jdhmnovel Chapter 342 The Biggest Problem Faced by Surname Migration
Chapter 342 The Biggest Problem Faced by Surname Migration
Xu Jingyu never imagined that he would have a headache because there were too many fish and shrimp.
"More than 300 kilograms of small sea shrimp, plus more than 200 kilograms of various sea fish."
Xu Jingyu said with a bitter face, "This is only the first batch delivered today. The people said they will send more fish and shrimp in a few days."
Yang Shaofeng was slightly taken aback, then glanced at Xu Jingyu and asked, "Isn't this a good thing? It's better for the people to be willing to follow your orders as the county magistrate to go out to sea to fish than for you to say a thousand words but not get two pounds of fish and shrimp in return, right?"
In fact, Yang Shaofeng could more or less guess what the people who brought the fish and shrimp were thinking.
The magistrate allocated land to them.
The master then allocated another boat.
The master asked everyone to catch some small shrimp.
For these people who received the small boats, whether they could exchange the small shrimp for money was not important. What was important was to catch the small shrimp first, so as to repay the kindness of the magistrate.
Xu Jingyu said with a bitter face, "Your Excellency, this is more than 500 catties of fish and shrimp. First, I don't know how to deal with it, nor do I know how the workshop should be set up. Second, the people that the court has relocated from Jiangnan will be arriving soon, and I really don't know how to settle them."
After hearing what Xu Jingyu said, Yang Shaofeng couldn't help but glance at Xu Jingyu with the kind of look one would give someone with intellectual disabilities.
Yang Shaofeng scolded him with exasperation, "If you don't know how to handle these fish and shrimp, do you think I do?"
"Don't you even remember what I told you before? I told the people to catch small shrimp and dry them—what's the point of you coming to me if you don't let the people do that?"
"How do you set up a workshop? You just need to find a place where people can dry fish and shrimp, and then find a place to store them temporarily."
After giving Xu Jingyu a thorough scolding, Yang Shaofeng continued, "As for the issue of money and grain, that's even easier to solve—once the fish and shrimp are dried, I will have Ningyang County bring money and grain to buy them."
"As for the people who migrated here..."
This is a problem that's neither too big nor too small.
On the surface, Dengzhou Prefecture now has ten counties. On average, each county can get about one hundred households. If you divide it further into the dozen or so villages and communities inside and outside the city, each village or community can get about five or six households.
However, in reality, the biggest problem involving large-scale migration of people is never the migration and resettlement process, but rather what happens after resettlement.
As the saying goes, customs vary from place to place, and accents differ from place to place.
These people who migrated from Jiangnan to Dengzhou Prefecture faced two main challenges: language barriers and differences in customs and traditions.
Of course, these two problems are actually relatively easy to solve, because as time goes by, the people of Jiangnan can gradually understand the dialect of the people of Dengzhou, and the people of Dengzhou can gradually accept some of the customs of the people of Jiangnan.
The real problem is how to resettle these people.
Although theoretically it is possible to distribute the land equally between the city and the outside, are the city and the outside the city the same thing?
At all times, especially in the early days of the nation's founding when war was still raging, it was an indisputable fact that people living within city walls had a greater sense of security.
Therefore, those people who were assigned to the city naturally had no objections, but how could those people who were assigned to the outside of the city not have any objections?
Even if a relatively fair method like drawing lots is used, it is still necessary to consider whether the people are related or not—whether they would prefer to be assigned to one place or accept being resettled separately.
Or, to put it another way, these thousand households migrated from Suzhou, Songjiang, Jiaxing, Huzhou, Hangzhou and other places. Would they prefer to be resettled according to their region, or would they prefer to be scattered and resettled randomly?
In addition, there are a series of messy issues, such as allocating land to them and having them cultivate the wasteland.
In short, these messy problems are as if they don't exist until they are brought to the forefront, but once they are, they are enough to give any official a headache.
Yang Shaofeng rubbed his forehead slightly and said, "After these people arrive, first have someone help them set up temporary shelters, and then have someone collect their original places of origin, and try to follow the plan of dispersing and settling them separately."
Centralized resettlement is definitely not an option.
If these migrants are resettled according to their original household registration, for example, people from Suzhou are resettled in one village and people from Songjiang are resettled in another village, not to mention whether this will satisfy these migrants, just integrating them into the local Dengzhou population will be a very serious problem.
Or to put it more bluntly: Why did Emperor Zhu move people from Jiangnan to Shandong?
It wasn't because there wasn't enough land in Jiangnan to distribute to these people, but rather because Emperor Zhu wanted to promote integration between the North and the South and try to eliminate the barriers between them.
If people from one place are concentrated in one village, the integration between the two groups will be prolonged indefinitely, and there is even a possibility that people from Jiangnan will band together, and local people from Dengzhou will also band together.
After a moment's consideration, Yang Shaofeng also had the lame man, Xu Liang, the Assistant Prefect of Dengzhou Prefecture, come over.
"The thousand households that were relocated from Jiangnan this time were divided and resettled in ten counties of Dengzhou Prefecture, with each county dispersing them to the county seat and the villages below."
Yang Shaofeng said while considering his words, "Tell those officials to make it clear to the people that no one is allowed to bully these people who have migrated from Jiangnan just because they are locals."
"If someone complains to me, I will not let these officials off easily."
"Furthermore, have those officials warn the people under their jurisdiction to forget the term 'southern barbarians' from now on, and forbid anyone from mentioning it in front of the people of Jiangnan."
In reality, this is the biggest problem faced by migrants – the attitude of local people towards outsiders.
To the local people, the outsiders are not friends or relatives, but outsiders who come to seize resources.
Especially since these people came from Jiangnan.
The term "southern barbarians" is definitely not a positive one, yet it is widely used.
This divide, which existed since the Northern and Southern Song Dynasties and was amplified to an extreme degree after nearly a hundred years of rule by the Yuan Dynasty, will undoubtedly increase the hostility of the local people towards the people who migrated from Jiangnan.
If we don't give them a heads-up beforehand, who knows how much trouble it will cause.
After Xu Liang, the Assistant Prefect of Dengzhou, and Xu Jingyu, the Magistrate of Penglai, agreed, Yang Shaofeng continued, "There is also the issue of household registration and land ownership for these people. Let the officials handle it in the same way as the local people of Dengzhou. Those who need to be registered should be registered, and those who need to be allocated land should be allocated land. In short, treat everyone equally."