Chapter Ninety-Three, The Fusion of Times

Anyone who has read the book "Guns, Germs, and Steel" probably knows what a terrible devastation the Indians of the New World were caused by germs from the Old World during the European colonization of the Americas—far more Native Americans died of smallpox than from muskets!

But on the other hand, the European colonizers themselves at this time also suffered from the scourge of plague - the average life expectancy in Europe at that time was no more than 35 years, the mortality rate of each transatlantic voyage was as high as one-tenth, the cities without sewers were full of feces and urine, the smell was stinking, the epidemic was breeding, the mortality rate of children remained high, the citizens did not have toothpaste and toothbrushes at home, and the occasional bleeding gum could be infected and inflamed and cause death. The Christian Church does not encourage believers to take a bath, and the vast majority of Europeans are a pile of stinky mud that can be smoked by modern people when they stay around...... Such an unhygienic living environment naturally led to the recurrence of plagues, often a plague will kill tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of people, thanks to the high fertility rate of Europeans in those years, as the so-called poorer the more born, not only to withstand the repeated harvest of death, but also to have the spare strength to launch expansion to the world.

In short, even the early European colonial towns in the Americas during the years often killed half of the population by a plague.

Therefore, when more than 500 travelers came to Manhattan Island, the first "gifts" they brought to the Native American Indians were not the ironware, cloth, plastic jewelry and carbonated drinks that the travelers gave to the Delaware tribe, but various bacteria and viruses from the 21st century......

Fortunately, this group of travelers in North America generally has a high level of discipline, and in the face of the outbreak of the epidemic among the neighboring tribes of the Indians, they did not stand idly by, let alone gloat or even fall into the grave (an important reason why the Huamei authorities are so enthusiastic is that there are a lot of young men who marry Indian girls from the Delaware tribe, even if it is just for the sake of their wives and children, they have to take care of their father-in-law's family), but send medical teams to try their best to treat the sick natives and teach the Indians various advanced medical and health concepts... … Finally got them through this crisis.

Then, as immigrants from all over the world continued to enter the American Republic, bringing with them not only practical skills, endemic crop varieties, and exotic livestock, but also diseases from all over the world...... In this era, anyone who can survive to adulthood has a strong immunity to various diseases in their hometown, but they are often very vulnerable to diseases in distant foreign countries. Therefore, in the immigrant Republic of China, the incidence of all kinds of infectious diseases is very high, even with the medical and health concepts that are ahead of the times, and the various anti-inflammatory drugs that have been "invented" one after another, frequent outbreaks of epidemics still cause the death of a large number of people, especially infants and young children.

For example, immigrants from Europe who come to North America are often infected with diseases that are common in Asia but rarely in Europe. East Asian immigrants are also susceptible to diseases endemic to Europe and the West, which have limited immunity and death each time due to their limited exposure to these diseases in their homeland. The indigenous Indians, on the other hand, were the most unlucky, having no immunity to germs in Europe or Asia. As representatives of the Americas, the only terrible disease they were able to "contribute" to all mankind was syphilis - syphilis was not only a terrible disease compared to other virulent plagues, not only because of its narrow transmission channels, but also because its symptoms were easily visible......

In the face of the global germ exchange meeting held every day in its own country, the Rao is the American Republic has attached great importance to the prevention and treatment of infectious diseases, once a patient is found, immediately isolated and treated, never relentless, even the house where the patient lived will be burned down, but there are still small-scale epidemic disease outbreaks every year, causing hundreds of casualties...... But it has not caused a national tragedy, which can be regarded as a great luck in misfortune.

Therefore, at the time of this large-scale introduction of immigrants from the East, the health department of the American Republic, which had already become a frightened bird, strongly demanded that all the new immigrants must complete the quarantine and purification work in Shandong, and that these "mobile pathogens" must no longer be allowed to pollute the land of North America -- otherwise, those European and Asian nationals who have been tested by germs in the Old World and have relatively strong disease resistance will be fine, and the Chinese American Indian nationals with relatively "delicate" immune systems and those Indian tribes who are dependent on the Republic will be fine. But it's about to be destroyed.

-- Although the Chinese American Republic is already preparing for universal vaccination after receiving interdisciplinary assistance from the central government, the implementation has only just begun, and the proportion of the population that has been vaccinated is less than one-tenth...... Even with the modern world of medicines available, the huge cost of treating infectious diseases for so many people, as well as the economic losses caused by quarantine and epidemic prevention, can obviously be avoided.

On the other hand, the eastern republic of South America did not refuse to come. The refugees and captives captured by the Dengzhou Army were simply taken a shower and changed their clothes, and then thrown directly to the Pampas steppes of Argentina to reclaim the frontier - the Eastern Republic did not have confidence in its own health care system (in fact, their health care system was no more advanced than that of the Chinese American Republic, or even slightly worse), but did not treat the indigenous Indians of South America as human beings at all...... Of course, strictly speaking, these Shandong immigrants are not treated as human beings......

Unlike the Chinese American Republic, which first concentrated new immigrants in the capital and sent them to various farms and factories and mines after vetting and training, the East Coast Republic did not allow new immigrants to pass through the densely populated capital port of the East and the well-developed prosperous towns, but directly placed the exit of the [random door] in the most inhospitable and wild frontier, and the immigrants started to open up the land as soon as they arrived in the land.

In this way, it is possible to minimize the contact of these "mobile pathogens" with the people of the East Coast, which can induce the plague in the main settlements. As for the indigenous Indians around the border...... The authorities of the Republic of the East Coast wish they had died as much as possible!

-- The two groups of traversers in North and South America are almost identical in their treatment of European immigrants, and both are "restricted, integrated and used." But in terms of the attitude towards the indigenous people of the American Indians, it is a heaven and a place: in the Chinese American Republic, the Indians represented by the Delaware tribe are also one of the main populations of the country, and because of many years of getting along and intermarrying, they have long been highly sinicized and integrated into society, and they are generally accustomed to the production and lifestyle of the travelers, and the government is more comfortable to use than the East Asian immigrants, and naturally treats them as their own people.

Of course, there are many Indian tribes who fight against the Chinese Republic, but that's another thing - Indians are actually a collective term like "Europeans" and "Asians", and the members of various Indian tribes never treat people from other tribes as compatriots, and the fighting between different tribes is also extremely cruel and bloody, often launching massacres on a scale of extermination, and there is no less grudge against each other than with the colonists.

In the eastern republic of South America, a militaristic state that was militaristic, it was a different situation - in the early days of the landing, before the military was yet to be formed, the traverser regime had at one time accepted about 2,000 Indians who had come to join the national ranks. However, with the increase of external military threats, after entering the era of militarism, the Eastern Coast Republic has completely corrected its previous "wrong policy", and generally preferred to introduce European immigrants and black Africans to develop wasteland, and also regarded Native Americans as objects to be eliminated.

According to the theories of the hardliners of the military on the east coast, in this iron-blooded era of natural selection, the law of the jungle and the prevailing social Darwinian theory, the struggle of various ethnic groups has always been all-encompassing. Or even delusional about merging and absorbing these aborigines? There's no limit to what you can do!

Therefore, the Eastern Coast Republic, as a foreign power, can absorb Ming Dynasty, Japanese, Europeans and even Arabs as official citizens, but it cannot absorb Indians, because of the "aboriginal" halo on their heads - in the eyes of the military of the Eastern Republic of China, it means that they naturally enjoy a right to this land, even their mixed-race descendants have more power to occupy this land than pure-blood foreigners, which is also one of the important reasons for the racial gap in South American countries in later generations. These traversers must not repeat the mistakes of the past and leave problems for future generations.

Under such a cruel and ruthless governing philosophy, the attitude of the Eastern Republic towards the indigenous people is naturally extremely cruel and inhumane. In the Age of Discovery, the Western colonizers in pursuit of commercial interests may have left a single life of the aborigines, and in the hands of the more murderous East Coast Republic, the indigenous Indians were either killed or exiled abroad to make room for the immigrants to live - the immigrants were covered with a virus that the Indians had never seen before, and with swords in one hand and plows in the other, they wantonly slaughtered the indigenous Indians who had lived in isolation with muskets and germs, robbed them of their land and homes, and enslaved their bodies and minds. And then use the wealth obtained from the oppression to nourish their own people and expand the living space of their own nation and country, which is simply the most terrifying destroyer and great demon.

Therefore, at the headquarters meeting of the Chinese League, when a representative of the Chinese American Republic sternly proposed that if the unquarantined Shandong refugees were allowed to enter the Americas on a large scale, it would probably lead to the spread of the epidemic around the resettlement area and endanger the health of the Native Americans, the representative of the Eastern Shore Republic was overjoyed and wished that the indigenous Indians of the Pampas Prairie would die silently at the hands of the disease. Next, after accidentally learning that Wang Qiu and Li Wei and their entourage were killing people while saving people in medieval Europe, spreading plagues everywhere and destroying the world, several army generals of the Eastern Coast Republic who killed people like blood, were even more happy, and even began to discuss the need to carry out bacteriological warfare against the indigenous Indians, such as trying to release viruses and bacteria near Indian villages to pollute water sources, and releasing infected insects into settlements...... However, considering that these practices were too low-limit, and once the plague was released, it would be difficult to control it, and maybe it would eventually harm the traverser, so this dangerous idea was finally dispelled.

Next, Vladivostok, Taiwan and Hainan Island all belong to the traditional Chinese territory, and Jeju Island is also within the scope of East Asia, so the problem of disease transmission caused by large-scale population migration is not so strict, and it is more necessary to worry about the immigrants who will not adapt to the water and soil.

The Australian colony where the headquarters of the Huameng is located has not yet begun to immigrate, and even if it does, there are few aborigines there to dispose of, and it doesn't matter if they die - the primitive people of the Stone Age are simply useless in this idea of the jungle.

As for the colonies of South Africa and Madagascar...... Well, those African black uncles have the ability to resist disease, so you don't have to worry about it. These Ming Dynasty immigrants went over there, and they don't know who infected whom! Don't forget, until the 21st century, Africa is still the source of all kinds of new plagues - including the dreaded AIDS and Ebola - are genuine African products!

Under the test of various diseases, the African black uncle who can live to adulthood is definitely an incorruptible King Kong who is invulnerable to all diseases!

In short, the traversers have absolute trust in the immunity and disease resistance of the African black uncles......

※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※

Seeing that all the new immigrants from Shandong who had been allocated to the Republic of China this week had arrived through the guò [random door], and the grain and straw materials from the Chinese American Republic to assist the Shandong battlefield had also been transported to the other side of the world through the guò [random door], Wang Qiu had nothing to do for the time being, so he simply browsed the street scene of Manchester City accompanied by Premier Qi Jianjun.

-- Among the cities built by the Plane Traverser, Vladivostok, which inherited the "silly, big, rough and black" style of Soviet Russia, may be the most industrially strong, but in terms of the elegance of the layout and the beauty of the streetscape buildings, Manchester City in North America is definitely the most beautiful.

Compared to the metropolis of New York in the 21st century, Manchester City in 1632 was naturally much smaller, with a population of about 100,000, and the entire urban area was only equivalent to the southernmost point of Manhattan Island, plus a small part of the westernmost part of Long Island. But in the Americas of this era, Manchester City is already the second largest metropolis after Mexico City, and the neighborhoods of the whole city are quite clean and beautiful, far from the dirty slums of other European colonies: at a glance, there are many multi-storey buildings with upright shapes and bright windows, geometrical block gardens or green belts, flowery potted plants on balconies and windowsills, black-gray streets with snow-white lines, colorful shops and shops along the streets, and the streets are full of people of different colors and clothes. There are also horse-drawn carriages for urban public transport drawn by heavy pack horses, which shuttle by from time to time to the shouts of the coachmen......

-- After fully experiencing the modern urban diseases of later generations, such as cage dwellings, traffic jams, and environmental pollution, and taking advantage of the rich natural resources of the New World, the North American travelers were like "petty bourgeoisie" and did not hesitate to build Manchester into a garden city.

In Wang Qiu's view, the streetscape of Manchester City is very similar to those Victorian European and American cities in the 19th century in old photos, most of the buildings are made of red tile stone walls, and there are also a few oriental-style cornices and arches in the middle, giving people a quaint atmosphere of the steam age. The tall street trees and large urban green spaces between the houses are far more aesthetically pleasing than the crowded and drab concrete forests of modern cities.

On the other hand, due to the availability of electricity and running water, as well as the emergence of radio stations and movie theaters, apart from the lack of cars, the place has basically reached the standard of living in the old Shanghai Concession before the liberation, and the security is much stronger than that of the old Shanghai, which is a mixture of fish and dragons.

In the eyes of Europeans in the 17th century, however, the city was astonishingly beautiful, elegant, and advanced and comfortable - running water for easy cleaning, smooth and clean cement or gravel asphalt avenues, street lights like the reflection of a galaxy, bustling market shops, stately government buildings, beautiful university teaching areas like gardens, and magnificent steam power stations in the industrial parks of the outer islands, and steam tower cranes like Titans...... All of them amazed them. By contrast, Paris and London at this time were as unsightly as stinking and filthy ghettoes.

What makes Europeans even more attracted is the level of living in paradise - after all, the mansions and palaces are not beautiful and have nothing to do with the people. By the standard of living of the citizens of Europe in the 17th century, the city was so wealthy that even the most lowly burghers could afford several sets of clothes, and because every family could afford white bread, it was difficult to find a place to sell brown bread in the city......

-- At this moment, China in the East is in turmoil at the end of the Ming Dynasty, and Europe in the West is also struggling with the unprecedented catastrophe of the Thirty Years' War. From Sweden in Northern Europe to Spain in Southern Europe, England, France, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, ...... Almost all the traditional powers are bathed in the flames of war, especially in Germany, which is the main battlefield, and five-sixths of the towns and cities have been destroyed and destroyed by the war.

Even the Ottoman Turkey, in a remote corner, fought with the Venetians for 25 years in order to compete for hegemony in the Mediterranean, and it was almost impossible to find a quiet place in the entire Western world. As social production was destroyed by war, even the famous wealth of Venice and Amsterdam was not as good as before. The bleak standard of living of the common people in Europe can be imagined.

In contrast, the relative peace and affluence of the citizens of Manchester City is nothing short of a miracle in their eyes.

As a French Protestant immigrant praised in a call for essays in a local newspaper: "...... It's the most beautiful city I've ever seen, and it's hard to imagine such a beautiful city in the New World. I've been to many places, but from Rome to Paris to London, all the cities I've seen add up to a little corner like what I see now...... Her extravagance, nobility, and neatness make her people feel immensely proud, and all outsiders feel bewildered humility and inexplicable fear......"

※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※

In short, after taking a ride in Premier Qi Jianjun's private carriage, I took a cursory look at the streets of Manchester City. Wang Qiu came to a street park in the southern district of Manchester City, and sat down in a membership-based high-end open-air café recommended by Premier Qi Jianjun, while listening to the blues saxophone on the radio, while tasting green and natural freshly ground coffee and all kinds of small pastries, and then looking at the two or three storey buildings with red roofs and white bricks, as well as all kinds of potted flowers on the windowsill and balcony.

Next to the street park, there is a commercial street across the iron fence, and people and cars come and go on the street. The residents of the southern part of Manchester are mostly the country's high-paid and wealthy class, and the pedestrians who come and go to the shopping streets at this time, whether men and women, young and old, are well dressed, generally wearing improved European-style suits drummed up by later generations of travelers, and their faces are quite healthy and ruddy, not much different from modern society, and there is hardly any unkempt hunger - and in most cities in the East and West at this time, such scruffy poor people are everywhere.

Although in order to ensure domestic harmony and stability, the Chinese American Republic spent huge sums of money to collect East Asian immigrants and at the same time tried to recruit Native American Indians, while controlling the number of European immigrants entering the country each year, legally allowing only 5,000 to 6,000 European immigrants to naturalize each year, so as to maintain a high proportion of yellow people in the country. But Wang Qiu sat in the café and looked out into the streets, and found that the majority of the pedestrians were still white and mixed-race - no way, Europe was now in the midst of the great turmoil of the Thirty Years' War, Britain, France, Germany, and Spain were constantly engaged in tragic foreign and civil wars, and the common people were displaced by the war and fled overseas one after another, trying to find a peaceful and prosperous new homeland, and the Chinese American Republic was obviously a very ideal destination. Since the increasing trade between Europe and North America, the number of illegal immigrants who have poured into the Chinese American Republic every year is quite staggering, and it is not at all a law that can be turned away.

Therefore, judging from the modern Western-style clothing of the pedestrians on the streets, and the yellow, white and black skin tones, it is difficult to tell whether this is Manchester City in the 17th century or New York in the 20th century...... Of course, if you listen to their conversation even a little closely, you will immediately notice the huge difference - although it can also be called the "melting pot of the peoples of the world", the official language of the Chinese American Republic is not American English, but Chinese, which has been forcibly promoted by the time-travelers using their dominant position......

- But...... Why does their accent sound so strange? And some inexplicable words mixed in?

“…… Hello Sir, this is the 'crisp candy' and milk you want. ”

A red-haired European maid leaned over and offered Wang Qiu a small plate of sugar cubes and a small glass jug of milk—though she spoke in Chinese, she had an indescribably awkward accent that was completely different from any dialect Wang Qiu had ever heard.

“…… Belch...... Thank you. By the way, Premier Qi, the sugar cube said that the sugar cube is good, why do you call it 'crisp candy' here? Wang Qiu asked curiously as he picked up two sugar cubes and threw them into the coffee cup, then gently pounded and stirred them with a teaspoon - he was not used to drinking bitter coffee.

Qi Jianjun also seemed to be a little confused, turned around and called one of his European personal servants, only to figure out the origin of this "new word" - crisp, which is the homonym of sugar (Zucker) in German, plus a sugar word, it constitutes a special word of the Chinese American Republic of the era of mechanism square sugar, and the literal meaning is also very consistent: crispy checkered sugar.

Because of the large number of refugees created by the Thirty Years' War with Germany as the main battlefield, and the excessive expectations of the travelers of the Chinese and American Republics for the "high Su zhì German workers", many German immigrants have been assigned to settle in the capital Manchester over the years, and as a result, some German words have also entered the daily conversation of the citizens - in fact, the current "Manchester dialect" has been very different from the Mandarin Chinese and any Chinese dialect in later generations. There are definitely many communication barriers that you will encounter in your daily life.

But this is also a helpless thing, and at the beginning of the founding of North America, the people of the Crossing also tried to formulate certain rules for standard spoken language. However, from the very beginning, few of these modern people from all over the world (mainly Cantonese) were able to pass the guò Mandarin level test and really speak the standard Mandarin of later generations. Later, it was only in the inner circle of the public that he could speak an "authentic Manchester City high accent". In the wider popularization of Chinese education, even if the advanced pronunciation method of the Latin alphabet is used, it is also faced with the problem of non-standard daily popular teaching and the teachers themselves -- many teachers who have been trained in this time and space do not speak Mandarin very well.

The Chinese immigrant teachers who spoke the southern accent of the Ming Dynasty or the European immigrant teachers with the characteristic European accent of the 17th century were destined to "learn the same" from each class of their students...... As a result, among the people of Manchester from the East and the West, a kind of Manchester accent gradually appeared, which was quite different from the crossing crowd and very different from any dialect in China, and even mixed with the pronunciation characteristics of a large number of Europeans speaking Chinese. On some occasions, even the Travelers sometimes had to imitate this "local dialect" in order to communicate with the teenagers of Manchester City......

“…… Now sometimes when you go around the school, you will find that you don't understand the words of the children very well - especially the children who are born after the crossing, and all kinds of strange new words keep jumping out! It's something that we old people can't understand at all. For such a situation, we are also scratching our heads! But even in 21st-century China, with its advanced information exchange and 12 years of compulsory education, it has not been able to eliminate dialects, especially Cantonese...... With the conditions on our side, let alone mention. ”

Premier Qi Jianjun shook his head and smiled bitterly while drinking coffee, "...... The same is true for the eastern republics of South America, where immigrants from all corners of the world have to lower their standards if they want to take a crash course in Chinese in a few years. As long as you can barely understand and communicate with each other, you have to forget if the pronunciation is a little wrong or something. If we want to make Putonghua education more standard, unless we travelers do nothing, instead of all Chinese teachers, we will teach hundreds of thousands of immigrants for decades......"

“…… Well, I think I can understand your struggle, but dialects are something that will continue to be created and cannot be eliminated. ”

Wang Qiu shrugged his shoulders and drank the coffee in his cup, "...... For example, in modern society, how many years has the computer network been popularized, and all kinds of Internet terms have been overwhelming, and those who do not use the Internet still cannot understand or understand even if they have been studying for a doctorate in Chinese language and literature. For example, with the rapid change in the proportion of the population in the modern United States, there are more and more Spanish words in American English, and even a small number of Chinese words...... It's something that no country of immigration can avoid......"

“…… Well, you mean to say...... Any social impact is interactive. We, the time-travelers, have changed the world dramatically, but the aborigines of this world are also influencing us, right? ”

After Qi Jianjun thought about it, he said to Wang Qiu, but then he was interrupted by two crisp sounds of "ding, ding" that sounded at the same time, "...... Belch? It's just a coincidence, why did our phones ring together? Oh, it's today's "Daily Military Intelligence Insider" ......"

-- Using Doraemon's magical props, sixteen [mini communication satellites] launched into orbit in this time and space as a relay, traversers all over the world, at least within the capital city limits of several union republics, have now realized the networking of computers and mobile phones with the help of signal transceivers on the ground. The headquarters of Huameng also often releases some latest announcements to all traversers in the form of short messages or emails.

“…… China Battlefield North China Theater Express: Lu Xiangsheng's troops defeated Jizhou, and the Tianxiong army retreated on all fronts? Jingshi closed the city and imposed martial law, and the Guanning Iron Cavalry Striker has arrived in Tianjin? Tsk, although this Guan Ning army has been defeated many times against Jiannu, but once it turns around and cuts off its own people, it is really sharp enough! ”R1148