Changningwei.

Since Yao Chun left, Xiong Wu has been free again.

This guy didn't know how he got together with Father Pierre. One of them spoke French and the other spoke Chinese. They could still communicate, and they could even argue and use gestures with their hands. This surprised everyone in Changning Guard, but as long as

He was not promoting that theory in Changning Wei, and Su Ze didn't bother to care about him.

Captain Alfonso also understood that the New World would not come back. After careful consideration, he decided to start writing, imitating his idol Marco Polo, and recording his experiences in the East. In that case, he would be sued by the shipowner for bankruptcy.

Maybe you can enjoy your retirement by publishing travel notes.

After having this idea, Captain Alfonso wandered around Changning Guard with his sailing diary all day long.

He also fell in love with charcoal pens, which he thought were easier to write with. Captain Alfonso chatted with people at the guard station when he had nothing to do. He found that the name that appeared most often in his notebook was Suze.

Captain Alfonso was even more curious about Su Ze, a language genius. When he heard that Su Ze could also repair and supervise water conservancy facilities, and saw the Jianxi River that Su Ze had managed, Alfonso was extremely surprised.

Is this the scholar of the Ming Dynasty? Alfonso heard that Su Ze could also write plays, but it was a pity that his Chinese proficiency was limited to oral English and he could not understand Chinese characters, so he could not appreciate Su Ze's masterpieces.

Alfonso sighed again, are all the scholars in the Ming Dynasty so good? This Su Ze is simply the Leonardo da Vinci of the Ming Dynasty. Such a person is actually the lowest level scholar in the Ming Dynasty?

Now Alfonso began to believe what Marco Polo said, maybe the capital of the Ming Dynasty was really a city paved with gold!

Su Ze didn't know that his reputation in Alfonso's heart had risen from respect to reverence.

In mid-August, it was time for Su Ze to go to the city to study.

But this time the road to the county seat was very busy, with people pushing carts everywhere.

When he arrived at the gate of the city, Su Ze met Lin Qingyuan, an official in the household, and then he remembered that August was the day when summer grain was collected during the Ming Dynasty.

The grain collected by the Ming Dynasty was divided into two seasons, namely summer grain collection in August and autumn grain collection in October.

Before Zhang Juzheng's "One Whip Law", agricultural taxes were mainly collected in kind, that is, agricultural taxes were collected in kind. In Fujian, wheat was harvested during summer grains and rice was harvested during autumn grains.

Changning Guard is the military guard of the military camp, so there is no need to collect summer grain from the county government. Instead, part of the summer grain collected by the county government must be sent to Changning Guard, so the farmers in Changning Guard are busy in the fields these days, but Su Ze doesn't know

The collection of summer grain.

Taxation has been the top priority for evaluating local officials since ancient times. Although the southeastern region is under the threat of Japanese rebellion, as long as the imperial court does not issue an exemption, the collection of summer grain cannot be stopped.

As soon as he met Lin Qingyuan, he was filled with bitterness.

"Ms. Su, I don't know why I'm so unlucky. I drew lots and got the chance to go to those villages in the south of the city to collect taxes."

In the land surrounding Nanping County, the water network in the south is the densest, so the fields are naturally the best.

There is a saying in Nanping County that the south is noble and the east is rich, while the north is poor and the west is humble. The owners of the land in the south are either rich or noble, so Lin Qingyuan looked distressed.

Su Ze understood what he was thinking, and he wanted Su Ze to go to the county government to complain.

However, Su Ze was not prepared to get involved in the issue of grain requisition, which was a bottomless problem in the Ming Dynasty.

But in order to understand the contradictions among the people in Nanping County today, Su Ze still asked: "It is so difficult for those Zhuangzi over there to harvest food?"

"Not only is it difficult to collect, last year's autumn grain was not collected in full!"

Su Ze saw the tea shop next to the city gate and took Lin Qingyuan to the tea shop to explain in detail.

The tea doctor at the tea shop brought cool tea, and when he saw the soap-colored official uniform of Lin Qingyuan, he hid far away outside.

Lin Qingyuan smiled bitterly and said: "The people fear us like tigers. I don't know that there are times when we are not as good as dogs."

Lin Qingyuan expressed his bitterness: "Outside of Yuan Cai in the south of the city, his family has the most land in Zhuangzi, and his family's grain is also the most difficult to collect."

Su Ze held the tea and listened quietly, and Lin Qingyuan said:

"Cai Yuanwai was appointed to the official position by a member of the Sixth Ministry of Southern Zhili, and his family has the largest food shortage."

Many people think that the Ming Dynasty gave preferential treatment to scholars and exempted them from land tax in their names. In fact, this is wrong.

What officials with meritorious status can enjoy exemptions from are the chores, not taxes.

There were two main burdens on the people of the Ming Dynasty: one was land-based taxes, and the other was labor based on population.

Taxation is easy to understand. It means that the land produces food and is taxed in proportion.

Menial labor is an obligation based on population sharing, and people are sent to work for the government for free in proportion to the population.

These tasks include building city walls, repairing water conservancy projects, transporting grain, carrying sedan chairs for officials, etc.

Even working as a yamen servant for the government is actually a kind of handyman.

In the Ming Dynasty, the number of handymen was very heavy, and many people transferred their household registrations to the names of scholars with meritorious titles in order to be exempted from the chores.

As long as the land is registered with the government, land tax is inevitable.

But land tax is indispensable, but it is hard to say whether it can be collected.

For example, Cai Yuanwai, once served as a member of the Household Department of Nanzhili Province, and had many official friends. The yamen could not even enter the door of his house, let alone collect land taxes.

Many Zhuangzi in the south of the city saw that Cai Yuanwai did not pay the land tax, so they followed suit and resisted the tax. As a result, the tax collectors who went to the south of the city to collect taxes were unable to complete their tasks.

If you fail to complete the task, you will be reprimanded by the county boss, and you may even have to pay the back taxes out of your own pocket.

"Yuan Cai has so much land, how can he resist the tax?"

Lin Qingyuan had been arguing with the Cai family a lot during this time, and said tiredly: "Cai Yuanwai said that his family has not grown food in these years and cannot produce food to pay taxes."

Is this a valid reason?

Su Ze thought that if he rebelled, he would have to deal with these "village sages", so he asked:

"Then what has Mr. Cai been growing these past few years?"

"Woad is grown on several estates of the Cai family."

Woad? Isn’t woad just the root of isatis?
To be continued...