A barefoot, hungry child shook his mother, but the skinny woman huddled on the ground and never opened her eyes again.
"mother!"
The child shook her mother and tried to wake her up. She was hungry, but her mother fell asleep forever.
"Why,"
The refugees in the nearby shack heard the sound and came over. They looked at this scene with numb expressions. People starved to death happened almost every day.
The situation in the refugee camp in Laizhou Bay is considered good. They can queue up to get porridge at least twice a day. Most of those who can make it here will survive. There are countless hungry people who died on the way here.
The roadsides and ditches were littered with the bodies of hungry people who had died of starvation.
"Oh my god, when will this end?"
On the other side, an old man was crying. He was old and had bad legs and feet. Along the way, his teenage daughter pulled a car and followed the refugee team to escape here. Finally, when they arrived, the daughter who had just eaten a meal of porridge,
After a night, he was still dead.
She was huddled next to the car, her bare legs were bare, her dirty hair was randomly tied into braids, her clothes were dirty and torn, and she died like this last night.
The old man heard the sound here in the morning, and when he woke up, he found that his daughter was also dead.
He sat there desperately and cried. Finally, with his hands supporting him and dragging his immobile legs, he crawled to his daughter step by step, hugging the already cold daughter in his arms, crying with great sadness and despair.
The whole family fled, and he was the only one who died in the end.
Several men with red strips of cloth on their arms came over. They were the corpse collection team in the refugee camp, and they were also refugees.
"Condolences!"
The task of several men is to deal with the dead bodies in the camp. These dead bodies will be taken away, then dug in pits and buried. The weather is getting hotter. If not handled in time, the refugee camp will be prone to outbreaks of plague.
They haul away many corpses every day. Even these people were fleeing famine and had family members who died on the road.
A Western missionary came over, inspected it, then raised the cross and started talking.
The old man refused angrily and wouldn't let him get close.
"I don't want to be saved by foreign monks, go away."
The priests were rejected but were not upset, and continued to work hard. These were Jesuit priests who came from Macau, and they came with another group of muskets and artillery mercenaries, and a new group of artillery ships.
After they met with the emperor, they followed the emperor's advice and built a mission hospital and church in Denglai. They preached while saving people, and also planned to build an orphanage.
The refugees were a little afraid of these dark-eyed, tall-nosed, red-haired people, but these people gave porridge, gave medical treatment, and even helped with salvation, restraint, and adoption of orphans, which gradually made them favored by some refugees.
Zhu Yihai is still open to the actions of these Portuguese and Spanish missionaries. First of all, he is now closely connected with Macau. Although he has established cannon factories and gun factories in Zhoushan and other places, Macau still has a constant supply of energy.
Provide mercenaries, especially qualified gunners and sailors.
Secondly, Zhu Yihai launched trade cooperation with Portugal and Spain, which not only included purchasing firearms and hiring gunners, but also included the ongoing cooperative construction of sailing warships, and even a joint attack on the Dutch.
Based on these cooperation, Zhu Yihai still allowed it as long as the Jesuits could act within the boundaries he had drawn.
Moreover, these missionaries are not only missionaries, most of them are quite capable. They are basically proficient in mathematics, know how to forge cannons and guns, and are even good at medicine. Therefore, after they come over, they also serve as imperial guards.
He serves as a staff officer, consultant, and even serves as a medical officer.
As for the Shandong governor and the imperial camp, they are actually providing relief and assistance to the refugees, but the problem is that there are too many and they cannot save them.
As the imperial camp operations expanded and the Qing army began to counterattack, fighting was taking place not only in Denglai, but also throughout Shandong, even in the north involving Beizhi, Liaoguan, and in the south involving Xuhuai.
The war is in chaos.
War will inevitably involve the common people, especially now that the Qing army is short of supplies, so it can only further plunder the common people.
The Tatars' orders to move the sea along the coast and abandon the Huaihe River made countless people homeless. Everyone knows that the Emperor of Tomorrow is here in Denglai, and there are ships to evacuate the people to Anding.
In the wealthy Jiangnan, countless people who know the news are rushing here.
Even Han people from Liaodong are coming here now.
Huang Zongxi has been busy with the issue of refugee resettlement, giving priority to the evacuation of craftsmen, scholars, etc., and transporting them in a one-stop relay from Laizhou, Dengzhou, Changshan, Weihai, Yantai, Chengshan, Qingdao, Yuzhou, and Chongming.
But it's far from enough.
There are too many refugees.
He is also engaged in local resettlement, reclamation, fishing and hunting, etc., but in the face of the seemingly endless refugees, these are far from enough.
Even if you only have two meals of porridge every day, it's still stressful.
Hunger, disease, etc. continue to take away the lives of hungry people. Even if it is summer and it is not the most deadly winter, there are still many deaths.
The husband loses his wife, the mother loses her child, and the child is left helpless.
Huang Zongxi established many temporary refugee settlements, transfer points, etc. according to the decree, and organized self-rescue and self-government for refugees.
There is a lack of medical care and medicine, and there is even a lack of food.
Human life is like a piece of grass, falling like a candle blown by the wind.
The most pitiable thing is the orphan like that little girl. Her parents, brothers and sisters all died, and she finally became a poor orphan.
Gu Jian
The governor's yamen had to allocate extra supplies and food, set up a special orphan camp, take in and raise these orphans, and then give priority to transporting them to the rear of the Yangtze River as soon as possible.
Although these children were so young and could not produce any value, they were saved by the emperor's will.
They are hope and the future.
In the Laizhou Bay refugee camp, in addition to a small number of officials, the majority are Baojiading, selected from the refugees. They are divided into different groups. Some are responsible for cooking and distributing porridge, some are patrolling and guarding the camp, and some are specialized in collecting corpses and burying them.
There are also people who clean up and take care of children and the elderly on a temporary basis.
Each refugee camp is a temporary rescue port.
Every arriving refugee will be registered as soon as possible, and then after cleaning, a temporary shelter will be arranged, an identity card will be given, and then, depending on the situation, they will be diverted or temporarily requisitioned.
The little girl seemed to finally understand from the sighs of the crowd nearby that her mother would never wake up, so she began to cry loudly.
Along the way, she also lost several family members. Her mother was the last relative, but she fell asleep forever.
Zhu Yihai visited Refugee Camp No. 37 today and saw this poor girl from a distance.
This is just a microcosm of the war. From Apocalypse to Chongzhen to now, the civil war and foreign wars in the late Ming Dynasty have been going on for decades. Natural disasters and wars have caused too many such tragedies.
Too many to count.
In the page-by-page official history, many times there is not even the qualification to mention a single word. Many tragic events in which thousands of people died in battle and starved to death are often recorded in just a few words.
Zhu Yihai walked up to the little girl and squatted down.
He took out a piece of candy.
The sucrose produced in Lingnan is processed and refined using the yellow mud decolorization method, turning the sucrose into pure white sugar.
The white sugar is then processed and finally becomes a piece of rock sugar.
good smell.
This is something that most people cannot afford in peacetime, and the little girl is still crying.
"Girl, what's your name?"
Zhu Yihai picked her up from the cold woman.
Looking at this girl carefully, she felt that she might be four or five years old, or three or four years old. She was extremely thin, skinny and skinny, and she was very light when held on her body.
His head looks big and his belly is bulging, but his limbs are as thin as thin bamboo.
Zhu Yihai stuffed the candy into the girl's mouth. Maybe it was too sweet. This girl, who had suffered so much in the world at such a young age, had never tasted this taste before, so she couldn't help but be attracted to it, and she didn't cry so much.
The corpse collection team took the woman away, and Zhu Yihai took the child for a ride. Finally, he took a wooden hairpin from the woman's body and gave it to the child as a final souvenir.
After the girl finished eating the candy, she was tired of crying. Finally, holding her mother's wooden hairpin tightly in her hand, she fell asleep deeply in Zhu Yihai's arms.
"Your Majesty, please give this girl to your servant. I will send her to an orphan camp."
At this time, the girl was startled in her sleep, cried a few times, and then held Zhu Yihai tighter.
"Forget it, let this girl stay."
"Your Majesty, she is too dirty, there are lice crawling in her hair, and there must be fleas on her body. She is too unclean, and she might even be sick."
Zhu Yihai waved his hand, "These are all my people. They are so pitiful. I have an unshirkable responsibility. Since we met today, it was fate. Just stay. When she wakes up, give her a bath and kill the insects."
From now on, she will be raised by me, and I will adopt her as my adopted daughter."
Liu Chao looked at the little orphan, not cute at all, just like a pitiful wild cat, but the emperor's words touched him, thinking that he was an orphan back then, almost froze to death on a cold winter night, and later became an old eunuch of the palace.
Met and adopted him.
"Your Majesty is truly a benevolent king."
"Needless to say, in this rotten era, each of us should have more compassion and compassion, so that there should be a glimmer of hope in this dark world."
Liu Chao was very moved, and then proposed to take in some male orphans from the orphan camp, and then when they were strong enough, they would castrate them into young eunuchs?
"They are already miserable enough, how can we give them another blow?"
"Your Majesty, just because they are pitiful enough, it would actually be a great mercy if they could get into the palace with just one cut. At least they don't have to worry about food and clothing, and they don't have to worry about tomorrow."
Zhu Yihai was deeply touched by these words. He had been castrated since he was a child and yet he was still kind. This is such a shitty world.
"From today onwards, these poor orphans will no longer be castrated,"
"From now on, if people are to be employed in the palace, they can only be castrated from criminals, enemy prisoners and other descendants, and they must be strictly reviewed."
The little girl suddenly started crying again. Zhu Yihai held her and patted her gently, and slowly she fell asleep again.
"What a sensible girl," Zhu Yihai said to Liu Chao, "If you are willing, you can go to the orphan camp to choose a boy to adopt. In the future, he can pass on the incense to you, and even serve you filially when you are old."
"Thank you, Your Majesty."
"In this shitty world, if you can live one more life, let's live one more life. I will draw up a decree and call on the officials and soldiers of the court to encourage the adoption of an orphan if possible.
The Ministry of Household Affairs may even consider setting up a special account to provide an annual subsidy to the families adopting these orphans."
