Lin Gao Qiming

Chapter 99 Salt Fields ([-])

The preliminary investigation in Nanan Cave lasted for two days, and because of the company of Fu Aoya, the survey team's investigation went very smoothly.Fa Shilu and Cui Yunhong were in charge of agriculture, forestry and mining respectively, while Mu Min investigated the local social conditions.The products of Nandong are still very rich:

First of all, there are various forest resources. There are large areas of forest land in the mountains. Although the original farming techniques of the local people have destroyed a lot, the reserves are still quite rich; Discovery - apparently the locals use this cotton for spinning and weaving.There are also many wild plantain, lychee, longan and jackfruit trees on the mountain, which are the source of food supplements for the local people.There are many betel nut trees, but they are of no use to traversers except as trade goods for re-export.

The second is that a large number of native rice species have been found in the rice fields here, which is a very useful gene pool for breeders-as long as there are enough rice species, new improved varieties can be continuously hybridized.Fa Shilu discovered seventeen different rice varieties in the paddy fields near Nanan Village alone, and obtained five upland rice varieties on the hillsides, including indica, japonica and glutinous varieties.

Hainan Island itself is the main distribution area of ​​wild rice in China, and the genetic advantages of rice variety are very obvious.In the 21st century, Lingao is the main seed production place for hybrid rice in China - Fa Shilu looked at the various samples collected, and he really laughed in his dreams!The father of China's hybrid rice may be himself...

Sweet potatoes haven't been grown here yet, and Limin doesn't even know of this new crop.But they grow some other potatoes, most of which are araceae.This is often used as medicinal materials in other places.Fa Shilu is not a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine, but he knows that Tiannanxing's taro is slightly poisonous-can this thing be eaten?But judging from the planting area, it is obviously still one of the main crops.Another common type is sweet potato, also called hairy potato.

In terms of miscellaneous grains, he discovered corn.Fa Shilu never knew that there was millet planted in Hainan, and that millet was included in the miscellaneous grains sent by the locals after the Bairentan War, which made the entire Agricultural Committee quite puzzled for a while.I asked the local people to know that this is duck foot millet, a common grain in Hainan, and the maturity period is very short.

In addition to food, he also found patches of wild ramie. It seems that the Li people don't care much about agriculture, and they are basically laissez-faire, not to mention field management.Fruits, ramie and cotton are all wild, they are only collected and utilized, and there is no planned cultivation and planting.

Pigs, cows, chickens and ducks are all free-range on the hillside, without corrals or feeding.So it doesn't look very strong, but the number of cattle is unexpectedly large, including buffalo and yellow cattle.But he doesn't study animal husbandry, and he doesn't know much about this breed, so he will send a professional to take a look at it later.

"I really think it's a waste," Fa Shilu said with emotion. "The agricultural conditions here are very good, but the agricultural level is only slightly better than that of the primitive society."

"Don't be emotional," Wen Desi patted him on the shoulder, "Let's just talk about the paddy fields on both sides of the Wenlan River. How clever can they be? They are far worse than the farmers in our hometown."

Cui Yunhong's harvest here is not so encouraging. With the help of another time-space map, he found an important production: lignite, which is buried very shallow and can be mined.There are also some stone resources, such as limestone, perlite and other small-scale reserves.But the distance is long and the roads are bad, so it is of little value.The rarest thing is the discovery of a small-scale tungsten ore vein, but it is of little use value to the traversers.

People in Li keep a respectful attitude towards these strange Han people, watching them hold strange things, climb trees for a while, go to the fields for a while, and stand aside and draw for a long time... But the children are obviously interested in the novelty. Things have the greatest curiosity, from the beginning of watching from afar, to slowly approaching, and finally starting to play with the utensils of the traversers, and slowly communicate.Of course, most people can't communicate with children. They can only use a little rock candy to represent friendship-this is what Wen Desi took care of before departure.Mu Min has an instinctive affection for compatriots in this other time and space, she can speak Hainanese, and with the power of sugar, on the second day, she has a group of followers around her.

Seeing this group of naked buttocked, mud monkey-like children, Mu Min suddenly had an idea, and this idea eventually became the first school in Li District of Transit Country.

While the work team in the Li area was doing goodwill activities, another team of traversers, led by Wang Luobin, marched towards the Mayao Peninsula not far from them.The goal is to solve the salt problem once and for all.

Salt is not only an indispensable necessity for human survival, but also an important raw material for the modern chemical industry.For the crossing regime, they also urgently need a material that can be circulated and exchanged.In ancient societies with a backward commodity economy, there was no more suitable exchange product than table salt.And the salt industry here has been very developed since ancient times.Lingao faces the Qiongzhou Strait, and has numerous ports and natural beaches. The concentration of sodium chloride in seawater is very high, generally above 1.5-2 degrees Baume.During the dry season, the temperature is high, the wind is strong, the sunshine is long, and the rain is little. It is a good place for sea salt production.Salt has been produced since the Tang Dynasty, and the method of boiling salt was still used at that time.Because of the superior natural environment, from the Yongle period, Hainan’s salt fields have successively adopted the sun-dried salt method for large-scale production. Yantian Village by the Xinying Bay in the south of the Yangpu Economic Development Zone in Hainan is the earliest existing sun-dried salt in my country. The salt-making point is also an ancient salt field with well-preserved primitive sun-dried salt-making methods.The salt farm can still produce normally.

According to the historical data obtained by the traveler, the Ming Dynasty Lingao Salt Field was located on the Mayao Peninsula 25 kilometers north of the county seat, under the jurisdiction of the Salt Field Ambassador, who was under the jurisdiction of the Haibei Tiju Division.It can produce "410 and 230 jin of salt" every year.Calculated on the basis of three hundred catties per import, the salt field produces more than 200 tons of salt per year, which is enough to meet the production and living needs of the people in the early days.

Such a rich resource, of course the Transit regime must quickly take over it.Wang Luobin's task is to observe this space-time drying salt technology on the spot, and consider how to use modern technology to improve and increase production-for modern chemical industry, 200 tons of salt is really too little.

The salt work team is better equipped than the Li district work team. Because some salt needs to be brought back during the mission, the whole team is completely mechanized and equipped with five agricultural vehicles.The car bounced forward on the dirt road and walked for almost two hours. It was rare to see a pedestrian along the road, and after entering the Ma Niao Peninsula area, there were very few people.On the road, only ruined walls and deserted fields can be seen, as if a great war once took place here.The sporadic salt sprinkled on the road made everyone sure that they were not going the wrong way.

Wang Luobin was very confused: according to the action information he got: According to historical records, there are more than 1000 people in this salt field, including their family members. There should be at least 6000 to [-] people around the salt field. There should be many salt villages.But along the way, nothing but ruins are ruins.

At noon, they found a half-abandoned stone road, walked along the stone road, and finally found a village with cooking smoke. The houses here are all made of volcanic rocks. The doors of the rooms are tightly closed, and weeds grow tall in front of some of the doors. It can be seen that no one has been there for many years.There are also many collapsed houses scattered in the village, and grass has grown on them.

There are only some old and young women and children in the village. They don't cover their clothes and look extremely poor.Seeing that this group of weirdos did not avoid them when they came, and their expressions were numb and indifferent, Xiong Buyou asked for a long time in the village before finding the village head's house.

The village head, surnamed Tan, is the hereditary salt family here, who comes from a famous family of sun-dried salt in Hainan.Faced with Xiong Buyou's request to buy salt, he asked someone to open the salt warehouse: there were five or six hundred catties of salt in it.Such a small amount of salt surprised Wang Luobin, and he found out after asking: the Lingao earthquake in Wanli 45 years, the beach fields of the salt field were washed away, and some places sank into the sea, and the production capacity of the Mayao salt field has not recovered. To the initial level, but the color silver specified by the government is not missing at all, and many Yan Ding fled.To make matters worse, pirates often came to the salt farm to rob Yanyin from the end of Wanli. Some of the saltmen were killed, and some fled. Now there are only more than 200 saltmen left in the village.The ancient sun-dried salt is a labor-intensive industry, and it will be even more difficult to maintain production with less manpower.Every year, the repayments are not always paid in full, and the government is in a hurry to urge the class, and the young adults in the village usually hide.Fortunately, there is still a lot of land in Ma Niao, which is irrigated by the water of the Ma Niao River. In addition to sunning the salt, he can cultivate the land to grow some food, which can satisfy his hunger.Just frightened.

This situation dealt a great blow to Wang Luobin. Obviously, the production situation of this salt farm was extremely unsatisfactory.It seems that the original plan of the executive committee to control the salt farm and buy all the production has to be changed - the traverser not only needs to control the salt farm, but also organizes to resume production and expand production.For a moment, Wang Luobin felt that he was like the captain of the land reform work in the movies he watched when he was a child, and there was a lot of waste everywhere.

But it is not easy to organize the resumption of production, so Wang Luobin decided to go to the saltworks to take a look.After giving a Mexican silver dollar to the numb Village Chief Tan, the village chief with a numb face and a disinterested expression finally agreed to take him to the saltworks.

(End of this chapter)