In the evening, the cadres who went out for inspection returned to the camp one after another. After several days of visits, the cadres have accumulated a lot of first-hand information and have meetings every day after returning to the camp. By the bright light emitted by the electric lights powered by lead-acid batteries, the cadres reported on the parts of their respective inspections. Zhang Xiao and Li Yaoer listened carefully and asked a few questions from time to time.
Chen Wurenhui reported: "...floods occur frequently in the local area. When it comes to sieges, the most serious cases cause drowning, collapse houses, and damage crops; followed by fish ponds, one for each pond, and the old water is exchanged since the first month. Filling the pond with new water, retting the water to feed the fish, and providing grass dung in the fifth and sixth months of the calendar year will consume ten gold. It is impossible to count the escape of fish, and it is difficult to count the loss of other goods. After the embankment breaks, it is advisable to rescue it as soon as possible within ten days. Those who have public funds to borrow should try their best to repair the wall foundation. Those who don't have public funds to borrow can only do their best according to the business owners. Be sure to plant late rice, wait for the mulberry leaves to grow, supply silkworms, and fish can be produced in the ponds. If you plant again, you will lose it in the east, but you can still harvest mulberry and elm. If the construction is delayed for more than ten days, the previous damage will disappear, and the later damage will continue to increase..."
Zhang Xiao listened to the report and quickly jotted down a note in his notebook: Water conservancy is the most important task in the development of Sangyuanwei. The Weiry Board Committees of each area lack a unified coordination mechanism. It is advisable to set up additional institutions for unified management, including Shunde.
"Is there anything else worth noting?" Zhang Xiao asked.
Chen Wuren thought for a while and said, "It does happen. Many fish farmers have reported that they have been particularly short of fertilizer in the past two years."
"Oh? What's the reason?"
Chen Wuren said: "I heard that the Zhu family set up some kind of traditional medicine shop and purchased a large amount of silkworm excrement for refining medicinal materials. The purchase price was very high, so many silkworm farmers sold the silkworm excrement to the Zhu family, causing fish There is not enough fertilizer in the pond.”
"Silkworm sand?" Zhang Xiao stroked his mustache thoughtfully.
Seeing that he was silent, Li Yaoer asked, "Is there any problem?"
Zhang Xiao said: "This is indeed a traditional Chinese medicinal material. "Compendium of Materia Medica" records that silkworm sand has the effect of treating thirst, women's hemorrhage, headache, dispelling wind and dehumidification. There are similar records in other ancient medical books. From the perspective of modern medicine , the main component of silkworm excrement extract, sodium iron chlorophyllin, is used to treat iron deficiency anemia. Just..."
"Just what?" Li Yao'er was a little curious.
"No matter how useful this medicine is, it won't cause local fish farmers to be short of fertilizer." Zhang Xiao said.
As a medicinal material, silkworm excrement is not as universal as licorice and has limited uses. Based on Guangzhou Prefecture's annual consumption, it probably won't exceed a few hundred kilograms. How could there be such a shortage of silkworm excrement in the market?
"Is there something fishy?" Li Yao'er asked.
"I can't tell, I always feel like something is wrong." Zhang Xiao couldn't give an answer even with limited information, and said: "Just talking about the lack of fertilizer, if the artificial breeding base is built, the fish flower production will double, and the fish flower production will be doubled. Relying on farmyard fertilizer is definitely not enough. No matter how efficient the mulberry fish pond is, it cannot create nutrients out of thin air. The material input of the entire system is certain. Without additional fertilizer, the unit output still cannot be increased. Our chemical fertilizer technology Without a breakthrough, lack of fertilizer will be a serious long-term problem."
"Then what should I do? Your confidence has been blown away." Li Yaoer smiled maliciously.
"Don't worry, sister, we can only brag by relying on our records," Zhang Xiao said: "The first phase of Changpo, which Ishichuyu has always been striving for, was put into production two years ago. He uses the 'Ishichuyu sulfuric acid method' to extract lignite from lignite every year. Ten thousand tons of ammonium sulfate can be recovered from the exhaust gas. Let’s work hard and walk around. Half of the fertilizer in the first phase of Changpo will be supplied to Jiujiang. Good steel should be used on the blade.”
"This is possible. When developing industries, we must pay attention to the return on investment. Naturally, fertilizers must be used in high-yield agricultural sectors." Li Yao'er also agreed with Zhang Xiao's opinion.
"Hey, this fertilizer is still useless. Ishide Yu originally planned to go to the second phase of Changpo. It planned to have 40 furnaces. The exhaust gas recovery could produce at least 50,000 to 100,000 tons of ammonium sulfate annually, and incidentally there were 8,000 tons of ammonium sulfate. Gasoline production capacity. But now there is competition from Brunei Petroleum, which I am very concerned about."
"Aren't you a die-hard southerner?"
"It's okay to engage in petroleum, but we have to wait for the petrochemical industry to produce fertilizers. We don't know how long it will be. It's better to hope that Chen Huan and the others can quickly build a self-produced ammonia synthesis device." As he spoke, Zhang Xiao went off topic.
"Hey, don't go off topic, pay attention to the efficiency of the meeting." Li Yaoer reminded.
"Okay, okay, let's get back to the business... Well, if someone else was doing silkworm silt, I might not worry about it, but Zhu's is different. His family is Chen Zizhuang's uncle." Zhang Xiao thought about it and still felt uneasy. Mo Yu was told: "Old Mo, keep an eye on this matter to see what Zhu is doing. Report any situation at any time."
Next is Zhao Hening’s inspection report:
"...A closer look at the life of a silkworm farmer reveals that, apart from the period when the silkworms have grown up and the work is urgent, there is still one to two weeks of leisure time after the rearing work is completed and during the period when the silkworms are young. Therefore, this time is used to do other hard work outside. After harvesting, in addition to farm work, they can still do other hard work to make up for household miscellaneous expenses. Although the result of hard work all day long is not enough to compensate for the lack of expenditure, the difference is not too big. All parties can borrow and try their best. There is no other better way than frugality and taxation. Apart from that, mulberry fish ponds can indeed create more wealth than rice cultivation and allow farmers to live a relatively comfortable life. However, due to the commercial nature of Agriculture requires high investment and involves huge risks, and farmers have little ability to avoid risks, which means that they may work hard all year round, but in the end they still have to fall into complete poverty..."
"Not bad, He Ning has made progress." After listening to Zhao He Ning's report, Zhang Xiao started to praise.
Zhao Hening smiled and his eyes curved into a crescent shape, and he said modestly: "Famous teachers make great disciples, and it's only two teachers who teach well."
Li Yaoer said: "The degree of commercialization of life of farmers in Jiujiang is already very high under the current social conditions, and their quality of life is better than that of farmers in other places. However, the gap between rich and poor seems to be very large, and social conflicts are not small." He Ning , have you collected exact data on the income and expenditure of silkworm farmers?”
"It is extremely difficult to obtain exact data. Silkworm farmers are not in the habit of keeping accounts and often cannot recall their income and expenses for a year. We can only guess out of thin air and make unfounded answers. Therefore, we have to observe the situation and make estimates based on their daily life. To confirm whether the answer we guessed is wrong."
"Did you encounter any special situation?" Li Yao'er asked.
"Yes, I was just about to say it." Seeing Li Yao'er take the initiative to ask, Zhao Hening seized the opportunity and said: "We met a mother and son, it was very miserable. I feel that her life is really meaningless. The only thing she has now is Her only wish is to divorce her dead husband, I think we have to take care of this matter..." Then Zhao Hening vividly described the experiences of Huang's mother and son, which made the listeners sad and the listeners in tears.
Li Yaoer couldn't help complaining: "Why is there such a father in the world?"
Zhang Xiao said: "There are a hundred people, all kinds of people, and there are all kinds of birds in the forest."
The situation of Huang's mother and son brought back Chen Wuren's memories, so he interjected: "Two chiefs, have you ever heard of 'eating an extinct household'?"
As a child born in the 1980s, Zhang Xiao is no stranger to rural life. The so-called extermination means that if a man in the family dies, if there are no other men in the family, someone will come to divide the family's property, even daily necessities such as pots and bowls. Don't miss it, these people are none other than others, usually relatives from the same clan of this family. Another way is to force the host's wife to set up the flowing water table until the whole family is completely eaten, destitute and exhausted. After the property was divided up, these relatives would find new ways to bully orphans and widows, driving them out of their homes, and some of them had to become prostitutes.
The situation of being exterminated became popular in the middle and late Ming Dynasty. Even Liu Rushi, a talented woman in the late Ming Dynasty, was not immune. After Qian Qianyi's death, people from the Qian family gathered to rob their property. In order to preserve Qian Qianyi's family property, Liu Rushi established a After leaving the will, he committed suicide by hanging from a beam, and a generation of romantic and talented women passed away, which was extremely tragic. This was only two months after Qian Qianyi's death.
"You mean, someone is trying to kill off the Youde family?" Zhang Xiao asked.
"Although Guan Youde is still alive, from the actual situation, he is no different from being exterminated." Chen Wuren said: "According to Miss Zhao, Guan Youde has been ill for ten years, and everyone thinks that he will die soon. That's right, including himself. In order to cure his illness, his family property was basically sold to relatives of the same clan at low prices. As the saying goes, "If you have children, you will soon be poor, but if you don't have children, you will not grow rich." Guan Youde only had an only son. Guan Zongbao was young at the time. , it is still unknown whether he can live to adulthood. I don’t know who made Guan Youde willingly give up his studies and go home to raise fish. The person who made this decision should have saved his son. I also want to return to the West as soon as possible. A medicine jar like Guan Youde will die in five or six years at most, and very few can delay it for ten years. I think this is a situation that his fellow clan members never thought of. I also saw it in the fish and flower market. I met a man named Guan Youde. His complexion was sallow, his face was black, and he looked like he was about to die soon. He should be the man that Miss Zhao mentioned."
"Hmph," Li Yao'er snorted coldly, "How could there be such a vicious person in this world!"
"Calm down, calm down. Isn't this kind of thing rare in the countryside? Even if you have a son at home, others may not think that you are living a better life than him. Even on the day we set foot on the Fengcheng Wheel, deprivation was still going on. , unless the backward productivity and deformed system in rural areas are changed, similar tragedies will not stop." Zhang Xiao looked at Li Yao'er, asked for her opinion, and said: "But I think this matter can be taken care of, what do you think? Woolen cloth?"
"Why not change customs?" Li Yao'er said with a smile.
