Chapter 2205: Renzong Chronicles 14: From the Port District to Huating

The river port district stretching along the Song River was unquestionably the most prosperous place in Shanghai, the heart of the entire city's economic development—the crashing of waves, the horns of boats, the clamor of the marketplace, all were the city's beating pulse.

With the development of urbanization, the empire had long undergone earth-shaking changes in urban management; the growth of the commodity economy, with unstoppable force, had completely shattered the traditional restrictive ward system.

Prefectures, circuits, counties, and county seats across the realm (including independent market towns) had also followed the trend, innovating and emulating the Two Capitals by lifting ward restrictions, forming a guild-office management system with streets as the trunk and wards as the body.

Counting from the mid-Kaibao period, this process had already continued for nearly a century, and to this day, it still could hardly be called complete. Many imperial cities, especially those in landlocked mountainous interior regions with poor transportation, still adhered to tradition—neither having the will to change nor the conditions to do so, at most adding a bit of "novelty" to their management models.

As for the vast frontier regions, due to their special characteristics, they placed greater emphasis on military functions, considered more factors of security, ethnicity, and religion, and thus moved toward yet another set of management models. Against the backdrop of flourishing border trade, the management of border cities grew increasingly strict—especially in the past decade or so, when the northern and southern frontiers had again become unsettled.

In terms of urban development and management, as the empire's number-one commercial city, Shanghai was clearly at the forefront of the nation. It had long since achieved district-by-district, zone-by-zone management; the thoroughfares and rivers that crisscrossed the city served as natural boundary lines for the divisions.

At the same time, Shanghai was also the empire's first city to completely break through the constraints of city walls. With no walls to block entry, all gates stood open, and guests came freely. There had once been officials who proposed building a new city on the north and south banks of the Song River to consolidate frontier defenses, which drew the support of a large number of conservative bureaucrats, powerful nobles, and self-styled purists at court.

However, though thunder rumbled loudly, the rain truly could not fall. No matter who held power, it was highly unlikely they would approve such a proposal—one only needed to do the math. On the distant shore of the Eastern Sea, building an entirely new grand city capable of housing several hundred thousand people would cost far too much.

Thus Shanghai had long been criticized by conservatives as an "undefended city," who found fault with it in every way and could not help but harbor worries about its security. Of course, Shanghai was in fact no undefended city—not to mention the Eastern Sea Navy that had long used it as its home port, the infantry and cavalry army camps, and over a hundred artillery batteries, even the tens of thousands of Red Gang members possessed considerable combat capability.

The imperial court had always regarded Shanghai merely as a small cash vault for withdrawals, and the powerful nobles did the same—a place for freely extracting profit. Investment was not absent, but compared to the benefits extracted, it was truly negligible.

And Shanghai was in truth a city painstakingly created by countless scholars, commoners, merchants, and artisans; it was only through the concentration of vast amounts of private societal wealth that this magical metropolis had been hatched.

Precisely because of this, Shanghai had been filled with an atmosphere of freedom and transformation from the very beginning. Over nearly a century, Shanghai had also become the place where the empire's newly emerging power strata (urban merchants and handicraft workers) were most robust.

But a century had passed, and those representatives of the new forces still could not turn over and become masters of their own fate. Only because Shanghai's sky was the sky of the Great Han Empire, and in the empire, power preceded wealth, and officials stood above the people—this was an iron law. No matter how enlightened and progressive the nobles were, they would not permit so-called new forces to slip out of their control.

And for those merchants, scholars, and commoners, when wealth and reputation accumulated to a certain level, they all faced a choice: to attach themselves to the powerful and willingly serve as their wings, or to stand independent and uphold freedom.

This was in fact a single-choice question. Choosing the former meant becoming a vassal of the powerful, and a heavy bloodletting was unavoidable. If one chose the latter, then one's enterprise could forget about continuing to grow; on the contrary, one would likely face suppression, even threats to life and property. Even if one withdrew from Shanghai, was there anywhere in the entire empire with a more lenient business atmosphere than Shanghai?

Against such a backdrop, the final choices of the standout new merchant class could well be imagined. This was the rule—the rule by which the entire imperial society operated. Those who broke the rules would suffer backlash, and those who opposed the rules would destroy themselves.

Of course, over the long years, there was no shortage of adventurers and challengers, but as for the final outcome—let alone building a business and prospering the family—they could not even get out of Shanghai. A large portion of such people found their final resting place at the bottom of the Song River.

Due to the massive influx of population, Shanghai's real estate industry naturally developed. What needs to be mentioned here is that during the process of urban development, several large-scale land enclosure movements had occurred.

Each time, they were accompanied by stepwise leaps in population, as well as the transition of old and new at the court's center (a new emperor's accession, a change of Chief Chancellor). And each enclosure movement was accompanied by bloody storms, but the city's scale also expanded and grew amid such storms, until reaching its current size.

About thirty li southwest of the port district lay Huating County, once the county seat of Xiuzhou, but long since become part of Shanghai's territory. Compared to several decades ago, Huating City had also taken on a new appearance.

Though the port district was prosperous, anyone who had spent a few days in Shanghai could discover that Huating was the true place where Shanghai's powerful nobles gathered and wealth converged.

Roughly starting from the Jianlong period, some powerful nobles had chosen to move their mansions from the banks of the Song River to Huating City. The reasons were varied, but the main one was the living environment.

Noise, filth everywhere, stench filling the air—these were unavoidable problems in Shanghai's urban development. To some self-styled purists who had visited Shanghai, it was a city piled with dung and filth, a place where only petty people would flock.

The massive influx of population and excessive development and exploitation had also caused severe damage to the ecology of the lower Song River, even affecting the drinking water of scholars and commoners. In the early years, people still drew water directly from the Song River to drink, but now, that was rare.

After all, the Song River contained everything—garbage, excrement and urine, and corpses. Just thinking about these things was nauseating. At the same time, due to the poor sanitary environment, Shanghai's citizens lived perpetually under the shadow of epidemics; every year, thousands died from pestilence.

As for public security, there was no need to mention it—all kinds of crimes, large and small, emerged in an endless stream, and the crime rate was unquestionably the highest in the nation.

These practical factors all led the powerful nobles to gradually withdraw from the Song River port district. Surveying the surroundings, only Huating remained—this was an unstoppable trend. After all, how could the refined upper class of "spring snow" long dwell together with those filthy and base "lowly folk"?

At the same time, this was also an instinctive adjustment of urban development. The large-scale southward migration of nobles, while diverting population from the river port district and relieving its pressure, also drove the development of the Huating area.

To facilitate travel, the "City-Port Grand Road" connecting Huating and the port district was completed in just two years, and the prosperity of the port district gradually spread southward. A host of "tertiary industries" established to serve the nobles also flourished even more. For instance, there were people who specially fetched water from Dianshan Lake, several dozen li to the west, to supply the nobles of Huating.

The old cramped city foundation of Huating had long been demolished, replaced by a great city ten times larger in scale, capable of housing tens of thousands of people. Within the city were clean and tidy streets; lining the streets were rows of Han-style buildings with ample space, novel designs, and beautiful views—green brick, white walls, gray tiles, and vermilion railings, presenting a magnificent spectacle.

History is a cycle. While Shanghai's urban area grew increasingly open and free, order within Huating City gradually shifted toward strictness and solemnity. There were thresholds for entering the city, commerce was targeted, there was no curfew, but the market restriction system had been brought back; security patrols ran from morning to night, from night to day, never ceasing—everything was premised on not disturbing the comfortable and leisurely lives of the nobles.

And with the relocation of Shanghai's various government offices into the city, the resulting siphon effect on the city became even more pronounced. If Huating were compared to a hotel, then a bed here would be worth a thousand gold and hard to come by.

The river port district attracted the gaze of the world at home and abroad, while Huating City was the cockpit of this great ship. Over decades of shifting winds and clouds, the Shanghai waterfront had given birth to countless legends of wealth and seen generation after generation of towering figures rise, but whether one could acquire a property within Huating City was the true test of one's mettle.