In the early morning, the mist is shrouded, and on the edge of the tributary of the Gan River, a quaint and poor village, with a few loess adobe houses mixed in the middle of the wooden houses and bamboo buildings, disappears in the morning light.

Most of the houses in the village are like this, which shows the backwardness and poverty of this small village everywhere.

Although the village is poor, the village is not small, and there is a temple, an ancestral hall, and a private school at the head of the village. In the east of the village, there is even a big mansion with blue bricks and green tiles, and there is a stone archway in front of the house, on which there are Jinshi and the fourth big character.

The sky was slightly bright, and in the courtyard now renamed Tongjiang Primary School, the bell rang.

Dozens of children from several classrooms poured out of the classrooms laughing and poured out onto the open playground in the middle of the school yard.

This school was originally rebuilt from a private school in Tongjiang Village, and not only the children of Tongjiang Village studied here, but even the children of seven or eight nearby villages also came here to study in primary school. The school is divided into two parts: junior primary school and upper primary school, junior primary school 1 to 3 grades, and upper primary school 4, 5 and 6 grades.

Tongjiang is on the edge of the Gan River and belongs to Jishui County in Jiangxi Province. Since the Song Dynasty, Jishui has been the hometown of culture. Especially after the Ming Dynasty, there were a lot of people from the imperial examination, and there was even a grand occasion of three jinshi and two prime ministers across the river. Tongjiang Village, a small village, also once produced a jinshi. There are even more people who show off their talents.

Now the principal of the village elementary school is an old Xiucai, and two of the other teachers have a reputation for showing talents, and the rest are mostly famous for their children.

Tongjiang is located in a plain area, where there are almost no mountains to be seen, not even a mountain bag. Moreover, the population density is extremely high, almost the head of the village is next to the end of the village, and the villages are connected to each other. The larger the population of the village, the less land it owns.

There are almost only a few hundred acres of land in each village, and almost all of them are concentrated in the homes of a very small number of large families in each village. The same is true for Tongjiang Village. There are more than 300 households in the village, thousands of people, but the land is only 500 acres, and it is basically the land of the old man Li's family who has been out of Jinshi. Most of the people in the village are surnamed Li, and they are all one family if they count up, but for a hundred years. Almost all of them are tenants for the Li family.

Of course, this little land could not support the whole village, so long ago, the people in the village developed a tradition of learning crafts to earn food, either to learn to be a carpenter, a carpenter, a bricklayer, a plasterer, or to learn to fish and become a fisherman, or to go to the next door Xiajiang County to work as a charcoal burner, and so on.

But the village also attaches great importance to reading, and the boys in the family will basically send him to a private school for enlightenment, if he has good qualifications. I will definitely find a way for him to continue to study and participate in the imperial examination in the future. If it is ordinary, then after a few years of study, you will have to follow the trade or send it to the store to work as a man.

In this small village where they can't even produce their own firewood, and can only rely on picking up cow dung and drying dung balls to make firewood, they have even more spirit of breaking through. I also understand that if you want to get ahead, only the road of reading is the most promising.

The principal of the elementary school is the former gentleman of the private school. He is also the contemporary head of Li Jinshi's family in the east of the village. After the private school was converted into a village elementary school, he became the principal. There are more than 300 students in the school, only one class in each of the six grades, and only 10 teachers, including the principal.

Except for the principal, who is a public teacher, the others are all private teachers. Ten teachers, three talents. There are seven children, and the teachers are relatively small in a nearby village.

Because the teachers' salaries are relatively high, the principal and teachers are more satisfied with this.

After the morning reading, it was the morning exercise, and a young teacher led the exercise in front. Take the students to do morning exercises. Morning exercises are also a mandatory activity required above, and the form is similar to the queue in the army, but it is simpler.

After the fifteen-minute morning exercise, the students have a five-minute break, and then it is time for the formal morning class, which will have two classes in the morning, after which the children will eat some of the dry food they have brought, followed by the morning class. At noon, there will be a free lunch in the school, which will be paid for by the education bureau above.

At the end of the afternoon class, the children go home, and at the end of the day, there are no classes in the evening and no boarding students.

With one morning reading class and eight formal classes, students have to attend nine classes a day.

There are 12 classes in 6 grades, and there are 92 formal classes a day, and the 10 teachers are basically full of class hours every day, and each person has at least nine classes a day.

After the morning exercise, Li Shuisheng came to the principal's office a little timidly.

"Report!"

"Come in."

"Headmaster, I can't come back tomorrow." Li Shuisheng said timidly. Shui Sheng is also a native of Tongjiang Village, in terms of seniority, the principal is his grandfather, but the Li family is the landlord of the village, and the Shui family also occupies three acres of land in the principal's house, he is a little afraid of the principal when he is a child, he is now in the third grade, and he used to be taught by the principal in the private school, when the principal teaches the private school, he likes to beat the palm of the hand with a ring ruler the most, and when the sailor can't memorize the book before, he is not less beaten, so he is very afraid of the principal.

Because the headmaster had a bit of a pointed head, Shui Sheng and his classmates in the village used to give him the nickname Sharp Head in private.

Pointed head wears a scarf with a scarf and a silk shirt, "Your family is also planning to move to Japan?" ”

Li Shuisheng nodded, "My father has already made up his mind, and my father-in-law has agreed." ”

The principal sighed, "In this case, then you won't be used tomorrow after today's class, but you should still study more when you have time, and when you get to Japan, you will definitely have to go to school again, but you can't delay." ”

"Yes, Headmaster."

"Let's go to class, it's almost time."

Li Shuisheng walked to the third-grade classroom, entered the classroom and found his place to sit down, and it was empty next to him. His tablemate Li Wenqun didn't come yesterday, and less than half of the original class of more than 50 people now had less than half of the classmates left.

Most of the students who didn't come were already at home and had already decided to immigrate to Japan, and they were busy packing their bags at home, so they wouldn't come.

Sailor Li's family hesitated for a long time, and finally his father decided to go to Japan yesterday.

During this day's lesson, Sailor Li was always distracted and unable to concentrate, he was always thinking about the place where he was going to move, and he heard that Japan was on the other side of the sea.

If you want to go to Japan, you have to take a boat to the Ganjiang River first, and then take a boat along the Ganjiang River for a long time to Nanchang. Eventually, I heard that they would enter the bigger Yangtze River, and then go all the way down the river to the sea, and I heard that they would go to Shanghai, and then there would be bigger ships there, and they would take them to Japan on the other side of the sea.

After two classes in the morning, Li Shuisheng ate a boiled egg that he brought. There is also a sweet potato. Each student was given a glass of milk, which was brewed with powdered milk. Because most of the students are missing, each student was given two cups today. Aqua loves milk and it tastes great.

For lunch, I ate rice, and there was also a kelp stew with a pumpkin, and the amount of pork was more than usual.

When I was eating, I couldn't help but feel a little sad at the thought that I would not be able to drink the milk that was sent out in the morning by the school and the white rice and stew at lunch.

Life in his family is not good. His father had three brothers, each with several children, but they were all crammed into a small mud-walled house, and their family had only two rooms, one for his parents and two sisters, and one for his brother and sister. The cooking place is in a thatched hut built outside the main house, and occupies a section with the uncle's house. Cook on the stove.

His father was a slurtier like his uncles, and they had learned from his grandfather. His grandfather was also an old scornmaker, and even his great-grandfather, Gaozu, had always been a smasser. Every year after the Chinese New Year, my father, my uncle and a few cousins would go to Xiajiang County next door to work as a scorn craftsman and make all kinds of bamboo products.

They are all made door-to-door, and the main family prepares bamboo. Then he is also responsible for their food and shelter, and he will fight whatever he needs, such as bamboo baskets, bamboo baskets, and so on.

The family goes to the same place every year, about four or five villages. These villages are the territory of their team of scornsmiths, and no other smister can come and steal the life. A team of scornsmiths. It's a family, every year my grandfather leads the team, his father's three brothers, there are cousins, and a few children from relatives follow as apprentices.

My father worked as a scorn maker in the first half of each year, and when there was no more work for him in the second half of the year, he would go to the town, where they would work in a bamboo workshop. Basically, my father works outside all the year round, and my mother is in charge of the few acres of land in the principal's house at home, and she also takes her sister to raise silkworms and weave silk, and the family also feeds two pigs to subsidize the family.

But life at home is always very hard, and there is basically no meat except for small salted dried fish all year round.

When he came home from school in the afternoon, several classmates asked him, "Shui Sheng, your family is really going to Japan, I heard that it is the hometown of the Japanese people, and those people are fierce." ”

Li Shuisheng hurriedly said, "I heard that the Japanese people there have all been moved by the emperor, so we can move over." ”

In fact, he didn't have any impression of Japan or the Japanese people.

He was reluctant to leave here, his friends in the morning at school, and the milk and meat he could eat at lunch every morning in the school.

But my father had already decided to move to Japan.

Carrying a schoolbag and running into his house, the family sat there.

The second cousin of the uncle's family beckoned to him.

"Aquatic, this pencil for you." The second cousin's brother-in-law works as a buddy in the county, and the last time he came to his house as a guest, he brought a box of pencils to him.

"You're going to Japan soon, you take this with you."

"Brother Level, aren't you going to Japan?"

"My dad said we wouldn't go."

My grandfather was sitting at the top of the hall, talking to my father.

"I still mean that, the second child wants to go to Japan, that's right. Although the imperial policy has improved in the past two years, Japan has been better, but Japan is still living a tight life, but it is just less debt. ”

"It is said that the tree is dead, the person is alive, the poor are thinking about change, and the person here likes to go out, because it is really difficult to live at home."

My grandfather had also studied at a private school for a few years, so he was very organized.

"But we can't put all our eggs in one basket, we have three of you brothers in the house, the second and third can go out, and the eldest stays here." After all, this is the root of our family, and the ancestral tombs of the ancestral hall are all here, and someone must guard them. Besides, I'm also old, and I don't want to cross the ocean, I'll stay with your mother, and your seventh sister will also stay, and find a home with her in this house in two years. The eldest family stayed, took care of the two of us who were immortal, and guarded this root of our family. The second and third families, you go out to break through, break through, in the future, you can also carry the old family, if you don't have a good time outside, you will also have a response when you come back to the house. ”

Tongjiang people have never been afraid of going out, and in the past two years, there have been many people who have emigrated, although no one in the village has ever emigrated, but they have also heard a lot of immigrants, and know that many people have lived a good life after emigrating.

This time, the imperial court wanted to immigrate to Japan, and the plan was to immigrate from Fujian, Zhejiang and Sanjiang, the two sides were close to each other, and secondly, the population of these places was also large, so that they could adapt to the new life there more quickly after the past.

Since the Ming Dynasty, Jiangxi has been a populous province, with a population of more than 20 million at the end of the Ming Dynasty. Every year, a large number of Jiangxi people move to a long time, moving to Guangzhou, Fujian and Zhejiang, and many more.

This time the imperial court immigration, basically, let the local people voluntarily sign up, and then the official organization went over.

There are arrangements made by the government on the road, and the government said that there are ready-made houses and ready-made fields in Japan, so this time the immigrants are not more than in the past, but they also have to pioneer and build houses, and this time they are all ready-made.

Therefore, this immigration is even more attractive.

Li Shuisheng's family had been a little hesitant before, but in the end his father decided to go. Living at home is so hard, I can't see the day of my future, I heard about the benefits of immigration, in the past, there were fields, land, houses, and tax exemptions for a few years, so what are you hesitating about.

Grandfather always spoke at home, and he made a decision that no one could question.

In the end, it was decided that my uncle's family would stay, as would my grandfather and grandmother and my unmarried sister-in-law.

The second uncle's family and the aquatic family signed up for immigration.

After the decision was made, my grandfather arranged for the family to be separated.

Although they used to live in the same house, they were all alone, but my grandfather meant that this time it was not an ordinary situation.

"The second and third children went to Japan, and they couldn't take away the things in this house, the house, the pots and pans, some furniture, and the pigs and chickens fed in this house, as well as the fields of your two tenants, all for the old family. You don't need to bring those pots and pans with you on the road, I will pool a sum of money with the boss for the two of you, and you will be richer on the road, and you can buy some more belongings when you get there. ”

Although the fields in the aquatic family are also tenants, they own the fields and skins, that is, the perpetual tenant rights, which are also worth a lot of money. The others are the houses under the names of the two families, as well as those various furniture and daily necessities.

It was nothing of value, and in the end, my grandfather made the decision and gave the two brothers who went out, and one of them made up twenty silver dollars. Uncle didn't have so much money in his hand, so he had to go to the credit union to borrow some money first.

In the end, there was no objection to this separation law.

In the future, the uncle will be responsible for taking care of his grandfather and grandmother, and in the future, the family business under his grandfather's name will also belong to the uncle's name. (To be continued.) )

PS: Thank you Shan Qingying and I love my sister and my brother for their support, thank you!