The rooster in the chicken coop crowed loudly early in the morning, Shao Yuanyi sat up from the bed helplessly, and then fell to the ground sleepily. He had been treating a number of sick militiamen in the township clinic last night, and then he had walked several miles of dirt roads all night back to the village, and now he had slept for less than four hours, but he was woken up by the sound of roosters, which made him feel so annoyed.

The back door of the hall was wide open, and Shao Yuanyi looked at his Russian wife, who was washing clothes by the creek behind her, chatting with several village women in the neighborhood in strange accents in Chinese. Well, what are they...... Slavs, they are also fellow countrymen, no wonder they can talk so much, and they don't know how to go to the field to mow the grass after finishing their work, Shao Yuanyi thought stupidly.

His little daughter, who was just a few months old, was lying quietly on a small bed in the hall, and was now asleep. Shao Yuanyi gently touched her tender little face, with a gentle smile on her face. The peach trees in the yard are blooming with brilliant flowers, and a swarm of bees is buzzing and circling. Under the tree, a huge hound was lying on the ground bored, its ears twitching, staring at a group of children outside the yard who were laughing and playing. The children were seven or eight years old, and they were carrying a basket of freshly cut sweet potato vines, which were going to be taken back to feed the pigs.

At this time, the sun had just risen, and many farmers were working in the fields. However, if you look closely, you will find that most of the people working in the fields at the moment are women, and there are very few men, mainly because the war broke out and too many men were taken away.

With the deepening of the fighting in the La Plata area, there are already many areas in the country that have been mobilized. Initially in the capital region, the first mobilized militia of a thousand participated in the offensive and defensive battles of Buenos Aires; Not long afterward. A mobilization was also carried out in Rocha County, which had been established for a few months. Six hundred militiamen were loaded onto ships and transported to the Paraná River. Participation in the offensive against Santa Fe. After the mobilization in these two places, it is now the turn of the towns in the Yahu Lake basin, and the township of Mucaoling has also received a mobilization order, and 250 militiamen have been transferred to Fort West Lake for training, ready to enter the battlefield of La Plata at any time.

Thirty people were requisitioned in Shao Yuanyi's village, and with the men involved in the construction of roads, irrigation canals, and logging, most of the male labor force in the village was assigned work, and there was no time to go to the fields. Fortunately, the mobilization order came after the busy season of spring sowing last month. At this time, there was not much farm work in the fields, and women could barely support it. Of course, the seven or eight-year-old peasant children can't be idle. They had to go to the fields in the cool morning to cut some sweet potato vines, then go to the barren grass by the river behind the yard to cut some grass, and mix some old corn kernels and other things to cook a pot of pig food on the stove. After cooking, you have to feed the pigs, feed the chickens and ducks after feeding the pigs, and fill the bucket with water at home, and then have time to eat breakfast by yourself, in short, it is also extremely hard.

After breakfast, the friends will meet up and go to school together. The school is located a little bit away from the village. It is also about two or three miles away, and there is a complete primary school where it feeds from several nearby villages. There is only one teacher in the primary school. It adopts a double-entry class education, and teaches all courses in five grades, including Chinese, mathematics, nature, and geography.

This is the real life in the rural areas of the Republic of China on the east coast of China during the war. Although the East Coast Army is overwhelming on the front lines, the continuation of the war still has a certain impact on people's lives, and it is expected that this impact will become more and more as the intensity of the war gradually escalates.

There are not a few people who have this kind of expectation, at least Shao Yuanyi has recently heard the familiar English tailor in the township complain that the cloth is not easy to buy, and another leather smith from Ireland in the township also complained that the cooked cowhide that used to be easy to buy is now available in limited quantities, and it is said that it is because the Big Fish River Arsenal has purchased too much at one time. After all, the war broke out in a bit of a hurry, and many supplies did not have time to be stockpiled on a large scale, and those who started the war at will should be held responsible.

Speaking of which, it has to be said that there was a large influx of Italians and Hungarians in the southern part of the Eastern Republic, and in the north, there were also a large number of English, Irish, and Scotsmen who fled from the Portuguese and Brazilian colonies. Many of these men were indentured slaves who could not bear the enslavement of the local plantation owners, because they were not sure that they would survive six or seven years of inhuman slavery, but they were not optimistic about the daily work heavier than that of the blacks, the poor food, and the dark and damp living conditions, so they decided to flee.

These men were mostly bachelors who had come to the New World to try their luck because of years of war in the British Isles. Of course, most of those who left Britain went to the British North American colonies, but there were also a considerable number of people who believed in the rhetoric of the Portuguese and came to the fabled richness of Brazil. But the harsh reality disappointed them, and when they came to Brazil on a labor contract because they couldn't afford to pay the fare, the captain sold them on the spot at the docks. The Portuguese planters, desperate for labor, groped around them like Soma, then bargained with the captain and bought their five- or seven-year labor contracts and became their contract owners.

Then came the heavy servitude, for they were not the complete private property of their masters, and their lives were worse than those of the negroes. Whether it's in the logging camps, cotton plantations, sugar cane plantations, tobacco plantations or coffee plantations, their lives are just as difficult. Coupled with the fact that they were not very accustomed to the hot climate of Brazil when they first arrived, these people began to flee in waves.

The best destination for the fugitives was of course the Republic of the East Bank in the south, and the officers of the Ministry of the Interior who were on duty at the border on the East Bank were probably instructed by their superiors to grant the fugitives a certain amount of asylum, that is, if they succeeded in entering the territory of the Republic of the East, they would no longer be handed over to the Portuguese who pursued them.

Once on the East Bank, they can find work in towns or villages in the north of the East Bank, where there is also a desperate shortage of labour. Skilled traders, blacksmiths, stonemasons, locksmiths, cobblers, winemakers, etc., can work decently in the town and earn a good income. Those who do not have a skilled workforce can only work in less skilled places, such as coal mines, brick kilns, construction teams, lumber yards, docks, and farmland.

At this time, a group of farmers from Scotland were active in Shao Yuanyi Village, who worked the slopes of the mountains, sorted out the bunches of grass cut down by the horse-drawn forage harvester, and then bundled them up and put them on the flatbed wagon, and then pulled the grass back to the village. Some of them are also responsible for drying grass, cutting grass, feeding cattle, herding sheep, milking cows, etc., in short, they are very busy.

All the East Coast farming families who employ them are provided with three meals a day, lodging, and a monthly salary of one and a half dimes. Of course, the farmers on the East Coast generally only hire some helpers for a short period of time during the busy season, and they are usually extremely frugal, eager to break a penny in half. After the busy farming season, these outsiders have to look for work elsewhere, usually logging or building roads to wait for official identification to be assigned to new settlements and obtain valuable houses and land.

After Shao Yuanyi finished washing, he went to the kitchen stove and took a few fires, then took out a large glass can from the cupboard, carefully cut a few small slices of pickled whale meat, sandwiched them into the fire, and chewed them. Sigh while eating, this whale meat is not as delicious as beef, not to mention the thick meat, not to mention the oil, if it weren't for the sauce when marinating at home, this really can't be eaten.

But he suddenly laughed as he ate, he had only lived a good life for a few years, and he began to pick and choose. Thinking about the past in Daming, let alone eating meat, even the kind of millet mixed with sand is also a rare delicacy for him. Now that he is really living a fairy-like life on the East Coast, he has not only courted his daughter-in-law, but although he can't eat beef, mutton, pork, whale, chicken, duck and fish, he can't eat it every day, but it's not difficult to eat every once in a while. Moreover, sometimes he will have a luxury after dinner, drink some wine or beer, and smoke a bag of cigarettes, which is not affordable for ordinary small landlords in the Ming Dynasty, and it cannot be compared.

But when it comes to alcohol and tobacco, the supply of these two supplies seems to be starting to tighten now. For example, the price of tobacco from Virginia is now 30% higher than before the war, and you have to find acquaintances to buy it at this price, and those small wholesalers don't want to sell it at all, they are all hoarding and waiting for the price to rise! The wine situation is better, because there are many places on the east coast where grapes are grown, especially Xiangshan Township and Sanbaotai Township in Zhenhai County, where the vineyards are now quite large, and the production of wine is increasing every year. However, beer is not good, with the government banning many small workshops in West Lake Fort and Dafeng Fort, and the brewer was exiled to Australia, now with the outbreak of war, the price is the same every day, and it seems that he has to buy some and stock it up.

War is really harmful! Shao Yuanyi thought helplessly, why do you want to fight if you have to live a good life? However, his mind can only wander around in his own mind, if he says it, he will be charged with a crime, or at worst, he will be fined and detained, and maybe he will be exiled overseas, which is not the life he wants. (To be continued......)