In the British Concession of Tianjin, a small western-style building on Racecourse Road is very lively. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 info

Li Shoumin's colleagues in the "New Tianjin Daily", "Ta Kung Pao", the Tianjin Telephone Bureau, and the Secretariat of the Tianjin Garrison Command, as well as his relatives and friends in Tianjin, plus many guests invited by the woman, sat at nearly 50 tables for the banquet.

Because "The Legend of the Swordsman of Shushan" sold very well, Li Shoumin also had some savings, probably saving more than 10,000 yuan. This money is more than enough for a wedding banquet, but if you want to buy a garden house in the British Concession, it is definitely not enough.

Sun Zhongshan loves face more, so he has to force his son-in-law to prepare a wedding room, and the house can't be too shabby. Li Shoumin really couldn't come up with so much money, so Sun Zhongshan simply bought one by himself, but the owner of the house wrote his daughter's name.

Li Shoumin felt very humiliated by this, as if he was under the fence, he would rather pay for the rent to live.

The wedding, which was originally scheduled for early May, was delayed until the end of May because the house matter could not be negotiated. Sun Zhongshan allowed Li Shoumin's mother to move into a new house, but Li Shoumin's two younger brothers had to continue to live in rented houses.

"Worship heaven and earth!"

"Second worship high hall!"

"Husband and wife!"

"Let's go into the cave room!"

The wedding was a traditional Chinese ritual because neither the Li nor the Sun family were religious.

To be honest, the development of traditional weddings to the Republic of China period has been very simplified, without so much red tape. In addition, the bride and groom are all from Sichuan, and ceremonies such as worshipping ancestors in the temple are completely omitted.

During the "high hall", the bride and groom offer tea to both parents, and the parents-in-law say some blessings and give the bride jewelry gifts (family heirloom bracelets and the like). The bride must put it on as soon as she receives the gift, and then the bride and groom offer tea to other relatives and elders.

At the end of the "husband and wife worship", the newlyweds were sent directly into the cave room, and did not come out to toast with them again.

Li Shoumin was wearing a red silk short coat and a red skirt underneath, and he led the bride and was surrounded by a group of young people in a haunted room to go up to the second floor.

"Fu Gan, don't you go up and make trouble?" Zhou Hexuan asked with a smile.

"I don't know the bride and groom. Ahem, ahem, ahem......" Ba Jin said as he suddenly coughed loudly, coughing his whole face red.

Zhou Hexuan asked, "What's wrong?" ”

"It's okay, old problem, it's much better now." Ba Jin waved his hand.

Ba Jin was so frail and sick since he was a child that he didn't even go to elementary school, so he had to ask his husband to teach at home. At the age of 14, he was finally admitted to an English cram school, but dropped out of school due to illness after only one month. At the age of 17, he finally recovered his health, and after two years of middle school, he went to apply for Peking University, but he was found to have lung disease during the physical examination.

At full length, Ba Jin only studied in school for three and a half years, two of which were secondary school, and the remaining one and a half years were spent studying in France.

But such a frail and sickly self-taught man actually became one of the top writers in China, and lived to be 101 years old.

Zhou Hexuan said: "I know a famous doctor in Tianjin, and I will find him to help you see him another day." ”

"No need, I can only slowly recover this problem." Ba Jin is quite open-minded.

In fact, Barking suffers from lung disease, and in his novels, the main characters often suffer from lung disease or other ailments. For example, Du Daxin, the protagonist of "Perdition", came up with the idea of assassinating the warlord because of lung disease, hoping to relieve the pain of the disease.

Zhou Hexuan knew a little about Ba Jin's situation, and he insisted: "I still have to ask Dr. Ding to come and take a look and help you prescribe a few medicines to recuperate." ”

"Thank you." Ba Jin felt that Zhou Hexuan was really good to his friends.

The banquet has begun, and from time to time someone comes to toast Zhou Hexuan, as if he is the groom's official.

Hu Zhengzhi sat next to him and watched the show for a while, and said with a smile: "Mingcheng, I plan to go to Shenyang next month to open the Shenyang branch of Ta Kung Pao." ”

"Don't worry, let's open the Wuhan branch first." Zhou Hexuan said.

Hu Zhengzhi was puzzled: "Shenyang is covered by Commander Zhang, and it will be much easier to run a newspaper." There will be a war on the Wuhan side soon, and it will be very troublesome to operate, so why should it be easy to find difficulty? ”

Of course, it was impossible for Zhou Hexuan to say that little Japan would occupy Northeast China next year, and he made an excuse: "Wuhan is located at a key point, and the establishment of the Wuhan branch will be conducive to the distribution of newspapers in the middle and upper reaches of the Yangtze River." Moreover, there are also advantages of fighting a war, so I happened to cover the situation of the war nearby. ”

Hu Zhengzhi thought hard, he felt that Zhou Hexuan had some truth, nodded and agreed: "Okay, let's open the Wuhan branch first." ”

"Has Yan Xishan's apportionment of silver been determined?" Zhou Hexuan asked again.

"It's confirmed, 100 yuan per month will be apportioned for military expenses," Hu Zhengzhi smiled helplessly, "It's cheaper than when Chu Yupu was a marshal." ”

As long as you are born in China, no one can think about it easy to fight.

Don't look at the fact that Shanxi's civil affairs construction has been done very well, primary school education has been popularized, and various factories have been established, but in fact, the financial situation of the Jin army is extremely bad. Because Yan Xishan controlled the territory of the six northern provinces (cities), the stalls were very large, the military expenditure was huge, and the newly occupied provinces such as Hebei were so poor that they were very poor, and the Jin army was seriously in arrears regardless of whether it was a descendant or a miscellaneous brand.

This time there was to be a war, and the first thing the generals under Yan Xishan did was to send a telegram complaining, saying that they could not allocate money due to lack of military funds.

Yan Xishan can only raise food and salary everywhere, and some of the ragtag troops of the Jin army are so poor that each soldier can only allocate 5 bullets, is this still a fart?

What made Yan Xishan even more troublesome was that before the war officially began, the Jin banknotes were depreciated by one-third. When the real fight starts, it would be good if the 2 yuan Jin banknote could be 1 yuan lower than the ocean.

The depreciation of the Jin banknotes also brought about a soaring price of grain, one price a day, and the people of Shanxi complained bitterly.

In order to solve the financial dilemma, Yan Xishan decided to issue military coupons in Taiyuan, and at the same time send additional military donations. These taxes (mainly grain and rice) could not be apportioned for a while, so they had to be raised directly in rural areas.

It's good for poor families to be able to fill their stomachs, where can they get it? This has brought about a series of serious consequences, such as the poor looking for the rich to borrow grain and donations, the profits cannot be repaid, they can only sell land, and those who have no land sell their sons and daughters, land annexation has become more serious, and the peasants' lives have become more difficult.

Yan Xishan also attacked the wealthy businessmen, taking Tianjin as an example, the Tianjin General Chamber of Commerce was helping the Jin army to raise funds, otherwise everyone's business would not be able to do.

In addition, Yan Xishan also wanted to mortgage the Tongcheng and Cangshi railways to the United States and Japan to borrow 20 million yuan, and to mortgage Shanxi's tax revenue to borrow 20 million yuan from the United States. It is a pity that the United States and Japan are inclined to the Nanjing government, and these loans have not been negotiated.

Even the Tianjin Customs and the Changlu Salt Administration were occupied by Yan Xishan, who wanted to withhold the customs duties and salt tax silver. Bell, director of the Tianjin Customs and Excise Department, resolutely opposed Yan Xishan's practice and collected the taxes by himself and deposited them in British and American banks.

In the following months, due to the struggle between the Nanjing government and Yan Xishan, the Tianjin Customs and Salt Administration almost stopped operating, and it is not known how much state tax revenue was lost, and even if it was received, all the taxes went to foreign banks. Later, when the Nanjing government took back the customs and salt administration, a lot of this money was gone, because the exact amount of tax collected was all up to the foreigners.

The warlords of the Republic of China are like this, once they fight, they will sell the national interests in various ways, and the people will become more and more impoverished, how can the national strength be developed?

The originally rich Northeast has been impoverished by Zhang Zuolin, and Shanxi, which was originally rich, is about to be impoverished by Yan Xishan.

As for Sichuan, Shandong, Hebei, Henan and other provinces, they are the hardest hit areas by the war, and it is not uncommon to sell children and daughters.