Chapter 429 Unexpected Discovery
Liu Wenjing smiled slightly and said calmly: “Our clerks are divided into three levels. You are recruited as third-level clerks. First of all, you don’t have a holiday to go back to visit your family. We have a lot of things to do. Everyone will start work tomorrow. As compensation, each person will have 20 strings of cash to settle down. You can keep it for yourself or send it to your family. It’s up to you.

Then there is the basic salary, which is five strings of coins per month, followed by various subsidies, which is fifteen hundred coins, and there is also a full attendance bonus. Our various leave are in accordance with the court system. In addition to the institutional leave, if you do not take additional leave, then there is a reward of five hundred coins per month, which is the full attendance bonus. If you take leave, there will be no reward. A total of seven strings of coins. The salary will increase every year, and the amount of the increase depends on personal performance.

In addition, there is ice in the summer, coal in the winter, ten stone of rice and two sheep per person during the New Year, and finally there is an annual evaluation award. I don’t know how much it is, but it will definitely not be low. You will be able to get part of it this year.

Finally, let’s talk about food and lodging. The government will provide a meal at noon, and there are dormitories. Singles can have one room each, and if you are married and have children, you can have a small courtyard. There will be a carriage to pick you up every morning and evening. If you miss the carriage due to official business, you will be subsidized 30 cents for the carriage fee.”

Next, everyone was assigned to various offices and arranged by the Official Office under the Shangshu Xingtai. Everyone did not need to participate. Everyone received a bronze medal and twenty taels of silver, and finally a reporting letter. Then everyone got on the carriage and went to the dormitory.

The dormitory is the County Samurai Academy, and its layout is exactly the same as Xiao Xia’s Samurai Academy back then.

Lu Miao and his two companions still lived in a small courtyard, each with a room. If they were married but had no children and needed to bring their wives to live with them, they would be given a courtyard with two rooms. If they were married with children and needed to bring their wives and children to live with them, they would be given a courtyard with three rooms.
“Where will you be assigned, brother?” Xiao Ning asked with a smile.

Lu Miao scratched his head embarrassedly, “Assigned to the secretariat, where is Brother Xiao?”

“Good! Good! I’m assigned to the Observation Department. Where’s Lao Xie?”

Xie Jun beside him said gloomily, “I was assigned to the reserve hospital. It is said that it is a miscellaneous hospital with no fixed positions. We are called over wherever we are needed. We may even have to clean toilets!”

Xiao Ning shook his head and smiled, “It’s not like I have to clean toilets, but I don’t have a permanent position for the time being. I can’t be assigned to the tax bureau, which is a lucrative job!”

Xie Jun sighed, “Will the lucrative job be mine? Tomorrow everyone in the Reserve Institute will report to the Canal Administration. Our first temporary job is to dig the canal.”

At this time, the dormitory management officer came to deliver daily necessities to them. Each person received a set of daily necessities. The officer told the three people: “Go to bed early tonight. Tomorrow is your first day of reporting. You must set out at 3:57 a.m.!”

The morning court time of the General Administration’s Office is Chenshizheng, which is 8:00 a.m., which is the same as that of government offices in other places. There is a half-hour break at noon, and the afternoon court is dismissed at Shenshizheng, which is 4:00 p.m., in total, seven working hours a day.

Early this morning, Gao Jiong was going to lead a hundred clerks from the Reserve Academy to rush to the twenty canal camps. Currently, each canal camp had only two clerks, and each of them had to deal with thousands of civilians on average. They were simply too busy to handle it all.

Xiao Xia was also going to set off together. He was going to inspect the progress of the canal construction.

Shanyang Du is 400 miles long and only required 150,000 laborers, unlike the Tongji Canal which required the conscription of 2 million laborers. Why were the number of people so small? Because the workload was small. Shanyang Du has already been dredged, but because the dredging standards were relatively low at the beginning, it now needs to be unified with the Tongji Canal, so it needs to be widened by three meters. The workload is relatively small, and 150,000 laborers can complete it in half a year.

After working for half a year, they will be exempt from labor service for the next five years. Other families who are not selected will need to share the food rations of this laborer, but they will also be exempt from labor service this year.

Soon, Xiao Xia arrived at the first camp. The west bank was full of busy laborers. They first dug a two-zhang and five-foot river channel, then built a dam with mud bags to separate the water, and then dug out the last five feet of soil. After removing the mud bags, the work was completed.

The biggest advantage of this is that it will hardly affect the current navigation of the canal.

The laborers had already started for three days, and there was an endless stream of digging and transporting soil. The government also invested 200,000 livestock. Although the Sui Dynasty did not have excavators, they also had ways to make full use of animal power. First, three oxen pulled a three-blade curved iron plow to fully loosen the soil. The remaining thing was to put the soil into sacks and transport it away by mules and donkeys. Finally, the sacks filled with soil were used to build dams, so although bagging was a little troublesome, it saved the trouble of bagging later. It was not as everyone imagined that tens of thousands of people dug the canal with hoes, which would underestimate the wisdom of the working people.

The reason for setting up twenty camps is that there is a camp every twenty miles. After completing a day’s work, the laborers can ride mules and donkeys back to the camp, which greatly reduces the commuting time on the road.

Xiao Xia came to a large camp and saw more than a hundred women cooking. Of course, the food conditions were not very good. Each civilian had a big bowl of rice, a piece of pickled vegetable, a spoonful of sauce, and a bowl of broth. They did not return to the camp for lunch, and the healthy women brought them food. Each person had two big steamed buns with a piece of pickled vegetable.

Women who cook are also conscripted. Some families really cannot afford to provide food rations for the laborers, so they let women come to the camp to cook, or if they are a little older, they come to the camp to feed the livestock at night.

In addition, each camp has 500 soldiers responsible for maintaining order and supervising work on the construction site. It is human nature to be lazy and take advantage, so there must be soldiers to supervise. It is inevitable that soldiers will scold and beat lazy laborers.

In addition, there is a labor head. One labor head is selected for every fifty people. The labor head is responsible for arranging projects for each person. Of course, the labor head himself also has to work. Being a labor head also has its benefits, which is that he can be exempted from taxes for one year.

All personnel and material dispatch, project schedule arrangement, emergency handling, conflict mediation, and even writing letters for the laborers were completed by officials.

Placing one hundred reserve officials into twenty camps, adding five people to each camp, greatly reduced the workload of the officials.

Xiao Xia did not inspect every camp. He only inspected three camps and a river section of about 60 miles and then ended his inspection. Overall, he was very satisfied with Gao Jiong’s various plans.

Xiao Xia was particularly impressed by the three-blade curved plow designed by Gao Jiong. This was obviously based on the previous experience of digging the Tongji Canal. When there were many livestock, three oxen could plow in parallel, but it required three people to hold the plow. If the three plows were combined into one, only one person would be needed to hold the plow, which greatly improved the efficiency. Moreover, with three oxen pulling, a large plow could be made, and the soil could be turned deeper.

With two people plowing the field, the people behind can pack the soil into bags and put them on the backs of animals to transport away.

If this high efficiency can be maintained, the project can be completed in three months instead of five months.

Xiao Xia’s official ship sailed along the canal, thirty miles away from Jiangdu County. There was a small town called Lingbei Town. There were about two or three hundred households in the town. It was a famous blacksmith town in Jiangdu, and many families made a living by making iron.

The town also built a dock along the canal. A fleet was unloading cargo, and the shore was piled with black stuff.

Xiao Xia looked at it for a while, then suddenly shouted, “Stop the boat!”

The ship slowed down, and Xiao Xia ordered, “Pull to the dock!”

The official ship turned around and approached the dock. As soon as it was steady, Xiao Xia pointed at the black objects on the shore and asked loudly, “Whose coal is this?”

(End of this chapter)