"Let's go, I remember I made an agreement with you. During the Chinese New Year, I will come to your place to eat meat and eat dumplings stuffed with white flour and meat. Are they available now?" Li Ke waved his hand and smiled freely. He took the lead and walked forward.
"Yes, yes! We can all live a good life now!" the village chief here said quickly.
"Hahaha, let's go and have a look." Li Ke was very happy. He believed that the village chief here was not lying, because walking along the way, he could see that the land in the village had been compacted and covered with river sand, so that even when it rained, there would be no rain. It can get very muddy.
Of course, Li Ke didn't have to worry about horses. Surrounded by the villagers, Li Ke walked towards the village. As he walked, Li Ke could see that the houses in these villages had also been preliminary planned.
There is a certain distance between each house, and in many cases there are very neat rows of houses.
Li Ke still had some impressions of this place. He directly recognized the house in Liu Laosan's house. This was very exciting for Liu Laosan and others.
But when Li Ke came over, he happened to see Liu Laosan's wife hurriedly walking over from a distance with a large piece of pork in her hand.
Liu Laosan's mother-in-law was startled when she suddenly saw Li Ke, and was at a loss for a moment.
"What's going on?" Li Ke asked with a smile, pointing to the pork in Mrs. Liu's hand.
"This..." Liu Laosan stuttered a little and didn't say anything for a while.
The village chief next to him was a little anxious: "Liu Laosan, what's going on with you? Don't you have any meat at home? Didn't your family kill a pig?"
The village chief didn't have any other intentions, but he was afraid that His Highness would think they were not doing well and start worrying about them again. They have truly gone through unprecedented times and cannot let His Highness worry anymore.
There are so many things going on in the Tang Dynasty, how could His Highness always be bothered by them.
"Don't worry, don't worry, Liu Laosan, just say it. It'll be okay." Li Ke said with a smile.
"Well... Your Highness, I saw you coming, so I asked my mother-in-law to go to Lao Qi's house to buy some pork. Lao Qi's house just killed the New Year pig the day before yesterday, and there is still fresh meat at home. The meat at my house has been transformed into pigs. It’s too oily, so we only have marinated pork. Fresh pork is better for dumplings,” Liu Laosan said sheepishly.
"Your Highness is like this. This meat belongs to my family. The third child didn't lie. He just wanted you to eat fresh meat, but this meat is my family's treat for you to eat." Among the crowd, a man who came later said loudly He spoke.
"Lao Qi, you fart! I paid for it! Who said that your family invited His Highness to come to my house for dinner." Upon hearing this, Liu Lao San's mother-in-law quit and even subconsciously uttered curse words.
"I don't want it!" the old seventh man said loudly.
"I gave it and threw it under your house!" Mrs. Liu Laosan said angrily.
"Don't you tell me that you are treating His Highness to a meal? If you treat His Highness to a meal, if I, the seventh one, accept money, wouldn't I be stabbed in the spine? Even if the seventh one dies, I will not be able to see my ancestors!" A manly joke called Lao Qi He rubbed his neck and spoke loudly with a red face.
"Okay, okay, please stop arguing. His Highness is still here. Isn't it embarrassing enough?" The village chief was a little dumbfounded. You guys are really promising, and you don't care about the occasion.
"Hahaha, it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter, it's all true temperament. What does this mean? It means that I have a high status in your eyes! Haha! In this way, you two should stop fighting. I will just be a freebie today. Give everyone in your village a meal."
"In this way, how about treating this meat as being produced by everyone in your village together, and then each household can share a little bit?" Li Ke said with a loud smile.
"Okay, Your Highness, let's go out together." The other people around were immediately happy and agreed directly.
This time Liu Laosan and Lao Qi couldn't object, so they naturally agreed.
"In that case, I'll go to Liu Laosan's house for dinner. Didn't I promise him before that I would have a meal of white flour and meat dumplings here during the Chinese New Year? The weather is not bad today. After dinner, we can chat in the yard together. , I have something to do and I have to go back in the afternoon, okay?" Li Ke said with a smile.
"Okay!" There were loud cheers from all around, "My third daughter-in-law, what are you still doing? Hurry back and cook, let's go and help." Several old sisters-in-law over there pulled the third daughter-in-law Liu and her daughter-in-law. Son walked towards his home.
Li Ke followed Liu Laosan and the others to Liu Laosan's house again. Liu Laosan's wife was making dumplings, and Li Ke simply smiled and chatted with everyone in the yard.
Soon, the huge courtyard of Liu Laosan's house was filled with people, and even some children climbed up the surrounding walls and roofs.
Li Ke didn't care, he just smiled and asked everyone to pay attention to safety, and then started chatting with everyone.
The things they talked about were very simple. They were familiar to common people and closely related to their lives, such as some of the things in their homes.
Every household bought an iron pot. This group of refugees was the first to start working in state-owned commercial banks, and their monthly wages increased the most. Therefore, this group of people can be regarded as the first batch of workers in the Tang Dynasty.
The transition from being a refugee to what we are today is a major opportunity for them.
While chatting with them, Li Ke learned that each of these people's households was not allocated much land, with an average of about ten acres per household. This is because the cultivated land near Chang'an itself is in very short supply, and most of the refugees like them are allocated to them from the wasteland in the hands of the government.
The excess land belongs to other surrounding people. If they want to be allocated a hundred acres of land, they can only move further away.
But these refugees themselves had very high monthly incomes and were naturally unwilling to migrate, so they accepted this amount of farmland.
However, this amount of farmland is enough for them. Most of them plant a few acres of wheat for their own consumption, and then plant two acres of alfalfa to raise pigs, chickens, ducks and other livestock.
The current wheat production, seven or eight acres of fertile land, is basically enough to feed a family for a year. Not to mention there are still two seasons here.
Being able to raise poultry and livestock also means that every household has no shortage of meat.
Just like Liu Laosan's family, they kill two pigs, then refine the oil and put it in the side room, which is enough to eat until next winter when they kill the New Year pigs.
This is a huge improvement over the past.
Moreover, every household bought a lot of thick linen, and you can also buy processed wool for winter clothes. In short, these first batch of workers near Chang'an can basically keep up with the farmers in wealthy areas when Li Ke was a child in about 90 years ago. People live.
