Chapter 114 The Current Situation of Ninghua County

Orthodox thirty-three years, spring.

It has been more than half a year since Li Dongyang arrived in Ninghua County.

In this small half a year, Li Dongyang did not do anything, but did one thing, that is, to learn the local dialect. That is, Hakka.

When Li Dongyang came to Ninghua, he wanted to show his strength, but after he arrived, he found that he couldn't understand anyone except the local scholars in Ninghua.

Because what Ninghua speaks locally is Hakka.

Li Dongyang grew up in Beijing, although the Beijing dialect of later generations is quite different from the Beijing dialect of this era. But in general, there is a mutual inheritance.

Let a person who has spoken the official dialect of the north since he was a child come to Ninghua, except for the local scholars who have studied the official dialect when they were studying, he cannot communicate with anyone.

Even a lot of the time, he had to talk to people.

Because the scholars in the mountains of Fujian do not speak very well in official language.

When Li Dongyang heard in his ears, it was as if an ant had drilled into his body along the ear holes, which was uncomfortable all over his body.

If it is an ordinary prefectural order.

Maybe he just wants to stay here for the last term, be clean and fine, and then transfer away quickly.

But Li Dongyang is not such a person.

Although he hasn't done anything for most of the year, he has one success that can be regarded as a light, that is, he is proficient in Hakka.

once made Li Dongyang a little happy. Thinking that he could unimpeded Fujian, he soon knew that the Fujian dialect was complex and cumbersome, and the Hakka dialect he learned was similar to the Hakka dialect in Jiangxi and Guangdong.

In short, if he wants to learn the dialect of the whole Fujian, it is a long way to go.

Li Dongyang could only give up.

However, Li Dongyang's academic ambitions were temporarily curbed.

He put all his thoughts on Ninghua County.

And what is Ninghua?

It's a poor place.

If you add an adjective, it's a poor place surrounded by mountains.

The same is true from the perspective of later generations.

Later, Ninghua County was titled as one of the four initiating counties of the Red Army's Long March, and the county that was finally lifted out of poverty in 2020. And in this day and age, the conditions are even more difficult.

There are 51 households in Ninghua County, with 110 households as one mile, a total of more than 5,000 households. Tens of thousands of people. However, there is very little land, and Fujian has a lot of people and little land, and most of the real farms are in the coastal plains.

Ninghua County is at the foot of Wuyi Mountain, with poor mountains and bad waters.

Most of the fields are dry fields, mountain fields, and in many places the yield is not as good as most of the north. A lot of land can only be harvested with a few buckets of rice.

I can't even get on a stone.

Tens of thousands of people did not gather in Ninghua County, but

It is scattered in the mountains, living together, Li Dongyang has also seen the courtyard of the Hakka people, where is the courtyard, it is clearly a dock fort.

Hundreds of people are guarded, water and food are available, and it is not a problem to guard it for several years.

That's where a very serious problem arises. That is, the clan power in Ninghua County is particularly strong.

It's not that in other places in the Ming Dynasty, there is no clan power. There are clan forces everywhere, but in other places, there is no such thing as Ninghua County.

Without the nod of these big families, nothing can be done, and the Huang family, the Li family, the Ning family and other major surnames have carved up the power of Ninghua County.

These patriarchs are not good at stubble, they are all able to give an order, pull dozens or hundreds of strong men out, and fight to death.

And the county seat that Li Dongyang can manage is only a few thousand people. Speaking of which, it is a big village in later generations.

That's it.

What made Li Dongyang feel most troubled was that the trade route was difficult.

To be honest, Ninghua County is not far from Shicheng County, Jiangxi. This road is also one of the mountain roads from Fujian to Jiangxi.

It's just that it's a mountain road all the way, how many people can you pass?

The ecology of Ninghua County is almost in a state of self-sufficiency.

Silver is rarely circulated in Ninghua County, and it is also used in the county. In the countryside, copper coins are mostly used, and in many places they don't even use copper coins.

It's simply bartering.

The reason for this is that, on the one hand, this poverty. On the other hand, Ninghua County is almost isolated from the outside world, except for the annual transportation of land taxes to Fujian.

There is very little communication with the outside world.

Even the taxes paid are not much, but only one or two thousand stones.

It's not that Ninghua County has only so many taxes.

However, under the Ming system, taxes are roughly divided into two parts, one is transshipment and the other is retention.

Transshipment is divided into three parts, one part is Beijing transportation, which is transported to the capital, such as Cao Yun, which is a typical Beijing transportation, and then it is border transportation, which is transported to the frontier, and then there is transshipment. It is to transfer from somewhere in the mainland to somewhere.

Most of the taxes in Ninghua County are transferred to Fuzhou Prefecture.

But tax transfer is a chore.

If a whip method is used to change from transporting grain to transporting silver taels, it is indeed a great action to reduce the burden on the people.

But in Ninghua County, it is absolutely unusable.

It is okay to let the people of Ninghua County hand over grain, after all, although the land in Ninghua County is a little thinner, there is always some harvest, and a little grain can still be dug out from the soil.

But how to dig out the silver from the land is a huge problem.

If the people are asked to pay the grain and then pay the taxes, the people will almost be forced to die.

After all, there can be a few grain merchants in Ninghua

Some grain merchants are all related to these surnames, and it is clear when you think about it, Ninghua County is a poor township, and it is not a traffic artery.

Whoever is a fool generally comes here to do business. The grain harvested here must be shipped out at a loss.

And Li Dongyang found one more thing, that is, the price of silver here is too high.

How high.

Before Li Dongyang came to become an official, in order to be in case, he took one or two hundred taels of silver from his family, which took out more than half of the Li family's savings.

Carry it with you, don't dare to use it, lest you use it after a mistake.

The Li family is not a rich man in Beijing. Li Dongyang is only from a military family, and he has only been admitted to the Jinshi for a few years. Most of this money is Li Dongyang's income for a few years, plus the income of a few acres of thin land in his family.

In Beijing, there are definitely not a few people like Li Dongyang.

But when Li Dongyang arrived in Ninghua County, he found that he had become one of the richest people in Ninghua County.

The purchasing power of one tael of silver here is more than that of one or two of silver in Beijing City, especially in terms of manpower. This is also an excellent proof that the population density of Fujian Jiangxi ranks first in the Ming Dynasty.

Discounting silver is a tax reduction in many places. But in a place like Ninghua County, it is an act of raising taxes.

This made Li Dongyang feel conflicted in his heart.

Of course, he knew that the purpose of his visit was to try out a whip here. It's just that he obviously underestimated the spicy gaze of some people in the court.

Almost when they selected this county, they knew that there were two ways to implement a whip law in Ninghua County, one was to find a way to make the people of Ninghua rich, and the other was to ignore their conscience, and I would do my own thing as a good official, and I would care if the people lived or died?

This is also the reason why Zhang Juzheng implemented a whip law, which was opposed by so many people.

It's not that they can't see that Zhang Juzheng's method is good, but that a whip method is not suitable for many places.

It's just that the administrative ability of the Ming Dynasty is already very difficult to implement a law in a unified manner, and if you let the following do their own thing, and improve them according to their local characteristics, it will only make the demons dance wildly, let alone become the same.

It's just that if Li Dongyang has a clear conscience and does this, he can't pass the hurdle in his heart at all.

And let the people of Ninghua have money in their hands, how can this thing be done in one year or two years, and Li Dongyang's term of office is only three years.

And there is still an unknown amount of news waiting for news in Beijing.

Good news and bad news.

Li Dongyang also knew that if he went up against the implementation of a whip law in Ninghua County, it was conceivable that he would let down a series of people from Liu Dingzhi and disappoint His Majesty, and his future political future would be over.

For a while, Li Dongyang was in a dilemma, and he didn't know how to advance or retreat. It seems that you can't advance, and you can't retreat.