Chapter 7 Section 1 The Story of Luoyang Suzhuang

In early February, the ice and snow melted and the vegetation turned green.Wang Ji of Luoyang farmed some cattle, and finally there was a little life in the silent field. I don't know from which year, King Zhou never held a spring plowing ceremony in person.Every year, the prince or the prime minister will help the plow to start plowing. Year after year, the spring plowing ceremony on the tenth day of February has become a fictional story.In February when the Canglong raised its head, the people of Wangjiguo no longer had the hard work of "the season of the year lies in spring".This bright spring has only become a season to end Wodong.The commencement ceremony of farming in Wangtian in the suburbs was deserted and lonely, and almost no Chinese listened to the solemn and peaceful "Ode to Zhou" and watched the old-fashioned emperor's ceremonial guard.Farmers who live in the city, in twos and threes, pull oxen and plows in an endless stream, walk out of the city gate, live in the huts in the well fields, and slowly start the spring plowing of the public land in the warm sunshine.This is an ancient tradition of Zhou people. Spring plowing must first start from the public field in the center of the well field.When the Zhou family was prosperous, on this day every year, royal officials would visit the public land of each well of Wang Ji, and reward the farmers of the eight families on behalf of the emperor, and the joyous and busy spring plowing officially began.Today, all that is gone.The joyous sounds and laughter in the fields in spring, and the vitality of farming and labor, all fade away with the sinking of Luoyang Wangqi.The people of Wangji Kingdom are only following the long-standing footsteps of their ancestors, obeying the loyalty accumulated for thousands of years, and are still the first to cultivate the public land belonging to the royal family.

At noon, three fast horses flew out from the south gate of Luoyang, and galloped deep into the field on the causeway of Jingtian ditch. "Hey! Look, the envoy of the Son of Heaven, we are going to reward farming!" Someone shouted in surprise. "Let me see. Cough! Where is the envoy of the Son of Heaven? Those are the three Su brothers." "Don't have a good dream. Son of Heaven, you haven't woken up yet." The man who fetched water by the well platform smiled weakly. "The Su brothers are going out of the city to see the Qi Geng Wang Dian? Tsk tsk tsk!" A woman was very surprised.

The men and women of the eight families who plowed the common land burst into laughter. An old man stopped plowing and said, "Don't you bother to read the ancient scriptures? Do the Su brothers have the time to read the old scriptures? Look east, that's Su's Biezhuang, Sumen Something big is going on." In the southeast of the wilderness outside the city, a willow forest just turned green, fresh and eye-catching on the withered and yellow wilderness.In the depths of the willow forest, there is a large manor of blue bricks and tiles.The land outside the manor is criss-crossed with ditches, the well fields are full of cattle, and the singing is faint.Smoke billows from the kitchen in the manor, chickens crow and dogs bark.In the lazy and embarrassing countryside of Luoyang, this manor is rarely prosperous.

This is the Su's Biezhuang that Luoyang people admire. According to the etiquette and law of the Zhou people, the land in the four fields of Wangcheng is directly under the jurisdiction of the emperor, and it is called Wangji.The people of Wang Ji are called countrymen.At that time, the land was vast and the population was sparse, and the people of the country lived in the royal city.Only the peasants who have no national status live in thatched huts called "field houses" in the fields outside the city.Until the chaos of the Spring and Autumn Period, cities were still the lifeblood of the country, concentrating almost all social wealth and population essence.Therefore, the war at that time was aimed at capturing cities, and each battle did not say how much land was occupied, but only how many cities were "pull out".During the season of harvesting and plowing, Chinese people who live in the city go out of the city and live in farmhouses in the fields.After the farming work is over, they return to live in the city.The vicissitudes of life have changed, and the world has changed.By the time of the Warring States Period, the situation of "Chinese people living in the capital" gradually changed a lot.The princes of the Central Plains carried out reforms and abolished the slave farming system. The slaves who could only live in the fields in the wilderness in the past became civilians.The common people have their own land, and the houses and manors gradually improve. It is not only convenient for farming and feeding, but also spacious and comfortable to live in.The population is slowly increasing, but the land is decreasing day by day, and it has become a common practice for farmers all over the world to open up wasteland and reclaim land.The new civilians living outside the city are not subject to the time limit for entering and leaving the city gate, nor are they subject to unreasonable interference from the government offices and businesses in the city. There is a lot of wasteland to be reclaimed, and they can work diligently from morning to night to raise more cattle, sheep and livestock, and many farmers quickly become rich. It has risen, surpassing the "countrymen and farmers" living in the capital.After a long time, the peasant households in the city also gradually woke up, and they changed their ways one after another. They built tile-roofed houses and courtyards for long-term residence in the suburban fields. Take care of the rural ditches; the old houses in the city are left behind to guard the old, the young, the weak, and the sick, and the ordinary people turn the redundant houses into shops and workshops to do some business transactions.

As a result, the population of the city gradually changed in structure—the farming population gradually moved out of the city, and villages dotted across the plains appeared, and the city gradually became a place where government offices, scholars, craftsmen, and merchants lived together and a place for transactions. center.Since then, land and population wealth have been linked together.Wars also began to focus on the scramble for land, and the number of miles occupied and the number of households won also began to become the fruits of victory.The defeated also gradually replaced the ceding of cities by ceding land.

However, in this bustling world trend, Luoyang Wangji has hardly changed. Like an isolated island in the turbulent waves, Luoyang Wangcheng is still immersed in the great dream of the kingdom of all ages.The people of the country still live in the royal city, and there are still only scattered farmhouses and dilapidated thatched huts in the fields in the countryside.Three hundred years ago, when King Ping of Zhou moved east to Luoyang, the surrounding land of Wangji contained the Sanchuan area with a radius of thousands of miles, and the princes of the world called it "Qianli Wangji".In the past three hundred years, Luoyang Wangji has shrunk to "seventy miles square", and he can see everything from the head of Luoyang City, and he has become a lone boat in the vast ocean.Even so, the people in Luoyang Wangcheng still keep their ancestors' etiquette as before, guarding the long-standing well fields, guarding the old Wangcheng, and guarding the "work at sunrise, rest at sunset, eat by plowing, and drink by digging wells". "The eternal principle of being the loyal and obedient subjects of Emperor Zhou indifferently.

In this piece of Wangji land, Su's Biezhuang is prominent, but also lonely.On the day of the grand ceremony of plowing the public land, the Su brothers galloped in fresh clothes and angry horses in the green field. How could they not make the people of the country look sideways?But hearing the sound of horseshoes, the unique loud accent of Luoyang people floated in the wind: "Fourth brother, what is the purpose of Brother Zhang coming here?" "But how do I know? I need my second brother to tell me." "Don't ask more questions, you will know when you go back."

While speaking, the three steeds had disappeared into the green swaying willow forest. The old man on the ridge shook his head and sighed deeply: "If the world is like this, the country will no longer be a country." The farmers on the plowing ridge also shook their heads and sighed, and then began to work silently again helplessly. The owner of the Su Clan's Villa is called Su Kang. In terms of his original identity, he is quite ordinary. He is just a businessman who specializes in long-distance trafficking.At that time, businessmen were divided into two categories, merchants and merchants - those who traveled around to purchase goods were called "merchants", and those who opened shops and retailed goods on the ground were called "jia".The Su clan was originally descended from the Yin and Shang tribes, and the blood of the Yin and Shang tribes running around the world in ox carts flowed in their bodies. Naturally, they were doing business.The Yin and Shang dynasty was revolutionized by the Zhou people, but the commoners of the Yin and Shang tribes were far less hostile and worried than the upper class nobles. They still traveled the world in a bullock cart and lived a traditional business life.But Zhou people have strict etiquette and laws, and all transactions are run by the government, and private business is not allowed, so naturally they look down on businessmen.However, the royal family of Zhou had a rare calmness. On the one hand, in order to eliminate the hatred of merchants, on the other hand, they also felt that the merchants’ flow of wealth was good for the people’s livelihood and the national economy. Yi continued to be a businessman, and did not force the businessman to become a farmer.This easing really worked. The merchants who were obsessed with accumulating wealth and wealth were all focused on making profits, which greatly weakened the fundamental strength of the Yin Shang nobles, making Zhou Gongdan quell the rebellion of the Yin Shang nobles Guan Shu and Cai Shu in one fell swoop, and made the Zhou family Heshan really settled down.

The Su family settled down in Luoyang before the "Guan Cai Rebellion".At that time, Luoyang was still a modest castle, and it was famous only because it was the barrier that defended the eastern part of Gaojing.Who would have thought that more than three hundred years later when King Ping of Zhou moved to the east, Luoyang would become the royal city of Kyoto.At the time of "Wangcheng Liaomin", the law of etiquette stipulated that the Chinese living in Luoyang City could only be from the Zhou tribe.As a "businessman", the Su family should have moved out of Luoyang.At that time, the patriarch of the Su family begged to see King Ping of Zhou at the risk of death, stating that the Su family had lived in Luoyang for more than 300 years and had already become a "national" and should not move out.In order to calm people's hearts, King Ping of Zhou made an exception and issued an edict: All "businessmen" who have lived in Luoyang for more than a hundred years can become "nationals"!

The patriarch of the Su clan pleaded for his order in a difficult situation, which stabilized the businessmen, and also made the Su clan famous and became a prominent family of "Xin Guoren".But after hundreds of years, the Su family's "trading" livelihood has not developed, and they are still a mediocre merchant family.When Su Kang became the patriarch and inherited the ancestral business, the world is already a warring state in a time of great conflict. This Su Kang is intelligent and intelligent, not only proficient in business and revitalizing the family business, but also knowledgeable about books and courtesies, and has many contacts with famous people all over the world.As a business traveler for a long time, Su Kang has traveled around the world to see a lot, and he deeply feels that the living methods of Luoyang people are no different from living coffins, which are far from the general trend of the world.He really wanted to change his way of life and live more freely, so he came up with his own ideas and did it step by step: the first step, he privately bought a barren 100-acre abandoned land of a "Chinese" outside Luoyang City, and built a The small courtyard was used as a separate residence; half a year later, no one in the Luoyang government office asked him about the crime of "changing land in private".Su Kang became more courageous, and saw that the royal government had no time to govern the people, so he consulted privately with those "nationals" who were unable to cultivate barren fields, and bought their "private fields" in the wells one by one.Over more than ten years, he gradually bought more than 2,000 mu of "barren land"!

After buying the field, he didn't have to worry about farming.Every time he harvested the seeds, he would "buy workers" - pay the slave farmers living in the countryside to help him cultivate and harvest.The slave peasants of Luoyang Wangji are "Guoli", that is, government slaves, who are only under the jurisdiction of the government to send workers.The royal family trembled and guarded against the flames of war all day long, and the control over the slaves was almost laissez-faire—as long as you didn’t flee, you were a good slave farmer, who would supervise your farming all day long?So Su Kang has an inexhaustible supply of labor, and he treats the peasants generously, so the peasants are very enthusiastic about working for Su Zhuang.The business on the commercial route was good, and the land harvest was good, so the Su family flourished. Suzhuang continued to expand, and the Su family became the only Chinese who owned a rich land outside Luoyang City. However, these are not Su Kang's final plans.His great ambition is to change the family, so that the Su family can get rid of the status of businessmen for generations and become a noble family of scholar-bureaucrats.Although merchants were no longer openly despised by others during the Warring States Period, in the eyes of the government and the world, they were always talkers.In his business dealings, Su Kang has a painful experience of this difference in status.A merchant, not to mention the world of difference from princes and dignitaries with high chariots and four horses, even poor scholars and ordinary peasants often disdain to be with merchants. One year, Su Kang went to Anyi, Wei State to purchase silk, but he didn't know that the ditch had not penetrated, and the Anyi government wanted to expel him, a Luoyang businessman.Su Kang was angry and argued, and the dispute was brought to the residence of the prime minister's uncle Cuo for adjudication.The uncle's official voice is quite good, and Su Kang is full of hope for the prime minister's ruling.Unexpectedly, when he entered the mansion, the official from the city went in with high spirits, but Su Kang was blocked by the mansion and waited in the courtyard, and he was strictly ordered not to move around and peep!In the cold winter when the north wind was howling, Su Kang stood for an entire hour, his whole body was frozen stiff, and he couldn't stand on the porch to take shelter from the wind, let alone go to the living room to keep warm.At that time, he shed tears of humiliation, and secretly swore to God that he would let his son become an official and never be such a "rich but cheap" businessman! Later, Su Kang had four sons.After careful consideration, he let his eldest son Su Chang with mediocre qualifications run a business with him, but sent his three bright and talented young sons to study.He set a rule for his three sons who were studying: if they can't become famous and become an official and change their families, they are not allowed to enter the Su's ancestral hall after death! The actions of the Su family were a silent announcement.Some people in Wang Jiguo ridiculed, some marveled, some envied, and word of mouth spread, and it became a good story for a while.Can the fate of the Su family be changed?It has become a mystery that the people of Luoyang are waiting to see. However, within a short period of time, the people of Luoyang looked at Su Kang with admiration—the three sons of the Su family were all extremely knowledgeable, and they became celebrities in Luoyang!These are the three brothers of the Su family—Su Qin, Su Dai, and Su Li.