The interview process was actually very fast. Considering that most of the refugees were illiterate, Zhao Xin and Liu Sheng were just going through the motions. The person who checked the interview was Kanbei Katayama.
Zhao Xin's main purpose of sitting here is to let these refugees know whose food you are eating.
That is to say, there are not many people here in Beihai Town now, so he has the leisure to do this; in the future, if there are tens of thousands of people, except for one or two departments that need to be personally controlled by Zhao Xin, the rest will have to be delegated.
The fifty people recruited this time will be trained as a training team. The security police recruited later will be led by these fifty people, and a large part of them will be assigned to Yubari, Sapporo and Otaru in Ezo.
port.
Katayama Kanbei knew that this was the first time that he had shown his ability in front of Zhao Xin, so he used his many years of experience in doing things in the town to see people, and he was very energetic and carefully selected.
Zhao Xin followed the contents of some psychological analysis books he had read before and observed these people through micro-expressions. In fact, when he usually talked to people like Chen Qingsong, he would also observe their micro-expressions.
For example, it is actually very difficult for people to remember all the details of a period of time. Usually when people recall the details of that period of time, they will repeatedly correct themselves and straighten out their thoughts; then in this process, the speaker will be a little stumped.
Knocking.
But liars don't do this at all. They have already imagined the hypothetical scenario in their minds, and they will speak it very fluently; and they will often raise their tone and repeat their lies.
Another most obvious characteristic is that liars touch their noses unconsciously.
In addition, there are also tone of voice, smile, eyes, etc.
For example, when a person says something, if he blinks rapidly, it means that he must be hiding something.
Fortunately, no one has studied this in this era. The ancients said that to see if a person has problems, they usually look at the eyes first.
"Mencius" said, "There is nothing better than the eyes", which can be regarded as the originator of modern micro-expression psychoanalysis.
Yajiro, who was ranked in the first group of applicants, passed the first step of the interview. Afterwards, Katayama would go to the camp to inquire about his family situation.
However, according to Yajiro himself, his eldest brother Yajiro is currently recruited to the Security Department to participate in training. Katayama feels that this young man is not a big problem.
This interview with the security police took half a day. In the end, 50 people were selected from more than 300 adult men. These people will receive training from Wang Yuanfang and the others in a few days together with the previous 50 people.
After Zhao Xin finished this matter, he was about to prepare for his second trip south to Sendai Domain. At this time, the ten-day period agreed between him and Katsuyama Denzo had passed.
On March 19, the forty-ninth year of Qianlong's reign (1784), the Leishen set sail again after two days of preparation.
The people on board this time include Zhao Xin, Liu Sheng, Ding Guofeng, Wu Siyu, Deng Fei, Zhang Bo, Sheng Haizhou, Jiuzang, Pingtai, Lu Shoushan, thirty "old" sailors from the last trip, and two newly recruited sailors.
ten people.
Zhang Bo was very excited when he went to sea for the first time, but he also became the most seasick. An hour after the Thor sailed on the sea, he started to get seasick.
Liu Sheng found seasickness medicine for Zhang Bo and asked him to go to the cabin to rest. The sea was calm at the moment, but when we reached the Tsugaru Strait, the turbulence would be even worse.
In fact, Zhao Xin is also seasick, but every time Zhao Xin goes to sea, he will take medicines such as Chengxuning, and then he will find a place to close his eyes and rest.
On March 21st, the Thor arrived off the coast of Ishinomaki Port.
Katsuyama Denzo, who had been waiting anxiously for a long time, finally felt relieved after receiving the news from his subordinates.
Because the Thor arrived two days late, Katsuyama Denzo was afraid that the four thousand refugees who had already gathered would fall into his hands. The Sendai clan would not come forward in this matter.
The first thing dispatched from Ishinomaki Port were two Senshi "Benzai Ships".
In the Edo period, the so-called Sengoku ship did not have any specific ship type. As long as it could carry one thousand stone meters, it could be called a Sengoku ship. Therefore, the Sengoku ship became synonymous with large return ships.
As for the Benzai ship, it is the most popular mainstream merchant ship in this era. It is 20 meters long. There is a mainsail at the amidships and a small sail at the bow. The mainsail post can be lowered when berthed. In order to maintain the stability of the ship.
After the refugees transported on the ship boarded the Thor, the two hundred tons of rice previously ordered by Katsuyama Denmi and Murataya's boss were hoisted onto the Benzai ship using the ship's crane installed on the Thor.
Denzo Katsuyama, who originally thought it would take a day to ship rice, was so surprised that he was speechless when he saw the hoisting machine on the Thor easily lifting dozens of tons of rice onto his ship at one time.
"These people have too many weird things!" Denzo Katsuyama and the boss of Murataya looked at each other, and they both saw the shock in each other's eyes.
Especially when Katsuyama Denzo was inspecting the goods, he was overjoyed to see that the rice provided by Zhao Xin was all polished rice.
In the Edo period, whether rice in tsutsubo or other types of packaging was distributed on the market, it was calculated as brown rice, that is, rice that has not been shelled. Who dares to say that rice bran is not food in these days? Farmers I have to fight hard to find him.
In this era, most islanders ate brown rice on a daily basis, and only rich merchants and generals and daimyo could eat polished rice. Therefore, many nobles in Edo City suffered from beriberi.
Among the nobles who died of beriberi, the most famous was Tokugawa Iemo, the 14th shogun of the Tokugawa shogunate. He died of beriberi at the age of 21, leaving behind a mess.
The 200 tons of rice transported by the Thor this time amounted to just over 1,500 koku. This small amount of rice flowed into the Sendai Domain, which was 2 million koku high, and could not even make a splash.
Now in the second year of the Tenmei Famine, all daimyo territories in the Mutsu region have implemented a "frugal order", which includes reducing three meals a day, stopping entertainment activities and all food-related commercial production such as sake manufacturing. To put it simply, we have entered a period of very strict rationing.
For the Sendai Domain, at least 40,000 to 50,000 俵 (two 俵 and one stone) of food are needed in the territory a year to meet the minimum ration, which is the level of the people under their command who will not starve to death. In addition, they must try their best to go to Edo Transport food.
As for the refugees in the territory, sorry, these people are not counted as territorial residents.
After the implementation of the "Frugality Order", many shops engaged in confectionery making and brewing have closed down. As for the two owners of Denzo Katsuyama and Murataya...unfortunately, one is brewing wine and the other is making wagashi.
If it weren't for the fact that they still had semicolons in Edo and Osaka, they would have closed down a long time ago.
In fact, the Sendai clan elders were a little tempted after they learned that Katsuyama Denzo had ordered a batch of rice. However, out of caution, they still planned to see the quality of the first batch of grain before making a decision.
As for why we are concerned about this mere 200 tons of rice, we have to start with the matter of grain outsourcing.
For example, in the Echigo area, which was less covered by volcanic ash and had relatively more food income, the excess food was bought by the feudal lords of the shogunate. Daimyos like the Date family could not buy much at all, and the price was expensive.
to death.
The reason is very simple. The Tokugawa family is eager to take advantage of your illness to kill you. It is best to let the Date family be completely destroyed.
But even a close shogunate like the Shirakawa Domain only transferred 4,000 taru of grain from Echigo, and bought 6,000 taru at a high price from its relative, the Aizu Domain; at the same time, the annual tribute tax rate in the territory had to be adjusted.
Increase to 100%.
Under such circumstances, as soon as the Sendai clan elders heard that Tang Yi (because they discovered that Zhao Xin and the others claimed to be Tang people, but were not from the Qing Dynasty, they gave Zhao Xin and the others the strange name of "Tang Yi") were selling
When a stone of rice is less than one tael of gold, it would be strange not to think about it.
As soon as the captain Benzai docked at the port, Ishinomaki couldn't wait to order his men to board the ship to inspect the rice.
After his subordinates checked a dozen bags of rice on the ship, they excitedly told Ishinomaki that the quality of the rice was very good. There was no stale rice, and they were all polished rice that had been shelled.
Ishinomaki was very surprised when he heard this. Now there are idiots selling polished rice for less than one or two gold per stone!
He immediately ordered people to take some samples and sent Pegasus to report to the elders in Qingye City.
Looking at the small handful of polished rice in his hand, Ishinomaki was tempted and wanted to try this business.
So, he asked the sailors on the ship to send a message to Katsuyama to buy two thousand shi of rice for himself; he planned to smuggle the two thousand shi of rice to Shirakawa Domain.
When Zhao Xin heard Katsuyama Denzo's request, he shook his head repeatedly and said that Ishinomaki's faith was too small. He told Katsuyama Denzo that now the entire eastern part of the island country is short of food, and the amount you bought can't even touch the tip of your little finger.
It doesn't even count. If you want to do it, you might as well make it big and buy 5,000 tons at a time. The total is only more than 3,000 taels of gold.
"You have to know that the Qing Dynasty now implements a policy that grain is not allowed to go abroad. Apart from me, only the Dutch in Nagasaki can transport grain from the south. But when the grain reaches the port of Nagasaki, you people will not be able to get it.
"
Katsuyama Denzo thought about it and felt that this was also the case. But what Zhao Xin said next moved him even more.
"Sir Katsuyama, do you need sugar here?"
"Oh? Mr. Zhao also has something as good as sugar? How much can you provide?" Denami Katsuyama's eyes lit up.
Zhao Xin smiled slightly: "I will have as much as you want. I think Mr. Shengshan is a good person, so I will give you a way to make a fortune..."
Katsuyama Denzo's throat felt tight at this moment, and he couldn't help but swallow a few times, waiting for Zhao Xin's next words.
Zhao Xin stared into Denzo Katsuyama's eyes and said, "Do you want to become the largest sugar merchant in the island country?"
At this moment, Katsuyama Denzo's whole body was filled with chills, and he felt as if a big gold brick was going to fall from the sky and hit him. He looked around and saw that the boss of Murataya was still there watching the rice being loaded onto the ship, so he quickly asked in a low voice
: "Just provide me with one person? Then he..."
When Zhao Xin saw the other party turning his head and gesturing with his chin to the owner of the village house not far away, Zhao Xin said with a smile: "I still have a lot of silk."
These words were like a bolt from the blue, leaving Katsuyama Denzo stunned.