Compared with those villages in Liaodong, this small village in the south of the Yangtze River is extremely poor. The entire village is almost thatched houses, and only one family in the east of the village has a brick house and a three-bedroom apartment.

"That household is the landlord." Li Xiao pointed to the blue brick house and asked.

"Most likely, in the old Jiangnan villages, the families who could afford to live in blue-brick houses were wealthy households, and ordinary people would never dream of living in such a house in their lifetime.

But after my renovation, generally speaking, the landowners were killed. In some families, even the children fell to death on the trees. I really eradicated the weeds, how do you think I got my reputation as a ferocious beast?"

Li Hao smiled helplessly. In the history books written by the Donglin Party members, his reputation was considered to be stinky on the streets, and it could be said that the peak of his reputation was stinky for three hundred miles.

Shi Kefa's family didn't care and still married the Shi Kefa's daughter to Li Hao. Of course, in Li Xiao's view, this was a purely political marriage.

Fortunately, the granddaughter of Shi Kefa's family got along well with Li Hao. The couple was like a harmonious couple. Lu Zhu said that the young couple had never quarreled or even blushed since they got married.

Although this is not a normal state for a couple to get along, Li Xiao still thinks it is good. A man is trying to conquer the world, but after all, he must have a family behind him.

"Let's go! Go in and take a look." Li Xiao strolled into a house.

There were three thatched houses, and a woman was feeding chickens in the yard. When she saw a group of grown men pouring in, she quickly got into the house in fright. The two wooden doors closed with a bang, and she heard someone inserting the door bolt inside.

sound.

Li Xiao walked to the grain pile and climbed up the ladder. He saw that there was still more than half of the grain in the grain pile. The chickens raised in the yard also ate the leftover rice eaten by people.

To the east of the yard is the livestock shed, which is now empty. It seems that the men of the family have taken it out to work.

"What do you do?" Several men jumped over the fence and rushed into the yard. They held wooden sticks in their hands and looked at the people in front of them with unkind expressions.

Li Xiao looked at this guy, it was rare that there was someone here who could speak Mandarin.

"You! Come here and tell me about you." Li Xiao pointed at the guy in the lead.

"You...! What are you going to do?" The leading man swallowed with a "gulp". He saw the guns in the waists of the guards!

Shunzi walked over and pulled the man over by his neck collar like a sheep.

"Are you the village chief?" Li Xiao looked at the man and asked.

"No, my father has gone to the fields." The man shook his head.

"What's your name?"

"Hou Dashuan."

Due to the ferocity of these people, Li Xiao asked Hou Dashuan and answered honestly. As for his companions, they had long since disappeared.

"This is strange. Judging from your age, your father is probably fifty this year. The old man goes to work in the fields, but a young man like you stays at home. What's going on?"

"My wife has just given birth to a baby. There is no woman at home, so I have to stay at home to take care of her." Hou Dashuan answered very honestly.

"Are they too?" Li Xiao pointed to a few guys who ran to the corner and hid. They all looked to be over twenty years old, and they were very tall young men.

"They had to attend literacy classes and were left in the village by my father. My father said that it would be fine if they couldn't read when they were old. The younger generation would still have a long time to learn how to read."

"This kind of literacy class has been set up in the countryside, and the teachers are limited. Generally speaking, there is only one teacher in three to five villages. Each village takes turns to teach everyone how to read. They also teach some very basic addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.

The solution is that this is the case in Jiangnan.

It is feasible to set up a school in the city, but it is basically impossible to set up a school in the countryside. These villages are located between Huating and Suzhou, and they are considered good villages.

In more remote places, even this kind of literacy class cannot be held.

There is no teacher!"

Li Xiao nodded, "It's hard for a clever woman to make a meal without rice. Without teachers, how can we talk about education?"

"Some policies will be introduced this year. People who graduate from primary schools in Shandong can come to Jiangnan to teach if they are willing. In any case, we must first eliminate illiteracy.

Hou Dashuan, is this family considered a wealthy family in the village?" In the countryside, a family with leftovers can almost be called a wealthy family.

"This is almost the case in the village now, except for the widows who have no men at home."

"Is there no one to take care of the orphans?" Li Xiao frowned.

"Everyone in the village collects some food for lonely old people and so on. It's not a problem for them to starve! It's been a good year in the past two years, and the officials no longer charge such heavy taxes. There are no more landlords to collect rent. Every year, the officials

Also purchased grain.

Only the big guys can live like a human being. If it had been a few days ago, these people would have starved to death."

"Oh, how much food does each family have?"

"Basically, everything except rations was sold to the officials. Each household had to pay a head tax based on Dingkou. However, each person only had 20 big coins, and a family of five only paid one silver dollar.

All in all, there is more left.

Every household is saving money, waiting to save enough money to build a house." After answering more words, Hou Dashuan didn't seem to be very scared anymore.

"Is that the landlord's house?" Li Xiao pointed to the blue brick house.

"Yeah!" Hou Dashuan nodded.

"Where are their family members?"

"A group of young children came to the city with soldiers. They said they were bad people and drove their whole family into the cellar and burned them."

"Burned?" Li Xiao turned back and glanced at Li Hao. He had only heard about it before, but now he was mentioned by the person involved. Li Xiao was still a little frightened, but he didn't expect the truth to be so cruel.

"Yeah! It's in the cellar at the west end of the village. After the burning, the guys buried the cellar. Now, no one dares to go there at night. They would rather take a detour than go there."

"Oh!" Li Xiao looked back at Li Hao.

Li Hao lowered his head and said nothing. He knew some things that were much more tragic than this.

“Are landlords bad people?”

"Mr. Tang is a very nice person. He is knowledgeable and even passed the examination as a scholar. When I was a child, he always gave me candies during the Chinese New Year. If any family can't survive, as long as they find Mr. Tang, they will get relief.

Sometimes the government bullies people, and it is Mr. Tang who takes us villagers to complain to the government. When tenants have difficulties at home, he will reduce or reduce the rent as appropriate."

Li Xiao looked back at Li Hao again, but Li Hao still didn't speak.

"Do you think officials killed good people?" Li Xiao looked at Hou Dashuan.

"Well! The student boy led the soldiers, and my father made a few words of love, and they almost dragged him through the streets. No one dared to disobey them."

"What's that house for?" Li Xiao pointed to the three-in-one blue brick house.

"It is used to house the lonely elderly people in the village."

"Okay, you can go." Li Xiao waved his hand, and Hou Dashuan immediately ran away as if he had been granted amnesty.

He didn't know who the other party was, he only knew that he was a high-ranking official, an extremely high-ranking official.

"Brother...!" Li Hao wanted to say something, but couldn't.

"Haha! What do you want to say? Pass the responsibility to your subordinates? You can't do this kind of thing. It's such a big thing in the five provinces of Jiangnan.

There are thousands of villages, big and small, and you can screen them one by one. There is nothing you can do about it!"

"That's it. Young people always have a fiery heart, but they are very impetuous in doing things. They believe that the landlords are all bad. They suppress it from above, and this is what they can do at the local level."

"I don't blame them for being impatient. In fact, I have another meaning that I didn't say.

This kind of country gentry has great local prestige. To a certain extent, the existence of such people is a headache for the government.

Therefore, local officials are also willing to use this excuse to get rid of such people.

The reasons were high-sounding and aboveboard, and they deceived some passionate young people. Those careless children became executioners in this way.

Haha! Do you think that old foxes only exist in the court, like people like Sun Chengzong or Zhang Huangyan?

The senior officials in these places are really naughty.
Chapter completed!