A batch of goods was unloaded from the train and moved into the warehouse, and Ye Mao sat down on the steps in front of the warehouse, and then he felt sore.

Although the rain had stopped, the lead clouds were low, and the sky was still overcast. The ground in the yard is muddy, and if you are in a hurry, you can fall if you are not careful.

Ye Mao's mood at this time was the same as this day and this place.

He took out a poorly carved pipe, his own work, took out a small oiled paper bag from his pocket, opened it with great difficulty, revealing the dull yellow, moldy tobacco inside, carefully pinched it, stuffed it into the pipe, and then rewrapped the oiled paper bag and put it back in his pocket. Ye Mao was not in a hurry to light the tobacco—he had no flint or the kind of foreign fire that could be ignited at the stroke of a stroke—but lowered his head, brought the pipe close to his nostrils, and sniffed deeply, long, and greedily.

Inexplicably in his mind, he thought of the thin proprietor in China smoking Fushou cream.

Top your lungs.

His face was wet and cold, Ye Mao raised his head, and the rain began to fall again. Your mother, this place in Chattanooga is really weird, the locals say they don't rain in the summer, it only rains in the winter, and now in November, the rainy season has just begun. When it rains heavily, it is said that the water of the Tennessee River outside the city can reach the train station.

Ye Mao's gaze fell on the railroad tracks not far away. The train station, well, is where I sat under my ass. November, this is the yellow calendar of foreigners, the calendar of the Qing Dynasty, it should be October, October of the second year of Tongzhi. The yellow calendar of foreigners is ...... November 1863.

It has been almost two years since Ye Mao came to the United States. The first half of his story is nothing new.

He is a native of Siyi, Guangdong, and is 23 years old this year. At the age of seventeen, he left his hometown to join a clan uncle in the provincial capital. The clan uncle arranged for him to help cook in a seafood restaurant. Ye Maoren is very smart. I am also diligent. He was thrifty by nature, and he had no hobbies, so he saved a small amount of money.

At this time, Ye Mao met the daughter of a seafood shop owner. Although the girl's complexion was a little darker, she looked very thoughtful. Ye Mao fell in love at first sight, you came and went back and forth with me a few times, and he decided not to marry, and he thought that he would not marry. So the work of the restaurant became more and more attentive. The cost is also more economical, I just hope to save enough money to marry my daughter-in-law as soon as possible.

finally felt that the heat was almost over, and Naiyang's uncle came forward, dressed himself, had a dowry, and came to the door to propose.

The woman said: Brother Shi has blue eyes and is grateful. But the little girl has promised the second son of her third uncle's family, who is the one who works as an "assistant" in a foreign bank.

Ye Mao is a thunderbolt on a sunny day. He didn't remember how he got home, nor did he remember how his uncle complained about him all the way, but he only remembered the look of the owner of the seafood shop who was polite on the surface, but in fact stunned and disdainful.

Ye Mao couldn't figure out whether it was Miss Seafood empathy. Or did people never mean it that way at all - that they would be wrong from start to finish?

In short, it was a big illness. I almost couldn't slow down.

After recovering from his illness, Guangzhou could not stay any longer. One is sad, and the other is really not to lose this person. Lang Zhong spent half of his savings to see a doctor, and he was ruthless, and the other half of his savings bought a ticket to Jinshan.

I want to return to my hometown in fine clothes, and give everyone a good look!

In this way, Ye Mao boarded an ocean-going ship to the United States in Hong Kong, and was carried by the gold rush tide that swept the east and west coasts of the Pacific Ocean and came to California.

California was snatched from Mexico by the United States.

In May 1846, the Mexican-American War broke out; In February 1848, the Peace Treaty was signed and Mexico surrendered—and the U.S. victory was for half of Mexico, including California. In January 1848, before the war was officially over, gold was discovered in San Francisco, and as soon as the war ended, gold prospectors began to pour in from all over Shijie.

China received the news the following year, and at first it was cautious, with only a few hundred people crossing the ocean in the first year, but it was out of control, and by 1852 more than 20,000 people had joined the gold rush. Most of them are Ye Mao's hometowns, namely Taishan, Kaiping, Enping, and Xinhui in Guangdong, the so-called "Siyi". And San Francisco has a large size of "Golden Mountain" among the Chinese.

There were so many gold prospectors that over the course of a decade or so, there was very little gold left on the surface of the riverbed – that is, the gold that ordinary gold prospectors were able to find. If you want to dig for gold, you have to dig mines, and this is obviously not something that ordinary people can do. Therefore, in 1861, Ye Mao, who set off in the last years of Xianfeng, was really in a late meeting.

I don't know who spread the saying that "the gold mountain is full of gold, and you can kick a piece of dog's head gold casually on the road" -- there are indeed people who have made a fortune, but it is not him Ye Mao. After a few months, I found nothing, and when I dug again, I had to eat sand.

I had to go back to work.

At that time, Chinese workers in the United States were basically concentrated in California, and most of the Chinese workers in California were so-called "simple workers on credit", and the Chinese self-deprecated "selling piglets", which was actually a semi-compulsory indentured labor. That is, the poor family could not afford to pay for the journey ticket, food and lodging, so the owner of the foreign bank paid for it, and after working in the United States, it was deducted from the salary every month. Indentured labourers are theoretically free men, but money lenders will take coercive or semi-coercive measures against their debtors through various means, both openly and covertly, in order to repay the loan as soon as possible. The days of "simple workers on credit" are very hard.

Fortunately, Ye Mao is not in this situation.

Soon Ye Mao found out that he was born to work? He is smart, diligent, and energetic, and has nimble hands and feet, and can quickly get started with any work; And in less than a year, I can even listen to English easily. Therefore, among the Chinese workers in Jinshan, Ye Mao soon became a small person.

At that time, the United States was overhauling railroads in both the east and west, and the most important of them, the Pacific Railroad between east and west, also began construction. The main artery of the United States was built by the Central Pacific Railroad, which runs from Sacramento, California in the west, and the Union Pacific Railroad in the east, from Ohama, Nebraska, to meet in the Hills, Ugdeon Hills, Utah (Utah was not yet a federal member). The project is huge, and the western section has to cross the Sierra Nevada Mountains, which is particularly difficult and labor-intensive.

The workers of the Central Pacific Railway were mainly of Irish descent, but the Irish were lazy and idle, drunk, and often demanded raises, and threatened to stop work if they were not satisfied, so that the project was delayed for a long time, and the bosses of the Central Pacific Railway were so anxious that the strands of hair fell down.

Ye Mao saw that it was cheap, so he recommended himself, and the boss of the Central Pacific was suspicious, so he gave him a place of fifty workers. Ye Mao immediately summoned his fellow villagers, rolled his arms and sleeves, and went into battle. The Chinese workers are out of the horse, the high and low opinions, the stagnant project is rapidly moving forward, the boss is overjoyed, and he has carte blanche to entrust Ye Mao to recruit Chinese workers, the more the merrier!

Ye Mao has consciously become a senior manager, and the spring breeze is blowing and he is full of spirit.

What he didn't expect was that he had offended the Irish gang to death.

The Irishman let out words and wanted him to look good. Ye Mao was on the rise, he didn't care at all, and when he was in the countryside, he ate a few days of night porridge (Cantonese dialect: martial arts), if he really wanted to fight, there was nothing to be afraid of, whether it was a fist or a stick, just let the horse come.

One night, a fire broke out in the Chinese workers' shed on the Central Pacific Railway construction site, Ye Mao saw the opportunity quickly and escaped with his life, but his three workers died in their sleep.

Only then did Ye Mao know that what people wanted was not to fight with him, but to kill him.

The Irish did not give up, and the reward of Ye Mao's head had already hung on the underworld.

California can't stay any longer.

What to do?

Back to China? Such a picture of a lost dog? Don't even think about it.

Then - if you don't stay in the west, and if you go to the east, you don't believe that there is no place to stay!

Ye Mao didn't know how big the United States really was, just as he didn't really know how big China really was. It's just that I heard that the capital of the United States is in the east, and most of the big cities are also in the east, so you can always get a living.

Put a little soft and make a small bag and hit the road.

Ye Mao first went south, and then basically followed the U.S.-Mexico border, turning east. He consulted people about the advantage of being able to get around the Sierra Nevada and walk a little better. Ye Mao has built the Western Pacific Railway and seen the boundless mountains.

But the more you go, the more wrong it becomes. Isn't it supposed to be more prosperous the further east, why is it becoming more and more desolate?

Seeing people isn't necessarily a good thing. Ye Mao was almost killed by Indians more than once, and almost killed as an Indian more than once.

But there was no turning back, so I had to go all the way to the dark.

At that time, the wave of Americans' westward expansion was surging, and Ye Mao was alone, swimming against the current. On this "eastward" road, Ye Mao used all the means of transportation that had appeared in that era, of course, the most used were his own two legs.

There are thousands of difficulties and dangers.

It must be noted that if the Americans at that time wanted to go from the West Coast to the East Coast, few people would choose the road of Ye Mao, and generally went south by boat, all the way to the southernmost point of South America, bypassing Cape Horn, and then turning north, along the east coast of the American continent and finally to the east coast of the United States.

But Ye Mao didn't have a clear concept of "East Coast", he just wanted to "go to the East", and he was in a hurry, so he embarked on a long journey in a daze.

Finally seeing a decent crowd, Ye Mao began to turn to the northeast. He heard that the capital of the United States and New York, the largest and most prosperous city, are both in the northeast.

It's still wrong, and it's getting more and more wrong.

*(To be continued......)