On the third day of the first month of March, at the market in Dahu Town, Hong County, Fengyang Prefecture, Jianghuai Province, Feng Zishan, a grassroots civil servant in Hong County, wore a light round collar and stood on the "promotion platform". Pen ~ fun ~ pavilion www.biquge.info

Feng Zishan is a civil servant who was admitted in the first month of this year. He was determined to be an official, so he was assigned to the county yamen as a grassroots administrator.

However, Feng Zishan is also in his thirties, and although he has no qualifications to be an official, he has decades of life experience. In addition, he read a lot of books and had a wide range of knowledge, so after he arrived at the Yamen of Hongxian County, he was very valued by the officials in the Yamen, and he was often assigned important work to him.

This time, Feng Zishan was sent to Dahu Town, Hongxian County, to preside over the "introduction of immigrants" in Luzon Province.

The so-called province of Luzon is the Philippines in later generations, including Luzon, Mindanao and a series of small islands around it. After Li Zhi killed all the Spaniards and conquered the islands, he now designated these islands as Luzon Province as the ninth province under Li Zhi's rule.

In later generations, the area of the Philippines was actually not small, and the islands combined had a land area of 300,000 square kilometers, which was two times the size of Shandong. Now after being incorporated into the Tianjin system, it is also a very large province.

Moreover, this tropical province has abundant sunshine and rainfall, and has great agricultural potential. If cultivating rice in Taiwan is twice the result with half the effort, growing grain in Luzon Province is several times the result with half the effort.

Li Zhi was determined to emigrate 5 million people from the small and densely populated Jianghuai Province to Luzon Province.

Of course, Li Zhi could not engage in forced immigration like the piglets caught in Fujian and Guangdong during the Qing Dynasty, and if he wanted to launch a large-scale wave of immigration, he still needed to do the ideological work of the people in Jianghuai Province.

Feng Zishan came to Dahu Town to do this ideological work.

The "Luzon Development Booth" was set up in the center of the Great Lakes Market, in the most crowded place. Previously, the "Jianghuai Daily" had been intensively publicizing the development of Luzon for a month, and the non-governmental newspaper readers had already spread all kinds of information to the countryside. The benefits of immigrating to Luzon are well known, but what is lacking is a final determination.

Jianghuai Province is narrow and densely populated, and the peasants live in great poverty, so they are actually very interested in Luzon, which is so fanciful in the newspapers. As soon as the "Luzon Development Promotion Table" was put up, the peasants of Dahu Town surrounded the promotion platform.

"Bang" A gong sounded, Feng Zishan shook his sleeves and walked onto the promotion stage.

As soon as Feng Zishan came to the stage, before he could speak, he heard someone below shouting loudly: "The poor master of the county government!" In Luzon, each person really divided twenty acres of paddy fields? ”

Feng Zishan laughed, pointed to the peasant man who was asking, and asked, "Good question, good question!" This man, how many acres of land are you planting now? ”

The man looked at the crowd on the left and right, and replied, "I am now a family of five cultivating sixteen acres of paddy fields. ”

Feng Zishan asked loudly: "Five people grow sixteen acres of paddy fields, can they have food and clothing?" ”

Everyone looked at the man, and the man blushed and replied, "When you don't get green and yellow, you will be hungry for a month." In winter, there are not enough cotton clothes and quilts, and life is not easy! ”

Feng Zishan waved his hand and said, "Bitter! The life of the people of Jianghuai Province is hard! ”

Seeing that Feng Zishan from Tianjin and the people of Jianghuai were in the same voice, the people suddenly had a sense of identity with Feng Zishan and looked at him with a blank eye.

"Why do the people of Jianghuai Province live so hard?"

Hearing Feng Zishan's inquiry, the people, you look at me, I look at you, and I don't understand why the people are so bitter.

Feng Zishan said loudly: "This mission office will tell you!" The people of Jianghuai Province are so poor because there is less land and more people. In the words of the prince: '20 million people in Jianghuai Province are crowded on 130,000 square kilometers of land'. Over the centuries, the population has increased year by year, and the fields passed down from ancestors are still those few plots. There are more and more mouths for eating, and the paddy fields where grain is grown are always those few pieces, how can they not be poor? How can it not be bitter? ”

Hearing Feng Zishan's words, the people below whispered. Some of the older peasants felt that Feng Zishan had a point, and they couldn't stop nodding.

"To get out of this increasingly predicament, it is necessary to emigrate and colonize abroad!"

"Trees die, people live! To use another sentence of the prince's words: now is the era of the Great Colony. The Han people in our Jianghuai Province have a large internal population, and there is a tiger army led by the prince outside, which can be described as unique, so it is natural to be the vanguard of our Han colonization overseas! ”

Feng Zishan pointed at the man and asked loudly: "Man, how many adults are in your family of five?" ”

The man replied, "There are four people who can plow the fields!" ”

Feng Zishan waved his hand and said loudly: "When I arrived in Luzon, the four of them divided eighty acres of land and harvested more than 100 stones of rice a year!" With an income of two or three hundred taels of silver, will your family still starve and freeze? ”

Hearing Feng Zishan say that he earned two or three hundred taels of silver a year, the man grew his mouth and was speechless in surprise.

Two or three hundred taels of silver, that man has never seen so much money in his life.

The words of two or three hundred taels of silver were like a stone smashed into the lake, causing countless waves. The people below heard Feng Zishan's agitation and became excited one by one. The crowd at the podium suddenly seemed to be boiling water, and there was a cacophony of discussions.

After all, the "Jianghuai Daily" is a grassroots creation, and it has not yet formed an authority in the hearts of the people of Jianghuai Province. Listening to the articles in the newspaper, after all, it is not as credible as listening to the face-to-face communication of the messenger. At this time, hearing the words of the poor master in the yamen, the peasants became excited one by one.

Someone asked again: "Poor master! If we go to Luzon, will we really give each of us 20 acres of paddy fields? ”

Feng Zishan looked at the questioner, and said: "It's not twenty acres of paddy fields, but twenty acres of flat land that is very easy to develop into paddy fields!" ”

Feng Zishan waved his sleeves and said loudly: "Then Luzon Province is vast, and there are two or three Jianghuai provinces. But the natives of the island know nothing, are lazy and not very cooperative, can neither grow rice nor build houses, and the island is full of flat open spaces! ”

"After you arrive in Luzon, the yamen will issue you a land deed, and the chief will lead you to open up the wasteland and build a house, where there is abundant rain and sunshine, and as long as it takes a year, twenty acres of coconut groves or banyan forests will be turned into high-quality paddy fields."

Someone else asked: "Poor master, how can we have the money to build a house, and if we all go to open up the wasteland this year and have no income, what will we eat?" ”

Feng Zishan shouted again: "Good question! When the new immigrants arrived in Luzon, they needed to build houses, build roads, open up wasteland, build water conservancy facilities, and everything needed a lot of materials. And new immigrants need a year of food support to do this! ”

Feng Zishan waved his hand and shouted: "There are a lot of things that you need, and you can't afford to raise them yourself!" But! The prince is ready for you! Nowadays, Tianjin and Shandong have a large amount of funds and no local investment, and the prince has called on businessmen in Tianjin and Shandong to raise funds from the private sector and set up a large number of 'Luzon Immigration Companies'! These immigration companies will provide you with everything you need for this year's wasteland! ”

"All these goods are valued as silver. You only need to repay the expenses of the immigration company in five years after the development of the new field. The interest is not high, only one point! According to my estimate, two years after the harvest of the new field, you will be able to repay all the expenses! ”

Feng Zishan waved his hand, and representatives of two immigration companies walked out. Both of them are folk businessmen in Fanjiazhuang, and they have a superior temperament of Fanjiazhuang businessmen, standing on the stage with a smile and a word, quite able to hold down the table.

The appearance of these two businessmen made the people believe in Feng Zishan's words even more.

In the end, Feng Zishan said with a smile: "If the development of Xintian fails, the prince will cover your travel expenses back to Jianghuai and send a ship to transport you back for free!" If you give up the fields in Luzon, you don't have to pay back the materials and silver you borrowed from the immigration company, and the prince will help you with it! ”

Hearing Feng Zishan's words, the people below suddenly boiled.

It turned out that the king of Tianjin had already arranged everything for the people.

Then what are you worried about, just kill Luzon to develop your own new fields! Good days are just around the corner! The people below became more and more excited, and some people already shouted: "Poor master, then how do we sign up?" ”

"Where can I sign up?"

Feng Zishan said loudly: "You can sign up on the spot today!" In the first year, the immigration company only accepted 1.2 million applicants, so everyone can hurry up if they want to go! ”

"This is the era of the Great Colony! Backward, don't blame the prince for not bringing you with his big ship! ”