Yongchang Province, Leping County (now Lismore City, Eastern Australia).

In the middle of August, the Mid-Autumn Festival, families reunite with their families to enjoy the bright moon.

Whether it is the royal nobles in Chang'an City, or the pawn traders of the people, whether it is the husband and wife who raise their eyebrows, or the confidant of Chanjuan who is thousands of miles together, they are all looking forward to a kind of fulfillment on this day.

In the Qin State, where transportation is inconvenient, it is difficult for a family in the north and south of the world to reunite.

In the country of Qi, where the railways are crisscrossed and the sea is developed, the Mid-Autumn Festival reunion is nothing more than spending more money and time on the road.

If Chinese New Year's Eve is a grand event for the whole family under the traditional etiquette system, then the Mid-Autumn Festival is a truly warm family feast.

On this day, in the courtyard of the city dweller's house, the owner will fill the courtyard with peanuts, apples, watermelons, longan, plums and other fruits. After the moon rises on the willows, the half-grown teenagers of the neighbor's family will take advantage of the late night to rummage into the courtyard and grab some red dates and other melons and fruits, and the host will also ignore them and laugh at them.

In the countryside, children would go to the fields when it was dark to pick pumpkins, paint them in ink like children, smear them with mud, stick them in branches, and send them to other people's bedding.

Not only is the host not angry, but they will also give these naughty children warm welcome, giving some peanuts, melon seeds and other snacks.

According to Chinese legends, every time the moon is full in the Mid-Autumn Festival, the fairies in the Moon Palace go down to the mortal world and sprinkle nectar all over, and the folk melons, fruits and vegetables are stained with nectar, which has the effect of prolonging life and shining on the stars.

Although, in Hanzhou itself, limited by the geographical location of the southern hemisphere, the traditional Mid-Autumn Festival happens to be the mid-spring season when everything recovers, and the time when agriculture is busy.

However, the genes of Chinese civilization engraved in the bones make tens of millions of people of Qi still willing to spend the Mid-Autumn Festival, which symbolizes reunion, at this time.

"Grandpa, someone has come to steal edamame from our vegetable garden!"

At the east end of Sai Wan Village, on the banks of the Peach Blossom River (now Richmond River), Ke Tugen and a few villagers were sitting on an earthen dam, smoking cigarette pouches and chatting about spring sowing. I heard my grandson, who was playing next to me, shouting loudly that someone had gone into the vegetable garden to steal vegetables and fruits.

"Little bunny, don't shout like that!" Ke Tugen just raised his eyes and glanced in the direction of the vegetable garden, and several black shadows jumped, laughing, and openly "stealing vegetables" with lanterns, and then showed a clear smile to stop his grandson from making loud noises, so as not to "disturb" the thief.

During the Mid-Autumn Festival, usually after nightfall, the girls in the village will start to act. They will go to their lovers' gardens to pick melons and fruits, and if the pumpkins and winter melons picked by each other are fat, or the edamame is round, it means that the children will be healthy and strong in the future. Then, everyone took the stolen melons and fruits to the master's house to ask for a cup of tea to drink, thanked each other for the melons and fruits, and received sincere blessings.

There are also those women who are not pregnant, accompanied by their sister-in-law, who go to the melon shed and bean shed in the field to grope in the dark of the night. If you touch a white lentil, it symbolizes growing old with your husband and loving her for a lifetime, and the birth will be a daughter. If you touch the pumpkin, it means that the noble son is coming, and it is auspicious.

The melons and fruits stolen on the day of the Mid-Autumn Festival cannot be taken home, but need to be eaten directly at the lover's or in-laws' house, or in the field, so as to indicate that the auspiciousness will not slip away, and happiness will always be by your side.

Children who don't know what is going on when they are young, and they shout loudly, isn't it to "startle" the happiness and auspiciousness of the women!

Besides, the woman who can go to her own vegetable garden to "steal" melons and fruits must be the future daughter-in-law of the family, and she can't spoil other people's happy events.

Leping County is a "new county" established less than 30 years ago in the northeast coast area of Vinh Chang Province in Handong Province, with a population of more than 45,000 people, and is a river port in a rich agricultural area, and an important distribution center for dairy products, meat, sugarcane and bananas. The place has a nearly subtropical climate, only more than 30 kilometers away from the sea, and the agricultural and animal husbandry conditions are relatively superior.

It was spring planting season, and the villagers had just inspected the land a few days ago to sow a new crop.

"Lao Zhang, are we really not planting wheat this year?" Ke Tugen slammed his cigarette pouch to the ground, then turned his head and asked.

"What's the matter, didn't you break it all up a while ago, why do you still ask?" Zhang Xiancheng, the president of the Xiwan Village Cooperative, said in a sullen voice: "In the past few years, growing food has not made money, what is worth planting?" I have been tired and tired for a year, and I can't leave a few big children in my pocket, and I am worried about the next natural disaster and a flood all day long. ”

"But don't you have to worry about natural disasters when growing sugar cane?"

"......" Zhang Xiancheng heard this, his expression suddenly froze, and then he rolled his eyes at Ke Tugen, "What do you know!" I said hello to the county, and it is much more cost-effective to grow sugarcane than wheat. At the very least, an acre of land can be charged seven or eight dimes more, or even one or two yuan! I'm afraid you don't know yet, what about this wheat, we can only plant one season, even if the year is good, after deducting the messy expenses, more than 30 acres of land can be collected at most more than ten or twenty yuan. But sugarcane is different, the county agricultural commissioner said, we have a warm climate here, you can plant two crops of sugarcane in a year, plant in spring and autumn, and harvest a stubble in a few months. Think about it, how much more money can you make at the end of the year? I guess you can charge more than twice as much as you can do! ”

"This kind of two-stubble sugarcane, I'm afraid the ground can't hold it, right?"

"If the soil can't hold up, then buy some guano mineral fertilizer and apply more fertilizer to the field. When the time comes, we can directly contact the agricultural cooperatives in the county and ask them to pull a boatload of guano mines, and everyone will share a point to ensure that the soil can recover quickly. ”

"However, if I don't grow food, I'll panic!"

"What's the panic?" Zhang Xiancheng said disapprerovingly: "Look at the grain sold on the market now, the rice is all transported from the Nanyang plantation, and the wheat is pulled by train from Kunzhou (now southwest Australia). Don't you know that the grain plantations in Nanyang are all laborers who don't need money, all of them are tens of thousands of acres, and they can grow three crops of rice a year. Where can we fight for them when we grow food! If this encounters a natural disaster or flood, you can only drink the northwest wind and eat some government relief. ”

Around the world, some places with high agricultural productivity not only have rainy seasons, but also have similar climatic conditions every year, and major droughts or floods rarely occur. Farmers can plough the land and sow seeds according to the seasonal rules every year, and the crops grow and mature under the irrigation of rain.

For example, in the Shenzhou mainland, according to the solar terms, sowing and harvesting on time, unless encountering a very extreme climate environment, the agricultural environment has always been extremely superior.

And the climatic conditions of the Han continent, well, how to say it, are unpredictable, and there is no law at all.

It is extremely difficult to arrange crop production according to the usual agricultural time and the climatic conditions of the previous year. The rainfall in most areas is simply unpredictable, and the rainfall in ten years is also more and less, and the changes between each decade are even greater, which is extremely unfavorable for the agricultural development of Hanzhou.

In later generations, this climatic environment was known as the Enso phenomenon, and it was definitely one of the greatest misfortunes that God had bestowed upon this continent.

In other words, the weather in Hanzhou is more fickle, more extreme, and more random than anywhere else.

It's impossible to summarize the seasons and climatic patterns of farming.

Even if it is summarized, it does not seem to help the crop production in the coming year.

When the early Qi immigrants first arrived in the eastern part of Hanzhou, they saw the endless forest and thought that it was a blessed land given by God, with fertile soil, abundant precipitation, and suitable temperature.

But this is just an illusion, they may have happened to have a good year, sowed seeds, and had a good harvest.

However, when the drought comes, their crops are often not harvested and their livelihoods are difficult to sustain, so they have to seek out areas with stable river irrigation.

The only region in the Han continent that is not affected by the Enso phenomenon is the southwest region, which can obtain a stable agricultural planting climate and environment, and is also the most important grain producing area in Qi country.

However, if we build more water conservancy according to the talent of the Chinese ethnic group to change the world and build more water conservancy, we can cope with this unpredictable climate and environment, coupled with the consistent hardships and hard work, how can we dig some grain from the soil, and it will not be a problem to eat a full stomach.

However, the state of Qi has been founded for more than 90 years, and with the sustained and rapid development of the economy, it is no longer the basic pursuit of farmers to have enough food and clothing.

Workers in the cities can earn seven or eight to a dozen yuan a month, and at the end of the year, they can save twenty or thirty yuan, and if they are frugal, it is not impossible to save forty or fifty yuan.

When you have money, you naturally have more life pursuits. Buying a house in the city, buying a house, having a few more babies, and then going to school, maybe after having enough knowledge, you can get a great opportunity and achieve a leap in class.

And in the vast rural areas, in the situation of satisfying basic food and clothing, do they want to replace the former adobe houses with beautiful brick houses? With a brick house, is it possible to build a small building with two or three floors?

If you have a bunch of babies at home, do you also have to work hard to support one or two who are motivated to study, so as to leave the countryside and settle down in a bustling city to enjoy a better life?

Oh, by the way, a few boys in the family marry daughters-in-law, and a large amount of dowry to give to the future in-laws, is it to save money and save more savings?

If you want to achieve these goals, in addition to doing more side jobs, raising a few cows, and herding dozens of sheep, you have to find ways to work hard in the fields and strive to create more income.

It is also very frustrating to say, there is really nothing lacking in our Qi country, not only a variety of industrial products are continuously supplied to the market, even agricultural products are also abundant, rice from Kaihua (now Java Island), wheat from Kunzhou, sugarcane from the Northeast and Xuanhua (now Timor Island) region, rubber, cocoa, coffee ...... from the South Seas, whether it is the planting area, or the scale of production, are extremely amazing.

If there are more of these things, the price will naturally be cheap, so that the income of ordinary farmers in Qi State has never been able to increase effectively.

Fifty or sixty years ago, when Qi had not really controlled the Nanyang region, with the rapid increase in domestic population, consumption power also rose, and the prices of various agricultural products have been in a relatively stable and slightly increasing trend. At that time, the income of most peasants was also quite considerable, and they planted some fruits and vegetables at home, raised some cattle and sheep, and lived a small life no worse than that of people in the city.

Sometimes, when a certain area suffers from a major natural disaster, there will be a wave of high prices of agricultural products, and grain can also be sold well.

However, as more and more Nanyang territories controlled by Qi State, all kinds of plantations increased sharply, causing the prices of various agricultural products to fall again and again, making the majority of farmers complain. There are even many voices to boycott the import of grain and other crops from overseas territories to protect the interests of local farmers.

In the era when only local agricultural products are in circulation, the rise in grain prices is of course no problem for grain growers, and they can go to the market to make up for the loss of crop yield in the form of price increases.

However, the influx of cheap rice and grains from overseas territories into Hanzhou has prevented local grain prices from rising, and due to the impact of climate disasters, grain production has been reduced, so the interests of farmers in Hanzhou have suffered heavy losses, and it seems that growing food is not so cost-effective.

In this case, the only way to increase farmers' incomes is to switch to cash crops such as sugarcane, which are of higher value.

If you do a little math, about 400-500 sugarcane seedlings are usually planted on one acre of land. At present, the price of a sugarcane seedling in the market is about 0.2 cents, and with a little freight, the cost of the seedling is about 0.8-1 yuan. In addition, the cost of field management should also be calculated, sugarcane is a large water and fertilizer crop, fertilizer needs to be applied many times a year, and irrigation is also frequent. One acre of sugarcane requires guano mineral fertilizer of about 1.5 yuan. The total cost per mu is between 2.3 and 2.5 yuan.

The yield of sugarcane is very high, the yield per mu is about 5-7 tons, the purchase price of sugar mills per ton is between 0.7-1 yuan, and the economic income of one mu is 3.5-5 yuan.

In the end, the profit per mu should be more than 1.2 yuan. If there are two seasons a year, that is 2.4 yuan. If each farmer owns 30 acres of land, it is 72 yuan!

In contrast, growing sugar cane is much more profitable than growing corn, rice, wheat, and even fruits and vegetables!

More importantly, typhoon disasters, which are the most feared by sugarcane cultivation, rarely occur in the southeastern coastal areas of Hanzhou (most typhoons form in the northern hemisphere, while the atmospheric circulation in the southern hemisphere is weak, making it difficult to form typhoons), so that sugarcane will not be swept down by strong typhoons and become worthless, as is the case in the Nanyang region.

The rise of coffee, cocoa, and mead (sugar cane wine, also known as rum) has also led to a strong demand for sugar consumption. In addition, the impact of the Qi-British War a few years ago caused a significant reduction in sugar exports from Brazil and the Caribbean, which led to a blowout of sugar sales to Europe in Hanzhou and the South Seas Territory, and indirectly triggered a new round of sugarcane planting boom.

Humans are no less addicted to sweetness than they are to salt.

During this period, ordinary people in various countries, including Qi State, could not drink milk or eat hot rice during their daily labor, and sucrose became a necessary condiment for their three meals a day, and even replaced fresh meat, milk, butter, cheese and vegetables, so that their tired bodies could recover as soon as possible, so that they could cope with more than ten hours of factory work every day.

Comparatively speaking, sucrose is the most efficient form of calorie production, providing 1.3 million units of calories per acre of sugarcane, four times that of potatoes and 10 times that of wheat.

Cheap and abundant calories are another fuel in the era of the Industrial Revolution, and they are indispensable!

(End of chapter)

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