I, the Ming Dynasty, can still save me

Chapter 468 Letter from Sun Yuanhua ([-])

Forbidden City, Qianqing Palace.

A sound of reciting came from the Nuan Pavilion.

"I, Sun Yuanhua, mentioned above. I set out from Shanghai on October [-]th and sailed south for half a month. I stopped at Daguang, Taiwan to replenish water. I then set off and arrived in Macau on November [-]rd. After arriving, I wrote down what I saw along the way. I will report to His Majesty in the title book and I will not neglect it."

Zhu Youxiao sat on the dragon chair, tapping the chair support rhythmically with his fingers while listening to Zhang Chang's recitation.

This was Sun Yuanhua's second title book after his departure. Since Zhu Youxiao specifically reminded the General Affairs Department, as soon as the title book was sent to the General Affairs Department, it was immediately sent to Zhu Youxiao's censorship.

As soon as Zhu Youxiao saw the question book, he guessed that he should have arrived in Macau, and immediately asked Zhang Chang to read it.

After hearing the first sentence, Sun Yuanhua gave himself a big surprise. On the way to Macau, the fleet actually stopped in Taiwan.

"I arrived in Macau on November [-]rd, Zhang Chang. What day is it today?"

When he heard the date, he immediately became interested and slowly calculated the date in his mind.

"Master, today is the seventh day of the lunar month, and tomorrow is the eighth day of the lunar month."

"The seventh day of the lunar month~"

Hearing this, Zhu Youxiao immediately calculated in his mind.Sun Yuanhua arrived in Macau in early November, and it would only take a month at most to send the question books from Macau to the capital, which made Zhu Youxiao secretly surprised.

You must know that it was very troublesome to travel to Beijing from Guangdong in the Ming Dynasty. Before the sea opened, there were two options: land and water.

The land route is generally Vietnam Ridge, passing through the two lakes, and Henan to Beijing; the water route is via Jiangxi or Hunan, eastward along the Yangtze River, to Jiangsu, and northward from the Grand Canal.The land route is very slow, usually taking three to four months, while the water route is faster, but it takes about two months.

However, Sun Yuanhua's title book could actually be reached in one month. He may have taken the sea route, going directly north through South Zhili to Tianjin Wei, and it was so fast because there were no obstacles along the way.

"This Sun Yuanhua is very thoughtful. He knows that I want to know what he has seen along the way. The efficiency of writing and delivering the question book is extremely fast, without any delay."

"That's right, Mr. Sun is an imperial minister appointed by His Majesty. He will definitely remember what your Majesty said and will not dare to forget it."

Listening to Zhang Chang's flattery, Zhu Youxiao laughed and then nodded:
"You will say good things. Okay, just keep reading. I want to see what new things he comes up with when he goes to Taiwan and Macau."

Zhang Chang stopped talking when he saw this and continued reading patiently.

Zhu Youxiao leaned back on his chair, listening to the lecture and closing his eyes to rest.As Zhang Chang told, Zhu Youxiao slowly opened his eyes, and the surprise on his face became stronger and stronger.

After Sun Yuanhua arrived in Taiwan, he landed at Tainan Port.

Before landing, he knew Taiwan very well. He originally thought that Taiwan was deserted, but after arriving, he found that this was not the case.

Da Yuan is a small port. After they docked, two Han people came on the ship and led them to live in Taiwowan.

After they got off the boat, they found that there were many Han people inside and they also raised goats, pigs, cattle and other livestock.

After inquiry, I learned that most of the Han people here came from Fujian, and some of them have lived here for many years. There are even some Han people who live with the local natives, get married and have children.

Sun Yuanhua knew that the emperor had the idea of ​​​​immigrating to Taiwan, so he took advantage of his time on the island to often walk around the port and ask the local Han people why they came here.

Local Han people said that people lived here as early as the Jiajing and Wanli years.

The first ones to come were the fishermen. They used to fish in the Penghu Islands, and then moved to the Jingang area in central and southern Taiwan, and then expanded to northern fishing grounds such as Chicken Coop and Tamsui. In order to facilitate supplies, fishermen began to set up camp on the islands. , let the place slowly begin to become populated.

They originally thought of living there for a short time, but they didn't expect that although Taiwan was poor, the land was fertile, and the government didn't collect taxes, so they began to live on the island for a long time.

On the other side of Taiwan, Fujian has barren land and frequent disasters. Many people cannot survive. Seeing that Taiwan is inhabited, they flee to Taiwan.

Therefore, Taiwan is not an uninhabited and barren land. On the contrary, there are still many Han people in it.

Sun Yuanhua roughly estimated that there were thousands of Han people in Tainan's Tainan Port.

This is just Taiyuan Port. It is said that there are many fishermen living in the northern part of Taiwan. It is estimated that there are hundreds of people in other places.

And due to its important geographical location, merchant ships come to Damuan Port from time to time.

According to his inquiries, at least a dozen Zhangdu merchant ships ply between Taiwan and Penghu ports every year, engaging in cross-strait trade activities. They carry agate, porcelain, cloth, salt, copper hairpin rings and other goods in exchange for locally produced deer breasts and Skin, horn.

Thinking of this, Zhu Youxiao couldn't help but sigh, he really underestimated the ancients.

In the past, when navigation technology was underdeveloped, few people went to Taiwan. Now that navigation technology is developed, Taiwan is not far away, so naturally more people go there. Now there are many people and business is quite prosperous.Zhu Youxiao was also happy when he thought of this. They had been in Taiwan for such a long time and were very familiar with its environment. When the imperial court went to Taiwan, they would not be blinded.

Along with Zhang Chang's explanation, Sun Yuanhua brought more and more surprises to Zhu Youxiao.

Sun Yuanhua not only made an on-site inspection of Taiwan this time, but also personally saw the crops grown by the local Han people. He really didn't know it until he went there. But when he went there, he was shocked to see that Taiwan's soil is very fertile.

Most of the people in Taiyuan Port are fishermen and are not good at farming.In their spare time, they burned wasteland for cultivation, simply plowed the fields and directly planted seeds. After that, they ignored them and allowed them to fend for themselves.

This kind of farming method has probably been scolded to death in Fujian and other places for a long time, but despite this, the harvest from farming in Taiwan is more than that from farming in Fujian, which can be said to be doubled.

Therefore, when Sun Yuanhua wrote this, he couldn't help but sigh.

It is said that the local Han people can have enough food for seven years if they farm the platform for one year. Taiwan really has acres of surplus grain and abundant crops. If the imperial court can increase the number of immigrants and make full use of these lands, even a small island will be able to survive. It can be compared with the Central Plains.

This is what Zhu Youxiao is most interested in and concerned about.

He didn't believe Sun Yuanhua's statement that "one year of tilling the land will yield seven years of food left over."But Taiwan’s climate allows two or even three crops of food to be harvested a year.

Not to mention the flat terrain, fertile soil and abundant water in the western plain area.Most of the land is paddy soil, which is suitable for planting rice, sugar cane, tea, etc.In addition, the forest is dense, with sulfur vines, sweet and sour, deer skins, and everything else. It is a prosperous place.

More importantly, most of Taiwan is in the tropics. Now that the entire Ming Dynasty is in the Little Ice Age and the temperature has plummeted, Taiwan's geographical conditions are extremely precious.

As the saying goes, practice is the only criterion for testing truth. Sun Yuanhua's on-the-spot investigation greatly increased Zhu Youxiao's confidence and strengthened his determination to encourage people to immigrate to Taiwan.

But there is one last thing to consider at this time, which is the problem of pirates.

"Zhang Chang, go and get the manuscripts I asked you to collect about Taiwan."

Ever since he made up his mind to encourage immigrants to Taiwan, Zhu Youxiao has been very concerned about Taiwan.

Previously, the Hanlin Academy was asked to compile a collection of excerpts of the most important records about Taiwan from the official inscriptions of the Ming Dynasty.After he was done, he discovered that Ming Dynasty had known about Ming Dynasty for a long time, but he didn't know much about it. Most of the records about Taiwan said that it was a pirate den.

Because of its good location and close proximity to Fujian, pirates have always gathered here.

In the 33rd year of Jiajing's reign, the Chief Secretary of Fujian reported that a pirate named Chen Lao had "set up a nest in Penghu".In the 42nd year of Jiajing, the pirate Lin Daoqian fled to Taiwan. Yu Dayou led his troops to pursue him to Penghu. Due to the twists and turns of the waterway, he did not dare to advance rashly, so he left a partial division to garrison Penghu and sent troops to Lu'ermen and other places to pursue him. Lin Daoqian finally escaped and occupied Penghu. city.

During the Daolongqing period, Liu Tao, the Minister of War, together with Xiong Jun, the governor of Guangdong, and Tu Zemin, the governor of Fujian, once encircled and suppressed the Guangdong pirates. However, they quickly ran away and broke through the encirclement to go north, preparing to establish a new base in Penghu or Taiwan.

Similar deeds occurred even in the second year of Wanli. The famous pirate Lin Feng was defeated by Hu Shouren, the general of Fujian, and retreated to Penghu.Lin Feng then transferred from Penghu to Taiwan and Hong Kong, then crossed the Taiwan Strait westward to the coasts of Fujian and Guangdong, where he continued his smuggling trade activities.

After the Fujian Chief Secretary discovered this matter, he once again mobilized the navy to send troops to conquer, and ordered the "Eastern Fan" to join forces to suppress it, so Lin Feng had to lead more than 60 large ships to flee to Luzon.

Even though Zhu Youxiao had read this information many times, he still had a headache.

The imperial court has always neglected to manage Penghu, Taiwan and other places, resulting in these two places and other places being often occupied by pirates.

Even though the imperial court belatedly realized that it had set up a Penghu Inspection Department to strengthen the defense of Penghu and sent warships to inspect Taiwan at any time, the pirates were still repeatedly suppressed.

The same is true now. Sun Yuanhua mentioned pirates in his title book. The local Han people said that there were pirates living in the north of Taiwan. In the middle of this year, a big pirate came and set up camp there.

In addition, he also heard that the Francois often came to trade by boat, and even secretly observed the terrain, and they had a big picture.

Zhu Youxiao couldn't help but shook his head when he thought of this, and said slowly:

"I'm afraid Taiwan will become more and more lively in the future."

Zhang Chang on the side was confused. He knew why the emperor said that.

Zhu Youxiao ignored him. Taiwan was becoming more and more interesting.Since such a lively place, how could it be missing the Ming Dynasty?

Thinking of this, he picked up the pen and paper on the imperial case and began to write the edict.

The general idea is that the Penghu Inspection Department is the Penghu Inspection Yamen, which is directly under the jurisdiction of the Fujian Commander-in-Chief Yamen. It regularly inspects Penghu, Taiwan and other places to eliminate pirates and maintain the safety of merchant ships along the way.

At the same time, the cabinet was ordered to send a document to the Governor's Office of Fujian and Zhejiang and the Chief Secretary of Fujian, asking Yuan Keri to send people to Taiwan to survey the terrain and prepare for immigration based on the original strongholds in Tainan and Taipei.

He paused for a moment after thinking about this, and then added: Xiong Wencan, the priest of the Ming Temple, is the right counselor of Fujian and is in charge of Taiwan affairs.

(End of this chapter)