The shaking of the ground and walls beneath him, as well as the sound of sea water lapping, and the stench of feces, urine and rot, woke Chen Zhengwei from his sleep.
"What's going on?" Chen Zhengwei covered his nose and opened his eyes to look around, only to see that he was in a dark space.
A faint light shone through the cracks in the wood above his head, allowing him to take stock of his surroundings.
The space is about 20 meters wide and 100 meters long, but hundreds of people are imprisoned.
Wearing dirty coarse clothes, with disheveled or braided hair, they were all crowded together.
"Is this on a ship?" Chen Zhengwei figured out where he was after a moment.
Then countless memories poured out in his mind, like a movie, with images constantly flowing in his mind.
"This is... a labor immigration ship!" With the memory in his mind, Chen Zhengwei suddenly understood where he was.
This is an immigrant ship heading from eastern Guangdong to San Francisco in the United States. The ship is full of young people in their teens and twenties, and I am one of them.
But he is different from others. Others go to gold panning alone to make money, but he drags his family with him to escape the disaster.
Thinking of this, Chen Zhengwei glanced at the side and saw a dirty half-year-old child huddled next to him, still sleeping.
He was still holding a small package tightly in his arms.
"Fuck! How the hell did I get through it?" Chen Zhengwei couldn't help but curse.
"What are you arguing about? If you don't have the strength, why not just lie down!" A young man not far away was alarmed by his curse and glared at him angrily.
Everyone else around was watching the excitement feebly. After all, it had been a month since we had been on this journey. Hundreds of people were huddled in this cabin, and those who were still alive were half dead!
Not to mention the dead, more than thirty people have died one after another these days, and they have all been thrown into the sea.
"It's none of your business? What are you looking at?" Chen Zhengwei looked fierce, and he was very irritable.
He stretched out his hand and touched his calf. There was a small knife hidden there for self-defense before boarding the ship. In order to bring this knife on board, the predecessor spent a lot of effort.
This ferocious energy shocked everyone else.
After all, for the past month, Chen Zhengwei had been huddled in a corner with his half-grown child, silently. No one expected that he would suddenly explode.
"I'm not as knowledgeable as you!" The young man didn't want to cause trouble, so he snorted.
"Okay, we are all in the same boat. These days are difficult, but we are almost there!" said an older man next to him.
Chen Zhengwei was too lazy to pay attention to them and continued to sort through his memories.
The Qing Dynasty...the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom...what a shitty time period...San Francisco...isn't it San Francisco?
Chen Zhengwei sorted through his memories. His name is now Chen Zhengwei. His hometown is in Xinning County, Taishan, eastern Guangdong. He originally had a father, but he was beaten to death.
His own house was also robbed, and then in a rage, his predecessor stabbed several people to death in the dark with a knife, then ran away with his younger brothers and sisters, hiding here and there for six or seven days, and then boarded the boat.
There are two types of people on this ship. One is to buy a ticket, which costs 60 Yingyang.
The other way is to sign an agreement and pay it back after arrival. However, this kind of money has to be repaid, and you need to pay back one hundred yingyang or US dollars.
It is said that working in the New World can earn more than a hundred dollars a year, and the money can be paid off in a year at most.
After selling your life for a few years, you can go home, buy a few acres of land, and marry a wife.
Chen Zhengwei is the latter, but he is not alone, he also has a younger brother and a younger sister.
In other words, he owed $300 from the moment he stepped on the boat.
Now his brother is with him, and his sister is in another cabin, where there are women.
The situation in that cabin was different from the situation here. Some of them went to find relatives, or were simply sold to the New World.
"Isn't this just a fucking piglet?" Chen Zhengwei squeezed out a voice from between his teeth.
And he's still a piggy who owes a lot of money.
"Forget it, we'll figure it out when we get to the shore."
Although he thought so, the cabin was stuffy, hot and smelly. Chen Zhengwei doubted whether he would survive to get off the ship if this continued.
Fortunately, not long after, the cabin was opened, and someone shouted: "The gambling game is on, is there anyone playing?"
Most of the others pretended not to hear, but Chen Zhengwei stood up and kicked his brother awake, stood up and said, "I'm playing!"
There will be gambling games on this ship, where you can play Pai Gow and dice. This is also the crew's method of searching for these piglets.
It is impossible to win. Those who go up there are almost always saddled with debts, and then they will sell you to the mines or factories when they reach the shore.
But in Chen Zhengwei's situation, he doesn't have to worry about having too many debts, and he doesn't have to worry about having too many lice.
The most important thing is that you can get some air when you go up there, and you can also stutter.
It's much better than eating pig food here every day.
"Hey, there are new faces today!" Two crew members stood above the cabin. They were both dressed in coarse cloth, with braids wrapped around their heads, dark skin, and daggers on their bodies.
Climbing up from the cabin is the deck, and the wooden deck creaks when he steps on it. Chen Zhengwei feels the sea breeze blowing on his body, takes a breath of fresh air full of ocean flavor, and finally feels like he is alive.
If I stay down there any longer, I will suffocate myself to death.
Scanning the surroundings, he saw that this was a wooden sailboat with more than a dozen sturdy crew members busy, walking on the swaying deck as if they were on the ground.
And everyone is very capable and a bit ferocious. Maybe in addition to giving away piglets, they may also make guest appearances as pirates or something.
Chen Zhengwei thought about it in his mind and decided to be more honest these days.
Then a half-year-old child of eight or nine years old climbed up with a package in his arms and two dirty broken bowls in his hands. He pulled Chen Zhengwei's clothes with some anxiety.
This is one of the two trolls, Chen Zhengwu.
"Brother, where are we going?"
"Follow me honestly!"
"Brother, get some food." Chen Zhengwei patted the crew member next to him.
"Wait on the side!" The crew members next to them didn't care. They were gambling on the ship and earned money from these "piglets" who wanted to come up to breathe and beg for food.
Of course, Cantonese people love gambling, and some are simply addicted to gambling.
After a while, Chen Zhengwei was sitting in the sailor's cabin with a dirty hard cake in his mouth.
Next to him, Chen Zhengwu was looking expectantly at the cake in Chen Zhengwei's mouth, and his saliva was almost drooling.
However, Chen Zhengwei didn't pay attention at all, he was completely stunned.
When he held the chips, a panel appeared in front of him.
Chen Zhengwei
male
18 years old
Strength: 0.8 (1.2)
Flexible: 0.7 (0.9)
Constitution: 0.8 (1.1)
Skills: Sanda LV2, English LV0.
In addition to this, there is a lottery wheel on the panel.
Among these data, Chen Zhengwei estimates that the first one is his current physical condition, and the brackets are his original data.
After all, being bumpy in the boat for so long cost me almost half my life.
The body data of a normal adult male should be about 1.
As for the skills, it's easy to understand. That Sanda LV2 is the Sanda I learned for six years in my previous life.
As for English... is your English level so low? Why? I graduated from college, and after studying for ten years, I am only LV0?
Is this system blind?
Chen Zhengwei didn't think about it for too long when someone next to him shouted: "Do you want to choose?"
This voice pulled Chen Zhengwei's mind away from the panel and put it on the table in front of him.
Everyone played the Bean Stall, grabbing a handful of beans and covering them with bowls, and then everyone guessed 1 to 4.
Then use a small stick to remove the beans inside four at a time to see how many are left at the end.
While Chen Zhengwei was playing with them, he was thinking about the panel in his mind. One draw costs fifty yuan, and only ten draws in a row will guarantee attribute points or skill points.
An ordinary Chinese worker can earn more than 100 yuan a year, and it would take three to four years to save a ten-year salary without eating or drinking.
Fortunately, there is no monitoring in this era. Apart from the system panel, this is the only good news.
The premise is that you make it ashore alive.
Chen Zhengwu next to him was like a puppy begging for food, almost starry-eyed, but Chen Zhengwei didn't even look at him and chewed up the piece of hard biscuit bit by bit and swallowed it.
Until the end, there were only two pieces of hard biscuits a little larger than fingernails left, and they were handed to Chen Zhengwu casually.
Chen Zhengwei lost more than ten yuan that day and returned to the cabin.
He doesn't care. Is there any difference between owing three hundred and owing five hundred?
But returning to the cabin from above made him even more uncomfortable. Hundreds of people were eating and drinking in the cabin. The smell of 82-year-old shit rushed directly into his nose and almost knocked him out.
He suddenly remembered something.
I could have endured the darkness if I had not seen the light.
Chen Zhengwei would go up to lose every day and inquire about the situation with the crew. Just as he thought, these people would be sold to others when they got ashore and then sent to the mine.
Chen Zhengwei still thought too much. Only those who bought a ticket to board the ship would enter the factory.
And their kind will be sold directly to the mines.
In addition, there is Chinatown in San Francisco, where more than 40,000 Chinese live.
This kind of losing money every day didn't last long.
On the fourth day, the ship docked.
Chen Zhengwei's physical condition has recovered a lot these days thanks to eating and drinking while losing money every day in the sailor cabin.
After taking a look at the panel, the data at this time is:
Strength: 1 (1.2)
Flexible: 0.8 (0.9)
Constitution: 1 (1.1)
Skills: Sanda LV2, English LV0.
…
"Brother!" Chen Zhengwei stood on the deck and saw a short, equally dirty little girl pushing through the crowd and rushing to his side.
Chen Zhengwei had no feelings for these two trolls, but when he saw the joy and peace of mind of his loved ones in each other's eyes, he thought for a while and said nothing.
He just said: "Take Zhengwu and follow me!"
The younger sister is Chen Qiaoniang, 11 years old, and the younger brother Chen Zhengwu is 9 years old.
Except for Chen Qiaoniang, there were only a dozen women among the hundreds of men on this boat.
A group of people were received with great enthusiasm even before they got off the boat.
Behind the barbed wire fence not far from the pier, many white people were holding signs and yelling:
"You bitch, get back!"
"Fuck you!"
"Clean the insects, coolies, go back!"
"Go back! Otherwise I'll kill you!"
"It seems that the Chinese have stolen a lot of people's jobs here!" Chen Zhengwei looked over there with interest. From the look of those people's clothes, they were workers at the bottom of society.
And these people on the same boat as him were almost uneducated and knew nothing but hard labor.
I came here across half the world just to work and make money and then go home and be a rich man.
"Brother, what are they talking about?" Chen Qiaoniang asked in a low voice, pulling on the hem of Chen Zhengwei's clothes.
Except for Chen Zhengwei, everyone else could not understand what those people were shouting, but they could also see their hostility.
"It's just a bunch of rubbish!" Chen Zhengwei said casually.
After staying on the boat for so long, when he reached the shore, he felt that the earth was shaking.
Immigration officers checked everyone’s documents and released them.
Chen Zhengwei and others followed the flow of people to one side. Chen Qiaoniang held Chen Zhengwu with one hand and the back of Chen Zhengwei's clothes with the other hand, for fear of getting lost.
Once here, these people split into two parts.
Some people bought boat tickets, and these people are completely free.
There was another group of people like Chen Zhengwei who signed the agreement and owed the ship money. There were more than a hundred people.
These people were taken aside, and a middle-aged man in a dress and top hat stood on a box, with two men next to him.
"Congratulations on coming to San Francisco. I am your new boss, Yu Chong!" the middle-aged man said to them directly standing on a box.
"Next, I will arrange jobs for you, and 90% of your monthly income will be given directly to me until the money you owe is paid off!"
"You work hard and don't cause trouble. When the time comes, you can return to your hometown with a sum of money!"
What Yu Chong said was very simple, and everyone understood the truth.
Especially these people are not familiar with the place here, they don't even understand the language, they have nowhere to run if they want, and they can't disobey.
Then his two men took the list and compared it.
Chen Zhengwei looked at the other person and realized that he must be the second-rate dealer the crew member mentioned.
He bought the debts of these men from the captains and sold them to the mines.
When Chen Zhengwei saw Yu Chong standing aside after finishing speaking, he walked up to Yu Chong and smiled and said: "Boss Yu, I came here across half the world not to mine!"
When Yu Chong heard this, he looked at Chen Zhengwei with a hint of displeasure on his face.
"There are so many ways to make money... I will mortgage my brothers and sisters with you, and you will help me take care of them first. I will redeem them within a month! What do you think?"
"It's only a few hundred yuan. Boss Yu definitely doesn't care about this risk. Many friends and many paths, what do you think, Boss Yu?" When Chen Zhengwei spoke, there was a fierce light in his eyes.
There is no surveillance in this era. As long as you are brave, it is still easy to make money.
If Yu Chong disagrees, then he is deliberately making things difficult for himself. If he insists on selling himself into the mine, he is trying to harm himself.
If he wanted to harm himself, he couldn't blame himself for being ruthless.
At most, I'll find an opportunity to kill him and his men, and then run away.
Yu Chong saw Chen Zhengwei's eyes and realized that he was a desperado.
After taking a deep look at Chen Zhengwei, he asked: "What is your name? Where do you come from?"
"Chen Zhengwei, from Taishan!"
"Taishan... there is a place that might be suitable for you!"
