Guangzhou Dongcheng is built on the basis of the ancient Yue City during the Xining period of the Northern Song Dynasty, after the completion of the East City, with the county office as the center, connecting the north and south city gates and the vertical and horizontal streets of the east-west passage. During the Southern Song Dynasty, the Song Dynasty favored peace and regarded foreign trade taxation as the main source of revenue, so it set up a city department on the north bank of the Pearl River in the south of the city. After the establishment of the city, the area on the north bank of the Pearl River flourished, and a few years later this place became the southern city of Guangzhou, and then merged with the east city to form the capital city of Guangzhou. During the Hongwu period, Zhu Liangzu, the Marquis of Yongjia, who guarded Guangzhou, expanded the capital city, connected the original eastern, western, sub-and southern four cities into one, and extended the Guangzhou city to the north to the area of Yuexiu Mountain, which formed the scale of today's Guangzhou City.

Guangzhou is the only treaty port in the Lingnan region, and the trade is extremely developed, so Yangcheng is famous for its wealth and world. After the fall of Nandu, a large number of reluctant people fled to Lingnan with Ming officials, and their arrival caused the population of Guangzhou to increase rapidly, so that the housing prices in the city increased several times. Unable to find a place to settle in the city, the refugees had to settle down along the walls of Guangzhou, forming shantytowns that were more than ten miles long.

The catastrophe of Gengyin in the fourth year of Yongli (the seventh year of pseudo-Shunzhi) made Yangcheng a hell overnight, and also made the people in the city disappear overnight with the ten-mile shacks outside the city.

In order to enrich the population of the city and restore the prosperity of Guangzhou, so that they could collect commercial taxes to support the soldiers and horses of the feudal clans, Shang Kexi and Geng Jimao successively moved tens of thousands of people from nearby prefectures and counties, plus the families of the Manchurian Eight Banners who had just moved this year, Guangzhou's vitality slowly began to recover, and there were already 100,000 people.

There are more people. There are many people who do business, and traders from all over the world have taken a fancy to the treasure land of Guangzhou, especially the newly built Mancheng City has attracted their attention. Although the king of Pingnan and the king of Jingnan were ruthless in taxation. But it can't stand the big profits. Those merchants are all traveling from south to north, and their hearts are clear, and they know who makes money well.

The silver of the high-ranking officials and nobles in this world is the best earning, followed by those nouveau riche, obviously, the Manchurians from Beijing are the nouveau riche in their eyes. No matter how fierce those Manchurian soldiers are, they will always have to spend money. Their wives and children should not spend money on food, clothing, housing and transportation, and they should not buy good things, otherwise they will kill so many Han people. What to do with grabbing so much money, you can't keep it and bring it into the coffin.

Since learning that the imperial court was going to set up a full city in Guangzhou, the merchants in Guangzhou have started to operate, and there are backstage ones who directly connect with the government. and even hung up on the road with the general's mansion all over the city. Those who don't have a backstage are also trying to get a piece of the pie. Started at the beginning of the year. The merchants of Canton sent a large number of people to various places to buy goods, or to pull them into the city by carts or boats, and they did not sell them, but hoarded them there, waiting for the Manchurians to earn their money. Otherwise, those poor haha in Guangzhou City can't digest so many goods.

Sure enough, after the Manchurians from Beijing arrived in Guangzhou, they drove the consumption in the city, and those Manchurian women were very willing to spend money. Seeing good things, they rarely bargained, which made the merchants in Guangzhou City make a lot of money. There is only one thing that makes them taboo. That is, many of the Manchurians used to settle accounts are unmelted gold and silver hand ornaments, and the blood stains on them are even rusty, and they can't be wiped off, God knows how those Manchurian mothers-in-law put this ominous thing in their hands.

After the expansion of the central area of the city into a full city, the original residents were relocated to the area of Guide Gate in the south. Most of them are poor and cannot afford to rebuild, and the lucky ones are the first to move into the houses of those whose owners died a few years ago, and those who are slow to move have to build their own shantytowns. The government is not without subsidies, but this subsidy is very small, and it is simply impossible for these "demolished households" to buy or build houses again.

For a while, the city wall of Guide Gate looked like it was a few years ago, and dense rows of shacks sprung up like mushrooms after a rain. Outside the Guide Gate is the Pearl River, where boats dock every day, and the men go to help carry the goods and sell the coolies to earn some hard-earned money, while the women do some manual work at home to make a living. If you have a craft, you will naturally find a way to turn the craft back up, which is better than selling coolies to make money.

The big merchants in the city naturally look down on the poor people in the area of Guide Gate, and they are not happy to make these small money, but the small traders are happy to pick up the streets and alleys to sell, and some directly set up stalls in crowded places. There are too many people in this land, and all kinds of livelihoods have appeared one after another, and every day there are teams singing Cantonese opera on stage. Today there are two, one in the east and the other in the west, and each sings its own without interfering with the other. One sang "Tian Ji Sends the Son", and the other sang "Bi Tian Congratulations on Birthday", the actors on the stage were dressed in red and hung colors, and the Cantonese singing and harmony made people listen to it very pleasantly. This Guangdong opera sounds really good to the locals, but the Han army and the Manchurians from the north don't like to listen to it, for no other reason, they don't understand it.

Wang Si walked the streets and alleys in this shantytown to carry the burden, he was not a seller, but a pick-up burden. After a morning, I picked three heads before and after, and earned more than a dozen coppers, if I could pick a few in the afternoon, the food of the family would be settled today, and if I was lucky, I could save a few dollars.

"Pick the head, wait a minute."

As soon as he crossed the intersection, Wang Si heard someone calling him from behind, and when he looked back, it was a woman holding a four or five-year-old child waving to him.

Wang Si smiled and picked up the burden, put it down and asked, "Who wants to pick off the head of the eldest sister's family?" ”

"Pick my boy's head."

The woman pulled the child by her side and motioned for him to sit on the stool that Wang Si had taken down.

"He?"

Wang Si looked at the child's hair and said with a smile: "This hair is not long, let's stay for some time." ”

The woman shook her head and said, "No, it's 7 years old, if you don't pick it, it won't be good for the government to know." ”

"Seven years old?"

Wang Si was a little surprised, and looked at the child again, no matter how he looked at it, he didn't look like a seven-year-old year-old, his heart might not have much to eat, and his body bones couldn't grow well, so he looked small.

The government has a strict order on the removal of heads, and if the doll of the Han family does not take off the head and tie the braids at the age of seven, then something will happen, and if it is not done well, it will lose its head.

Wang Si put down his burden, told the doll to sit down, took out the knife and was about to start, but at the intersection in front of him, a few soldiers from the green camp stumbled to run, as if they were being chased by ghosts, and they ran towards this side in a panic.

Wang Si was startled, he didn't dare to block the military master of the green battalion, he hurriedly pulled the doll and was about to flash to the side, but he didn't want a tall horse to run out behind the few military masters of the green battalion, and the knight on the horse slashed at the back of the green battalion soldier who fell behind, and then shouted loudly: "The Ming soldiers have entered the city, the Ming soldiers have entered the city!" ”

(To be continued.) )