The leader took the party to an open field outside the village and told them to rest here. This Li village is completely different from the Li villages in the large and small folk tours in Hainan that everyone has been to in later generations. First of all, it has no wall, from the outside it looks like a slightly larger ordinary village, around the village planted dense thorny dwarf trees, and during the period is overgrown with all kinds of vines and bamboo, let alone people, not even a rabbit can get through. This is the first time everyone has seen such a wall.

Secondly, there is no trace of the iconic boat-shaped house of the Li nationality that everyone learned from the folk village, this kind of house lives on the top and raises livestock below, which makes people look very "ethnic" at a glance. At present, the village is a pyramid-shaped straw house. The walls of the house are made of bamboo and pasted with mud, which looks very special. This Nanan Village is where the "capital" of this mountain is located.

The so-called Li Tong in Hainan is generally divided by natural terrain and is generally composed of several villages. The lords have been recognized by the government, hold hereditary positions, and are issued with seals and bronze medals. The local officials of the Li people, such as the lord of the mountain and the Tushe, are to suppress the Li people and maintain local public order and social order; The second is to complete the various apportionments sent by the government on time every year, where there are taxes on the official side and "auspicious money" for the private affairs of officials. Of course, their own income is indispensable -- no matter how big or small the local officials are, the government does not give them money, and they have to rely on themselves to collect them. In other words, as long as you pay the various official and private "share money" that should be paid on time every year, the local officials can do whatever they want in their own territory, and they are basically a local emperor.

The people who stayed outside the village were unified under the management of Zhang Bolin, and everyone was loose on the outside and tight on the inside, and they seized the time to rest. Lu Rong, Wen Desi, and Mu Min were led by the head man into the village to meet the lord.

There were many curious people inside and outside the village, all pointing and watching a little farther away from the roadside, and Wen Deji saw several old ladies sitting on the stones on the roadside weaving rattan tools. The face is densely tattooed with black patterns, but the mouth is jet black, which is really terrifying, thinking that this is the "old lady like a monster" in the eighteen monsters in Hainan. Sure enough, it's better to be famous than to meet. (Note: The literary habits of Li women did not completely disappear until the 50s of the 20th century.) The first is to prevent being taken captive by outsiders, and the second is to represent the steadfastness of feelings. As for the color of the lips and teeth, it is purely the result of chewing betel nut every day). A little attention is paid to the fact that almost all women have literacy, except for the little furry child who has not yet developed. This completely shattered everyone's illusions about ethnic minority women.

"This custom must be repealed." Wei Aiwen muttered that in his original Jihua, recruiting Li soldiers was only the first step, and then he had to master the team by serving as the commander of Li soldiers - the most important part was to marry the daughter of a Li leader - and his impression of Li girls was based on the image in the movie. However, the sight in front of him made his Jihua shake badly.

If there really be a leader who will marry his daughter to him, will he accept it? It's nerve-wracking. And the women here are literal as soon as they become adults...... He was so troubled by the bubble in the air for no reason.

This will not say that the head person, even the ordinary Li Min girl did not take a fancy to him. To the common people of the Li ethnic group, this is a group of terrible figures: they have heard that the "powder guns" in the hands of these people are so powerful that they can shoot guns in succession and kill people from a long distance. Those who fled said that they could only hear the continuous sound of gunshots, and that as soon as people died, they were in large numbers.

Lu Rong and his party were taken into a large house in the middle of the village. This house is taller than ordinary houses, built on a pedestal, and in addition to the middle corridor, there are bamboo beds on three sides of the house, which are used for everyone to sit and sleep. The fire pit is on the back wall, and on top of it hangs bamboo rafts, which are used to smoke food. There are windows on the side of the roof, but the lighting is still very poor, and when you enter, you feel that it is dark in front of you, and it takes a while to get used to it.

The Lord was an old man, with gray hair and a very bad face—and they later learned that he was in his early fifties, but he was an old man everywhere by the standards of the 17th century. Lu Rong presented a specially prepared gift: a bottle of Red Star Erguotou, a packet of rock candy and two folding knives.

Of these three things, the two pot heads in glass wine bottles attracted his attention the most - Ming Dynasty liquor has been popularized, but the wine packaged in pure and colorless glass small flat bottles is very visually striking for anyone in this time and space. Obviously, in modern times, glass bottles, which are only used as packaging for goods, are much more valuable in his eyes than wine.

As for the two folding knives, the lord played with them for a while, and carved them on the wooden board a few times, and his eyes showed admiration.

"Such a haode knife, even if you go to the county seat, you can't buy it." The lord raised his head and looked at them, very surprised, "Where are you from, Qiongshan?" ”

Wen Desi blew up his set of Australian maritime things, which he was very familiar with because he talked a lot. The lord didn't know much about the outside world, and he had only been to Lingao County in the Han District. The "big official" in Qiongzhou Mansion -- the prefect -- is the biggest official in his eyes. However, when he heard that they were not Ming people, but Han Chinese from overseas, he was obviously more relaxed, and ordered people to bring wine to entertain guests—rice wine made from Shanlan rice glutinous rice grown by the Li people, which developed into a famous local rice wine "Shanlan Yuye" in later generations.

Shanlan liquor is the simplest fermented glutinous rice liquor, with a brewing period of only seven days and a negligible alcohol content, similar to that of later generations. All three drank a bowl.

With wine as a lubricant, it is much easier to talk about things, and I also took the opportunity to ask a lot about the local situation. The surname of the lord is Zhu, but this Zhu Ke has nothing to do with Zhu Yuanzhang, their family is the so-called: "Basho's child". Generation is the head of this village. When the Ma Ya riot in the Wanli year, many Li Dong in Lingao were also involved. Only his family was not involved, and after the matter calmed down, he merged the neighboring villages into one mountain and sealed the lord of the mountain. There are seven villages in the whole mountain, and there are more than 2,000 men, women, old and children, which is a very large local area in Lingao.

Mu Min inquired about how many Li people there were in Lingao, and this Zhu Tong lord himself couldn't tell, in addition to Bentong, there were more than ten Li people in Lingao, some of them made up the map, and some of them did not make up. The number of people is as small as a few hundred, and as many as one or two thousand. After passing the Panbao Mountain, further south is the place where Li is born. In addition to them, there is also a nearby Li Tong called Gamuli, all in all, the Li people are also quite complicated, because the language and living customs are different, there is not much interaction, and even little intermarriage.

As for the government, Lord Zhu said that the last two county magistrates are easy to talk about, and they don't need to ask for much, and they don't come to talk about it when they send the prescribed money every year. It's just that in recent years, the road has not been quiet, and there are many fewer Han hawkers in Laili District, and salt is already expensive, but now the price is higher. If the maritime merchants could transport salt, they were willing to exchange animal skins, red and white vines, betel nuts and cattle. Then the man who had been bribed by them suggested that it would be better to sell some iron tools, as there was a shortage of farm tools and knives.

These conditions were expected, and Lu Rong agreed. Salt and iron cannot be manufactured at the moment, but production is a recent thing, and supply is not a problem. In contrast, the Loon district had a lot to offer: wood, cotton, hides, rattan, pigs and cattle, all of which they urgently needed.

In terms of price, Wen Deji decided not to use the method of high-price exploitation - it is true that it is possible to make huge profits by trading like those small traders who carry their hands on their shoulders, but the result is that there is very little to sell. Of course, in ancient times, the level of productivity was low, the transport capacity was low, and there were risks on the way. The way of high prices and huge profits is still reasonable. It is not suitable for people who have mastered the capacity of large-scale industrial production such as the Crossing Public. The price of salt is too high, and the profit is very large, but the people will reduce the consumption of salt to the lowest survival level, and as a result, they will not be able to sell much salt. As soon as the price is low, the consumption of salt will immediately increase.

The price of salt he quoted was very satisfactory to the lord of Zhu Tong and the head, only one-third of the price of the small traders, but even this price, Wen Deji felt that he was a profiteer. For the time being, the measurement of salt was made as a unit of weights and measures by the official bucket -- Wen Deji decided to make a batch of weighing instruments as soon as he returned, and to popularize the units of weights and measures of the traverser as soon as possible through trade. As for the price of ironware, he did not know the market price of pig iron in the Ming Dynasty for the time being, so he only promised that it would be lower than that of the traders.

The two sides haggled for the first time since they arrived on this plane. Historical name: "Nanan Village Trade Agreement". The agreement stipulates that the traversal can sell all goods to Nanantong, but they must carry a certain amount of salt and iron with them for each trade. The Nantong is exchanged for whatever the traverser needs, but does not include the population.

The 80 kilograms of salt brought this time were exchanged for more than 70 cowhides, deer skins, and wild boar skins. Forty Qiongbu and a buffalo. The piles of things in the empty yard made everyone feel that they were profiteers, and they did not know that the hawkers who specialize in trading in the Li District could exchange one catty (old catty, 594 grams) of coarse salt for twenty or thirty catties of pigs.

The Li people also felt that they had benefited: there were many animal skins in every village, and in their eyes they were easy to obtain; The qiong cloth was spun by the women for their own use, and it was not worth a few dollars.

The Lord also sent twelve horses of arrowroot. Ge cloth is a famous product of Hainan in the Ming Dynasty, because of moisture absorption and heat dissipation, it is a high-grade fabric for summer clothes. Each captive family who was returned was given a pig as a thank you for the release. All parties rejoiced. Lord Zhu sent a message to all the villages to come and drink, and took out two arrows at the banquet, he first asked people to read out the contents of the agreement aloud, and then cut nine arrows at the arrow, and then gave another arrow to Lu Rong.

"You can cut nine knives too." Mu Min told him that this was the ritual of cutting arrows, which meant that both parties should abide by each other's rules, and if they violated the agreement, they would be fined ninety cows and ninety taels of silver.

After cutting the arrow, I drank a few more bowls of rice wine. The two sides also designated their own contact persons: Lu Rong on the side of the traverser, and Nan Yu was the Aoya Fu Dayou of the village. Wen Deji took the opportunity to propose that he would like to stay in Nan Nan Tong for a few more days to see what local products they need. If you have it, you can also use these local products to offset the price of salt and iron in the future. This request was readily granted.