Chapter 70: The "ordinary" life of Ming Chuan, a peasant girl (Part 1)
Name: Dai Erdong
Previous name (working name): Yao Han
Gender: Female
Current age: Fourteen years old
Substantial identity: Future traveler of the 21st century
Way of time travel: Soul time travel (Borrowing corpse to bring back soul)
Current apparent identity: The personal maid of Yu Guozhen, a scholar in Nanzhili
The apparent identity at the beginning of the time travel: a peasant girl in Daijia Village, Qufu, Shandong Province in the late Ming Dynasty
"... Seniors who have traveled through time and space and struggled in various time and space, convey your domineering spirit to me through time and space!"
In those hungry and cold nights, Dai Erdong had secretly prayed like this countless times, hoping that when he opened his eyes again, he would be completely transformed. He felt that his whole body was full of strength, and there was a faint halo behind him. There are two big words in the letter: "Protagonist"!
Unfortunately, her prayers never came to fruition.
Poor time traveler Miss Dai Erdong, it was not until she was reincarnated through time and space and truly arrived in the Shandong countryside in the late Ming Dynasty that she finally realized that the real real-life ancient countryside was completely different from the paradise described in time-travel novels. Something!
Unfortunately, when she finally knew this, it was too late.
At this moment, Dai Erdong was standing in front of the courtyard of a farmhouse, looking up with his mouth open.
This is a brick house with white walls and black tiles, but it is somewhat dilapidated. Not counting the yard, the total area of the main house and the wing rooms is more than one hundred square meters. The base of the wall was covered with moss, and a few hoes and poles were placed crookedly. There were mottled stains on the walls, and there were small holes in some places that were blocked by something unknown. Only the main house is entirely made of tiles, and the roofs of the wing rooms are thatched. A few chickens clucked and walked past the door, and a little fat girl wearing a patched thick cotton coat and holding a broken bowl with a chip was squatting at the door to eat.
In the writings of modern female romance writers, in those rural farming stories that travel through ancient times, such living conditions probably belong to ordinary people in ancient rural areas - to put it simply, most of the remote and impoverished mountainous areas of New China in the 1980s living standard.
But according to what Dai Erdong knew... I'm sorry, this is already the richest landlord's house in their village!
As for the houses that other families live in... Haha, in a rural farming story that travels through ancient times, I don't know what level it is.
Even in the eyes of modern people, there may be a question mark as to whether the place where they live can be regarded as a "house".
The village that Dai Erdong traveled through is called Daijia Village, located in Qufu, Shandong Province. Half of the village's old and young people have the surname Dai. Although they live in the hometown of the "Holy Master" Master Kong, there is not even a private school in Daijia Village, and most of the villagers have been illiterate for generations.
Generally speaking, this is a very poor village. Many baby girls in the village are drowned by their parents after birth because they cannot feed them. Relatively speaking, Dai Erdong's family in this village is pretty good. At least they can raise Dai Erdong and her sister half-starved and half-fed, so they don't have to drown at birth—— ...But that's all. Don't even think about having enough food and clothing. Whatever food is available at home, it must be given priority to the younger brother who is carrying on the family line and the father who is the main labor force. Dai Erdong and her sister rarely have a full meal throughout the year.
The original little girl Dai Erdong had only one meal a day for a certain period of time, and she was so hungry that she couldn't bear it. As a result, when she went to the river to fetch water, she fell down and drowned without being able to stand... So she was replaced. The soul of this future girl passed through and continued to suffer under the identity of Dai Erdong.
Well, next, we should first introduce Dai Erdong’s family members. There are five people in her family - the cheap dad who is always urging her to work fiercely, the cheap mother who is always beaten and crying, a sister who is four years older than her, and a younger brother. The elder sister is named Dai Yixia and the younger brother is named Dai Sanchun - because these three juniors were born in summer, winter and spring respectively, they were named in this order.
Although there is no literary talent to speak of, compared to the "big dog, second dog" and other titles in the village, such a name is already considered good.
Although Dai Erdong's mother looks to be at least 30 or 40 years old, she is actually only 24 years old this year. She was only 20 when she gave birth to her younger brother Dai Sanchun, which is just the legal age for marriage in modern China. She gave birth to her eldest sister before. Dai Yixia was only twelve years old when she was born!
——From a modern perspective, this is obviously a crime that harms primary school students. But at that time, it was a kind of helplessness. The average life span of ordinary people in those days was no more than thirty years old. Those who survived were those who were in excellent health, ate delicious food, and were really lucky. After all, just a common cold can induce a lot of syndromes. If a woman is not allowed to have children earlier, can we wait until she is almost thirty years old?
Those modern people who need to rely on various sling bottles and vaccines to survive can never imagine how terrible the health and hygiene conditions were at that time.
In a cruel era when average life expectancy is so short, people choose to marry and have children early as a last resort.
Thinking of this, Dai Erdong suddenly felt like there were fleas crawling on his body. So she picked up a flea from her body, put it in her mouth and killed it. Looking down, he saw that the piece of rag she was wearing, which was still technically a piece of clothing, was so tattered that it could not even cover her dirty breasts.
Sighing, she scratched her hair, which was as messy as a chicken coop, turned around and looked at the large water tank with duckweed and fallen leaves beside her, and tried her best to show a smile - although only a dark mouth was exposed. Rotten teeth.
However, the ordinary people in the rural areas of the Ming Dynasty in this era were actually similar to her. They were generally unkempt, full of bad teeth, and had rough skin. Since they didn’t bathe often, most people also had some... skin disease.
Well, it seems that she should be lucky that Dai Erdong traveled to the Ming Dynasty instead of the Qing Dynasty. The custom of wrapping the "three-inch golden lotus" was not that popular in the north, so Erdong did not bind her feet. In fact, she suspected that the real reason why she did not need to bind her feet was The family is reluctant to spend money to buy her foot wraps...
Just as she was looking down at her dirty bare feet, a twenty-year-old fat woman walked next to her. She looked like a big burnt white bun. She was wrapped in silk and had a thin slit on her face. ―Those are eyes. She bent down, lowered her fleshy and heavy penis to Erdong's eyes, and then slapped Dai Erdong, who was only eight years old this year, down.
"...Ugly thing, get away from my door! Don't stand in a place that dirty my house!"
——This fierce fat woman is the owner of the house, the wife of the richest landlord in the village, and also the fattest person in the village.
In the era of the late Ming Dynasty, except for those gentlemen with unique tastes in big cities, most rural women considered fatness to be beautiful.
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After being slapped to the ground by the landlord's wife's cattail fan, Dai Erdong had no choice but to stand up with his neck curled up, endured the burning pain, and quickly left the landlord's house, the only decent-looking place in the village, slowly. Walking slowly towards the village.
Walking along the way, except for a few "high-end and classy" brick and tile houses in the village, they are basically all mud houses, which look dirty. Dai Erdong's home is no exception. There is damp mud at home, and it is easy to develop arthritis if you stay there for a long time.
But despite this, her family is not considered poor in this village, or even in the entire province of Shandong. For example, Dai Erdong, an eight-year-old girl, actually has several rags to cover her breasts and lower body. No need to run around naked. Unlike the little flower from Lao Wang's family next door, who is already a twelve-year-old "big girl", but she is still naked and has never worn serious clothes in her life!
——There is no way, the five members of Lao Wang’s family are so poor that they only have one complete piece of clothing, and even the idiot wife who drools all day long picked it up from nowhere. In the northern countryside at the end of the Ming Dynasty, most men from extremely poor families were unable to marry seriously.
As for poor men who have been bachelors all their lives, they can be found all over the village: on one side, girls drown to death at birth, and on the other hand, there are poor men who will never be able to marry a wife until they grow old. In ancient societies without birth control, this might also be a disguised form of family planning!
Secondly, Dai Erdong's family can actually afford salt, which is something that her neighbors are very envious of.
In short, this kind of life is extremely difficult. As a time traveler and a lover of farming literature, Dai Erdong naturally wants to find ways to improve his life.
Obviously, without pesticides, chemical fertilizers and improved seeds, there is little potential to be explored in the few acres of land farmed by the tenants.
It's not a good idea to go fishing in the river - the river next to the village is narrow and shallow, and the fish in it are as small as the goldfish in the fish tanks of later generations. They are also very agile and difficult to catch and have no meat. . However, about half a day's walk from her village, there is a mountain with dense trees. According to the theory of farming, it seems that you can go to the mountain to hunt some game, collect some mushrooms and wild fruits... But she has neither a bow nor a hunting knife at home. If a little loli goes up the mountain alone with nothing, she may have to die to feed the wolves...
So she didn't go there after all.
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For the vast majority of villagers in Daijia Village, the only hope of maintaining their livelihood is the crops in the fields.
Although in Dai Erdong's opinion, the crops in this field are not very full, according to the cheap daddy, this year has been considered a bumper harvest - without chemical fertilizers and pesticides, disasters are extremely frequent. In the late Ming Dynasty, it was time to laugh at the production capacity of hundreds of kilograms per mu.
When Dai Erdong walked to the village drying field, he saw the cheap dad standing beside his pile of wheat with a smile, and he was so happy that he couldn't open his mouth from ear to ear - according to his dad, there was a lot of grain harvested this year. , the whole family probably won’t starve to death this year.
However, in the end, this was just an unattainable extravagant wish - not long after, under Dai Erdong's shocked eyes, a group of fierce men with sinister faces suddenly burst into the village arrogantly and unceremoniously attacked everyone. A full 70 to 80% of the grain piled by each household on the drying ground was taken away! Naturally, the food of Dai Erdong's family was not spared... This winter's full meal was wasted.
——Most of the farmers in Daijia Village do not own their own land and can only work as tenants for the landlords. The people who came to take away the food were the landlord's new rent-collecting steward and his lackeys. The village has had bad harvests in the past few years and has been in arrears with rent. This year is finally a good harvest, and the old steward who was responsible for collecting rent was disgusted by the owner because he had not collected all the rent in the past few years, so he was replaced by a new one. The new steward was anxious to perform well in front of the owner, so he wanted to The villagers paid off the rent they owed during the famine in previous years, and as a result, much more food was recovered than in previous years.
As for what the people of Daijia Village should eat to survive after taking away so much food... this was not considered by the new steward who was eager to make meritorious deeds. Anyway, don’t worry even if they all starve to death, there are many refugees out there who have no land to farm!
As a result, as the landlord's action to collect the rent arrears over the years began, the joy of the harvest disappeared in an instant, and the whole village, old and young, felt as if they were mourning for their heirs... Unexpectedly, it rained all night, and less than half a day later, there was another group of people with full faces. The fierce man arrived and swaggered into Daijia Village, with a face full of Pinching his nose in disgust, he skillfully searched for any place where he could hide things, and at the same time threatened the villagers with a loud voice. The villagers were even more desperate to learn that after paying the rent this year, they still had to pay miscellaneous taxes from the court. You have to pay it, and in addition you have to bear the gray income from the yamen.
With the intrusion of this group of ferocious men, the whole Daijia Village was in a state of uproar, wailing, and howling. One person was even beaten to death with a stick because he resisted taxes! In addition, there were several men who were given food by them because their families could not afford food (they owed a lot of rent, and the landlord's steward had taken too much away before, and what was left was not enough for the next group of people). He was arrested and told that he would be escorted to the county town, where he would be yoked in front of the Yamen and put on display in a cage. If the family did not use money or food to atone for their sins, they would be yoked until they died!
The cheap dad of Dai Erdong's family was also taken away by those scoundrels, and the family was asked to give him a tael of silver to redeem him, but where was there any money left at home?
It was clear that the entire family had been plundered, and not even a grain of rice could be found! ! !
But it’s not possible without redeeming people. Without the main labor force of Cheap Dad, how will the family survive?
Cheap Mom and the two sisters Dai Yixia and Dai Erdong were so worried that they had nowhere to borrow money at usury. The hungry little brother Dai Sanchun was still crying loudly, which made people more and more upset, as if a hundred cats were scratching his heart.
Finally, the cheap mother finally had an idea and came up with an impossible solution, which was to sell people - although the world is getting more and more chaotic these days, human life is getting more and more despicable, and it really can't be sold for much price. But at least I still have one or two taels of silver.
Except for the cheap mother, there are three members of the Dai family left. The younger brother Dai Sanchun wants to continue the family line, so naturally he cannot be sold. The eldest sister Dai Yixia has told her husband's family that even the bride price has been collected (already spent), so naturally she cannot sell it. As a result, Dai Erdong, who was only eight years old, was tied up by his cruel cheap mother and sold to a human trafficker. He finally got a tael of silver.
The trafficker planned to sell Dai Erdong to a brothel in the city. Once he changed hands, he would get two taels of silver and double the profit.
Then, while being escorted by the trafficker to the county seat, Dai Erdong quietly broke the rope, smashed the trafficker's head open with a stone, took off his clothes and straw sandals, and took away the few items he had on him. Copper coins, and then fled in a panic.
——She had to escape, because little girls sold into brothels these days usually have two prospects. One is to work as a maid for a high-level prostitute with status, which is a good way out, and the other is to be dragged away directly. Pick up guests and satisfy the special fetishes of some guests who like young girls!
Before she traveled through time, she had heard about Arab men marrying nine-year-old girls, which she felt was both contemptuous and unbelievable. Now that she had traveled to the late Ming Dynasty, she discovered that such things were common in China these days... But the death of the little girl The rate is also terrifyingly high!
Once when she went to the county town with her father, she saw with her own eyes a girl from the same village who was sold by her parents the day before. She was only six or seven years old at most and was taken out of the brothel. At that time, her immature lower body was already It was a mess of blood and flesh, and it seemed like even the intestines were leaking out!
Therefore, facing the terrible prospect of being sold into a brothel, Dai Erdong really didn't dare to gamble her luck - if the cruel brothel owner actually asked her to accept customers now, she doubted whether she would be able to see the next one. Two days of sun!
So Dai Erdong had no choice but to find a way to escape - luckily she was lucky enough to succeed.
On the way to escape, Dai Erdong ate and slept in the open, drank raw water, dug wild vegetables, stole, begged, and relied on a few copper coins from traffickers to exchange for food. Dai Erdong stumbled and walked without knowing how far he walked. Another village looks like the same poverty and filth as Daijia Village. The people living in these places are also the same as the people in Daijia Village, rags, dirty and thin.
At the end of the Ming Dynasty, the rural areas in northern China were so desolate and dilapidated. Compared with the situation in Shaanxi, Shandong was actually relatively good: here in Shandong, the people could at least survive by selling their children and daughters. In Shaanxi, people can't survive even if they sell their sons and daughters.
China during the Chongzhen period of the Ming Dynasty was such a miserable world where people had no means of livelihood.
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I don’t know how many days since he escaped. With a heart full of despair and a growling stomach, Dai Erdong crossed his arms and shivered, wandering aimlessly on the road. After running out of the few copper coins he found from the human trafficker, , even though she ate tree bark, gnawed grass roots, caught mice and frogs, and collected everything she could eat along the way, almost eating dead human flesh, she was still so hungry that she felt dizzy.
She doesn't know the way and has to rely on her head and intuition. There are dangers everywhere in the wild: wild dogs, bandits, venomous snakes that have not yet hibernated, human traffickers everywhere, and hungry refugees - they have really begun to eat dead human flesh!
Unfortunately, the unlucky Dai Erdong finally encountered such a cannibal lying on the bones and feasting. When he rushed towards him with red eyes, Dai Erdong was so scared that he jumped into a river.
It was already late autumn, and the weather in the north during the Little Ice Age at the end of the Ming Dynasty was extremely cold. The cold and biting river water suddenly flooded up to her waist and washed away her tattered clothes. However, she still struggled to continue to escape, and finally lost her life. He climbed out on his hands and knees.
When Dai Erdong struggled to climb up the other side of the river. She had no feeling at all in her legs. She groped her way through deserted fields and woods, until at last she found a small manor. Even though she was exhausted, she didn't dare sit down and rest for a while - she was afraid she would die of hypothermia - but she knew she didn't have the strength to go further. She had no choice but to try to find someone for help.
Although there are very few kind-hearted people in this world, even if he encounters a human trafficker, Dai Erdong, who is completely desperate, has no choice but to recognize him.
She stumbled along a dirt road to the door of the manor and found that the door was open and no one could be seen at the door. So Dai Erdong tried to look inside, and then accidentally fell into the ground inside the door.
On the ground, she saw a small earthenware bowl with some food in it. She looked closer - it was a bowl of rice! White rice! There is also some meat and bones mixed in! She couldn't remember the last time she saw a whole bowl of white rice!
But what is a bowl of rice doing here, just sitting on the ground? When she heard a tied local dog barking next to her, she understood everything.
- Damn it! ! Even a dog eats better than her! ! ! Oh my God! ! ! ! What kind of world is this? ! ! ! !
This new discovery made her full of anger, and she didn't know where the strength came from. She immediately grabbed the bowl of dog rice, ignored the fierce-looking native dog, and sat on the ground to gobble it up - pitifully speaking, this was It was already the best meal she had this year!
However, the meal was not finished, because the barking of the dog attracted a servant in the manor, who immediately beat her to the corner with a stick, and then rained down sticks, preparing to steal the owner's dog. For the crime of food, let's beat Dai Erdong half to death.
Fortunately, the servant was stopped by a steward before Dai Erdong received a few sticks. Then, the person in charge dragged her over and washed her with water. He found that although she was thin and dark-skinned, her facial features were quite regular, so he smiled as if he had picked up a bargain.
——Until then, Dai Erdong didn't know that the manor where he broke in to compete with the watchdog for food was the rural villa of Yan Shenggong's Confucius Mansion. The steward in front of him came from Confucius' residence to inspect. It just so happened that the Kong family was short of a little girl to do chores recently, and he hadn't had time to go to Ren Yazi to buy her. Now that she happened to bump into him, she simply signed a contract of sale and went back to Kong's house to work with him.
What? She doesn't want to sign the deed of sale? If you don't sign, you'll be killed and fed to the dog!
Therefore, Dai Erdong, who knew that she would probably starve and freeze to death if she wandered outside, had no choice but to swallow her anger and start her career as a slave.
Well, by the way, in order to show the "literacy" of the Confucius family, she was given an "elegant name" by a steward: Yao Han.
For Dai Erdong, or "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 and no longer have to worry about starving to death and freezing to death. ……
However, the seemingly luxurious and wealthy Yanshenggong Kong Mansion is also a terrifying place that eats people without spitting out their bones.
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——Qufu, Shandong Province, was the old capital of the State of Lu in the Spring and Autumn Period, the hometown of Confucius, and a place where the descendants of Confucius lived together.
The Confucius Mansion in Qufu, Shandong Province is a symbol of Confucian civilization. The Kong family's "Yanshenggong Mansion" is located in Qufu County, covering an area of more than 100 acres. It is a dark ancient building with three black doors, numerous places of interest and historical sites, and an indescribable aristocratic style. , countless luxurious affairs.
In order to ideologically consolidate their feudal political system, the rulers of successive feudal dynasties used Confucianism as a tool for ideological rule. They particularly respected Confucius, and they also "thought deeply and thoughtfully" for Confucius' descendants. Increase solemnity." Since the Han Dynasty, the titles of Confucius descendants have been changed many times, from kings to princes. Since the Northern Song Dynasty, Confucius' direct descendants have been canonized as hereditary "Yanshenggong" and built a magnificent mansion in Qufu City.
From the Spring and Autumn Period to the Ming Dynasty, more than twenty centuries passed with the wind. Many wealthy families were famous in the past, from the four princes of the Warring States Period to the Eight Pillars of Guanlong in the Sui and Tang Dynasties, and even Genghis Khan's The Golden Family has all perished one after another in the flames of war.
But as long as the scholar-bureaucrats in the court continue to use the way of saints to govern the world, Duke Yansheng of Confucius in Shandong will be a distinguished guest of the rulers of all dynasties,
Even if the Hu people invade and the country changes color, it will not harm the Confucius family. On the contrary, the more the foreign dynasty is ruled by the Hu people, the more it has to show kindness to the Han people in the world and win over the Han literati. The Confucius Mansion gave the Confucius family more titles, land and wealth.
The world-famous Holy Gate of Confucius, a unique thousand-year-old family...
The Kong family in Qufu is actually the most "aristocratic" family in Chinese history.
Everyone in the Kong family is quite proud of this, believing that their family's bloodline is the most noble existence in the world. Even the most noble royal family of this dynasty in the world, in the eyes of the descendants of the Confucius family, are just nouveau riche who have "no more than two hundred years of wealth" - the picture on the door of the Confucius' mansion reads "Have peace with the country and be rich and honorable." The couplet "The mansion is in the same sky as the moral saint's home" is a perfect portrayal of this arrogant mentality.
Passed down for thousands of years, the various rules and taboos in the Confucius Mansion are also outrageous, even more exaggerated than those of the royal family. For example, in the Confucius Mansion, there were strict restrictions on the relationship between men and women. Adult men other than Yan Shenggong were not allowed to enter the inner house, otherwise they would be beaten to death with sticks. In most cases, the female relatives in the inner courtyard are not allowed to go out, otherwise they will also be beaten to death with sticks. Even if the water is used in the inner house, the water bearer is not allowed to cross the gate of the inner house, so there is a special water tank in the Confucius Mansion. The water bearer pours the water into the water tank on the outer wall, and the maids inside use the water in the courtyard. Get water from the tank... As for getting water from outside? It is extremely troublesome to deliver daily necessities such as meals and clothing in the inner house. Just sending a message has to go through several people. If something goes wrong and the wrong thing is delivered, you don’t know who should be held responsible. < br>
Then, in daily speech, those slaves and maids also have to abide by a lot of rules. For example, they are taboo about saying the master's name. When mentioning the words that appear in the master's name, they must try to use other words to get around it.