HLnovel Chapter 271: Land Reclamation Issues
Chapter 271: Land Reclamation Issues
At this time, Tang Guangzheng led Shen Zhiqiu and his group to a mud-brick house and said only one sentence: "Go to the west of the river to check tomorrow, don't run into wild beasts on the first day."
As soon as he left, everyone in Shenjia Village sighed in unison: "From their attitude, we can tell that this village doesn't welcome them very much!"
The repair of these mud-brick houses is not very good. The tiles on the roof are still translucent. Fortunately, the walls have not collapsed.
Everyone from Shenjia Village walked around the house. There were five rooms in the north, two on the east and west sides, and no furniture inside. There was only a broken table and two chairs that were about to fall apart in the middle room.
The other rooms did have heated brick beds, but the kangs in two of them had collapsed. Judging from the dust, the owner of the house had probably not lived here for a few years.
Seeing this situation, everyone felt uncomfortable, but the phenomenon that Shen Youyou had imagined, where the woman and child hugged each other and cried, did not occur.
The main reason is that they also know that outsiders will be disliked and will not give them any good face.
After all, they came to occupy someone else's house and land, so this was considered pretty good. On the first night, they were allowed to build a shack on the west side of the river and were given a small yard to live in temporarily.
After a whole day's journey, everyone was exhausted. In order to settle down as soon as possible, everyone was in a state of excitement, nervousness, and anxiety.
Now that I've arrived, I can finally settle down.
Shen Zhiqiu first greeted everyone: "Set up the pot, boil water, cook, clean up, and we'll talk tomorrow if there's anything else."
Old Man Shen was afraid that his third son was upset because of what happened today. After all, anyone with a discerning eye could see that the old man seemed to be advising everyone, and also seemed to be advising his third son:
"In fact, it's normal for these people to be cold to us when they first meet us. After all, there are so many of us here. Once they get to know us better, they'll know who we are and things will be fine."
Old Lady Hua also said, "Yes, time will tell. We don't care what they think of us. We will just live in the west and won't have much contact with them. We don't have to point fingers at anyone."
Master Shen looked around at everyone's faces and said, "Boys, fight for your dignity. They look down on us now, but that's because we just got here. As long as you work hard, you will be able to hold your heads up in front of them sooner or later."
As a result, Shen Laoshi, who rarely expressed his opinions, said: "I actually think this is good. We are like our hometown in the west, an independent place without outsiders interfering."
This actually expresses the thoughts of many people. While fleeing from famine, they feel like they can't trust anyone. Only the people around them can be trusted wholeheartedly.
Although they have settled in Yangjia Village now, it is equivalent to a small Shenjia Village there, and it is nice for them to live their own lives behind closed doors.
Shen Zhiqiu agreed to go west so readily because he thought so. He said happily:
"You are right to think so. Who says that the west cannot become the second Shenjia Village?
I see that although it is backed by Fangshan and has a few small earthen slopes, there is still a lot of flat land. We can slowly buy all that land and we will have the final say over that land."
At this time, many people also figured it out. It turned out that the third brother had his eyes on the land over there, and he agreed to it not out of necessity. They felt much better.
In fact, they didn't know that Shen Zhiqiu had really made long-term plans after knowing the situation over there, but he hadn't had time to tell everyone yet. He was also afraid that everyone would be too happy and let the people of Tangjia Village raise the price for him.
However, Old Master Shen still had his own concerns, so he asked Shen Zhiqiu:
"Xiao Sanzi, the west is all wasteland. Even if all of us reclaim the wasteland this year, how much can we reclaim? Also, the reclaimed land cannot be cultivated in the first year. We have to cultivate it for another year. This..."
Shen Zhiqiu understood that in ancient times, when many people could not survive, they were unwilling to open up wasteland.
The biggest reason is actually because the cost of land reclamation is too high.
This has to start from the slave society, when the society implemented the well-field system.
The so-called well-field system refers to dividing a field into nine pieces in the shape of a "well".
Eight of the plots are cultivated by eight different families.
Another piece of land was cultivated by eight families together, and the crops they obtained were handed over to the public.
Under the well-field system, all the land in the world, legally speaking, belonged to the emperor or the princes.
"All under heaven belongs to the king" actually refers to this matter.
According to the well-field system, the grain output of the public land was equivalent to the rent paid by the people for renting the emperor's land, and it could also be regarded as taxes paid to the state.
The well-field system had a particularly important feature, that is, the public ownership of land. At that time, all land nominally belonged to the emperor or the public, and private individuals could not buy or sell it.
Under this social system, naturally no one was willing to open up wasteland, because even if they succeeded, the land they created would be public property and would be confiscated.
However, with the development of society and the gradual maturity of iron smelting technology, iron farm tools began to become popular on a large scale.
Although it was still very difficult to open up wasteland, some people were unwilling to cultivate public land because the state levied high taxes on the people.
They already had iron farm tools, so they began to think about reclaiming wasteland and getting a piece of land of their own.
In order to keep up with the trend and enhance their own national strength, in the early Warring States period, various countries began to reform their laws, recognize land privatization, and allow land transactions.
Among these reforms, the most famous one is Shang Yang's Reforms in Qin State.
It was precisely because Shang Yang's reforms were very successful that the national strength of Qin increased greatly, which enabled Qin to unify the world and establish the Qin Dynasty.
During this stage, the state tacitly allowed the people to reclaim wasteland. As long as they could reclaim new land, they could own it.
However, as the Qin State gradually unified the world and history entered the feudal era, the situation changed again.
Because the country at that time had already recognized the privatization of land and allowed the sale of land, the problem of land annexation began to arise.
The more land a landlord has, the more money he has to buy more land.
After nearly a hundred years, the country's land has been completely concentrated in the hands of a few people. Most of the lower-class people have no land to farm and can only work for the landlords and be exploited by the landlord class.
But why are people without land still unwilling to reclaim wasteland?
The most fundamental reason is that the economic cost of land reclamation itself is far higher than the cost of leasing land for cultivation.
First you need to find a piece of wasteland suitable for farming, and then find a few strong laborers to clean up the land.
Moreover, after a piece of land is reclaimed, it often takes a year or several years to cultivate the land and clear weeds before crops can be grown.
But as long as you open up wasteland, you not only have to spend some money, which means you have bought the country's wasteland, but you also have to pay taxes. Of course, some countries encourage people to open up wasteland and can exempt people from taxes for the first two or three years.
However, due to insufficient fertility in ancient times, even if there was a three-year tax exemption, it was not certain how much grain could be harvested after three years.
This means that an ordinary family needs to prepare several years' worth of food in advance before they can afford to reclaim wasteland.