I am an immortal in heaven and earth

Chapter 321 Heavy Snow
The Mid-Autumn Festival comes soon after the Zhongyuan Festival. During the last Mid-Autumn Festival, Xu Jia held a ritual to awaken Chang Yu, the mountain god of Mount Sanqing.

A harvest celebration was also held this time. Last time, the Mid-Autumn Festival was to commemorate the ancestors and hungry ghosts, but this time the Mid-Autumn Festival was to celebrate the living people. It was both a harvest and a reunion.

It is not an exaggeration to say congratulations.

What are you congratulating for?

Congratulations, you are still alive, have food to eat, and clothes to wear.

It was a high and cool autumn day with a bright moon and fresh air. Everyone sang and danced, offered fruits to the moon, admired the moon and ate together. Shunji sent 100,000 fat crabs with thick and sweet roe from Poyang Lake for the banquet.

Everyone was cheering, especially those who had fled. They had experienced war, plague, famine, and even death, and were now rejoicing here.

Although people die frequently here, some people drown when trying to catch fish or shrimp because they can't swim, some die of heatstroke, and some die of difficult and complicated diseases that even the Bai family immortals can't cure.

But no one froze to death, and no one starved to death.

There must not be anyone who starves to death or freezes to death.

In Luzon, crops can be rotated three times, and the second crop has been planted now. At the same time, Xu Jia has also started the second round of immigration. Before winter comes, a group of people will be sent there. The food there does not need to be sent here for the time being. Wait until they finish the third crop, open up new land, and occupy the entire Luzon Island. After the food is enough to support the local area, it will be sent here.

However, the purchase of cheap foreign grain from Siam, Annan and other places is still ongoing, coupled with the continuous sacrifices from America, if Xu Jia only wants to live in peace in a corner, these grains are enough to eat. Shunji may bless the Poyang area with good weather, and Ao Jin and General Yuan may bless the Xinzhou area with good weather. This is completely sufficient.

But times are tough, and the refugees who had been tricked into going south have arrived one after another.

When they arrived in Jiangnan West Road, they were assigned to different places one after another, and after they had strengthened themselves and recovered from their illnesses, those with families immigrated overseas with their entire families, and those without families were sent to various production teams to open up wasteland. They were expected to be allocated five acres of land within two years, and to marry a wife, and then immigrate overseas with their entire family, and be given triple treatment.

Luzon is a precious land with three crops a year. Even without using chemical fertilizers and only intensive farming, if the population and land are saturated, it can support tens of millions of people. Based on this, ports, trade, and industry can be developed, following the early path of the British Empire.

However, no matter how precious Luzon is, it is also a place of elixirs. It can solve the problem temporarily, but it cannot replace the treasure of the Central Plains. It can only be a pendant.

.........

Time flies, another month passed, and it was September, less than October, but winter had already begun in the south of the Yangtze River. It was even earlier in the north, with snow everywhere. Fortunately, millet was not planted in the second round, otherwise it would have been frozen to death. This time, beans were planted, and the farmers harvested the beans before the snow became thick.

The bean stalks can be used to burn fire, and the beans can be ground into soy milk and made into tofu. The cafeteria almost always has freshly ground soy milk every morning, served hot, with crackers, fresh steamed buns, and sometimes a boiled egg, which makes them feel energetic.

"The snow came earlier this year." Xu Jia sat cross-legged on Mount Sanqing, and it seemed like spring all year round.

Sanqing Mountain became a Taoist temple. Chang Yu did not like to hibernate in winter, so he stimulated the geothermal heat and produced springs. Although it was not spring-like all year round, it was no longer snowy and cold. With the warm springs, Jin Chan accelerated the construction progress and hired a large number of skilled craftsmen. They were all skilled in building temples and Zen monasteries. This was the first time they had built such a grand Taoist palace.

But this does not make them feel embarrassed, instead it makes them excited, as this is a skill that has not been passed on for generations, and what they can learn and the experience they can pass on to their children and grandchildren will become a survival skill for generations to come.

Even in winter, we are still working hard to speed up the progress. When we feel tired, we go to the hot springs, and when we are hungry, we have hot drinks and hot food.

The memorial archway, caisson, pillars, railings, stone steps, or corridors, water pavilions, secluded terraces, cloud halls, fairy pavilions, towers, altars... construction started everywhere. Thousands of people were sent to repair the road up the mountain. Since there was no farm work in winter, they could just do some odd jobs. Jin Chan was not short of money.

If the temple had been built earlier, he would have gained this credit earlier.

There is a lot of rain in spring, farming is busy in summer, and harvest is even busier in autumn. In the final analysis, only in winter when the year is coming to an end can we take a break. As the ancients said, plant in spring, harvest in summer, store in autumn, and hide in winter.

This is a good time to stay at home, but winter has become a good time for Xu Jia to promote education and literacy among the whole nation.

Each villager was given a small notebook to learn how to recognize words. Each team leader would conduct a seven-day intensive training. Those who could recognize 300 words were considered qualified, and those who could recognize 500 words were given actual rewards. Then the team leader would be sent to preach literacy.

Xu Jia’s requirements are not high. Those who are over 50 can freely choose to study or not. Those who are under 50 are required to know 300 common characters, addition and subtraction within 100, and the multiplication table, which are the most basic. Upon completion, one can obtain a literacy certificate.

As for school-age children, Xu Jia is currently targeting those under sixteen years old, because in this era, most people are preparing to get married at the age of sixteen, and some have even started at the age of fourteen.

Going to school was mandatory, but there was a serious shortage of teachers. Xu Jia could only ask some scholars and old students to teach them how to read and write. But more often, they were taught how to do labor, such as how to weave a bamboo basket, how to forge a kitchen knife, or how to reel silk and make cocoons.

These labor classes are classes that teach technology, and people are happy to send their children to learn, and are even willing to send girls to study and learn technology. If it is just studying, it will be difficult to change the fate of most people.

It is better to teach people how to fish than to teach people how to fish.

This is exactly what Xu Jia did. It is difficult to find a math teacher here, but you can find an accountant; it is difficult to find a painting teacher, but you can find a dyeing worker; it is difficult to find a physics teacher, but you may find a house builder who can tell them about the load-bearing structure... There may be unique skills hidden here in all kinds of trades, but everyone will still communicate and improve on ordinary technologies. In other words, the American sacrifice civilization brought by Xu Jia has surpassed most of their unique skills.

The power of education is gradually growing stronger in this process.

Knowledge changes destiny, it is not just talk, there are already smart students who have been discovered and recommended to Taoist temples to learn Taoism. Their destiny is destined to be very different from the past. They will learn alchemy chemistry, refining physics, as well as Taoist philosophy, Taoist medicine and biology...

"This is the flintlock rifle in your blueprint. We have already mastered the seamless steel pipe technology. The rest will not be difficult."

A Taoist priest brought a weapon to Xu Jia. It was a magical instrument with mixed gold and silver patterns on it. It was glowing with magical light and was filled with the righteous energy of the Heavenly Gang.

(End of this chapter)