Zhao Jun looked at the mountains, empty, there were no villages, and there were no people.

"Southern History: The Biography of Liu Zhixuan": Emperor Wu said: "Qing's mother is young and virtuous; Therefore, Huiqing returned to his hometown in fine clothes and did his best. ”

Returning to the hometown has been one of the most proud things for Chinese people since ancient times.

But the same.

The saddest thing in the world is that you have returned home, but you are faced with "children who don't know each other, and ask where the guests come from with a smile." ”

In the past, people not only didn't know you, but even forgot about your existence.

That feeling of desolation will come to my heart.

However, at least in Zhao Jun's case, this is not the saddest thing.

Because even if things are wrong, many people in my hometown don't remember it, but as long as you have money, they will soon remember.

When you drive around the village in your luxury car, the people of the village will recognize you immediately.

Oh.

It turns out that you are so-and-so from a certain family, I remembered, I hugged you when I was a child.

Even wait for you to build the house of the old mansion and make it into a luxury villa, so as to ensure that all relatives who can't beat the eight poles will come to your house to join in the fun.

So as long as you and your hometown exist in the same era, even if ten or twenty years have passed, and you haven't returned to your hometown for a long, long time, the years will still not take away the traces of your life here.

And the saddest thing in this world is that you don't belong to this era, and you don't even have any traces of living here.

Not even your ancestors have migrated here, and there is only a wilderness left here.

Is it still your hometown?

Therefore, for Zhao Jun, the sad thing is that he doesn't even know whether to recognize this hometown, because this is his hometown thousands of years later, not the wasteland in front of him.

Zhao Jun stood on the mountain and looked at this land for a long time.

He remembered that the bay by the river at the foot of the mountain was the town, and then along the town to the north, was his hometown Zhaojiawan. Although it is the same as a thousand years later, the entire mountain terrain has not changed much.

When he was a child, Zhao Jun often herded sheep with his friends on the hillside, and the terrain of the entire town and village had already been imprinted in his mind and never erased.

But now, the plains and farmlands on both sides of the river are dense jungles, and the location of the town is a meadow, surrounded by dense mountains, and there are almost no traces of human existence in the distance.

"Zhiyuan."

Seeing that he had been looking at the bottom of the mountain beam, the mayor pointed to the distance and said, "Twenty miles from there, it will be Meishan." ”

"Oh."

Zhao Jun responded, he knew the location of Meishan better than the mayor, pointed to the bottom of the mountain and said: "Looking at the terrain here, it should be possible to build a village, why is there no one to inhabit it?" ”

The mayor smiled bitterly: "This place is too close to Namei Mountain, Meishan barbarians live on the mountain, and the Han people are not allowed to come at the foot of the mountain, and they are not willing to live at the foot of the mountain." These Meishan barbarians, except for occasionally coming to the town to exchange some grain, rice, oil and salt, hide in the mountains all year round, and sometimes they will quarrel with the Han people and have armed fights, and we are miserable. ”

"That's right."

Zhao Jun responded, and he didn't know how the ancestors broke through this barrier and settled here. But after all, it was a matter of the Southern Song Dynasty, maybe the barbarians had been exterminated by the government at that time, or they had begun to contact the Han people, who knows?

The mayor said: "There will be no Han villages in the past, and those barbarians will drive out all those who come close, or go back." ”

"Nope."

Zhao Jun looked around, turned his head and said to the magistrate of Shaozhou and Xinhua County: "You have the responsibility to defend the land, go back separately, I will stay here for one night, there is no need to stay with me all the time." ”

He said so, but where did the two dare to go?

Since Zhao Jun is in their territory, he must be with them twenty-four hours a day.

The two hurriedly said: "Don't worry, don't worry, it's also our duty to accompany the prefect to inspect the place." ”

"Okay then."

Zhao Jun didn't force them, and then ordered Jiang Dalang and them: "Set up camp here." ”

"Yes."

Jiang Dalang: They actually don't want to camp in this barren mountain range.

After all, the New Year has arrived, and although the soldiers followed Zhao Jun away, they are all creatures who love to join in the fun, so they naturally want to go to the county seat.

First, they have saved a lot of reward money along the way, and they really want to find a green house, a tavern, a gambling house and other places to spend it.

When the second year comes, I still hope to be lively and lively, which is much better than nesting in the mountains.

But Zhao Jun's order could not be disobeyed, so the soldiers had to reluctantly go down the hillside and set up tents at the bottom of the mountain.

As night fell, the soldiers camped near the stream, silent.

In the distance, the crackling firecrackers could already be heard in Baisha Town, and Zhao Jun just stood by the river, quietly watching the small river flow.

A thousand years later, he used to swim in this river. The river is not big, only 20 meters wide, and the deepest part is a waterhole under the dam, which has not been built now, just a high and gentle slope, and the waterhole is there.

Zhao Jun looked down at the waterhole, where he almost drowned as a child and was pulled up by an adult who was bathing in the river together.

At that time, there were still people swimming in it in the summer, and when they grew up, they didn't know why, and the river stinked, all of which were domestic sewage and garbage, and there were even dead babies and dead pigs, so naturally no one went down the river.

There is also the eastern slope, the gentle slope of the mountain is the ancestral hall of the Zhao family, later the ancestral hall was built very large, it was donated by the rich people who went out of the Zhao family, it can accommodate hundreds of people to worship, every year at the sacrificial ceremony, Zhao Zhen's spiritual seat is hung high on it.

Zhao Jun stayed by the river like this, staring blankly at all this as a little familiar, but more as a strange place. Everyone could see that something was wrong with him, but no one dared to disturb him.

"What is the prefect doing?"

Huang Sanlang tidied up the tent and asked Jiang Dalang next to him: "Today is weird." ”

"I don't know."

Jiang Dalang scratched his head and said, "Maybe it's because government affairs are too busy, so let's go into the mountains occasionally to make my body and mind feel more comfortable." ”

"It's wrong, it's the prefect who has something on his mind."

is still educated in Shaozhou, after all, he was born as a Jinshi, and he can see Zhao Jun's state at this time.

Got something on your mind?

Everyone looked at each other, confused.

No one understood why Zhao Jun suddenly changed his route and came to a barren mountain range under a remote town in Shaozhou.

But no one dared to go.

Time flows like water in a stream.

It's late at night, and the end of the year is approaching.

Zhao Jun spent the end of Jing You's four years in this mountain nest, and also came to the new year.

At the beginning of this year, Song Renzong Zhao Zhen announced that the era name would be changed to Baoyuan.

At the end of this year, Li Yuanhao officially attacked the Great Song Dynasty in history, setting off a years-long Song-Xia War.

In the early morning of the next day, Zhao Jun once again embarked on the road to the south.

On the first day of the new year, he waited for the soldiers to pack their belongings, stood on the mountain beam, looked deeply at the little mountain nest again, and then left without looking back.

If he can change the fate of the Great Song Dynasty, maybe there will be no more incidents in the future where the ancestors of the Zhao family fled here in the late Southern Song Dynasty.

At that time, there was still no one here, and there might be other Han people who moved here.

But at least his ancestors will never come.

Here, there is only a trace of his thoughts and memories, and he will not have anything to do with him.

"Let's go."

Back in Baisha Town, Zhao Jun's rented boat was still waiting at the pier.

The water flows slowly.

This time, he did not continue north, but went south back to Shaozhou.

On the boat, Jiang Dalang was still curious, and saw Zhao Jun standing at the bow of the boat, standing with his hands in his hands, still looking in the direction of Baisha Town, and couldn't help but ask, "Zhiyuan." ”

"Huh?"

"The villain doesn't understand, why did the Zhiyuan come here on purpose?"

"Just to see, something has happened here before."

"Oh."

"Okay, let the boatmen speed up, and go south to Guangzhou."

Zhao Jun didn't want to explain too much to Jiang Dalang, because there was actually nothing to explain, just to see his former hometown.

That's this time.

Maybe he will never come back in the future, and this time it can be regarded as breaking his thoughts.

Jiang Dalang left in confusion.

The ship slowly sailed away from the port, Zhao Jun still looked at the mountains in the distance, until the fleet turned a cliff, and the mountains in the distance were completely blocked by the mountains behind, he sighed and returned to the cabin.

In the past, for Da Song, there was not much sense of belonging after all. Even if his surname is Zhao, Emperor Zhao of the Great Song Dynasty is indeed his ancestor, but it is still a little bit worse.

In Zhao Jun's cognition, the small mountain village that haunts his dreams is the hometown where he was born and raised for more than 20 years, even if he later went north to study in Beijing, he still can't forget everything in the mountain village.

But now after taking this look, even if it is officially goodbye to the former self.

Because no matter what, even his ancestors don't exist here, so there is no trace of him at all.

So he's been here, but he can't belong here, so it's better to break it off simply.

Future.

He devoted himself wholeheartedly to the cause of the Great Song Dynasty.

The fate of the ancestors changed completely.

This hometown is a thing of the past, and only dreams remain.

．

．

In February of the first year of Baoyuan, Zhao Jun went south to Guangzhou, inspected the port of Panyu, and saw the grand scene of many foreign ships parked at the wharf.

In fact, this situation can only be regarded as a small scene worth mentioning in any Chinese foreign trade terminal in the future.

However, in the Great Song Dynasty thousands of years ago, no empire of any time period had never had so many foreign ships flock to the country just to take away the country's tea, porcelain, silk, spices and other specialties.

Zhao Jun asked the local officials if they had any contact with Southeast Asian countries and whether they had taken the initiative to send ships to investigate the situation on their side.

As a result, the reply was "A small state, no need to send an envoy." "There are only foreign courts to see the Great Song Dynasty, except for the Liao State, which has never sent envoys to other countries."

Hearing such arrogant words, Zhao Jun was speechless.

If it weren't for the investigation and learning that Fan Shidao, the Guangnan East Road transfer envoy who said this, was a strict and honest official, he really wanted to knock on the other party's head and ask him, with the force of the Great Song Dynasty, why was he so arrogant.

In the end, Zhao Jun instructed him that he must form a fleet this year and go to the South Seas to investigate everywhere.

In addition, Nanyang has abundant grain production, and if conditions permit, I hope he can find a way to import grain from Southeast Asia to alleviate the pressure on domestic grain.

In fact, the grain of the Song Dynasty was not without imports, for example, the north and Tubo, Western Xia, and Liao often bought each other's cattle and sheep and other livestock. And during the period of Song Zhenzong, due to the disaster in the south, he imported grain from the Yue Dynasty to relieve the victims.

Champa rice was also introduced to China at that time.

It's just that importing grain is too troublesome and the cost is very high. It is estimated that more than half a year has passed from Guangzhou to Hunan through the Ling Canal, then from Hunan to the Xiangjiang River into the Yangtze River, and finally to Bianliang by canal.

Therefore, except for the disaster in the south and the inconvenience of transporting grain from the north, which solved the problem at close range by importing grain from the South Seas, the Song Dynasty did not import goods from abroad.

This is also why since the Tang, Song, Ming and Qing dynasties, foreign trade has been so developed, basically there is a trade surplus, a large amount of silver inflow, but few Chinese regimes imported goods from outside, and there was a trade deficit.

The Opium War of the Qing Dynasty started because even if Britain industrialized, it did not compete with the local manufacturing industry of the Qing Dynasty, and the trade between an industrial country and an agricultural country was still in deficit.

Britain needed to import a large amount of porcelain, tea and silk from the Qing Dynasty, and their wool and woolen wool could not be sold at all.

The so-called empire that the sun never sets was angry and angry, so it used foreign guns and cannons to solve this problem by exporting opium, which is really despicable.

Now Zhao Jun let Guangdong Road import Nanyang grain, the original intention is that although the import cost is expensive, but he knows that there will be a war this year, and the price of grain will rise sharply, and even if the cost is high, it will not be able to compare with the soaring grain price in China.

Therefore, it is possible to use imported grain to flatten food prices, at least much stronger than sudden inflation.

In addition to inspecting the port situation in Guangdong, Zhao Jun also went to see the cotton planting situation.

Last year, the Constitutional Yuan had already ordered a large number of cotton to be planted in Guangzhou, and now it is not possible to talk about comprehensive promotion, but local counties have political tasks, and cotton began to take root in the Great Song Dynasty.

It's just that judging from the inspection, the yield of this poisonous cotton is still not as good as that of Xinjiang cotton in later generations, after all, Xinjiang cotton is well cultivated, and the yield and quality are naturally very good.

However, the ancient cotton has not been scientifically cultivated, and the yield is half of that of later generations, even if it is good, it will definitely not be as good as that of later generations.

Zhao Jun stayed in Guangzhou for more than two months, during which time he also dealt with a number of cases, some of which were complained of by exiled people in Lingnan, some were problems with local officials, and some were disputes between foreigners and Han Chinese.

He recorded everything he saw and heard, and also wrote a report on the governance and arrangements of Guangzhou and sent it back to the imperial court, and it was not until March of the first year of Baoyuan that he left Guangzhou and went to Guangxi.

In June, he returned to Hunan and continued his tour.

At this time, the war in the northwest was also intensifying, and a special accident made the two sides tense, and there was a faint precursor to the start of a major war.

I myself know that these two chapters are a little bit watery, mainly because of the change in the protagonist's mood, which makes him feel more belonging to the Great Song Dynasty, and then it's basically a new beginning, the protagonist's tour is over, the Song-Xia War begins, and then it's a comprehensive promotion of reform, which is the climax of the whole book, so stay tuned.

(End of chapter)