The first chapter is five years in a hurry The first day is harmonious, the spring breeze is warm, and in a flash, five years have passed.
In the early spring, there is still a chill in the north, but on Qiongzhou Island in the south, it is already full of flowers, and spring has returned to the earth.
The sand on the beach is as fine as snow, and a group of children are jumping on the beach to collect shells, and their little feet are walking on the soft sand, imprinting a string of small footprints.
Under a row of coconut trees, dozens of parasols are lined up, and there are all beauties lying below, each of them is a peerless beauty, surrounded by groups of three or five, either watching the sea, or playing games, the clothes are very revealing, the white thighs are so exposed, and the eyes are dizzy, fortunately, the guards are all female guards nearby, if you change to a man, you may make some heinous mistakes.
What's even more amazing is that this group of beauties are dressed very modernly, if it weren't for the tone and accent and a bit of ancient style, just looking at their dress, even if the traveler comes, I am afraid that they will think that they have traveled to the 21st century - even their clothes are bikini-shaped, and the hairstyle is combed according to the style of later generations, coupled with sunglasses of different colors, and all kinds of juices in the glass......
Even if the future generations come, as long as you don't talk to them, I'm afraid you will think that this is still the 21st century.
But unfortunately, this is not the 21st century, but the 7th century AD, and now it is the early spring of the 23rd year of the Tang Dynasty.
The spring breeze in February blew people's bones crispy, and Li Zhen also took a rare time out of the busyness, and took his wife and family to the place known as Yalong Bay in later generations, which was still in the barbaric era in this era, and even the entire island except for some natives, there was no civilization at all.
However, this situation has completely changed a year ago, Li Zhen sent a fleet here three years ago, and then spent two years to build this place into a picturesque first prosperous scene of the Tang Dynasty (the world praises, not Li Zhen is narcissistic), not only this Yalong Bay, Qiongzhou Island is also being transformed - after all, this is also a territory of the Tang Dynasty, although it was used to exile prisoners at the beginning, but with the continuous development of Lingnan, the establishment of the Lingnan Economic Circle centered on Yuezhou, There are also many people eyeing here, but Li Zhen is worried that they will damage the environment here, so he personally started to build, after all, if Li Zhen takes action, this place can at least maintain the best style.
Speaking of the current development of Lingnan, everyone who mentions this place will give a thumbs up and praise the good place.
The current Lingnan is no longer the Lingnan of five years ago, not to mention anything else, let's talk about the highway, where was there any highway in Lingnan five years ago?
The mountain roads are rugged and difficult, and only in some big cities are paved with concrete roads, and it would be nice to have a little gravel road in the rest of the country.
But after the unremitting efforts of Wen Xueling (a small dragon set, he only appeared once, because he looked very much like a star he hated, so he was sent out by Li Zhenfa to explore the geology of Lingnan), it took a whole year to figure out the geological conditions of Lingnan, and then it was completely changed after more than a year of detailed planning by engineers.
The construction of highways in Lingnan began five years ago, Li Zhen invested nearly 100,000 slaves, and even after the slaves were not enough, the people of Lingnan took the road to help on their own, and many people lost their precious lives.
But there is a payback, after Li Zhen disregarded the lives of slaves regardless of the cost, and the whole of Lingnan was united, it took a full five years to completely change the road conditions of the entire Lingnan.
Today's Lingnan can be said to be the most developed place in the Tang road system, not to mention the city, and even some villages have roads, although they have not yet reached the village to the village so perverted, but it is also quite good, after all, in this era the village is too luxurious - not to mention that even if it does not reach the village pass, but at least it ensures that all the towns and villages under the jurisdiction of Lingnan have road access, which greatly facilitates the travel of the people.
As for the designers who built these roads, they were engraved by Li Zhen on the stele mountain, ensuring that they can be passed down through the ages.
However, in order to achieve such an achievement, it is not without a price, although the lives of Nanyang slaves are not valuable, but even if slaves are not counted, the daily consumption of resources alone is an astronomical amount, such as the cost of cement, the money to buy explosives, the loss of tools, and so on......
Afterwards, Li Zhen asked people to make a statistic, according to the statistics, just to build the road, Lingnan spent enough money equivalent to Lingnan taxes last year.
And how much was Lingnan's tax revenue last year?
13 million ......
Among them, Yuezhou alone contributed seven million guan, just in terms of tax payment amount, this amount has even surpassed Luoyang and Kaifeng, only a little bit after Chang'an (eight million guan), is the second largest tax city in Datang, and Li Zhen is sure to increase this number to 10 million guan this year, completely leaving Chang'an behind - the reason why Chang'an has such a high tax is purely because the strength of Datang has triggered merchants from the Western Regions, especially Dashi, At this time, stimulated by the Tang Dynasty, Sassanid Persia had been completely killed, and the territory was already connected to the Tang Dynasty, only separated by a Western Desert.
But there are so many Jedi on the Silk Road, the supply is quite limited, there are only so many caravans that can reach Datang through the Silk Road in a year, this number is constant, even if it breaks out, it will definitely not exceed 10 million, this is the limit of Chang'an, unless they increase taxes, but high taxes will only scare away merchants.
However, Yuezhou is different, the tax here mainly depends on the navigation trade, and the biggest feature of the navigation trade is that the mobility is strong, the cargo capacity is large, a fleet of goods loaded more than ten camel teams on the Silk Road at a time, and because of the return of trade to make money, so the tax is also very high, not only to collect the shore tax, but also to collect the transaction tax after the transaction is completed.
What's more, as more and more people go to sea to make money, even though five years have passed, Datang's annual cargo ship holdings are still rising at an average rate of 10% per year.
Nowadays, the number of private merchant ships in Datang has exceeded 5,000, and some large fleets go to sea at one time to hundreds of merchant ships, coupled with the existence of auxiliary boats, a sea area that can almost cover a radius of dozens of nautical miles, let alone rob, some small-scale pirates dare not even approach.