Haiyan Golden Beach and Silver Beach have brilliant wildflowers and are surrounded by mountains on all sides.
Blue sky, white clouds, grassland, cattle and sheep, the winding Xichuan River, and the rippling Dongtan Lake.
The rolling hills, the green grassland, the blue sky and white clouds seem to be within reach. Guo Shoufu, who moved from Baoning Prefecture in northern Sichuan, is sitting on the roof of the caravan, looking at it with some expectation and curiosity.
Everything here.
"Is this our new home?" asked a woman in the same car. She also came from Baoning, northern Sichuan. Her husband was also a miner in northern Sichuan. Last year, she signed up for the Tunzhen Army and was selected in Guangyuan.
After a month of intensive training, they went through Wudu, Minzhou to Lanzhou, and then transferred to Xining, where they conducted another two months of training.
Then she was assigned to the newly established Haiyan County of Xihai Prefecture to garrison in Triangle City. Her husband wrote to her saying that for one station, he was directly allocated fifty acres of cultivated land and one hundred acres of pasture. The letter read:
He commissioned them to write a text about the camp, and the description was very good. He asked her to bring the children over quickly, and sent her money, which was also the money the town gave them to move their family.
In the early years, the woman's family was almost eaten by the local tyrants and thieves in northern Sichuan. The army of northern Sichuan, local bandits and western thieves repeatedly attacked and killed the people. The people were reduced to lambs or even food, and the population suffered a huge loss.
He also made tigers and wolves run rampant in northern Sichuan, and many people were eaten by wild beasts.
The remaining people had no choice but to hide in caves or on some dangerous mountain tops and build strongholds to defend themselves. However, hiding in the mountains had to be wary of tigers and wolves, local tyrants and thieves, and plunder by the army or western thieves.
It was miserable, but fortunately their family managed to survive until the Ming army returned to Sichuan.
They temporarily settled down in the original village, and could even trade at the foot of the mountain, exchanging local produce and grain for other supplies such as salt, iron, etc. However, the land in the mountains was limited, and life was still tight, but it was much safer. Later, someone came to mine, and my husband
So he worked as a miner, working hard and finally able to provide food and clothing for his family.
But mining underground is very dangerous, and people often die. They are risking their lives to make money.
Before, some people came to recruit soldiers or brave men, and even mobilized them to immigrate to places such as Liaodong or Taiwan. However, many miners may not have heard the news, or they may not understand enough, and are not willing to believe it, and are willing to leave their hometowns. Moreover, the miners
Although it is bitter, it is much better than it was a few years ago.
It was only when some brave people moved out and slowly began to send letters to their relatives in their hometowns, saying that they had a good new life there, that everyone was dubious. When some people couldn't help but also started to sign up to immigrate, and more and more people began to sign up to immigrate.
After a while, more people finally became interested.
I don’t know how many years I can endure living in the dark underground.
The woman's husband decided to immigrate mainly because his wife gave birth to another child, and the family had more mouths to talk to, and the expenses were higher. Suddenly, there was an accident at his mine, and he and a group of miners were buried in the mine for more than ten years.
God, they survived by drinking urine. Fortunately, the mine owner still had a conscience and reported it to the government. The mine and the government worked together to rescue them and finally rescued them.
After this incident, he finally made up his mind to immigrate.
Registration, experience, then Baojia, guarantee from the clan leader, government review, etc. After going through a lot of procedures, I finally passed.
After her husband put on his military uniform and wore a red flower and left, the woman took care of her children at home. Fortunately, she had a settlement fund left by her husband to spend, but she was always nervous and had nightmares because she was afraid of her husband.
Gone never to return.
Fortunately, during the little half-year of anxiety and waiting, I also received several letters from my husband. Each time, the letters were very good. They were training outside to eat and drink well, and they also took literacy classes to learn Mandarin. My husband said that Longnan
The Gansu side is much better than my hometown in northern Sichuan.
When the last letter came, saying that she had been allocated 50 acres of farmland and 100 acres of pasture in Haiyan, she almost couldn't believe it.
They were in their hometown. When the government registered and allocated the land in the village to them, it was only just over an acre. The mountainous land was barren. Even if they planted drought-tolerant corn, potatoes, sweet potatoes, etc., there was simply not enough to eat.
Fifty acres of cultivated land, how big is that?
In the past, the landowners in her natal village only had twenty or thirty acres of land, which was enough to make them extremely envious.
Although she couldn't believe it, in the end the woman packed up her things immediately, took a few children with her and went to the Yamen, where the clerk in charge of immigration made arrangements.
With a few children in tow, they got into the carriage and followed the route her husband took out of Sichuan to join the army.
This journey is more than 2,000 miles long and takes the Longnan route, which is also the most difficult route to follow. Even if the road has been repaired in recent years, there are still many places where it is very difficult to walk.
They had to change cars constantly along the way. Fortunately, the court had someone to arrange it, and the government would support them along the way. She also got a lot of help from Guo Shoufu, a fellow countryman. She had known him before, and Guo Shoufu and her husband were from the same mine.
Yes, they were buried together in the mine.
Guo Shoufu took great care of the wives and children of his fellow mine worker. He was a bachelor. During the war, all his family members died. Some died of famine, some died of epidemics, and some were eaten by tigers and raped by thieves.
After eating them, some of them died after being dragged into battle. Guo Shoufu was lucky enough to survive.
When he was working in the mine, his income was still enough for one person. Under his conditions, it would have been fine for him to marry a local wife and start a family. However, most of the local young and beautiful girls were sent to the local garrison defense camps and provincial patrol camps.
, Tunzhen, Yamen officials, rural security officials, etc. were taken away.
There wasn't much room for him to choose. Most of them were women from dead miners dragging their children with them. Not to mention carrying oil bottles, most of the women were not young. He didn't want to bear such a big burden, but the general conditions were a bit better.
A good girl, who is willing to find a man with better conditions, must at least have parents-in-law to help her, not an orphan and a bachelor like Guo Shoufu.
"Sister-in-law, we are going to Haiyan City soon, and my eldest brother will probably come to pick you up then."
The woman's face also showed an expression of expectation and joy. The journey of thousands of miles was not easy for a woman who had never left her hometown for thirty miles before.
With the commissioner in charge of their team, the government offices and even the garrison taking care of them along the way, and the help of this young man Guo Shoufu, she didn't know how she could find this place.
“This place is so beautiful!”
On the prairie covered with honeysuckle, a long four-wheeled caravan was meandering forward. The coachman driving the carriage smiled and said, "The golden flower is called Jinlumei, and the silver flower is called Yinlumei. These little flowers are so beautiful."
Yes, deer like to eat it very much.
There are many deer here, and the Mongolians call this place Baohutu, which means a place with deer."
The green mountains are dripping with green, and the blue fields are thousands of miles away.
For this group of people from my hometown in northern Sichuan, the scenery here is so beautiful. In my hometown in northern Sichuan, it is said that the road to Shu is difficult to reach the sky. Many places are accessible by plank roads, and even walking over the mountains and ridges on bird trails. Sichuan people are accustomed to
They were used to steep cliffs and mountains and flowing water, but suddenly this endless plain was really difficult for them to get used to.
She had heard people say that Chengdu, the provincial capital, was also a large plain, but she had never seen it before and could not imagine seeing such a large plain at this moment. It was so amazing and intoxicating.
When she entered the Hehuang Valley, the prosperity of farming in the eight-hundred-mile high loess slope of the Hehuang Valley had excited her for a long time. She never thought that there was such a large grassland at the source of the Huangshui River and on both sides of the Xichuan River.
.
“How big must this land be? It must not be several thousand acres?”
"Haha, several thousand acres? Let me tell you this, this Jinyintan grassland alone is two million acres, not counting the other grasslands in Haiyan County. Although our Haiyan County is newly established, here
It used to be Haixi County in the Western Han Dynasty. Now Haiyan County is connected to the Hargai River to the northwest, Qinghai Lake to the east, Riyue Mountain to the south, and Daheishan Mountain to the northeast. There are more than 4 million acres of grassland in total, and 500,000 acres can be used.
Where is the farmland?"
Two million acres of Jinyintan grassland is a figure that an ordinary mountain woman cannot imagine or calculate. Two hundred acres is huge. Add another ten thousand acres, and how big will it be?
Guo Shoufu said very excitedly, "No wonder one person can be divided into fifty acres of cultivated land and one hundred acres of pasture. With so much land, we can divide it into more."
The driver smiled and said, "That can't be divided completely. Haiyan used to be the Dayu tribe, one of the eight Mongolian tribes around the sea. Now it has joined our Ming Dynasty and has been naturalized and settled. The court has also divided pastures and pastures for them according to households.
, they have a total of more than 1,200 households and more than 6,000 people."
The flowers on the floodplain are in full bloom, with honeysuckle blooming in patches.
Under the blue sky and white clouds, black and white yaks are grazing leisurely, next to the cloud-like flocks of sheep, there are Dayu tribe herders wearing Mongolian robes, riding Qinghai horses through the herds, facing each other from a distance
This caravan sang songs.
"These Mongolian herdsmen are very hospitable."
The coachman laughed, "Since our saint's imperial guards came with muskets and cannons, built castles, practiced on the grasslands, and even annihilated a rebel tribe that dared to attack and plunder our supplies, the Mongolians on the Qinghai Lake
The herdsmen all became good at singing and dancing and became hospitable."
The caravan turned a corner.
The road ahead is covered with colorful prayer flags.
"Not far ahead is Haiyan County." The driver reminded everyone loudly.
Even the horses pulling the cart snorted excitedly, and their hooves became more powerful. This four-wheeled caravan has a very strong load capacity and can carry several tons. The only drawback is that it is not fast enough, and it only lasts sixty or seventy miles a day.
But it can both carry cargo and pull people.
Nowadays, the postal system of Shaotian Dynasty is becoming more and more developed and smooth, and a large number of four-wheeled carriages are used, which can not only deliver letters and mail to counties and villages, but also carry people and serve as short-distance transportation.
In the past few years, the Ming Dynasty has continued to expand its territory and immigrate everywhere. These large carriages also played a huge role in transporting families from the mainland to various places in the frontiers.
Guo Shoufu and five other immigrant passengers who were sitting on the roof of the car couldn't help but stand up after hearing this, wanting to see Haiyan City immediately.
In the motorcade behind them, many passengers on the carriages stood up and couldn't wait any longer.