The conference on the future, ideals and how to live well now lasted fifteen days. The transfer of power, the plans for the recent years, and the long-term plans are all internal matters. Relating to some, not to some.

In this era of imminent change, if it is slowed down, the ethnic groups that will be a few steps slower in the future will choose different ways to combine with the traditional spirit implanted in the bone marrow to gather strength: the Chinese understanding is to be a selfless saint-like revolutionary, an Orthodox Martyr-saint builder, an adventurous revolutionary of Spanish descent, and a romantic fanaticism of German petty citizens...... Many people understand the future in their distorted way, and use the core of the purest national tradition, which seems to be neglected, to rush to the broad road of capitalism with the most national traditional spirit.

On this avenue, the development of capitalism will cut off the fetters of feudal morality, the warmth of the family, the sacred feelings of personal cultivation, the condescending pity of the middle class, and the concealment of religion...... Cut off all this, and the whole world will be left with pure money relations and the union of capital, and then those who have dedicated themselves will understand that their blood has not been shed in vain, but only on one side of the rails, and the other side will have to be laid by capital itself.

This meeting is not so complicated, it is not yet this complicated era.

This meeting involves the future of the entire city of Wangbei and the people of the island, including the vast majority of people who did not attend the meeting, but it does not mean that all those who are on the island at this time are related to this meeting.

The unrelated have completed their mission, and they will be the second group to return to their homeland to welcome the jubilation and triumphant return of the circumnavigation voyage. It was the officials who followed Chen Jian to the sea, scholars outside the organization, the wives of soldiers who married here, and several Confucian scholars who went to the Republic to see for themselves, as well as the official envoys of the Japanese shogunate and the Thai god king who had to be carried.

The meeting was not about them, but not all of those who were leaving the island were not. For example, some of the people who followed Chen Jian to Nanping to find a new land and a new route to do a formal, first-time new geographical discovery that belonged to the dignity of their own country and preceded the great discovery of the new geography of Europe.

The southern continent, maybe there is, maybe not. In this era of great voyages and discoveries, just two words are enough for many people to make decisions.

The people who volunteered to follow Chen Jian to the south further south to find the southern continent wrote their letters or suicide notes one after another while the second batch of returned ships had not yet set off.

No one can say for sure, the Southern Cross is far less known than the North Star, and it is even more difficult to predict what will happen on the vast sea.

Many scholars who accompanied the ship could not bear to bury their achievements in the past three years with them at the bottom of the sea, so that no one knew about them, but they couldn't help but want to be the first to see the new world.

The new world includes new species, new flora and fauna, new lands, new islands, and new human societies.

Heavy special wooden crates were being packed, wrapped in a special layer of pine resin-soaked paper to repel water, most of them notes or books, far tighter than the gold and silver.

Ballast is made of a large amount of sucrose, which can be dissolved in water in case of any danger, making it easy to repair and less likely to sink.

A lot of people are sorting out their notes and stuffing them into tight waterproof buckets.

Lan Qi sat in the middle of the room, next to a part of the notes that had been sorted out, and the titles of the notes that were inadvertently revealed were all such as "Stories of the Land System", "Serfs Bound by Law and Serfs Bound by Economy", and so on, but with a good-looking, feminine delicate style.

The ink on a piece of paper on the table had not yet completely dried up, and he was still frowning and thinking about it.

As a woman, as a woman who has gained fame in the Republic without her parents or husbands, the last time the ship arrived, she received a lot of letters from women who were also from her homeland, and she was just thinking about how to reply.

"Dear sisters who have walked out of the boudoir."

"The place where this reply is written is in Wangbei City, 25 degrees and 11 minutes north latitude, and the longitude is not known, so I can't know exactly how far I am from you."

"Luckily, there is an ancient country with people who are very similar to us, and their history is well documented. Chen Jian and a Chinese scholar who was proficient in astronomy roughly calculated the longitude of this place by comparing the phenomena such as lunar and solar eclipses recorded in the history books here, but they said that the error was about 6 to 10 degrees...... For the vast Earth, this is a long distance. ”

"It's like a haha mirror here, and I think you've heard about the first batch of people who returned home. I won't say much more here. ”

"More than three years have passed since the departure of Minjun, and I have seen many different but similar worlds when I think about it. Those things can be seen in the notes I sent back, and if you can see the letter, you will definitely see them, and if you can't see it, it proves that the ship has sunk to the bottom of the sea, and maybe one day the barrel will float back to its hometown and be picked up by the people by the sea. ”

"I may not reply to all of them, but, sisters, there are many similar questions in your letters. In particular, there are doubts about the transformation of the big workshops and hydroelectric factories that are taking place in Minxian today, and the doubts about whether we as a gender should support or oppose in the last so-called 'Dignity March' operation. As a member of the new Mexican Party, I think you've heard too much about the ideals of the world as a whole, so I'll just write about some of the things I have seen along the way, just about women. ”

"In the place where I am now writing to Wangbeicheng, there are many tribal villages that are still hunting with stones and bows and arrows. The village community here is very primitive, primitive like we look through the history books of the early days of the founding of the country, and the stories that seem incredible now. ”

"Three months ago, I was a guest at the village community along the Tamsui River, just in time for a woman to give birth. The ancestral spirits they worship have left many interesting habits, and they also have a custom or taboo that they must follow when it comes to children. ”

"Babies are forbidden to be touched by men for a long time after birth. Including their fathers. The reason is that newborns are weak, which will make the man holding the child so weak that he has no strength to hunt. ”

This reason makes sense from the doctrine of ancestral spirit worship, because religion or custom always seems to be changeable and unjustified. But after sailing from Europe, I have seen similar customs at the ends of the earth, among many tribes of black skin, brown or yellow on the coast of Africa. From an inductive point of view, there should be some hidden ways to strip away this surface, as for whether it is just an explanatory solution, but isn't that the difference between science and God's rightness? ”

"After arguing with Chen Jian for a while, I feel that the habits of these ethnic groups in Wangbei City are a manifestation of a woman's right to tribal equality or participation, and even this behavior is conscious."

"Because they are so backward, the slash-and-burn knives are still stone, and the men have to hunt to supplement their food. So, in this case, the members of the clan become the most important factor that sustains the clan. And the members of the tribe can only be obtained through procreation, that is, the more backward it is now, the higher the status of women. ”

"No way, the child crawled out of our belly. For a tribe, even if only a few men die, as long as there are women left, they can continue to live, while men cannot give birth to children. A hundred women and a man, lucky enough to collect, and twenty years later another tribe. One woman and one hundred men...... This tribe is very dangerous. ”

"But we know that this only happens in very backward areas. With the increase of population, the improvement of tools, the surplus of food and the exchange of society...... The role of simple people is getting smaller and smaller. It is no longer possible to obtain the original status by procreation, because the more important thing in life will be the inherited property, land, and agricultural tools, rather than the simple person. ”

"In fact, the women of the first few villages we came into contact with have already found themselves in an awkward situation. After the men of the village community learned how to plow the ox, I don't see any equal opportunities for women who cannot become the main force in agriculture. I think that the reason why there are such habits and equality is more traditional habits, and habits and traditions are always slower than the changes in material conditions and tools, decades or even hundreds of years later. ”

"In addition to these villages, there are also some settlements that we have seen in the ends of the earth and in Africa, and they are also in the midst of this change. But in some of the more primitive settlements, the status of women is still not lower than that of goods, because those settlements need women's labor in order to survive—and women's labor is of great significance in primitive settlements, and it is recognized by the settlement society, so they can have such a seemingly equal status. ”

"In fact, we are also working, but many women's labor is not recognized by society because their labor does not participate in social exchange. For example, taking care of children, doing household chores, or simply being a reproductive animal. This is the reason and process of our gradual decline. ”

"So, it seems like our situation is like that 'march of dignity' – a retreat to a more backward era in exchange for so-called dignity? Or do you believe that there will be better times if you continue to move forward? ”

"Therefore, the matter of 'marching with dignity' is not only the choice of those laborers, but also the choice of women from a purely female perspective. My sisters, when our labor is recognized by society and participates in the production of society, is the time when we regain our freedom—or we will revert to the primitive state where weaving, tending, and gathering are social labor; Either go forward and go to a new era. We are involved in textile and water-powered factories where there is little difference between men and women, and in the work of nursing assistants, teachers, and accountants who are more suitable for women, and we have established nursery schools for child care based on large factories, so that childcare, which is not involved in social exchange, can be turned into a recognized and paid work. ”

"The big factories and nursery schools that are not very different between men and women are not something that can be brought to us by the 'march of dignity' that retreats to the patriarchy and guilds. The freedom we pursue is a step backwards and a constraint. ”

"Yes, you're right, those hydroelectric factories brought brutal labor, extreme exhaustion, and numb bodies. You tell me that there is no longer oppression of men and women, because many women workers are no longer afraid to conceive for fear of being fired and starving, and they do not have the time to do what men and women should do, and they are not even qualified to be oppressed. ”

"You ask me, what is the price of freedom? If there is a privileged life to be a caged bird, how good is the birdcage of freedom? I can't answer this question, my family has brought me a bright, notched jade birdcage since I was a child, so I want to avoid and be silent on this issue. Therefore, I am not qualified to talk about it, and I have not gone to the hydroelectric factory to experience the desperate life of women workers for myself, imagination alone is not enough. ”

"Emotionally, I would say that freedom is priceless. But because my parents were rich enough and spoiled enough to spoil me, the price was meaningless to me personally, and it didn't apply to my universal sensibilities. I can ride horses, hunt, and raise a few wolf cubs that eat meat every day just to see if they can become dog 'moral', while the women workers have to work in the factory for fourteen or fifteen hours, and it is shameful to talk about it from an emotional point of view. ”

"Logically speaking, the internal logic of my idea is correct, and actively participating in the work of large factories and the socialization of domestic labor employment and raising are the way to freedom for women. It's not the machines and the big factory model that's wrong, it's something else. ”

"So, since the logic is correct, we need to move forward for freedom and liberation, and we don't need to dream of going back to the primitive slash-and-burn era of slash-and-burn hunting and women's gathering, nor should we be seduced and deceived by actions like 'march of dignity'. At least, the light is ahead, how to go is what we have to do next, at least we can see the hope ahead, the hope of the sisters in the whole world. ”

"Well, the sailors are urging again, hurry up and pack and seal. At this point, I will continue to look south for the southern continent based on geometrical beauty, and see if primitive clan life is universal, if they exist. ”

"-Lan Qi, who has seen too many novelties at sea and doesn't have much time to miss you, I wish you well."