Normally, due to the simple and rich people in the south of the Yangtze River, most of the rich eunuchs and scholars in the past would take out money to help, and large families took out rice and noodles to cook porridge; The gentry would ask for the grace of God, either reduce or suspend the collection of money and grain, and the court would distribute money and grain to help the victims.

Even if the squires refuse to go to the book, the people also have to go to the public, and even if the eunuchs refuse to go to the book, there are still two houses and the Taoist government to submit a public submission.

Unexpectedly, with the departure of the government officials this year, the officialdom and squires in Hangzhou had no food to eat from the disaster victims in the countryside, and the people did not have a word.

Xu Hao couldn't guess the reason, and he couldn't understand it in the past few days, and found that the officials and the servants were like wolves and tigers, not only did they not help the people, but they urged taxes everywhere.

After the explanation of the Xia family and Yu Shiji's letters, it turned out that over the years, all parts of Jiangnan owed too much tax grain, and Huzhou alone owed a full 600,000 stones.

In Hongwu's later years, every year the local government paid for grain, making the deficit bigger and bigger, although last year was exempted from taxes for one year, but what should be done with the arrears in previous years? The debts left by the previous official, the next official did not want to admit it, and they dragged on for three years and continued to leave it to the next one.

After a long time, the local officials are afraid that the court will investigate and implicate their colleagues and superiors, so no matter who is the official, they can only cover up the truth under the rat trap, there is no grain in the warehouse, and they are afraid that they will starve to death to the fault of the big families who are looking for wealth, and force them to take out the grain, so that who will pay for food relief again?

The same is true for ordinary people. Millet was sold for eight taels of treasure money and one stone, and the government still refused to stabilize the price of grain, isn't it impossible to support its children? It happened that the boy was sold to be a tenant farmer, and the daughter's good-looking one was sold to be a thin horse in Yangzhou, or a slave and a maid.

What's even more hateful is that some people are dissatisfied and go to the government to complain, generally the cost of the lawsuit in this famine year is reduced, and a complaint is handed over, regardless of whether it is reasonable or not, when the business trip is detained and asked for money, when the trial is heard. It also costs money to summon witnesses or something; When the case is being tried. In the name of repairing Yayu and so on, a fine of thirty or forty taels of silver, or a fine of rice, grain, wood, bricks, and adobe, is specified within a time limit of three days.

Even if you pay it on the fourth day, you can't do it. forced the people to sell their houses, land, and children. If you can't sell it. forced the head of the family to death, worried that widows and orphans would not starve to death one after another? If you die cleanly, you can value the family affairs and destroy the property. The price was limited, and the neighbors were forced to pay.

Therefore, every little thing, Hangzhou doesn't know how many people have to do it, people are forced to such fields, and they can't wait for someone to rise up, who will go to the public?

Xu Hao is angry and angry, the difficulty of the rule of officials is here, even if these officials are killed, the next batch will come out, even if Zhu Yuanzhang is so radical to kill tens of thousands of officials, it has only been a few years, and the rule of officials is so bad?

In terms of treating officials, few people have been able to do Zhu Yuanzhang's evil eradication throughout the ages, even Zhu Di can't do it, let alone Zhu Gaochi, of course, killing people can't completely solve the problem.

Besides, Xu Hao can't interfere in local political affairs without authorization, let alone come to the door to slap him in the face and then send someone to arrest him and behead him on the street, such recklessness is just counterproductive, and if he doesn't get it right, he will lift a stone and shoot himself in the foot.

Moreover, because the imperial court has already sent officials, it is not Xu Hao's turn to take the mouse and meddle in things, and the officials in Hangzhou have also been greatly restrained in the past few days, and they have actively assisted the household officials in disaster relief.

It was Xu Hao who chose to continue to hide behind the scenes, and he was very familiar with disaster relief, anyway, the illegal officials couldn't run away, so there was no need to settle accounts in a hurry.

Sell the Wanshi grain brought in the name of the Xia family, isn't the price of grain six dollars and eight cents a bucket? The Xia family only needs one penny and two cents and one liter, and it is only twelve copper coins.

Each person is only allowed to buy one liter per day, and he does not guard against those officials and heroes taking advantage of the opportunity, how can Xu Hao's cheapness be so easy to deceive? If there is one, no one will be able to run in the future.

Grain is a cheap kind of grain crops, and it would be good to be able to fill in the stomach in a disaster year, Xu Hao never thought that his family would pay for a large amount of rice and wheat for people to eat, and urgently bought tens of thousands of stones of grain from Shandong and other places, and sold them at cost price.

With the four grain stores set up by the Xia family in the southeast and northwest, coupled with various factors such as the imperial court's relief and cracking down on illegal grain merchants, the price of grain in the city dropped significantly.

Mrs. Xia came out of the pain of losing her child, and sat in the store every day, and the people flocked to buy food to eat, and one of them said: "Sixty-eight dollars of grain, your family only needs twelve dollars, why not even get rid of these few dollars, and help the poor refreshingly?" Picture a good reputation and official rewards, which is like now there is no fame and fortune. ”

Mrs. Xia smiled: "I am from the Mu family in the capital, and I have received many graces from the imperial court, what reward do I want?" Wealthy families, the eunuchs are unwilling to donate some to help, what reputation does an old widow covet? The Xia family doesn't have any savings, so they sell a few dollars to save their vitality, and when the year is good, I will make up the grain back to the original amount and prepare for the next famine year. ”

The people nodded frequently when they heard this, and everyone said that Mrs. Xia was right, Xu Hao and Mu Ningxue in the distance looked at each other and smiled, saying that the nurse was a person who could live.

The Xia family is not easy to fool, although I don't know that Xu Hao plans to settle accounts after the autumn, facing the people who bought the grain, among them, there is the person who resold it for a profit, recognized it and did not sell it to him, and the victims also helped to identify it, at this time, similar people are street rats, once it is spread, who will not despise it? Gradually, it was gone.

Some people asked, "I have a lot of people in my family, and one liter is not enough to eat, can I sell more?" ”

The family said, "If there are really many people in your house, ask them to buy it themselves so that they can find out." "When the people saw that what the Xia family committee said was reasonable, they had no opinion.

In short, the hungry people have enough to eat when they have cheap grain, and when they have food, they have the strength to do work for others, help them, and buy grain to eat when they get paid. Since the Tang Dynasty, Hangzhou's agricultural economy has been the most developed, and the textile and other industries have not become depressed due to the famine, but because of the opening of the sea ban last year, the workshops are increasing the number of people, which is one of the reasons why most of the victims can barely survive despite the anger and resentment of the government.

Of course, there are also people who cannot find a part-time job and who are disabled and widowed. Twelve copper coins a day was an astronomical amount to them, too. In this regard, Mrs. Xia didn't have to worry about the young lady and aunt, she invited a few people from the township and the clan, and set up a porridge factory in the east, west, north and south.

This is almost the same everywhere, and there is no need to feed the hungry, one meal a day is enough. Each person has a large ladle, and four bowls are enough for a family to survive.

In this way, the city of Hangzhou was restored to its peaceful appearance in a few days, the public order was rapid and stable, few people gathered to make trouble, and tourists from all over the world could rest assured that they could play. The peace of mind has brought the operation of all walks of life back to normal.

There was a man surnamed Wu in the city. I once did the county governor of Shaanxi, and when I heard about Mrs. Xia's righteous deeds, I sighed: "Such a beautiful deed, the people brought by my generation do not do it." The anti-sect woman who combed her hair and dressed her hair in two sections did it. It's really shameless. ”

The samurai have learned from each other. took out a few hundred stones of grain at home, and cooked porridge for free while cooking porridge for 12 yuan a liter.

One after another, several kind-hearted wealthy people participated in the grand event. Mu Ningxue then sent people to each house and said: "Each family has limited manpower, and they have to cook porridge and rice grains, so they can't take care of it in two times, and they don't have a lot of rice and grain to support it. Today, with the help of Wu Ye and others, a good thing has been achieved, and the Xia family is very grateful.

I'm afraid that someone has bad intentions, buy here and go there to buy, eat the porridge here and eat there, and the inspection must not disappoint everyone's kindness, it is better to plan the area, each in charge of one place, people are not allowed to spend, but also save the lack of skills. ”

Wu Juren said happily: "Your grandmother is very worried, I didn't even think about this festival, so I should do it." Several other families agreed, so each family was responsible for selling grain, the Xia family specialized in running a porridge factory, which was responsible for cooking porridge for fifteen days, and the other five families sent grain for three days a month.

In fact, with the support of Xu Hao and the imperial court, the Xia family alone can insist on long-term relief, whenever the rest of the food is gone, the Xia family will help buy grain from the government at a low price, without spending a penny on each family, it is precisely because several families have no idea of asking for help from their fellow villagers, united and persistent, only two months later, it made many people who disagreed change their views.

Gradually, other eunuchs also wanted to do some good deeds or for the sake of fame, and they were moved by the fact that several families were indeed selfless, so they spontaneously gathered together to discuss, and united to calculate this matter with their hearts, and finally discussed merging everyone's grain, and continued to be led by the Xia family, so as to save money to survive the famine year.

Many wealthy families in the city were also moved, and they came out to donate rice and silk money, all of which were attached to the rice shops and porridge factories of the Xia family and others.

As a result, like the deceased Mrs. Xiao in Xiaojia Village, Mrs. Xia's reputation increased greatly and she was respected by the whole city.

In the seven months from the first day of October this year to the first day of May of the following year, thanks to the concerted efforts of the whole city, only 38,670 stone of rice and more than 186,000 stone of grain were used to miraculously feed hundreds of thousands of hungry people.

Among them, Xu Hao only used 10,000 stone of rice and 80,000 stone of millet, which was only a drop in the bucket for the Xu family. has completed a feat of saving people, and also achieved a beautiful talk about famine relief.

In June, the weather was beautiful, and it was gratifying that wheat and rice were harvested in all parts of the south of the Yangtze River and autumn seedlings were held. In this regard, Xia Yuanji, Yu Shiji and officials played the court according to the facts, and Zhu Gaochi and the ministers were very happy.

Good will be rewarded, evil will be rewarded, meritorious people will be duly rewarded, the Sixth Ministry sent a large number of officials and brocade guards to thoroughly investigate illegal things such as local grain storage, and severely punish the officials and wicked people who report the people as one of the troubles.

Zhu Gaochi faced the truthfully reported grain arrears, and did not hesitate to issue an order to exempt all of them. In September of the following year, a total of 3,380,000 stone of land rent was exempted from the floods in Sizhou, which immediately shook the world, and the soldiers and civilians everywhere praised Emperor Hongxi's benevolence, righteousness and sageness.

The emperor also issued an order to praise the people who contributed money and efforts in Hangzhou, and gave the plaque of the great good house, which was a great honor in ancient times, and the Wuju people were happy on their faces.

The city of Hangzhou was filled with an atmosphere of joy, everyone had a smile on their faces, all the heavy burdens that had been pressed on their bodies for many years were gone, and there was no need to sell their children for the taxes they owed, and this year's money and grain taxes were also exempted, and the imperial court purchased grain at a higher price.

The encroached land has been returned to the people one after another, and the people who died in vain have been given Zhaoxue, this time the efficiency of Jinyiwei is really astonishing, no one expected that in just one month, thousands of cases will be solved, hundreds of officials will be imprisoned, handed over illegal gains, and most of them will be reduced to civilians to return to their hometowns to farm.

Everyone believes that in time, with the land of fish and rice in the south of the Yangtze River, it will not be difficult to recover in a short period of time and reproduce the prosperity of Hangzhou's paradise.

At this moment, few people know that Xu Hao, who lives in seclusion near Xia's house, has silently played a huge role in this disaster relief.

Xu Hao stood in the famous Lingyin Temple, looking at the beautiful scenery of the West Lake, with a smile on the corner of his mouth.

Yu Shiji, the imperial envoy of the same great force, felt the spring breeze on his face, he appeared in place of Xu Hao from beginning to end, and faced the entire Jiangnan officialdom that wanted to cover up the truth and pray for a small number to be reported to the imperial court, he resolutely said: "I can't do anything about bullying the king and the sick people!" ”

At this time, Yu Shiji wanted to restore the original appearance of the West Lake, but Xu Hao shook his head, it is indeed a beautiful thing, but for Hangzhou, which has been hit hard, more than 4,000 acres of land should not be lost because of this, it is better to stay for a few more years, and it is not too late to dredge the West Lake when the national strength is restored.

No matter how beautiful the scenery is, it is not as important as filling the stomachs of the people, even if most of these fields belong to the wealthy. (To be continued......)