Chapter 143 142. If you want to be rich, build roads first
It is more than a thousand kilometers from Kyoto City to Nanjiang.
Even if one travels day and night without eating or rest, and even changes to a good and energetic horse, it will take 10 days for one person to travel light. If one takes into account food, drink, rest, and weather and road conditions, a conservative estimate is that it will take nearly half a month.
The Third Prince's team cannot be small in number. If there are too many people, there will be more complicated things to do. It will take at least 20 days to travel at the fastest. The overwhelming number of locusts can eat up half of Nanjiang.
What's more, Meng Luo's news was sent back urgently over a distance of 800 miles thanks to his family's connections. When he received the news, the third prince and his entourage had just set off.
So the documents were created by our ancestors.
Eight hundred miles express.
They flew all the way from Beijing to Xiling to mobilize food and fodder, and also flew to the county governments in Nanjiang to ask them to implement Zhou Yi's method of preventing and controlling the locust plague. By the time the Third Prince and his entourage arrived, they would definitely have achieved results.
A large number of disaster victims from Nanjiang arrived in Qingmi County before the transfer order.
"Our Sanli River flows out of the mountains and flows all the way to Nanjiang. The refugees from Nanjiang followed the river up and arrived at Wulihe Village."
The village chief said with a bitter expression, "At first, we didn't know there would be so many refugees. The people of Wulihe Village felt sorry for them, so we helped them by giving them food and things to do, so they wouldn't die."
"There was a poor family with an older man who couldn't get married, so they chose a good-looking young man to marry into their family. They got married and registered their household registration just two days ago."
"I didn't expect there would be so many refugees!"
Lei Li frowned slightly when he heard this, "Did they come into our village to cause trouble? Or did they spoil the chili peppers?"
The village chief came up early today in a bullock cart. When he arrived at the house, he didn't see Lei Li and Zhou Yi. He went to the restaurant to look for them and just had a sip of tea. He couldn't help talking about the refugees. It seemed that he didn't just feel sorry for them and wanted to help them.
"Yes!"
The village chief nodded repeatedly, "One of them accidentally ran into the chili garden. Not knowing what the chilies were, they saw that they were red and there were so many of them that they rushed to eat them. One of them even died from the spiciness!"
"Our villages grow peppers, our precious commodity. We have people patrolling every night. Someone from Wulihe Village was on patrol at night when they suddenly saw someone stealing something. They ran over and saw someone was dead! They were so scared that they almost died!"
"The people in Wulihe Village saw them stealing things and didn't like them. They drove them away. What if something happened and they blamed us?"
"Besides, there's not enough rice for them to eat. We haven't had a good life for two years. If it weren't for you two and Young Master Meng, even our village wouldn't be able to afford food."
"I know all that."
Lei Li was born and raised in the village. His life was not easy in the past. His father was in poor health and needed tonic. Fortunately, he could go to the mountains to collect tonics and prepare them at home, otherwise his family would have been ruined long ago.
In the village, even those who wanted to break even a copper coin into three were even more likely to spend it. Those with limited land, in particular, couldn't even afford to sell their new rice, so they had to pick up unwanted rice ears from the fields. They wouldn't even buy last year's rice, instead buying rice from previous years and adding wild vegetables to their diet.
——The fresh sweet potatoes at that time were more expensive than the old rice from several years ago, so they were reluctant to eat them themselves.
There is no money to buy salt.
Go to the mountains to find the fruits of the Rhus chinensis to use as salt. The fruits are small but very salty. However, there are not many of them growing in the mountains of Sanlihe, so it takes a lot of effort to find them.
"No one dared to stop them. They dug up wild vegetables along the way. They dug up all the wild vegetables at the foot of the mountain and on the hillside. They also stopped the fish in the river and ate them. The villagers couldn't compete with them. It didn't matter. As long as they didn't damage the peppers and crops, it was fine."
The village chief suddenly became furious at this point. "Last night, I saw them sneaking into our fields and stealing rice! The rice had just grown, and the husks hadn't even turned yellow when they destroyed it! Fortunately, the patrol had a dog, otherwise they would have gotten away!"
"How did it go later?"
"Of course I caught them in bundles!"
The village chief said this angrily, then sighed, "Although stealing rice is indeed abominable, it is because their family suffered a natural disaster and they all dig for food in the soil. The villagers don't want to see the officials impose such a harsh sentence."
"I came here just to ask, Brother Li, do you have any ideas?"
There were so many people fleeing.
They have no land, no houses, and can't find work to earn money. Sooner or later, they will eat up all the wild vegetables and grass roots. Maybe they can survive if we drive them into the mountains, but it will not be easy to live in the open air in a drought year.
There are wild boars and tigers in the deep mountains.
Even someone as bold as Lei Li only dug some herbs and picked some mountain products on the outskirts. It was only when Zhou Yi came that he dared to use a knife to slaughter the wild boar. He used a lot of skills instead of just brute force.
After living in the mountains for a long time without food or clothing, and seeing that people in the villages below the mountain are living well, they might become bandits and rob people under the guise of "robbing the rich to help the people."
And they only provide emergency relief but not poverty relief.
Setting up a tent and distributing porridge to provide relief is possible for a short period of time, but it won't work for a long time. Not to mention that there is not enough money, Lei Li is not a pushover like Meng Luo. What if those refugees who are given relief are too lazy to rely on Lei Li?
Then Lei Li, who originally did good things, became a bad guy who was jealous of Dou Mi Chou.
"I'll discuss it with Zhou Yi."
"become."
—
While Lei Li and Zhou Yi were worried, County Magistrate Xu Xingzhe was also anxious about this matter.
Although Qingmi County is relatively wealthy, its total population is only tens of thousands. Several thousand disaster victims are a considerable burden. If they are not handled properly, they may die in large numbers or become bandits, which will be a big problem.
The best way is to turn them into cheap labor without impacting the original market economy.
But how exactly?
Who will pay for it?
How to arrange it afterwards?
"How about letting them build the road?"
"Road construction?"
Xu Xingzhe was looking worried, but unexpectedly Lei Li and Zhou Yi came to him and gave him a good suggestion, but as a county magistrate he had many concerns.
"Building roads is good, of course. Not to mention how muddy and bumpy the roads to the towns are, even the main roads to the county seat are broken and uneven. But building roads is complicated and expensive, and the county government... I'm not going to lie, they're really stretched to the limit."
Although Xu Xingzhe also accepted bribes and went out for drinks and social events, he was still an honest official and did not impose any exorbitant taxes behind the back of the court.
——Qingmi County is relatively wealthy, and he makes a lot of money just by accepting bribes. There is no need for him to take risks and do all kinds of things. He still wants to get promoted a few levels.
In order to promote people's livelihood, the Daiyou Dynasty was relatively relaxed in terms of taxation, so the tax accounts of government at all levels were actually not used much. Only economically developed places like Kyoto Prefecture and Nakagawa were rich, and the tax and finances looked good.
"That's easy."
Lei Li glanced at Zhou Yi with a smile. He didn't expect that he could come up with such a sinister idea, which was difficult for those wealthy refugees to refuse.
—
As the saying goes, if you want to get rich, build roads first.
As several villages that have achieved win-win cooperation with "a Sichuan restaurant", especially Sanlihe Village, which was the first to take the plunge, they know the weight of this sentence best.
There was originally no road leading from their village and Silihe Village to the town and county seat. It was built by the ancestors of the two villages together. They agreed at the beginning to maintain it together, and fortunately it has been used for more than ten or twenty years.
Later, that generation had almost passed away, and the responsibility of maintenance fell on the younger generation. Some people became lazy and didn't want to do it anymore, so the road gradually deteriorated and became overgrown with weeds and potholes.
This road was built slowly because it was necessary to transport peppers, grains and vegetables to "a Sichuan restaurant" and the port, but it was only a temporary solution and not a fundamental solution.
Now that there is an opportunity to make huge profits, Lei Li and Zhou Yi will not let it go.
The village chief gathered the villagers together and set up a tent at the entrance of the village and cooked soft and sticky sweet potato porridge. Hearing that it was a free donation, refugees from nearby and far away even rushed over to eat it.
Some people even rushed to cut in line.
However, there are many strong young men in the village, especially those in the patrol team, who stand in a row there, steaming like a wall.
Those refugees had been hungry for many days, and they were pale, thin, and ragged. How could they win the fight? They were also afraid that they would not be allowed to eat porridge, so they naturally lined up obediently.
"Our soup kitchen will give out alms for three days, and then it will be gone."
The village chief said loudly that when they saw some commotion among the refugees, the young men on patrol shouted at them to be quiet. They were afraid of being beaten and quickly fell silent. They didn't care about the heat and drank the porridge in the bamboo tube in their hands in a hurry, fearing that they would not be allowed to eat it if they were late.
"If you still want to come here to drink porridge, come here to sign up for the road construction. The road construction fee is five cents a day, and three meals are provided. You can drink this white rice and sweet potato porridge every day!"
There was another small commotion below, but it soon stopped. Even the old man who was scrambling to drink the porridge looked at him with cloudy eyes, with suspicion and eagerness.
"If you do a good job, the master will be happy and you will get vegetables and meat to eat!"
"Is it true?"
"Really give me meat?"
"When do we start working? Can we do it today? My family and I both want to sign up!"
"What kind of road are you building? Are you really going to pay for it?"
You wouldn't be lying and want to sell it to some illegal mine, right?
No one dared to say this, but there were certainly people who questioned it. During their journey, they were lucky if someone gave them a steamed bun and some porridge. Most of the time, they dug wild vegetables and grass roots to eat. At first glance, it seemed like a dream to be given rice, vegetables, and meat and also to be paid.
"Of course it's true! Repairs will begin in three days!"
The village chief pointed at the two tall, burly men standing in front of the boiler and said loudly, "The master I'm talking about is right here. He's the owner of a large restaurant in the county town. He's connected to the county magistrate and the bigwigs in Zhongchuan Prefecture! How could he lie to you?"
"If you don't believe me, go ask around and you'll find out what kind of good people our master and the magistrate are!"
Relieving disaster victims is a big deal, not to mention building roads. It is reasonable for Lei Li and Zhou Yi to show up and take a look.
They did not just stand by and watch, but sat in front of the stove, one of them cooking porridge while the other served porridge to the victims waiting in line, just like the husband-and-wife fast food restaurants that used to run at the port, except they didn't charge money and still served the porridge full.
When the victims saw the master the village chief was talking about making porridge for them, they felt a little uneasy when they heard that the two men were so tall and the one with the scar on his face was so fierce.
I encountered a lot of cold stares from wealthy local gentry along the way. Such kindness and favors are rare.
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