Chapter 50: Wind and rain from all directions will come to Qiongya Four s: I had a bad stomach two days ago, suffered from vomiting and diarrhea, and worked overtime continuously at night.
I really didn’t have time to type, so I stopped for a while and apologized.
Thick smoke billowed and flames shot into the sky.
The sound of wood burning and cracking can be heard endlessly.
The scalding heat wave rushed towards you, making it almost impossible for passers-by to get close.
The Chenji Cloth Store in Bobu Port is now bathed in a bright flame.
Watching his most profitable store gradually turn into ashes, Boss Chen, who was so anxious, had to drive his assistants, trying his best to water the fire and save the stock goods that were not on fire.
Cloths and silks were moved to the streets and piled up.
After hearing the news, onlookers came from all over to watch the fire.
For a time, they were surrounded by three floors inside and three floors outside the fire scene, blocking the originally not spacious street with water.
However, based on the common thinking of Chinese people, "Everyone sweeps the snow in front of his own door and doesn't care about the frost on other people's tiles."
Everyone stood there with their hands folded, whispering to each other, and talking about it.
But not one person in a hundred was willing to lend a helping hand to help put out the fire.
As for Boss Chen and a bunch of shop assistants, they were anxious to become ants in the hot pot.
The bosses and assistants of several nearby shops also looked worried, as if they were facing a formidable enemy.
According to the general experience of people in the Ming Dynasty, due to the dense density of houses in the city, fires in the city often burn out in large areas, and are by no means just a disaster for Chen Ji Cloth Shop and his family.
Faced with such a huge fire, any amateur would be at a loss to do anything.
At this moment, the professional fire-fighting team finally arrived "Ding dong, let's go.
Ding dong, let's go.
Let's put out the fire."
With the crisp ringing of copper bells and the shouts of a strong man, the fire brigade newly established in Bobu Port this year pulled several human-powered water hoses, struggled to push through the crowded crowds along the way, and finally arrived at the fire scene.
The owners of the surrounding shops were immediately overjoyed and came forward to cheer and flatter them.
The attire of the fire brigade was very similar to that of later generations.
These seventeenth-century firefighters who were recruited and trained by the time traveler senate also wore orange-red long-sleeved jackets with their heads on their heads.
Wearing a bright red helmet and yellow armbands on his arms, he looked very capable.
Although due to technical limitations, their equipment and equipment are a bit shabby.
There are no dry powder or foam fire extinguishers, nor high-pressure water cannons or fire trucks with ladders.
Even because of limited funds, we don’t even have animal-drawn vehicles.
We can only rely on manpower to drag manual pumps mounted on several carts around.
But they are regular professionals at least.
With their arrival, the onlookers around the fire scene They all breathed a sigh of relief.
However, one strange thing about this seventeenth-century fire brigade that is completely different from that of later generations is that on the back of each firefighter's uniform, there is a large word "tax" embroidered on it.
That's right, in the Lingao Traveler Veteran Within the institution’s system, the fire brigade is affiliated with the tax bureau.
As for why the "relevant departments" decided to let a group of tax collectors come to the fire brigade in such a bizarre way, please read below to find out.
Seeing that professional fire fighters had arrived, several owners of other nearby shops seemed to have a backbone.
They hurriedly approached and said hello with a flattering smile.
Some even offered herbal tea and other items attentively, and some even wanted to treat him.
The tall and round fire captain declined their solicitude with an upright expression, saying that putting out the fire was more important at the moment.
Then, amidst the flattery of the shopkeepers and waiters, he led a group of his men to attack the roofs of every shop around Chen Ji Cloth Shop.
They sprayed water on the walls and tried their best to ensure that the jumping flames would not spread to the shops around the fire scene.
Strangely, the firefighters turned a blind eye to the raging fire at Chen Ji Cloth Store and did not even pour a water pipe on the flames.
However, the owner of the cloth shop that caught fire vaguely guessed why he saw the distressed Boss Chen.
He first lamented with infinite regret, and then put on a flattering face to greet him.
He took out a stack of circulation certificates printed by the "Australian Government" from his sleeve and asked several "officials" of the fire brigade to accept them.
But the leading captain quickly shied away: "Don't do this, boss, we don't accept bribes."
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Then, the "thief tax collector" who guest-starred as the fire captain put on a businesslike expression, took out a small black leather notebook from his pocket, opened it in front of everyone, and then said with pretending to be worried, "I said Boss Chen, according to the records of the tax department, from the time the fire tax was levied to now, you have not paid a dime in circulation coupons for six months.
Now that the fire has started, what are you going to do?
" When Boss Chen heard this, he felt that his cloth shop seemed to be saved, and he no longer dared to be stingy.
He quickly took out more circulation rolls from his sleeves and asked the fire captain to accept them.
This time, the upright fire captain immediately accepted it, but then he said with a smile: "Okay, Boss Chen is indeed a law-abiding person.
These cloths piled up on the road in your store are fined for illegal occupation." , I have received it now.
I will transfer it to the person in charge of that part for you later.
I will give you a certified receipt by the way.
You don’t have to thank me, but what are you going to do about this fire?
Boss Chen, who already had a lot of money to give away, became angry when he heard this bastard: This money is for your fire tax, why do you just use it as tolls for road occupation?
Besides, he is just piling goods on the street.
After a while, he had to pay money no matter what.
This thief was indeed vulgar and uncivilized.
How could he not have the slightest bit of kindness?
Nai's current situation was stronger than that of others, so he had to put on a cry and beg for mercy, "My lords, I know that I have made countless mistakes, and they are all the fault of the villain.
But the villain's shop is still burning, so I beg you."
Please, gentlemen, please do your best and put out the fire in my little shop."
Although Boss Chen burst into tears when he spoke, the tax collector who was a guest fire captain seemed to be born with a heart of stone.
He let out a long sigh and replied unhurriedly, "Boss Chen.
It’s not that we don’t put out fires.
The purpose of tax collection by the Senate has always been to take money from the people and use it for the people.
Since the money has been collected, it must be done.
You see, aren't we spraying water on the surrounding shops that have paid the fire prevention tax?
We are obviously trying to save them.
It's just that you haven't paid a dime of fire prevention tax since the opening of the business.
It's really hard to save us.
If we save it now, If I open your shop, everyone will follow your example in the future.
I usually refuse to pay my bills, but when trouble comes, I will cry and beg for help.
Where can I collect taxes?"
After hearing what the other party had said so clearly, Boss Chen didn't bother to argue, "Tell me how many circulation volumes.
I admit defeat this time."
Unexpectedly, the other party seemed to be determined to do nothing, but continued to hit him: "Oh, how much tax should be collected specifically?
I am not the person actually responsible for handling it.
How can I make it clear at once?
Otherwise, Come on, Boss Chen, hurry up and go to the tax department, pay all the tax arrears and late payment fees, and then issue a certificate, and I will definitely help you put out the fire."
This kind of insincere official cliché immediately fooled poor Boss Chen.
What kind of bad idea was this?
Now he ran over to queue up to stamp and pay the tax, and then ran back with the certificate slip.
After waiting for so long, his The store must have been burned to a pile of ashes long ago.
Suddenly, Boss Chen, who believed that his family had several talented people and was quite arrogant towards others, finally lost his legs and knelt down towards the clerk whom he had always looked down upon.
He kowtowed repeatedly and put his head on the concrete pavement.
There was a loud banging sound, "Please, sir, please save this little dog's life.
This shop is not mine alone, and there are also many old people in the clan who have invested in it.
Now that it has been burned down, I will pay the loss."
Life is not enough.”
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"Hmph, I really can't shed tears until I see the coffin, Boss Chen.
When we asked you to pay the fire prevention tax in the past, you were so rich.
Not only did you hide better than a mouse, but you even incited the guys to play tricks and resist the tax.
Now you know you're going to beg me.
Tell you, it’s too late” The fire captain stood leisurely in front of the raging fire, looking at Boss Chen who was crying with disdain.
He was about to spit at him, but suddenly remembered something and stopped quickly, "Ahem, in short, I just want to say, Anyone who has not paid the fire prevention tax will not be allowed to put out fires.
You can just do it yourself."
In this way, the newly opened Chen Ji Cloth Store in Bopu Port less than a year ago was slowly burned to ashes amidst the flames and thick smoke, while a heavily armed fire brigade watched helplessly.
Working hard to pour water around the fire.
To ensure that surrounding shops do not catch fire A middle-aged man with short hair, wearing a pullover, and dressed like a "naturalized citizen" stood on a dark street corner far away from the fire, watching from a distance this kind of thing that often appeared in American news in later generations, which fully proved that The absurdity of "capitalism's evil nature" cannot be understood: "Oh, what abomination, you actually dare to ignore the noble gentry just because of a mere tax payment.
This thief is indeed an overseas barbarian.
He doesn't even understand the basic principles of superiority and inferiority.
I don't know when the soldiers of tomorrow will be able to do so.
Recovering this place will give the people of Qiongzhou a bright future."
Just when this loyal minister of the Ming Dynasty, who was deeply lurking in the enemy's nest, was sighing in his heart, he finally waited for an old man and a young man to come to join him.
Both of them were wearing traditional Ming Dynasty clothes.
The older guy was quite energetic, but the young boy with a tender face was limping, as if there was something wrong with his legs.
There were also scars on his face and hands.
They were all looking around vigilantly, as if someone might appear at any time to make things difficult for him.
After the middle-aged man recognized the other person, he hurriedly came over.
After exchanging a few pleasantries and exchanging the pre-agreed incision code, he complained to the old man and the young man, "Didn't I already say that in the letter?"
, the Australian Kun bandits gathered barbarians from all over to Lingao.
It seems to be a move that is not conducive to the imperial court.
Please send more people here to find out the news.
Why did the superiors just send you two?
Do these gentlemen take this seriously?
" "Look what you said, the news that the Siyi fleet will join Lingao has been spreading in Guangzhou for a long time.
Even the governor was alarmed.
How could he just send us two spies sent by various yamen gangs?
, there must be at least a hundred or ten people in front and behind."
The old man smiled and replied, "But in order to prevent people from talking too much and leaking the news, we are not walking all the way, so as to avoid being caught by the thief's minions if we are exposed.
The superiors also told us that even if we reach Lingao, There is no need for each team to communicate with each other, as long as they do their own thing, our team has a small number of people and few errands.
As long as we can collect some useful information and bring it back, it will be a great achievement."
"So that's it."
The middle-aged man nodded reluctantly, seemingly frustrated that his superiors looked down on him, but in the end he sighed helplessly, "And what's going on with this junior's legs?"
You can’t really send a cripple here, right?”
"Hey, how can this be possible?
It seems like this kid doesn't have a long memory and asked for a beating on his own.
As soon as he landed on the beach, he received a killing blow from the bandit."
The old man hit the young man on the head angrily, "Before I came here, I gave him countless warnings, saying that Lingao has strict rules and told him not to urinate anywhere.
But I just didn't pay attention, and he I took off my pants and pulled them up on the street, so the Australian policemen rushed up and beat us up.
Fortunately, they didn't ask us to check our household registration documents, otherwise we would have been sifting through sand and doing hard work."
"There is nothing we can do.
The security measures against thieves in Australia are really tight."
The middle-aged man sighed, "Let me find a place to live first."
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At the same time, in a second-floor lounge of a restaurant a street away from the fire scene, Comrade Li Wei, the "True Australian" negotiator wearing a suit, was also holding a small white porcelain wine cup while admiring what was going on.
Chen Ji Cloth Shop, which was gradually reduced to ashes as the flames soared, smiled half-heartedly at Wen Desi, one of the three giants of Lingao in front of him, and said, "Mr.
Wen, the way your fire brigade puts out fires is really interesting."
"Well, what can we do?
It has become a habit for businessmen in the late Ming Dynasty not to pay taxes.
If they pay taxes according to regulations, they will be ridiculed.
In order to correct their wrong ideas in the shortest possible time, we sometimes have to Without some strong medicine” Wen Desi smiled awkwardly, but in his heart he cursed the guy responsible for collecting the fire prevention tax hundreds of times: "Why didn't you set the fire earlier and later?
Why did you set the fire at this time?
Others are embarrassing to Java, you Even more powerful, it was thrown to Australia in one go.
Speaking of which, although the Lingao Traveler Senate has fully learned from our party's early base construction experience from the beginning, it has worked hard to develop state-owned enterprises and state-owned farms to develop production and improve its own hematopoietic capabilities, instead of just plundering and sucking blood from the private sector.
But as time went by, the markets in the towns and cities in the base area began to become increasingly prosperous.
Even if it was just to collect currency and establish a tax concept, taxation became necessary.
You must know that if a country cannot establish in the minds of its citizens the concept that "only death and taxes cannot be evaded" and form the golden rule that "everyone is responsible for paying taxes in accordance with the law", then this country is equivalent to being abolished and cannot learn from it.
During the War of Liberation, Chiang Kai-shek made a living by printing money like crazy.
And even the brain-cramped Chairman Chiang did not forget to exploit and plunder the people while printing money like crazy.
But the agricultural tax in the countryside is just that, and the commercial tax in the cities and towns is not that easy to collect.
After all, there are some ultra-low commercial taxes similar to those in the Ming Dynasty.
Compared with the Ming Dynasty, the low commercial tax does not mean that the burden on merchants in the Ming Dynasty is light.
The routine filial piety that needs to be paid to various yamen often makes businessmen bankrupt, but the money is basically not transferred to the government, and is all intercepted by private individuals.
The national treasury is still too poor to run away, and the commercial tax standards set by the Senate of Lingao Travelers, It can definitely be called an exorbitant tax.
Businessmen these days are not even willing to pay the Ming Dynasty's "Thirty-One Tax" business tax.
Even wealthy businessmen with a little status regard paying taxes as a shame and would rather bribe officials than pay taxes according to regulations.
This tax awareness is simply poor.
Couldn't be worse.
Moreover, merchants in the late Ming Dynasty were still full of rebellious spirit against the imperial court, and various anti-tax mass incidents emerged one after another.
The inscription of the Suzhou Five, which was once included in Chinese textbooks in later generations, describes a large-scale anti-tax movement in Suzhou that relied on the law to ignore responsibility.
Everyone, really even the imperial envoy dares to beat him to death Therefore, collecting business taxes in Lingao sounds simple, but in fact, the blood-stained and tearful tax collectors will have a big fight every two days.
For any newly opened store, if the boss has a little bit of background, basically They have to fight with sticks, swords and guns to let the other side know the rules.
The most tragic thing is that there was a boxing gym owner who beat several groups of tax collectors to the point of being unable to find their way.
In the most serious case, the time traveler senate even had to mobilize the army and push cannons onto the streets to intimidate the die-hard merchants.
Only then can commercial taxes be collected smoothly.
In the view of the time-travelers, this method of blindly violent taxation not only has a bad social impact, but is also very costly.
Each time you have to pay a lot of errand fees, injury medicine fees and pensions, it is really not something that can be sustained for a long time. things.
But on the other hand, no matter how high the cost of taxation is, merchants cannot be allowed to evade tax, otherwise it will quickly become a habit.
In the end, just like the current Ming Dynasty, the national treasury is extremely poor, but the rich in Jiangnan are extremely fat.
Oil, but the court just couldn't collect taxes from Jiangnan.
Therefore, after experiencing several riots caused by violent taxation, everyone in the Lingao Traveler Senate learned from the pain, brainstormed, and finally learned from one of the three giants at the end of the ancient Roman Republic, who suppressed the Spartacus slaves.
The rebellious consul Crassus relied on setting fires and putting out fires in the city of Rome to make money, and eventually became the "advanced experience" of a generation of wealthy people.
He decided to levy a fire prevention tax on a trial basis in Lingao County.
Specifically, it was to seal up some local Ming Dynasty natives who were engaged in private fire brigade business.
Then, while setting up a government-run fire brigade under the name of the tax authorities, they openly and honestly apportioned fire prevention taxes to every merchant.
In order to save the cost of tax collection, this new tax no longer sends people to collect it door to door, but allows merchants to voluntarily come to the tax department to pay.
As for the consequences of not paying the tax, well, it seems that no one will save you after a fire.
Haha, if you just think this way, you are really too naive.
The lower limit of moral integrity of time-travelers in some aspects is definitely beyond your expectation: if any merchant insists on not paying taxes, then the "relevant departments" will dispatch the most loyal and reliable elite troops to check his business from time to time.
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The store organizes an arson drill.
If something goes wrong, someone will be sent to set a fire, and then the fire brigade will be there.
I just watched as a precaution to prevent the fire from spreading and burning down the entire street.
After the conspiracy of several large merchants to incite a strike and attack the Senate was preempted by the death threat from the Senate's special team, it turned out that Forced taxation, which caused a lot of confusion time and time again, turned into everyone scrambling to pay taxes voluntarily.
Of course, behind this harmonious atmosphere of "paying taxes is glorious", there are not without a few disharmonious notes.
For example, the Chenji Cloth Store in Bobu Port is a strong believer in non-violence and non-cooperation.
The owner of the store, Mr.
Chen, seemed to have experience in putting out fires.
He not only dug a well in the yard, but also installed a large fire-proof water tank in front of the warehouse door.
In terms of fire prevention, it had reached the highest standards among the people in the late Ming Dynasty.
As a result, the spies sent by the Senate lit a fire in his shop several times but failed to burn it.
It also caused other businesses on the street to be adversely affected and hesitated to pay the fire tax.
However, after the Senate ruthlessly deployed the final weapon of war and threw "" at Chen Ji Cloth Store, this nail shop that had long been in debt with taxes was finally set on fire, perfectly achieving the warning effect of killing chickens to scare monkeys.
However, at this time, His Excellency Wen Desi was sitting in the restaurant watching such a scene from a distance, but he was not happy at all.
Not only because it was so unethical and not worthy of public boasting and celebration, but also because Coincidentally, the "real Australians" who came from Australia saw it clearly.
Seeing these "Australians" whispering and having weird smiles on their faces, they really felt embarrassed and had been thrown into the Southern Hemisphere.
La Although no matter which time travel group it is, the lower limit of moral integrity in treating the natives of this time and space is very low.
For example, in order to reach an armistice treaty with the Kingdom of Spain, the East Coast Country of South America betrayed the Indian rebels who fought alongside them against the Spanish. .
China and the United States in North America also once fanned flames and provoked wars among European countries in order to make war profits.
Even the newly arrived Australians brutally enslaved the Australian Aboriginals and forced them to work hard in the mines.
However, the fire brigade moonlighting as arsonists is just like the navy moonlighting as pirates and the police moonlighting as robbers.
The category of things that can be done but cannot be said has now become the laughing stock of the visitors, which makes people feel a bit embarrassed.
"Ahem, I'm sorry to let you see such an unsightly scene.
However, I think the reason why both of us are sitting here now is not to watch such an insignificant little fire."
Seeing the strange looks on the faces of the "True Australians", Wen Desi could only cough dryly and change the topic, "Mr.
Li Wei, I wonder what your views and requirements are on the suggestions we just made."
"Just let the more than 100 of us give up our base in Australia and move to Lingao with the COSCO Star."
Levi smiled slightly playfully, folded his hands and put them under his stubbled chin, "How should I put it?
It's not impossible for us to move here.
After all, we are already in the desolate wilderness of Australia.
I'm tired of seeing it.
It's really hard to live a hard life where you can only eat kangaroo meat when you want nothing.
It's a good thing to be able to return to your roots and return to the embrace of your motherland.
But the problem is, for the world’s unique 10,000-ton modern sailing ship in our hands, as well as the remaining more than 4,000 tons of alloy steel and modern machinery on the ship, as well as our more than one hundred travelers, including many living creatures What kind of price are you willing to pay for highly educated experts in chemical, biofuel synthesis, metal smelting and mining, a tangible and intangible wealth that is nowhere to be found in this time and space?"
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