Chapter 31: One Hundred Thousand People Build a City

After the Chongzhen Emperor approved the construction, the new city officially began to be built, and the construction soldiers immediately started bustling about their work.

In order to fire more standard Ming bricks as quickly as possible, Zhu Cilang added ten brick kilns nearby, and the construction soldiers and refugees working the kilns were split into two shifts, working day and night without rest.

Building a city requires a great deal of manpower, and manpower was precisely what was not lacking here. After a period of recuperation, the sallow complexions on the refugees' faces had already turned somewhat ruddy.

Zhu Cilang planned to use work as relief, having all these refugees work on building the city walls — those who didn't work wouldn't eat. But upon further reflection, even if some lazy people refused to work, could he really deny them food?

Not to mention that these idle and gluttonous people, by slacking off passively, would affect others and lead the good work ethic astray — what Zhu Cilang worried about even more was that some people might secretly stir up the refugees' emotions and resist the court. After all, not everyone who walks on two legs is human.

In the end, Zhu Cilang decided to make it entirely voluntary. Those willing to participate in building the city would have their daily meals increased from two to three, and the newly added meal would include three liang of meat, plus they would be given clean clothes to wear. Moreover, after the city was completed, they would have the right to reside in the new city, while those who did not participate in the construction would have no right to settle and live in the new city in the future.

High-intensity labor requires the consumption of large amounts of grain and meat, so Zhu Cilang added extra meals and meat for those willing to build the city, fearing that someone's body might give out and collapse under the strain.

At present, Zhu Cilang was not short of money. The over one million taels of silver he had squeezed out of the wealthy merchants of the capital were more than enough for him to squander. As for the remainder, he naturally would not hand it over — he still needed it to develop his own power.

Seeing such good treatment, many people were willing to participate in the construction. The essence of the Chinese people is still industriousness — they wanted to build their homes with their own hands, and wanted to obtain survival and dignity through their own labor.

Of course, the world is never short of the idle and gluttonous. Quite a few people thought that since they had food and drink every day, why bother working when there was no silver to be had? Besides, once the new city was finished, they could just go in and set up a shanty.

The civil clerks dispatched by Shuntian Prefecture quickly completed the census. There were altogether one hundred and twenty thousand refugees and beggars here, with over seventy thousand males, of whom more than forty thousand were able-bodied young men. In addition, there were over five thousand orphans under the age of fifteen, with boys making up the greater part.

Those willing to participate in building the city, women included, numbered nearly one hundred thousand in total. Each person was issued a wooden placard bearing their name, to serve as their identity credential for future settlement.

Those who could travel a thousand li from places like Shaanxi and Henan to reach the capital had naturally endured great suffering along the way. Those who managed to persevere through hunger were mostly men, and the women and children were basically the families of these men.

Not all refugees headed for the capital — most settled down along the way in places that were relatively safe and stable, and some died en route. Many regions suffered from years of disasters and were very poor, unwilling to accept refugees, and when the local officials saw refugees approaching, they closed the city gates early.

These refugees could only continue northward with longing eyes, thinking that the capital was at the feet of the Son of Heaven, and surely the Emperor would not close the gates and refuse them entry. Therefore, many people struggled northward clinging to a thread of hope, which led to the present situation.

Zhu Cilang found professionals to survey the terrain, and ultimately selected a site for the new city a few li away from the porridge kitchens — a city with a circumference of fifty li, with a projected cost of one hundred thousand taels of silver. That was equivalent to half the scale of Beijing, capable of housing a population of four to five hundred thousand.

Although it would have half the scale of Beijing, once completed it certainly could not compare with Beijing. Zhu Cilang's early planning covered only the city walls, internal roads, and simple residential houses — as for everything else, that would have to develop slowly over time.

Zhu Cilang ordered most of the porridge kitchens to be relocated to the vicinity of the construction site, leaving only ten porridge kitchens in their original location to provide food for those unwilling to build the city. At the new porridge kitchens, there was meat to eat every day, and temporary barracks built of brick and tile were erected nearby for these people to live in.

On the day after they were settled in, under the leadership of the construction soldiers, they began bustling with work. Their main task was building the city walls — the refugees helped carry bricks, transport timber, and haul thousand-year mud.

On the foundation site of the new city, large numbers of men and women carrying winnowing baskets and wicker crates were running back and forth hauling earth. Some construction soldiers were directing the men in mixing thousand-year mud, while others were directing men at the kilns firing and carrying bricks.

One hundred thousand people building a city together — the scene was a blaze of activity, truly spectacular.

According to the calculations and planning of Zhu Cilang and the construction soldiers, the new city would have a circumference of fifty li, city walls ten meters high, and foundations five meters thick. Each of the four sides would have one city gate, with a gate tower built atop it, a barbican outside, and a moat trench surrounding it.

All around Beijing were cities in protective rings — Changping to the north, Shunyi to the northeast, Tongzhou to the east, Daxing to the south, Wanping to the west, and Fangshan and Liangxiang to the southwest. Every direction had cities guarding it, except the southeast — and that was precisely the reason the Chongzhen Emperor and the Grand Secretariat approved Zhu Cilang's building a city in that direction.

The streets and lanes within the new city were paved with crushed stone, compacted flat by hand, with drainage ditches on both sides, lined with standard Ming bricks and reinforced with thousand-year mud. This way, even when it rained, water would drain easily, with no danger of waterlogging or accumulated flooding.

At the same time, in the east, west, south, north, and center of the new city — five locations in all — a well was dug at each, for the residents' drinking water.

Some of the land within the city was used to build barracks — the kind joined together in rows, similar to the shops of later generations. If residents later did not wish to live in the barracks, they could purchase land from the new city's government and build their own houses on the designated plots.

With the designs of Zhu Cilang and the construction soldiers, the refugees only needed to work diligently. Zhu Cilang and the others estimated that the new city would take roughly two to three months to complete — mainly because there were so many workers, making it far faster than an ordinary city construction.

Zhu Cilang also opened up a tract of land suitable for farming not far from the new city, distributing it to these refugees through a leasing arrangement, so that they could truly settle down in the new city.

If they had no land and no work, then sooner or later they would starve to death again, and the refugee problem would never be thoroughly resolved.

With the Crown Prince's arrangements, and because they were building their own homes, although the daily work was heavy, everyone's drive was strong, and every face was filled with happiness.

During this period, Zhu Cilang reported to the Chongzhen Emperor, requesting a two-year exemption from taxes for the new city's people, with field taxes to begin in the third year. All field tax revenue collected would be turned over to the privy purse.

Originally, in the records of Shuntian Prefecture, this tract of land for the new city was Zhu Cilang's imperial estate as Crown Prince. In the Ming dynasty, the Emperor, the Empress Dowager, and the Crown Prince each had their own imperial estates, with the income managed by eunuchs and freely disposed of by the palace.

However, Zhu Cilang had no intention of keeping these field taxes for himself — he directly gave the benefits to Chongzhen. Of course, he was not giving them away for nothing; he took the opportunity to make some requests, hoping that this imperial father of his would grant him some conveniences for the sake of money — for instance, that he would have priority in recommending officials for the new city in the future.

Zhu Cilang worried that if the new city were governed by a pack of corrupt officials, before long land annexation and excessive taxation would appear once again, new refugees would emerge again, and his original purpose in building the new city would become utterly meaningless.

Zhu Cilang was not worried that recommending officials would arouse the Chongzhen Emperor's suspicion, because in those days, it was very common for superior officials to recommend subordinates, and it was also one of the main bases for promotion — this was what was called patronage.