Lin Gao Qiming

Chapter 251 Heading to Shilu

"Changhua is famous for raising sheep." Xiong Buyou knows Hainan's famous food like the back of his hand, "It's as famous as Lingao suckling pig." He smacked his mouth and looked greedily at the kid who was gnawing on the bushes. .There are many sand dunes along the coast of Changhua, dense shrubs, and many natural herbs and herbs. The plants are rich in minerals and salt.The famous Changhua sheep grew up on this kind of natural feed, and the taste can be imagined.

"Why don't you just hit one end and start eating meat." Huang Zuozhao was already eager to try.

"It looks like they are all raised by farmers. If you can't beat them well, just buy one if you want to eat."

"Excuse me, who will butcher a sheep?"

"Slaughtering a sheep is a joke." Huang Zuozi was very confident, "I have taken care of wild rabbits before."

Everyone discussed whether the slaughtering experience between hares and goats could be shared and came to the gate of Changhua County.The official name of Changhua County is Changhua Qianhusuo City. From this name, everyone knows that the county government is just a place to work, and the Ming army is the real master of the city.

The city is not big, about the same size as Lingao. It looks like the city wall is three meters high.The whole body is covered with bricks, and the city defense construction of Ming Dynasty is still in place in terms of hardware.The software is not very good: the city gate is open, and there are no security measures at the gate except for two figures who are probably yamen servants or sentries.

Xiong Buyou looked up and saw that the name of the gate was "Zhenhai". He smiled and said to everyone: "This gate really fits the occasion. This is to welcome us."

With a few copper coins given to the gatekeeper, a group of people entered the city smoothly, and the city was even sparser than Lingao.There are only over 600 households in Changhua County, half of which are military households.There are not even [-] households in the county town. The so-called county town is nothing more than a large village for these farmers who wear the title of soldiers to farm the land.Naturally, there is no commercial business, only a blacksmith shop for repairing agricultural tools, and two grocery stores. Although everyone has already known what Hainan's urban business looks like from Lingao, they are still not interested in seeing such a depressed county town.

"It's so unfair." Ye Yuming muttered to himself.

"?" Others wondered.

"Don't tell me how the traversers can earn hundreds of thousands of silver from a county? We—we—" He pointed to the streets of Changhua County, which are full of dust and garbage, "this place Not even a hundred copper coins!"

Fang Jinghan with a poker face said: "This place makes me feel like watching a western." There is actually a tape recorder in his luggage, which he says is for field research.

Xiong Buyou tried to communicate with the locals, but found that his language skills were completely ineffective.The Hainan dialect spoken here is neither Cantonese, nor the Minnan dialect spoken by Fujian Shegeng people, nor the Lingao dialect that he is best at.Rather a rather strange dialect.

"This is Junhua!" Fang Jinghan understood after listening for a while, "The language in Changhua is very complicated, and one of the major dialects is Junhua."

So the task of communication was given to him, but Fang Jinghan could only roughly understand what the other party meant, he couldn't speak, and he could only communicate with gestures.

Finally, under the guidance of the locals, they finally found a fairly large shop on the county street.It's a warehouse, and the name on it is still from Guangzhou.

What business do merchants from Guangzhou do here?Xiong Buyou went to the counter to inquire, and the shopkeeper was a genuine Cantonese with the surname Qian.I am suffering from staying alone in this wild town, and I can't even find anyone to talk to.Suddenly a group of strange vendors who can speak Cantonese came, and they were immediately excited. They insisted on chatting with everyone, and asked a young man to bring herbal tea.It was also hot for everyone to go, so they just stopped to ask for news.

It turns out that this warehouse is dedicated to purchasing local saponins, medicinal materials and goats.Many big households in Guangzhou like the sheep here. The boss saw that the business was good, so he specially sent someone to buy it here.

Xiong Buyou pretended to be a small peddler who came to Changhua for the first time and was going to Li District to sell goods, and asked how the situation here was?

Shopkeeper Qian said that the place was relatively peaceful, and pirates rarely came to Changhua, and the most they came were to fetch some water from the shore and snatch a few sheep.The paddy fields around the county town belonged to the Qianhusuo. Although the Qianhusuo was dilapidated, it was able to pull up a team of two to three hundred people, so the pirates would not come near the county town.

As for Li District, shopkeeper Qian said that the terrain is too rugged, there are many mountains and rocks here, and there are many serious diseases, most people are not willing to go to Li District.Li people go to the city together to sell some local products every half a month or a month.It must be quite peaceful. I haven't heard of any robbery and killing of Han traders.

Shopkeeper Qian curiously asked where they came from.Hearing that they came from Lingao, the shopkeeper didn't show too much surprise—this allowed the travelers to fully experience the slow speed of news transmission in the past. Changhua outside knows nothing about it.Later they learned that the boss of the shopkeeper Qian sent a boat from Guangzhou to Changhua only half a year.

Seeing the salt, sugar, sewing needles, shochu and other small hardware items that the traverser took out, Shopkeeper Qian's eyes straightened.Enjoyment products such as sugar and shochu have been out of stock locally for a long time.Immediately asked to buy dozens of catties of sugar and shochu.In exchange, he exchanged hook knives and iron farming tools that Li people like.

The traveler took the opportunity to ask him to introduce a guide, and Treasurer Qian readily agreed.

"It's easy, I'll find someone for you."

After the exploration team achieved their goal, they returned to the Zhenhai and reported the situation.Another batch of goods for trade was unloaded from the ship.

Early the next morning, the fleet set sail to continue their journey,

The exploration team headed by Cui Yunhong had breakfast in the morning, brought their equipment and goods, and went to the river to meet the guide.The guide that shopkeeper Qian found was a guy in his warehouse.Although the Li people are not cannibals, but the Li area has high mountains and dense forests, the climate is changeable, wild animals, snakes and insects are infested, and there are various miasmas, Han people often regard it as daunting.When ordinary people go to Li District, they must ask "Shu Li" as their guide.

Although this guy is a Han Chinese, his mother is a local Meifuli.His surname is Wang.Changhua has been a county with many intermarriages between Han and Li since ancient times.There are many Han-Li hybrids like this.The guide is not only proficient in the language of Mobil.And his uncle's family lived in the middle reaches of the Changhua River.The roads and customs are very familiar.It's a very suitable candidate.Because I have been an apprentice as a clerk since I was a child, although I am only eighteen or nineteen years old, I am very familiar with the world and the world.Open your mouth with a three-point smile.I saw that there were a dozen or so people in this group. Although they were wearing Han clothes, the men were all bald, and there was even a Li girl among them.Everyone is carrying a big basket, and there is probably a long stick wrapped in cloth on the basket, which can't help but wonder.

Naturally, the exploration team couldn't say that they were looking for iron ore, so they said that their group went to Li District to buy medicinal materials, so Cui Yunhong had to pay the guide first, but the guide said no, and it would not be too late to pay when he came back.As long as they give him a catty of white sugar first, let him take it home and give it to his family to try something new—white sugar is very rare here.

Well prepared, a group of people set off in the morning and went upstream along the Changhua River.

After setting off, everyone realized how wise the decision to hire a guide was.In this barren land, there are few things that can be called landmarks. The Changhua River is a river with a particularly large drop in dry and wet seasons, which makes it difficult to find its real channel in the dry season. The river that comes out is not only wide but also very loose.Dots of puddles and runoff can be seen everywhere.

Cui Yunhong used a compass and a map to constantly check whether the direction of the team was accurate.Their first goal is to find the Shilu River.This tributary of the Changhua River is shown on the map to be about [-] kilometers upstream from the mouth of the Changhua River. After finding this river, go upstream and walk about [-] kilometers to the Shilu Mine.

Obviously the journey will not be easy.Especially when carrying a lot of equipment and a lot of goods, this journey is even more difficult.The only hope is that the more you go upstream, the water volume will increase, and it will be easier to sail a boat—even if you don’t have a boat, it’s easy to build a bamboo raft.

After walking for more than ten miles, I saw that the water in the river was slightly stronger, and the sand dunes became less and less.Know that it is near the inland area.The terrain is getting rougher.Most of the two banks are hilly, undulating, the forest vegetation is not dense, and there are large areas of rocky sandstone exposed in many places.Cui Yunhong saw that many of the hills here are limestone containing a lot of clay. This kind of limestone can be directly fired into high-quality cement without ingredients, so it is also commonly known as "cement rock".I couldn't help but feel secretly happy that this place can be built into a cement industrial base across the country.

Cui Yunhong didn't know that in another time and space, Hainan's high-grade cement was often fired with limestone in Changhua.

Between the hills and the river bank, there are sporadic flat lands, many of which have been reclaimed into flood and dry fields.Those uncultivated places are large tracts of barren grassland.Some villages were scattered during the period.The guide said that these villages belonged to Han people or mixed with Han people.Cui Yunhong saw that there was nothing special about these villages, so she just asked the people from the surveying and mapping team to mark the size and location on the map.

The people of the survey team walked all the way, drawing routes on the map, and re-measured the settlements and places where fresh water was available, and re-measured the places where the terrain changed greatly.These data are the basis for future development.

The guide saw that they were not in a hurry along the way, and they would stop to write and draw after a while, and some people were wandering around carrying poles, boxes, etc., and they didn't know what they were messing with.Feeling strange, he said to Cui Yunhong, "Shopkeeper, it took several days to get to Lizhai after walking like this."

Cui Yunhong had to fabricate that they were looking for herbs.Naturally, the young man didn't quite believe what he said.But it's a rare rest if you don't work in the extremely dull warehouse and go out for a walk, so you don't care if you walk for a few more days.Don't ask any more questions now.

(End of this chapter)