Chapter 189: New Year’s Eve in South America This is a standard immigrant village of fifty households.
The houses are all standard East Coast-style red brick and blue-tiled houses, namely three on the left, middle and right, plus a pigsty, a woodshed, and a kitchen.
They are all hidden among the lush greenery.
Among the trees.
The grape vines in the yard of the house covered most of the fence along the braided reed supports.
Some birds landed on the top of the fence from time to time, chirping and looking at the tall and straight Paraná pine trees and the crystal clear river outside the yard. , dense irrigation canals, fertile rice fields horizontally and vertically, and the smoke rising from the village.
Such pastoral rural scenery made Xu Xiake, who was accustomed to all kinds of turmoil and displacement in Ming Dynasty, feel unreal for a while.
It was almost noon, and everyone was rushing back to have lunch, so when Xu Xiake and other people entered the village, there were several farmers carrying hoes to finish their work.
Behind the farmer were a few jumping children, carrying fat fish with gills stuck on branches.
These fish are huge, weighing about five or six kilograms.
Even if they are held in someone's hands, they are still struggling hard.
From time to time, the group of children would exclaim.
At the entrance of the village, there was a vendor pulling a cart filled with various goods and shouting loudly.
The cart is full of popular rural products ranging from needles and threads to farm tools, iron stoves and the like.
From time to time, a few housewives would call to stop the vendors and then step forward to select goods.
Behind the housewives, there are often one or two children.
These children stare at the snacks such as dried fruits, dried meats, candy cubes, and cocoa powder on the truck with their big black eyes, and they drool.
Shouting to buy it.
Some housewives were really annoyed, so they gave their little kid two hard spanks on the buttocks.
The kid blinked and then started crying desperately.
After crying for a long time and finding that no one was paying attention to him, the child slowly stopped crying.
Then his attention was quickly drawn away by something else.
It was such an innocent and happy day.
Looking at these children with rosy faces and nimble and alert looks, Xu Xiake couldn't help but feel a little sentimental.
As far as he knew, as early as several years ago, the northern provinces of the Ming Dynasty were covered with bare land, barren of grass, and filled with hungry people.
The people first competed for the grass in the mountains.
After eating the grass, they peeled off the bark of the trees to eat.
After the bark was gone, they could only eat Guanyin soil, and finally died of abdominal distension.
Before Xu Xiake left his hometown in the south of the Yangtze River, which was known as peaceful, famine spread, riots continued, and the last vestiges of prosperity were destroyed by war and harsh government.
The entire Ming Dynasty's children are wandering between hunger and death, and a considerable number of them are destined not to live to grow up.
They either died on the battlefield, died of disease and hunger, or were captured and cooked.
Compared with the overseas paradise in front of me, the world over there in the Ming Dynasty is already in a terrible state.
Xu Xiake has been traveling around the world for so many years.
Naturally, he has seen many tragedies in the world and has long been numb.
At this time, he suddenly saw These children in the South American countryside have a happy childhood life, but they still feel sad and sad.
It was just that the time traveler officer who accompanied him to visit did not notice Xu Xiake's subtle changes in mood.
He just introduced the group of them directly into the village office: in such a small rural place, only the village office can entertain so many people at one time. guest.
Like most places in the East Coast Republic, the village chief here is also a veteran.
Although this simple country man has retired for a few years, he still wears the military cap he used when he served on his head.
The yellow on the brim The copper five-pointed star shines brightly in the midday sun.
As soon as he saw a distinguished guest coming, the village chief quickly put on his best clothes and went out to greet him.
He also ordered his wife and father-in-law to make tea and vegetables to entertain the guests.
Xu Xiake followed him around the village while casually asking about the village chief's current life, and the village chief also told him everything he knew.
It turns out that the village chief is also new here and has only been here for a year.
His wife is the daughter of a farmer from Shandong in the Ming Dynasty.
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She is just 18 years old this year.
Unfortunately, during the melee in Shandong a few years ago, their home was burned down and their livelihood was lost.
The whole family had no choice but to seek refuge in the refugee relief center in Dengzhou Town.
They were working around for a living, and there they met the village chief who had not yet retired at the time.
After several twists and turns, he followed the village chief to the South American mainland of the East Coast Republic.
The village chief's father-in-law was a small landowner with dozens of acres of land in the Ming Dynasty.
Although he was a small landowner in name, his life was actually quite poor.
Let’s not talk about the world of war and chaos and heavy taxes.
Just talk about the seventy or eighty acres of dry land, which is too busy for their family alone.
Especially in the years of great disaster, even if you want to rent your land to others, you can't find tenants.
In the end, they had no choice but to abandon most of the land, and the family of four chose the fertile half of the land to plant wheat.
In this way, by the time of harvest, the yield per mu is often only forty or fifty kilograms, without deducting seeds.
It's frustrating to the core.
It was such a pitiful harvest of grain, but it had to pay various royal grain taxes one after another, support from the government at all levels, local big households, village heads, and village distributors.
In the end, even if the remaining grain fell into the hands, it was still only a small amount, even if it contained chaff and bran.
So I have to collect some wild vegetables and other things and mix them with bran to eat, otherwise it will definitely not be enough to make ends meet.
Even in the best of years, you have to count on the whole family not getting sick or having any other accidents, so that you can save a little bit of surplus from between your teeth and put in a few pounds of meat for the whole family at the end of the year.
Two tooth sacrifices.
On weekdays, all I have to do is cook a pot of multigrain porridge with clear soup and little water.
The men in the family are the backbone and the main labor force, so they have to fish out all the soup, while the women and children can only scrape the soup residue at the bottom of the pot to cheat their stomachs.
If you accidentally get a headache or a fever, you are forced to borrow a loan shark at a high interest rate, or you meet those official servants who will ruin your family if you point their finger at it.
Then the only option is to go bankrupt and run away to beg for food.
It's really pitiful to say that before entering the refugee camp in Dengzhou Town, the village chief's father-in-law's family had not had enough to eat for several years.
So after arriving in South America, the family was like a mouse falling into a rice village, and they lived a happy life with round bellies: although the main food was whole grains such as sweet potatoes, corn and couscous, they were serious grains after all. .
As for fish and meat, it can be served every day.
As a result, this large family quickly became die-hard "supporters of the new life" and took an active part in the work of opening up wasteland.
Every day, he took the lead in organizing the villagers to dig water wells, cut down trees, dig ditches, and grow food.
They were very busy.
This immigrant village has also been rated as a "model village".
All immigrants have fully accepted the new lifestyle, at least on the surface: keeping short hair, shaving, paying attention to hygiene, etc.
At present, half of the residents who came earlier have cultivated at least ten acres of wasteland per capita and planted the first batch of beans, melons and potatoes.
Although the new immigrants who came later had to eat relief food from the government, they also developed some vegetable patches.
This shows that the Chinese people are traditionally more motivated to work.
After all, the entire village currently only has fifty households and the area is limited, so the group arrived at the other end of the village within a few steps.
Here is a small, clear lake with rippling water.
There are several Paraná pine trees that require five or six people to embrace and are 60 meters high.
There are also some low shrubs.
Under the pine trees, there are some trees that are more than 20 meters high.
Giant reeds, which the local Guaraní people call "Tacros".
These reeds can be used to build houses or rafts, which is very practical.
There are also a large number of giant reeds growing in the shallow water area on the lakeshore on the right side of the road.
A group of panicked wild ducks fly out from the reeds from time to time, and then you can see a few more screaming and shouting ducks emerging from the reeds behind the ducks' buttocks. children.
"These children were not so bold before."
The village chief glanced at the happy children chasing the wild ducks, and couldn't help but smile and said to Xu Xiake, who was looking attentively: "At that time, there were many cannibals living on the shore of the lake.
The crocodiles were all expelled or killed later.
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This place has become a paradise for children.
Every time after school, a group of children will go to the reeds to dig out wild duck eggs and catch fish.
Some older children who are particularly courageous will also go to the woods across the lake to catch fish.
A venomous snake whose meat is delicious but also dangerous to catch."
"Uh, is there a school here after school?"
Xu Xiake asked in surprise.
Before he came here to visit, he also inquired about the situation in the Guiyibao area.
He knew that this place was still a wild land until last year, but he didn't expect it to be here now.
There is even a school.
"Of course there is a school in Guiyi Fort."
The village chief said matter-of-factly.
"As long as the population reaches a certain level and the fort is officially established, there will be a school, and then the government will send a teacher to teach.
The current school in Guiyi Fort There are already more than 280 students, but unfortunately there are only five teachers, including the principal.
The number is too small and the level is not good enough.
From now on, my son must go to a good school in the county or the capital."
In this regard, Xu Xiake couldn't help but sigh repeatedly.
The people from the East Bank seemed to be vulgar and easy to kill, but in fact they really valued education.
From what he has seen along the way, in this country on the east coast, not only adults have to attend some night school regularly, but this child also has to go to school every day, and there is no charge.
It is really strange, whether he is a farmer's child or a craftsman.
Children, or children of military families, these children can study and read for free.
They can be said to be well-educated, even better than the mother country of the Ming Dynasty, which is known as a cultural country.
Is it just the content of this "enlightenment" that made Ming Dynasty scholars like Xu Xiake very criticized: they hardly talked about the classics of saints and the way of benevolence and forgiveness, but instead taught children various fighting techniques from an early age.
What is the name of it?
The boy scouts were so militaristic that they were like demons.
However, he also had to admit that the Ming Dynasty's method of emphasizing culture over military affairs and treating the gentry preferentially might not work on the territory of the East Coast Kingdom.
If you insist on advocating culture and suppressing martial arts in such a wild and foreign land where the jungle is strong and the jungle is strong, it is almost equivalent to committing suicide.
Although Xu Xiake, out of his own selfish intentions, really hoped that the people of the East Coast would rather commit suicide than worship civility and suppress martial arts, he also knew that such stupid words seeking death could not be uttered, so he just smiled and praised a few words. , the visit ended, and we returned to the village hall to prepare for a meal and rest.
At this time, a burst of fragrance was coming from the village hall.
The village chief's wife and sister-in-law had already used all kinds of tricks to prepare a sumptuous banquet.
As soon as Xu Xiake entered the room, he saw a small stove on the table.
The iron basin on the stove was steaming, and the milky white soup was boiling with green onions.
The fragrant smell made him swallow it.
Swallow.
Agui, Wang Hu and other servants who came with Xu Xiake were already hungry because they had been carrying luggage for a day.
Each of them was holding a large pottery bowl and pouring water into the boiling soup pot with shining eyes.
Look inside.
The village chief's wife poured slices of white radish into the basin and said casually: "Don't be anxious, wait a while before they are cooked."
Regarding the greedy and greedy behavior of the servants, Xu Xiake immediately snorted in displeasure and scolded them coldly.
When the servants suddenly heard that the master was angry, they were shocked.
They rushed up to say hello to the master, gave him a fan to wipe his sweat, and brought a blue and white porcelain bowl to serve the master.
At this time, the hot pot on the table was also cooked.
Xu Xiake then He nodded and spared them, and concentrated on eating.
Although the food at the village chief's home is not as exquisite as in the restaurant, the heat is not bad, and the various ingredients are abundant, making it very tempting to look at.
Take a spoonful of fresh fish and mutton soup, pick up some mutton and radish, and pour it into the bowl.
Red dried chili peppers and green chopped green onions come to the surface.
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The taste is really spicy and delicious.
Xu Xiake only took a sip of the soup and couldn't help but admire in his heart.
Eating hot pot and drinking hot soup on a hot day is also a unique enjoyment.
As for the servants, they were already ravenous.
Seeing the master's acquiescence, they immediately scrambled to scoop out the mutton.
The bowls were piled full to the brim, and then they squatted in the corner with the bowls and took big mouthfuls.
Swallowing, while eating, he praised: "It smells so good and delicious."
Seeing that the guests were eating happily, the village chief and his family were also very happy.
They brought out sizzling herb-roasted chicken, fried dried fish, hot mushroom, tofu and cabbage soup, and several plates of unknown names.
Tropical fruits with the same name, as well as a jar of homemade mixed fruit liqueur.
Under the host's repeated enthusiastic persuasion, Xu Xiake drank a few glasses of sweet and sour fruit wine, and couldn't help but think of a poem by Lu You, a poet of the Southern Song Dynasty: "Don't laugh at the muddy wax and wine of farmers.
In good years, there are enough chickens and dolphins for visitors.
There is no doubt that the mountains and rivers will be restored."
Road, dark willows and bright flowers are another village."
So, half awake and half drunk, he couldn't help but raise his glass and sigh sincerely: "In today's world, it is true that there is no way out of mountains and rivers, and there are villages with dark flowers and bright flowers.
I, a Chinese nobleman, have this god-given land.
Then we can rebuild the Chinese nation overseas, and there will be no need to worry about the instability and famine in the Central Plains."
Of course, before hundreds of thousands of immigrants from the Central Plains swarmed to this "God-given land" in South America, the Guarani Indian tribe that once lived on this land has now gone.
Wherever it is, it is not enough for outsiders to understand Due to the fatigue of the journey, Xu Xiake and his party stayed temporarily in the village that night under the host's attentive hospitality.
However, when the host was already snoring loudly on the mat, Agui and Wang Hu, two porter coolies who had followed Xu Xiake all the way from Shaoxing, Zhejiang, were each holding a bamboo tube of fruit wine and lying on the bed in the village hall.
I thought about my thoughts on the haystack and couldn't fall asleep for a long time.
Looking up, it was already dark outside the courtyard.
From time to time, there was a burst of crackling firecrackers, and a group of gorgeous fireworks would always explode in the dark night sky.
It was already New Year's Eve.
Agui thought like this and found that his memory of the Jiangnan water town seemed to have gradually become blurry.
At the same time, he suddenly felt vaguely that it would be great if he could spend the rest of his life in this wild and foreign land with abundant products and affluent life: Especially when he heard that every immigrant who came here could be allocated thirty acres of wasteland and one year's rations from the "thief".
However, as a traveler's servant, any stable pastoral life is just a dream until you get rid of the shackles of this identity.
Next, after spending this hot New Year in South America, they will soon set off again.
They will follow Xu Xiake on a navy ship, cross the equator and go north to the Caribbean, see the tropical scenery of sugar cane plantations, and follow famous celebrities along the way.
Pirates of the Caribbean then visit the Chinese American Republic in North America, go boating on the Great Lakes, and admire the majestic Niagara Falls; then go to the Republic of South Africa, which is rich in gold and diamonds, but also rich in violent plagues and bloodthirsty black uncles, and experiences A thrilling jungle adventure In fact, according to the plan of the Hua League Cultural Department, there was originally a plan for Xu Xiake to visit Europe.
However, the Thirty Years' War in Europe was in full swing at this time.
From Spain on the Iberian Peninsula to Denmark and Sweden in Northern Europe, the entire Christian world was almost in a state of chaos.
It was really not a suitable time for travel and sightseeing.
The Mediterranean Sea to the south is not peaceful either.
In order to preserve the Eastern colonies torn from the remains of the Byzantine Empire, the "Sea People" of the Republic of Venice are engaging in an unprecedentedly cruel and tragic long war of attrition with the behemoth Ottoman Turkish Empire.
The United Kingdom, which is isolated outside the European continent and has basically maintained peace for the time being, has recently been having trouble with the Chinese League due to disputes over its North American colonies.
It may not necessarily welcome guests from the Chinese League, so the relevant departments had to regretfully cancel Xu Xiake's trip to Europe.
Travel plan.
As an alternative, after Xu Xiake leaves South Africa, he will follow the old route of Zheng He, the former Three Treasures Eunuch, who sailed to the West.
He will first appreciate the charming coral reefs of the Maldives, and then visit the ancient civilizations of Arabia, Persia and India in order to fully taste the Arabian barbecue. and the taste of Indian curry.
Then you can realize Xu Xiake's dream for many years and take a fleeting tour of Myanmar, a country rich in gems and ivory in the southwest of the Ming Dynasty.
As for the end of this long journey, and the most grand and exciting show, it is the base camp of the legendary "Kun Thief": Australia.
In the second half of 1634 AD in this time and space, the "China City", the capital of the Chinese League, located in southwestern Australia, was finally completed. oshow7: