Daming Yinghua

According to the geography of later generations of China, Chongming Island is the third largest island, after Taiwan Island and Hainan Island.

Located at the mouth of the Yangtze River, this island was formed by river erosion and sediment deposition. In the Ming Dynasty at this time, it was even more flat, with occasional natural mounds. It may not be as high as the stage in Songjiang Mansion.

Therefore, in the huge Chongming Island, which already had tens of thousands of families in the late Ming Dynasty, the most stalwart place is the city wall of the county seat.

At this time, just after the early days, Yao Qianhu stood on the city wall, facing the southeast facing the sea.

Beside him, Yang Xiancheng also stood with his sleeves behind his back, squinted his eyes in the glaring sunlight overhead, and said, "These hillbillies from the northeast are pretty good at dealing with our Chongming tidal flats."

Yao Qianhu let out a muffled "hmm".

It has been more than half a month since the woman surnamed Zheng led the Liao people to the island.

Yesterday, Yue Zhixian came back from Suzhou and sent someone to the guard to tell Yao Qianhu that the Suzhou prefect, who was from the Donglin sect, did not bring the land invasion case to the Nanjing Metropolitan Procuratorate, so the matter should be turned over.

At the same time, Suzhou Bingbei Dao gave an echo. It was downgraded from the Chongming guerrilla to the general, now vacant old barracks. The imperial court does not allocate salaries for the time being, and if Chongming County wants to use the courage of the township to call it temporarily, it can provide silver and grain supplements as appropriate.

Yao Qianhu rushed to the county seat from Tunpu on the North Bank this morning, planning to ask Yue Zhi County some details.However, Yuezhi County did not see him on the grounds that the county was busy during the spring plowing season, and only asked Yang Xiancheng to take him to the city wall to have a look at Zhengjiazhuangzi.

Yao Qianhu began to scold in his heart.

You old cunning Yue Yunhong, you figured out how much a woman surnamed Zheng is, so you forgot how you kept trying to curry favor with me, and started acting like a bitch, pretending to be chaste and strong, closing the door and not accepting guests?
Seeing that Yao Qianhu was angry, Yang Xiancheng also sneered secretly.

It is clear that Qiu Bayi, who climbed up from the mud pond, relied on the smoke from his ancestral grave, and there was a brother who was favored by the chief minister, so he ran amok in Chongming, and sent us a Jinshi and a Juren to occupy land and cheat fields for you. A martial artist of my mother is also worthy!
It's right for a little girl to set up a hill, not to mention planting the fields that you took away, and recruiting a new soldier to beat you in the face.

But Yang Xiancheng, a literati who is proficient in stereotyped writing and has read Fengyue novels a lot, when the words come to his lips, they become a sense of relief.

"Old Yao, what are you doing with such a face? Haven't you seen Master Yue's good intentions? Then Mrs. Tang sued Suzhou. Do you think Donglin faction is vegetarian? Hey, it's okay now, Donglin's As soon as the civil servants inquired, these lands belong to their own people, and Huang Zunsu's good friend is planting them, okay, let the flags die down, and we won't be able to catch Yao Yushi and even Fang Ge's mistakes."

Yao Qianhu still squinted his eyes and pouted his mouth: "Let the fields eliminate disasters, I admit it. But your master, why did you tell that little girl that there is a camp of soldiers in Chongming County? I heard that she is going to try it on the island." What, what cannon. Isn't this forcing me to lead people to practice, or some bastard will sue, saying that my thousand households are lax in military affairs, and you and Lao Yue will help me out?"

Yang Xiancheng still smiled, and said softly and lightly: "You are a guard, originally a military warehouse, and the land in Chongming is difficult to grow. You spend more time in the field, who can chew your tongue? Besides, think about it, Chongming Restoring a battalion will actually do you a lot of good and nothing bad."

Yao Qianhu coughed a few times, spit out a mouthful of thick phlegm on the city wall, wiped the saliva from his mouth, and said softly, "Why?"

Yang Xiancheng endured his disgust and explained: "There is no one hundred days of happiness in a family, and there is no one hundred days of peace in a country. The Jurchen Tartars in the northeast, the Mongolian Tartars in the north, and the red hair and Frangji on the sea in the east can't guarantee what time it will be. Come to fight our Daming again. At that time, the imperial court will definitely dispatch guest troops from all over the place. Yuezhi County and I will recommend that little girl’s battalion to die. You Lao Yao, you still manage your tenants, ah, that’s right, those hoarders Household, happy and safe in Chongming."

Yao Qianhu finally looked better when he heard this verse.

He breathed a few sighs of relief, and said with a smirk: "It's good that you are still brothers and I am my own. Let's not talk about those wretched old women. Lao Yang, you go back and ask Yuezhi County if you want to Join me in the business of selling salt and cotton, and go to a new land."

Yang Xiancheng asked curiously: "Where?"

"Liaodong," Yao Qianhu said with a mysterious look on his face, "I picked up a merchant from Liaodong, went to Liaodong's private port, then went south to a few guards, and received the goods all the way to our Yaopi port in Chongming. .”

Yang Xiancheng was a little nervous: "Aren't you a smuggler?"

Yao Qianhu sneered: "Old Yang, you may not be an official for the first day? How many people in the Daming sea area are not smugglers? Don't worry, those generals in the guards are also my brothers who are in charge. Besides, Songjiang once opened the door. , There are so many sea boats running from Denglai to Nanzhili, who the hell is checking you all day to see if there is a boat leading you."

Yang Xiancheng thought about it, and felt that it was indeed not that dangerous.

"Well, it's fine to stop at Chongming, and don't go south to the vicinity of Wusong. Those who are in the Songjiang Mansion are very strict in anti-smuggling."

……

Four miles away from Chongming County, Zhengjiazhuang is busy with farming.

The land of more than [-] mu is even more vast and boundless because it is not blocked by hills and adjacent to the river and sea.

But on closer inspection, the fields of the manor are actually divided into three parts: salt fields, dry fields, and paddy fields.

Salt is cooked in salt fields, wheat and cotton are grown in dry fields, and rice is grown in paddy fields.

The Liao people who escaped from Jiannu outside the pass knew how to grow wheat. It was nothing more than spring wheat in the cold Northeast, and winter wheat in Chongming, which was relatively warm.

There are also paddy fields in the Northeast, and those families with seedlings even know that many lands in the south of the Yangtze River can be replanted with rice and wheat.

When preparing to reclaim Chongming, Zheng Haizhu already estimated that the Liao people were proficient in fields such as composting, but they were unfamiliar with cooking salt from the sea and growing cotton.

So early on, she invited salt workers from Yan Siqi's base in Daishan Island, Zhejiang Province, and lived in Songjiang.

These days, several salt workers came to Chongming Island to demonstrate to the Liao people how to dig polders with a wide, deep and smooth bottom and build dikes.When the tide is high, the dike is opened to introduce seawater, and when the tide is low, the gate is closed, so that the seawater in the polder pit is gradually dried by the sun, and rough sea salt is precipitated.Then scoop up these sea salts, dissolve them in clean water, cook them on a fire, and use the characteristics of different solubility of different components in sea salt to filter them continuously to finally get fine salt.

And in the dry fields where winter wheat was planted in the fall of last year, the old farmers from the cotton fields of the Han family in Songjiang are also teaching the Liao people how to sow cotton seeds.

Chongming Island at the end of the Ming Dynasty was similar to the Susong area. Due to the prosperity of the silk cloth textile industry, there were far more lands for growing cotton and mulberry trees than for food.In the Song and Yuan Dynasties, there was still a saying of "cooking in Suhu, the world is enough", but after the middle of the Ming Dynasty, it has been changed to "cooking in Huguang, the world is enough", because the food in the south of the Yangtze River in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River is mostly imported from other places.

However, Zheng Haizhu's plan for his small estate at the start-up stage still pays equal attention to food crops and cash crops.

At this moment, she took Wu Bangde and Xu Yilong to walk around the manor, not only to observe the busy farming situation, but also to observe which descendants of more than 100 Liao people and thirty or forty Chongming veterans were suitable to develop into the first batch of battalion soldiers, and which ones were suitable to become the first batch of soldiers. Secret service personnel trained by Wu Bangde.

The three of them had just turned to a polder field when they heard Grandma Tang's loud and angry voice.

"Wang Tai, your wife has worked so hard to bring you food, but you have hurt others, do you still have a conscience? Quickly apologize to your wife!"

At the edge of the polder filled with seawater, the young Liao people Wang Tai listened to the training with his head bowed. Standing beside him was his wife, carrying a bamboo basket, with an embarrassed expression on her face. Several other Liao people who were learning how to cook salt gathered around to watch with playful smiles. lively.

Wu Bangde muttered softly behind Zheng Haizhu: "The Bodhisattva you enshrined, um, what do you call her, the head of the Women's Federation and the Society, is really dedicated to her duties, even more diligent than the Bodhisattva."

Zheng Haizhu also felt a little black line on his forehead, feeling speechless in his heart.

After she talked with Mrs. Tang about accepting the descendants of the veterans, she thought, since the old lady is so respected in Chongming, and has never married all her life and lives alone in the county, she might as well invite her to live in the Zhuangzi, and give it to all the white men on weekdays. Literacy and literacy.

Tang Po, who is very pursuing the realization of self-worth, gladly accepted the invitation.Zheng Haizhu's head got hot again, and he decided to establish a women's federation organization in Zhuangzi. According to the common saying in the south of the Yangtze River in the late Ming Dynasty, it was named the Women's Union Society.

Zheng Haizhu figured that with Mrs. Tang's gold-lettered signboard, the Chongming locals in the neighboring villages of Siye might be more daring to marry their daughters over.

Unexpectedly, after hearing Zheng Haizhu's brief talk about the purpose of the women's federation, Mrs. Tang would be so excited like a spring river. Whenever she went from house to house and saw a man scolding his wife, she would sternly criticize her. Ask the man to put his fingerprint on the paper she wrote to promise not to bully his wife.

A few old men from Liaodong who lost their face did not dare to complain to Zheng Haizhu, so they went to Wu Bangde to ask Wu Bangde, can they ask Mrs. Zheng to take care of this old lady and not to interfere with the couple's housework.

At this moment, when Wang Tai's wife saw Madam Zheng appearing, she said to Granny Tang with a look of begging for mercy: "Grandma, it's getting hot, and my man sweats a lot from working hard. I put less salt in today's dishes." It’s not bad for him to lose his temper.”

Zheng Haizhu caught a glimpse of Wang Tai's face, which was on the verge of breaking out, so she also stepped forward and smiled, "Grandmother, brother Wang asked me yesterday how to get to the county town and where the makeup shop is. He actually loves his wife very much."

On the one hand, he had already stepped forward to pull Granny Tang over: "When I came out just now, I saw Hua Da and Hua Er, and they drove back to Zhuangzi. Granny, follow me to have a look. The number of books brought in is right."

Grandma Tang was also a little angry at Mrs. Wang Tai's ungrateful attitude, she responded coldly, and followed Zheng Haizhu and the others to leave the polder.

Now, Zhuangzi's tile-roofed house has not yet been built, and Zheng Haizhu has given the largest thatched hut to Grandma Tang to live in.

When the old and young women returned to the hut, the brothers and sisters of the Hua family immediately greeted them, pointing to several book boxes under the sun: "Mrs. remain."

Grandma Tang opened the bookcase, feeling very happy, and rewarded each of the Hua family brothers and sisters with a few copper coins. The Hua family brothers and sisters also thanked each other happily, and went to work in their own fields.

Grandma Tang entered the room and made a pot of hot tea, took it out and put it on the simple stone table, and called Zheng Haizhu to sit down and rest.

"Miss Zheng, do you feel that I, my wife, have treated those elders a little too hard?"

Zheng Haizhu took a sip of tea and said with a smile: "Mother-in-law, some of it is chili water, which hurts people, and some of it is just ordinary tea, just boiled a little, just blow it."

Grandma Tang played her lawyer's quick rebuttal quality: "That's right, someone needs to blow it, otherwise, even if it is tea, it will burn your tongue."

Zheng Haizhu thought for a while and said: "Those Liao people, although they talk about 'not fighting for three days, go to the house to expose the tiles', but after watching this for a while, there is really no one who dares to do something to the lady. The man who took his wife with him when he escaped from the hands of a slave is probably a good man, not to mention a saint. Let’s do this, mother-in-law, when we take the women to the county town to pull cloth to make jackets, we will tell them that husband and wife We don’t care about the ordinary quarrels between them. But you must come and talk to us about the grievances you can’t swallow.”

Grandma Tang glanced at her: "Okay, old lady, I understand. If the tea is hot, let them blow it by themselves first. If it doesn't cool down by themselves, then tell me to go out and lift the table."

Zheng Haizhu smiled and continued drinking tea.

The spring sun is pouring down generously, warming people thoroughly, and even the bones are filled with a comfortable tingling feeling.

In the peaceful atmosphere, Grandma Tang suddenly asked: "Miss Zheng, my wife has a bad temper, and no man in this life would dare to marry. You seem to have a very gentle temper, why do you want to do such a thing, a self-combed girl?"

Zheng Haizhu showed a faint smile in the sunshine.

"It's too tiring to be married."

"Oh, is it more tiring than you traveling all over the world?"

"Grandma, do you think the swallows in the sky are tired or the parrots in the cage are tired?"

Grandma Tang sighed: "Actually, I'm tired. When people come to this world, they suffer hardships and misfortunes. Therefore, we should love ourselves even more. It's okay to have a cage to rest in."

Zheng Haizhu made no secret of his approval: "Grandma's words are really clear."

Grandma Tang suddenly showed an inquiring expression: "Miss Azhu, look at her, that Mr. Wu is actually pretty good."

Zheng Haizhu said frankly: "More than one of my elders and friends around me said this, but I really don't have a relationship with him. In his heart, there is someone he wants to let go for the rest of his life. In my heart, there is no one at all. Mother-in-law, don't Remember, he is the cage I rest in."

Granny Tang shook her head, leaned over to pick up a book from the bookcase, and said earnestly: "But for a while, how do you know it's not suitable? The big deal is, live under one roof for a few years, eat in the same pot for a few years, and if it doesn't work, go back Let's separate. You see, this script that my mother-in-law loves to read the most is about how a daughter of a thousand gold treats her marriage."

Zheng Haizhu became curious when he heard the words, and glanced at the book, "Qing Huan Ji", I don't know, I haven't heard of it.

But when her eyes continued to fall into the book box, she was attracted by a drawing.