"Changhua is famous for raising sheep. [No pop-up novel website]" Xiong Buyou knows Hainan's famous food very well, "It's as famous as Lingao suckling pig." He licked his mouth and looked at it greedily. Baby goats nibbling 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 salts. The famous Changhua sheep grew up eating such natural feed, so you can imagine the taste.
"Why don't you cut one end and eat it?" Huang Claws 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 them."
"Speaking loudly, who knows how to slaughter a sheep?"
"It's easy to kill a sheep." Huang Zhao said confidently, "I've taken care of hares before."
Everyone came to the gate of Changhua County discussing whether the slaughtering experience of rabbits and goats could be shared. The official name of Changhua County is Changhua Qianhusuo City. From this name, everyone knows that the county government just borrows the place to work, and the Ming army is the real owner of the city.
The city is not big, about the same size as Lingao, and the walls seem to be three meters high. Covered entirely with bricks, Daming's urban defense construction was well done in terms of hardware. The software is not very good: the city gate is open, and there are no other warning measures except for two figures who can be regarded as government officials or sentries sitting at the door.
Xiong Buyou looked up and saw that the name of this door was: "Zhenhai". He smiled and said to everyone: "This door is really suitable for the occasion. It is here to welcome us."
With a few coins given to the gatekeeper, the group of people entered the city smoothly, and the city was even more deserted than Lingao. There are only more than 600 households in Changhua County, half of which are military households. There are not even 200 households in the county town. The so-called county town is just a big village for these farmers with military titles. Naturally, there is no business at all. There is only a blacksmith shop for repairing farm tools and two grocery stores. Although everyone already knows from Lingao what Hainan's urban commerce is like, they are still not interested in seeing such a depressed county.
"It's so unfair." Ye Yuming muttered to himself.
"?" Others wondered.
"How can a time-traveler earn hundreds of thousands of silver from a county? We - we -" he pointed to the streets of Changhua County filled with dust and garbage, "This place Not even a hundred copper coins!"
The poker-faced Fang Jinghan said: "This place makes me feel like watching a Western movie." There was actually a tape recorder in his luggage, which he said he was going to use for field research.
Xiong Buyou tried to communicate with the locals, but found that his language skills were completely useless. The words spoken here are neither Hainanese, a Cantonese dialect, nor the Minnan dialect spoken by Shegeng people in Fujian, nor Lingao dialect, which he is best at. But a rather strange dialect.
"This is military dialect!" Fang Jinghan understood after listening for a while, "The language in Changhua is very complex, and one of the major dialects is military dialect."
So the task of communication was given to him, but Fang Jinghan could only roughly understand what the other party meant, and could not speak. He could only make gestures when communicating.
Finally, with the guidance of local people, they finally found a fairly large shop on the county street. It's a warehouse, and its brand name is Guangzhou.
What kind of business do Guangzhou merchants do here? Xiong Buyou went to the counter and inquired, and found out that the shopkeeper was a genuine Cantonese named Qian. I was suffering from being alone in this barren town, with few people to talk to. Suddenly, a group of strange vendors who could speak Cantonese came, and they immediately became energetic. They chatted with everyone and asked a boy to bring herbal tea. Everyone was getting hot after walking, so they stopped to inquire about the news.
It turns out that this warehouse specializes in purchasing local saponins, medicinal materials and goats. Many big households in Guangzhou like the sheep here. Seeing that the business is good, the boss sends people to buy the sheep here.
Xiong Buyou pretended to be a small vendor who came to Changhua for the first time and was going to Li District to sell goods. He asked how the situation was here.
Shopkeeper Qian said it was peaceful here. Pirates rarely came to Changhua. When they came, they only fetched some water from the shore and grabbed a few sheep. The paddy fields around the county town belong to Qianhusuo. Although Qianhusuo is dilapidated, it can still recruit a team of two to three hundred people, so pirates don't come near the county town.
As for Li District, Shopkeeper Qian said that the terrain is too rugged, with many mountains and rocks, and there are many bad diseases. Most people are not willing to go to Li District. Li people go into the city together every half a month to sell some local products. All in all, it's quite peaceful. I haven't heard of any robberies and killings of Han traders.
Shopkeeper Qian asked curiously where they came from. Hearing that they came from Lingao, the shopkeeper did not show too much surprise - this allowed the travelers to fully understand the slow speed of message transmission in the past. They made a fuss in Lingao, less than 200 kilometers away. Changhua outside actually knew nothing about it. Later they learned that Shopkeeper Qian’s boss only sent a ship from Guangzhou to Changhua once every six months.
Shopkeeper Qian's eyes widened when he saw the salt, sugar, sewing needles, soju and other hardware and groceries that the traveler took out. Delicacies such as sugar and soju have been out of stock locally for a long time. Immediately, I asked to buy dozens of kilograms of sugar and soju. In exchange, he used hook knives and iron farm tools that the Li people liked.
The traveler took the opportunity to ask him to introduce a guide, and Shopkeeper Qian agreed.
"This is easy, I'll find someone for you."
After achieving their goal, the exploration team 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 led by Cui Yunhong had breakfast in the morning, brought equipment and goods, and went to the riverside to meet the guide. The guide hired by shopkeeper Qian was a clerk from his warehouse. Although the Li people are not cannibals, the Li region has high mountains, dense forests, a changeable climate, infested by wild animals, snakes and insects, as well as all kinds of miasma, so the Han people often regard it as a dangerous road. Most people who go to Li District must ask a "familiar Li" to be their guide.
Although this guy is a Han Chinese, his mother is from the local Mei Fuli. My surname is Wang. Changhua has been a county where there were many Han-Li marriages since ancient times. There are many Han-Li hybrids like this. The guide is not only proficient in the language of Mobilei. Moreover, his uncle's family lives in the middle reaches of Changhua River. We are all familiar with the roads and people. He is a very suitable candidate. Because he worked as an apprentice since he was a child, he is very familiar with people and worldly ways even though he is only ten years old. Always smile when you speak. I saw a group of about ten people. Although they were wearing Han Chinese clothes, all the men had bald heads. There was actually a Dongli woman among them. Everyone was carrying a large basket, and there was probably a long stick wrapped in cloth on the basket, which made me wonder.
Naturally, the exploration team couldn't say that they were looking for iron ore, so they said that they were going to Li District to buy medicinal materials. Cui Yunhong wanted to pay the guide first, but the guide said it was not necessary and it would not be too late to pay him when he came back. As long as they give him a pound of white sugar first and let him take it home to try something new for his family - white sugar is a very rare thing here.
After being prepared, everyone set out in the morning and headed upstream along the Changhua River.
After leaving, everyone realized how wise the decision to hire a guide was. In this barren land, there are almost nothing that can be called landmarks. The Changhua River is a river with a particularly huge gap between dry and wet seasons. This makes it very troublesome to find its true river course in the dry season. The river flows in the rainy season. The river out of the river is not only wide but also very diffuse. Dots of pools and runoff can be seen everywhere.
Cui Yunhong used the compass and map to constantly check whether the team was traveling in the correct direction along the way. Their first goal was to find the Shilu River. This tributary of the Changhua River is shown on the map to be about 40 kilometers upstream from the mouth of the Changhua River. After finding this river, go upstream and walk about 20 kilometers to the Shilu Mine.
Obviously the journey won't be easy. Especially when carrying a lot of equipment and a large amount of merchandise, this journey is even more difficult. The only hope is that as we go upstream, the amount of water will increase and it will be easier to sail. Even if there is no boat, it is 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 were becoming less and less. Known to be within 6 areas. The terrain becomes more rugged. Both sides of the bank are mostly hills, undulating, with not dense forest vegetation, and large areas of rocky sandstone exposed in many places. Cui Yunhong saw that many of the hills here were made of limestone containing a large amount of clay. This kind of limestone can directly bake high-quality cement without the need for ingredients, so it is also commonly known as "cement rock." I couldn't help but feel secretly happy that this place could be built into a cement industry base across the country.
Cui Yunhong didn't know that in another time and space, Hainan's high-grade cement was often fired from Changhua's limestone.
Between the hills and the river banks, there are sporadic flat lands, many of which have been reclaimed into paddy and dry fields. Those uncultivated areas are large areas of barren grassland. There are some villages scattered throughout this period. The guide said that these are Han Chinese or villages where Han and Li live together. 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 scale and location on the map.
As the survey team walked, they drew the route on the map. They also re-measured the settlements and places where fresh water they encountered where the terrain changed greatly. These data are the basis for paving the way for the future.
The guide saw that they were in no hurry along the way. They would stop to write and draw after walking for a while. There were also people carrying poles, boxes and other things around, wondering what they were doing. He couldn't help but feel strange, so he said to Cui Yunhong: "Shopkeeper, it will take several days to walk like this to reach Li Village."
Cui Yunhong had to make up that they were looking for medicinal herbs. Naturally, the young man didn't believe what he said. But it was a rare break to go out and walk around instead of working in that boring warehouse, so I didn't mind if I walked for a few more days. No more questions now. ! ~!
