Little Cardamom - Chapter 79

After not sleeping well the night before, and spending another night in the ruined temple, Ming Tan visibly haggarded a lot.

But she didn’t feel tired, so she took a rest for two hours, and the next morning, she followed Jiang Xu to the seaside fishing village to find out what the sea storms in Tonggang have been like in recent years.

Ming Tan had previously analyzed the difficulty of opening Tonggang port, and it is not bad. It is nothing more than that Tonggang is too poor, lacks various basic conditions, and the sea is constantly changing and unpredictable.

In fact, as long as the imperial court is willing to allocate funds and provide strong support for the former, it is not difficult to change the appearance of the poor and remote areas. The latter is the key to whether Tonggang can become the next Lingzhou Port.

How should I put it, Tonggang is really poor, from the inside to the outside, from the town to the village, it’s so poor that it doesn’t differentiate between you and me.

The fishing village by the sea is in disarray, the sea is salty, the sun is completely exposed, Ming Tan is covering his veil, and he feels his face is burning hot and painful.

Jiang Xu had transferred the local chronicles of Tonggang earlier. Although Tonggang had not been very rich, it was not so bad going back two dynasties.

Tonggang became what it is today, and it should be said that during the reign of Emperor Taizong, the Tonggang sea dam was in disrepair for a long time, and the sea tide broke the embankment.

The break of the sea dam is a major event, but it is only a major event for the important salt fields. In a small place like Tonggang, the break of the embankment will also break the embankment. Chase for a text.

After the embankment broke, the sea tide rose during the heavy rain, and the seawater backflowed. The surrounding fertile farmland was eroded by the seawater, hardened and turned white, and could no longer be cultivated. A large area of ​​famine followed.

The famine during the reign of Emperor Taizong forced the young people in Tonggang to leave their hometowns to find another way of life. Only the elderly and weak stayed behind, and Tonggang was declining day by day visible to the naked eye.

To this day, the Tonggang sea dam has not been repaired, and it has to burst its embankment every few years. Quanzhou officials have never paid much attention to Tonggang. They only think that it is a remote and sparsely populated place, and even the road does not need to be repaired.

All kinds of things, it’s no wonder that this place is poor and difficult.

Jiang Xu and Ming Tan inquired about several companies in the fishing village, and when they mentioned going to sea, they shook their heads again and again, saying that the sea was very windy and rough, and they would die if they went there.

There are also villagers who are enthusiastic and talk to them about the past examples of going to sea without returning.

Is there a man in the village who wants to go to the sea to earn money, but he hasn’t returned for several years after he went there, and there is no news at all. In the past two years, his daughter-in-law didn’t wait, and remarried to a neighboring village, and gave birth to a fat boy. On the wreckage of the ship, the daughter-in-law recognized that the items on the ship belonged to the first man, and cried hard for a while.

There used to be countless such incidents of going to sea to die, but now it is rare. Those who want to go to sea to earn money have tried their best to go to Lingzhou, and most of them are old, weak, women, children and lazy people, fishing and hunting, and can eat and drink. That’s it.

Mrs. Liu of the Orion’s family also briefly talked about these things, and Ming Tan patiently asked about the specific situation of the wind and waves at sea.

But when asked about this, the villagers couldn’t tell the reason, most of them said that when the sea was in trouble, there were lightning flashes and thunder, the tide was turbulent, and the fishing boat capsized all of a sudden, which was very scary.

Ming Tan didn’t know what came to mind, so he asked in a different way: “Then aunt, how long has your family lived here?”

How long have you lived here?

The aunt thought about it carefully, and hurriedly said: “My mother’s family is in the next village, and my husband’s family is here. The two ancestral graves are on the mountain, and the ancestors have been there for several generations!”

Ming Tan heard the words, nodded, thoughtfully.

After the aunt left, the two continued to walk to the rocks beside the village.

Ming Tan sorted out while walking: “Although they all said that the sea is very stormy, and the tide will come back every few years, but the ancestors have lived here for several generations, and the wind and waves are not as severe as they said.

“Isn’t Lingzhou Port also prone to storms? Master Yu has sold you on this matter, but when I was in Lingzhou, I told the magistrate’s wife that it seems that as long as the fleet is experienced and can accurately observe the sea weather It is not difficult to go to sea with more effort in ship construction.”

Jiang Xu said “hmm”, and stood in front of the reef with his hands behind his back, looking into the distance and said, “The influx of the sea tide is caused by the breach of the embankment. There are many such disasters in the coastal areas. If there is no solid embankment in Lingzhou Port, you can’t escape it either. It’s not enough to be overflowing.”

“Hai Yi?”

Jiang Xu explained: “The disaster of sea overflow cannot be resisted by manpower. It is recorded in history books that sea overflow is mostly caused by earthquakes. If there is a danger of sea overflow here, no matter what, the port cannot be opened.”

Ming Tan had never heard of Hai Yi before, but it sounded similar to a great flood at sea? She nodded with a vague understanding.

“Actually, before delineating Tonggang, I also considered other coastal towns, many of which are far superior to Tonggang in terms of geographical location, but the local annals of these places contain many traces of earthquakes. It will not be just this one time, and in the long run, it is not suitable to open the port. Tonggang has no previous history, and there is no difference when looking at it on the spot.”

The waves in the distance are dark gray and blue, and the nearby area is dirty and messy. There are also dead fish with white bellies, and the salty smell of the tide is mixed with the rancid smell. The sky is clear, but the gray-blue is boundless, and the sky is also stained with a bit of gloom, as if something has accumulated, and it almost wants to be suppressed.

Seeing that Ming Tan hadn’t made a sound for a while, Jiang Xu turned to look at her, only to find that she had been looking at him.

“What are you looking at?”

Ming Tan stared at him fixedly, his small face was tense, and he suddenly said seriously: “I discovered something.”

“what?”

“Husband, you didn’t call yourself ‘my king’ just now.”

“…”

“Husband didn’t call himself ‘the king’, suddenly he was much more amiable.” The seriousness on Ming Tan’s face was suddenly replaced by teasing. She imitated Jiang Xu, put her hands behind her back, and stepped forward briskly on tiptoe, deliberately Put your arms around him.

“This king is young, why should he be amiable?”

“Is your husband young? Let me do the math, my husband is one, two, three, four, five older than me…” Ming Tan began to count with his fingers.

Jiang Xu couldn’t help looking at her: “You think I’m old?”

“I didn’t say that my husband is a prince, but I can’t just wrong people. And I don’t dare to dislike it. People say that I married His Highness King Dingbei as a high-ranking marriage. Even if there is such a small opinion, naturally It can only be hidden deep in my heart.”

“This king really pampered you.”

He lowered his eyes and pinched the back of Ming Tan’s neck.

“Don’t pinch, itchy!” Ming Tan hurriedly dodged.

But Jiang Xu’s hand easily followed her, and Hua Er was willing to stop only when she was pinching her to plead guilty and beg for mercy.

…

The two stayed in the fishing village until noon. They planned to go back to the town to find some food to fill their stomachs, but Ming Tan was extremely thirsty. Seeing this, Jiang Xu dragged her to find a random house and asked for a bowl of water.

Most of the people in the fishing village are simple and simple, just begging for a bowl of water. The lady who opened the door agreed without thinking too much, and warmly invited the two of them into the house to rest: “What are you doing here? Right? Come in and sit down.”

Ming Tan was really dizzy from the sun, and his feet hurt a lot. He thought it would be good to take a break to inquire about the situation, so he went into the house with Jiang Xu.

Who would have thought that as soon as they entered the room, the aunt who had been kind and enthusiastic to the two of them just now turned around and yelled at the people in the room: “It’s dishonest to kneel! I think you owe a beating!”

Ming Tan was startled by the sudden rough voice, and his heart skipped half a beat.

Only then did the aunt remember that there were two guests behind her, she turned around immediately, smiled, and apologized to the two of them: “I’m sorry, I let you see a joke, the baby at home is disobedient, you sit, sit whatever you want, I will I’ll go get you some water.”

Ming Tan nodded, and sat with Jiang Xu on half of the kang with lingering fear.

She looked around the room.

If the hunter’s family at the foot of the mountain is said to be poor, their family here is a serious family with no walls. Strictly speaking, there should be three walls of the house, and the wall facing west has collapsed, and only a piece of tarpaulin was pulled to cover it indiscriminately.

Kneeling in the east corner is a thin and small child, probably the disobedient own doll that the aunt said.

“Come on, water.”

Ming Tan took it with both hands, and quickly thanked: “Thank you, Madam.”

She was so thirsty that she didn’t care how broken the bowl was, but just after taking a sip, the aunt turned her head and cursed harshly: “You dead man went to that smelly brothel in the town again?! If you don’t come back all night, you’re good at it!” You! If you have the ability, just die there and never come back!”

Ming Tan almost choked to death.

She calmed down, took another half sip, and pulled Jiang Xu’s sleeve calmly, intending to leave.

But suddenly I heard the aunt swearing at the lazy man who had just entered the house and turned into a puddle of mud: “My children will be sent there to beg for food, you still have the face to go shopping in brothels, tell me if you are a human being!”

Send it over to beg for food?

Ming Tan subconsciously looked at the child huddled up and kneeling on the ground in the corner of his eyes.

She didn’t see the child with his back turned to them earlier, but now she turned her head, she saw clearly that this child was one of the children who went to the ruined temple last night.

He was also peeking at them, looking at his expression, he should have recognized them, and he was a little afraid that they would cause trouble for him and his family because of what happened last night.

Ming Tan felt a little uncomfortable.

She kept thinking, what kind of family would send their children to beggars to learn how to cheat? Should it be cold-blooded and ruthless, selfish? But this aunt can treat strangers warmly, obviously she is not without kindness.

After leaving the aunt’s house, Ming Tan suddenly asked melancholy: “Husband, in time, Tonggang will no longer be poor, can they really live a good life?”

Jiang Xu paused, but in his opinion, it wasn’t necessarily true. What was terrible was never poverty, but the compromise that was engraved into the bone marrow and was already content with the status quo, but seeing her feeling lost, he still responded: “Yes.”

Ming Tan already had the answer in her heart, she followed in Jiang Xu’s footsteps, and said as she walked forward: “In time, when the port is opened here, the town will become more and more prosperous, and scholars will come here to set up schools, and those children will be able to understand the principles and knowledge.” When you grow up, you can either stay here to build a side, or go out to see a wider world, in short, it will definitely get better and better.”

Jiang Xu was slightly taken aback.

In fact, he hadn’t thought of such a distant thing, but according to what she said, it was true, the only way to change the poverty of this town was to study.

He stepped forward, took Ming Tan’s hand, and repeated the sound quietly, as if to promise something.

“Will do.”

After staying in Tonggang for three days, the two finally returned, Ming Tan always remembered what he said when he came, even if he couldn’t hold on, he didn’t complain for a while.

In fact, the matter of eating and sleeping, just bear with it and pass, eat less and sleep less, at most a little hungry and tired, the most unbearable thing for Ming Tan is that he hasn’t bathed for three days.

On the third day, she didn’t dare to get close to Jiang Xu’s body anymore, for fear that her husband would smell something she shouldn’t, and she would never remember the fragrant and exquisite little fairy from before.

Jiang Xu didn’t understand what she was being hypocritical about. When he left Tonggang, he rode with him, and suddenly said that he didn’t want to sit in front.

He asked for a long while before she reluctantly whispered, “I haven’t bathed for three days, and I don’t know if I smell.”

“My king hasn’t bathed for three days, so if he stinks, he stinks.” Jiang Xu didn’t care.

“How can it be the same? You are a man, and there are stinky men who say it, but no stinky woman. Who wants to stink with you!” Ming Tan retorted without thinking.

“…”

After a stalemate for a while, Jiang Xu suddenly said, “Come up and take you to take a bath.”

“…?”

“Can’t make it to the neighboring town tonight?” Ming Tan hesitated.

The road in Tonggang is so bad, and there is no way to gallop on horseback. When I came here, I spent a night at the foot of the mountain, which she will never forget.

“If you can’t make it, I’ll take you to the hot spring to take a bath.”