jdhmnovel Chapter 245 The situation is so good it's unbelievable
Chapter 245 The situation is so good it's unbelievable
In the end, Wang Guangyang was reluctant to send all the people of Hongzhou to Ningyang County for resettlement, since the number of people was one of the performance indicators for officials.
Unfortunately, Magistrate Yang is now nominally an official directly under the Central Secretariat, no longer under the jurisdiction of Wang Guangyang.
In Wang Guangyang's view, if all the people of Hongzhou were sent to Ningyang County, wouldn't that be harming his own officials while enriching Yang Dianfeng?
Therefore, handing over the people of Hongzhou to Yang Dianfeng is definitely not an option.
If the people are not sent to Ningyang County, how will the people of Hongzhou City be resettled? And how will the problem of the land being flooded by the sea be solved?
The more Wang Guangyang thought about it, the more his head ached. After a while, he couldn't help but sigh, thinking to himself, "Could it be that I am really not as smart as that man surnamed Yang?"
After pondering it over in secret, Wang Guangyang's eyes suddenly lit up, and he inwardly cursed himself for being foolish.
Yang Dianfeng can't give the people of Hongzhou City to him, but he can come up with solutions to how to resettle the people of Hongzhou and how to solve the problem of the land being irrigated by seawater.
After all, when that crazy Yang proposed to abolish all barbarian customs, I, the Councilor, had my name attached to his memorial.
Before Ningyang County was incorporated into the Central Secretariat, the Shandong Provincial Secretariat had treated him quite well, allowing him to act freely and make a fuss in Ningyang County.
With these two bonds of kinship, how could Yang the Madman not have the nerve to help me, Mr. Wang, find a solution?
Wang Guangyang suddenly didn't want to copy Magistrate Yang's homework anymore.
Copying homework is too much trouble. Wouldn't it be better to just have him write one and use it directly?
After making up his mind, Wang Guangyang first wrote a letter to Magistrate Yang, saying that although Magistrate Yang was no longer under the jurisdiction of Shandong Province, he, Wang, had always been concerned about him and had even thought about going to Ningyang County to see him. Unfortunately, Hongzhou was suddenly hit by an earthquake and tsunami, and the people were displaced. As the Vice Minister of Shandong Province, he could not go to Ningyang County until the resettlement of the people was resolved.
Immediately afterwards, Wang Guangyang changed the subject, stating that the earthquake and tsunami that Hongzhou had recently experienced were particularly severe. He asked if Ningyang County had felt the earthquake, how the people of Ningyang County were doing, and whether anyone had been affected. If so, he asked how Magistrate Yang planned to resettle them.
Then, Wang Guangcai seemingly casually mentioned: This time, the seawater flooded back, and the people were displaced. Even if they could return to Hongzhou in the future, the land that had been flooded by the seawater could no longer be cultivated normally.
In summary, it all boils down to this: the letter has been written, so if you, surnamed Yang, have any conscience, then be more conscientious and help this official find a solution. But if you, surnamed Yang, are heartless and rotten-hearted, then you don't need to care about the lives of the people of Hongzhou; just let them fend for themselves.
Once the ink had dried, Wang Guangyang summoned his trusted confidant and instructed him, "Send this letter to Ningyang County by fast horse. Make sure it reaches Magistrate Yang of Ningyang County. I am waiting for his reply."
After his confidant bowed in agreement, Wang Guangyang added, "When you go to Ningyang County this time, be careful not to offend the magistrate, or even I won't be able to save you."
……
The extent of the damage in Ningyang County has finally been tallied.
The damage to the houses of the people in Ningyang County was even worse than Magistrate Yang had anticipated. Many mud-brick houses had developed cracks, and if a heavy rain came, several houses might collapse.
In addition to the numerous cracks appearing in people's houses, the already low and almost non-existent city walls of Ningyang County also developed a large number of cracks. In many places, the blue bricks fell off due to the earthquake, exposing the mud bricks inside.
As for other aspects, there was basically no loss. The poultry and livestock in the farms and ranches have returned to normal. The biggest loss was that eggs and duck eggs were broken when the earth trembled.
The condition of the simple cement road in the south of the city was so good that even Magistrate Yang could not believe it—probably because there was a narrow crack every ten feet, the cement road in the south of the city did not have large-scale cracks!
Aside from these news items, which were either bad or not so bad, there was another piece of good news that Magistrate Yang was particularly concerned about.
The two blacksmiths sent by Magistrate Yang to find an iron ore mine actually discovered one more than 100 li east of Ningyang County.
This is actually quite absurd.
Under normal circumstances, Magistrate Yang should have sent some experienced miners to find iron ore. Sending a blacksmith to find iron ore is as absurd as asking a programmer to build a chip.
However, among the 318 engineering workers sent by Zhu Biao, there were no old miners; the only ones who could be associated with iron smelting were two blacksmiths.
Therefore, when Magistrate Yang first sent blacksmiths to look for iron ore, his mindset was that it would be best if they could find iron ore, and if not, he would think of another way later.
But to everyone's surprise, this inexplicable earth-shaking event led the two blacksmiths to discover an iron mine about 110 miles east of Ningyang County.
Although it was a poor mine, the iron ore reserves were not too low, and it could be mined in the open—the fact that it could be mined in the open was enough to make Magistrate Yang grin from ear to ear.
Of course, simply finding an iron ore mine that can be mined in the open is not enough. After all, mining iron ore is no easy task. If the able-bodied men of Ningyang County are mobilized to mine iron ore, it will inevitably affect a series of agricultural activities in Ningyang County, such as the autumn harvest, winter reclamation, and spring plowing.
However, apart from the people of Ningyang County, Magistrate Yang did not have enough manpower to call upon at the moment.
After all, Zhu Chongba and Xu Da were too stingy and kept delaying sending non-Muslim laborers to Ningyang County.
It wasn't until Magistrate Yang saw the letter Wang Guangyang had written to him that he understood.
The people of Hongzhou suffered from earthquakes and floods?
What a coincidence! Ningyang County only experienced a minor earthquake, and the floods didn't seem to have any impact at all. If only we could bring those disaster-stricken people from Hongzhou to Ningyang County...
After careful consideration, Magistrate Yang had no choice but to abandon this tempting idea.
First of all, Wang Guangyang wrote to me to ask me to help him find a way to resettle the people, not to send them to Ningyang County for resettlement.
Secondly, Ningyang County cannot accommodate all the people of Hongzhou for the time being. After all, the grain in the county government's warehouse is only enough to feed about a thousand people of the Ming Dynasty. If the number of people in Hongzhou City is too large, even if Magistrate Yang uses all the reserve warehouses inside and outside the city, it will not be enough.
So, how can we get Wang Guangyang, that old man, to go to Ningyang County to resettle the people?
How can we get that old Deng to only assign a few hundred people?
After thinking for a long time without coming up with a solution, Magistrate Yang could only sigh helplessly and start figuring out how to get some prisoners of war from that old tyrant Xu Da.