Section 19 Road

Quark? Poor and red-faced, he came out of the room, and it was a long time before he told Li Luoyou what had happened inside: he had been semi-forcibly stripped of his trousers, and then forced to lie on an iron bed, and then several women with white cloths covering their faces and only their eyes exposed, came over and scrubbed him from front to back with a brush dipped in potion.

Then his cleaned and sterilized parts were carefully watched for several minutes, and then they were tossed back and forth by something cold, like pincers. Quark secretly screamed that it was not good, but the big man beside him made him dare not resist.

He then heard someone talking about his body hair being too much to see clearly, and then someone discussing whether or not to shave him. Quark was shocked, he was not a woman, and he would not become a laughing stock for life if he was known about his shaved hair.

He begged for mercy in Mandarin and Cantonese vernacular, saying that he was willing to give up everything and ask them not to do such a thing that would disgrace him. Zuihou didn't know if it was his plea that worked or if the other party didn't think it was necessary, so he escaped.

“…… I still smelled of the potion for days after I got back from Lingao. Quark said helplessly, "These Australians are such strange guys"

But at this time, he kept an iron face and followed Li Luoyou out of the customs without saying a word.

Outside the customs office is a stone-paved square. The group was looking around, and suddenly a man in a green coat and a small hat hurriedly ran over:

"Excuse me, isn't this old man from Foshan?"

"It's my lord." Sweeping Leaves nodded.

"Say hello to Master Judah." The person who came immediately climbed to the ground and kowtowed, "The small one is under the door of Master Yang Shixiang of Lingao Runshitang, and he came here to greet the master on the order of our master." ”

"Please lead the way with your butler."

The comers hurriedly got up and led the way. At the edge of the square is a wide road with many signs along it. It probably says the name of the place. There are several places such as the county seat, the horse, and the hundred. Under each sign, there are people who look like villagers waiting with backpacks, and there are also "bearded people" wearing Australian's signature short coats.

Everyone watched interestingly, and suddenly there was a whistle sound from a row of houses on the road, and a four-wheeled vehicle pulled by four oxen slowly appeared on the road. The bullock cart was long and box-shaped, and it was very tall, and each wheel was as high as a person's shoulder. Two mitotes sat at the front of the car, and a sign that read "Bairen" hung on the front of the car.

"Passengers, please note, passengers, the shuttle bus to Bairen is about to enter the station, please retreat to the security line and wait in line to get on the bus."

A man in a blue cloth coat stepped out, put a funnel made of tin to his mouth, and shouted. Every now and then, the whistle blows.

The ox cart slowly leaned under the sign of Bai Ling and stopped, and the waiting crowd was in a commotion, and you squeezed me and pushed it towards the ox cart. The man with the tin funnel kept shouting: "Don't crowd, don't crowd"

But apparently his shouting didn't work much, and everyone had to squeeze to the front. What do you do by squeezing to the front? Could it be that the ox cart is to give money and rice?

At this time, several people wearing hats and short sticks hung from their waists appeared in the square, they waved the sticks in their hands, shouted, and order was restored slightly, and people began to gradually line up. It can be seen that the people here are very afraid of the "police" who wear hats and hang short sticks, and they are about the "public officials" of Lingao.

The driver climbed out of the car and lowered the folded iron ladder. One by one, the queue began to board the ox carts and sit along the sides of the carriages. Then the rider erected a simple awning. Those who carried burdens and baskets were fastened to the outside of the carriage with iron rings and ropes mounted on the outer walls of the carriages. The bullock cart turned into a strange appearance full of plug-ins.

Li Luoyou and his party naturally did not need to ask for public transportation, and Runshitang had already prepared two sedan chairs and four or five wheelbarrows to wait. At the moment, the owner sits in a sedan chair, bundles the luggage on the car, and goes with the synchronous.

The climate of Lingao is hot, but it is the end of February, the weather is already a little hot, and Runshitang has to prepare a bamboo silk sedan chair. It is both ventilated and sightseeing. Li Luoyou sat in a sedan chair, and the road to the county seat was as smooth as a stone, all of which were paved with black debris, which was extremely tight. The vehicles I saw along the way walked on it smoothly and quickly, which made Li Luoyou, who had been sitting on a lot of mule carts in the north, sigh secretly-this road was repaired, even the heavenly street in Jingshi was not as smooth as that.

There is a white line in the middle of the road, and less than a mile along the road is an arrow indicating the direction. There are signs set up everywhere on the roadside, some are words and some are symbols, which makes Li Luo dizzy.

What he appreciates most is that each fork in the road has obvious signs that tell you where to go at the junction, not only the name of the destination, but also the name of the place along the way and the length of the distance. It looks clear and understandable.

He took care of the servants of the Yang family who swept the leaves and called them in the future.

"What does this sign of the road mean?"

"It's all traffic symbols." The Yang servant explained the meaning of the symbols and words on the sign one by one.

"It's really nuanced." Li Luoyou commented, "Did the Australians do it? ”

"Yes, this road is also built in accordance with the Australian way, and it takes countless manpower and material resources."

Although I don't know what the black material of the road is and how to pave it, there are drainage ditches with perforated covers on both sides of the roadbed; Trees planted on both sides of the road - the trees are no thicker than tea cups, and they are extremely well maintained, and each tree has a bracket on its trunk; pavilions, troughs, and wells along the road for pedestrians and livestock to rest; There are piers every two miles...... All things add up, and the cost of this road is at least several times more than that of ordinary roads.

"With such a large-scale construction, the people of Lingao are afraid that they will have a very hard time."

"If you go back to the master, it's not true." The servant smiled and said, "How many people are there in Lingao?" It's not enough to pull all the roads to build them. He pointed to the large pile of gravel and gray sand on the right side of the road, "There are thousands of workers working on this river alone, all of them are the labor transported by the Australian master himself." ”

"Where does the labor come from?"

"Transported from the mainland, several boatloads of people have to be transported to Lingao every few days." The servant said.

"Shipped from the mainland? It's all homeless. ”

"Yes. When it comes, a person is not like a person, and a ghost is not like a ghost. You have to live in the big camp of Bopu for two months before you can use it. The servant laughed and said, "The little ones say, 'It is not like a hired hand, but a good deed.' Australian gentlemen really have nothing to say about the poor. ”

This is a harsh sound. Li Luoyou snorted lightly. The servant knew that he was unhappy, so he said no more, but followed the sedan chair.

Although the construction site in the river is not visible from the road, the project is large from the continuous stones, yellow sand, and excavated soil on the roadside. Ox carts laden with masonry, timber, bundles of thin bamboo strips, and sacks lined up on the roadside waiting to be unloaded. Some of the sacks were broken at the edges, spilling gray powder. The kind of squirrel cage cranes he saw in the harbor were also there, standing one by one. Strangely enough, no one was running around in it, replaced by a black iron guy, wheezing and wheezing, emitting white vapor and black smoke. The large and small iron wheels were spinning rapidly, making a clanging sound. Several black-covered men smoky from the soot circled around the guy, shoveling coal into it

From time to time, blue-clothed workers wearing rattan hats walked by with tools on their backs and pushing carts. They were covered in dirt and dust, but they looked very energetic, and they were sturdy and dark-skinned. From time to time, he still sings "...... There is a song of liliang ......". This song makes Li Luo, who is used to listening to shallow chanting and singing, sound similar to howling, but it is indeed very majestic and inspiring.

The laborers were very disciplined, and there were people with small red and green flags directing the work, but there were no whip-wielding overseers, and everyone seemed to know what they had to do. The whole site looks very orderly.

Li Luo looked at the construction site along the river and couldn't help but smack his tongue. With such a scale of river governance, how much manpower and material resources should be invested in Lingao? Not to mention building roads and houses...... Australians have really made a lot of money in Lingao

In this way, cooperation with Australians can be discussed. Li Luoyou believes that no matter what the Australians come from, how good their goods are, and how great their ability is, the least thing is to be able to protect themselves. If they are not able to protect themselves, sooner or later they will either be expelled and exterminated by the officers and soldiers or the sea owners, and cooperation will not be of much benefit to them.

Cooperation is only possible if they can guarantee that they will stay in Lingao. As his main partner, the Portuguese.

Now it seems that the Australians have invested a lot in Lingao, and since they have such a large investment, they must also have the ability and determination to defend their property. With these two points, he Li Luoyou can talk about more in-depth cooperation with Australians.

Li Luoyou and his entourage soon arrived at the county seat, and he had seen enough of the ugly houses built by Australians along the way. Saying ugly is not that the house is not strong enough or that the house is not well repaired. Instead, all the houses are built according to standard geometric shapes, with almost no curves visible. All of the houses have no decoration other than whitewashing, and many of them are identical in shape, proportions, and dimensions. The biggest feature of Australian architecture is that it is practical and solid, and there are many buildings, not only two floors, but also three, four, and even five or six floors. Li Luoyou did not quite understand that there was a lot of wasteland in Lingao -- along the main road, not to mention villages and towns, there were not even fields, and they were all barren grass -- and the Australians still had to use this method of saving land.

Seeing that the city wall of the county town is already in sight, there is a circular fortress-like building not far from the city gate.

The castle is surrounded by large fields of farmland, some of which have been planted with green seedlings, some of which are full of golden cauliflowers, some of which are batches of various vegetables, and some of which are planted with unknown green crops. The growth is excellent, and it is much more regular and prosperous than the farmland along the road. Li Luo nodded secretly, this place

When the sedan chair was carried over, he took a look at it attentively, the door of the castle was open, and there were several women sitting, some were sewing clothes, some were holding children and talking, a peaceful scene, but there was a strong man holding a spear on the city gate.

"What is this place?"

"If you go back to the master, it's a learning grange."

"Study Grange?"

"Yes, it is inhabited by long-term workers and family members who grow and study fields." The servant said, "All around are the high school fields. ”

"This school field is well cared for"

"This is the Australian's world will contract the planting."

"Do Australians still farm?" Li Luoyou was even more surprised. The outside news only said that they were "good at skills" and "capable of work", and made many exquisite things, but I didn't expect them to farm the land, which is big news.

"That's right," the servant pointed out, "the school fields in this area were originally not one out of ten, but since the Heaven and Earth Society came to pack seeds, it has become like this. Sir don't you know, just the effort it takes to farm is scary enough. ”

As he spoke, he talked with great interest about how the Australians turned over the fields and prepared the land, how they dug ditches, how the Australians used more than a dozen oxen to drag iron racks to do farm work in the fields, and how they transported truckloads of black charcoal and lime to scatter in the ground...... Li Luoyou listened carefully, and felt more and more that the Australians came from different intentions than the Europeans. Europeans, no matter what country they are from, are most interested in trade and trade, or simply robbery and plunder, and have never heard of anyone interested in farming. Of course, they were not interested in the extenuating circumstances - the Ming Dynasty was not their hometown, and it could not be reclaimed as a colony.

Australians recruited exiles here, built roads and cities, dredged rivers, and handled reclamation...... Although Li Luoyou has not read much history books, he also knows that this practice far exceeds the needs of maritime merchants - the Portuguese occupy Macao just to find a place to live and stop ships, but the Australians are building a "little Australia" He suddenly thought: Could it be that this is another slave?

Thinking about it this way, we should be cautious about working with Australians.

With such a complicated mentality, Li Luoyou's sedan chair had already arrived at the city gate. There were four or five people armed with spears at the door. It seems that the county seat is still the world of the Ming Dynasty. However, as soon as he saw that Minzhuang had monk-like short hair, he knew that the world of the Ming Dynasty was just a skin.

"Present your ID"

Li Luo knew that this brand was called "certificate", so he handed over everyone's documents, and handed over a red envelope that had been prepared for a long time: two coins of silver.

"A cup of tea for the brothers."

"No, you don't." The sentry politely returned the red envelope. Sweeping Ye was stunned: This is two coins of silver, which can be called a lot of extra money for the four people, why is it too little?

The sentry took his own hands and checked the documents one by one, and checked the luggage on the car. Zuihou waved his hand: "Let's go into the city." ”