Dominate the Country

China is too big, and transportation is not convenient in this era. The spread of news from south to north is relatively fast, but from east to west it is really very slow.

Especially the mountainous gullies in the west. In a sense, the southwest is more difficult to lead than the northwest.

Just as Chen Ding's team was struggling to rush to Huangshengguan, he didn't know that a Tibetan horse team from the southwest of Qinghai was also struggling to advance towards Huangshengguan.

The closest place to Huangshengguan is actually Gannan. Although Songfan is adjacent to Yushu in Qinghai in the northwest, Yushu is too big. The territory of the Donzhu family from the southwest of Yushu is in the southwest of Yushu. If he wants to follow the horse team to Huangshengguan, he must first go east through the entire Qinghai to enter Gannan, and then go south to Sichuan. This journey is much more difficult than Chen Ding's journey.

"Doji Zhaxi, is Huangshengguan really more prosperous than Nangqian Wangcheng?"

For Donzhu, who has not left Yushu for 20 years, Nangqian Wangcheng is the most prosperous place. Since the Southern Song Dynasty, the Nangqian royal family has always controlled the Tibetans in the southwest of Qinghai. With a history of six or seven hundred years, the Nangqian royal city in Yushu is a symbol of local power.

Although the total population of Yushu Tibetans has always been limited, they were suppressed by the Mongols who occupied most of Qinghai in the early years. After all, the Qinghai Mongols once occupied the entire Qinghai-Tibet Plateau during the heyday of Gushri Khan's rule, and the Mongols still have a deep influence in Tibet. However, the only cities that can be mentioned on the entire Qinghai-Tibet Plateau are Lhasa and Xining, but they are a bit far away from Dunzhu in Yushu.

This is like the Chinese country people in the 1990s. They know that Los Angeles and New York are much more prosperous than the Magic City at that time, but the Magic City is enough to satisfy their definition of prosperity in their brains. They can't imagine the luxury of Los Angeles and New York that they can't see with their own eyes.

This is the current Dunzhu. In his impression, the Nangqian Royal City, which was attached with the color of power, was prosperous enough. It was really difficult for him to imagine a place that was more prosperous than the Nangqian Royal City in Doji Zhaxi's mouth.

What's more terrible is that Huangshengguan is just one of the insignificant cities of the Han people. The Han people have cities that are far more prosperous than Huangshengguan, such as Songfan City itself, such as Chengdu and Chongqing, such as Wuhan, Shanghai, Guangdong and Nanjing.

He felt dizzy just thinking about Dunzhu. He climbed to the top of a mountain from the foot of the mountain with great difficulty. He thought that the mountain was already the highest place in the world. He never expected that there were more mountains higher than the mountain in the distance. He just stepped on the stone steps, and there were countless stone steps waiting for him to climb up.

"Young Master, Doji Zhaxi would never dare to deceive you. Huangshengguan was originally the place where the Tea and Horse Department and the Tea Tax Department were located. Now the court has unified these two departments into a unified tea and horse trading place. What can be traded there is not only tea and horses, but also salt, medicinal materials, ironware, cloth, etc. There are two to three thousand people living in the entire Huangshengguan." This number is not much less than the number of people in Nangqian Royal City. And these people are all people who do business and trade. There are so many traders in Nangqian Royal City, and there are so many goods in Nangqian Royal City. So Doji Zhaxi certainly thinks that Huangshengguan is more prosperous than Nangqian Royal City.

"The trading market there is bigger than the palace of the entire royal city. There are houses and vendors everywhere. As long as you have money, you can buy all the goods you want from there." Doji Zhaxi is the steward of the Donzhu family. He is one of the few people who have traveled all over the country and has truly seen the world.

Chen Han Dynasty changed the Tea and Horse Department and the Tea Tax Department into the Tea and Horse Exchange. Doji Zhaxi originally thought that it was just a face-saving job with a new name but the same substance. However, after he went through hardships three years ago and personally visited Huangshengguan, he was shocked to find that the Tea and Horse Exchange was completely different from the official yamen he had in mind.

"Young Master, you don't know. The Ming Dynasty and the Qing Dynasty were just a new name with a new name. The government and court in the Central Plains have always monopolized the tea trade. Spend some silver and make some connections, and you can sell whatever you want. Everything depends on money and money." Doji Zhaxi's face was bitter when he spoke. The tea merchants on the ancient Tea and Horse Road had long been accustomed to the official monopoly of the Central Plains regime on the tea trade, so for perhaps more benefits, they had to curry favor with those officials.

The so-called policy from above, countermeasures from below. This practice is not only in the 21st century. The inevitable result of official monopoly is collusion between officials and businessmen, which is a phenomenon that is easy to understand. No matter how strict the imperial court's decrees were, or how many official institutions were established, in order to protect their own interests, the tea merchants who traveled between the mountains always found ways to make these laws and institutions work for them.

Money and silver were a panacea for the officialdom in the past.

But now the tea-horse trade has changed greatly. The tea-horse material transactions there are not directly controlled by the government, but are managed by merchants themselves. There are dozens of companies of all sizes. The control of tea is far less strict than in the past, and there is no limit on the amount. For the prices of tea, cloth, horses, medicines, furs, ironware, etc., the imperial court only gives a reference price, not a hard and fast rule. The real transaction price still fluctuates according to the actual supply and demand of the goods, which is too convenient for promoting the entire tea-horse trade.

For old people like Doji Zhaxi who travel on the road, this is the environment they yearn for the most. Even though he is over 40 years old, he is full of endless longing for the great changes that will happen in the future.

As long as this system can be established for a long time, he can even give up his position and identity as a housekeeper and become a businessman, traveling between Yushu and Sichuan.

But ten years ago, Doji Zhaxi didn't even dare to think about it, and he didn't even want his children to follow him. It was too hard, too tiring, and too dangerous. In the past environment, there was no big power to support them. If Tibetans like Doji Zhaxi wanted to jump out and work alone, their whole family would be skinned in minutes. But now it's different. There are still Han courts in Nangqian Wangcheng, and Yushu nobles of all sizes have long stopped killing and punishing people without authorization.

Some people have been reported and punished by the Han people. The vivid examples are there, and no one dares to take their own lives lightly.

When the Fu Han army entered Qinghai Lake, it had already used the actual results to let all the people on the plateau know who is the real master of this land.

Even the living Buddhas in Tibet have to be nominal members of the Han people's Education Administration Bureau. The four major Deben families are constantly sending people to the Han schools. What is the Nangqian royal family that has controlled Yushu for hundreds of years?

"What I am afraid of now is that this rule will not last long. The Central Plains has a new emperor, and the Qing Dynasty was driven away by the Han people. When the new emperor comes to power, the Han officials always like to make things happen when they take office. I am really afraid that it will not take long before the transactions at Huangshengguan will be the same as before. Alas, you will understand this kind of thing in the future." This is also a major reason why Doji Zhaxi dare not leave the Donzhu family until now. It is not just the accumulated prestige of the past.

After a difficult journey, the Donzhu family caravan finally saw Huangshengguan under the towering green mountains at noon three days after Chen Ding's team arrived at Huangshengguan. It was a not very tall pass between two mountains, but the mountains on the left and right set off its majesty.

However, to their surprise, their cavalry was stopped by a group of children on the road more than ten miles away from Huangsheng Pass. These children wore smaller military uniforms, but they were holding real weapons in their hands. The bayonets on the muzzles of the guns shone coldly, which made people feel cold.

It was at this time that the Donzhu family's cavalry learned that a rebellion had broken out in the Songfan City area not long ago.

The Chen Han government did not have many troops stationed in Songfan, but they had a boy camp in Songfan. Thousands of boy scouts rushed into Songfan City with bayonets at a critical moment, and defeated the Songfan rebel chieftains and soldiers who had more people than them in one fell swoop. The whole Songpan got rid of a big disaster, but the vigilance had not been dropped. At least until after the New Year!

Donzhu heard that in Songfan City, more than a thousand boy scouts defeated one or two thousand rebel soldiers.

This reminded him of the Boy Scout Camp in Yushu.

At the beginning, the Han people set up a Boy Scout Camp on the grounds that they would not station troops in Yushu, and the Nangqian royal family agreed to it. In the eyes of the Yushu Tibetans, the Boy Scout Camp with as many as three or four thousand people was far less intimidating than a cavalry camp. Although in the following years, the Yushu people honestly accepted the shackles imposed on them by Chen Han, and no rebellion occurred. But now it seems that the Chen Han "silly hat" that the Yushu people thought of at the beginning was not the same thing at all. That was not Chen Han's stupid hat. He had unknowingly put a sharp knife to the side of the Nangqian royal city.

Judging the Boy Scout Camp outside Nangqian City by the Song Fan Boy Scout Camp is really too scary to think about.

The Han people are really too cunning and cunning.

In order to avoid the resistance of the local natives as much as possible, the Chen Han government stationed troops in the entire Qinghai, except for the area around Qinghai Lake, where only a cavalry regiment was stationed in the open space between Chaling Lake and Eling Lake. No other places were firmly stationed, but replaced by the unnoticeable Boy Camp.

No one would regard the Boy Camp as a big threat, and Chen Ming seized this point and withdrew from the army and returned to the Boy Camp.

Those natives didn't know how powerful the boy soldiers were.

The boy soldiers of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom made countless Qing generals call them fierce.

These little kids either lacked food and clothing, or lost their parents, and many of them even begged for a living, starving and full. They were brought to the Boy Camp where they had no worries about food and drink by Chen Han in dire straits. Their loyalty was trustworthy, and the courage of these children to fight with knives when necessary, and the strict training in the Boy Camp was not in vain. Under the neglect of many people, the Boy Scout Camp, as a hidden military force, controlled quite a lot of places for Chen Han. The judgment here in Songpan is just an example, a representative, and by no means a special case.

There were dozens of heads hanging outside Huang Shengguan. After asking, I found out that these were the leaders of the rebels. During the suppression of the rebellion, the Boy Scouts killed people in an orderly manner. Zhang Laying and other sources of the rebellion were killed. These are only part of them. Some are hung in Songpan City, and the heads of several other main leaders who were killed and the captured main rebel leaders and their families have all been sent to Chengdu.

If these bloody heads had not confirmed the Boy Scouts' words, Dundup and his party would have been unwilling to believe that what the Boy Scouts said was true. However, in Huangsheng Pass, the boy scouts with live ammunition patrolled the sentry together with a group of garrison troops here. The heroic spirit displayed by those soldiers even made Dunzhu and others subconsciously ignore the youngness of those boy scouts. The security at Huangsheng Pass was much tighter than the previous times when Duoji Tashi came. It seemed that it was not just because of the rebellion that had been put down before. After some inquiries, they found out that a Nanjing team had come to Huang Sheng Pass. The nobles are all descendants of the royal family, and among them there is even the eldest son of His Majesty, His Royal Highness. Of course, Huang Shengguan must be more vigilant.

The Dondup family's horse team does not have enough points, and the leader of the team, Dorje Tashi, only has the most common first-class economic person qualification. Therefore, the Dondup family's horse team is also a first-class caravan, which is not allowed to keep muskets in Huangsheng Pass. , Dundup's two horn handguns were all taken away, leaving only a Tibetan knife.

In fact, not only Dundup, Dorje Tashi and others, but also the cavalry of many Han people were subject to the same strict search, and all firearms were strictly inspected. This was to ensure the safety of Chen Ding and others to the maximum extent.

There is no airtight wall in the world. Chen Ming sent the children of the royal family and powerful people to children's camps to endure hardships and receive training. At first, the people didn't know about it, but they didn't know it for one year, two years, and three years. Do you know?

This matter was so extensive that if a servant of the powerful family revealed it to the outside world, it would be enough to spread throughout Nanjing. How can I hide the news? Who else can I hide it from?

Dunzup didn't think there was anything terrible about this incident. On the contrary, it was a pity that he could not arrive at Huangsheng Pass a few days earlier, so that he could watch the court behead him.

Nowadays, the death penalty in the imperial court is divided into several categories. The most serious one is beheading, followed by shooting, and finally hanging. Not to mention the rebels who died in the counter-insurgency war, all other leaders were beheaded.

After entering Huangsheng Pass, Dunzup felt that this place really didn't look like a heavily guarded place. The streets were so neatly cleaned. Guancheng was too lively. He could see the Tea and Horse Exchange at a glance. Before he even got close, the aroma of wine reached his nose.

The caravans of the Dunzhu family are too far apart, and alcohol is rarely sold. The only thing Dunzhu can taste is highland barley wine, but the taste is really not as good as the good wine from Sichuan.

The street shops are piled with tea cakes and tea bricks, as well as cloth, ironware, medicines, cans, and seafood. Many vendors are shouting loudly to attract customers.

In any tea shop, there must be a pot boiling tea leaves; the waiter opened the mouth of the jar and poured wine into the large bowl next to it. The salt piled on the oilcloth like dirt is so white that it dazzles the eyes in the sun. It doesn't look precious at all, and this is also a good thing in Yushu. There are also a large number of seafood exuding a fishy smell that is very unfamiliar to Dunzhu, a large number of canned food, dried vegetables, and even fresh fruits...

Dunzhu suddenly felt that his eyes were not enough. There were so many good things here that he could not bear to move his eyes away from them.