"I still think it's better to learn farming skills. It's most comfortable when the belly is full." Jiji touched her slightly swollen belly and said in a slurred speech. His Chinese is not fluent and he has a stutter, so he is silent most of the time, whether among his friends or at school. It was unexpected that he rushed to speak this time. Seeing him like this, the others stopped talking and listened quietly to him telling his study story. Jiji's speech was stammering and intermittent, but everyone still understood his general meaning: The Pili Army's agricultural technology is very good, and after I learn it, I will make sure the entire tribe is fed.
Luo's ghost country is very poor, and Jiji's tribe is the poorest in Luo's. It borders the Dali Kingdom, but was not occupied by the Mongols. On the one hand, although Jiji's tribe is small, they are short and capable, and they are good at using a poison that seals the throat at the sight of blood, which makes the people of Dali and Mongolia fearful. On the other hand, there are high mountains and dense forests, and the few hillside fields are also covered with stones, making farming very difficult. The Mongols had no intention of occupying this place, and they had no interest in even robbing it. It's just that this place is located on an important channel for exchanges between various tribes in the Miao border. The Mongols frequently conduct reconnaissance here and even carry out military operations through here, but the tribes are not immune to military disasters. Various villages were frequently harassed by the Mongols, young men were taken away as slaves, women were raped, and many people were even killed innocently.
"If you fall behind, you will be beaten." In order to avenge the bloody feud with the Mongolian army and to find support for the resistance against the Mongols, the Jiji tribe was the first tribe to agree to sign a tripartite agreement with the Bozhou Perak Army. It is said that although Jiji's father is the leader of the tribe, his family is extremely poor. The whole family can barely feed themselves, and they can't even afford salt. With the tribal leaders in such a predicament, one can imagine the plight of other ordinary tribesmen. It is common for them to have one meal but not another, and they eat glutinous rice bran for half the year. Eating is a top priority for the entire tribe. Because of the lack of food, the tribe members are short and weak, causing them to be bullied. With enough food, there will be more people, and with more strong laborers and warriors, there will be more land. Because they were afraid of hunger, Jiji's tribe became interested in agricultural technology.
Except for a few places such as Bozhou, agricultural production in the entire Miao border is slash-and-burn farming. Naturally, such grain yields are extremely low. In years of natural disasters, the harvest may not even be enough for seeds. In view of the completely different geographical climates of Miaojiang, Yifan alpine areas, and western Sichuan plains, the Agricultural Technical School has opened three agricultural technology classes. Among them, Jiji’s Miaojiang class is located in the Wugen Mountain area, and the Yifan class is located in Wugen Mountain. We moved to Wandanping, the highest point of Jiguan Mountain, and the plain class in western Sichuan was located in Yongqu Township. Each of these three classes has hundreds of acres of land, which the students cultivate and put the theories in the classroom into practice. However, this kind of teaching is more popular among students from Miao and Yi areas. After all, farming does not require brain-burning, as long as you follow the method.
In response to the situation in Miao territory, the school put forward the policy of "using tools, selecting species, and careful management" for mountain planting agriculture in Miao territory. The so-called sharp tools are suitable agricultural tools such as plows, pickaxes, and short sickles. When Jiji and other tribes cultivated scattered fields on the hillside, they always spread seeds directly on the land after fire, or made holes with sharp wooden sticks and buried the seeds in them. On the one hand, this is because iron farm tools are expensive, and on the other hand, there are no such convenient and advanced farm tools in Miao territory. After the tripartite agreement is signed, each tribe can exchange supplies for purchases or even purchase them on credit.
Selected species include two aspects. The first aspect is to select different varieties for planting based on climate, rainfall, light, soil thickness and fertility. Although Miaojiang has a lot of rainfall and a mild climate, most of the hillside soil has thin soil and poor water retention, making it more suitable for planting soybeans, sorghum and other drought-tolerant varieties. The second aspect refers to the need to select plump and large seeds before sowing and sterilize them with plant ash water or lime water. After each harvest, the best fruits are selected to save seeds, and high-yielding varieties are continuously selected and cultivated.
In terms of careful management, in addition to diligent daily fertilizer and water management, regular weeding, and repelling birds and beasts, the most important thing is to implement compound planting and make full use of light, heat and biological resources. Most of Miao territory is mountainous, but there are also many fertile small basins in the mountains. If the Pili Army's current planting method is adopted, or the greenhouse seedling raising method is used, these fertile farmlands can also be harvested twice with rice and wheat like in western Sichuan, instead of only harvesting rice in one season. For areas with rich water resources such as lakes, ponds, rivers and swamps, three-dimensional agricultural planting models such as mulberry (hemp), fish, duck and lotus root can be realized.
Jiji listened carefully to the lectures and worked extremely diligently, which was unanimously praised by the teachers. In addition to taking agricultural technology classes, he often used his free time to go to the nearby blacksmith shop to modify agricultural tools to make them more suitable for use on the gravelly hillside farming land of his tribe. The Pili Army Farm Tool Factory also redesigned farm tools suitable for Miao people based on his suggestions, which not only improved labor efficiency but also reduced the wear and tear of iron farm tools. Although the water transportation cost for the Perak Army to transport agricultural tools to Bozhou was not too high, the transportation cost from Bozhou to various tribal areas accounted for more than half of the entire cost. Although Pili Army has opened a mine and set up a factory in Boju, it will still take some time before it can be put into production. Reduced wear equals increased production.
After Jiji finished speaking, Huang Bochun slowly talked about his study life while chewing crispy wheat cakes. The Huang family was the first family to follow the Yang family to Bozhou, and the Yang family valued their ancestors' military exploits. However, when Yang Wen's father, Yang Jie, came to power, the family was already in decline. No one in the family was an official or had strong financial resources, but they were just famous. Huang Bochun has always had great ambitions and has always cherished the ambition of "organizing the family, governing the country and bringing peace to the world". This time Bozhou sent people to study in the Perak Army, and military personnel, teachers, and doctors were the most popular. The Huang family has declined, and naturally cannot compete with those families who hold important military and political positions in Bozhou. Yang Wen thought of his old friendship and assigned several places to the Huang family, which led to Huang Bochun's study trip.
At the beginning, Huang Bochun actually had some regrets. He actually wanted to study military affairs. After all, firearms have given the Perak Army its invincible reputation. In these troubled times, of course, to achieve success is to gain military merit. This is also the most convenient way to restore the glory of the Huang family. A teacher is someone who preaches, teaches, and resolves doubts. Although it is noble, it is difficult to make achievements. He did not want to spend his life immersed in the Four Books and Five Classics, nor did he want to be like those old scholars in Bozhou City who showed their knowledge by talking a lot. However, after this period of time, he discovered that the Normal School of the Perak Army, although nominally training teachers, was actually more like training reserve officers.
The reason why Huang Bochun made this judgment is that the curriculum of the Pili Army's Junior Normal School contains very little content about the Four Books and Five Classics, and there is little mention of the Confucian doctrines of the day. You must know that today's emperor can highly esteem those who study Neo-Confucianism, and officials at all levels also regard Neo-Confucianism as the foundation of official learning. The content taught by the Pili Army even conflicts with Neo-Confucianism. For example, Neo-Confucianism advocates the monarch and his ministers, but what the Pili Army teaches is "the people are the most important, the country is the second, and the king is the least." This is simply deviant.
