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Text 928 [Yellow River]

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    A total of 47 people were beheaded this time, including 32 officials, 9 merchants, and 6 non-official and non-business civilians.  These six people are all accomplices involved in the case, such as Du Xingxue from Shanghai, and those who personally killed them, and some of them absconded without knowing their whereabouts.

    There were many more exiled, a total of 122 officials and 17 merchants were exiled.  Including their family members, a total of more than 1,600 people were exiled, and more than 800 were exiled to Tibet and Heilongjiang.

    The so-called ghosts in the case were investigated, and two were interrogated.

    One is the customs secretary of the Ministry of Finance. Because the Ministry of Finance assisted in the investigation, this guy received the news very early and quietly tipped the local government to make preparations.  There is also a low-level clean government official. His elder brother works in the Shipping Department of Ningbo City, and he also secretly passed on the news.

    The ransacking and fines are still in progress.

    Especially for fines, the imperial court ordered maritime merchants from all over the world to pay in full by February next year.  If the time limit is exceeded and the penalty is not accepted, the government will take action and forcibly auction their fixed assets.

    In the coastal areas, there is a lot of wailing, and there are many people with poor capital turnover. It is estimated that 10 to 20% of maritime merchants are on the verge of bankruptcy.

    Those private banks were extremely excited, Huizhou merchants, Jiangxi merchants, Western merchants, Lake merchants, and Sichuan merchants transported box after box of silver to the port.  Not enough cash to pay the fine?  We have money in our hands, and the loan interest rate is not much higher than usual. You maritime merchants use cargo ships and shops as collateral.

    What's more, direct acquisition or shareholding, want to take the opportunity to participate in maritime trade.

    Take the Longyou Merchant Gang in western Zhejiang as an example. They mostly do business in remote inland areas.  Occasionally someone goes to sea, not by sea, but by opening a shop overseas, or buying local products overseas.  Now it's cool, the opportunity has come, and if the money is not enough, many companies will raise funds, and we must open up the sea route of the Longyou Merchant Gang.

    The semi-monopoly of coastal wealthy merchants over maritime trade was severely torn apart by the imperial court because of this corruption and tax evasion case.

    Many wealthy mainland businessmen have dug out all the silver hidden in the cellar!

    Zhao Han did not continue to pay attention to the coast, because the Yellow River diversion project, which lasted more than ten years, will be completely completed by this winter.

    Zhang Guowei specially sent a capable man back to explain his whole project to the emperor.

    This man is called Zhai Maohua, and he is the head of the water department of the Ministry of Industry.

    Pointing to the map, he said: "The dividing line of the Grand Canal is Nanwang in the north of Jining. The terrain here is the highest, which is the ridge between the north and the south. In the early Ming Dynasty, the water was controlled and Wenshui was diverted to Nanwang, which made the river diverge from north to south. It flows south to  Xuzhou and Pizhou accounted for four tenths of the water, and six tenths flowed northward to Linqing. Gates were set up in sections along the way to store and release floodwater, and to lift ships. In the Guanjia Lake in the west of Huai'an City, 20 miles of canals were dug  , for Qingjiang Pu, to guide the lake water into the Huaihe River, and build four gates to vent it from time to time."

    Zhao Han seemed to understand, but he didn't seem to understand.

    Zhai Maohua continued: "This time Zhang Shangshu governed the Yellow River. In order to solve the shipping of the Grand Canal, he also adopted the method in Huai'an in the early Ming Dynasty. All the residents in Anshan and Liangshan had to be relocated, because when the water from the Yellow River came, Anshan Lake  The area may be expanded several times. In the north and south of Anshan Lake, six gates are set up in sections. The Yellow River does not flow directly into Anshan Lake, but a 20-mile canal is dug to connect with Anshan Lake. When the Yellow River floods, it can flow  Enter Anshan Lake for flood discharge. When the Yellow River is dry, the six gates release water to ensure the smooth flow of the canal.¡±

    Zhao Han understood this time that Anshan Lake is specially used for flood discharge, and its function is the same as that of Hongze Lake when the Huai River was taken into the sea.  The current Anshan Town and Liangshanji will be submerged to the bottom of the lake in the future. In the long run, Anshan Lake will become a ghost like Hongze Lake.

    Zhao Han asked: "The Yellow River brings a lot of sediment, will it silt Anshan Lake and Quhe in the future?"

    "It will definitely," Zhai Maohua explained, "it is unavoidable. In the early Ming Dynasty, the Yellow River was treated for about 150 years. Qingjiangpu and Hongze Lake were silted up. Now some places are less than two feet deep. Zhang Shangshu  The method is the same, it will silt up in about one or two hundred years. The more serious the silt and silt, the larger the area of ??Anshan Lake and the shallower the water of Anshan Lake.¡±

    This is really helpless, the mother river has long been ruined.

    Twenty-five years after Jiajing, how has the lower reaches of the Yellow River silted up?

    It can no longer flow directly into the Huaihe River, but instead takes the river course of Sishui, passes through Sishui and then flows into the Huaihe River.  The section of the Yellow River from Dangshan to Xuzhou is often unable to flow through. It needs to go through the Zhuohe River and Qingou in the north to enter the canal, which caused the canal there to be blocked. At the end of the Ming Dynasty, water transportation could only go along the middle canal.

    Fortunately, the section of the Huaihe River from Hongze Lake to the sea can still be cured.  Unlike in history, after another two or three hundred years, the Huaihe River could not enter the sea, and could only enter the sea through the Yangtze River.

    Zhai Maohua continued: "For the new Yellow River, dams need to be built year by year. There is also the Abandoned Yellow River, the river network is extremely complicated, and it may be flooded in the future."The Nick", and asked for an additional budget while working on it.

    Although the emperor has allocated funds many times, it still exceeds the budget by more than 800,000 taels.

    There are a lot of engineering materials, the payment is still owed, and the merchants have received a bunch of IOUs.  The first thing Zhang Guowei did when he returned to Beijing was to ask the emperor to settle the payment for the goods. It is not a problem to be in arrears with merchants all the time.

    Fortunately, the Datong court has a strong reputation. Otherwise, those merchants would not be willing to pay on credit if they were beaten to death. I have never heard that the court can get back their debts.

    Deep winter.

    Zhang Guowei came to Xuzhou and saw nearly a thousand exiles outside the city. He couldn't help but ask, "Why are there so many prisoners?"

    The accompanying officials gloated: "These are rich people, either officials from the Municipal Bureau of Shipping, or big merchants along the coast. This winter they will be sent to Xuzhou for centralized custody, and next spring they will be sent to Heilongjiang."

    The reason exiles do not go directly by sea is because Xuzhou has a special government office.

    All immigrants and exiles going to the north must be registered in Xuzhou, which is equivalent to the big locust tree in the early Ming Dynasty.

    After listening to the officials' narration, Zhang Guowei just sneered. He worked tirelessly to manage the Yellow River, and these officials made a lot of money.  deserve it!

    (End of this chapter
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