The sun rose in mid-sky and shone warmly on people. However, this warmth was not enough to melt the snow and ice on the ground, and the road became more slippery with water.

Xu Ping, Xu Chang and several other important figures in the village stood at the gate of the village, looking at an ox cart slowly driving in the distance, all of them looking forward to it.

This is the first batch of southerners who can grow rice introduced by Guo Shi, the county director, with the help of Zhuangli, and with these people, the fields in Zhuangli can be planted with rice in the next year.

In this era, there were very few ordinary people from the south who came to the north, and most of them were businessmen or eunuchs, and it was not easy to find someone who could grow rice. This is because the economy of the north is not developed at this time, and the products are not abundant compared to the south, and of course, the most important thing is that the water and soil are not adapted. Another reason is that only Liangzhejiang, Jiangnan and Xichuan have mature rice planting technology, and Liangguang and Jinghu have not yet been developed, and many places are still in the stage of slash-and-burn cultivation. The developed places are rich, and the people are reluctant to leave their hometowns.

The ox cart arrived, and the first to get out of the cart were a middle-aged couple with two children, one was twelve or thirteen years old, and the other was only three or four years old. Then there was a young couple, both in their twenties.

Xu Ping stepped forward and introduced himself: "In Xia Xu Ping, he is the little master of this grange. After a tiring journey, the village has prepared thin wine to wash the dust for you. ”

The middle-aged man who came down first came up and saluted: "The little Song Laozhuan was originally a member of the Xingguo army, because his hometown suffered a disaster when he was young, and he went to the Jinghu area to beg for a living. Two years ago, the imperial court recruited people to cultivate fields in Tangzhou, and I went there to apply. The camp was abandoned there, and he was exiled to Kaifeng Mansion. ”

Pointing to the women and children beside him, he said, "This is my Hun family, those two are dogs, the eldest is thirteen years old, named Dashu, and the younger one is only three years old, called Xiaoshu." ”

Xu Ping hurriedly said welcome.

The young couple who came down came up and said, "The small Tian Sihai, the people of Changzhou on the Liangzhejiang Road, have been farming for generations. In my generation, there was not enough land at home to plant, so I also wanted to look around, so I came to the capital with an official. Three years ago, when the official was ill, I had no one to rely on, so I lived in the capital. This one is my Hun family, who was originally the female envoy of the official's family, and after the official was gone, we lived together. ”

Xu Ping welcomed the two as usual and said: "You all have families, and it is inconvenient to live with other villagers. This one is Xu Chang, the manager of the village, let him take you to see, if you are still satisfied, you will settle down first. ”

The two saluted Xu Chang and followed him to see the residence. Naturally, other bankers moved over for them.

Watching Xu Chang take people around to the back of the village, Xu Ping also took the others back to the village, waiting to pick them up.

This is the process of the rise of a village. At the beginning, the big families coveted the preferential policies of the imperial court, spent money to reclaim wasteland, and recruited people who had no worries and no worries, and the construction period could be long or short, and they were not particular about living, and they all lived together so-so. When Zhuangzi improved, he had to make a long-term plan to recruit some long-term employees to help them settle down here. In another ten or eight years, the wasteland became ripe land, and it was not economical to hire workers to do the work, so they rented the land, and the owner only collected the rent.

According to the policy of the Song Dynasty, both employees and tenants were customers, and taxes were borne by the masters.

No matter how long time passed, few landlords could keep a few generations of wealth, and the land began to be pawned little by little, and some customers slowly became the main households, and the village was officially formed.

Although these two families are also employees of the Xu family, because they all know how to grow rice, they are considered technical talents, and the Xu family gives them generous treatment, and even gives them a new home. With their arrival, Xu Ping's village also officially has its own name - Xujiazhuang. It is no longer the same as those scattered farmhouses, which are called the Li family under the locust tree, and the Zhao family at the east end of the river have no accurate names.

In this era, the rural clan society inhabited by large families was very rare, and it was similar to the rural organization in Xu Ping's previous life. Due to the small scale of the villages, there is no grass-roots organization at the village level, and the township and management are at the top, and the officials who assist the government in managing are the lizheng, the township clerk and the elders, and the prosperous township and management are upgraded to towns and have management officials.

Because the clan society was not formed, and the identities of landlords, yeoman farmers and even tenants changed drastically, the countryside here was very different from the later Ming and Qing dynasties. This generation is a landlord, and the next generation may be hired as a hired laborer, and it is common for the situation of being rich for less than three generations. For example, this Zhuangzi is called Xujiazhuang, and after a hundred years, there may not be a single family surnamed Xu in the village.

The reasons for this are varied, but the imperial court policy is the biggest driver.

Xu Ping learned from textbooks in his previous life that the ruling class of the Song Dynasty represented the interests of the landlord class, the scholars were large landlords and ordinary landlords, and the imperial family was the largest landlord, and all policies were aimed at safeguarding the interests of the landlord class. Now that he has come to this era and become a landlord himself, he can only smile wryly and shake his head at this statement.

The official policy of the Song Dynasty towards the countryside, from taxation to errand labor, was all aimed at cracking down on large rural households, and there was no reason to crack down on them in all directions. Those who can maintain wealth and nobility in the countryside for 100 years are not ordinary people, not ordinary people. Historians will make a patch when they talk about this, what is the original intention of the imperial court policy, but when it is actually implemented, the landlord class will pass on the burden to the lower peasants, further widening the gap between the rich and the poor in the countryside. Xu Ping can only say that these people all regard the scholar as a psychopath? In order to defend the imaginary landlord class, it is necessary to come up with a bunch of legal provisions against the landlord class.

In fact, the Song Dynasty was the only dynasty that did not inhibit land annexation, but the degree of land annexation was also the lightest in all dynasties. Because the imperial court does not inhibit annexation, but strikes at those who succeed in annexation.

According to the law, almost all of the burden in the countryside was borne by the landowners, and the more land there was, the heavier the burden. At this time, there was no monster of clan in the countryside, and there were no gentry with privileges, and even the privileges of officials at all levels were restricted.

Unlike the Ming and Qing dynasties, when the gentry and large families covered up a large number of unrelated people to obtain benefits from tax exemption, the Song Dynasty was desperately dividing the family one by one, and the phenomenon of brothers living together was rare in the countryside. The beards that were unsuccessful in the separation were all white, and the pigtails pretended to be children, and the children who had the ability to split the family just ran away and quickly separated them to live another life, which is the common generation of this era. Because the taxes and servants are all according to the household level, if they are divided into details, they can reduce their rank, so as to reduce the burden. This is also the reason why the average number of people per household in the Song Dynasty was smaller than that of all dynasties, which makes people feel weird.

Fundamentally speaking, it is still a rigid copy of the chaos caused by China's classical society by class society, and it is necessary to describe the scholar class as the representative of the landlord class. In fact, what kind of family did most of the scholars come from? Most of them were born in the families of eunuchs, and most of the officials had land, which did not mean that they felt that they were landlords. This reason is just like Xu Ping's previous life, the biggest source of civil servants is the family of civil servants, but it has to be said that most of these people have housing, so it is as ridiculous as representing the class with houses.

The emperors of the Song Dynasty ruled the world together with the scholars, and they were originally a class that was beyond the landlords, peasants, and merchants, and they did not have such a high class consciousness of the other three, and they considered themselves to be the rulers of the world.

Therefore, the scholars of the Song Dynasty sometimes did things very undisciplinedly, such as not suppressing annexation, and even sometimes encouraged annexation, not for any noble purpose, often just to collect more taxes. This is not only the case in the countryside, but also in other industries and businesses, and the Song Dynasty government often does similar things.

The Song Dynasty was the dynasty with the highest revenue of the Chinese central government, and strangely enough, it was also the time when the government was most short of money, and it never spent much money. To put it bluntly, it's not worth mentioning, the cost of social governance is so much, and it is either the government or the people who come forward to spend money, and the doctors of the Song Dynasty just feel that they want to manage the whole society, so the money will never be enough. If you don't have enough money to spend, the entire ruling class will appear greedy, and as long as you think of a way to make a lot of money, you will be targeted by the government and want to take the money out of your pocket and into the official treasury.

Xu Ping's Zhuangzi is just in its infancy, and what he feels now is more of the warmth of this era, the tax exemption of money and grain is a few years, and the village lacks people to help you hire it, and if you don't have the capital, you can borrow it from the government, and if he wants, he can also come back from the county to face a big pennant and hang it.

It's just that as he learned more about this era and became familiar with the surrounding situation, Xu Ping also felt more and more the sword hanging over his head. In the following year, the village will be exempted from paying taxes, and his Zhuangzi is like a pig raised by the imperial court, and it should be slaughtered at that time.

If you don't want to be slaughtered as a pig by a scholar, you have to become a scholar.

Thinking about these things, Xu Ping could only sigh. No matter what dynasty, if you want to live comfortably, you have to squeeze into the ruling class, but fortunately, in this era, a big opening for the imperial examination has been opened.

The light was swaying, and Song Laozhuan was poured a few glasses of wine, squinting slightly.

A group of Zhuang Ke surrounded him and Tian Sihai in the middle, and asked these two characters who traveled from south to north what the outside world was like.

One asked: "Uncle Song, why don't you stay in Tangzhou, how can you just talk about the camp and field affairs there?" The imperial court spent a lot of money and energy, and it always had to be opened. ”

Song Laozhuan sighed and said, "How to open it?" When recruiting the fields, it was said that the cattle would be exempted from money and grain for a few years and taxes for a few years, but the next year the errand came! Everyone has no foundation, where can we cope with this? They're all gone. ”

When Xu Ping heard this, he felt a sense of kinship. This is because the magistrate was too anxious, and he slaughtered the pig without waiting for fat, and made a chicken and egg to fight for nothing.

Another asked Tian Sihai: "Brother Tian, I have heard that Jiangnan is like heaven, is it true?" You have also been in Kaifeng Mansion for a long time, what is good for you to talk about? ”

Tian Sihai said: "If you talk about the capital, that is the essence of the world, where is there another place in the world that can compare?" But if you talk about this rural place, it is not as good as Jiangnan. ”

Someone asked, "Where can't it be compared?" ”

Tian Sihai said: "Where we grow, we grow two seasons of grain a year, one rice and one wheat. ”

The farmer asked, "We have a lot of land here, and one acre of variety is no worse than yours!" ”

Tian Sihai shook his head: "How can you compare?" For the same acre of land, we get two seasons of grain, but the government only receives one season of money and grain, that is, the land of the tenant's family, and the lord's family only collects the rent of one season of rice, but we own the wheat in that season. That's a lot lower than you guys do! ”

When Xu Ping heard this, his heart moved. I often hear that the people around me envy Jiangnan, but according to his knowledge, if he only relies on agriculture, how rich can Jiangnan be? I didn't expect that there was still this rule in this era, and the grain rent tax for planting two seasons was only collected for one season, which is too strong. If one day my own Zhuangzi also encounters this kind of predicament, I wonder if I can learn from this.