After sending Zheng Hui away, Li Zhi began to recruit tenant farmers in Tianjin.
Nowadays, people in more than a dozen prefectures and counties near Fanjiazhuang know that they can live a good life following Li Zhiqian. The first two batches of tenant farmers who followed Li Zhi to open up wasteland in Fanjiazhuang and Jinghai County have now lived a life like a gentleman, with enough food and clothing.
They lived in brick houses, had meat to eat, smoked cigarettes, and drank tea.
Even for the tenant farmers newly recruited by the general in Wuqing and Baodi counties this year, good times are about to come. The general's dry farmland has complete water conservancy facilities, and every fifth person in the family borrows an ox, and wheat grows in the newly opened fields.
It's very green and plump, and we're about to have a big harvest.
The people nearby were waiting with red eyes for Li Zhi to recruit new tenant farmers. They were all worried that they had no relatives in Fanjiazhuang and no one would act as a guarantor. This time they heard that the general wanted to hire people to open up wasteland in Xiaoliuqiu and did not need relatives to act as guarantors.
After hearing the news that they could also apply, everyone rushed to sign up for fear of falling behind.
In just ten days, the officials Li Zhi sent to various places to recruit tenant farmers received applications from 50,000 farmers. If the officials had not stopped accepting new applications, there would have been even more people, 100,000.
No one can stop.
Farmers only recognize what they can see. They have seen over the years that they can get meat by following Li Zhi, so they understand the truth of following Li Zhi.
As for the tenant farmers recruited this time to go to Xiaoliuqiu to open up land, the farmers didn't think much about it. Anyway, it would not be wrong to follow the general, and even if they went to open up wasteland elsewhere, their life would not be bad.
Li Zhi was quite emotional when he learned that the recruitment of tenant farmers went so smoothly. Now, his reputation has been established near Tianjin. As soon as the people nearby heard about what Li Zhi was recruiting people to do, they tried their best to join in, without any doubt that there would be
Not a good result. Now that Li Zhi is in Tianjin, it can be said that he responds to everything he calls.
Tianjin has become Li Zhi's base camp. No matter how prosperous the overseas colonies are, Li Zhi will never leave this base camp. Li Zhi's factory is here, the army is here, and his relatives are here. Overseas construction is just the icing on the cake.
means.
After obtaining 50,000 tenant farmers, Li Zhi asked the officials to select 5,000 healthy tenant farmers who were married but no more than 30 years old as the first batch of immigrants. These tenant farmers were young and strong, which would help the entire reclamation point survive the initial period.
It was a period of high incidence of malaria during the land reclamation period. At the same time, they were already married, so there would be no difficulty in finding wives for them in the future.
Marriage these days is all about matchmaking, and older girls will not go to Taiwan by themselves. If the men who are shipped to Xiaoliuqiu do not have a wife, it will be a long way for them to go back to Tianjin for matchmaking. Farmers who are married do not have such problems. And they are married.
Couples soon had children, which also contributed to the population growth of the entire colony.
However, after hiring these tenant farmers, Li Zhi suddenly thought of a problem. These tenant farmers in Tianjin could only grow wheat, not rice. In Taiwan, the climate is warm and humid, and the harvest of rice is much higher than that of wheat. Should these tenant farmers be allowed to grow rice?
Wheat? That’s a shame.
But the methods of growing rice are different from those of growing wheat. Where can we find so many masters to teach these tenant farmers how to grow rice?
Li Zhi thought about it in the General Military Mansion for several hours, but couldn't think of any way, so he called Gao Ligong again.
"Gao Ligong, you asked me to recruit farmers from Tianjin to grow rice in Xiaoliuqiu, but my tenant farmers can only grow wheat. What should I do?"
Gao Ligong raised his hand and said: "General, this is not difficult. Growing rice is very similar to growing wheat. If there is one master, he can teach ten families of disciples that year."
"Where can I find this master?"
Gao Ligong handed over his hand and said: "The student's uncle serves as the county magistrate in Taiping County, Taizhou Prefecture, and is quite wealthy. If you are willing to pay two thousand taels of silver, the student can persuade him to recruit two thousand households to grow rice for the general.
Old farmers. With the guidance of these two thousand old farmers, all the wheat farmers you will send to Xiaoliuqiu this year will learn to grow rice."
Li Zhi knew that Taiping County was a county near the sea in Zhejiang. This county was very close to Taiwan. If rice farmers could be recruited from there, Li Zhi's fleet could transport all 2,000 households to Taiwan in just a few trips.
Li Zhi was very happy when he heard this and said: "Okay, I will give you two thousand taels of silver. Go and tell your uncle to recruit two thousand rice farmers. You have organized all the rice farmers, and you will take my boat to Taiping County.
People get on board.”
Gao Ligong raised his hands and said, "General, it's too slow to go by land. I'll wait for the ship to come back and follow it to Taiping County."
Li Zhi nodded and said, "Okay, you can go with the boat then."
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Boss Wei joined the trapping group in the 11th year of Chongzhen.
When he first joined the regiment, Boss Wei still had a fantasy, thinking that he could become an officer in the Huben Division. In a few years, he would recruit all the young boys in his village into the Huben Division. But he did not expect that the reality was very cruel.
It took Mr. Wei three months after joining the army to distinguish between left and right, and figure out whether to turn left or right. The so-called idea of becoming a first-class soldier and being promoted to squad leader turned out to be a fantasy.
For more than a year, Boss Wei has never achieved the status of a first-class soldier, and he is still a grassroots soldier. Boss Wei slowly accepted the fact that he did not have the ability to be an officer, and he no longer interacted with the boys when he returned to the Wei family.
Brag.
Mr. Wei gradually felt that there was nothing wrong with being an ordinary soldier. He got three or two months of money. Last month, his parents arranged a marriage for Mr. Wei, and the woman was the most beautiful girl in the neighboring village. Next April,
Boss Wei went back to get married.
But before getting married, Boss Wei went on an expedition. This time, Boss Wei's company was transferred onto a ship and came to Xiaoliuqiu with the ship. Eight hundred craftsmen came with Boss Wei's troops, saying they wanted to open up a "colony".
The so-called "colony" is a new word invented by the Grand Governor. As the name suggests, it is a place where people are bred. I heard that the Grand Governor will gradually transport more farmers and plant all the farming areas in Xiaoliuqiu, turning it into a colony.
Overseas lands of the Han people.
The Grand Governor also called Xiaoliuqiu Taiwan, saying that the name Xiaoliuqiu would cause misunderstandings. From now on, the island will be called Taiwan Island.
Establishing a colony sounds like a good thing, but in practice it is very troublesome.
Boss Wei followed three large ships to the northern part of Xiaoliuqiu and landed in a bay. After landing, Boss Wei followed the squad leader to explore the terrain and draw maps. Finally, he rejected the landing site and drove fifty miles south with the ship. When he arrived at Xin
Finding that the place was still not good, we drove another fifty miles south.
After struggling for a few days and rejecting five or six places, Commander Zheng finally selected a place and let the craftsmen and soldiers go ashore to work.
The first was to burn the wasteland. The commander chose a hilltop by the river that was higher than the surrounding land, and asked the soldiers and craftsmen to cut down trees below the hilltop to create an isolation zone. Then he set fire to all the dry trees on the hilltop.
The fire burned for two full days, burning out a vast charred and empty land on the top of the mountain.
In this empty, scorched land, a thousand people disembarked and set up camp.
