1905: Beer Hall Speaker

Page 131

The immigration officer in front of them had clearly encountered some southern barbarians. The honest immigrants from the Central Plains and North China brought dry food and farm tools with them, while these southern barbarians were carrying guns and knives.

This group of over a hundred immigrants came from the mountainous areas of western Hunan and Jiangxi. Life in the mountains was too hard; they couldn't even get enough to eat. So they spent all their savings to buy equipment and prepared to try their luck in Northeast China. But the immigration officers still had to send them back to the mountains. How could they accept this?

“Sir, let’s make money peacefully. Please don’t make things difficult for us, and we won’t make things difficult for you either. To be honest, we’re a group of people from the mountains. We’re terrified of poverty and can’t even find wives, so we’ve traveled thousands of miles to try and turn our lives around.”

"You're sending us further into the mountains? Isn't that a waste of time? If we really wanted to go into the forest, why would we come all this way? There are forests everywhere back home; it would be much easier for us to become outlaws!" The leader was somewhat wise enough not to be completely stubborn and offered a few words of reasoning, but not much.

The immigration officer immediately recognized that this group was no ordinary people; they were most likely former southern bandits or local troublemakers who had been driven out by the local government to cause trouble for others.

After Wu Zifu's multiple rounds of bandit suppression and crackdown, the southern regions have also suffered multiple rounds of attacks from the garrison. Hundreds of thousands of bandits resisted for a long time, but they still could not hold on any longer.

The government was also very troubled. The bandits in the south were too resilient. Even a killing god like Wu Zifu could only make them temporarily bow down. Subsequent rounds of suppression could not completely eradicate them.

In the end, the government had no choice but to offer them amnesty, saying, "Stop fighting. We're all江湖儿女 (people of the underworld), harming the locals isn't a skill. If you're so capable, go out and make your way in the world."

The southern bandits thought it made sense. They realized that continuing the fighting would be difficult for them, but they didn't know how to farm and only knew how to rob. So, they accepted the offer as a way out.

The government promised not to send them to reformatories, but to issue them free ID cards and register them as normal citizens, thus absolving them of their past crimes. However, they could not stay in the local area and had to participate in the immigration strategy to go to other places and harm others.

At its peak, there were over a million bandits in the mountain valleys of the south. Mountain people were often associated with bandits, farming when there was nothing to do and robbing when there was trouble.

Wu Zifu launched a campaign to eradicate the remaining 100,000 people, and local governments subsequently launched multiple campaigns to eliminate them, but they were still unable to completely eradicate them. The only solution was to offer them amnesty and send the remaining hundreds of thousands of tough guys to the Three Norths (Northwest, Northern Mongolia, and Northeast) to cause trouble for others, as long as they were not left in the local area.

The immigration officer immediately understood what was going on. He cursed his southern colleagues for cheating him, but dared not escalate the conflict. He could only try to appease them by saying, "Gentlemen, our Liaoning is too small to accommodate so many true Buddhas. Why don't you look elsewhere? There are plenty of other places that accept immigrants!"

Liaoning Province prefers the honest and obedient Shandong immigrants to these southerners. After all, Liaoning is not a border province, and its economy and industrial strength are quite good. What it is pursuing now is stable and orderly development.

When the immigration leader realized there was no hope, he stopped arguing and led his group to other immigration points to try their luck. As the leader, he had to hurry up and find a way to survive, otherwise his fellow immigrants wouldn't let him off the hook.

Immigrant groups in the south tend to spontaneously band together, and these groups are usually composed of more than a hundred people, with the leaders being the most resourceful and innovative members.

But being a leader isn't easy. If you can bring benefits to everyone and lead them onto the right path, then you're the boss. But if you lead them astray, everyone will be the first to turn against you.

After hitting a wall, the group hadn't gone far when another immigration officer stopped them: "Gentlemen, do you want to immigrate and get rich?"

The leader nodded: "You've come all this way, not to turn your lives around and make a fortune, but to be your laborers?"

When the immigration officer saw the group of men with fierce looks in their eyes, each carrying a gun and a knife, a look of satisfaction immediately appeared on his face: "Then you've come to the right place. Heilongjiang Province is in dire need of heroes like you. We'll take as many as you come."

I'm not afraid of your ambition, I'm afraid of you being cowards!

The immigrant group immediately objected: "Who are you calling a coward? Back when we were mountain bandits..."

The leader quickly stopped them: "Shut up, all of you, don't make a sound!"

“Sir, we’re not afraid of death, we’re only afraid of being poor. As long as we don’t have to go to the mountains to eat dirt, we’re willing to do anything.”

The Heilongjiang immigration officer nodded emphatically: "Good, that's the kind of wild spirit we need!"

“We have plenty of land there, and it’s all flat land, black soil! The kind that you can squeeze oil out of a handful, stretching as far as the eye can see.”

“If you don’t know how to farm, there are serfs. You can have them farm for you, just pay them some wages.”

The leader asked with a skeptical look, "Is there really such a good thing? And why would they take the initiative to come to us?"

The Heilongjiang immigration officer laughed and said, "Of course, it's not all good things; there are some bad things too."

"The path is through Russia; the risks are higher, but the profits are also very high!"

"When you go there, you have to get your hands on the land and property first. Once you have it, it's yours, and you can just pay the taxes according to the regulations."

The leader looked troubled: "What do you mean by 'get it'? You're just telling us to rob it. To be honest, sir, we robbed too much in the south, which is why we were driven out. You're trying to trick us into going back to our old ways. What if we attract the bandit suppression army?"

The group of southern immigrants all looked distressed. They were only driven out because they couldn't win. If they could, who would want to travel thousands of miles away from their homeland?

In the south, they had withstood the suppression of Wu Zifu's army. Back then, that mountain was stained with blood. Wu Zifu's ruthless methods showed them the power of the government troops. Even though they survived, they were still fearful and unwilling to provoke the government troops again.

The immigration officer said nonchalantly, "It's alright. The provincial government will issue you a settlement permit. The land and property you acquire are legal in the Republic. I guarantee that our troops here will not attack you, but you'll have to deal with the Russian troops on your own."

"Russian government troops? Who's stronger, them or that prince's Red Sixth Army?" the leader asked cautiously.

The "crown prince" was Wu Zifu, and the "Sixth Red Army" was Wu Zifu's elite Sixth Army Group. It took the immigration officer a long time to communicate with the vegetable farmer to understand.

Then, upon learning that this group of people were actually ruthless individuals who had withstood three moves from Wu Zifu, they became even happier: "Then don't worry, with this skill, you'll definitely make a fortune in Outer Northeast China. You can have anything you want, as long as you don't rob Han people, there won't be any other problems."

"Rob Russians, no matter how many, the government will back you up. As long as you pay taxes, it's all legal. Go ahead and do it!"

The leader felt he had no other choice but to agree. As long as they didn't go up the mountain, everything else could be dealt with when they got there. With weapons in hand, they would grow bigger and stronger!

Chapter 218 Immigration (2)

There are still a large number of immigrants in Shandong ready to go, but their predecessors have already made waves in Northeast Asia.

Wangjiatun, Hegang area, Heilongjiang Province.

Wangjiatun is a small town built by immigrants from Shandong. The town mainly relies on agriculture and forestry. It has only been established for less than two years, but it has already grown to a size of more than 3,000 people.

The immigrants here are constantly creating their own wealth through hard work. The government has also provided them with many preferential policies, such as tax exemption and exemption from corvée labor, as well as low-priced tools, fertilizers and other production materials.

The immigrants did not disappoint the government's investment, displaying astonishing efficiency by continuously reclaiming farmland and clearing forests, transforming the originally barren and primitive swamp forests into towns and farmlands.

Once the tax exemption period ends next year, this place will be able to contribute its own tax revenue to the local treasury.

Zheng Dakang, a resident of Wangjiatun, moved as usual today, carrying a large saw, an axe, and other tools, along with four poles and a bundle of pancakes, preparing to head to the nearby mountains to reclaim wasteland.

The land reclamation here is different from that inside the Great Wall. Land reclamation inside the Great Wall only requires dealing with wild grass and shrubs, because inside the Great Wall, especially in the densely populated northern areas, almost all the trees that can be cut down have been cut down over thousands of years.

So-called wasteland is land that has been abandoned due to war and famine, resulting in the death of its original owner. Reclaiming wasteland simply means that a new group of owners will take over the cultivation.

But in many places outside the Great Wall, it's a different story. The land reclamation work no longer involves dealing with wild grass and shrubs, but with forests, wetlands, and swamps.

Zheng Dakang's family arrived in Zhengjiatun in the early winter of last year. They survived thanks to loans from the local government. They worked tirelessly to reclaim wasteland and developed more than 30 mu of land. This year, they barely managed to make ends meet.

But Zheng Dakang was still not satisfied. His family of five had a quota of fifty mu of tax-free land, so he had to at least get the tax-free land approved first.

Zheng Dakang was most envious of the immigrants and veterans who followed the head of state out of the country. They were the first to receive ready-made cultivated land, and each plot was allocated to them in hundreds of acres, requiring no land reclamation. The geographical locations were also the best.

These latecomers all have to make tremendous efforts to catch up with the starting point of others. Those old immigrants are now all big landowners, with farms averaging over a thousand acres. By rotating wheat and soybeans, they can still make a fortune even with extremely high tax rates.

Moreover, many military families or families of fallen soldiers have a large tax-free allowance, so they earn even more.

Zheng Dakang also wanted to become a farmer like that, but it was difficult to do so with just his own two hands. He could only hope to have more children in the future so that the next generation could fulfill his dream.

After arriving on his land, his father and wife followed closely behind. They were less able to work, so they took care of the land that had already been cultivated. Zheng Dakang, being strong and capable, was responsible for clearing out the forests and swamps on the edge of the land, turning them into legal land for the Zheng family.

Local governments in Northeast China have now banned land grabbing. Only when the land is reclaimed and cultivated will the authorities recognize it as your legal land. Otherwise, if you just put up a few boundary markers and claim it as your land, no one will recognize it.

Besides the Zheng family, there were many other people cultivating the land on the edge of the forest. There were no lazy people here; they were all hard-working thieves who wished they could work 24 hours a day.

Everyone abides by the tacit agreement, cultivating the edge of their own existing land and not venturing onto the land next to others.

What puzzled and baffled these Shandong immigrants the most was why trees could grow on such fertile flat land. In their hometowns inside the Great Wall, not to mention flat land, even the trees on the mountains had been almost completely cut down, but here, towering trees could grow even on irrigated land.

What surprised them even more was that the land here was so fertile that once it was cleared out, it could be used to grow crops without any need for soil conditioning.

After the barren land within the Great Wall was reclaimed, it was necessary to fertilize it and plant soybeans in the first year, continue to nourish the land and plant some fertile crops in the second year, and only in the third year could grain be planted.

The land in Northeast China outside the Great Wall is mostly suitable for growing grains directly, and it doesn't require much fertilizer, resulting in much higher yields than the land inside the Great Wall.

The only problem is that there are a lot of wetlands and swamps here, and drainage work is very time-consuming and laborious, which is unimaginable in the interior of the Great Wall. In the interior of the Great Wall, there is only land that is short of water, and almost no land that needs drainage.

All morning, there were diligent and busy figures everywhere, with almost no rest. Even toddlers had to bend over and weed, and the adults didn't stop at all. Women were used like men, and men were used like animals.

Around noon, no one went home for lunch. They all sat in the fields, took out pancakes and started eating. Zheng Dakang was even more ferocious, not even drinking water, and just ate raw glutinous rice!

The reason why Shandong people are so suitable for immigration and can easily settle down in Northeast China is closely related to their dietary habits.

Shandong has limited land and a large population, with its population nearing the point of explosion. In order to feed such a large population with limited land, Shandong people never pursue taste or nutrition; their only requirement for food is that it fills them up and is easy to store.

Those with better resources would mix wheat flour with mixed grain flour and knead it into a cylindrical shape, directly processing and maturing the unfermented dough to create what is known as "gangtou" (杠头).

Compared to this thing, the Russians' so-called black bread, which could be used as bricks, was nothing more than raw recruits! If the Russians' black bread was like bricks, then the Shandong people's sturdy concrete was like concrete.

The steel head is something that can really stop knives and guns, and even low-powered submachine gun bullets can't penetrate it if they encounter a thicker steel head!

Another treasure of Shandong immigrants is the rolled pancake! Its texture is indescribable. Decades later, the pancakes made with refined grain flour often make people break their teeth from the hard bits.

The pancakes that Shandong people make nowadays using a mixture of sorghum, bran, corn, and other grains are far more than just hard to chew; they are completely unsuitable as a staple food, both in terms of taste and nutrition.

Pancakes not only hurt your teeth, but they also damage your stomach. Eating them year after year is like torture; you're almost guaranteed to develop gastrointestinal problems because even your stomach acid can't handle the chewiness of pancakes.

But this kind of food was a daily staple for Shandong people back then. In later generations, scallion pancakes became a Shandong specialty, but back then, scallion pancakes were a unique part of Shandong people's traumatic culture. Unless absolutely necessary, no one would eat this stuff.

Steel-headed bread and pancakes are proof of Shandong people's survival and continuation through countless hardships. Under the tempering of such resilient food, the character of Shandong people has also become resilient. Like weeds, as long as they are given a chance to survive, they will spread.

Their bodies are forged in hardship, enabling them to adapt to extreme environments and persevere in labor, whether in severe cold or scorching heat.

Their digestive systems are also incredibly resilient; they never experience any food incompatibility or dietary problems, no matter where they go. As long as there's something to eat, they can unleash their energy. If there's nothing to eat, they'll just gnaw on a pancake.

In the afternoon, the sky began to gather dark clouds, and it looked like it was going to rain. Everyone quickly packed up their things and went home, because they didn't dare to get caught in the rain in Northeast China.

Once you catch a fever or a cold, it can easily kill a perfectly healthy person. For immigrants, when illness strikes, they can only tough it out and can't expect to find a doctor to prescribe medicine.

Back in town, Zheng Dakang quickly instructed his wife to gather up the clothes and the drying crops. The family squeezed into their home, which was built of logs. Although the logs had been fired and the gaps filled, the roof was also covered with four or five layers of reeds.

But it's still very uncomfortable when it rains, as it often leaks, and shortly after it rains, mushrooms start growing on the house. In short, it's a lot of trouble.

It was even worse in winter, when they had to keep burning firewood to maintain the indoor temperature.

After the daughter-in-law finished tidying up, she lit a fire and cooked a pot of corn and oat porridge. Then she made four wild eggs. The family sat around the round wooden table and started eating the porridge and pancakes. The wild eggs, which were easier to eat and digest, were given to the old man and Zheng Dakang, the main laborer. The women and children could only watch.

The coarse pancakes became much easier to eat after being softened by the porridge. Zheng Dakang chewed them heartily. Because the food was low in oil and calories, Zheng Dakang could only make up for the energy deficit by eating a lot, relying on quantity to win.

When he finally saw the two fried eggs, Zheng Dakang resisted the urge to drool and gave them to the two children.

The surrounding forests and swamps are home to many wild animals; you could practically catch roe deer with a stick or scoop up fish with a ladle. However, the nearby areas have all been cleared, so to obtain wild meat, you have to travel to much farther places, which takes a lot of time and effort.

What immigrants lack most is time and energy. The summer and autumn seasons in Northeast China are not long enough for farming. Winters are long and springs are rainy. In the remaining few months, smart people will work hard to cultivate the land instead of hunting and fishing.

Because the land produces stable and abundant yields, enough to feed a family, but fishing and hunting are not so certain. If you waste too much time and miss the farming season, the consequences will be dire.

Don't be fooled by the fact that Northeast China has fertile land and abundant produce, making it sound like paradise on earth. But don't forget that Northeast China also has long and extremely cold winters. The people here store up supplies and work hard in spring, summer and autumn so that their families can safely get through the long winter.

The winters in Northeast China were so harsh that even the steely-willed Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army almost couldn't withstand them, let alone ordinary people. They could only desperately stockpile everything they needed and hope that no accidents would happen during the winter.

It's already mid-July, and Zheng Dakang's family has less than three months to stock up on winter supplies. After October, the temperature will start to drop gradually until it becomes completely frozen and snowy, and it won't thaw until March of the following year.

For at least four or five months during this period, you can't do anything and can only rely on your savings to survive.

In TV dramas, it seems that winter in Northeast China is just about wearing a few layers of thick clothes and being able to move around freely outdoors. You can even go hunting or fishing on the ice. But those are things that only skilled people dare to do. Most ordinary people don't have that kind of ability.

Even decades later in Northeast China, only residents in some urban areas dared to move freely outdoors, because in urban areas you could always find a place to keep warm.

Rural people would never dare to leave their village or town settlements. If they went out into the wild in the freezing cold, even special forces soldiers would not be able to find their way home if there was a slight wind or snow. In extremely cold temperatures, let alone minus twenty or thirty degrees Celsius, even minus ten degrees Celsius, if you were exposed for a long time, you would most likely have problems.

Not to mention that you're going hunting in the forest or fishing on the ice, which are dangerous areas.

In high-latitude regions, winters are so hot that people can barely stay indoors burning firewood, let alone outdoors.

After finishing his meal, Zheng Dakang looked worriedly at the rain outside. Of the more than 20 mu of land he planted this year, only 10 mu were used for grain, and the rest were soybeans.

After selling the soybeans, they still have to repay the government loan, and the remaining money has to be used to purchase fuel and daily necessities needed for the winter. If possible, they also need to stockpile some oil.

But he didn't know if the grain produced from the ten acres of land would be enough to meet the needs of his family of five for four or five months during the winter, because he had to use some of the grain to exchange for building materials to continue reinforcing the house.

Harvesting another ten acres of land will also take a lot of time. In addition, he also needs to take time to stock up on firewood. Burning coal in winter is too expensive. The coal he buys can only be used in emergencies. He still has to rely on firewood for daily heating.

During this period, clearing land and developing new areas was just a side project; the main task was logging. We had to cut down enough trees to make firewood and dry them before winter arrived.

Life in Northeast China may seem easy, but in reality, every step must be flawless and every factor must be considered, otherwise it will be a survival crisis.

Everyone in town is like this, preparing for winter. It's certain that if someone is in trouble, they will help each other. But this kind of favor often requires you to pay many times more to repay it the following year.

Chapter 219 Immigration (3)

The gaze moves westward from the northeast beyond the Great Wall, gradually entering the vast, boundless grasslands.

Yunzhong City in Mobei Province is a new city, or rather, a city that evolved from a grassland market.

After Zhao Yan pacified the grasslands, the central government began to assimilate the grasslands, starting with de-Mongolization. The official designation of "Mongol" was abolished, and all Mongols were referred to as "Han Chinese of the grasslands."

Even official history textbooks have been revised, defining the ancestors of the Mongols as a branch that migrated north from the Han Chinese population in the Central Plains, with the evidence being that Liu Bilie himself claimed to be a descendant of Liu Bang.

The names of Inner and Outer Mongolia were abolished, and the grasslands were divided into Southern Mongolia Province and Northern Mongolia Province by the central government. There were no so-called ethnic autonomous regions, and not even a single place name with ethnic characteristics. Everything was swept away.

The names of major cities and key locations within the two provinces of Inner and Outer Mongolia have been renamed. Some place names that had long disappeared from history have been reinstated, such as Yunzhong, Dingxiang, Shuofang, Huaihuang, Huaishuo, and Wuchuan, which have a strong Han Chinese flavor, replacing the original Mongolian-style place names.

It's like pushing the ancestral border line thousands of kilometers north, almost as if they've used place names like Langya and Changshan on the grasslands.

Besides place names and historical and cultural methods, the central government also vigorously promoted the migration of Han Chinese to the grasslands. The two provinces of southern and northern Inner Mongolia cover an area of ​​over one million square kilometers, but the population is pitifully small.

Before Zhao Yan personally led the expedition to the northern desert, the grassland population was about 800,000. But after the expedition, only about 450,000 people remained on the grassland. This population density was so low that there wasn't even one person per square kilometer.

Originally, the higher authorities were supposed to implement a policy of replacing local birds with new ones in these newly naturalized areas, but seeing that there were so few local birds left, they were speechless and could only desperately try to increase the number of people on the grasslands.

At its peak, the grasslands had a population of two to three million. After all, such a large area, with its unique culture and history, and a people that was once a nightmare for the Han Chinese in the south, should not have such a small population.

Even the central command was starting to have a headache. Zhao Yan regretted lowering the wheels too much back then. With only 400,000 people on such a vast grassland, what good could that do? It was practically uninhabited.