After Emperor Chongzhen approved the construction of the city, the construction of the new city officially began, and the construction soldiers immediately began to be busy.

In order to bake more bricks as quickly as possible, Zhu Cixiang added ten brick-burning caves nearby. The brick-burning construction soldiers and refugees were also divided into two shifts, working day and night.

Building a city requires a lot of manpower, and there is no shortage of manpower here. After a period of recovery, the original color on the faces of the refugees has turned a little rosy.

Zhu Cixiang planned to use work as relief, so that all the refugees would work to build the city wall, and those who did not work would not have food to eat. But then he thought about it, even if some lazy people did not work, could they really not give them food?

Not to mention that the passive idleness of these lazy people will affect other people and lead the good atmosphere astray. What Zhu Cixiang is more worried about is that some people secretly incite the emotions of refugees and resist the imperial court. After all, not all people are human beings.

In the end, Zhu Cixiang decided to do it all on his own free will. Those who are willing to participate in the construction of the city will have three meals a day instead of the original two. The additional meal will also include three ounces of meat, and they will have clean clothes to wear. They will also have a residence in the new city after the city is built.

However, people who did not participate in the construction of the city will not have the right to settle in the new city in the future.

High-intensity labor consumes a lot of rice and meat, so Zhu Cihong gave extra meals and meat to those who were willing to build the city, just because he was afraid that some people would suffer from indigestion and collapse.

At present, Zhu Cihong is not short of money. The more than one million taels of silver he got from the wealthy businessmen in the capital is enough for him to squander. As for the rest, he will naturally not hand it over and will use it to develop his own power.

Seeing such good treatment, many people are willing to participate in city construction. Chinese people are still industrious in nature. They want to build homes with their own hands and gain survival and dignity through their own work.

Of course, the most indispensable thing in the world is people who love to eat and are lazy. There are also many people who feel that they have to eat and drink every day, so why do they have to do any work and have no money? Besides, after the new city is built, they can just go in and build a shack.

The civil servants sent by Shuntian Prefecture quickly counted the population. There were a total of 120,000 refugees and beggars here. There were more than 70,000 men, including more than 40,000 young men. In addition, there were more than 5,000 orphans under the age of 15.

, boys account for the majority.

There are nearly 100,000 people willing to participate in the city's construction, including women, and each person will be issued a wooden sign with their name written on it as an identity document for future settlement.

Those who were able to travel thousands of miles to the capital from places like Shaanxi and Henan naturally suffered a lot along the way. Most of the people who were able to survive the hunger were men, and those women and children were basically the family members of these men.

Not all the refugees rushed to the capital. Most of them went to live in other places that were finally stable on the way, and some died on the way. Many places were poor and suffered from disasters all year round and were unwilling to accept the refugees. When the government saw the refugees, they came.

, the city gate was closed early.

These refugees could only continue heading north eagerly, thinking that the capital city was at the feet of the emperor, and the emperor absolutely could not close the city gates to keep them out. Therefore, many people arduously headed north with a glimmer of hope, and that is why the situation in front of them happened.

Zhu Cixiang hired professional people to detect the terrain, and finally selected the location of the new city a few miles away from the porridge factory. He built a city with a circumference of fifty miles, with a budget of 100,000 taels of silver. It was equivalent to half the size of Beijing.

It can accommodate a population of four to five million.

Although it is half the size of Beijing City, if it is built, it will definitely not be comparable to Beijing City. Zhu Cixiang’s early planning was only for city walls, roads within the city, and simple residential buildings. As for other things, it will take time to build them.

Slow development.

Zhu Cixi ordered people to move most of the porridge factories to the area where the city was built, leaving only ten porridge factories in place to provide food for those who did not want to build the city. The new porridge factories were provided with meat every day, and temporary buildings were also built around them.

Barracks made of bricks and tiles were built for these people to live in.

On the second day after settling in, under the leadership of the construction soldiers, we began to get busy. Their main job was to build the city wall, and the refugees helped move bricks, transport wood and thousand-year-old mud.

On the foundation of the new city, there are a large number of men and women carrying dustpans and baskets running back and forth carrying earth. Some construction soldiers are directing the men to stir the thousand-year-old mud, and some construction soldiers are directing the men to burn the kilns and move bricks.

One hundred thousand people worked together to build the city, and the scene was lively and spectacular.

According to the planning and calculations of Zhu Cixiang and the construction soldiers, the new city had a circumference of fifty miles, a city wall ten meters high, and a city foundation five meters thick. There was a city gate on each side, a tower on the gate, an urn outside, and a moat to protect the city.

Beijing is surrounded by many cities, including Changping in the north, Shunyi in the northeast, Tongzhou in the east, Daxing in the south, Wanping in the west, and Fangshan Liangxiang in the southwest. There are cities guarding in all directions, except in the southeast, which is why Chongzhen

The reason why the emperor and the cabinet approved Zhu Cixiang to build the city in this direction.

The streets and alleys in the new city are paved with gravel and flattened manually. Drainage ditches are set up on both sides, paved with exposed bricks and reinforced with Chitose mud. In this way, it will be easy to drain when it rains, and there will be no risk of rainwater logging.

At the same time, a well was built at five locations in the east, west, south, north and middle of the new city for residents to drink.

Some land in the city is used to build barracks, which are connected together, similar to shops in later generations. If residents do not want to live in barracks in the future, they can buy land from the new city government and build their own houses on the divided plots.

With the design of Zhu Cixiang and the construction soldiers, the refugees only need to work hard. Zhu Cixiang and others estimate that it will take about two or three months to build the new city. Mainly because there are too many people, it will be faster than ordinary city construction.

Too much.

Zhu Cixi also opened up a piece of land suitable for farming not far from the new city and distributed it to these refugees on a lease basis, allowing them to truly settle down in the new city.

If there is no land and no jobs, they will starve to death sooner or later, and the refugee problem will not be completely solved.

With the crown prince settling in and building his own home, although the daily work is very heavy, everyone is very motivated and everyone's face is full of happiness.

During this period, Zhu Cixi reported to Emperor Chongzhen, requesting that the people of the new city be exempted from taxes for two years, and that land taxes be collected from the third year, and all the land taxes collected were paid into internal funds.

Originally, the land in Xincheng was recorded in the Shuntian Mansion as the imperial estate of Zhu Cihong as the crown prince. In the Ming Dynasty, the emperor, the empress dowager, and the crown prince all had their own imperial estates, and the income was managed by the eunuchs and freely controlled by the palace.

However, Zhu Cixiang did not intend to ask for these land gifts, and directly gave the benefits to Chongzhen. Of course, he did not give them in vain, and also took the opportunity to make some requests, hoping that the emperor could make it easier for him in terms of money, such as the future of Xincheng

Official appointments are recommended by him with priority.

Zhu Cihong was worried that the new city would be governed by a group of corrupt officials. It would not be long before land annexation and multi-party taxation would still occur, and new refugees would appear again. His original intention of establishing the new city would become meaningless.
Chapter completed!