This was a great surprise to our guide, who was even more shocked than I was by the Chinese scene. He kept asking questions about the people who were escorting us, and he wasn't even afraid to upset them. I once asked him why he cared so much about the affairs here, and he told me that he had been so moved by the scene that he had decided to return to his hometown as soon as he was freed, and to bring his family here so that they could enjoy life here too, even if it was brought by a rebel from the Ming Empire.

I could understand his thoughts, but I kindly reminded him that moving is not so easy, and no matter how prosperous it is, if you bring your family here without a means of making a living, it will be a more terrible ordeal for them than staying in their hometown.

My guide, on the other hand, said that he was not worried about this because he had already made it clear to people that there was actually a great shortage of labor. Because Zhao Jin's forces intended to develop agriculture of this generation on a large scale, they even set up a special agency, the Agricultural Reclamation Department, for this purpose, and under the unified planning and command of this organization, nearby agricultural production is developing on a huge scale.

And this requires a lot of labor, so Xuzhou has actually been recruiting labor lately to distribute to their various farms, and my guide said that Zhao Jin's forces did not get much from the peasants' income, at least much less than the taxes that his family had to bear, and that he could keep a lot of food as long as he worked hard with his family, and he did not have to bear all the terrible taxes issued by the imperial court.

At this point, I knew that he had made up his mind, and I was not going to persuade him to change his mind, but I was just bless him on behalf of the Lord.

I thought a little deeper than the fact that the guide just wanted to make his family better.

In my opinion, this approach of the Zhao Jin forces is tantamount to replacing the imperial court and achieving effective rule in this generation - he has replanned the land, undertaken the construction work, and even completely replaced the imperial court's right to collect taxes, so to speak, in this area, they are the government, but nominally continue to submit to the rule of the Ming imperial court.

This kind of feudal lord who has the right to rule the territory and submits only nominally to the supreme ruler is not uncommon in our Europe, but in the Ming Empire, except for the distant frontiers, it is almost impossible to see or even unheard of. When Macau is familiar with Chinese history, we all know that nearly 2,000 years ago, a great emperor had replaced the Zhou dynasty to unify China, and then deprived this feudal lord privilege.

Who is it that can achieve such a career?

I couldn't help but be full of interest in the man named Zhao Jin.

With this interest in mind, I began to talk to the people who were escorting us with a purpose, quietly stealing their information.

Fortunately, these people all admired Zhao Jin very much, so it didn't take much effort for me to get a lot of information.

According to them, their leader is still very young, not even thirty years old.

For such a grand undertaking, this age is too young. So much so that some Chinese we met also privately rumored that the rapid rise of their power was accompanied by a mysterious color, such as when he was born, there was a magical animal or a mysterious natural phenomenon.

However, as far as I can see, the rapid rise of this power is not very miraculous, but has a context: it is actually the first power group in China dominated by industry and commerce.

Before it, there were a number of merchant groups in China, some of which were even richer, but there had never been such an industrial and commercial group that simultaneously controlled land, minerals, workshops, agriculture, and capital.

This young man, Zhao Jin, in a short period of time, established a vast industrial and commercial network centered on Xuzhou, extracted huge profits from it, and used these profits to support his political interests, and even raised an army - he used his commercial wealth to get what he wanted, just like the Medici family, and its scale and speed seemed to me even more astonishing than the Medici family.

This is the result of hard work and talent, not mysticism.

And in my opinion, effort is more admirable than miracles.

As we traveled north, the closer we got to the heart of Zhao Jin's power, the more we felt the extraordinary affluence of the region, where the villagers clearly had more wealth and means of livelihood than the dwindling countryside elsewhere, and thus had a standard of living far greater than elsewhere.

It's not purely agrarian. I took a closer look at the soil and found that it was not any different from the places I passed along the way, and it could even be said that the climate here was harsher for the crops than in the south, where the climate was warmer and wetter, and it was clear that the agricultural conditions here were not as good as those in the places we passed through.

Then, logically, the wealth here should be attributed to the efforts of Zhao Jin Group and people. The Zhao Jin clique provided a relatively stable order, and relieved the oppression and burden on the people, you should understand why I say so, so that these industrious peasants could enjoy the fruits of their labor.

After developing an even greater curiosity about Xuzhou, I decided to do my best to get a deeper look at this rapidly growing region.

Unfortunately, our captivity, which limits our freedom of movement, prevents me from visiting places that interest me and communicating with the people here. However, this problem was quickly solved by an accident.

As missionaries, we all know some medical skills, and this hard-earned knowledge quickly helped me a lot: as we traveled along the way, we passed through the home of the patrol leader who was escorting us, and as he passed by, he suddenly heard from his family that his brother was in an emergency. When he was at his wit's end, we offered to help him with the treatment of his brother, and we wouldn't take any compensation from him for the care he gave us along the way.

God willing, our treatment went well, and his brother's ill was quickly cured, and the captain was so grateful to us that the patrol was very lenient on us on the rest of the journey, and even deliberately slowed down the journey so that we could communicate with the locals as much as possible and visit the places.

This kind of looseness is also a sign of self-confidence - they absolutely do not believe that we people can pose any threat.

Yes, very confident.

Unlike the peasants elsewhere, who were so confused and insensitive by famine and taxes, the people here had a cheerful aura, and it was evident that they believed that their lives would get better under the leadership of Zhao Jin and his cronies, and that no one could interfere or hinder them from doing so.

Zhao Jin's subordinates or ordinary civilians all have this peculiar self-confidence, obviously they have become an independent region in the hinterland of the Ming Empire, which is only nominally loyal to the Ming court, but they are not at all worried about the suppression that the imperial court may come at any time, and the reason for this, I will understand not long after.

At the same time that the Xuzhou forces have reduced their oppression of the peasants, I can assure you that the income of the Xuzhou forces will not decrease, but will even increase, because they have more reliable means of accumulation.

Along the way, we saw many workshops. These workshops for sake brewing, woodware, and textiles abounded along the main road. Moreover, these workshops do not need to go through much detailed investigation to discover, and it is obvious that most of them belong to Zhao Jin and his cronies.

These workshops have absorbed a large number of people, continuously produced a variety of products, supplied the people in the Xuzhou area, and at the same time increased their spending power, so that they lived a relatively prosperous life.

If seeing this was enough to amaze us at the immense wealth of Zhao Jin's forces, then what we saw next really shocked us.

When we were escorted to the outskirts of Xuzhou City, we found a large number of ironwork workshops gathered together. With a large number of wagons coming in and out every day, the workshops swallowed a large amount of ore every day, smelted it into iron pulp, and finally spit out countless iron products and farm tools, and even armor and weapons, and the workshops here have effectively formed a large market town, which the locals even call it the Iron City in private.

Although we all asked to go inside, the patrol captain refused to say anything, saying that he had been ordered not to let any unrelated people enter the place to avoid sabotage, otherwise he would be severely punished - from here we can also see the importance that Zhao Jin attaches to these workshops.

After the request was denied, our pleas finally yielded some concessions from the captain, who allowed us to observe the workshops from a distance, and to have a few words with the workers who went to work, all of which had to be monitored by the patrolmen, of course.

So, with the permission of the patrol leader, we went to the vicinity of these iron workshops to observe.

In such a place where the workshops are concentrated, the air is filled with soot and the smell of burnt every day, and we find that sometimes the sky seems to be a little gray with dust and fog

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