New Shun 1730

This kind of despair is not like the despair of the previous dynasty Wanli forty years, when people of insight had already sensed the huge crisis and wanted to do something, but found that nothing could be done.

Rather, this is the first year of Dashun Weixin, when the Junggar was pacified, Japan was conquered, Nanyang was seized, the Huaihe River was repaired, and the country was flourishing and oil was boiling, like a prosperous era.

This kind of despair is the kind of despair under the raging fire and oil.

It is the kind of despair that Europe experienced in the early 20th century, when some people were afraid that "our civilization is about to have a major crisis, and whether we are on the right path." It is not as simple as the fear of the possible outbreak of World War I, but a deeper kind of despair about "the world", "civilization" and "the future".

This kind of despair can only be produced in an era of flourishing and oil boiling.

It is a very luxurious and powerful despair.

Like the current Dashun, it can do whatever it wants, even things like equal distribution of land have been done in Huainan with the support of some despicable means.

However, whatever you do is just repairing.

You can do anything, but you know at the same time that the ship will eventually sink.

This is more terrible than the despair of the 40-year Wanli period.

Because at that time, it was believed that after destruction there would be a new life, and there would be a great way to connect three generations.

Now, it is believed that after destruction there would be reincarnation, and everything is meaningless.

In the 40-year Wanli period, there were many knowledgeable people who thought that the Ming Dynasty would end, but absolutely no one thought that it would end like that, so they just felt sorry but not overly sad.

In the first year of the Xin Dynasty, there were also some knowledgeable people who thought that the Dashun would end sooner or later, but half of them were full of despair and sadness.

Not sad for the Dashun.

But sad for the world.

After criticizing the Neo-Confucianism of the Song and Ming Dynasties, the new learning has not been established for a hundred years, and some people have already felt that there is a problem.

The old set seems to be no longer working.

But what should be done with the new one?

This kind of sadness and despair that does not want to fall into reincarnation, to put it more deeply, is actually just two sentences.

The first sentence:

Opposing capitalism and supporting the feudal aristocracy and reaction are not contradictory, not at all.

The second sentence:

Supporting the development of capitalism and burying capitalism are not contradictory, at least not completely contradictory.

These two sentences are the current deadlock of Dashun.

If you don't want to be passively involved in the capitalist system by external forces and let yourself fall into the fate of semi-feudal and semi-colonial, you have to carry out the New People's Revolution.

Then you can only take the initiative to go in and carry out the Old People's Revolution.

A normal school student said: Replacing the oppression of foreign imperialism and domestic feudalism with a certain development of capitalism is not only a progress, but also an inevitable process. It is not only beneficial to capital, but also to the nothing, or more beneficial to the nothing.

Liu Yu has been trying to do this.

However, Liu Yu knows exactly how terrible and scary this gluttonous monster is. Although Yu Sunan has gradually shown his prowess and eats people without spitting out bones, this is just the beginning.

The more they develop themselves, the more attractive the reactionary fantasy of the retro school becomes, and the stronger the reactionary forces become.

And this reactionary fantasy is the most beautiful blueprint that the old times could imagine.

But this most beautiful blueprint is also what the knowledgeable people who were sad and desperate in the prosperous times of the old times thought would never be realized.

Liu Yu was full of confidence.

But his confidence can only be full of confidence by himself, because the economic foundation that shaped his confidence and world outlook is not the current economic foundation.

His confidence comes from a world of great development of productivity that sounds purely illusory at this time.

One is an illusory myth, and the other is a helpless reality.

The above two sentences are the source of despair and sadness for people like the Lianghuai Salt Administration.

Funing's closing of official fields, Haizhou Salt Factory, Huaiyan ticket change, Huainan capital reclamation, and Sichuan South Salt enclosure... all cannot get around these two sentences, so they are extremely awkward.

Liu Yu knows what he is doing. For example, in the salt field, he turned the workshop into a factory, and sometimes he pretended to be repairing it.

The Lianghuai Salt Administration could not understand the difference between these two words, so all he saw was patchwork.

He and Liu Yu finished talking about the context of the Dashun salt reform. Going back to the sixth year of Emperor Zhaodi of the Han Dynasty; going back to the fourteenth year of Emperor Dezong of the Tang Dynasty; going back to the forty-fifth year of the Wanli period.

Looking back at the past, and looking at Liu Yu's targeted reform plan, he was completely different from the reform he had envisioned at the beginning, with too many compromises to reality.

Up to now, the means and policies of reform have completely slid into patchwork and drinking poison to quench thirst.

The Ming Dynasty's salt control law and the right to hoard merchants eventually led to big merchants with salt permits collecting money on the spot, and the real salt merchants who transported salt suffered from exploitation. The price of official salt increased, and private salt sold well, and finally the salt administration almost collapsed. It was not good for the country, not good for the people, and only profited from salt.

According to Liu Yu's analysis, the reform plan proposed by the reformists in Dashun will see that in ten years at most, small merchants will go bankrupt and big merchants will monopolize salt tickets. It will just turn the original hereditary salt permits into assets hereditary and then buy salt tickets. It's the same as taking off pants and farting.

The current reform plan that takes reality into consideration means that the original salt households and merchants will go bankrupt, and either sell the salt fields at a low price or wait for death; the policy of open tickets and hidden permits means that in twenty years at most, the old big salt permit merchants will be gone, and the new salt permit merchants who are secretly supported will rise again.

He supported Liu Yu's method, partly because it made it clear that he had obtained the emperor's consent.

Another reason is that Liu Yu delayed the onset of poisoning by twenty years; and according to his plan, according to the deduction he was convinced by Liu Yu, the onset of poisoning would only take ten or even five years.

The assumption of this deduction is that the wealthy businessmen in Dashun are slow to react. It takes two or three years to realize that they can hoard tickets and sell tickets instead of selling salt. In other words, the premise for the outbreak of poison in this decade is that the commercial capitalists in Dashun are a bunch of fools.

However, before he came, he had fantasized about solving the problem once and for all and treating the symptoms and root causes.

An ambitious person who dreamed of treating the symptoms and the root cause once and for all found that no matter what he did, the greatest progress and all his efforts would only extend the onset of poisoning from five years to twenty years.

Even before he died, he could see with his own eyes that the salt policy that he had imagined would cure the symptoms and root causes once and for all collapsed again, poisoning took effect, and he was reincarnated again.

What would this feel like?

What a powerless despair?

This feeling of powerlessness.

It is difficult to be concrete.

It is also very easy to understand.

…………

A few months later.

But it is the winter month of the first year of the new year.

Lin Min, the salt envoy to Huaihe and Jiangsu provinces, came to Haizhou again. Just like a few months ago, Liu Yu also came.

Accompanied by some local officials, everyone stepped into the Huaibei Qingkou Salt Fields Corporation, which was emitting thick black smoke.

The company's technical chief followed these officials and explained as he walked: "Two adults, eighty days before and after Xiaoman every year is the best time for salt production. Because the weather is the hottest at that time, it is the most suitable for collecting and producing salt. No rain."

"Now that the winter moon is about to pass and the twelfth lunar month is here, it is the time to receive the tide."

"The sea water in the twelfth lunar month is called a cold wave; around the Lantern Festival, it is called a lantern wave."

"Only this second wave has the highest concentration."

"Starting from the twelfth lunar month, the tide will turn into a pond. It will evaporate in advance and wait until March 15th for spring cleaning."

"In the past, when we were drying salt like this, if we wanted to attract tides on weekdays, we had to wait until the 15th tide and open the gates, because the tides are stored like the Wei River."

"Nowadays, steam engines are used to lift water, so there is no need to wait for the 15th tide. As long as the coal arrives, after March 15th and the weather is good, we can continuously draw the tide."

As he spoke, he led Lin Min and Liu Yu to the place where the tide was drawn, and introduced in turn what these large and small grids were for.

"The water must first enter the depression pool, and from the depression pool enter the large pond. Then from the large pond, it enters the first, second, and third small depressions. Then it enters the large, second, and third small depressions. Then it enters the brine pond. Finally, it enters the sun grid. ”

He used all the terminology of sun salt, and those around him who were learning new skills and operations quickly explained: "Dawachi is a tide storage pool. The rest, from Dasheng to Dagao and Ergao, can be collectively referred to as The evaporation tank. The brine adding tank can be called the regulating tank, and the final brine tank is the crystallization tank.”

"The role of the steam engine is mainly reflected in two places."

"One place is from the tidal river to the depression pond. Because if a steam engine is not used, after the tidal river receives brine, it needs to be brought in with a windmill or a pedal waterwheel. If no one is used, you have to wait for the wind."

"The second point is that a higher dam can be built between the sea and the tidal river to prevent accidents caused by the impact of the tide. There is no need to wait until the 15th to open the gate to get sea water. Sea water can be taken at any time as long as needed. "

"The salt content is highest during cold waves and light waves. This has been known since the Song and Yuan Dynasties. But I don't know why. It should be higher in summer?"

This new young man who came to learn technology gave a simple explanation, simplifying some difficult-to-pronounce professional vocabulary into evaporation ponds, crystallization ponds, etc. that were very easy for Liu Yu to understand. Liu Yu also roughly understood the flow.

In the distance, a group of people were building a road there during the winter. The simple horse-drawn railway track had already extended for four or five miles.

The craftsman said hurriedly: "Originally, a Fat Tou River was built between each drying field to facilitate the transportation of salt. But if the river was built, we would have to worry about floods and siltation every summer, so it would have to be repaired every year. . Nowadays, the company builds these railway tracks according to the blueprint of the imperial court, and transports the salt to the public square for sale and weighing, which is quite convenient. "

"In addition, now we use steam engines to pump water, so we need to use coal."

"Coal is produced from Xuzhou and other places and flows down the river to Luoma Lake and along the Qiangwei River."

"Coal is unloaded at Qiangweihe Wharf, and this railway will be used to transport it to the steam water lifter in the future. It is quite convenient..."

While the craftsman was explaining the many conveniences now, he heard someone in the distance shouting loudly: "It's wrong! It's wrong! Sir! If we are wronged, please ask Mr. Qingtian to make the decision!"

"I was originally the owner of the salt farm here. Now the price of salt is too low. We and other ordinary people have no way to survive. This Qingkou company deliberately lowers the price. It is trying to force me to death! I can still survive, but the renter The people in Renchangpu can no longer survive! Lord Qingtian! Lord Qingtian! Make the decision for the grassroots!”

Several local officials nearby had expressionless faces.

Lin Min was a little embarrassed and was about to ask, but Liu Yu didn't even turn around, waved and shouted: "Left and right, fork out!"