The sun never sets in America

Chapter 186 Voyage: Changes in Japan

In the Pacific Ocean, a sailing ship emitting black smoke was sailing on the vast and boundless sea.

Under the reflection of the blue sea and the hot midday sun, it is like an old-fashioned movie, giving people an almost science-fiction aesthetic.

This motor-sailboat named Happiness is a training ship affiliated to Jinshan Navigation Company.

It is mainly used for training sailors, selling Chinese goods, and purchasing overseas goods.

This is a very economical approach, which not only solves the training problem of sailors, but also maximizes the economic benefits on the road.

This is also what most sea-going ships of this era would do.

Even the immigration ships and colonial ships in Europe not only carried humans, but also animals such as chickens, ducks, geese, pigs, and cattle, and even vegetable seeds, in order to obtain life support as soon as possible when opening up colonies.

This is what the Han Dynasty did in Penglai in the early days. Penglai Province introduced a large number of native plants and animals. After all, Penglai Islands is a place located in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The local ecology tends to be closed, which also formed a unique local environment. ecological chain, and this ecological chain has been basically broken after the arrival of the Han people.

At present, the Hanguo Railway Company is planning to build a railway around the island to develop the resources deep in Penglai Island. However, this plan was rejected as soon as it was proposed. The main reason is that it is not cost-effective.

The reason for this is due to the geography of Penglai Island. There are a large number of active volcanoes on Penglai Island. Although the eruptions are not that serious, there are still a lot of natural wildfires caused every year. Therefore, railways are built, especially deep ones. , is a very risky and challenging thing.

In addition, a large number of people are concentrated in the coastal areas of Penglai Island and Yunshan Island. The demand for railway construction is not that great, and the cost recovery will not be very fast. Relatively speaking, it will be very long. Therefore, the plan for the ring-island railway has been cancelled. , instead invest in a seaside railway built in coastal areas and close to towns.

This railway is not long. The total length including double tracks does not exceed one hundred kilometers. It is divided into two islands, which is equivalent to only a few dozen kilometers on one island.

The main reason is because of the local railway construction. The most important thing is not to transport people, but to transport wood and fresh fruits.

It's said to be a railway, but it's actually just a freight rail car, and bringing people along is all incidental.

At present, this coastal railway has been built in advance on Yunshan Island and is currently under construction. The main reason for this is that the amount of wood in Tanshan City on Yunshan Island is too large, and the speed of pulling the rails by horse-drawn carriages is too slow. Instead, use Trains can also maximize economic benefits.

This railway was built by the Penglai local government with a loan to the railway company, and the land was given away for free. The main reason was that there was no money.

Yes, there is no money. Hanguo Railway Company has too many projects under its subsidiaries. For a while, it will be hard to draw out funds, so it can only find local loans, and even this loan is interest-free.

But the consequence is that ten years later, 50.00% of the equity of this railway will belong to the local area.

It can be said that the local loan officials in Penglai are very good at settling accounts. They used the technology and railway construction capabilities of the railway company to build a railway for themselves, and also provided funds and land. This not only stimulated the local economy, but ten years later, the original The investment cost was recovered with interest.

...............

"Ha ha……"

"Ha ha……"

In the cabin, Luo Daniu was looking at the funny comics in his hands, laughing loudly every time he read a paragraph.

"Can you please lower your voice??" Bai Erwen put down his pen, looked up at Luo Daniu who was sitting on the bed and laughed non-stop, and said impatiently.

"No, this Sun Haixing is so funny. He hit the monster and hit the monster's butt. The monster...the monster pulled him out!!" Luo Daniu held up a painting in his hand with Superman Sun Haixing being pulled out. The colorful pictures came out and laughed at Bai Erwen, laughing and talking at the same time.

The comic in Luo Daniu's hand is about the superman Sun Haixing, who has been very popular in China recently. From the name, he thought it was similar to the later American Superman and Captain America.

In fact, it is quite different. This Superman Sun Haixing is a funny comic, and the characters in it have IQs that require re-education.

The stories that happened were also mindless things like what happened just now, where Superman was pulled out by a monster, or Superman was caught by the police for urinating on the street.

But it is precisely this kind of mindless, funny storyline purely for the sake of being funny that has gained a group of fans.

In this era of lack of entertainment, reading comics has become a daily necessity for many people.

Even newspapers published by newspapers will have comic advertisements in them to tell everyone what new comics are coming out in this issue.

Among young people in Han Dynasty, there was even a trend of reading comics, which indirectly led to the rise of the comics industry.

"What's so good about this kind of thing?" Bai Erwen glanced at the funny cover of the comic in Luo Daniu's hand. It showed a Superman with his underwear on backwards and lace. In his opinion, this kind of thing is completely demeaning. The brain is an insult to people's IQ. "If you want to watch it, watch something about solving crimes. The recent corpse dismemberment case in Detective Wei Li is the only thing with brains. You can't even imagine how the murderer kills people." !!" Bai Erwen likes to read detective and adventure comics very much. He doesn't know how many times he has put himself into the perspective of the protagonist, feeling that he is the one who discovers ocean treasures and new continents.

"Hmm..." Luo Daniu responded casually, and then he was immersed in the story of Superman Sun Haixing, still making all kinds of laughter, but it was much smaller than before.

Bai Erwen on the side simply picked up two tissues, balled them up, stuffed them into his ears, continued to pick up a pencil, and wrote in his diary.

"Today is the ninth day after leaving Yunshan Island. During these nine days, Luo Daniu and I wiped the deck for nine days and passed through the chimney once. That thing is really disgusting. There is ash everywhere. Once you smash it, there will be countless The coal fell. If I hadn't been wearing a safety helmet, I might have gone to see my father." Writing this, Bai Erwen thought of him, the drunkard father who died due to wind and waves while fishing.

"The captain named Ji said that we can reach Japan almost tomorrow, which is one-third faster than the original sailing period. And it is said that this is to save coal on the road, otherwise it will be faster."

"I don't know what kind of country Japan is. The only impression I have of them is those fruit farmers who immigrated to Penglai Island. These people are very strange. When they first came to Penglai Island and saw the mangoes and durians in the orchards, they actually I cried, I really don’t know what a piece of fruit is worth crying about..."

"Later I found out that in Japan, they can't eat these fruits. Even watermelon is a relatively valuable fruit in Japan. Poor people generally can't afford it. After all, like the man who changed his name to Feng Si The little Japanese man said that when he was in Japan, Misao often appeared. I didn’t know what Misao was, but later I realized that it was because the price of rice had increased and Japanese people couldn’t afford rice.”

"It's really strange. In a country that relies on growing rice for a living, its people can't afford rice??" When writing this, Bai Erwen was still confused as to why Japan was like this.

"But I heard that that was all a few years ago. Now Japan is said to be much better. We Han people have built many factories in Japan. With factories, their lives should be pretty good!!"

“But I’ve heard from many people who have been to Japan that Japanese girls are very enthusiastic and unique, but I don’t know if that’s true!!”

Bai Erwen's face showed a lewd smile.

"The final stop of this journey is Istanbul in West Asia, which is the closest place to Europe." "Europe, I really don't know what it is like. It is said that there are many countries there, and they are all very powerful. There are several A country similar to our Han country, or even more powerful." Bai Erwen basically described Europe based on what he usually heard from others.

"I am 19 years old this year, and I don't know when I will be able to own such a big ship..."

Bai Erwen wrote this in the last sentence of his diary. Many years later, when he becomes famous, he will read this diary again to see if he still has the same feeling as before.

.............................................

Japan, Edo...

Edo Castle was the first city in Japan to come into contact with the Han Dynasty. It was also the city with the most intensive investment and the largest amount of capital from the Han Dynasty.

Nearly a quarter of the people in the city can speak some simple Mandarin. In fact, some people can speak Mandarin better than the native Chinese.

This group of people is mainly the powerful class, mainly Japanese aristocrats and wealthy businessmen.

Not only can these people speak Mandarin and Chinese calligraphy, but they also have a better understanding of Chinese culture than many Han Chinese.

As the exchanges between China and Japan continue to deepen, this has also led to a sudden surge in the number of people in Japan who can speak Mandarin.

Especially in trading cities such as Edo, Nagasaki, and Osaka, it is actually not a strange thing for a Japanese to know two languages, but a very normal thing.

Just as Japan's new-school writer Hanyu Ken wrote in his new book The 50s in the 40s: "What did the 40s mean to the Japanese? It meant changes."

Hanyu uses the changing situation to describe Japan at this moment.

"In cities such as Edo and Osaka, Chinese-style cement high-rise buildings abound. A large number of wealthy people from all over Japan regard owning a Han-style house as an important tool to measure their success." (Japan at this time) , has not reached the level of exaggeration like Hanyu Ken's. Japan's local economy cannot support so many high-rise buildings. These high-rise buildings were built in the 50s. The tallest building in the area is only the 55-meter Edo Bank Building. The bank is also a joint venture between the Shogunate and Honor Bank and has the right to issue Japanese yen)
"Han Chinese Yuan can be used freely in the streets and alleys of Japan. It is even more popular because of the exchange rate. Many wealthy Japanese families have a special box for storing Hua Yuan in their homes in case of emergency..." In this paragraph, Hanyu describes the influence of Han finance on Japan.

"For those of us who were born in the 30s and grew up in the 40s, Han Guo is like a dazzling teacher. Although he sometimes makes people feel breathless, especially I still clearly remember that in 1844 That year, at the end of October in the fourth year of Longwu, the news that Han had defeated the United States and divided North America with the United States spread. The whole of Japan, and even the Nagasaki Middle School where I was at that time, was filled with cheering students. ." (At this time, it was popular in Japan to use the Han chronology method, or the Western-style AD. As for the emperor, who remembers him??)
"They carried various banners written with Chinese characters to celebrate Han's victory over the United States and its victory over the evil white people..."

"When someone questioned why the Japanese cheered for the victory of the Han Dynasty, one of them, a senior named Sanshan Shiba, I remember very clearly. He took out a book on Orientalism and read it loudly, calling on all Orientals to unite to fight. The white man’s invasion of the world.”

"The atmosphere in Japan was really strange at that time. We were happy that the Han people had defeated the United States, but we were also sad for Japan's weakness."

"Although many Japanese claim that Japan is the only country that has not been invaded, this is like covering one's ears and stealing the bell. If it is successful to be on a small island with small resources and make people have no desire to attack, then the most successful ones should be those A Pacific island country where even the racial appearance of the people has not changed at all.”

"Is Japan really still the sacred and inviolable Japan that those people claim? As early as when the Han came to Japan with their strong ships, cannons, and all kinds of novel things from the Han, Japan has changed, and it has been extremely complete. Japan is no longer the same Japan."

"Even in the 40s, some people proposed to abolish katakana and fully use kanji. Anyway, those things were just for the purpose of deceiving themselves and others. They were used to fool their own people, and the nobles themselves did not use them!!" In Hanyu Ken's era, in fact, it was It has been abolished, but in the 40s, this was still an issue that countless Japanese literati were debating endlessly.

Whether to use all Chinese characters or to give up katakana, which symbolizes Japan's independent culture, is the most controversial thing in Japanese society at present.

"Han is like a stern teacher, teaching Japanese students all kinds of things he has never seen before, and at the same time holding a pointer, constantly beating Japan, forcing Japan to obey the will of Han... "

"Han is really a country that people fear and want to get close to!!"

The first sentence on the cover of Kenshin Hanyu's book about the 50s! !
…………

In Edo Bay, there are dozens or hundreds of merchant ships of various types moored, including old-fashioned sailing ships and new-style motor-driven sailing ships.

On the pier of Edo Port, several steam cranes were smoking, lifting materials on the pier.

Most of these goods are machinery, light industrial products, etc. imported from Han, and the largest number of them are bicycles.

In today's Japan, because the price of bicycles has been reduced many times, some middle-class Japanese families can also afford bicycles. In addition, the cost of raising horses is too expensive, so bicycles, a novel means of transportation produced in Han China, have become The first choice for Japanese urban families.

Even in Japan, whether or not there is a bicycle is an indicator of a Japanese family's condition.

This also gives bicycles a social attribute in Japan. Many Japanese people buy bicycles, are they really for riding them? No, they are just for showing off to others.

In Japanese cities, a new profession has arisen because of bicycles, the three-wheeled bicycle driver.

They mainly ride three-wheeled bicycles with sheds and shuttle through the streets of Japan. They are the Japanese taxis of this era.

Where there are taxis, there are naturally car dealerships. Mitsui Automobile Dealers, controlled by the Mitsui family, is currently the largest car dealership in Japan. It owns thousands of three-wheeled bicycles and earns an annual commission of up to 200 million yen, which is equivalent to 100 million yen. Huayuan, in Japan, where the industrial and commercial economy has just developed, this is an incredible wealth.

You must know that according to the latest fiscal year budget of the shogunate, it is less than 500 million yuan, which shows the huge profits of the emerging bicycle industry. (Japan learned the fiscal budget system from the Han Dynasty. Many words in Japan today, such as banana, are pronounced in Chinese, which is very different from the Westernized English pronunciation of later Japanese countries.)
On the streets of Japan, a new group of people has emerged, that is, people who work as managers in new factories invested by Japanese or Chinese capital and wear Chinese-style Western clothes when commuting.

This group is also called the Sinicization faction. Of course, this is the group of anti-Han people in Japan who secretly mock these people as Japanese devils and lackeys of the Han people.

Those Sinicizationists claim that they are the conscience of Japan's reform and the pioneers who will lead Japan into the future.

They derided the Japanese who opposed them as rags from the Warring States Period because they were old and smelly.

And they are very proud of being administrators in Han Chinese factories and working in Han Chinese banks. They claim that they are a truly civilized group of people in Japan, while everyone else is a country bumpkin! !

Japan during this period was such a complicated and contradictory country. On the one hand, it yearned for the life of the Han people and was proud of the strength of the Han country. On the other hand, it was worried that Japan would be completely controlled by the Han country. It wanted to resist but was afraid of the powerful Han country. After all, Huo Qubing and the Sino-American War shocked the Japanese so deeply that even the most radical anti-Han faction can only vent their dissatisfaction with the Han in newspapers and privately, and then What I use at home are industrial products shipped from mainland China and canned tropical fruits from Penglai Island, and I also ride bicycles made in China.

To express it in Hanyu Ken’s words, Japan is no longer the original Japan.

And in Edo Port, the Happiness, which sailed for more than ten days, finally arrived at its first stop in West Asia, Japan! !
On the bow of the ship, Bai Erwen was blowing the sea breeze and looking at the bustling Edo Port opposite. His eyes were full of expectation, like a child traveling for the first time. He hoped to see something he had never seen or experienced before. everything of! !

　Ask for a reward, ask for a monthly ticket
　　
　
(End of this chapter)