After the sheds outside the city were set up, many people came to try queuing up. When they saw that there was indeed a lot of rice piled up in the sheds, they finally believed that the notice at the front desk about donating rice was not a lie.
Song Wan asked Song Qi to buy ordinary rice. Even so, many ordinary people could only eat it a few times a year.
Song Qi ran all over the city and the rice shops in the nearby towns before he could gather enough.
A sack of gold could be exchanged for several bags of silver, which could buy a lot of rice. Song Wan asked Song Qi to spend half of the silver to buy rice, and exchange the other half for copper coins, one hundred coins per string, and put two strings in each bag of rice. Later, the copper coins were not enough, so Song Wan took out another small bag of silver and asked Song Qi to exchange it again.
A bag of rice was not much, weighing less than two kilograms in modern terms. Regulations stipulated that only ordinary farmers and beggars could receive it, and each household could only receive one portion. In order to prevent people from receiving rice again and again and officials from taking advantage of the situation and pretending to be poor beggars to receive rice, Song Wan directly asked Wei Lin to use his mouth to broadcast in real time what happened to Li Shi in front of the Wei Mansion that day to intimidate those who came to receive rice.
People here believe in karma, so after using this trick, at least the officials and their families would not dare to come again. As for ordinary people, Song Wan only used one trick, which was to tell them that the quota was fixed. If one household took one more share, then another household would not get any.
As long as one household did not get it, the rest of the households that did get it would have to return it intact. Everyone worked hard all year round just to have enough food and clothing. With the special conditions that Song Wan mentioned, even if there were families who really wanted to get an extra share, they would give up the idea immediately.
Villagers even supervised each other to ensure that only one person from each household came to queue.
If such a bag of rice is stored properly until the New Year, it will be enough for the family to have several meals of delicious rice porridge. You know, they can only drink porridge made from pure rice once a year.
Song Wan was very satisfied with this. Wei Lin had been shouting for the whole morning and his voice was hoarse, so he asked for someone else to come in the afternoon.
Song Qi thought he was too busy and rejected his request.
Wei Lin was dissatisfied. He pointed at the short man next to Song Qi and asked, "Why can he share the rice with you, but I can't?"
Song Qi glanced at Niu Tiedan beside him, then said to Wei Lin, "Because this is the order of the eldest lady, I said, do you still want to eat meat tonight? There are so many things to do."
Wei Lin recalled the bowl of braised pork he had yesterday and swallowed his saliva involuntarily. He replied unconvincingly, "I want to eat."
Song Qi said without even looking up, "If you want to eat, just keep opening your mouth and shouting."
Wei Lin: “…Oh.”
There were tens of thousands of households in all the villages and towns inside and outside the city. It took six or seven days to distribute all the rice. After the rice was distributed to the last household, no one left because they wanted to know who the kind-hearted person was who donated the rice.
Because many people took the rice home and found two strings of copper coins when they were about to pour the rice into the rice jar. After counting, they found that there were a total of 200 copper coins. You have to know that when it is better to move goods to the dock, you can only earn 20 to 30 copper coins a day.
It would take at least twenty days of moving goods at the dock to earn two hundred copper coins.
At first, many people ran back with two hundred coins. They thought it was a mistake and wanted to return it. But who knew that the answer they got was that they had to give away both rice and copper coins.
When the others heard that there were two strings of copper coins in the rice bag, some went home immediately, while others took the rice, opened it on the spot, and rummaged around in it until they touched the copper coins.
This person is not a good man at all, he is clearly a deity from heaven who has come down to earth to save people from suffering and distress!
"The rice in your hands was bought with money confiscated from the homes of corrupt officials, so if you want to thank someone, thank them," Song Wan said. "But the chances are slim, as they're all in jail right now, unless you commit a crime and go to jail too."
"A corrupt official?" The common people were puzzled. How could such a large amount of silver be found in the arrest of a corrupt official? The old farmer in the lead was shocked. He subconsciously asked, "Then next time a corrupt official is arrested, will rice be given as a gift?"
The old farmer only has a blind old woman and a five-year-old grandson left in his family. His son and daughter-in-law died of illness three years ago.
He and his wife raised their grandson and lived a very difficult life. The rice they received this time, mixed with the coarse grains at home, was enough for the three of them to eat porridge for two months.
Song Wan frowned as she looked at the skinny old farmer. The grain production in Da Yueh Eh was still too low. Even if there were potatoes, it would take a long time for everyone to plant them.
It is unrealistic to give rice every time a corrupt official is investigated. It will easily foster laziness in everyone. If such a system is really implemented, no one will farm and will just think about how to catch corrupt officials every day.
Corrupt officials will be caught one day, but if no one cultivates the land, it will become abandoned in a few years and the soil will become barren. When crops are planted again at that time, the yield will definitely be very low.
"Please wait a little longer. I promise you that in the near future, no one will have to go hungry!" Song Wan looked at the expectant eyes of the crowd and felt as if she had found the direction of her efforts, which was to ensure that everyone in the world could have enough food to eat!
No one took Song Wan's words seriously because they knew it was difficult to accomplish. It was something that no previous emperor had ever done, let alone a girl like her.
But they were still very grateful to Song Wan. At least this bag of rice could help them avoid going hungry for a few more meals.
But they didn't expect that in the near future, this girl who had made such a solemn promise would actually fulfill her promise.
The rice distribution stall outside the South City had been set up for so many days that naturally the news spread throughout the capital. Those officials who initially spread the rumor that Song Wan was faking the rice distribution were all slapped in the face, and were more or less severely criticized by the new emperor for improper work at the morning court in the following few days.
At this time, the high-ranking officials in the capital finally realized that the new emperor's favor for the Song and Gu families was real and without a trace of falsehood.
Those who originally wanted to suppress the Song and Gu families all retreated their heads after seeing this.
All the members of the Xu and Yao families, regardless of gender, age or status, were imprisoned in the Ministry of Justice prison.
Recently, Yao Yuan, the second master of the Yao family who was guarding the city at Donglin Pass, received the imperial edict and rushed all the way from Donglin Pass back to the capital alone.
Song Wan remembered his name, and Gu Yan said anxiously that the Yao family had a nest of bad bamboos, but only one good bamboo shoot came out.
"So what do you decide to do with him?" Song Wan asked with her head raised.
Gu Yan was anxious and had no good solution for the moment. As a soldier, he did not want to see a good general like Yao Yuan die.
But as a member of the Yao family, it is impossible for him to be completely implicated in the crimes committed by his father and brother.
Yao Yuan knew this day would come ever since he learned about the conspiracy between his father and brothers two years ago.
God is watching what you do, and as a member of the Yao family, he cannot escape it.
Wei Xuezhi didn't know what to do with Yao Yuan. It would be a pity if he was treated the same way as the other members of the Yao family.
Without Yao Yuan's Donglin Pass, the court would not be able to find a suitable general to replace him for a while.
The punishment for the Xu and Yao families has been decided: all males over the age of fourteen will be executed, and the rest will be exiled to Jingbei.
As for Yao Yuan, Gu Yanji finally proposed to demote him to Guizhou and let Jiang Zhen return to Beijing, and then he would be in charge of guarding Donglin Pass.
Guizhou is bitterly cold and is separated from Jingbei by the northwest, Jin, Yi and Zezhou. Even if Yao Yuan wanted to do something, he would have no chance.
Wei Xuezhi and Xu Ziwei thought for a moment and felt something was wrong.
Let Yao Yuan go to Guizhou and serve as a fifth-rank general to guard the border of Guizhou.
In September, the Song and Gu families finally arrived in the capital from Xinzhou, accompanied by Li Lin and his mother, Yun Zhuo and his two followers, Yuanbao and Ada.
No, it seems there is one more person, the one who is Ada’s new wife, Yuanbao’s younger sister.
Yuanbao was unhappy about this for a long time. He didn't know when this wooden guy started to flirt with his sister.
His sister is only sixteen, and this guy is already twenty-four or twenty-five. He is not ashamed of being an old cow eating young grass.
Yun Zhuo came to the capital to open a restaurant and do business, and by the way, he brought the profits of Zezhou Restaurant in the past few months to Song Wan.
Song Wan didn't expect that just as she had settled the cooks and their families from Qingyun Mountain, Yun Zhuo came looking for her following the smell.
After hearing Yun Zhuo's thoughts, Song Wan instinctively shook her head, "They are all here to cook for me, what's the big deal about them going to your restaurant?"
Yun Zhuo begged, "Good lady, Lady Song, just give me two. I think Aunt Chunhua and Sister Hehua are good."
He has tried the cooking skills of the chefs in the Beijing restaurant over the past two days and found that the taste is almost the same. If he asks them to suddenly change the recipe, it will definitely take a lot of time to get used to it.
What's more, he is not familiar with the capital city now. What if the chef he finds is eyeing his exclusive secret recipe? Yun Zhuo thinks it would be better to train trustworthy newcomers.
So when he learned that Song Wan had gathered a lot of women who were good at cooking from Qingyun Mountain and brought them down the mountain to work as cooks, he came over with a flattering face to ask for them.
She wanted two, and they were Song Wan's two favorites. She was not willing to do that and refused directly, "No! Neither Lotus nor Chunhua will do!"
Hehua and Chunhua are the two best at making dumplings and buns, and Song Wan is reluctant to let them go.
After thinking about it, she tried to play dumb. "How about you recruit their men? Don't Sister Lotus's man and Sister Chunhua's man also have the words 'Lotus' and 'Chunhua' in their names? And they even have the word 'man' added in there! Maybe their cooking skills will be more to your liking!"
Yun Zhuo...
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