That night when Shen Xuan and Zhao Xin were having dinner, the matter of Shen Zhongcai was mentioned. Zhao Xin couldn't help but laugh twice, and then covered his cheeks. My back molars are still swollen, so don’t laugh for now.
"Okay, don't worry about this. I'll see him tomorrow."
After dinner, when the two were drinking tea and chatting, Shen Xuan asked the same question at noon.
"Miss Wang, what are your plans?"
Zhao Xin knew that he couldn't hide. He was silent for a while and said, "I don't know either. In fact, she...she is sick and may not live long."
"Ah? What's the disease?" Shen Xuan was stunned and thought to herself, you actually knew that she was sick! How many things do I not know about you two? Thinking of this, his face darkened, his face twisted and he groaned.
As soon as Zhao Xin saw Shen Xuan's expression, he knew that the other party had misunderstood, so he started to make it up.
"Do you know why Miss Wang has been traveling around with her father?"
Shen Xuan didn't say anything, thinking, "I don't know."
"The father and his daughter have been seeking medical advice everywhere. That Wang Zhenyi has been ill since he was a child. His father said that it is difficult for him to live past the age of thirty."
Shen Xuan was silent for a while, and finally said: "So that's it, I'm too worried."
While the other party was not paying attention, Zhao Xin wiped the sweat from his forehead...
Shen Xuan's third cousin was Shen Zhongcai. He had been studying for several years, but he didn't even pass the boy's entrance exam. Later, he worked as a clerk in Shen Jingdan's shop. After a few years, he was promoted to the accounting office, and he was very good at calculating. If Shen Zhongcai hadn't been too close to Shen Jingdan, Shen Jingdan wouldn't have asked him to come to Beihai Town.
But since Shen Zhong found out that the Shen family was attached to Zhao Xin, he thought that the time for him to become rich was coming. He originally thought that Zhao Xin would reuse the children of the Shen family, but who knew that after coming to Beihai Town for a few months, Zhao Xin only let them work as clerks in the town office, and they did not have much power.
In fact, Zhao Xin did not do anything wrong, because if outsiders want to adapt to the system of Beihai Town, they must start as a clerk; or they must become a soldier. Zhao Xin made it very clear to Shen Jingdan that if the children of the Shen family are capable, I will not suppress them. If they are unable, don't expect chickens and dogs to ascend to heaven. He is not used to this problem.
Having said that, from the perspective of the ancients, you don't need to reuse your own relatives, why don't you reuse outsiders? Shen Xuan was no exception, so even though she didn't like helping others make peace, she still mentioned it to Zhao Xin.
The next morning, Zhao Xin met Shen Zhongcai in his office. None of the Shen family members are ugly, and Shen Zhongcai also looks polite and courteous.
Zhao Xin didn't have much time to beat around the bush, so he got straight to the point and said, "You want to seek an official position? OK, I'll ask you two questions. If you can answer them correctly, I'll let you be the mayor."
Shen Zhongcai thought that he could be the mayor of Fuldan City. He was so happy that he raised his hands in salute and said, "Your Excellency, please come up with a question."
"Suppose you are stranded on a desert island, and it will take four days for the rescue ship to arrive. But you have a special disease, and you need to take one pill each of A and B every day to survive. Fortunately, you I happen to have four doses of two medicines A and B on hand, but they are all mixed together. The size, taste, color, and appearance of the two medicines are all the same, making it difficult to distinguish them with the naked eye. What should you do?"
After Zhao Xin finished speaking, he pointed to the clock on the table and added to Shen Zhongcai: "The time limit is one minute. If you can't say anything, you won't have an answer."
"I, I..." Shen Zhongcai thought to himself that this is all nonsense. Shouldn't I be tested on my abacus and four-pillar inventory? He looked at the clock on Zhao Xin's desk and struggled for a long time. Seeing that there were still ten seconds left, he thought: "I will grind the pills, mix them together, and divide them into four parts. If everything goes well on the first day... ..."
Zhao Xin raised his hand and said, "Stop. I'll talk about the next one."
Shen Zhongcai wiped the sweat from his forehead with his sleeve and thought to himself, did I get the answer right?
"In the first ten days of this month, I went to the big market in the south of the city. First I got a haircut for 20 cents, then I listened to a commentary for 1 yuan. I also bought half a catty of pine nuts in the market, and then I went to a cloth shop to get some. I bought two feet of cloth and finally went to the savings bank to deposit 50 silver coins."
As Shen Zhongcai listened, he kept fiddling with his fingers hidden under the table. He was trying to write down the numbers Zhao Xin said. Shen Zhongcai thought to himself that this answer should be an accounting question, and he would definitely be able to answer it.
Zhao Xin smiled slightly and continued: "The barber shop is closed every six days on the first and eighth day of every month; the savings bank is closed for two days every fifth day starting from the first day of the month; the market is only open on the first, third and sixth day of every ten days. , open on the eighth and tenth day of the lunar month, and the cloth shop is closed on Saturday. May I ask which big market I went to on the first day of the lunar month? The time limit is also one minute."
"Spicy piece, your mother!" Shen Zhongcai's vision went dark, his fingers hidden under the table suddenly cramped up into the shape of chicken claws, and Yangzhou dialect almost came out...
"Hahahahaha~~"
Shen Xuan came over at noon. When she heard about the interview in the morning, she was lying on the bed laughing so hard that her stomach hurt. She rubbed her stomach and stood up and said to Zhao Xin: "You are such a bad person. How could you come up with this?" Are you teasing him with such a weird question?"
Zhao Xin sat on the chair and said with a smile: "I'm not teasing him, this is logical reasoning, and the test is the ability to analyze emergencies. What you want to be in Beihai Town is not relying on stereotyped articles, nor is it about cheating. Character first must be Reliable, and secondly, able to deal with problems independently. He wants to be an official, but he doesn’t even have basic analytical skills. How dare I let him take charge of a region?"
Shen Xuan stopped laughing, thought about Zhao Xin's second question, and asked curiously: "How should I answer this second question?"
Zhao Xindao: "Think about it, on which day do the opening hours of barber shops, savings banks, markets, and cloth stores overlap?"
Shen Xuan said coquettishly: "I don't want to, just tell me."
Looking at Shen Xuan's appearance, Zhao Xin's heart bubbled with beauty, so he scraped the other person's nose and said, "On the third and tenth day of the lunar month."
Shen Xuan thought for a while, then smiled and said: "It turns out that the amount of money you mentioned before was all because of the confusion."
Zhao Xin shook his head and said: "If your cousin can be right for one day, I will consider him a pass, but his brain has turned into mush. Still want to be an official? What a dream!"
Shen Xuan asked: "If he passes the exam, where are you going to let him go?"
Zhao Xindao: "Dabo Town."
In late June, Ding Guofeng, together with students from the navigation school and a dozen Portuguese craftsmen, drove a motor sailing boat named "Beihai No. 1" with the new mayor of Dabo Town, a hundred households of Henan refugees and a company of people. The garrison sailed to Dabo Town in the south of Kuye Island.
The new mayor of Dabo Town is Jiang Tenglin, the same Jiang scholar who once boasted in Fuldan City that "Xuanwu was born". This person was sent to Ezo by Liu Sheng's order and worked there for a year before being transferred back. After that, he worked with Chen Qingsong for a period of time. Zhao Xin selected among dozens of civil affairs clerks, and finally decided to promote Jiang Xiucai. After all, his ability was still very good.
The "Beihai No. 1" they were traveling on was actually the Nicholas, one of the two three-masted sailing ships captured at Kuye Island the year before last; and the other sailing ship named Natalia is now named "Beihai No. 2". "", both ships have a displacement of 1,500 tons, and are currently the two largest sailing ships among the five.
It is said that these two boats had completed the hull repair and shell cleaning work in the middle of last year, and at the same time, the parts below the waterline were completely wrapped with copper sheets. When Deng Fei inspected the work, he found that all the Portuguese craftsmen used to fix the copper sheets were iron nails, so he replaced them with zinc steel nails that were not easy to rust.
After carrying out several missions to transport coal from Ezochi to Hokkai Town, before winter last year, Hokkai 1 and 2 entered the dock again and began to modify; this time they installed diesel engines and propeller blades. For reasons of confidentiality, the Portuguese craftsmen from Macau could not participate in this matter. However, because Zhao Liang really couldn't spare any time, Deng Fei led the students from the technical school to take charge of the installation work. The entire progress was extremely slow and slow.
After Wu Ping'an came with his people in May, because the power plant was in the early stage of infrastructure construction, many of the newly arrived time travelers were temporarily idle and had nothing to do, so they were captured by Deng Fei. As a result, the modification speed suddenly became very fast. It's all done by the day.
The engines selected for Beihai No. 1 and No. 2 are domestically produced 300KM 420 horsepower four-cylinder marine clutches, and the propeller blades are also purchased separately. When tested after installation, it was confirmed that the maximum speed could reach 15 knots in headwind or when the sails were lowered; the fuel consumption was between 75 and 78 liters per hour.
After renovating two large sailboats with a displacement of 1,500 tons, Deng Fei took advantage of the abundant manpower and began to renovate three other small sailboats.
Amidst all the busy work, the time has entered July, and Beihai Town is also preparing to usher in the spring wheat harvest. At this moment, a piece of news sent back from Xu Dayong in northern Jiangsu shocked the entire Beihai Town again.
On June 9th, due to continuous heavy rains in the upper reaches of the Yellow River, the water level in the lower reaches soared. A major breach occurred in the Yellow River dam located in Thirteen Forts, Sui Prefecture, Henan Province. The floods broke open the Yellow River dam in two places, both of which were more than 20 feet wide. Afterwards, the flood flowed through the Guohe River and diverted the Huaihe River into the sea, causing hundreds of thousands of acres of fertile farmland to be flooded in Guide Prefecture in Henan Province, Bozhou in Anhui Province, Mengcheng and other states and counties. All the affected areas lost their summer grain harvest this year!
According to what Xu Dayong sent people to learn, this disaster left hundreds of thousands of people homeless. A large number of victims fled to Lunan, Jiangsu, and Huguang to take advantage of the food, becoming a new batch of refugees. The people who stayed in the Yellow Flood Area were almost all old people, women and young children. In some places, there was a swamp for dozens of miles, with ruins and no human habitation in the villages. Many of the people who stayed lived by eating Guanyin soil, and they died of bloating after being unable to hold stools. People have it every day. There are even human meat workshops in the mountainous areas of northern Anhui. Extremely poor families have begun to sell their sons, daughters, and wives to the workshops to feed passing guests.
At the same time, because the Qing government used troops to suppress the Tiandihui rebellion in Taiwan, a large amount of grain was shipped to Fujian as military ration, causing grain prices in the north to skyrocket.
On the afternoon of the day they received the news, Zhao Xin, Liu Sheng, and Zhou Weiguo put down their affairs and hurried back to Beihai Town from Fuldan City. Early the next morning, in the newly built large conference room in Beihai Town, all the relevant persons in charge of civil affairs, maritime affairs, training headquarters, medical care, and education were present. Even Wu Ping'an came over with a few people. , see if there's anything we can do to help.
In the conference room, Chen Qingsong reported the situation with a serious face and said to everyone: "Next, we have to discuss how to rescue and resettle the refugees without affecting the autumn harvest."
"Excuse me, where is the Thirteenth Fort in Suizhou?"
Chen Qingsong saw that it was the fat man named Fan Tong under Wu An'an, so he replied: "East of Shangqiu, Henan."
At this time, Zhao Xin spoke first: "Let me tell you first, the exercise plan will be postponed. The entire army will be dispatched this time, firstly to support the autumn harvest, and secondly to help build resettlement houses."
As soon as these words came out, Liu Sheng, Wang Yuanfang, and Wu Siyu stood up and said that there was no problem at all and they would cooperate fully.
Chen Qingsong asked: "Are you considering sending a group of people to Ezo Land and Kuye Island?"
Zhao Xin nodded and said: "Okay. Let's place two thousand people on each side first."
Yu Deli said: "I propose to mobilize the students of the school to cooperate with the security police and do a good job in publicity work among residents to avoid unnecessary trouble."
Hong Tao said: "After a major disaster, there will be a major epidemic. We will arrange people to accompany the ship and do a good job in epidemic prevention on the way."
Wu Ping'an, Fan Tong and other newcomers did not speak, and listened quietly to everyone's speeches. Fan Tongxin said, "Good guys, every one of them is serious, as if they are real."
After everyone had spoken, Wu An'an said, "Mr. Zhao, see what we can do to help?"
Zhao Xindao: "Old Wu, building a factory over there is your first priority, otherwise nothing will be done when winter comes."
Wu Ping'an thought for a while and said slowly: "Don't worry about this. The foundation part is guaranteed to be completed by the end of September. But now many people are idle and have nothing to do. If you don't think so, if you are short of manpower, just come to me. There are more." Don’t say anything, forty or fifty people are on standby at any time.”
After the meeting, Xu Dayong, who was in northern Jiangsu, received an order from Beihai Town on the same day. There were only eight words on it: transport people with all your strength without delay.
Then, starting from the fifth day of July, the entire Beihai Town began to move. All cargo ships and renovated sailing ships were dispatched, and a large number of hospital nurses and all students from the navigation school went to sea with the ship.
This time, they no longer only pick up people from Jeju Island as before. The Thor, Thunder, Beihai 1 and 2 all gathered along the coast of northern Jiangsu and began to blatantly transport refugees from the mainland.
Four large and small ships from Beihai Town suddenly appeared on the east side of Wutiao Sha. In addition, there were fleets of sand ships sailing out from the inner ocean and approaching these large ships to transport refugees. They quickly attracted the attention of the passing sand ships.
Since the Ming Dynasty, the inner and outer oceans in the sea area of Northern Jiangsu have been divided by the "Five Sands"; this is where the Yellow River used to enter the sea. Due to the accumulation of large amounts of sediment, all merchant ships going north must detour eastward to prevent the bottom of the ship. stranded.
A few days later, the Miaowan Water Camp stationed in Funing received a report that several unknown Yi boats were parked outside Wutiao Sands. This shocked the Miaowan Camp guerrillas, and he quickly sent people to report the situation in Huai'an City. While guarding the camp, he ordered his subordinate Qian Zong to sail out to sea to check.
As a result, when the CEO came to Wutiaosha, he was shocked. Comparing my big boat with other people's boats, it's like an ant meeting an elephant.
However, the officers and soldiers leading the Qing Dynasty are not afraid of foreigners at the moment. It doesn’t matter what big or small boats you have, just go to Guangzhou and wait. If they say they won’t let you in, they won’t let you in. You are very arrogant!
"Come closer! This group of barbarians is completely arrogant!"
"Sir, these four boats are terrifyingly big. Where should we stop?"
Mr. Qian pointed to the nearest three-masted sailboat and said, "That's the one!"
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