The day after my visit to the munitions factory, the Governor gave me a day off.

Originally, the regulations stipulated that officers who participated in a military operation at the level of a campaign – yes, although the war against the shogunate, called the "First Song-Japanese War", was actually classified as a "campaign" – could be granted a vacation of no less than half a month, but due to the current situation in Liaodong, my vacation was naturally reduced to one day.

"This is also a cultivation for you." The Governor said to me, "The price you pay now, the losses you endure, will be very bright when you are promoted to the rank in the future." ”

So I had to give up appealing to the Ministry of Defense and honestly enjoy the freedom of this day.

The good news is that I met my old friend, Jiang Xiaobai, who has been absent for more than three months.

"Why did you come to Taipei?" Looking at Jiang Xiaobai, who was sitting across from me, I spit out the straw from my mouth and asked expressionlessly.

"Also, why are you still wearing this kind of clothes when you go out shopping?"

Jiang Xiaobai finally kept his hair long enough at this time and tied them on his head. He wears a white shirt with a hem tied in black Songsuit trousers. Wearing a watch on his wrist and a pair of nostalgic boots on his feet, he is really dressed as a talent.

Jiang Xiaobai also showed an expressionless smile, put the juice cup in his hand on the table, and grinned, "Master, I'm on vacation." I heard that you came back from Japan, so I came to Taipei to look for you. ”

"What, this is the attitude towards your future brother-in-law?"

I almost squirted juice out of my mouth.

"Okay, okay, this matter is settled, why are you so shy. Hey, when is my sister coming? ”

"Xiao'an said she would come in the summer." I wiped my mouth with a handkerchief and looked out of the drink shop.

Jiang Xiaobai "tsk" a few times: "Now that I know An Xiao'an's call, who was the 'Jiang classmate' full of mouth back then?" ”

I tried to keep my expression unchanged, thinking to myself that you can, damn it, I will be your brother-in-law in the future, and see how I can give you little shoes to wear.

Luckily, Hersman came in a hurry and rescued me from my awkward situation.

He was wearing a gray military uniform, and shouted loudly from afar: "Li, I'm late, I've kept you waiting." ”

I smiled and put down the cup with Jiang Xiaobai to greet him, and introduced Hersman: "It's okay." This is my classmate, Jiang Xiaobai, who is now working at the embassy in Beijing. ”

I didn't say that Jiang Xiaobai is still a staff member of the CIA, so don't talk nonsense about this identity.

Hersman had asked me to take a tour of the city. The German, who came to the East for the first time, was curious about everything, and looked at Taipei, which was far away from the European cities, and his blue eyes were glowing green.

Well, if you go to Chang'an, this European guy won't have to change his eyes to a light bulb.

So we boarded a horse-drawn carriage at Yangming Park (Note 1) in the west of the city and headed all the way to Shilin District, the busiest area in Taipei at the time.

The road from the military district station to the city passes through a large construction site in the north of the city. The construction of this super construction site of more than 10 square kilometers was started to accommodate Dongjiang migrants.

Originally, during the Apocalypse of the Ming Kingdom, when the Ao Song Dynasty first established contact with Dongjiang Town, the plan to relocate the civilians of Dongjiang Town living on Liaonan Island and the mountainous area of Liaodong to Taiwan, Jeju and Ryukyu had already been proposed by the Civil Affairs Department of the Governor's District. It was only because of the unique homeland plot of the Ming people, and the fact that the offensive momentum of the Jin bandits was not concentrated in southern Liaoning at that time, so only a few thousand civilians were willing to come to Taiwan by boat - these civilians were assigned to Kaohsiung, which had just been established at that time.

By the beginning of this summer, the situation was no longer comparable to that of five or six years ago. Not only did Guangning fall and the situation in western Liaoning collapsed, but since Nurhachi's death, Huang Taiji has paid more and more attention to Dongjiang Town, which has contained the flank of Houjin, and the pressure on Mao Wenlong has also increased day by day, and he has to agree to a large-scale transfer of civilians.

Hersman sat in the car, his big blond head leaning against the window, stunned as he watched the endless construction site.

The first batch of young and middle-aged people in Dongjiang Town were organized into the construction team. At this time, they all wore yellow hard hats, wielded hoes and shovels, and dug the foundation under the guidance of Ao Song engineers and interns from the Department of Civil Engineering.

Hundreds of people worked together in the sun, and loud slogans and trumpets were heard one after another. Bright red flags fluttered in the sea breeze, and from time to time a logistics team of women sang songs on the construction site to cheer on their husbands and brothers.

Hersman was stunned. He never imagined that thousands of people working together would have such a high morale. In his hometown, even if the baron himself led the knights to the peasants for labor, and every twenty peasants had a steward with a whip, and the lazy farmer was also a cunning man... And here he did not see a single soldier or knight supervising the workers, and these workers who were completely conscious were not lazy in the slightest, and each of them mustered all his strength to work.

"It must be the superiority of the Ao-Song system!" After really not thinking of a reason, Hersman subconsciously attributed these wonderful scenes to the particularity of the Australian Song Kingdom, "It must be that the social system of the Australian Song Dynasty is better than that of Europe!" Those stupid Junkers and the imperial court simply don't have such skills! ”

"Oh, no. I saw captured Spanish and Portuguese sailors in Singapore, and those scum refused to work well under the watchful eye of the soldiers! It seems that not only the Australian and Song systems are good, but the Australian and Song people are also God's people! They are so industrious, so honest, a hundred times better than the Europeans! ”

The carriage stopped by a small stream, and Hirschman pulled Jiang Xiaobai and me out of the car, ready to take a closer look at the people on the construction site.

A couple of girls standing on the side of the road to rest caught our attention. Although Hesman was born tall and big, and he was also a reactionary and evil feudal landlord class in Europe, he must have done a lot of bad things to bully men and women, but in the face of Chinese women here, he cowered and didn't dare to step forward, so Jiang Xiaobai went up to greet and talk to them.

The women, all of whom belong to the Volunteer Art Troupe, have just sung a song "Southern Red" on the construction site and are now sitting and resting. When we came to learn something about labor, one of the young girls in the red short-sleeved shirt stood up happily and chattered non-stop.

"My brother is from the construction team, and he works over there." The girl pointed to the place where a red flag was located in the distance, "You see, it's the batch under the flag, my brother is the captain of that team, and they sent out two labor pacesetters this week, and they also took a mobile red flag!" ”

"What is a mobile red flag?" Hersman asked in a strange pronunciation.

The girl looked up at the big blond man with some curiosity, and said with a smile: "It was proposed by the Department of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, and officials come down for assessment every week, and the qualified team can hang a mobile red flag and get a bonus!" ”

Hirschman scratched his head and made another note in his heart: there must be a mobile red flag and pay the excellent squad.

"You're all from Liaodong?" Jiang Xiaobai asked with a smile.

The girl faced Jiang Xiaobai, who looked handsome, and her attitude immediately became gentle: "Yes, my family turned out to be from Tieyuan." Later, the Jiannu Tartar incident, the Ming court was shattered as soon as it was touched, and my father took me and my brother to escape all the way, followed Mao Dashuai to Kuandian, and only came to Taiwan last month. ”

"Are you afraid of slaves?" That's what I asked.

"What are you afraid of, what are you afraid of?" The girl looked at me strangely, as if she were looking at an alien. "In the past, before you came to Song, we were a little afraid... But he is not afraid of too much, because of General Huang Stone, he will never lose a battle, from Jinzhou to Lushun has always cut off the head of Jiannu. ”

"But at that time, Yuan Chonghuan's dog thieves and Shandong dog officials both stuck our grain, and a thousand stones of grain were transported over, which could give them three hundred stones or four hundred stones! (Note 2)"

"But after you Ao Song comes, we will no longer be afraid! Jiannu had not won a single battle with us since then, and there was no shortage of food as much as he came. ”

As she spoke, the other women shouted, and the girl in red smiled embarrassedly, and hurriedly ran over, gathered with her companions, and stood on the dirt slope.

A deep song came slowly.

"My home is on the Songhua River in Northeast China,

There are forest coal mines,

And the soybean sorghum that is all over the mountains.

......

From that miserable time,

Separated from my homeland,

Abandon the endless treasure,

Stray! Stray!

......”

Jiang Xiaobai and Hersman and I stood on the side of the road, looking at the boundless construction site. Thousands of hard-working workers stopped their work in the midst of the song and looked this way.

Slowly, the squads of other art troupes also began to sing together.

One, two, and tens of thousands.

One by one, the workers opened their mouths. Fifty-year-olds, forty-year-olds and thirty-year-olds, twenty-year-olds, teenagers.

A hundred people, a thousand people, all of them.

Everyone couldn't help but sing along with the song. The originally soft female voice was covered by countless male voices, and the low melody spontaneously turned high, and a kind of power converged on the loess construction site, fluttering between the blue sky and white clouds.

"That's electricity, it's light, it's the myth of China."

Many years later, when Hersmann, who taught German martial arts at the martial arts gym, told his children and grandchildren stories, there was still an indescribable look in his eyes.

"That is hope, it is the future, and it is the soul of a nation."

Note 1: After the completion of the first phase of expansion in Taipei, this park was renamed "Working People's Park".

Note 2: "Every year, the annual allowance is 100,000, and the end is 670,000, and the rest is lost", Memoirs of Mao Wenlong, 2nd edition, p. 17.