Chapter 114 The Current Situation of Ninghua County

The thirty-third year of orthodox, spring.

It has been more than half a year since Li Dongyang arrived in Ninghua County.

Within half a year, Li Dongyang did nothing and did one thing, which was to learn local dialect, that is, Hakka dialect.

When Li Dongyang came to Ninghua, he wanted to show his strength, but after taking office, he realized that he could not understand anyone except the local scholars in Ninghua.

Because what Ninghua locally speaks is Hakka dialect.

Li Dongyang grew up in Beijing. Although the Beijing dialect of later generations is quite different from the Beijing dialect of this era, it is generally related to mutual inheritance.

He asked a person who spoke northern official language from childhood to adulthood to Ninghua. He could not communicate with anyone except for local scholars who studied official language when they were studying.

Many times, he even talks with others.

Because scholars in Fujian's mountains do not speak very well in their official language.

When Li Dongyang heard it, it seemed like an ant drilled into his body through the ear hole, which made him feel uncomfortable all over his body.

If it is an ordinary county magistrate.

Maybe he just wants to stay here, be quiet and have nothing to do, and then be transferred away quickly.

But Li Dongyang is not such a person.

Although he has not done anything for the past six months, he has achieved one achievement, that is, his proficiency in Hakka dialect.

Li Dongyang was a little happy for a while. He thought that it would be able to open Fujian without any obstacles. Soon he realized that the complexity and cumbersomeness of Fujian dialect, and the Hakka dialect he learned was actually similar to the Hakka dialect in Jiangxi and Guangdong areas.

In short, it is a long way to go if he wants to learn the dialect of the entire Fujian province.

Li Dongyang had no choice but to give up.

However, Li Dongyang's academic ambitions have been temporarily curbed.

He focused all his attention on Ninghua County.

And where is Ninghua?

It's a poor place.

If you add an adjective, it is a poor place surrounded by mountains.

From later generations, the same is true.

The titles of Ninghua County in later generations were one of the four counties initiated by the Red Army's Long March and finally lifted out of poverty in 2020. In this era, the conditions were even more difficult.

Ninghua County has 51 miles of households, with one hundred and tens of thousands of households as one mile, with a total of more than 5,000 households and tens of thousands of people. However, there is very little land. Fujian originally has a large population and a small land area, and most of the ones that can be cultivated are coastal plains.

Ninghua County is at the foot of Mount Wuyi, with poor mountains and bad waters.

Most of the fields are dry fields and mountain fields. The output of many places is even worse than that of most places in the north. Many lands can only collect a few buckets of rice.

I can't even get a single stone.

Tens of thousands of people did not gather in Ninghua County, but were scattered among the mountains and lived in tribes. Li Dongyang also saw the Hakka courtyard. There was no courtyard there, it was clearly a fort.

Hundreds of people are guarding, and there is water and food, so it is not a problem to guard for several years.

This is a very serious problem. That is, the clan power in Ninghua County is particularly strong.

It’s not that there were no clan forces in other places in the Ming Dynasty. There were clan forces everywhere, but other places were not like Ninghua County.

Without these big families nodding, nothing could be done. Several major surnames such as the Huang family, Li family, Ning family and other families divided the power of Ninghua County.

These patriarchs are not good at plagues. They can bring dozens of strong men and hundreds of people to come out with a command, and fight to death.

The county town managed by Li Dongyang Energy only has a few thousand people. Speaking of which, it is a big village in later generations.

That's fine.

What made Li Dongyang most difficult was that the trade route was difficult.

To be honest, Ninghua County is not far from Shicheng County, Jiangxi. This road is also one of the mountain roads from Fujian to Jiangxi.

But there are mountain roads all the way, how many people can pass through?

The ecology of Ninghua County is almost in a state of self-sufficiency.

Silver is rarely circulated in Ninghua County, and is only used in county towns. Most of the copper coins are used in the countryside, and even in many places, they don’t even use copper coins.

It's just barter.

The reason for this is that on the one hand is that this is poor. On the other hand, Ninghua County is almost isolated from the outside world, except for transporting land taxes to Fujian every year.

I rarely communicate with the outside world.

Even if the tax is not paid, it is only one or two thousand stones.

It’s not that Ninghua County has only so many taxes.

However, under the Ming system, taxes were roughly divided into two parts, one was for transfer and the other was for retention.

Transportation is divided into three parts. One part is Beijing transportation, which is transported to the capital. For example, the canal transportation is a typical Beijing transportation, and then it is border transportation, which is transported to the border, and then it is transshipment. It is transported from somewhere in the mainland to somewhere.

Most of the taxes in Ninghua County were transferred to Fuzhou Prefecture.

But tax transfer is a chore.

If you use the one-whip method to transfer grain to transport silver, it is indeed a great burden reduction action for the people.

But it is absolutely impossible to use in Ninghua County.

It is okay to let the people of Ninghua County pay grain. After all, although the land in Ninghua County is a little thin, there is always some harvest. If you dig food from the soil, you can still dig out some grain.

But how to dig out silver from the land is a huge problem.

If the people were asked to pay the food and then pay taxes, they would almost force the people to death.

After all, there are several grain merchants in Ninghua, and all of these grain merchants are related to these big surnames. Thinking about it, it is clear that the poor townships in Ninghua County are not important transportation routes.

Any fool who comes here to do business. If the food collected here is transported out, it will be costly.

And Li Dongyang discovered another thing, that is, the silver price here is too high.

How high?

Before Li Dongyang came to become an official, in order to get one or two hundred taels of silver from his family, he took out most of the Li family's savings.

I carry it with me and dare not use it, for fear that I will use it after a mistake.

The Li family is not a rich man in Beijing. Li Dongyang is just a military family and has only been admitted to the Jinshi for a few years. Most of this money is Li Dongyang's salary for several years, plus the income from a few acres of thin land in his family.

In Beijing, there are definitely many families like Li Dongyang.

However, Li Dongyang only found out that he had become one of the richest people in Ninghua County.

The purchasing power of one tael of silver here is much greater than that of one tael of silver in Beijing, especially in terms of manpower. This is also a great proof that Fujian and Jiangxi are among the highest in the Ming Dynasty.

Discounting silver is a tax reduction action in many places. However, in places like Ninghua County, it is a tax increase action.

This made Li Dongyang feel in conflict.

Of course he knew that his purpose was to try the whip method here. But he obviously underestimated the gaze of some people in the court.

Almost when they chose this county, they knew that there were two ways to implement the one-whip method in Ninghua County. One way was to find a way to make the people of Ninghua rich. Another way was to go against their conscience and take good officials into their own care and care about their lives or death?

This is also the reason why Zhang Juzheng's implementation of the one-whip method was opposed by so many people.

It’s not that they can’t see that Zhang Juzheng’s method is good, but that the one-whip method is not suitable for many places.

However, it is already very difficult to implement a law in the Ming Dynasty. If the Ming Dynasty's administrative capabilities are allowed to be implemented separately and improve them according to their local characteristics, it will only cause demons to dance, and it will be even more dissatisfied.

It was just that Li Dongyang was in disgraceful and did this, he could not overcome the hurdle in his heart.

As for the people of Ninghua to have money in their hands, this thing cannot be done in one year or two years. Li Dongyang's term of office is only three years.

And there are still many waiting news in Beijing.

Whether it is good news or bad news.

Li Dongyang also knew that if he had a memorial to oppose the implementation of the one-whip law in Ninghua County, it could be imagined that if he had let down Liu Dingyi's series of people and disappointed His Majesty, his future political future would be over.
Chapter completed!