Chapter 70, the "ordinary" life of a peasant girl (I)

Name: Dai Erdong

Former name (working name): Yao Han

Gender: Female

Current age: 14 years old

Substantive identity: A future traveler in the 21st century

Crossing method: Soul crossing (borrowing corpses to return souls)

Current apparent identity: The personal maid of Yu Guozhen, the son of Nanzhili

The superficial identity at the beginning of the crossing: a peasant girl in Daijia Village, Qufu, Shandong Province at the end of the Ming Dynasty

“…… Seniors who have struggled in various time and space, and convey your king's qi to me! ”

In those hungry and cold nights, Dai Erdong had secretly prayed like this countless times, just hoping that when he opened his eyes again, he would be reborn all at once, feeling full of strength, and there was a faint halo behind him, with two big words on it: "protagonist"!

Sadly, her prayers never worked.

As a college girl who used to like to read the kind of ancient farming essays that traveled through the countryside, the traverser Dai Erdong can swear to the sky that if there is any female author who writes "happy" farming essays, and now she dares to stand in front of her, she will definitely open her mouth and spray the saliva on the face of the liar!

——In the pen of modern romance female writers, what are the living conditions of the heroines who usually travel through the ancient countryside farming texts?

First, at the very least, there should be a house made of bricks, and the roof can be made of thatch.

Second, do not pay attention to colors and embroidery, but at least have thick cotton clothes to wear in winter, and have a patched quilt cover at night. You don't ask for any high-end seasonings for cooking, or even oil, but at least you have to have salt to eat and firewood to burn.

Third, after a year of struggle, you may have new clothes to dress up during the New Year's holidays, you can eat a piece or two of meat, and you can occasionally eat a little white noodles.

To put it simply, it is the living standard of most remote and impoverished mountainous areas in the 80s of the 20th century in New China.

People with the above conditions, in the farming essays of modern romance female writers, probably belong to ordinary people in the ancient countryside.

But according to Dai Erdong's personal experience...... I'm sorry, but those who can achieve the above living conditions must at least be a small landlord!

The village that Dai Erdong crossed over is called Daijia Village, which is located in Qufu, Shandong. Half of the people in the village have the surname Dai, and they are basically tenants of the Confucian Mansion of Yansheng Gong - as a unique thousand-year-old family in China, the descendants of Confucius have already almost encroached on the fertile land near Qufu.

Although they live on the territory of the "Holy Teacher", there is not even a private school in Daijia Village, and the vast majority of villagers have been illiterate for generations.

However, in general, Daijia Village is still a relatively poor village among the ten miles and eight townships, at least most of the villagers can still live in houses instead of shacks. And Dai Erdong's family in this village is a medium-sized family that is neither rich nor poor, generally speaking, there are occasional pickled radishes to eat, millet porridge to drink every day, and barely raising a girl to the age of four or five - you know, at least thirty percent of the poor families in this village drowned their babies when they were born. The rest of the baby girls who did not drown are also improvised, and they can be raised to a few years old, in case they really can't be raised and starve to death, then they will be thrown into the roadside ditch and pulled down. If you are lucky and can raise it until you are seven or eight years old, then you can sell it and make some money.

The original Dai Erdong little girl was so hungry that she couldn't stand it because she only had one meal a day, and when she went to the river to fetch water, she fell down and drowned without standing firm...... So she was replaced with the soul of a future girl, and continued to suffer under the identity of Dai Erdong.

Well, anyway, first of all, let's introduce Dai Erdong's family members. There are not many people in her family, above is her father and an older brother who call her "money losers" all day long, and there is a younger brother below, and then there is no more. The father's name is Dai Dashan, the elder brother's name is Dai Yixia, and the younger brother's name is Dai Sanchun - because these three juniors were born in summer, winter and spring respectively, so they were named in such order.

Although there is no literary brilliance at all, it is already good compared to the titles of "big dog, second dog" and so on in the village.

What the? You ask Dai Erdong's mother? As early as when she gave birth to her younger brother Dai Sanchun, her mother was wrapped in a broken mat at home by her father and buried in a random place. When Daddy Dai Dashan saw his daughter-in-law die in childbirth, he grinned and patted his chest to rejoice: "God takes care of it, God takes care of it!" "——Fortunately, my daughter-in-law has a tenacious vitality, and she died after giving birth to the third labor force in the family.

You know, there are many women in the village who started giving birth to children at a young age from the age of twelve or thirteen, and then gave birth to one corpse and two lives, so that those mothers-in-law and men cried and beat their chests, and scolded the useless daughter-in-law Why did they leave with their grandchildren? I gave birth to a grandson and then died!

Like 80 percent of the people in the village, Dai Erdong's family lives in mud adobe houses, and when it rains, it washes away the adobe and causes the entire wall to fall down. He slept on a haystack, and every one of them was hard and hard, and there was mud stuck in the straw, and from time to time there were all kinds of fleas and lice and other small insects crawling along the straw poles, and they often ate cold rice and drank raw water - because firewood was not often picked up.

But despite this, her family is no longer poor, for example, the most enviable point of her family in the village is that there are six complete clothes!

- Even though the clothes are covered with patches and are as thin as paper, they will be torn if you don't pay attention when you wash them......

Therefore, even Erdong, a money-losing goods, can get a rag like a strip of cloth instead of running naked. Unlike the little flowers of the old Wang family next door, they are already twelve-year-old "big girls", but they are still bare-bottomed, and they have never worn serious clothes in their lives!

- No way, Lao Wang's family of five only has one dress, and even the idiot daughter-in-law who drools all day is picked up from nowhere.

And then there is another point, in the farming texts of those romance novelists, there is little mention of the hardships of farming in the ancients.

- Most of the families in the village do not have cattle, and only a few landlord families have cattle. They sometimes lent cattle to farmers in the form of usury, but one family could not afford to borrow them, so it was common for several families in the village to share a borrowed cow.

Even many people's iron hoes and sickles were borrowed from the landlord from usury - in this regard, Dai Erdong's family was lucky, their farm tools turned out to be handed down from their own family: any iron tool in these years was also a very valuable treasure in the peasant's family.

However, her family couldn't afford to buy cattle after all, because the fees for borrowing cattle were too high. So her family often goes to the ground with the whole family and uses people to pull pears. Daddy pulls the pear in front, and Dai Erdong and her brother Dai Yixia support the plough naked in the back—for fear of wearing out their precious clothes. When he reached the turn, the plough was plunged deeper into the mud, and when he could not lift it, Daddy took a deep breath with difficulty, and bent his back like a real old cow.

- So, even though she was not yet forty years old, her father's back was already very hunched.

Finally, let's introduce Dai Erdong's appearance, she naturally can't afford to buy a mirror at home, but she once looked at herself by the water - her hair is yellow, her swarthy face is always stained with mud, a mouthful of black rotten teeth, her cheeks are sunken, her eyes seem to be weirdly big, her body is so thin that her ribs are counted, and there are lice and fleas in her hair from time to time...... But she hadn't paid much attention to her appearance since she crossed over.

Because most of the people in the village are not much better than her.

Most of the ordinary people in this era are so rotten and unkempt. Those fat women with slightly yellow faces, braided hair, yellow-white teeth when laughing, and leaning on the doorway in cotton jackets are all wives of landlords' families - in this era, except for those gentry in the city with unique tastes, most countrymen like to be fat: fat means that the family has financial resources, it means that there is work, can eat enough, and does not have to work hard.

As for the women who crossed the barb, they used willow to brush their teeth—sorry, it was too troublesome, the farm work was too busy, and they had to get up early and stay up late every day. There is the one who has the leisure to figure out how to clean his teeth with willow branches, and there are only the daughters of the rich landlords in the village.

Cleaning your teeth with salt? Many people are so poor that they can't even afford to eat salt, and they are willing to use it to brush their teeth? From time to time in the village, you can see a man walking by with a neck - a huge ball of flesh growing from his neck, protruding like a rooster...... Because they can't afford to eat salt for a long time, they naturally get big neck disease.

Well, in the end, she should be glad that she traveled to the Ming Dynasty instead of the Qing Dynasty, and the custom of wrapping "three-inch golden lotus" was not so popular in the north, so Erdong did not wrap her feet - in fact, she suspected that the real reason why she didn't need to wrap her feet was that her family was reluctant to spend money to buy her footwraps......

In short, such a life is extremely hard, and as a traveler and a lover of farming, Dai Erdong naturally wants to try to improve his life.

Obviously, in the absence of pesticides, fertilizers and improved seeds, there is little potential to be exploited in the few acres of land that you have cultivated.

It's not a good idea to fish in the river – the river at the edge of the village is narrow and shallow, and the fish in it are as small as goldfish in a fish tank of later generations, and they are so agile that they are difficult to catch and have little meat. However, there is a mountain about half a day's walk from the village, and when he was about to go crazy with hunger, Dai Erdong had a whimsical idea to learn how to travel through the literature, to hunt some game, pick some fruit, and catch some honey...... Completely ignoring the fact that she has neither a bow nor an arrow or a hunting knife at home, if she is alone and a little Lori is empty-handed and goes up the mountain, she is afraid that she will have to sacrifice herself to feed the wolf......

However, she did not succeed after all, and fortunately she did not do it - not because she was afraid of the beasts in the mountains, but because of the humans who were more ferocious than the beasts: it was not long before she saw a few poor people in the village, but because she went to the mountains to collect some firewood, dig some wild vegetables, and beat a few rabbits, but after being denounced by someone, they were all arrested by a group of powerful servants, and then beaten to death with sticks in public!

——Dai Erdong only learned later that the people in the village would never dare to go to the mountain until the disaster year. Because the mountain with a radius of more than ten miles, along with the fertile fields and wasteland near the mountain, belonged to the private property of an official from the family of the Confucian sage. If the common people go to the mountains to poach and dig wild vegetables, once they are discovered, they will never be able to escape from a good meal, and most of them will be killed directly.

As for the famine year, ha, anyway, it will be death, and the villagers will not be able to care so much.

Come on, don't talk about hunting, beekeeping, and reclaiming wasteland, even collecting firewood is a capital crime, what else to toss? Let's get on with it!

-- High land rents, usury on donkeys, exorbitant taxes that have been passed on, and mountains and rivers that have been occupied...... By the end of the feudal dynasty, the open source methods of ordinary farmers had long been blocked. The greedy landlords simply did not allow the peasants to have a penny in their hands, let alone become rich and well-off.

※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※

But even this kind of half-starved days are not so easy to survive.

For example, Dai Erdong's father, who always had a gloomy face, pulled it up with a hoarse throat: "...... Lose money - come and work! ”

- The whole family directly called her for losing money...... So much so that Dai Erdong once thought that this was her name.

Regardless of whether Dai Erdong recognizes this cheap dad or not, whether she knows that this cheap dad is thinking about selling her to a passing trafficker in two or three years, she must understand one thing now: now that the autumn harvest is imminent, she must go out with the whole family to protect the autumn.

At this time when the crops are about to ripen, in order to prevent the crops from being stolen - among the thieves are birds and rats, as well as those who are very hungry. All the fields in Daijia Village are full of people, and pairs of eyes are vigilantly watching each other, patrolling the fields that are about to be harvested.

- Crops must not be stolen! Otherwise, the whole family's sweat would have been in vain this year.

Whether it is a wealthy family or a poor and dilapidated household, the whole family must be dispatched; Even an old woman with her teeth falling out, a naked doll, or even a woman who is too poor to wear clothes has to go to the ground to protect the autumn. Because autumn protection is a great thing for crop people, and it is a major event that can be placed in front of birth, old age, sickness and death. Any unguarded crop will be stolen by the wretched people who are desperately hungry.

And there have been more and more people who are about to starve in recent years.

After sleeping like a savage in the field for almost a month, it was finally time to harvest the crops.

Although in Dai Erdong's opinion, the crops in this field are really not very full, but according to the cheap father, this year has been regarded as a bumper harvest year. Even after paying off the loan shark that I don't know when I owe the black-hearted rich man in the village, there is still a big pile left, which makes people happy to look at it - no matter what, I should always be able to eat a few full meals!

As a result, most of the grain had just been dried in the threshing floor when it was immediately taken away by a fat white man wearing silk and a golden wrench. The cheap father, who was covered in mud and black and thin, could only rub his hands and tear down under the threat of a few strong men, watching the crops he had grown after a hard year disappear like this, leaving less than one-fifth, just enough to fill a clay urn.

Dai Erdong, who was scared stupidly, asked the cheap dad blankly: "...... Daddy, they're ......."

The cheap old man squatted down, counted the grains that the white fat man had leaked, and replied without raising his head: "...... Our whole village is a tenant of the Kong family, and that is the steward of the Kong family who came to collect rent. This year's harvest is a bumper harvest, and the master of the Kong family has to collect the rent accumulated during the famine in previous years, so he collects a lot. ”

“…… But - they took so much food, what will we eat next year? ”

“…… No way. Daddy smiled wryly, "...... Tighten your belts......"

At the same time, the whole village erupted in weeping wails.

Seeing that seventy or eighty percent of the harvest of the people in the village was taken away, Dai Erdong sighed helplessly, and could only comfort himself: It's good...... Anyway, there was still some food left, and although I couldn't eat enough, I could at least drink gruel.

Who knew that less than half a day later, there was another shout outside the door: "...... Old things who don't know whether they are alive or dead, come out to meet the bad man! ”

Then, a few tall men in red-faced official boots kicked the crumbling door panel and swaggered in. While pinching his nose in disgust, he expertly searched for any place where he could hide.

Seeing this group of officials who were fighting with open fire entering the door, the cheap father was so frightened that he trembled and hurriedly begged: "...... Official, official, our family is the tenant of the Confucian family, and the tenants of the Holy Gate are all exempted from paying grain tax by the imperial court......"

Who knew that the official cha immediately slapped him: "...... What about exemption from food tax? There are other miscellaneous taxes to pay! ”

Then, the official casually made up a name and took away all the food left in Dai Erdong's house.

Other farmers in the village also suffered the same fate, and even beat one person to death.

This time, the whole village was dead silent - everyone couldn't cry anymore.

Dai Erdong couldn't bear it anymore, there was no grain of food at home, and the tragic prospect of starvation seemed to be coming...... The little girl's face suddenly turned cold: "...... Dad, I can't survive this winter! Instead of starving to death, it is better to lead the whole village to grab the food together! ”

Historical anecdotes of the many peasant uprisings came to her mind.

However, the cheap dad was so frightened that he staggered, and slapped her in the face: "...... Lose money and goods, do you want to rebel and kill the whole village! ”

- Most of the time, as long as there is a little way, the Chinese peasants will not think of rebellion, even at the risk of starvation.

As for the cheap daddy's solution...... Like most of the people in the village, in addition to borrowing usury from the landlords and the Confucian family, he was selling people.

Those who have women sell women, and those who don't have women sell children - children and women, there are always people who want them.

So, Dai Erdong, who was only eight years old, was tied up by his cheap father and Brother Yixia, and was ready to sell it to a rich old bachelor in the next village.

Then, Dai Erdong quietly grinded the rope, smashed his brother's head with a stone, picked up his clothes and straw sandals, and escaped.

- She had no choice but to run away, because the buyer, the lame old bachelor from the next village, had killed two young daughters-in-law alive in the last year alone. Dai Erdong saw with his own eyes that when the two girls who were only six or seven years old were carried out, their lower bodies were already blurred with flesh and blood, and even their intestines flowed out!

If he is obediently sold, Dai Erdong suspects that he will not survive the candle night in the cave room!

Since Daddy Cheap and Brother Cheap want her to die, she has no choice but to turn against them.

It's just that...... Without the money to sell her, the cheap dad will owe another year of usury to the black-hearted rich man, and he will have a little less income to buy food to survive. The cheap brother was hit with a stone by her and his face was bleeding, and if the wound was infected, he didn't know if he would survive this winter......

But Dai Erdong still has a clear conscience, because their suffering was not caused by her.

Since the crossing, she has endured an unfamiliar hard life, helping her family do all kinds of farm work half-starved, and has already fulfilled her obligations. However, when the harvest came, the little harvest of the family was still divided by the rich usury, and it was to be divided by the Confucian family, and it was to be taken away by the official officials...... The expropriation of all kinds will never end until the last grain of wheat in the farmer's house is scavenged.

It's been a bumper year, but it's still going to starve. I wonder how many people in the whole village will flee because of this, and how many will survive if they are left?

And among those who survived, how many of them barely saved their lives by eating the flesh and blood of their wives and children?

Dai Erdong didn't want to be eaten, and he didn't have the ability to eat people, so he had to escape.

But on the way to escape, she was surprised to find that Daijia Village, which was already a purgatory on earth in her eyes, was really not poor in the nearby ten miles and eight townships! At least compared to the poorer villages, there are not many abandoned houses in Daijia Village, and most of the villagers still have clothes to wear.

Along the way, village after village, it was all the same poverty and squalor – piles of garbage, sunken roofs, collapsed walls, rotting straw, and scattered rubble. From time to time, bare-bottomed children mingle among the stinking garbage, and the bruise-purple half-rotting corpses of baby girls are often found in the ditches. The people who came and went were all the same as those in Daijia Village, full of yellow and smelly rotten teeth, unkempt, grease and dirt more than a penny thick, skinny, full of smell, and their eyes were full of numbness and despair.

This is a typical portrayal of the rural areas of northern China at the end of the Ming Dynasty, and compared with the situation in Shaanxi, Shandong is actually quite good

Then, at last, she came to the county seat, hid in a cart that hauled firewood and grass, and escaped the entrance fee of the soldiers who defended the city—she had nothing on her. Immediately, when the cart pulled to an alley and stopped, Dai Erdong quietly rolled out of the car.

Then, she cowered in the corner and looked blankly at the Qiē in front of her.

said that it is a county seat, but in fact, it is a dusty world.

Most of the pedestrians who come and go are thin, and their faces are all yellow and waxy, but their faces are slightly cleaner, and their clothes are relatively complete. In the stinking ditch by the side of the road, there was also a gruesome stench and white bones - the drowned remains of a rotting baby girl. There are also the bones of a few adults, which seem to belong to the homeless people who starved to death and froze to death...... In the towns and villages of the late Ming Dynasty, corpses and bones were a common sight.

The only difference is that in order to prevent the outbreak of the plague, the city will organize people to collect the corpses and throw them into mass graves in the suburbs.

For Dai Erdong, what made her feel even more desperate was that no matter which shop in the city did serious business, it would not accept women. The only place to accept women is Qinglou. And if she wanted to leave the county seat to find a way to live elsewhere, she actually had to run a road guide - according to the rules of the Ming Dynasty, countrymen were only allowed to move within a radius of twenty miles. If you want to go out of the range of 100 miles, you must have a "road guide". The road guide needs to apply to the county government, and you must first prove that you have a household registration and are innocent. In addition, you have to pay a sum of money to apply for road guidance, which is called "road introduction money".

Poor people who can't afford to pay are not qualified to go far away. If you go out without permission, you are a homeless person and will be punished with 80 boards.

- Obviously, this is a closed society that is strictly guarded.

Of course, by the end of the Ming Dynasty, the road guide and the household registration system had almost collapsed, but that was for the rich and powerful. If you change to a poor bastard like Dai Erdong, as long as you get out of this county, you will automatically become a criminal...... The fate of the rest is unknown.

If she had been a strong young man, she might have already set her mind on becoming a bandit. But Dai Erdong is just a thin and weak Lori, she doesn't even have a knife in her hand, and she can't rob anyone if she wants to.

So, with a heart full of despair and a rumbling stomach, Dai Erdong wandered aimlessly on the street, unaware that he had quietly followed a few strong men behind him...... By the time she found out, it was already too late.

I saw that it was dark in front of me, and the little Lori was put into a sack in the second winter and let people carry it away.

This is again one of the characteristics of this era: the ubiquitous human traffickers.

- In a world full of traffickers and bandits, women and children are usually not allowed to go out lightly as long as conditions permit.

When she was released from the sack again, she was already tied up to the Confucian family of Yansheng Gong, and let an unknown lewd man sign the deed of sale, and since then she has become the slave of the Kong family - with the monstrous power of the Kong family in Shandong, the end of the fugitive slave is definitely to be beaten to death.

So, Dai Erdong had no choice but to swallow her anger and start her career as a slave.

Well, by the way, in order to show the "literary tone" of the Confucian Mansion, she was given a "elegant name" by a certain steward: Yao Han.

For Dai Erdong, or the "Yaohan" girl, although it is very humiliating to be a slave, it is precisely because she was sold to the Kong family that she can survive this winter without worrying about being starved to death...... Then, she was horrified to find that among the tenants under the name of Confucius, the people of Daijia Village were not in the worst situation because of the distance and little contact with Confucius!