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Section 30 Go to Shilu

 Section 30 Heading to Shilu

"Changhua is famous for raising sheep." Xiong Buyou knows Hainan's famous food very well, "It's as famous as the Lingao suckling pig." He clicked his mouth and looked greedily at the little goat that was eating the bushes.

There are many sand dunes along the coast of Changhua, dense shrubs, and many natural herbs and herbs. The plants are rich in minerals and salts. The famous Changhua sheep grew up eating such natural feed, and you can imagine the taste.

"Why don't you cut one end and eat it?" Huang Claw was already eager to try.

"It looks like they are all raised by farmers. If you can't beat them well, just buy one if you want to eat them."

"Speaking loudly, who knows how to slaughter a sheep?"

"It's easy to kill a sheep." Huang Zhao said confidently, "I've taken care of hares before."

Everyone discussed whether the slaughtering experience between hare and goat could be shared all the way to the gate of Changhua County. The official name of Changhua County is Changhua Qianhusuo City. From this name, everyone also knows that the county government is just

They just borrowed a place to work. The Ming army is the real master of this city.

The city is not big, about the same size as Lingao. It looks like the city wall is three meters high. The whole body is covered with bricks. The Ming Dynasty's urban defense construction is still very good in terms of hardware. It is not so good in terms of software: the city gate is open, and there is nothing except

Two figures who could be regarded as government officials or sentinels were sitting there without any precautions.

Xiong Buyou looked up and saw that the name of this door was: "Zhenhai". He smiled and said to everyone: "This door is really suitable for the occasion. It is here to welcome us."

With a few coins given to the gatekeeper, a group of people entered the city smoothly. The city was even more deserted than Lingao. There were only more than 600 households in Changhua County, half of which were military households. There were not even 200 households in the county. The so-called

The county seat is just a large village for these farmers who work under the title of military personnel. Naturally, there is no business. There is only a blacksmith shop for repairing farm tools and two grocery stores. Although everyone already knows Hainan from Lingao.

What is the general appearance of urban commerce? However, seeing such a depressed county, I am still not interested.

"It's so unfair." Ye Yuming muttered to herself.

"?" Others wondered.

"How come time travelers can easily earn hundreds of thousands of silver from a county? We - we -" He pointed to the streets of Changhua County filled with dust and garbage, "This place

Not even a hundred copper coins!"

The poker-faced Fang Jinghan said: "This place makes me feel like watching a Western movie." There was actually a tape recorder in his luggage, which he said he was going to use for field research.

Xiong Buyou tried to communicate with the locals, but found that his language skills were completely useless. What he spoke here was neither the Hainanese dialect of the Cantonese family, nor the Minnan dialect spoken by the people in Shegeng, Fujian, nor the Lingao dialect he was best at.

A rather strange dialect.

"This is military dialect!" Fang Jinghan understood after listening for a while, "The language in Changhua is very complex, and one of the major dialects is military dialect."

So the task of communication was given to him, but Fang Jinghan could only roughly understand what the other party meant, and could not speak. He could only make gestures when communicating.

Finally, with the guidance of local people, they finally found a fairly large shop on the county street. It was a warehouse, and its brand name was Guangzhou.

What kind of business do Guangzhou merchants do here? Xiong Buyou went to the counter and asked about it. The shopkeeper was a genuine Cantonese with a surname of Qian. He was suffering from being alone in this barren town and couldn't even find anyone to talk to.

Suddenly, a group of strange vendors who could speak Cantonese came, and they immediately became energetic. They chatted with everyone, and asked a boy to bring herbal tea. Everyone was getting hot after walking, so they stopped to inquire about the news.

It turns out that this warehouse specializes in purchasing local saponins, medicinal materials and goats. Many big households in Guangzhou like the sheep here. Seeing that the business is good, the boss sends people to buy them here.

Xiong Buyou pretended to be a small vendor who came to Changhua for the first time and was going to Li District to sell goods. He asked how the situation was here.

Shopkeeper Qian said that it was quite peaceful here. Pirates rarely came to Changhua. When they came, they only fetched some water from the shore, grabbed a few sheep and so on. The paddy fields around the county town belong to Qianhusuo, although Qianhusuo is in dilapidated condition.

, at any rate, they could raise a team of two to three hundred people, so the pirates did not come near the county town.

As for Li District, Shopkeeper Qian said that the terrain is too rugged, with many mountains and rocks, and there are many diseases. Most people are not willing to go to Li District. Li people go to the city in groups every half a month to sell some local products. It has to be done anyway.

It's quite peaceful. I haven't heard of any robberies and killings of Han traders.

Shopkeeper Qian curiously asked them where they came from. Hearing that they came from Lingao, the shopkeeper didn't show much surprise - this allowed the time travelers to fully understand the slow speed of message transmission in the past. They were making trouble in Lingao

They were so prosperous that they knew nothing about Changhua, which was less than 200 kilometers away. Later they learned that Shopkeeper Qian’s boss only sent a ship from Guangzhou to Changhua once every six months.

Shopkeeper Qian's eyes widened when he saw the salt, sugar, sewing needles, shochu and other hardware and groceries brought out by the traveler. Enjoyable items such as sugar and shochu had been out of stock locally for a long time. He immediately asked to buy them.

In exchange for dozens of kilograms of sugar and soju, he used hook knives and iron farm tools that the Li people liked.

The time traveler took the opportunity to ask him to introduce a guide, and Shopkeeper Qian readily agreed.

"This is easy, I'll find someone for you."

After achieving their goal, the exploration team returned to the Zhenhai to report the situation. Another batch of commodities for trade was unloaded on the ship.

Early the next morning, the fleet set sail to continue their journey,

The exploration team headed by Cui Yunhong had breakfast in the morning, brought equipment and goods, and went to the riverside to meet the guide. The guide hired by Shopkeeper Qian was a clerk from his warehouse. Although Li people are not life-eating people, Li District

The mountains are high, the forests are dense, the climate is changeable, wild animals, snakes and insects are infested, and there are all kinds of miasma. Han people often regard it as a fear of the road. Most people who go to Li area have to ask a "familiar Li" as a guide.

Although this guy is a Han Chinese, his mother is from the local Meifu Li. His surname is Wang. Changhua has been a county where Han and Li have many intermarriages since ancient times. There are many Han-Li mixed-race people like this. The guide is not only proficient in the language of Meifu Li, but also his uncle.

My family lives in the middle reaches of the Changhua River. I am very familiar with the roads and people. He is a very suitable candidate. Because I have been an apprentice as a waiter since I was a child, even though I am only eighteen or nineteen years old, I am very familiar with the people and the ways of the world. I always smile when I see this group of people.

There were about ten people in the group. Although they were wearing Han clothes, all the men had bald heads, and there was actually a Kunli woman among them. Everyone was carrying a large basket, and most of the baskets had a long stick wrapped in cloth.

Can't help but wonder.

Naturally, the exploration team couldn't say that they were looking for iron ore, so they said that they were going to Li District to buy medicinal materials. Cui Yunhong wanted to pay the guide first, but the guide said it was not necessary and it would not be too late to pay him when he came back. As long as he paid the guide.

They first gave him a pound of white sugar and asked him to take it home and give it to his family to try something new - white sugar is a very rare thing here.

After getting ready, everyone set out in the morning and headed upstream along the Changhua River.

After setting off, everyone realized how wise the decision to hire a guide was. In this barren land, there are almost no landmarks. The Changhua River is a river with a huge gap between dry and wet seasons.

It becomes very troublesome to find its real river channel in the dry season. The river channel washed out in the rainy season is not only wide but also very diffuse. Dots of pools and runoff can be seen everywhere.

Cui Yunhong used the compass and the map to constantly verify whether the team was traveling in the correct direction. Their first target point was to find the Shilu River. This tributary of the Changhua River was shown on the map to be about 100 meters away from the entrance of the Changhua River.

About 40 kilometers upstream from Haikou, after finding this river, go upstream and walk about 20 kilometers to the Shilu Mine.

Obviously, the journey will not be easy. Especially when you are carrying a lot of equipment and a large amount of goods, the journey will be even more difficult. The only hope is that as you go upstream, the water volume will increase, and it will be easier to sail.

――Even if you don’t have a boat, it’s easy to build a bamboo raft.

After walking for more than ten miles, I saw that the water in the river was slightly stronger and the sand dunes were getting fewer and fewer. I knew that I was approaching the inland area. The terrain became more and more rugged. The two sides were mostly hills, undulating, and the forest vegetation was not dense.

Large areas of rocky sandstone are exposed in many places. Cui Yunhong saw that many of the hills here are made of limestone containing a large amount of clay. This kind of limestone can directly bake high-quality cement without the need for ingredients, so it is also commonly known as "cement rock". She couldn't help but feel

I am secretly happy that this place can be built into a cement industry base for the country that has traveled across the country.

Cui Yunhong didn't know that in another time and space, Hainan's high-grade cement was often fired from Changhua's limestone.

Between the hills and the river bank, there are sporadic flat lands, many of which have been reclaimed into paddy and dry fields. Those areas that have not been reclaimed are large areas of barren grassland. There are some villages scattered in the period. The guide said that these are all owned by Han people or

Villages where Han and Li lived together. Cui Yunhong saw that there was nothing special about these villages, so he just asked the people from the surveying and mapping team to mark the scale and location on the map.

As the survey team walked, they drew the route on the map. They also re-measured the residential areas and places where fresh water was available where the terrain changed a lot. These data are the basis for future road development.

The guide saw that they were not in a hurry along the way. They would stop to write and draw after walking for a while. There were also people carrying poles and boxes and other things walking around, wondering what they were doing. He couldn't help but feel strange, so he said to Cui Yunhong

: "Shopkeeper, it will take several days to reach Li Village by walking like this."

Cui Yunhong had no choice but to make up the story that they were looking for medicinal herbs. Naturally, the young man didn't believe what he said. However, it was a rare break to go out and walk around for a few days without working in that boring warehouse, so he didn't mind if he walked for a few more days.

No more questions now.

This chapter has been completed!
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