I want to be emperor

Chapter 869 Marriage
Sun Xu spent more than a year in Songjiang and returned home, which caused a huge sensation in the surrounding neighborhood.

After all, Sun Xu was just a poor boy when he went out, but when he came back, he was sitting in a two-horse four-wheeled carriage, carrying various gifts in large and small bags, and he also brought a young and beautiful 'friend' home.

This caused a lot of discussions among the neighbors. Most of these discussions were envious and jealous, but there were also eccentricities. Many young people asked about Sun Xu's work and life in Songjiang. Judging from their appearance, they probably wanted to go to Songjiang. Let's go for a walk.

This kind of situation didn't just happen in Sun Xu's old home, it actually happened in many places in the Great Chu Empire.

Many young people who return to their hometown during the Chinese New Year holiday will themselves become the promotional business card of the city where they work.

Higher salaries and more modern lifestyles are very attractive to young people in rural areas.

Compared with working hard in the soil, you can't make much money all year round, and you need to do odd jobs to subsidize your family.

And for the future, you can see the end at a glance.

Although the contemporary rural life of the Great Chu Empire has benefited from a series of policies over the past 30 years since the founding of the Great Chu Empire, almost all farmers have owned their own land, and the landlord class has been forced to give up their land due to high land tax and other issues. After selling the land, they invested the funds in the industrial and commercial industries, and became the new generation of industrial and commercial bourgeoisie in the empire.

At the same time, the Great Chu Empire also has many support policies for rural areas, such as the construction of various water conservancy facilities and agricultural protection policies.

The most famous of these is the Tea Protection Act. The Tea Protection Act directly prohibits the promotion of tea planting overseas, including the Americas and many other overseas territories, so as to ensure the interests of local tea farmers.

Then came the mulberry tree and silkworm cocoon protection decree led by the Raw Silk Association, and at the same time prohibited the export of silk-related mulberry tree planting and silkworm cocoon breeding technologies to overseas regions.

At the same time, it actively develops the processing of economic crops such as grain processing and fruit processing, and then purchases a large number of various economic crops produced in rural areas to further increase the income level of farmers.

But even so, the economic development of the vast rural areas of the Great Chu Empire was still unsatisfactory.

It is true that during the Ming Dynasty, or even any feudal dynasty, the rural areas of the Great Chu Empire could already be considered affluent, and the majority of farmers could basically eat.

But eating well and eating well and eating well... are two different things.

The vast number of farmers in the Great Chu Empire, in fact, are currently only at the level of being able to eat, and in fact there is still a little distance from being full.

In the 35th year of Chengshun, according to the statistical report of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry of the Great Chu Empire, the per capita grain consumption in the local area was about 370 kilograms, a slight increase compared to the previous two years... It sounds pretty good at first glance, but you have to know , if you want to really have enough to eat, the bottom line is actually [-] kilograms per capita... If you exceed this line, the people can really talk about having enough to eat.

Under this premise, we can talk about increasing the types of food such as meat, poultry and eggs so that the people can eat well... This stage is often the reason why the per capita food consumption has not increased, hovering around [-] kilograms for a long time.

After all, people's stomachs are so big, so if you eat more meat, eggs, etc., you will naturally eat less staple foods such as rice and wheat.

However, the Great Chu Empire is still a long way from having enough food for all the people... Even if it is only 25 kilograms away from the final per capita, it is still very difficult.

It is not easy for the empire to maintain a small increase in per capita food consumption... mainly due to the large-scale development of the Southeast Asian region and the large-scale development of the North American region.

In particular, the grain output in North America is increasing year by year. In addition to meeting local needs, the remaining grain is basically transported back to the mainland to supply the huge consumption of the local population of more than 4 million.

In addition, the development of the Nanyang region is also good. After years of construction of water conservancy facilities and large-scale immigration in areas such as the Mekong River Delta, the Red River Delta, and the Bangkok Plain, they have been able to produce food on a large scale.

And the rest of the grain produced was also shipped to the local area.

The large-scale transportation of grain from overseas territories to the mainland is the reason for maintaining the steady and small increase in per capita grain consumption in the empire.

If there is no such food from overseas...according to the population growth rate of the empire, coupled with the fact that there is no chemical fertilizer in the contemporary agricultural planting technology, and no decisive breakthroughs have been made in grain varieties, relying on the local food production alone, at present At this stage, it is simply impossible to maintain the growth of per capita food consumption...

Moreover, the huge population is actually a headache for the top management of the empire. After all, it is not an easy task to feed the more than 4 million people of the Great Chu Empire. The most important thing is that the population is still rising.

In the early years, around the 20th year of Chengshun, the population growth rate in the Great Chu Empire was very fast, and the huge population growth rate once made the high-level officials of the empire worry... At this rate, in less than 20 years, the empire The total population must exceed one billion!

This is also the reason why the Great Chu Empire expanded so frantically overseas and promoted overseas immigration in the 20s... There are too many people and the local food production is limited!
And this is the fundamental difference between the overseas expansion of the Great Chu Empire and the overseas expansion of European countries.

The essence of European countries' overseas expansion is for profit, and colonization is regarded as a business.

But the overseas expansion of the Great Chu Empire was purely to relieve the population pressure...

What reassures the top management of the empire is that after the super-peak birth rate in the 20s and early 20s, it entered the late 30s, and now after the 40.00s, the birth rate in the Great Chu Empire was finally not as crazy as above 20.00%. Instead, it has gradually returned to rationality, and it has dropped to more than [-]%.

However, due to the improvement of the medical level and the increase of the average life expectancy, the death rate of the population has been reduced year by year, which has also led to the rapid growth of the total population.

In the [-]s of Chengshun, many couples would raise three, four, or even five or six children... Mainly because after entering the [-]s, the empire almost ended all civil wars, and all kinds of chieftains and landlord armed forces in the country were also wiped out. The country has entered a period of high stability and peace. At the same time, with the development of agricultural and water conservancy construction, the continuous development of industry and commerce, and the improvement of people's living standards, this led to a very high fertility rate in the empire in the [-]s.

Of course, at that time, many couples actually did not expect that all the children they gave birth to would live to adulthood... In the agricultural period, the child mortality rate was very high. Even if there were seven or eight children, usually only about half of them survived in the end. live to adulthood.

However, people underestimated the determination of the Great Chu Empire to develop health care.

Then the vast number of young parents discovered that the expected high mortality rate did not come, and most of the children born could grow up smoothly...then sadly found that it was too difficult to raise.

Coupled with the gradual promotion of education in the Great Chu Empire, although it doesn't cost much to go to primary school, it still costs money. If there are more children, it will cost a lot of money just to go to an inclusive primary school.

At the same time, after the environment is stable, people always hope that their children can live a better life, hope that their children can go to a better school, go to junior high school, etc... and this will cost more.

Many children born in the [-]s have several brothers and sisters. Most of them have fewer opportunities for education because they have too many brothers and sisters. Eat, a group of brothers and sisters are all staring at the pair of chicken legs!

Even after they become adults, this kind of memory still stays deeply in their minds!
Therefore, many people grow up, and when they reach the age of marriage and childbearing, in order not to let their children suffer as they did back then, they often don’t insist on having five or six or more children as stubbornly as their parents, but choose to have fewer children, and then concentrate on Resources to better train children...

Studying in the Great Chu Empire is still very expensive... Even if ordinary families don’t expect their children to go to college, they at least want to let their children go to junior high school. Only after they have a middle school education can they find a decent job.

If you only go to an inclusive elementary school, you can only enter the factory assembly line as an ordinary worker.

These conceptual changes led to the new generation of young people in the Great Chu Empire becoming more restrained in childbearing after entering the late 20s, which directly led to a decline in the birth rate.

Of course, this does not mean that the total population has declined. In fact, the total population is still growing every year, and the growth rate is still not small.

It's just that the growth rate is not as exaggerated as before...

The huge population, especially the relatively large population growth rate, made the high-level officials of the Great Chu Empire very worried, and eventually triggered large-scale overseas expansion and immigration supported by the entire empire.

The idea of ​​the high-level empire is very simple: since there is not enough arable land in the country to support such a large population, they should grab foreign land and emigrate the people overseas.

Therefore, in the past 20 years, thanks to the emergence of large-tonnage motor sailboats and the sharp drop in shipping costs, the Great Chu Empire has immigrated a large number of people overseas every year since [-] years after Chengshun, and the current immigration The number is still increasing year by year, and the number is very large.

In the past 35 years of Chengshun, at least more than 400 million people have gone overseas to make a living through official immigration, loan immigration, self-funded immigration and other channels, mainly in North America and Southeast Asia. In addition, India and Africa have also become new options for immigration.

This is 400 million a year, and it is still official statistics, and there are some irregular immigrants who are not included in the statistics.

The number of overseas immigrants in the Great Chu Empire was very large.

In North America alone, the population now exceeds [-] million, and it is still increasing rapidly every year.

Even in the newly developed African and South African regions, the population has exceeded one million today... Mainly because after the discovery of gold mines in South Africa, a large number of people flooded in in a short period of time... These people who went for gold discovered that Africa The land is pretty good, and in order to attract immigrants to settle down, the local government provides free land allocation as the most basic policy. There are also various other measures to subsidize boat tickets, subsidize the production of farm tools, and exempt the previous agricultural tax.

In these years, an ordinary young man with no skills or culture in the Great Chu Empire was basically at the bottom of society in the mainland and could only struggle to survive.

But as long as you grit your teeth and go overseas, take South Africa as an example, as long as you dare to go to a slightly inland place, the local colonial government will not give you a fixed amount of land... They will give you a horse, and you can do it within the specified time. How much land you enclose is yours... you don't need a single coin, and you will be provided with a loan to purchase the basic production tools such as plow horses and grain seeds that are necessary for the development of the farm.

In other words, even if you are nothing at home, as long as you dare to go to those places in Africa, you can become a owner of tens or even hundreds of acres of land in minutes. You can own hundreds or even thousands of acres of land.

Of course, in that kind of poor place, you can't hire anyone to farm the land for you. You can only farm by yourself and your family. However, if you use horses to farm the land, the per capita cultivated area is also very considerable.

Don't talk about using local aborigines, free or no money, this is impossible, and the law does not allow it.

The overseas territories of the Great Chu Empire formally established administrative agencies, adopting the same legal standards as the provinces of the empire. Strictly speaking, these overseas territories are no different from the mainland. Slaves are prohibited in the mainland, and these overseas territories of the empire are also prohibited.

In addition, regarding the population policy of the overseas territories, the top management of the empire has always been old-fashioned and stubborn, insisting that these overseas territories are the living space of the Great Chu people!

The land of the Great Chu Empire, the grain of the Great Chu Empire, was used to feed the Chu people, not to feed the natives... slaves were not allowed either.

Even if the local overseas territories are temporarily underpopulated and cannot be developed temporarily, they will not introduce local aborigines for some economic benefits... There are not enough people, just continue to introduce immigrants from the mainland, what a big deal!
Anyway, the local area is overcrowded, and the high-level officials of the empire have a lot of headaches. Every year, a large number of people immigrate overseas.

However, immigrating overseas is, after all, the first choice of the bottom-level people, especially those who cannot find a way to survive in the country. If they have the opportunity to find a good job in the country, no one wants to go to a wild place overseas.

If you can find a good job in Songjiang, live a decent life, let your family enjoy a better life, get medical care, and let your children receive better education, the people of Chu country only emigrate overseas when they have problems.

The risk of immigrating overseas these days is quite high... For example, in South Africa, there are millions of immigrants, but how many doctors are there?In addition to the aid doctors sent by the government, doctors with legal medical licenses, dozens of them died...

In the Great Chu Empire these days, doctors with legal medical licenses are all highly educated and respected upper-middle-class groups in the country. They live well in the country, and they will go overseas to the wilderness if they can't think about it. land?

Therefore, the number of legal doctors in the overseas territories is pitifully small, and a considerable number of these few doctors are concentrated in the major cities of the overseas territories.

However, ordinary immigrants live in immigrant settlements. If you are sick and rich, you can't find a doctor to see you.

So if you can live a good life in your own country, few people will choose to immigrate.

For example, Sun Xu... If you let him immigrate now, even if he goes to Jinshan Prefecture in North America with better conditions, he will turn his eyes on you... If you persuade him a little more, he will turn his face on you directly.

He's doing well in Songjiang, but you asked him to immigrate overseas... Isn't that nonsense.

However, many people from his old home have immigrated, and during the few days at home during the Chinese New Year, he also had a little contact with former classmates, relatives and friends. He heard that several classmates who lived in rural areas had emigrated with their families.

Sun Xu was a little embarrassed about this. After these students immigrated, there is a high probability that they will never see each other again.

There are also a few classmates who want to go to Songjiang for a while, so they asked Sun Xu a lot for this, and Sun Xu also knows everything, and has said everything that needs to be said.

As for how they choose and how they do well in the future, it depends on their personal opportunities.

Just after the Spring Festival, Sun Xu took Ms. Meng to Jiangxi on the second day of the Lunar New Year. Sun Xu's former primary school teacher also went with him. This is the matchmaker Sun Xu invited.

The teacher is a matchmaker, which is a good story, and most people still can't invite it... Sun Xu also made a fuss, which made the former elementary school teacher feel relieved, so he agreed.

Otherwise, whoever will run thousands of kilometers with you during the Chinese New Year, and go back and forth for several days to come to propose marriage!

A group of people went straight to Jiangxi, sent Miss Meng home, and asked for a marriage proposal... The whole process was also very smooth.

Although it is said that this meeting will only come to ask for marriage, in fact, the parents of both parties have already obtained permission through letters, that is, the distance between the two families is too far away, and Sun Xu and Ms. Meng work in Songjiang. The relevant three-media and six-engagement procedures have been completed.

Because the distance is too far and travel is inconvenient, related matters have also been simplified...Of course, the procedures for the three media and six recruitments are indispensable, at least they have been simplified and adapted.

After staying in Jiangxi for a few days and completing various procedures, Sun Xu and Ms. Meng are officially unmarried couples. Even the date of marriage has been fixed, which is next month.

Just considering that Sun Xu has to go to work and is busy with work, and there are also a group of colleagues and friends in Songjiang who need to be invited, etc., the venue for the wedding is in Songjiang City.

At that time, relatives and friends of both parties will come to Songjiang to attend the wedding.

After confirming the date of marriage, Sun Xu put the teacher on the return train, and stuffed a big red envelope before leaving... Although the teacher came to be the matchmaker out of friendship, talking about money is too vulgar.But Sun Xu couldn't let people really go for a trip, and he didn't say anything, and he still had to have the proper etiquette.

Afterwards, Sun Xu returned to Songjiang to work first, while Ms. Meng planned to stay at home for a while until she got married next month, when the Meng family sent her relatives to Songjiang.

After finalizing the lifelong event, Sun Xu was in a good mood all the way back east, and after arriving in Songjiang in the first class all the way, he devoted himself directly to work.

Anhua Textile Company is as busy as ever... Even if it is not the same as last year, it even has to work overtime during the Chinese New Year, but it is only a seven-day standard holiday. When Sun Xu arrived in Songjiang, Anhua Textile Company had already started work for several days .

(End of this chapter)