Villager of Daming

Chapter 1323 Disaster and Labor Force Are Unavoidable (Nine Other Chapters)
The lower-level officials started to work. The data was given to them and they filled out the forms. When the higher-ups needed the data, they would organize the most recently completed forms and send them up.

They all worked very hard. One reason was that they couldn't sleep because of the earthquake, and the other was that all their families were in Xiaqiu Village.

When the earthquake happened, their families were not around and they had no mind to work.

If anyone said that he didn't care about his family and would sacrifice his own family for the sake of the public, Zhu Yuanzhang would drive him away directly. How can a person who doesn't love his family love his country?

Therefore, even minor officials of lower ranks were allowed to bring their families to Xiaqiu Village, as the village was large.

When the village needs land, the land to the east will be allocated to the village. Currently, Niutou Mountain is also being prepared to be included and it is almost there. It is a straight line of ten kilometers east of Chaoyangmen.

Now it is not an area that will be flattened like a plain later, such as Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Agricultural University, and Provincial Academy of Agricultural Sciences.

There are mountains, water, and bamboo forests. No matter who occupies the fields in the plains, they are required to sell them to the court and pay more money.

Bring the officials and their families and place them in a location not too far away, so that the officials can work with peace of mind without any worries.

Zhu Yuanzhang was still very energetic. The older people occasionally took a nap and woke up again due to the aftershocks.

The kids are really sleepy, so rock them! Rock them as you like, use them as cradles, and they will sleep peacefully with adults around.

Zhu Wentian got a big pot and made salt-baked potatoes.

Potatoes were harvested last month and planted again this month, so some of the harvested potatoes must be very small.

It is troublesome to peel small potatoes, but it is easiest to peel large new potatoes. Just rub them hard with a loofah, or use a small spoon, the same one you use for eating, to scrape them clean.

The best way to deal with small ones is to not peel them and use them directly for stewing pickles. If you want to peel them, you have to bake them with salt, which is a waste of salt and most people don’t do that.

Zhu Yuanzhang had a big appetite, but he didn't eat much. He kept eating other "snacks", such as this salt-baked potato.

He looked at it and asked, "How long will it take, Hanhan?"

"It's just been simmered for 20 minutes. Wait! Let me bake some potato chips for you? I'll bake them manually, not in the oven."

Zhu Wentian grabbed the ears on both sides of the big iron pot and shook it without opening the lid.

"People are going to start eating potatoes this year. I don't know if there is enough vinegar. Potatoes have been stored for a long time and have some kind of alkali poison. We need to fry them with vinegar to dig out the sprouts."

Zhu Yuanzhang looked worried. The people were disobedient and no matter how hard he tried to tell them what to do, they always thought they were right.

Only when someone actually dies do others feel afraid.

"Your Majesty, this is solanine, also known as solanine. It is also found in potato leaves. Be careful when feeding it to livestock. Normally, potatoes should not be eaten once they sprout, but it would be a pity to throw them away. Just add vinegar to neutralize the alkali.

There is enough vinegar, but if the wine is not brewed well, it will become vinegar.

The laboratory has glacial acetic acid, but the cost is too high, so ethanol, or alcohol, is needed. Brother Hanhan said that when the cost is lower, mass production will be carried out.

Oh! Potatoes have toxins that affect yield after being grown for a long time, so they need to be detoxified.

The laboratory has a method and has already used some virus-free seeds, but it is not easy to popularize.

The chemical method requires acetic acid and hydrogen peroxide, so it is still not popular.

Finally, the method with a less effective detoxification effect is steaming, at a temperature of 40 degrees for an hour, and then taking it out and storing it for use as seeds.”

Ling'er promptly gave some scientific advice, why do we need glacial acetic acid? Because there are many aspects of need.

"Ling'er, do you know these things about the origin of potatoes?" Liu Bowen suddenly asked a special question.

When the others heard this, they thought, "Yes! We brought potatoes from such a faraway place. Do the locals know about it?"

Ling'er shook her head: "How could they understand? They use the most primitive method. Every time they harvest, they choose the big ones to keep as seeds."

"Sure enough! Ji Hanhan knows how to deal with any crop?" Queen Ma said what everyone wanted to say.

Zhu Wentian nodded gently: "If you understand one principle, you will understand all principles. No matter how things change, they will not deviate from the original principle."

As he spoke, he started to peel potatoes. The potato peeler was "invented" by him. It was very useful for peeling small fruits and vegetables. Most importantly, it was low cost. One cost only one cent in the department store.

To slice, don't use a knife, use a grater with a slicing mouth on it.

In fact, he cut faster and more evenly. He demonstrated various tools, including the one that novices use to hold the potatoes, so that they don't have to worry about cutting their hands.

Many people at that time would not use this, afraid! They would rather cut, cutting is safer.

In addition, the potato shreds grated by the grater are not cut very finely. It depends on your knife skills. You can practice shredding potatoes for four hours a day in a month.

If you find it difficult to control, you can start by practicing by cutting cucumber into shreds, or cutting dried tofu into shreds, and then use them to make mixed vegetables.

Remember to sharpen the knife, otherwise a dull knife will cut your hand.

The practice process should be from slow to fast. Don't be distracted, especially don't make friends with stupid people who may suddenly slap you or something.

When I saw someone coming, I immediately stopped and told the other person that I was using a knife and not to touch me.

Therefore, the kitchen is an important area and no unauthorized personnel are allowed to enter.

For example, when drying sea cucumbers, suddenly the oil is poured into the basin...

Zhu Wentian was more focused. The same was true for those from Xiaqiu Village who had been to the laboratory. They were afraid that someone would suddenly appear next to them while they were working.

After the potato slices were peeled, someone nearby brought a small coke oven, put on the grate, and roasted the potato slices directly without brushing them with oil, turning them frequently.

Other people's potato chips were delivered to them in various flavors, baked in the oven, but they could not enjoy Hanhan's special service.

The potato chips were quickly baked without any seasoning, including salt, and were directly handed over to those who were qualified to eat.

The potato chips baked in this way are not crispy, but a little soft, with a strong potato flavor.

"Toasted potato chips?" The sleeping little guy smelled the scent and didn't know whether he was awake or still dreaming.

The people around looked at Zhu Xiongying. Zhu Xiongying frowned and looked struggling. He seemed to be swallowing, but suddenly stopped and opened his eyes.

This indicates that your growth and development are normal. You cannot eat in dreams. Only people with a bad stomach may chew in dreams and choke easily.

Usually, no matter what delicious food you encounter in a dream, when you want to eat it, the dream will automatically correct it and you will not be able to eat it.

Some people also dream of going to the toilet. Otherwise, once they succeed in going to the toilet, they will...

"There really are baked potato chips!" Zhu Xiongying yawned, took the water handed to him by the palace maid next to him, rinsed his mouth, and smiled. There are delicious foods!

He wiped his hands with a disinfectant wipe and reached out to grab the toasted potato chips. It was not suitable to eat with other utensils, so it was better to eat them by grabbing them.

Zhu Yuanzhang, who was standing next to him, also wiped his hands and took a sip of wine: "This year, a large area of ​​the country will be exempted from labor service again."

"Your Majesty is wise!" Hu Weiyong praised him as quickly as possible.

The other officials were about to agree, but Zhu Wentian said, "No, not this year, and not in the future."

The officials were coughing, some were touching their chests, some were holding their breath.

Hu Weiyong: “…”

Zhu Yuanzhang was stunned for a moment: "What do you have to say, Hanhan?"

“Your Majesty, the reason why we exempted people from labor service before was that the people’s material life was not good enough and they lacked the assistance and subsidies from the court.

Since the imperial court has already begun to provide subsidies, labor service must be strengthened.

In some places, only one crop can be grown a year, and after being exempted from labor, everyone stays at home.

It would be better to continue to exercise the labor law, organize the people to work in their own places, and repair bridges and roads.

There is less water in rivers in northern regions in winter, especially seasonal rivers, which is a good time to dredge the river channels.

There is snow accumulated on residents' houses, which is not easy to clean up by themselves.

The imperial court organized manpower and provided tools to help clean up each household.

Road transportation cannot be stopped. Everyone should take care of their own business and not worry about other people's problems. There is no need for official intervention.

Take advantage of the opportunity of military service to allow idle people to build their own villages and hometowns.

The difference from the past is that the court provides tools and food.

Without labor, people will only care about money in the future. If you ask them to work, you have to pay them. Money is not the problem. The problem is that the good quality of helping each other is gone.

Take this earthquake for example, many families need help and they themselves are like headless flies.

The government organized them and made them do things in a planned way, but they were actually working for their families and were counted as forced labor.”

Zhu Wentian gave the reason that labor service had to be strengthened and that it could be skipped for one month or even a day in a year, but it could not be cancelled.

Just like selling things, the less developed the economy is, the easier it is to lower prices and the harder it is to raise prices.

If you open a cake shop in the village and offer half-price cakes at night, it will be completely useless because people in the village will not buy during the day and will wait until night time.

There are also vegetable vendors who are used to not being able to sell the leftover vegetables at night, so they reduce the prices a lot, and a group of people come out to buy them at night.

Therefore, the watermelon sellers did not lower the price. When they saw that it was already evening and the watermelons could not be kept until the next day, they smashed all the watermelons.

Cake shop discounts at night are only suitable for places with good economy, such as Beijing, where people pursue quality and have strong purchasing power.

Some people only want to eat cakes that are freshly baked in the morning and don’t want the free cakes in the evening because they will taste bad if they are left for a long time.

The people have to work for one month a year. It is useless to exempt them now. Even if they are asked to work for one day and keep records for the remaining 29 days, it is better than exempting them completely. Human nature and human heart cannot be indulged. The development of society depends on human desires.

For example, when it comes to food delivery people, people who buy things always express their understanding for the delivery people, give them good reviews, and even say that it’s okay if they’re late.

So when the delivery person and his neighbor have to exceed the delivery time, who will the delivery person let exceed the delivery time? Who will the delivery person let arrive early?

Will they think that someone who is nice to me is so nice, shouldn’t I give him timeout?
No, they would think that this person is easy to talk to, so it’s okay to deliver the order early, but the other person is difficult to talk to, so if the order is delivered early, money will be deducted.

That is, sometimes when you are nice to others, they may think you are easy to bully.

This is the real society. Even a gentleman would not stand under a dangerous wall, let alone other people.

Zhu Wentian had previously proposed the strategy of exemption from labor service because he was worried about social instability, insufficient productivity and court resources.

But the exemption of land tax does not involve this. If the land tax is exempted, the money can be obtained through other economic means.

So, 'the people can be made to follow it, but they cannot be made to understand it' was the only explanation at the time, and it was not wrong. Later, as society developed, many other explanations were given.

The current earthquake has caused the people to refuse to perform labor and to take care of their own affairs. Some of the people have the physical strength and skills but not the ability to plan.

Exempting them from labor is a waste of resources.

Some of the bricklayers who cannot enter the industrial zone are very skilled and can finish their own work very quickly.

Others only have strength and can't do technical work.

This requires that masons take charge and personally handle difficult tasks while others do the hard work.

It is best to drive them by means of labor. If they don't want to work, they can just pay.

"Okay!" Zhu Yuanzhang readily followed the advice, thinking that Hanhan could not be wrong.

"I second the proposal!"

"I second the proposal!"

One of the officials took the lead and the others followed.

Hu Weiyong: “…”

"I...also think it's okay!" Hu Weiyong had no choice but to save face. Fortunately, he hadn't said anything more shameless like "guided by the thoughts of so-and-so".

"Okay, okay!" Zhu Xiongying didn't understand what he meant. He just expressed his feelings, holding half a baked potato chip in his hand: "What are you eating for lunch?"

"How about potato flour?" Zhu Wentian continued to bake potato chips. He needed to make some potato products to sell so that businessmen could discover business opportunities and help promote potato planting.

"Uncle Hanhan, do other people affected by the earthquake eat it too?"

Zhu Xiongying swallowed his saliva, feeling greedy. The potato noodles tasted delicious, and he started to care about others.

"They eat rice noodles. We can't give them potato noodles because there are too many people." Zhu Wentian said no.

"What about sweet potatoes?" The little guy still had more questions. He was young and could not access a lot of knowledge.

“It has not been harvested yet. After it is harvested, it can be roasted and eaten, or made into sweet potato flour, but it cannot be used as a staple food.

Sweet potato flour is the best vermicelli for making dishes, or...it can be made into stewed food and fried with garlic juice, sesame paste and salt.

The color is darker, potato flour is not suitable, and corn starch is not suitable for stir-frying. It is best fried and dipped in garlic sauce..."

Zhu Wentian very patiently explained to the little one the different applications of various starches. There is no best one, it depends on what you want to do.

Sweet potato starch is black in color and is generally used to make vermicelli stews. It is very resistant to stewing.

Then, people in Dalian at that time liked to stir-fry stewed food, so he used sweet potato starch to make the stewed food. It was called stir-frying, but it was actually frying.

The stewed meat in other parts of Northeast China is made from the soup used to make sausages. It is made from corn starch, which is not black and is most suitable for frying. It is usually eaten directly cut and dipped in minced garlic and soy sauce.

Potato starch is not used to make stewed food, but is used to make jelly and vermicelli, and is sometimes used as starch like corn starch.

Mung bean flour is a soup flour. It is relatively thin and cooks quickly. It can be used as a staple food, but it is not as good as rice flour as a staple food.

The advantage of using potato vermicelli is that it tastes good. It has a sweet taste by itself, and when combined with good soup, it is equivalent to a convenience food when there are no other dishes.

"Okay!" Zhu Xiongying listened, and for a moment, the one-third of the roasted potato chips in his hand that he had not finished eating no longer smelled good. He was looking forward to eating potato noodles at noon.

"Your Majesty! Potato flour is the staple food for lunch?"

Zhu Wentian asked Zhu Yuanzhang for his opinion: Do you want to eat it? If you want to eat it, prepare the soup now.

This soup is different from the one he had back then. His was a simple meal, and the most important thing in the potato flour was the meatballs.

The meatballs were made with a lot of spices and wheat starch. Some were cut in half and some were cut into quarters in the potato starch soup.

Many cheap shrimp balls, fish balls and crab balls are made using this process, and the balls are very elastic.

The bone meal added to the meatballs costs three or four yuan per pound, which can be calculated by looking at the price of wheat starch. The added bone meal is not expensive, and there are a lot of chemicals that can remain unspoiled even at 40 degrees above zero.

Zhu Wentian couldn't possibly make something like this. It wasn't that he couldn't. He could make it whenever he wanted. It tasted delicious, but it was very unhealthy. It was much, much worse than the oil in the grilled chicken rack...

The oil in the sizzling chicken rack is nothing but saturated fat, and the special meatballs are full of technology and hard work.

The village definitely doesn’t make this kind of thing, all the ingredients are freshly made, and the meatballs are made by hand, depending on who’s eating.

People like Zhu Yuanzhang must be typed by hand, which is quite different from machine typing! The difference in taste.

There is no need to add starch, which is a thickening agent. Beef meatballs can be made directly by beating the beef. The protein will coagulate. The same goes for fish. It depends on how you beat it.

The officials ate machine-beaten noodles with a little starch added and not much other five spices, with salt being the main seasoning.

Too much five-spice powder is not good, just like adding too much thirteen-spice powder in cooking. What's the feeling? Bitter! What else can it be!

If you put too much in other dishes, it will be ruined. But it can still be saved when making stews. Add more water, boil it and drain the water to dilute it. Add some sugar and it will be less bitter.

Noon arrived very slowly and everyone felt that time was passing very slowly, even though the palace maids were singing and dancing there.

It's raining outside, and the amplitude of the aftershocks is getting smaller and smaller, and the intervals between them are getting longer and longer, which proves that it's almost... over?

Potato flour starts to be made, and the soup is prepared in advance. The potato flour is put into a small bowl, like a large soup bowl. If it is not enough, the palace maid will bring new potato flour to avoid waste.

There are a lot of side dishes, and the cost of potato flour increases significantly.

The little fellow ate a small bowl of potato flour while puffing, and motioned to the palace maid to bring another bowl: "Hey! Have the people outside eaten yet?"

He thought of the people gathered in the market outside. They couldn't sell their vegetables because they knew there was an earthquake and people were just trying to hide.

Everyone thought it was safe outside Xiaqiu Village and there were sheds to shelter from the wind and rain, so they ran outside to wait out the weather.

The village sent people to build a new shed. The shed was not afraid of shaking as long as the supporting poles were buried deep enough, the poles themselves were strong enough, and there was only a layer of canvas on top.

"Your Majesty's grandson cares about the people of the world. Don't worry, Your Majesty's grandson has already sent it. The shredded pork noodles are sent.

First, there is not much potato flour, so we need to save some for ourselves.

Secondly, potato flour takes longer to cook than machine-made noodles.

Third, because the place where people live is drafty and humid when it rains, eating a bowl of shredded pork noodles can warm their stomachs.

In fact, we can send fried instant noodles and ask people to make them with hot water, but it will not be as warm as what we send."

The village head has changed his title. Zhu Xiongying cares about the people and must be the emperor's grandson.

"Oh!" The little guy thought about it carefully and said, "Thank you, Mr. Lichang, for clearing up my doubts."

He called everyone in Xiaqiu Village by their titles. Having grown up like this, no one else would be able to bear being addressed like that.

The people outside were indeed eating the shredded pork noodles, but Xiaqiu Village did not prepare the dish and send it to them. Xiaqiu Village only sent the ingredients.

Machine-made noodles, washed vegetable leaves, chopped green onions and coriander.

Prepare the shredded meat in advance, cut the meat into very thin slices, then cut into shreds, marinate with starch, cooking wine and salt, and fry in a pan with oil.

The purpose of this operation is that the meat shreds are very thin, and they appear thick once slid open, saving meat. It is more challenging to use a knife, and you need to press the meat slices with your palm. Otherwise, if you cut the meat directly with shreds of the same thickness, you will need four times the amount.

Usually the pork tenderloin is used, it is tender!

They started delivering wontons yesterday. People cooked them themselves outside. There was a coke oven made of big oil drums and refractory clay, with a big iron pot on it, and tap water was available for free use.

Even if the ingredients are delivered to people now, people still make them themselves. It is not convenient to make such soup in the village, and it will become mushy when delivered to other places.

There were large basins of pickled vegetables there, and people could take them themselves.

Women who are breastfeeding are given separate arrangements, and imperial physicians from the Imperial Medical Bureau are on duty outside.

"That's good. We can go there after dinner... Forget it, I won't cause any trouble for others!"

Zhu Xiongying wanted to go and see the specific situation, but he rejected it himself. He knew what kind of escort team he would need when he traveled. When the people outside saw people, would they kneel?

"Let's go upstairs and take a look. Our house is sturdy," Zhu Wentian suggested.

"Thank you, Uncle Hanhan!" The little guy was satisfied.

(End of this chapter)