The Ming Dynasty did not revolutionize

Chapter 166: Going to Guandong and Southeast Asia

The situation of the Ke family is relatively good in Shandong.

My family owns a small shop and I have some savings, which is enough to buy some food.

Although we don’t know how long we can hold on, there are many people who can’t hold on any longer.

Cui Er was going to sell the folding fans made by his brother-in-law on the street that afternoon, but soon after he left the house, he ran into his friend Hao San:

Hao San said anxiously:
"There's work to do. Help Fan's grain store clean up. One silver dollar. Come quickly!"

Cui Er was stunned when he heard this:
"A silver dollar is so much? What kind of trouble is this?"

Hao San himself was not very clear:

"I heard from the people who assigned the work that a group of temporary workers had no money to buy grain sold privately, so they surrounded the grain store and demanded that it open the store and sell at the official price. They knew that there was grain inside the store."

Cui Er went back immediately and put the folding fan made by his brother-in-law back into the shop. Amid the helpless and puzzled expressions of his brother-in-law and sister, he ran away quickly with Hao San.

When the two men ran to the street where Fan's Grain Store was located, Cui Er knew that today's trouble was indeed big.

It wasn't just a few people causing trouble, nor was it that a grain store was blocked by people. Instead, it was that an indiscernible number of people blocked the entire street.

They were all young and strong, and they were very aggressive and excited.

There were a few middle-aged men in the front, banging hard on the closed doors of the grain stores and shouting loudly to people inside.

Several grain stores were required to sell grain according to the court's requirements, otherwise they would be smashed today.

Cui Er immediately backed down:
"With so many people, what's the point of calling us here? This is a life-threatening job, what can a silver dollar do for it?
"It's obvious that these people are not good people. Let's not get involved and just watch the fun."

Hao San was also a little scared:

"I'm afraid this is some gang's doing."

The two were talking at the street corner when they suddenly heard a scream from the front.

The two men immediately looked in the direction of the sound and found that a fight had already started on the other side of the street.

A group of local thugs, armed with swords, sticks and clubs, shouted at and smashed the crowd at the street entrance.

This was the job that Cui Er and Hao San were originally planning to take.

It has already started over there.

Originally, this job was not that troublesome. Usually, I would help the store owner bully ordinary people, or fight against troublemakers.

Most of the time they just shout big words to scare people, and when it comes to real fighting it usually depends on which side has more people.

When a large group of people charged at a small group of people, the other side couldn't withstand it and just scattered like birds and beasts.

But the situation is different today. Those who are blocking the street are not ordinary people. The street thugs are driving them away with sticks, but they find that the other party is not afraid at all.

These people were already holding their breath, and when these thugs came up and started beating them up, they couldn't hold it back anymore.

Someone shouted, and hundreds of people around rushed forward, and dozens of street thugs were immediately dispersed.

A few clever ones immediately turned around and ran, but those who were slow to react were caught, pinned to the ground and beaten half to death.

Hao San looked at the situation at the scene and immediately grabbed Cui Er's arm and shouted:
"Brother, you are my real brother. Fortunately, we didn't go in to do this..."

After the people at the scene lost control of their emotions and started fighting, they were no longer just fighting the thugs who were beating people.

Someone immediately broke open the door of the grain store.

The people around immediately rushed into the grain store, and soon someone inside shouted loudly:
"There is food! There is really food!"

"These damn profiteers!"

"They watched us starve to death but refused to sell us food!"

As the news spread, the situation immediately got out of control and more people rushed into the stores.

Some people went straight to steal food, and some grabbed the shopkeeper and his employees and beat them up.

Seeing that the situation was out of control, the shopkeepers and their assistants gave up resistance.
"Don't fight, don't fight..."

"It was our boss who asked us to do this."

“We are just working!”

The thugs who were beaten on the streets were finally freed.

Hao San looked at the situation on the street, listened to the shouting that was spreading everywhere, and pulled Cui Er forward:

"Let's go, let's get some food..."

Cui Er hesitated a little:

"If we rob them openly like this, what will we do if the government officials come?"

Hao San said directly:
"Who cares? There are so many people here. Can the county magistrate just kill them all?"

Cui Er was just a street urchin, with a little brains but not much. After a little hesitation, he accepted Hao San's proposal.

The two followed the crowd into a grain store.

Cui Er knew that fine noodles were the most expensive, so he wanted to get a bag of noodles, but when he entered the door, he found that he had no chance to choose.

The stores were packed with people, and it was a great achievement to be able to get bags of food.

Cui Er and his companion squeezed in with great effort and finally managed to grab a bag.

Cui Er squeezed out of the crowd and went to a place where there were less people. He looked carefully at the bag in his hand and confirmed that it was a bag of rice.

Hao San also snatched a bag of miscellaneous grains.

Hao San hesitated whether to grab another bag of rice and flour, but Cui Er pulled Hao San and ran out:

"Quit while you're ahead, put the money in your pocket and take it home first!"

Hao San was a little unwilling, but looking at the noisy crowd inside, he felt that the possibility of getting another bag was slim, so he followed Cui Er and ran out.

As a result, just as the two of them reached the door, they heard the sound of horse hooves coming from far away outside, and someone outside the door shouted in surprise:
"The prefect is here!"

"The soldiers are coming! Run..."

"I can't run away. The Green Camp soldiers are coming. The streets are blocked."

Cui Er squeezed to the door and looked out, and found that hundreds of soldiers had come to both ends of the street, all pointing muskets and spears at the street.

The crowds on the street also stopped and confronted the soldiers, each holding the stolen food bags.

Behind the soldiers were two officials on horseback. From their clothes, one could tell that he was the prefect of Caozhou, and the other was the commander-in-chief of the Green Camp troops stationed in Caozhou.

There were also several merchants wearing silk clothes, kneeling on the ground next to the two most powerful officials in Caozhou, crying and begging loudly to these officials and soldiers:
"Please seek justice, sir. Please quickly order the arrest of these robbers. They are robbing in broad daylight!"

The general first looked at the prefect. The Caozhou prefect had a serious expression on his face and asked the merchants:

"Since you have food in your store, why don't you sell it to the public?"

The businessman immediately defended himself:
“Sir, it’s not that we don’t want to sell grain, but we want to save it for the winter.

“If we sell them now, they will be sold out immediately.

"There won't be anything left to sell in the fall."

The prefect of Caozhou said loudly:

"In the winter there will be autumn crops."

The businessman immediately continued:
"If it rains now, the autumn crops can be harvested, but if the drought continues, the autumn crops cannot be harvested.

"Sir, no matter what, these people are blatantly robbing.

"In broad daylight, in a clear and bright world..."

The governor of Caozhou waved his hand:

“In any case, it is a fact that merchants have grain but do not sell it, and instead hoard it for profit.

"It is understandable that the people are outraged by righteous indignation."

The prefect's meaning was very clear. The government was already unhappy when merchants hoarded grain and refused to sell it.

Moreover, although these hundreds of young and strong people gathered in the streets did not have guns or other weapons, the risk of arresting and suppressing them all was still very high.

The key point is that as long as troops are sent to arrest and suppress, it is equivalent to treating this matter as a rebellion, or at least large-scale robbery.

Officials in this era all seek to do less rather than more; they do not want to see anything like rebellion during their tenure.

Therefore, the prefect of Caozhou was prepared to use the reason that the law does not punish the masses to excuse these unidentified citizens who stole food.

But the merchants were not easy to deal with, and one of them immediately shouted to the prefect:

"Sir, these grains were purchased with all our wealth, and a lot of them were purchased with money borrowed from banks.

“If we are robbed like this without any compensation, we won’t be able to survive.

“No merchants will sell food here anymore.

"The indignant people want to steal food, but now there is nowhere to steal!"

This is the threat from the businessmen.

If you allow the people to grab food now, we will have even less to sell later.

If you are determined to fight to the death, then we will really stop doing business with your Caozhou Prefecture and just transport the grain away.

The Caozhou prefect didn't look very happy. He discussed with his staff for a while and made a compromise decision:

"Only the main culprit will be punished, and the rest will not be investigated. The grain taken by the people will be counted as borrowed by the government and used to provide relief to the people.
"The money will be returned after the autumn grain arrives. If the autumn grain is insufficient, it will be returned after the next year's harvest." The prefect seemed very generous and asked his staff to draft the documents on the spot, which meant that the court was borrowing grain from these businesses.

However, the merchants all had ugly expressions. Although their food would not be stolen for nothing, they also directly lost a large amount of profits.

If possible, the businessmen certainly did not want to accept this arrangement, but they had to accept it.

We can only report more in the statistical losses.

The prefect of Caozhou ordered the soldiers to disperse the people at the scene and arrested the first few people who instigated the beating and those who removed the door panels of the grain merchant.

Then let the shop owners and clerks of each business count the losses.

Cui Er and Hao Sanbai got a bag of food, each weighing 50 kilograms, enough to feed the family for several days.

This matter seems to have passed just like that, but in fact it is not that simple.

The next morning, several trading companies prepared a large number of mule and horse teams to transport a large number of full bags out of Caozhou City.

The merchants wouldn't say what was inside, but everyone thought it was food.

Various rumors immediately appeared in the market.

The main story is that the government condoned bandits in robbing the grain stores, so the grain stores could no longer do business here and had to transport the grain to other places for sale.

Meanwhile, food prices on the black market have soared again.

After conversion, one stone of grain was worth twenty silver dollars.

One dan in the Qing Dynasty was equivalent to about 150 jin in the Ming Dynasty. Twenty silver dollars were equivalent to about 3,000 yuan based on purchasing power.

In other words, the price of a pound of wheat has risen to 20 yuan, but this is not the limit.

After the summer, there is still no rain in most parts of Shandong.

The time for sowing summer crops is almost over, and the ground in most areas is too dry and hard to sow.

The rivers and canals that were previously used to bring water for irrigation have dried up.

Ke Da looked at the scorching sun, the increasingly thick dry dust on the streets, and the twisted air like in a steamer, and would mutter to himself from time to time:
"If this continues, people will starve to death this autumn..."

In fact, a larger number of tenant farmers and self-employed farmers, as well as ordinary workers in the city, can no longer hold on.

In addition, most people can see that there will be no autumn crops this year, and there will be no harvest for the entire year, so this winter will be even more difficult to endure.

So some people began to flee north and south.

The weather is still warm now, so we can hit the road directly. We will freeze to death in winter.

As the days passed, the market became more and more deserted. Except for the grain store whose doors were tightly closed and always guarded by someone, few people came in and out of the other shops.

There are fewer and fewer pedestrians on the street, but more and more people are lying on the street waiting to die.

People actually started starving to death on the streets.

Some people began to sell their children on the streets, selling them to rich families as slaves or child brides in exchange for some silver and food to keep both parties alive.

Ke Da's wife wanted to find a child bride for her eldest son, but Ke Da refused after he had done the math.

“Summer to fall should be our busiest time, but there were hardly any customers.

"If this continues, not only will our shop not be able to continue operating, but we may not even survive until next year.

"You are still thinking about finding a wife for your son..."

After scolding his wife, Ke Da thought about it for a long time and decided to send the two apprentices home first.

But the two apprentices did not want to leave. Their family situation was more difficult than that of the Ke family, otherwise they would not have come to be apprentices, which was almost like free labor.

After hearing the master's arrangement, the two apprentices knelt on the ground and kowtowed to Ke Da:

"Please, Master, please be kind and don't chase me away."

"We will starve to death if we leave here."

Ke Da said with a sad face:

"Of course I know your family's situation, but if I don't send you home, Master's family will also be unable to make ends meet."

The two apprentices had nothing to say, but still didn't want to leave, so they just lay on the ground and cried.

Ke Da's wife, Sister Cui, felt a little reluctant:

"Boss, is there really nothing we can do now?"

Ke Da asked back somewhat angrily:
"If you don't let them go home, you'll have to choose this winter: starve them both to death or starve your son to death."

Sister Cui was frightened by her husband and turned to her brother with a bitter face:
"Second brother, you usually have a lot of tricks up your sleeve. Do you have any ideas? Can you find a way out for these two guys?"

Cui Er also had a sad face:

"What can I do? I asked around on the street and heard that the whole of Shandong is suffering from a severe drought.

"The situation south of Xuzhou is slightly better, but not much better.

“If I have to say there is a way out, I have heard others say it.

“One is to go to Guandong.

"I went to Liaodong to work as a tenant farmer, waiting to go to a place called North America to open up wasteland.

“The other is to go to Southeast Asia.

"I went to the Nanming territory to find food. They said it would be best to go directly to Yingtianfu.

“I heard that the Southern Ming Emperor provided free meals to the disaster victims, so they would not starve to death as long as they arrived in Yingtian Prefecture.

"Then wait to go to a place called Australia in Southeast Asia and give it to the Southern Ming Emperor's favorite youngest son, who was given the title of King Wu, to open up wasteland and cultivate the land."

Most ordinary people don’t know where North America and Australia are, and they only have a vague idea about Nanyang and Kanto. Many people think that Australia is a place in Nanyang.

Sister Cui found it incredible:

"There's food when we get to Yingtian Prefecture? Free meals for the disaster victims? I heard it was all a lie.

"They say that the Qing people were tricked into going south, and once they got there they would be forced to work as slaves in black factories, where they would work until they died."

Ke Da also said:
"It's not that easy to get through Guandong. I heard that once you get there, you have to sell yourself into slavery to the local bannermen, nobles, and landlords.

"After becoming a slave, your wife and daughter are no longer your own. They are at the disposal of the master..."

After hearing what his sister and brother-in-law said, Cui Er shook his head and said:
“I don’t know whether these words are true or not, but I have done the work of spreading these words, spreading them everywhere on the streets and in restaurants and teahouses.

"Of course the people who assigned us the job said all this was true, but these guys never tell us the whole truth.

“So we can’t trust all of this stuff.

“I think that although it is unlikely that the Southern Ming emperor would give free food, it is most likely true that he sent the disaster victims to his youngest son to open up wasteland.

"Then people probably won't starve to death. After all, there will be a way to survive.

"And my idea is that our whole family should stop suffering here and go south to Yingtian Prefecture together.

“Since my brother-in-law has skills, he will have business in Nanming.

"I heard that Nanming has a lot of food, and it's much cheaper than here, and it can even be sold here.

“I heard a while ago that someone got a batch of southern rice.

"Nan Ming was still able to sell rice, so there shouldn't have been a disaster as large as the one we had in Shandong."

The Ming Emperor's method of disaster relief was capitalist.

To people in the Central Plains region, where the feudal land system was strong at that time, it really seemed like a legend.

The court's unlimited supply of three meals a day seemed completely unbelievable to the people in the Central Plains, and most of them did not believe this legend.

Merchants from the Qing Dynasty and grain merchants from the south all asked their employees to claim among the people that this was a scam.

Of course, merchants were also spreading exaggerated rumors about the expedition to Guandong.

Their goal is to keep everyone in the local area so that they can scoop out the last bit of value.

When the farmers and workers are really dying and have to go out and try, they won’t care because it’s of no value anyway.

After listening to what Cui Er said, Mr. and Mrs. Ke immediately understood a lot of things.

People doing business are not fools. If someone deliberately spreads bad words about a place, it means that the place is probably not as bad as they claim.

But when Cui Er talked about the plan to take his whole family south, he couldn't accept it:
"Impossible. We are still alive now. Why would we go to Nanming to escape famine?"

"Just let these two guys go first."

Cui Er started to show off:

“I heard some scholars say in a restaurant that after a great disaster there will be a great epidemic.

“They said that Shandong had a total crop failure this year and that people would starve to death or freeze to death in the winter.

“Even wealthy families who have food to eat can still be infected with the plague.

“If there is still a way out somewhere else, it is better to leave here as soon as possible.

"That's why I wanted to go to Nanming together."

Sister Cui was startled:
"A great epidemic? There will be a plague?"

Ke Da's expression was also very ugly:
"The older generation seemed to have said that after a great disaster there would be a great epidemic..."

(End of this chapter)