Film and Television World Life Record

Primary school is much simpler; it's easy to find a large number of suitable primary school teachers.

Compared to Nanyang, the region under the control of the Anti-Japanese United Army, centered on eastern Henan, was larger in area and had a larger population, exceeding 20 million.

It would take nearly seven or eight thousand primary schools to meet the basic education needs of the entire population.

Labor was cheap back then, especially in eastern Henan. Building a simple primary school, along with the necessary desks and chairs, would cost three or four hundred silver dollars.

The construction cost of seven or eight thousand primary schools would be approximately three million silver dollars.

Although the legal tender has depreciated significantly, it is still widely used in China. One hundred yuan of legal tender still has the purchasing power of twenty or thirty silver dollars.

Therefore, Li Mu directly allocated 15 million yuan in legal tender for this purpose, which not only covered the construction costs of seven or eight thousand primary schools, but also enabled the construction of a number of middle schools, and the funds for the establishment of these schools were also secured.

With this funding allocated, construction of all school buildings will commence across multiple locations in this region, centered on eastern Henan.

It is expected that all primary schools will be completed within six months.

In addition, in response to the people's livelihood issues, Li Mu transferred a large amount of grain and daily necessities from Nanyang and allocated another 20 million yuan in legal tender.

The 20 million yuan was used entirely to improve the local people's livelihood and to carry out large-scale infrastructure construction, such as building roads, repairing waterways, digging irrigation ditches for farmland, and building a number of basic factories.

For example, cement plants, brick factories, flour mills, and other basic infrastructure projects that consume huge amounts of resources and are crucial to the local people's livelihood.

It can create a large number of jobs and increase local tax revenue and industry.

Not only did this happen in eastern Henan, but the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region did the same. However, although the border region had a large territory, it did not have a large population, so two or three thousand primary schools were sufficient.

Li Mu provided 5 million legal tender for the construction of primary schools in the border region; in response to the local people's livelihood and infrastructure needs, Li Mu provided another 8 million legal tender for road repairs, river dredging, farmland irrigation, and the construction of a number of basic factories.

Hopefully, this large investment will cultivate a group of industrial talents to support the country's comprehensive industrialization.

Subsequently, in response to the various dire situations affecting people's livelihoods that have been exposed in China, Li Mu donated another seven or eight million yuan, hoping to save some lives.

Thus, the more than 50 million yuan was quickly squandered.

Chapter 457 So-called Consumables

That day, Li Mu came to Singapore to discuss investing in and building a factory in Australia. There was a severe shortage of meat in the country; many people hadn't tasted meat for months, making it essential to increase the domestic meat supply.

Australia's livestock industry is highly developed, producing large quantities of beef and mutton. However, due to a rabbit overpopulation that damages grasslands, organized rabbit hunting is common. This results in a large surplus of rabbit meat that has nowhere to be processed. Locals don't like to eat it and simply discard it, which also pollutes the environment and breeds large numbers of mosquitoes and flies.

Sometimes, the local government even hires companies to handle these rabbits.

In light of this, Li Mu decided to invest in a number of meat processing plants here to produce canned meat and cured meat with extremely long shelf lives, which would then be shipped back to China.

As for the 21st century, research shows that eating too much cured or smoked meat is bad for you, as it can easily cause cancer and weight gain. In this day and age, who cares about that?

Gaining weight? Everyone's craving something oily and flavorful; their stomachs are practically empty.

In fact, let alone meat, in some famine-stricken areas these days, even tree bark has been almost completely gnawed off; who cares about that? In this chaotic world, simply surviving is a stroke of luck.

Having personally experienced this era, especially after witnessing certain events firsthand, my romanticized view of the Republic of China has long been shattered. The dire living conditions of the lower classes today are unimaginable to people in the 21st century.

Li Mu remembered that before coming to this world, he had collected a lot of information about the War of Resistance against Japan, and he had many questions that he couldn't answer. After arriving in this era, he gradually understood some of his questions.

For example, a very sensitive question: where did all those able-bodied men conscripted during the War of Resistance go?

From the outbreak of the War of Resistance against Japan, the government conscripted 1 million to 1.9 million people every year. Even in the first nine months of 1945, 810,000 people were conscripted. In eight years, a total of 16,728,659 people were mobilized.

It was unprecedented in history and could be ranked among the top three major belligerent nations in World War II, alongside the Soviet Union and the United States.

Strangely, by the time of the victory in World War II, the number of troops in both the Soviet Union and the United States had swelled from several hundred thousand or a million before the war to more than ten million.

At the time of the July 7 Incident, the total number of Kuomintang troops was 2.8 million, with an average of more than 1.5 million conscripted every year. By 1945, the total number of troops had dropped to more than 5 million. Where did the remaining 10 million conscripts go?

People might say they were sacrificed. What is widely circulated in later generations is that the Guo family sacrificed 3.2 million soldiers.

In fact, after the victory of the War of Resistance against Japan, Guo Fu compiled a list of army casualties since the outbreak of the full-scale war.

其中，175万9715阵亡，131万9358负伤，11万6593失踪，阵亡、失踪、负伤的总数为319万5666。

后来又加入了海、空军的伤亡后，果府把数字调整为阵亡177万6678，负伤130万1357，对因伤致残的7万7108进行了单列，失踪人数仍然是11万6593。

In 1946, as the Allied powers were preparing to claim reparations from Japan, they needed to collect figures on the expenditures of various countries' pensions. The government further verified the losses of the War of Resistance against Japan and finally determined the number of military casualties during the war to be 3,407,931. This figure was also included in the "General Table of Losses in the War of Resistance" compiled by the government and can be considered an official internal conclusion.

So, the total number of able-bodied men, including those absorbed by the front-line troops and those who joined the army, was less than five million.

What happened to the remaining 11 million-plus able-bodied men?

Some say that five million people were conscripted into the transportation service, but that leaves more than six million people!

Taking Sichuan as an example, it is said that three million brave men left Sichuan to fight against the Japanese, but in fact the army only numbered in the hundreds of thousands, most of whom were able-bodied men.

Sichuan province produced the most able-bodied men, with a staggering 257.8 million. Henan province ranked second with 189 million, and Hunan province came in third with 157 million.

After the victory in the War of Resistance against Japan, how many of these conscripted men actually returned alive? Was it half?

Even He Yingqin, the governor of the KMT (Kuomintang) government, was puzzled by this and sent people to compile statistics. According to He's final statistics in 1946, the "loss" of conscripted men amounted to 14,050,521. Similarly, this figure was accepted by the KMT government's Academia Sinica - Department of Social Research and included as an official record in the "Population Casualties" category of the "General Table of Losses in the War of Resistance Against Japan".

So, where did all these able-bodied men go?

Forty years ago, Professor He Jihong, a renowned legal expert, participated in the "Discipline Inspection Team" of the State Council and conducted an investigation in various counties of Henan Province under the First and Fifth War Zones, exposing the truth of the exploitation of men during the conscription process.

According to the regulations of the government in the 40th year of the reign of Emperor Guo, for every able-bodied man conscripted, a conscription fee of 2 yuan was allocated to provide food for him along the way. Although it was a pitiful amount, given the prices at the time, it was enough to keep him from starving.

However, once it fell into the hands of the officials and local gentry, things wouldn't be so simple. In the division and regiment districts, they would usually keep 1.4 yuan and only give 6 mao to the county magistrate; even if the county magistrate didn't deduct a penny, the local gentry would still take advantage of the situation, for example, the head of the joint security unit in each township would usually deduct 1.5 mao and the head of the security unit would usually deduct 1 mao.

Even the big shots get to eat meat, and the small fry get to drink some soup. When the food reaches the headman, he has to deduct 5 cents, euphemistically called "office expenses." As a result, the food expenses go from two yuan to 3 cents. Since they have to buy staple food and fuel, the able-bodied men can only get two meals of sweet potato and millet porridge that are almost as thin as water each day.

In addition, the production of cotton-padded clothes by the able-bodied men was also a lucrative business. They would take a few feet of cloth and a few pounds of cotton, resulting in cotton-padded clothes that were all short and thin. The escorting officers also used these able-bodied men to transport smuggled goods. For example, the commanders of two supplementary regiments in the Xulu Military District took advantage of a military operation in Yunnan to smuggle 20,000 jin of Sichuan salt, all of which was carried by the able-bodied men on their shoulders and backs.

Even more terrifying was that many of the officers were extremely tyrannical. In 41, Qiu Kaiji, the principal's bodyguard captain, was appointed commander of the "Jianping Military District" in Sichuan. After the victory of the War of Resistance against Japan, in 46, the people of Jiange County collectively petitioned him, accusing him of massacring as many as 4000 able-bodied men during his tenure.

For example, in Gansu, from 37 to 41, more than 20 men were conscripted. Of these, less than one in a hundred served on the battlefield, and nearly 30% died from cold, hunger, or disease, while about 10% deserted.

41年I0月，第8战区26补充处第4团自秦安、天水征得壮丁2000余人，开到两百多公里外的定西后，冻饿病死的壮丁就达1300余人。

As for treating able-bodied men, what a joke! They're just consumables; they wouldn't care if they starved to death, let alone get medical care. Whoever gets sick just has to endure it; if they die, they'll just die quietly, no one will remember them.

In this day and age, being conscripted into the army is something that all young people fear. Escaping conscription and hiring laborers have become commonplace.

This led to another, even more brutal phenomenon: the buying and selling of conscripted men.

The conscription system in the Guo government was incredibly ruthless, especially in the areas it directly controlled. As the territory dwindled, in many places, one out of every two able-bodied men was conscripted, or even two out of every three. This meant that out of three adult men, two had to be conscripted to avoid military service. In some cases, this even led to tragedies of brothers killing each other.

What about those families with some money, or those from the middle class, who don't want to be conscripted? They just pay to hire someone to do it for them. This can bankrupt families with even slightly less wealth.

This also created a huge market for buying and selling able-bodied men.

Back then, a large portion, if not all, of the soldiers in the Guo family's army had participated in the forced labor trade.

Of the high-ranking military officers who fled back then, apart from a few who ended up in dire straits, why are most of them quite wealthy, and some even transformed into successful businessmen?

Do they all have a talent for business? Where did they get their capital?

Many people think the Republic of China era was romantic. If you were rich and powerful, that would be a real romantic era.

If you're from the bottom class, no one will treat you like a human being. At best, you'll be treated as waste, and you never know when you'll starve or die of illness somewhere.

Chapter 458: The End and the Return

Just like the incident at Huayuankou, why did it happen so easily? Why did the government turn a blind eye and remain indifferent when so many people starved to death in 1942?

If it weren't for foreign journalists exposing it, nobody would have cared.

Because the upper echelons of the Guo family at that time really didn't care about these things. In their eyes, the people at the bottom were just consumables that could be consumed at will.

Fortunately, the fourth and fifth victories were achieved. If this had continued for several more years, the government would have exhausted its manpower without needing to use force.

In fact, for these able-bodied men, being able to go to the front lines to fight was a kind of luck. At least they had guns and could at least get enough to eat. They wouldn't just starve or die of disease somewhere without realizing it.

As for military pay, it goes without saying. The government issued legal tender, and the amount was the same as before the war, but the purchasing power had shrunk dramatically. It was no different from not issuing it at all.

If you were to travel back to the Republic of China era and be from the lower class, your only hope would be to reach the Soviet area. Although life would be tough, at least people would treat you like a human being and wouldn't exploit you like a waste product.

Otherwise, given the strictness of the household registration system at the time, one would only be conscripted as a resource, and whether one could go to the front lines as cannon fodder to fight the Japanese depended on whether one had the luck.

This era is just that cruel. Romantic moments are out of reach for 99% of people; most are destined to be used as expendable resources.

After finalizing the plan to set up a factory in Australia, tens of thousands of tons of beef, mutton, and pork purchased through the Far East Trading Company arrived. Li Mu also purchased 20,000 tons of dried fish before piloting his fighter jet back to Nanyang.

With so much meat and dried fish flowing into the market, even the poorest people can enjoy meat.

In fact, with Li Mu's involvement, the situation in this world has indeed improved a lot in many ways. Not to mention that the front lines have stopped suffering defeats and entered a stalemate.

The food shortage in the rear was greatly alleviated because Li Mu purchased large quantities of grain and various supplies from abroad, which flowed into the surrounding markets. At least the prices of grain and other goods were much lower than at the same time.

Correspondingly, some tragedies have also decreased.

After that, everything in the country was quiet.

During this quiet period, Li Mu vigorously built factories, improved industrial sectors, and combined this with the mineral and energy resources in the north to develop local industries.

A complete basic industrial system gradually took shape.

Time flies, another year has passed, and we have arrived at the year 40.

Looking at the wide streets, the bustling crowds, and the prosperous city of Nanyang New District, Li Mu was very pleased. After several years of development, the new district, whose design style was in no way inferior to that of the metropolises of this era, was finally completed.

Through years of dedicated development, the Nanyang region has fully industrialized, even establishing a complete basic industrial system and cultivating a large industrial workforce.

As long as there are raw materials and energy, almost everything can be produced, except for some high-end technological products.

Two days later, Li Mu participated in the opening ceremony of the Nanyang-Longcheng flight, marking the official start of commercial flights between Nanyang and Longcheng.