1635 Han style rises again

Chapter 975 The Poor Inland

At noon on February 1681, 2, Fort Gangu.

Yang Anlin lifted the lid of the enamel bucket, which was lined with insulating straw and contained a deep basin filled with beef and potato cubes, as well as a large amount of rice.

Holding the chopsticks, he picked up a lump of beef and stuffed it into his mouth.Although it is cooked with sun-dried beef jerky, after several hours of cooking, the industrious wife still cooks the beef soft and pulpy. After chewing a few times, it becomes a ball of minced meat and swallowed , a deep sense of satisfaction arises spontaneously.

A shepherd dog kept turning around beside him, wagging its tail vigorously, fawning on its owner desperately, hoping to get some food.

"Here you are!" Yang Anlin picked up a piece of beef, hesitated for a moment, then threw it to the shepherd dog, "Damn, your food is better than some people's food!"

The dog quickly ate the beef that fell on the ground into its mouth, then raised its head, looked at the owner, and continued to wag its tail vigorously.

"Don't compete with Lao Tzu for food!" Yang Anlin raised his foot and kicked the dog away, "Hurry up and drive the sheep over there to Lao Tzu."

The dog whimpered a few times in dissatisfaction, and did not leave. It continued to surround its owner, wagging its tail, jumping left and right, and the corners of its mouth dripped haha ​​from time to time.

"Greedy bastard!" Yang Anlin scolded with a laugh, then took out a piece of dry steamed bun from his satchel, and threw it to the dog.

In the vast countryside, pastures, and factories in the city, the place of work is often too far away from home, and it is impossible to spend a lot of time going back and forth to have a formal lunch.This means that men who go out to work have to prepare some simple food that is easy to carry.

In the early days, it was usually a few dry biscuits, a piece of bread, or a steamed bun, with some pickles, and then a pot of water.With the gradual improvement of people's living standards in recent years, the lunches they carry are not limited to the above-mentioned dry food, and have begun to become more abundant.There are steamed stuffed buns filled with meat or vegetables, oiled pancakes, oil cakes, and even "bento" filled with meals.

Free and unrestrained farmers and herdsmen will even bring a small pot of wine to drink a few sips after lunch to relieve the fatigue after working for half a day.

Yang Anlin is the second-generation immigrant of Qi State. After six years of happy school life, he was less than 13 years old and planted and herded cattle with his father.

The area around Gangubao is barren and the climate is arid, so it is not suitable for large-scale agricultural planting. However, there is a small seasonal river, the Xiaogan River, as well as many saline-alkali wetlands and large areas of low meadows. Good for grazing. More than 20 years ago, the government organized more than 30 new immigrants to settle here, and also allocated some women to them, and allocated a number of cattle and sheep to each immigrant in the form of loans, and set up this inland heartland stronghold .

After so many years, the registered population of Gangu Fort has increased to more than 160 people.The local people mainly live by grazing. Hundreds of acres of arable land have been reclaimed on both sides of the Xiaogan River to grow vegetables, melons and fruits, as well as drought-resistant crops such as potatoes, peanuts, corn, and sorghum.Life is not rich, but there is no shortage of food and clothing, and there is no danger of food and clothing.

However, this place is too desolate, and it is more than [-] kilometers away from the nearest "big" city, Songcheng (now Catherine, Australia), so it can be described as very poor both materially and spiritually.This caused some young people in the small town to leave Gangu and go to the big cities in the north in search of better development opportunities.

Yang Anlin's two younger brothers went to Jianye and Xinhuai'an (now Palmerston, Australia) respectively, and entered the factories there to work.

In big cities, there are bustling markets, all kinds of goods, and dense and dense buildings. When you go to the seaside, you can see countless large ships docking, and all kinds of foreigners come and go.Although working in the factory is hard and there are many constraints, after a year, I can save 50 yuan.

When Yang Anlin read the letters from his younger brothers to his parents and described life in the city to them, he felt somewhat envious in his heart.

Because Gangu is located in a remote place, it is extremely closed and backward.The only small store in the Fort, it takes about a month to go to Songcheng or Hot Spring Town (now the small town of Mataranka in northern Australia) to buy goods once a month, and then bring back some outdated newspapers and publications by the way to let the local people know about the country. Various new policies and decrees, as well as understanding some major domestic and foreign events.

Three years ago, I heard that the Ministry of Communications and the Ministry of Railways planned to build a railway across the Hanzhou continent from north to south. At that time, the railway would pass through Gangu Fort where they were located. This made everyone very excited, thinking that the arrival of the railway would be extremely greatly improve their lives.

But after waiting for a few years, I found that there was no intention to start construction on it.After the northern railway line was extended to Wenquan Town two years ago, it stopped there and started to build the (industry) Song (city) railway double track.

Think about it, this inland area is all desert, except for the poisonous insects, snakes and ants wandering around, and a few scattered pastures like their Gangu, there seems to be nothing valuable, the government spends so much money to repair The railway is definitely not worth the loss, and it will go to grandma's house!

"Wow! Woah! Woah!..."

After lunch and two sips of wine, Yang Anlin was lying comfortably on the grass and taking a nap, when he heard the shepherd dog barking wildly, he sat up in a jerk, and took the long knife beside him in his hand.

Could it be the thylacine?
By the way, isn't this beast used to haunting at night?
Ai Cheng looked at the man in front of him riding on the horse, holding a long knife in his right hand, watching them coming, with a bit of astonishment and a bit of sluggishness in his expression, he couldn't help smiling, and walked slowly over on the horse.

"Hey, that man! In the past few days, have you seen any troops here?"

"You are... my Daqi Jingzhi army?" Yang Anlin looked at a long line in the distance, dozens of carriages, more than 200 cavalry, and dozens of camels. The big-brimmed hat, except that there are fewer accessories on the body, is almost the same as those cavalry uniforms that occasionally pass by Gangu Fort.

"Brother, we are cadets of the Daxing Army Academy, and we are ordered to conduct military drills here." Liao Xiuyi stepped forward and said gently: "Dare to ask, brother, have you ever been near us in the past few days? Student soldiers?"

"...No." Yang Anlin looked at the officers and soldiers with immature faces in front of him, with an amiable attitude and a friendly tone. A team of cavalry passed by our Gangu Fort and escorted several engineering personnel who were exploring the road, stayed here for less than two days, and then went all the way south."

"Hey, it's done!" Qi Guangzheng listened, and exclaimed in a low voice excitedly: "We rushed so hard, we finally rushed ahead of the Jianye Military Academy and arrived at Gangu Fort. Needless to say, we have to make good use of the time difference and arrange a The perfect ambush battlefield, we must beat them to the ground!"

"What's wrong, there's going to be a war here?!" Yang Anlin was astonished, and subconsciously clenched the scabbard tightly, "Could it be that some enemies have killed us in the territory of Qi?"

"Hahaha..." Several student soldiers present burst into laughter immediately, "In this world, there is probably no enemy that can hit our territory of Qi!"

"That's right, not to mention hitting our mainland of Hanzhou, even invading our overseas territories, that would be an earth-shattering event!"

"..."

Although Ai Cheng was also laughing along with the crowd, but he was a little bit dissatisfied in his heart when he heard these students and soldiers from Qi state speak such wild words.This is too arrogant, as if Lao Tzu is number one in the world and treats all countries as nothing.Doesn’t your country of Qi occupy a good place, monopolize a piece of land, be surrounded by the sea, and have a powerful navy, so you can really keep any enemy out of the country?

Gangubao is a small town with a radius of less than 500 meters. Well, it should be accurately said that it is a slightly larger village.Except for the official hall, warehouse and primary school, which are made of masonry, the other houses are made of adobe.On the outskirts of the town, there is a one-meter-high soil fence, which may have been built a long time ago, and several sections have already weathered and collapsed.

The people in the small town heard that a team of military cadets was coming, and they were going to hold a military exercise here, and they all rushed out of their houses to watch the excitement around the cadets.

The civil affairs officer of Gangu Fort obviously received the instructions of the superior in advance, and gave full support and satisfaction to all the requirements of the cadet soldiers.

These more than 200 soldiers, oh, no, they should be military cadets. If they stay in Gangu Fort for seven or eight days, they will spend a lot of money on food and drink every day, and they will surely bring a lot of cash income to the local people.

There is no economic activity in this broken place on weekdays.Regardless of the abundance of water and grass here, Gangu Fort has raised a lot of livestock, including hundreds of cows and thousands of sheep.But because of the remote location and inconvenient transportation, those unscrupulous merchants who come to buy cattle, sheep and wool every year kept pushing down the prices and exploiting them to the fullest, so that the people in the area were very tight and their lives were miserable. .

Under the guidance of the instructors leading the team, more than 200 cadets from the Xing Army School began to nervously set up the battlefield, all of which were aimed at actual combat.The collapsed soil fence was repaired by urgently requisitioned wood; outside the town, two trenches and many horse traps were dug in a row; several nearby ponds were erected with several eye-catching signs. Write "poisoned"; the commanding height in the town - the two-story material storage warehouse is used as the main firepower point of the troops, and an artillery position is set up on the roof.

The children in the town excitedly ran and shouted behind the student soldiers. They held long sticks in their arms as their own "guns" and enthusiastically participated in the upcoming "battle".

Regarding whether to requisition the people's power in the "occupied area" to act as a temporary strong man on the battlefield, several instructors who led the team had a heated argument, and finally reluctantly agreed to this very "inhuman" suggestion.Some young residents immediately left behind grazing cattle and sheep and work in the fields, and with the greatest enthusiasm, brought their own tools to help the "occupation army" build a series of fortifications. pleasure.

In the evening, the residents of the small town generously slaughtered two sheep and lit a bonfire to entertain these guests from afar.The cadets also contributed their canned food, tobacco, coffee, tea, and precious drinks.

Ai Cheng and several Qin State student soldiers were extremely surprised by the extremely harmonious military-civilian relationship shown in Gangu Fort.After decades of war, the soldiers of Qin State not only got rid of the situation of emphasizing civility over military affairs in the previous Ming Dynasty, but their status even faintly surpassed that of literati.Although not as domineering and domineering as the feudal towns at the end of the Tang Dynasty and the Five Dynasties period, at least in terms of military and political affairs, they can achieve complete autonomy, which isolates all kinds of constraints and restrictions on the military by the literati.

At the local level, although the soldiers of the Great Qin State did not wantonly occupy land and plunder people as slaves like the Qing captives did in the past, but relying on their strong position, the soldiers of the Qin State implicitly have the right to take what they want, especially in the border areas On the front line, civilian materials and manpower can be requisitioned at will, and they can be driven into dogs.

When it comes to materials and manpower, what Ai Cheng and other students from the state of Qin saw in the coastal towns of the state of Qi is a prosperous scene, with many factories, rich residents, and abundant commodities. The strong impression of Qi.After entering the inland area, especially the desolate and remote desert area, it gives people a huge contrast.

The road from Jincheng to Shanyang, and then to Gangu is not only sparsely populated, it is simply inaccessible. During the hundreds of kilometers, no one was seen.The rough road, the vast red land along the way, the strange and rugged terrain, the extremely dry climate, and the scorching high temperature are like a hellish scene.

And in this small town located in the hinterland, all you see are gray adobe houses, children with runny noses, honest and honest shepherds, poor supplies, and plain and simple clothes. Experience a familiar feeling.

Damn it, it turns out that there are also poor places in Qi!
Moreover, the closer to the inland area, the fewer the population, and the worse the people's livelihood and economy. From this point of view, the country of Qi, that is, the coastal area, is relatively prosperous and prosperous. At first glance, people would think that such a large piece of land Above, it's all like this.

In other words, if this country of Qi meets a very powerful maritime country, and they go on an expedition across the sea and smash it to pieces along the coast, it will definitely make Qi country fall into a situation where it cannot be restored.

Like our Great Qin, the inland hinterland not only has a large population, but also has fertile land and abundant products. It also has dozens of hundreds of prosperous big cities. Even if the seaside is occupied by the Qi State, our Great Qin still has strong resilience and stamina. , and carry out a long-term stalemate with it.

Hey, why do you think that Qi is going to invade our Great Qin?
Ai Cheng shook his head vigorously, put all his assumptions behind him, and continued to step up "preparation" with his companions to meet the upcoming challenge of the Jianye Army Academy cadets.

(End of this chapter)