1627 Rise of the South China Sea

Chapter 755 The Conditions Are Difficult
Although Gao Qiaonan's army usually trains very hard, and the tasks they perform are often first-class and dangerous, but the treatment in life is quite good.When he was stationed in Annan before, all the rice he ate was the high-quality rice that was supplied to the nobles in Annan. Gao Qiaonan could tell whether the rice was good or bad as soon as he entered it.

As soon as Gao Qiaonan tasted it, he knew that it was old rice. He put down the bowl and chopsticks not because he disliked the rice, but because he thought of another question: "Mr. Mou, I see that your village has reclaimed rice There are many rice fields, how is the harvest this year?"

In fact, Qian Tiandun had already asked this question to the village representative before, and Gao Qiaonan heard it nearby, but now he wanted to ask it again—since the village offered to entertain, even the sour fruit The wine has been taken out, how can you use aged rice to cook?

Mou Qing replied honestly: "This village has a total of 13 mu of rice fields, and the total grain harvest last season was about [-] catties." In terms of yield, this level is indeed surprisingly low. The yield per mu of rice on Hainan Island is generally There are four to five hundred catties, almost two or three times as much as here.

"What about the new rice you harvested this year?" Gao Qiaonan asked.According to the calculation of time, Shibazhi had already fled overseas when the rice was harvested, and it was unlikely that he would sneak back to exploit these immigrants, so Gao Qiaonan wanted to find out the whereabouts of this year's new rice.

"This..." Mou Qing probably didn't expect Gao Qiaonan to ask such a question, and thought he was dissatisfied with the treatment, so he quickly apologized: "I dare not neglect adults, but there is really no one in the village right now. New rice..."

"I'm asking you where Xinmi went." Gao Qiaonan interrupted him with a frown before the other party finished speaking: "Answer whatever I ask you, don't talk nonsense about anything else!"

Mou Qing replied tremblingly: "The new rice...is all taken away by the local natives..."

"The natives who come here every month to make trouble?" Gao Qiaonan continued to ask angrily.

"Yes..." Mou Qing couldn't figure out Gao Qiaonan's purpose for asking this matter, so he could only explain cautiously: "If you don't give it to them, the village will have no peace. The village has limited youth and strength, and it can't compete with them..."

"Are they going to grab it directly or exchange it?" Gao Qiaonan immediately asked the next question.

"They will exchange deerskin, medicinal materials and some game, but the value is not that high..."

"That's forced buying and selling? Then you sell these things to Bengang to exchange for old rice?" Gao Qiaonan has roughly sorted out the context of this matter.

Most of the indigenous tribes living in the mountains on Taiwan Island are at the level of slash-and-burn farming. Some even can't match the Li Miao cottages on Hainan Island, and naturally they don't grow rice in plain areas.However, they can rely on their superiority in force to coerce the Han immigrants to exchange grain with them in the form of barter.Of course, the passive party cannot control the pricing power of the transaction, so the natives probably have the final say on what to exchange for how much food.If the Han immigrants are unwilling to cooperate, then the aborigines don’t even need to take extreme measures such as attacking the village. As long as they continue to harass the outskirts of the village so that the villagers cannot normally cultivate the farmland outside the village, the village can be dragged down.

Although Fengrong Village's food production is low, it is barely self-sufficient. However, because of the coercion of the indigenous tribes, they can only passively accept the transaction terms offered by the other party, and sell the hard-earned food at an extremely low price. Sell ​​it, and then take the items given by the natives to the merchants in Bengang to exchange for old rice.In this process, the villagers were first exploited by the natives, and then they were exploited by the grain merchants again when they went to Bengang to buy grain. It is no wonder that the village looks so impoverished.

After sorting out the mystery of this matter, Gao Qiaonan calmly picked up his rice bowl and started to eat.Obviously, these indigenous tribes who squeezed Fengrong Village would not give up such a good advantage easily. In the future, when Haihan resettled immigrants to this place, they would inevitably face a similar situation.However, it is obvious that this kind of problem cannot be solved simply by swallowing one's anger. In the end, some more direct measures are needed - such as asking the army to come forward.However, considering the natural environment of Taiwan Island, there is really no team in the Haihan militia that is more suitable than the special forces under Qian Tiandun's command to carry out military operations here.

Compared with the opponents that special operations forces have encountered in the past, the tribal armed forces on Taiwan Island not only have more primitive weapons and equipment, but also have a large gap between their combat system and the real army.Although the two sides have not really contacted each other yet, neither Qian Tiandun nor Gao Qiaonan has much fear of the indigenous tribes on the island. The difference in combat effectiveness between the two sides is not because one side is more familiar with the fighting terrain. able to make up for.

After this simple meal, Gao Qiaonan asked his subordinates to go to the village to check the situation in units of shifts.He is not worried that the villagers here will do anything wrong to his subordinates. After all, there are large troops outside the village. Even if someone wants to make trouble, it is unlikely that they will choose this moment.Gao Qiaonan also led a team, and asked Mou Qing's grandson to take him to investigate in the village.

Gao Qiaonan randomly selected a few families. After entering the house, he first looked at the kitchen and rice tanks. Sure enough, each household only had a small amount of old rice, and there was basically no food in the kitchen except for fish, shrimp and crabs caught in the river. It's something else.As for the poultry and livestock that are usually seen in ordinary farms, they are actually rare here.After Gao Qiaonan asked, he found out that the village did not raise livestock, but after they were raised, almost all of them were sold to Bengang for food.The stewed chicken that was served earlier was also an egg-laying hen that was ruthlessly killed—there are only two hens left in the village, and one breeding hen is left.

Living is a problem, not to mention other conditions.The existing conditions for education and medical care are basically zero, and the most literate people in the village have only attended private schools for two years when they were young, and they have basically forgotten what they learned.Currently, the illiteracy rate in the village exceeds [-]%. Only two families send their children to local private schools because they have relatives in Bengang.A doctor who has no medical profession at all, has a headache and brain fever. The villagers use some herbal decoction to deal with it based on their experience. If they are lucky, they will recover. If they are not lucky, they can only accept their fate.The nearest clinic has to go to Bengang, and the distance of several tens of miles in between is an insurmountable obstacle for the seriously ill.

Given the medical and health conditions and the knowledge level of the people here, the death rate of the people is also quite high.When they moved here from Bengang, there were more than 60 households with more than 300 people. However, after a few years, the population has not increased, but has shown a downward trend year by year.During this period, the whole family did not move away from the local area, and the population reduction was almost all caused by deaths, of which at least more than 20% of the deaths were caused by various diseases.If this situation continues and the surrounding environment does not change much, in another ten or twenty years, this village may die out naturally due to its small population.

The troubles caused by poverty are not limited to this. Due to the poor conditions in Fengrong Village, other immigrant villages are unwilling to marry here. Downward trend.The decline in population will lead to the vicious cycle of the above disadvantages. If there is no outside force like Haihan to intervene, Fengrong Village will find it difficult to get rid of the increasingly embarrassing situation.

After visiting several houses to confirm the actual situation in the village, Gao Qiaonan returned to Mou Qing's residence and asked him in detail about the distribution of some nearby indigenous tribes.As the village representatives said in front of Qian Tiandun, there are also some tribes that are relatively friendly and willing to conduct normal transactions and contacts with Han immigrants, but there are only one or two such tribes, and the goodwill they show And the benefits that can be brought to Feng Rong Village are not enough to maintain the peace of this place.At least three indigenous tribes from mountainous areas demanded that Fengrong Village provide them with a certain amount of supplies every month. Although it was not an obvious robbery, in terms of the value of the exchanged goods they gave out, it was actually not much different from a hard robbery.

With the inquired news, Gao Qiaonan led the team back to the camp outside the village.After listening to his report, Qian Tiandun pondered for a while before asking: "Will these villagers reject immigrants?"

Takahashi Nandao: "I asked the village chief, and he does not reject any more immigrants moving here. He thinks that the biggest problem in Fengrong Village is the small population. If the population is large enough, more land can be reclaimed. land, and enough young adults to protect the village from native tribes.”

Qian Tiandun smiled and said: "He doesn't think about whether the place can afford it if the population suddenly increases? When the time comes to immigrate, it is necessary to pay money and food here."

Gao Qiaonan didn't care about the future immigration plan. What he cared about was still military issues. He bowed and asked, "General, should we continue to march inland?"

"Go in, why don't you go in?" Qian Tiandun said confidently: "Our trip is to collect as much information as possible about the surrounding environment, including the indigenous tribes. Those indigenous tribes are dozens of miles away. We won’t be so cowardly to stop here. But today it’s dark, we’ll camp here, and we’ll continue eastward tomorrow.”

Because they found Fengrong Village on the way, the original itinerary was delayed for half a day, so this day's settlement was only [-] miles away from the beach camp where they set off.When Gao Qiaonan came back, he also brought some vegetables from the villagers, so the army had an extra vegetable soup for dinner, so they didn't have to eat the hard marching rations.

Early the next morning, the troops pulled out their camps and continued to advance. When they passed Fengrong Village, many villagers were timidly watching the army without any banner at the entrance of the village.Seeing that these soldiers with muskets had no intention of entering the village, the villagers heaved a long sigh of relief.To be honest, if this army intends to make a fortune in Fengrong Village, the people in the village can only obediently obey and let the other party take what they want.

Qian Tiandun asked Gao Qiaonan to spend two taels of silver to find two brave young men from the village to be guides.However, even if a special guide was invited, the advancing speed of the troops did not speed up.Because this inland operation is not simply a march or an attack on hostile targets, but more importantly, it is to complete the investigation of the area along the Zhuoshui River and to correct the original map.And this involves a lot of surveying and mapping and hydrographic recording work. Every time one or two miles forward, the team has to stop to complete the surveying and mapping work.At the end of the day, being able to march for about twenty miles is considered a good speed.

From Fengrong Village to the east, there were no other Han Chinese villages, but on the third day of the march, we came to a village of the Pingpu tribe.Under the intermediary contact of two guides, the aborigines of this tribe carried out a simple transaction with the troops led by Qian Tiandun with vigilant eyes—in fact, they took some personal items carried by the soldiers, such as copper whistles and horns. Combs, cowhide belts, knives, etc., in exchange for clean well water and food made of millet from these aborigines by bartering.

Qian Tiandun's troops were not short of supplies. The soldiers had enough dry food for a ten-day march when they set off, and they only needed drinking water on the way.In fact, the main purpose of such a transaction is to release goodwill and avoid unnecessary conflicts caused by these natives overreacting to the sudden appearance of outsiders.

These Pingpu aborigines are relatively easy to communicate with, and in the original history, they were also ethnic minorities with a high degree of Sinicization.They were indeed very interested in these exquisite gadgets provided by strangers, but at the same time they maintained a high degree of vigilance, refusing the Haihan militia to enter their village.This made Qian Tiandun a little disappointed. He also wanted to see the difference between this village and the Han village.However, from a distant view from the outside, the houses of this indigenous tribe seem to be inferior to the adobe houses in Fengrong Village. They are all small houses with bamboo and wood structures. Like the boat houses of the Li nationality on Hainan Island.If there is a typhoon, it is not difficult to imagine how this simple shack will be blown to pieces.

Although he was not allowed to visit the tribe, Haihan's goodwill still played a role. The tribal elders here allowed the Haihan militia to continue marching eastward through their sphere of influence.But before the militia group set off, the locals gave them a special warning: one day's journey east from here, they will enter the territory of the mountain tribe, and the residents there are not as easy to communicate with them as they are.

(End of this chapter)