Rise of the 1630s South America

Chapter 592 Winter ([-])

June 1647, 6, sunny, Wuding Township, Luocha County.

With a cock crow, Li Qun sat up from the bed in a daze.After being dazed for a long while, he suddenly remembered something. He lifted the pillow and carefully counted the pile of "bills" hidden under the pillow before grinning reassuringly.A Northwest Reclamation Bank acceptance bill worth two hundred yuan, my God, when did Lao Li become so rich?

After giggling for a while, Li Qun put on a cotton dress for himself, then put on a pair of cotton shoes and got out of bed.The door of the room was wide open, and a cool morning breeze blew in from outside the door from time to time, which made Li Qun shiver.His own foreign woman opened the door early in the morning, which was really disappointing. Li Qun yawned, then Shi Shi ran to the door and leaned against the door frame.

There was a hanging basket hanging under the wooden rafters under the eaves. Li Qun walked over lightly, and inside was his sleeping young son.Li Qun looked at his sleeping son and laughed foolishly for a while, then walked into the yard again.At this time, the sunlight in the yard was a bit dazzling, Li Qun squinted his eyes for a while to get used to it, then picked up a piece of corn from the still steaming tin stove and gnawed it for breakfast.

After eating, Liqun casually threw the gnawed corn cobs towards the foot of the wall, and several Gallic chickens who were leisurely walking around the room immediately fought desperately, pecking at the food scraps on the corn cobs quickly .Liqun laughed loudly, and then went out for a stroll.

At this time, his Greek aunt should still be cutting sweet potato vines in the field.Wuding Township was newly established not long ago, and it belongs to an "agriculturally backward township". There are mostly sweet potatoes, and the income is generally not high. Compared with the "traditional agricultural towns" in the Yazihu ​​area in the north, it is really far behind.Therefore, every household here will help Luocha Leather Factory tan some raw hides during the slack time to earn some pocket money to subsidize the family.

Liqun's neighbor and newly appointed village chief Huang Renshi held a meeting outside the village water pumping station a few days ago, and ambitiously proposed to go to the village to ask for special agricultural loans to encourage villagers to reclaim more land.In the future, if conditions permit, a three-crop crop rotation system will be carried out in the village.

Liqun is not optimistic about this.Huang Renshi was originally a veteran of the 103rd Company of the Army. After Corrientes was discharged from the army due to injury, he did not want to hang out at the Invalides Farm, so he was settled here by his superiors as the village head.This man's military career has come to an end, but he still wants to make progress in his official career, so he put forward some unrealistic ideas. This Liqun can understand, but it doesn't mean that he will agree with him.Soldiers are all passionate but not mature enough. What Liqun appreciates is someone like Mr. Zhu Heng Zhu who is mature in doing things but very decisive when it is time to take action-although he always talks about hurting others.

After wandering around the neighbors' houses for a few times, Li Qun turned around and walked to a small dirt road at the east end of the village.That road leads directly to the market in the village. Today is the weekend market day, and at the same time it is the beginning of winter on the east coast, the market must be more popular than usual, so Li Qun, who is very bored, decides to go to the market. By the way, buy some meat, noodles and the like.It's the beginning of winter, and it's time to eat dumplings anyway, Liqun smacked his lips, then walked up the small dirt road with his hands behind his back.

On the side of the small dirt road, a group of Englishmen and Scotsmen (both crossing the border from Brazil) in sky-blue denim are planting oak trees.Liqun was not interested in these stowaways who had been sentenced to one year of hard labor, so he quickened his pace and soon came to the market.

Today's market was really hot, but after Liqun observed it carefully, he found that there were many people watching and few people buying.For example, the mutton sold by the Tatar butcher from Crimea, a group of people gathered around to bargain with him, but few people bought it, for no other reason, the price was too expensive.

The eldest son of the butcher, wearing a pair of leather trousers, was skinning a goat hooked to a wooden stand beside him. His technique looked very skillful. The scene of slaughtering sheep.It's just that I was killing sheep at the beginning, but the world was bad, and then I killed people...

Liqun walked over with his hands behind his back, picked and picked at the mutton stall, and picked four catties of mutton and two catties of sheep bones.After doing the math, the butcher said with an incomprehensible Chinese accent, "It's fifty cents in total."

Liqun bared his teeth a little bit, twice the price!But recently, he made a lot of money in the business by speculating in grains. He was not short of money at all, so he took out a five-yuan bank acceptance draft from his pocket and handed it over.

The butcher wiped his hands on his greasy clothes, took the money order with a frown, and said, "It costs sixty cents to pay by money order, and this is the current market price. When I go to the countryside to collect sheep I use silver dollars, and country people don’t recognize money orders. My small business is not easy to turn around, so I can only charge you an extra dime.”

Liqun was a little speechless.However, he was in a very good mood today, and he didn't intend to argue with the barbarian, so he took the four one-yuan silver coins and four dimes that the butcher had found.After buying the mutton, he went to buy dumpling wrappers for 4 cents, and condiments like onion and ginger for a few cents.After buying it, he felt that he couldn't get enough of it, so he went to buy ten expensive eggs for two cents, and all the ingredients for today's dumpling were complete.

The above items cost a total of one yuan, which is one-sixth of the monthly salary of ordinary workers on the east coast, which is really not cheap.And a year ago, it probably cost less than [-] cents to buy all of these things, which shows how much the shortage of materials caused by the war has affected the lives of ordinary people this year.

Of course, these are only relative to the old citizens. For the Ming people or Livonians who immigrated newly, they can eat white noodles and occasionally eat some cheap meat provided by the government (salted whale meat ) or splurge on some beer, this day is a paradise compared to the precarious life of the past.As for the shortage of supplies and rising prices caused by the war, they don't have any personal experience, because these people don't usually go to the market to spend money to buy things.They saved almost every penny they had, and bought a permit from the government to reclaim an acre of wasteland for every five yuan they saved.

After all, land and food are everything to them.As for consuming some non-necessities of life, I'm sorry, they don't have this habit.In addition, there is a lack of a large number of handicraftsmen on the east coast to manufacture various small commodities (even sewing needles and fishhooks must be imported), so they can only be imported in large quantities, which leads to high prices of many non-necessities, making these frugal farmers They are intimidated by it.

Liqun has been in the east coast for two years, and he can barely be regarded as an old citizen.Although many goods such as tobacco, sugar, spirits, cocoa, etc. disappeared from the shelves of government stores because of the war, his attitude towards the war was not as full of complaints as his business partners.Those businessmen, big and small, were originally doing foreign trade business in Colonia. Now that the war broke out, they are naturally unemployed, so they are full of complaints against the government.

Although Li Qun is also a businessman, he is full of contempt for these people: what the hell?At the beginning, one by one came to the east bank without enough to eat. Now that they have made a small fortune in business, they don’t know how much they are worth. They even question the necessity of the government’s war. , I really need to clean up.

The most popular place in the market is the stage, and at this time hundreds of farmers who are going to the market are watching.Li Qun glanced at it from a distance, and today is still performing the old repertoire - "Five Warriors of Santa Fe", which is about the Changshou Taoist priest of the 101st Company of the Army and the four officers and soldiers from the east coast who fought bravely and fought hand-to-hand with unstoppable courage Frustrated the barbarian raid in the downpour, and finally seized the enemy's position together with his comrades.At this time, the play had come to the end, "Shou Daoist" stabbed the "Spanish Captain" to death, and then said a line of Wei Guangzheng, and the audience cheered enthusiastically.Especially the five or six students who looked like half-children, they rushed onto the stage excitedly, and then yelled some radical slogans, as if they wished that they could become the officers and soldiers of our Great East Coast who were fighting hand-to-hand with the barbarians at that time.

Li Qun also likes watching this play very much. When it first came out, he watched it six times in a row, almost never getting tired of watching it.I still remember that when I watched it for the first time, he was as emotional as these students and couldn't help himself. It's a pity that the army didn't accept him, which was helpless.Thinking of this, Li Qun took out another banknote from his waist, and saw that it was a bank acceptance draft with a denomination of five yuan. After thinking about it for a while, he put it back and drew another bill with a denomination of ten yuan, and then strode to the banknote at the side of the stage. Put the ten yuan money order in the military donation box.

After finishing these, Liqun left the bustling market and walked all the way back to his home.His Greek daughter-in-law had already returned home and was feeding the pigs. After instructing her to deal with the vegetables and meat and eat dumplings in the evening, Li Qun pulled out an old horse that had been eliminated from the horse farm in the livestock pen and turned over. After riding it, we headed to Luocha Port.

Today, Mr. Zhu Heng Zhu invited some businessmen with assets of more than [-] yuan in the county to gather at his home to discuss how to do business in the future. After all, it is not an option to sit and eat.The grain business is not sustainable, because soon many people will raise funds to imitate Zhu Heng and others to sell grain, and their profits will inevitably become thinner and thinner. Therefore, it is really necessary to think long-term, and it is best to develop a new source of income. .

(End of this chapter)