Chastity Layman

  Chapter 1154 Five Watch Fireworks

  Boom—Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!

  Wooden sticks hitting the bamboo tube made one long and four short sounds, echoing crisply and long in the silent night.

   One watch for people, two watch for fire, three watch for ghosts, four watch for thieves, and five watch for chickens.

   "It's sunny!"

   "Five watch, Yinzheng four quarters, go to bed early and get up early, take care of your body!"

  A young man in a Ge linen gown knocked on a bamboo clapper and announced the dawn along the street.

  He is a fifth-grade student at Jinyincheng School. These senior elementary school students have to take turns to be on duty, and the first task every day is to announce the dawn.

  When the five-watch drum is sounded in the Bell and Drum Tower in the city, they will start walking around the streets with clappers to announce the dawn.

  Compared to the special night watchmen who start the shift from the first shift, the students will ring the school bell first when the fourth shift is due, and then announce the dawn along the street, and divide it into places.

  There is not one but several students who are on duty every day to tell the time. While telling the time, I also want to report the weather by the way.

  By the way, I also take a part-time job as a newspaper delivery man.

Luzon is becoming more and more lively now, and gold diggers are pouring in continuously. Nearly 100,000 gold diggers have also brought huge other needs. Therefore, there are now many gold mining towns in Luzon, and the Qin family has also established many supporting shops. , workshops, there are many plantation manors outside, and there are servants who act as guards.

The students in the City of Gold and Silver are a relatively special group. Most of them are orphans or abandoned babies adopted by the Qin family. They were brought up since childhood. The Qin family also brought many children with them when they came to Luzon. The situation here is to reserve talents for the future.

  The children have no father or mother, and they are still working and studying, and they are very strong and hardworking.

  Even a child who is only eleven or twelve years old, in addition to part-time work and part-time study, also has to take on the errand of reporting the news. In fact, there is a bell and drum tower in the city, and the time is recorded according to the leaking clock, and then the bell and drum are used to tell the time to the people in the city.

  But the school still arranged for the children to take turns to get up early to announce the dawn. In addition to telling the time along the way, they also reported the weather and delivered newspapers.

  Newspapers include the Gold Rush News published by Jinyincheng itself, as well as newspapers that come with the ship, such as the Taiping Commercial Daily issued by Wu’an Prefecture, Southern News issued by Guangzhou Port, and several major newspapers issued by the imperial court Chang’an and Luoyang, etc.

   Following the boy's loud weather report, Jinyincheng slowly woke up.

   Those in the early snack business pushed open the door, set up the stall, and began to put the first basket of steamed buns on the steamer. The butcher shop over there had also slaughtered pigs, cattle, sheep, etc., and put the meat on the table to divide.

  Shops open.

  The merchants, workers, or managers in the city also got up one after another to start a new day of life.

  The owner of the early shop on the corner of the street smiled and said to the boy, "Young boy's voice is loud enough, come, have a steamed stuffed bun."

  The boy smiled and waved his hands in thanks.

The school does not allow students to collect things from others on the street, even if they are given by others, but the neighborhood merchants also feel that the students report the dawn and weather, especially these children, no matter it is windy or rainy, then It's all rain or shine, on time and on time.

For the people who are still in bed in the morning, the time and weather are very useful information. After all, not everyone can leak these things these days. You don’t need to get up to know the time and the weather outside. .

   According to the weather conditions, you can make arrangements for the day in advance.

  Everyone wants to thank them, but the school rules are strict, and the teenagers are also very self-reliant and self-reliant, so they will never accept any favors, not even a bun.

  So now, it is gradually organized by chambers of commerce and guilds. On the first and fifteenth day of each month, some materials will be raised to go to the school to visit teachers and students and give some help. There may not be many things, a little rice, flour, grain, oil or cloth, etc., but this is a rare love between fish and water, which is appreciated by the Qin Family Deacon in Jinyin City.

   Following the sound of the time signal, Jinyin City, the largest city on Luzon Island, also became lively.

  As the center of Luzon, there are many shops and workshops here. The first ones to open are naturally the early ones. The dock area has always been the first place to be lively.

  Caojia Congshi, Wanjia Mantou Shop, Wujia Steamed Cake, Shijia Flax Pancake, Li Sijia North Food Shop, Jin Family South Food Shop, Dingjia Vegetarian Tea Shop, Shijia Hutang Shop and many others rushed to shout.

The Shijia Hutang shop is most famous for filling the lungs and frying the lungs, and other restaurants basically have good signature breakfasts, such as Shijia’s flax pancakes, Ding’s eight-treasure porridge, Lisi’s haggis soup, Jin's duck blood vermicelli, Wan's steamed buns and so on.

There are other kinds of fried white sausage, five-flavored meat porridge, sanzi, glutinous rice cakes, etc. In a way, this place is actually similar to those famous big ports such as Wu'an Taiping Port, Zhennan Jiaozhou Port, Guangzhou Port, etc. Almost, because there are many people traveling from south to north and the population is highly mobile, it brings a variety of delicacies.

   Jinyincheng is a gold mining city, and it is also the port of Luzon. The ships coming from the Central Plains are all advanced to Jinyinwan, and they dock at Jinyincheng Wharf along the Jinsha River. The first stop must be Jinyincheng.

  A large number of gold diggers come and go, and the rich gold collected on Luzon Island will also be processed in the City of Gold and Silver.

  This in turn made the gold processing industry in the City of Gold and Silver very prosperous, bringing a large number of industrial workers and attracting many merchants who bought and sold gold.

  In the same way, there is such an important industry that attracts so many gold diggers and industrial workers, and of course there is a large consumer market surrounding their food, drink, housing and transportation.

  This is an industrial and commercial port city, no more than traditional inland cities, with stronger consumption attributes.

   "Eat a bowl of noodles."

  It was hot on the island, Qin Lang wore a pair of slippers and a thin shirt, dressed like a businessman who woke up early.

  Qin Lang went straight down to Guangzhou in a light boat from Xunzhou. Without disturbing the local officials, he took the Qin family's merchant ship to Fuqing Port first, and then went to Liuqiu Island via Penghu. After a round of travel, he left Tainan for Luzon.

Arrived at Jinyin Port with the ship, and did not disclose his identity. He still only entered the city as a small steward with the ship. He planned to visit Weifu first to see how the development of Luzon has been in the past year, and whether it is as good as he took over. as stated in the report.

  At the same time, what you can see from different angles is also different.

   Walking into a noodle shop that looked quite lively, the boss immediately greeted them warmly and asked them what kind of noodle they wanted to eat. They were a group of four or five, and the boss immediately regarded them as big customers.

  Qin Lang hesitated between rice rolls and chee cheong fun, and finally decided to eat something lighter, so he ordered rice rolls. The boss enthusiastically recommended chee cheong fun, saying that the taste of his pig intestines was the most authentic.

  Successfully got Zhang Chao and the others to order chee cheong fun, but Qin Lang insisted on ordering chee cheong fun and ordered a coconut.

  The catering industry in Jinyincheng is very developed, which is also a common phenomenon in most port cities.

  The rice rolls taste good, and the coconut is very fresh and sweet. The last asking price is one penny for the coconut, and two pennies for the rice rolls. This price is really very affordable, even cheaper than those in Taipinggang.

  At first, Qin Lang thought that with the sudden influx of 100,000 people from Luzon, the prices would definitely rise steadily, and he was psychologically prepared for the high prices.

  But now a rice roll costs only two pennies, and a fresh coconut costs only one penny, which is really not expensive.

  Qin Lang deliberately walked around the pier, and found that the prices are indeed not expensive. There are people on the street who specialize in selling syrup, and some who directly sell coconut juice, all for a penny.

   Those who sell Hubing, two articles, steamed buns, one article.

  At noon, Qin Lang visited restaurants and restaurants on purpose. Fried vegetables only cost ten cents a piece, and ordinary small meat dishes such as fried fish and chicken offal only cost fifteen cents a piece.

   Pork, mutton, chicken and duck are relatively expensive, while fish is relatively cheap.

Tea, wine, and sugar are all expensive. For example, the cheapest tea sold on the wharf costs two yuan a bowl, while the cheapest tea in the shop is fifteen yuan a catty. But this kind of tea basically belongs to the kind of broken tea. In the end, it is generally worth hundreds of coins a catty, and there are thousands or even tens of thousands of high-end ones.

  The same goes for wine, the worst one costs two or three dollars a bowl, and the expensive one is hundreds or even thousands.

  Qin Lang visited the grain store on purpose, and found that the rice portion was very stable, at forty-five cents a bucket, while the price of salt happened to be forty-five cents a catty.

   Dou rice catty salt.

   Firewood and charcoal are more expensive.

The reason why food prices are not expensive is also simple. Nowadays, there are many new plantations in Luzon, and there is no shortage of fields here. The Qin family directly transports slaves to reclaim wasteland and farm land. At least two seasons a year, the average income per mu can reach five stones. A 10,000-mu plantation manor is enough to have a hundred serfs, but it can produce 50,000 shi of grain a year, and 20 manors are one million shi of grain.

  An adult male only needs about seven shi of grain a year, and a population of 100,000 people consumes 700,000 shi a year.

  So now Luzon Island has initially achieved food self-sufficiency.

  Although many foods such as flour, soybeans, and vermicelli are still mainly shipped by sea, at least the basic staple food can be self-sufficient, which saves a lot of transportation capacity and stabilizes the price of food.

   Pigs, cattle, sheep, chickens and ducks are more expensive, but the breeding industry has not kept up with it, and many of them have to be shipped from the Central Plains. Although there is no tariff, the cost has increased a lot.

Gold and Silver City is full of gold diggers and gold-buying merchants, which also leads to relatively high prices. It is indeed higher than the average inland county town, but compared with the big cities such as Liangjing and Guangzhou Jiaoyang, it is still relatively expensive. lower.

   But he also discovered that, except for some small breakfast shops and small restaurants that are privately run, other plantations, mines, workshops, iron workshops, etc. are basically the property of the Qin family.

   "It's not enough!"

  Zhang Chao felt that the development of Treasure Island was beyond expectations, "Not enough? You are really unsatisfactory. In just a few years, you have gathered such a large scale overseas. Are you still not satisfied?"

  (end of this chapter)