Chapter 755 Difficult conditions

Although Takahashi Minami's army usually trains very hard and performs first-class and dangerous tasks, the treatment in life is quite good. When he was stationed in Annan, all the rice he ate was supplied to Annan nobles.

Waiting for rice, the quality of this rice can be tasted as soon as Gaoqiao Nan enters it.

As soon as Gao Qiaonan tasted it, he knew it was old rice. He put down his bowl and chopsticks not because he thought the rice was not delicious, but because he thought of another question: "Village Chief Mou, I see that there is land reclamation outside your village.

There are many rice fields, how will the harvest be this year?"

In fact, Qian Tiandun had already asked this question to the village representative once before. Gao Qiaonan also heard it at the time, but now he wanted to ask it again - since this village took the initiative to host a reception, even sour fruits

The wine has been taken out, how can you use aged rice to cook rice?

Mou Qing responded honestly: "This village has a total of 700 acres of rice fields, and the total harvest last season was about 130,000 jins." In terms of yield, this level is indeed surprisingly low. The rice yield per mu on Hainan Island is

Generally, they weigh four to five hundred kilograms, almost two or three times as much as here.

"What about the new rice you harvested this year?" Takahashi Minami asked. Judging from the time, Shibazhi had already fled overseas when the rice was harvested, and it was unlikely that he would sneak back to exploit these immigrants, so Takahashi Minami only

I would like to find out where this year’s new rice is going.

"This..." Mou Qing probably didn't expect Gao Qiaonan to ask such a question, and thought he was dissatisfied with the treatment. He quickly confessed: "I don't dare to neglect you, but there is really no one in the village at this time.

New rice…”

"I'm asking you where the new rice went." Takahashi Minami frowned and interrupted the other party before he finished speaking: "Just answer whatever I ask you, and don't waste any more nonsense!"

Mou Qingzhan responded tremblingly: "The new rice... has been taken away by the nearby natives..."

"Are they the natives who come here every month to cause trouble?" Takahashi Minami continued to ask angrily.

"Yes..." Mou Qing couldn't figure out the purpose of Gao Qiaonan's question, so he could only carefully explain: "If we don't give it to them, the village will not be peaceful. The young people in the village are limited, and we can't compete with them..."

"Are they robbing them directly or exchanging them with something?" Takahashi Minami immediately asked the next question.

"They will exchange deer skins, medicinal materials and some game, but the value is not that high..."

"Is that forced buying and selling? Then you sell these things to Bengang and use them to buy old rice?" Gao Qiaonan has roughly sorted out the context of this matter.

Most of the indigenous tribes living in the mountains on Taiwan island practice slash-and-burn farming. Some of them are even inferior to the Limiao village on Hainan Island. Naturally, they will not grow rice in the plains. However, they can rely on their military superiority to

Coerce the Han immigrants to barter food to them. Of course, the passive party does not have the pricing power of the transaction, so what is exchanged for how much food is probably left to the indigenous people. If the Han immigrants do not

If they are willing to cooperate, then the indigenous people do not even need to take extreme measures such as attacking the village. They only need to continue to harass the outside of the village so that the villagers cannot cultivate the farmland outside the village normally, and they can bring down the village.

Although the food output in Fengrong Village is low, it is still barely self-sufficient. However, due to the coercion of the indigenous tribes, they can only passively accept the transaction conditions offered by the other party and sell the food they have worked so hard to grow at an extremely low price.

Then they took the items given by the natives to the merchants in Bengang to exchange for old rice. In this process, the villagers were first exploited by the indigenous people, and then they went to Bengang to exchange for grain and were exploited again by the grain merchants. No wonder this

The village will look so poor.

After clarifying the mystery of this matter, Gao Qiaonan calmly picked up his rice bowl and began to eat. These indigenous tribes who exploited Fengrong Village obviously would not give up such easy advantages easily. In the future, Haihan will be resettled

Immigrants to this place will inevitably face similar situations. And simply swallowing your anger will obviously not solve this problem. In the end, some more direct measures will need to be taken - such as asking the military to come forward. In the case of Taiwan Island

For such a natural environment, to carry out military operations here, there is really no team in the Haihan Militia that is more suitable than the special operations force under Qian Tiandun.

Compared with the opponents that the special operations forces have encountered in the past, the tribal armed forces on the island of Taiwan not only have more primitive weapons and equipment, but also have a large gap between their combat system and the real army. Although the two sides have not yet had real contact,

Neither Qian Tiandun nor Gao Qiaonan had much fear of the indigenous tribes on the island. The gap in combat effectiveness between the two sides could not be made up by one of them being more familiar with the fighting terrain.

After a simple meal, Gao Qiaonan asked his men to go to the village in teams to check the situation. He was not worried that the villagers here would do anything untoward to his men. After all, there were many people outside the village.

Even if someone in the army wanted to cause trouble, it was unlikely that they would choose this moment. Gao Qiaonan himself also led a squad and asked Mou Qing's grandson to take him to investigate the village.

Gao Qiaonan randomly selected a few families. After entering the house, he first looked at the kitchen and rice vats. Sure enough, each household only had a small amount of old rice. In the kitchen, except for fish, shrimps and crabs caught from the river, there was basically nothing to see.

As for the poultry and livestock that are commonly seen in ordinary farmers, they are actually rare things here. After asking Minami Takahashi, she found out that it is not that there are no livestock raised in this village, but almost all of them are sold after they are raised.

Food was being exchanged in Bengang. The stewed chicken that was brought to the table earlier was also an egg-laying hen that was killed ruthlessly - there were only two hens left in the village, and one was left for breeding.

Life is a problem, not to mention other conditions. The existing conditions for education and medical care are basically zero. The most literate person in the village only attended a private school for two years when he was young, and what little he learned has basically been completed.

I forgot about it. At present, the illiteracy rate in the village is over 90%. Only two families have relatives in Bengang, so they send their children to local private schools. A doctor who has no medical profession at all has a headache and a fever.

Based on experience, the villagers prepared some herbs and boiled water to deal with it. If they were lucky, they would recover. If they were not lucky, they would have to accept their fate. The nearest clinic from here has to go to Bengang, and the dozens of miles in between are for seriously ill people.

It is said to be an insurmountable obstacle.

Considering the medical and health conditions here and the people's knowledge level, the mortality rate is also quite high. When they first moved here from Bengang, there were more than 60 households with more than 300 people. But after a few years, the population not only

There is no increase, but a downward trend year by year. During this period, families did not move away from the local area. The decrease in population was almost all caused by deaths, of which at least more than 70% of the deaths were caused by various diseases. If this situation continues

The surrounding environment has not changed much. In ten or twenty years, this village may die naturally due to its small population.

The troubles caused by poverty don't stop there. Due to the poor conditions in Fengrong Village, other immigrant villages are unwilling to marry here. As time goes by, the rate of reproduction of offspring is gradually slowing down, which in turn contributes to the population growth.

A downward trend. And the decline in population will cause the above shortcomings to continue in a vicious cycle. Without external forces like Haihan to step in, Fengrong Village will have a hard time getting rid of its increasingly embarrassing situation.

After visiting several houses to determine the actual situation in the village, Gao Qiaonan returned to Mou Qing's residence and learned from him in detail the distribution of some nearby indigenous tribes. As the village representative said before Qian Tiandun, there are also

Some tribes are relatively friendly and are willing to conduct normal transactions and interactions with Han immigrants, but there are only one or two such tribes. The goodwill they release and the benefits they can bring to Fengrong Village are not enough to maintain this community.

Local peace. At least three indigenous tribes from the mountains require Fengrong Village to provide them with a certain amount of supplies every month. Although it is not an open robbery, in terms of the value of the goods they exchange, it is actually different from hard robbery.

Not big anymore.

With this information, Gao Qiaonan led his team back to the camp outside the village. After listening to his report, Qian Tiandun pondered for a while before asking: "Will these villagers be repulsive to immigrants?"

?”

Gaoqiao South Road: "I asked the village chief, and he does not object to more immigrants moving here. He believes that the biggest problem in Fengrong Village is that the population is too small. If the population is large enough, more land can be reclaimed.

land, and enough young people to protect the village from the intimidation of the indigenous tribes."

Qian Tiandun smiled and said: "He doesn't consider whether this place can afford to support the population if the population suddenly increases. When immigration starts, we will inevitably have to add money and food here."

Takahashi Minami didn't care about future immigration plans. He was still concerned about military issues. He bowed and asked: "General, should we continue to march inland?"

"Come in, why not?" Qian Tiandun said confidently: "Our trip this time is to collect as much information as possible about the surrounding environment, including the indigenous tribes. Those indigenous tribes are dozens of miles away.

We won’t be so timid as to stop here. But it’s getting dark today, so we’ll camp here and continue eastward tomorrow.”

Because Fengrong Village was discovered on the way, the original itinerary was delayed for half a day, so the destination for that day was only twenty miles away from the seaside camp where they set out. When Takahashi Nan came back, he also brought

We bought some vegetables sent by the villagers, so the troops had an extra vegetable soup for dinner, so they didn't have to chew on the hard marching rations.

Early the next morning, the troops broke camp and continued to advance. When passing by Fengrong Village, many villagers were still timidly watching the army at the entrance of the village that did not display any flags. Seeing that these soldiers carrying muskets did not enter.

The villagers heaved a long sigh of relief at the intention of the village. To be honest, if this army planned to make a fortune in Fengrong Village, the people in the village could only obey obediently and let the other side take what they wanted.

Qian Tiandun asked Gao Qiaonan to spend two taels of silver to find two bold young men from the village to serve as guides. However, even if special guides were hired, the troop's advance did not speed up. Because this time they went deep into the interior.

Lu's actions were not simply marching or attacking hostile targets, but more importantly, completing the investigation of the areas along the Zhuoshui River and revising the originally used maps. This involved a large amount of surveying, mapping and hydrological recording work, and every day

After advancing one or two miles, the team will stop to complete the surveying and mapping work. At the end of the day, a march of about twenty miles is considered a good speed.

Going east from Fengrong Village, there were no other Han villages. However, on the third day of march, we came to a village of the Pingpu tribe. With the help of two guides, the indigenous residents of this tribe came to the village with vigilance.

With his eyes, he conducted a simple transaction with the troops led by Qian Tiandun - in fact, he bartered some personal belongings carried by the soldiers, such as copper whistles, horn combs, cowhide belts, knives, etc.

These natives received clean well water and food made from millet.

Qian Tiandun's troops actually did not lack supplies. When they set out, the soldiers carried enough dry food for a ten-day march. They only needed to add drinking water on the way. In fact, the main purpose of such a transaction was to release goodwill and avoid these indigenous people.

Overreaction to sudden outsiders can lead to unnecessary conflicts.

These Pingpu natives are a relatively easy ethnic group to communicate with, and they were also a minority group with a higher degree of Chineseization in their original history. They are indeed very interested in these exquisite gadgets provided by strangers.

But at the same time, they also maintained a high level of vigilance and refused to allow the Hai Han militia to enter their village. This made Qian Tiandun a little disappointed. He also wanted to see the difference between this village and the Han village. But only from

From a distance, the houses of this indigenous tribe seem worse than the adobe houses in Fengrong Village. They are all small houses with bamboo and wood structures. The floors are raised off the ground to prevent moisture. The structure is a bit like Hainan Island.

The boat-shaped house of the Li people above. If there is a typhoon, it is not difficult to imagine that this simple shack will be blown to pieces.

Although they were not allowed to visit this tribe, the goodwill released by Haihan still played a certain role. The tribal elders here allowed the Haihan militia to continue marching eastward through their sphere of influence. But before the militia set out, the locals still

They were given a special warning: One day's journey eastward from here, they would enter the territory of the mountain tribes, and the residents there would not be able to communicate with them as easily as they did.
Chapter completed!