New cultivators, new fields, and new agricultural productivity began to appear in Donghui of the Ming Dynasty. For example, after an early autumn rain in the fourteenth year of Wanli, Gao Zijia, a new farmer, carried a wooden ox and walked to his new field in Yuan Jing's Mansion, the Chief Secretary of Japan.
The Japanese girl whom he named Wu Qian followed him barefoot and carrying a basket on her back. Not long after, a cock crow called the red sun.
Facing the red sun, Gao Zijia placed the wooden ox on the ridge of the field. He first asked Wu Qian to give him the backpack, and then he took out a cloth bag from the basket.
The cloth bag contains ashes. They are the bones of various chickens, ducks and other birds and animals that Gao Zijia collected after he went on a big fish and meat trip on the ship. Now they are burned specifically for fertilizer.
Gao Zijia now began to spread the ashes evenly in the field. The Japanese girl Wu Qian skillfully went to the pond above the field ridge.
The pond was newly dug by Gao Zijia, drawing water from the mountain stream beside the field. There is a chicken pen made of wood on the pond, which contains the chicks that Gao Zijia recently bought from the market.
The reason why a chicken pen is erected on the pond is to use the chicken manure as fish feed, so that the fish in the pond can be raised while raising chickens.
The pond is not only used to raise fish, but also serves as a water reservoir so that your fields can use water when there is a shortage of water. This is the comprehensive agriculture that has emerged in the Ming Dynasty.
The earliest record of comprehensive agricultural management comes from the "Manuscript of Zhaochang Hezhi" in the mid-Ming Dynasty, which mentions that brothers Tan Xiao and Tan Zhaozhao transformed low-lying wasteland into large ponds to raise chickens and fish, making the chickens and fish fat and making them rich.
Nowadays, this kind of business model has been gradually promoted in the Wanli Dynasty. Gao Zijiazi also knew this method, and although it was no longer the time to plant rice, he had already begun to prepare to plant corn, which would be the corn of later generations.
Corn had been introduced to the Ming Dynasty in this era, and it was mainly introduced through two routes, one was from Yunnan and Burma to Yunnan, and the other was from the southeast coast to Zhejiang.
After Zhu Yijun came to the throne, he vigorously promoted the promotion of new crops, which made Gao Zijia know about maize even though he was from the north.
The task of the Japanese girl Wu Qian is to take care of these chickens, clean the chicken pens, take away the sick chickens and dispose of them in time, and sweep the feces into the pond.
In addition, she had to follow Gao Zijia to learn how to grow corn, rice, wheat, sweet potatoes, beans, etc. As for the seeds, she could go to Yuanjingfu City and buy them from local seed merchants in the Ming Dynasty.
According to "Liuhe County Chronicles", in the Ming Dynasty, in terms of crop types, there were as many as 107 types of rice adapted to different types of fields, more than 20 types of beans, and more than 20 types of wheat. In addition, exotic crops introduced by each.
It can be said that because the farming civilization of the Ming Dynasty was wider than the farming civilization of the Japanese country, and had more channels to contact the outside world, the Ming Dynasty was able to produce a richer variety of crops and have a higher land utilization rate.
Therefore, Gao Zijia will naturally need to grow a lot of crops, and there will be more types of land that can be used.
In short, because Gao Zijia, a Han Chinese, had richer agricultural experience and technology, and Wu Qian, a Japanese girl, helped them, they were able to cultivate and cultivate fifteen acres of land on the basis of the original ten acres. land.
And because the land was managed to become more fertile, he actually harvested 30 shi of rice and more than 50 shi of miscellaneous grains in the first year!
The yield of the Japanese farmland, which originally could only produce one stone per mu, was increased to two stones and five bushels per mu. In addition, there was no shortage of chickens and fish, so that many products could be sold in the market and promote commercial development.
According to the "Complete Book of Agricultural Affairs", in the middle of the Ming Dynasty, fertile farmland could be managed to a maximum of three dan, while the worse ones were more than two dan and five dou.
And here, it was Gao Zijiacai's first year of farming, so it was good to be able to harvest two stones and five buckets per acre. However, in any case, ordinary Han civilian farmers like Gao Zijia, although they have become refugees and disaster victims that drag down the national finance due to the intensification of natural disasters and land annexation at home, once they come out, they have indeed become the real sharp edge of Ming Dynasty's external expansion!
What Ming Dynasty moved here was not the people, but advanced productive forces. If according to historical records, the Japanese were unable to match the Ming Dynasty in agricultural production during this period, and generally could only guarantee one stone per mu, the Han people who moved here during the Ming Dynasty could at least enable agricultural production here, and one Han could equal two Japanese, or The situation of Sanwa.
Perhaps in the Han Dynasty, one Han and five barbarians were not only a comparison of force, but also a comparison of productivity. Anyway, for the Ming Dynasty, the Han people could indeed create more wealth than the Japanese.
Perhaps this is why the foreign races around the Ming Dynasty, whether they are Mongolians, Jurchens, or southwestern chieftains, like to plunder the population when they raid the Han Dynasty.
Perhaps the most valuable thing in the Ming Dynasty was actually its people, that is, the domesticated Han people who were hardworking and good at farming.
It’s just that the rulers who upheld the old etiquette only wanted to squeeze them and exploit them, and never thought about organizing them to expand their civilization. Therefore, it seems that their contribution to civilization was not that great, and even after being over-squeezed, they showed Due to its huge destructive power, it is despised by most educated people in its own tribe.
The Han people are indeed better at farming and less at fighting and robbing. When Gao Zijia successfully managed agriculture in his new homeland and began to enter business by selling agricultural products, he also aroused the covetousness of the surrounding Japanese landowners.
The Japanese landlord class was basically aristocrats. There was no such thing as commoner landlords. The bottom landlords were basically samurai who worked for the daimyo.
Human greed is unstoppable. For the samurai who belong to the Japanese landlord class, after seeing that the agriculture operated by Han people like Gao Zijia has become more developed, the first thing they think of is not learning, but the most primitive and brutal robbery.
this day. At dawn, Japanese warriors rushed into Gao Zijia's village and killed several Han Chinese who had just migrated.
For a while, there were screams and dog barking. Gao Zijia also hurriedly stood up with Wu Qian, and then he saw several Japanese warriors rushing towards him with swords. Several Japanese warriors were already destroying Gao Zijia's chicken coop and taking his chickens away.
"Stop!" Gao Zijia shouted. But as soon as he finished shouting, the Japanese warriors in front of him already walked towards him with a bad smile. One of the warriors kicked him down, then pulled Wu Qian over, held him in his arms and started messing around. touch.
Wu Qian was so frightened that her face turned pale, and she yelled Japanese language to Gao Zijia desperately, begging him to save her. Snapped! Because he heard that Wu Qian was still a Japanese, the warrior who hugged him slapped her, cursed a few times, and then started to lift her skirt to force her.
When Gao Zijia saw this, he immediately went back to the house and pulled out his Yanling sword, and stabbed the Japanese warrior in the chest who was about to force him with force: "Damn it!" The Japanese warrior couldn't help but fell to the ground in shock.
Several other Japanese warriors were smiling and preparing to watch a live show, but they froze in place because of this. Then they couldn't help but became furious, and they all drew their swords and slashed at Gao Zijia.
boom! boom! boom! Suddenly, there was a loud sound of gunfire. These Japanese warriors couldn't help but be stunned.
