Chapter 93, The Fusion of Times
Anyone who has read the book "Guns, Germs, and Steel" probably knows that during the process of European colonization of the Americas, germs from the Old World caused horrific destruction to the Indians in the New World - death from smallpox Far more Native Americans died than were killed by muskets!
But on the other hand, the European colonists themselves at this time were also suffering from the plague - the average life expectancy in Europe at that time was no more than thirty-five years, the mortality rate on each voyage across the Atlantic was as high as one tenth, and there were no sewers. In the city, feces and urine are everywhere, the stench is high, and epidemics breed. The child mortality rate remains high. Citizens do not have toothpaste or toothbrushes at home. Occasionally bleeding gums may lead to infection and death. And the Christian Church does not encourage believers to bathe. Most Europeans will just rub themselves into a pile of smelly mud. Modern people will faint if they stay around them... Such an unhygienic living environment naturally leads to the plague. It happened repeatedly, and a plague often killed tens to hundreds of thousands of people. Thanks to the high fertility rate of Europeans at that time, as the saying goes, the poorer you get, the more you live. Not only did you withstand the repeated harvests of death, but you also had the energy to spread your wealth to the whole world. Launch expansion.
In short, even in the early colonial towns established by Europeans in the Americas these days, half of the people often died when a plague broke out.
Therefore, when more than five hundred travelers came to Manhattan Island, the first "gifts" they brought to the Native American Indians were not the iron tools, cloth, plastic jewelry and carbonated drinks that the travelers gave to the Delaware tribe. They are various bacteria and viruses from the 21st century...
Fortunately, these travelers in North America generally have high moral standards. When faced with the outbreak of the epidemic among the neighboring Indian tribes, they did not stand idly by, nor did they gloat or even add insult to injury (an important reason why the Chinese and American authorities were so enthusiastic was that there were many The time traveler guy got married The Indian girls of the Delaware tribe have to take care of their father-in-law's family even if they are just for the sake of their wives and children). Instead, they send medical teams to try their best to treat the sick natives and teach the Indians various advanced medical treatments. The concept of hygiene... finally allowed them to survive this crisis.
Next, as immigrants from all over the world continued to enter the Chinese-American Republic, they not only brought practical skills, unique crop varieties, and exotic livestock from all over the world, but also brought diseases from all over the world... In this era, everyone People who can live to adulthood have strong immunity to various diseases in their hometown, but they are often very vulnerable to diseases in distant foreign countries. Therefore, in the Republic of China, a country of immigrants, the incidence of various infectious diseases is very high. Even with the time-travelers' medical and health concepts that transcend the times, as well as the various anti-inflammatory drugs that have been "invented" one after another, epidemics frequently break out. The disease still kills large numbers of people, especially infants and young children.
For example, when immigrants from Europe come to North America, they are often infected with diseases that are common in Asia but rarely seen in Europe. Immigrants from East Asia are also prone to diseases that are unique to Europe and the West. My hometown is rarely exposed to these diseases, and the body's immunity is limited, which will cause death every time. As for the indigenous Indians, they were the most unlucky. They had no immunity to germs from Europe or Asia. As representatives of the Americas, the only horrific disease they can "contribute" to all mankind is syphilis. Compared with other severe plagues, syphilis is really not on the table. Not only is the transmission channel narrow, but the symptoms are also It's easy to see...
Faced with the global exchange of germs that is held every day on its own land, the Chinese-American Republic has attached great importance to the prevention and control of infectious diseases. Once a patient is found, he will immediately isolate and treat him without mercy, even in the house where the patient has lived. They are all burned down, but there are still small-scale epidemic outbreaks every year, causing hundreds of casualties... but at least it has never led to a nationwide tragedy, which can be regarded as a great blessing among misfortunes.
Therefore, when this large-scale introduction of immigrants from the East occurred, the health department of the Chinese-American Republic, which had already been frightened, strongly demanded that all new immigrants must complete quarantine and purification work in Shandong, and these "mobile pathogens" must not be allowed to contaminate North America again. Earth— -Otherwise, those European and Asian nationals who have been tested by germs in the Old World and have relatively strong disease resistance are just fine. The Chinese American Indian nationals with relatively "delicate" immune systems and those Indian tribes vassalized by the Republic, But they are about to suffer a disaster.
——Although after receiving cross-dimensional assistance from the central government, the Chinese American Republic is already preparing for universal vaccination, after all, it has just begun to be implemented, and the proportion of the population that has been vaccinated is less than one-tenth... Even with the modern world today Drugs are available, but the huge cost of treating infectious diseases for so many people, as well as the economic losses caused by isolation and epidemic prevention, are obviously better to avoid if possible.
On the contrary, the republics on the east coast of South America welcome all comers. The refugees and prisoners captured by the Dengzhou Army just took a shower and changed their clothes, and then were thrown directly into the Pampas of Argentina in later generations to reclaim the frontier - the East Coast Republic did not care about its own medical and health system. They have confidence (in fact, their medical and health system is not more advanced than that of the Chinese-American Republic, and is even slightly worse), but they do not treat the indigenous Indians of South America as human beings at all... Of course, strictly speaking, they do not have much Treat these Shandong immigrants as human beings...
Unlike the Chinese American Republic, which first gathers new immigrants to the capital, and then sends them to various settlements, farms, factories, mines and workshops after review and training, the East Coast Republic does not allow new immigrants to pass through the densely populated capital Oriental Port and the better developed bustling Towns, but the direct exit of [Random Gate] was placed in the most desolate wilderness frontier, and the immigrants started to open up wasteland as soon as they arrived.
In this way, these "mobile pathogens" can be prevented to the greatest extent from coming into contact with East Coast citizens, thereby inducing plague in major settlements. As for the native Indians around the border...the authorities of the East Coast Republic are still hoping that as many of them die as possible!
——The two groups of travelers from North America and South America have almost the same purpose in treating European immigrants, which is "restriction, integration and use". But the attitude towards the native American Indians is different: in the Chinese-American Republic, the Indians represented by the Delaware tribe are also one of the main populations of the country, and due to years of getting along and intermarriage, they have long been They have been highly Chineseized and integrated into society, and are generally accustomed to the production and lifestyle of those who have traveled through time. The government is more comfortable with them than East Asian immigrants, and naturally treats them as one of their own.
Of course, there are many Indian tribes who are fighting fiercely as enemies of the Chinese-American Republic, but that is another story - Indians are actually general terms like "Europeans" and "Asians", and the members of each Indian tribe have never been People from other tribes will not be treated as compatriots. The fighting between different tribes is also extremely cruel and bloody. Massacres on the scale of genocide are often launched. The hatred between them is no less than that of the colonists.
However, in the East Coast Republic of South America, this militaristic country was in a different situation - in the early days of the landing, when the military power had not yet taken shape, this traverser regime once accepted about 2,000 Indians who came to seek refuge. people and bring them into the national category. However, as external military threats increased and after entering the era of militarism, the East Bank Republic comprehensively corrected its previous "wrong policies". Generally speaking, it has always preferred to introduce European immigrants and black Africans to develop wasteland, but also to develop wasteland. Native Indians were targeted for eradication.
According to the theory of the hard-liners of the East Coast military, in this iron-blooded era when natural selection, the law of the jungle and social Darwinian theory prevailed, the struggles of various ethnic groups have always used all possible means. On the land of South America, these people who traveled through As a foreign robber, how can he still live in peace and contentment without killing all the original owners of this land? Do you even want to integrate and absorb these aboriginal people? This is simply seeking death without limits!
Therefore, as a foreign political power, the East Coast Republic can absorb Ming Dynasty people, Japanese, Europeans and even Arabs to become official citizens, but it cannot absorb Indians for the sake of the aura of "aboriginal people" on their heads. ——In the eyes of the military in the East Coast Republic, it represents him They naturally enjoy all rights and interests to this land. Even their mixed-race descendants have more rights to occupy this land than pure-blood outsiders. This is also one of the important reasons for racial isolation in South American countries in later generations. Travelers like myself must not Repeat the same mistakes and leave trouble for future generations.
Under such a cruel and ruthless governing philosophy, the East Bank Republic's attitude towards the indigenous peoples was naturally extremely cruel and inhumane. In the Age of Discovery, Western colonists might have spared the lives of the indigenous people in order to pursue commercial interests. However, in the hands of the more brutal East Coast Republic, the indigenous Indians would have been either killed or exiled overseas. Immigrants make room for survival-the immigrants are covered with viruses that Indians have never seen before, and their hands Holding a sword and a plow, he arbitrarily used muskets and germs to massacre the native Indians who had lived in isolation, snatched away their land and homes, enslaved their bodies and minds, and then used the squeezed wealth to nourish his own Citizens, to expand the living space of their own nation and country, are simply the most terrifying destroyers and great demons.
Therefore, at the headquarters meeting of the Chinese League, a representative of the Chinese-American Republic seriously proposed that if unquarantined Shandong refugees were allowed to enter the Americas on a large scale, it would likely lead to the spread of diseases around the resettlement areas and endanger the health of the Native Americans. At that time, the representatives of the East Coast Republic were overjoyed, wishing that the native Indians in the Pampas would die silently at the hands of the disease. Next, after accidentally learning that Wang Qiu, Li Wei and his party saved people and killed people at the same time in medieval Europe, spreading plague everywhere and destroying the world, they saw several murderous East Coast Republic Army generals. Hunter was so happy that he even began to discuss launching germ warfare against the native Indians, such as trying to Viruses and bacteria are released near Indian villages to pollute water sources, and infected insects are released into settlements, etc. However, considering that these methods are too low-level, and once the plague is released, it will be difficult to control, and it may even cause harm to the people in the end. On the head of the time traveler, I finally gave up this dangerous idea.
Next, Vladivostok, Taiwan and Hainan Island all belong to China's traditional territory, and Jeju Island is also within the scope of East Asia. The problem of disease transmission caused by large-scale population migration is not that serious. What needs to be worried about is that immigrants will not adapt to the local environment.
The Australian colony where the Chinese League's headquarters is located has not started to immigrate yet. Even if it starts to immigrate, there are not many aborigines there to deal with, and it doesn't matter if they all die - the primitive people of the Stone Age, in this weak and strong prey The idea is simply useless population.
As for the colonies in South Africa and Madagascar...well, there is no need to worry about the disease resistance of those black African uncles. When these Ming Dynasty immigrants arrived there, it was still unclear who infected whom! Don’t forget, until the 21st century, Africa is still the origin of various new plagues-including the frightening AIDS and Ebola, which are all genuine African products!
Under the test of various diseases, the African black uncle who can live to adulthood is definitely indestructible to all diseases!
In short, travelers have absolute trust in the immunity and disease resistance of African black uncles...
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Seeing that all the new immigrants from Shandong allocated to the Chinese and American Republic this week have arrived through the [Shuimen Gate], and the grain and fodder materials provided by the Chinese and American Republic to assist the Shandong battlefield have also been transported to the other end of the world through the [Zhishimen], Wang Qiu temporarily There was nothing else to do, so I simply browsed the streets of Manchester City accompanied by Prime Minister Qi Jianjun.
——Among the cities built by travelers from this plane, Vladivostok, which inherited the "silly, big, thick and black" style of Soviet Russia, may have the strongest industrial strength, but in terms of the elegance of the layout and the beauty of the streetscape architecture, it is absolutely Manchester City in North America is the most beautiful.
Compared with the New York metropolis in the 21st century, Manchester City in 1632 was naturally much smaller, with a population of about 100,000. The entire urban area was only equivalent to the southernmost tip of Manhattan Island, plus the westernmost part of Long Island. Just a small part. But in this era of America, Manchester City is already the second largest city after Mexico City, and the neighborhoods throughout the city are quite clean and beautiful, far from the filthy slums in other European colonies: at a glance, everywhere They are multi-story buildings with dignified shapes, bright and clean windows, geometrically symmetrical block gardens or Green belts, potted plants with colorful flowers on balconies and windowsills, black and gray streets with snow-white lines, colorful shops and stores along the street, the streets are filled with people of different skin colors and clothes, and urban public transportation pulled by heavy-duty draft horses. Railway carriages shuttle by from time to time amidst the shouts of the coachmen...
——After fully experiencing various modern urban diseases such as cage dwellings, traffic jams, and environmental pollution in later generations, and taking advantage of the rich natural resources of the New World, North American travelers were simply suffering from the "young bourgeois disease" and did not hesitate to work locally. Building Manchester City into a garden city.
In Wang Qiu's view, the street scene in Manchester is very similar to those European and American cities of the 19th century Victorian era in old photos. Most buildings are made of red tiles and stone walls, with a few oriental styles mixed in. The cornices and brackets give people a simple atmosphere of the steam age. Houses are generally dotted with tall street trees and large urban green spaces, which are far more beautiful than the crowded and monotonous concrete forests of modern cities.
On the other hand, due to the popularization of electricity and tap water, as well as the emergence of radio stations and movie theaters, except for the fact that there are no cars, this place has basically reached the living standard of the old Shanghai concession before liberation, and in terms of security, it is better than a mixed bag. The old Shanghai was much stronger.
In the eyes of Europeans in the 17th century, this city was already astonishingly magnificent, elegant, advanced and comfortable - convenient and clean running water, smooth and clean cement or gravel asphalt avenues, and blocks like reflections of the stars. Electric lights, lively and bustling market shops, solemn government buildings, beautiful garden-like university teaching areas, as well as the magnificent steam power stations in the outer island industrial park, and the Titan-like steam tower cranes... all of them are fascinating to them. Tsk-tsk in admiration. In comparison, Paris and London at this time were as unsightly as smelly and dirty slums.
What makes Europeans flock to it even more is the paradise-like living standard here - after all, no matter how beautiful those buildings and palaces are, it has nothing to do with ordinary people. According to the living standards of European citizens in the seventeenth century, Manchester was extremely wealthy. Even the lowest citizens could afford several sets of clothes. Since every family could eat white bread, even in the It’s hard to find a place selling brown bread in the city…
——At this moment, China in the East is in the chaos of the late Ming Dynasty, and Europe in the West is also struggling with the unprecedented catastrophe of the Thirty Years' War. From Sweden in northern Europe to Spain in southern Europe, England, France, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy... almost all traditional powers are bathed in the flames of war, especially Germany, which is the main battlefield, with five-sixths of its cities and towns Torn and destroyed by war.
Even the Ottoman Turkey, which was in a remote corner, was also fighting for the hegemony of the Mediterranean in this era, fighting the Venetians to death for twenty-five years. Looking at the entire Western world, it is almost impossible to find a quiet place. As social production was completely destroyed by the war, even famous places of wealth such as Venice and Amsterdam were not as good as before. It is natural to imagine the bleak living standards of ordinary people in Europe.
In comparison, the relatively peaceful and prosperous life of the citizens of Manchester is simply a miracle among miracles in their eyes.
As a local newspaper, a French Protestant immigrant praised in his essay: "...(Manchester City) is really the most beautiful city I have ever seen. It is unimaginable that such an exquisite and gorgeous city exists in the New World. Although I have been to many places, from Rome to Paris to London, all the cities I have seen combined, cannot compare to the small corner I see now... Her luxury, nobility and neatness make her people feel extremely proud, and also make all outsiders feel at a loss. Humility and inexplicable fear..."
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In short, after riding in Prime Minister Qi Jianjun’s private carriage and taking a quick glance at the streets of Manchester. Wang Qiu came to a street park in the southern district of Manchester and sat down in a membership-only high-end open-air cafe recommended by Premier Qi Jianjun. While listening to the blues saxophone on the radio, he tasted green and pure freshly ground coffee and various kinds of coffee. Look at the small two- and three-story buildings with red roofs and white bricks around, as well as the various potted flowers on the windowsills and balconies. They are really like jacarandas, as if they are painted in the sky. It is so beautiful that it feels so bourgeois. mood.
Next to the park in the center of the street, separated by an iron fence, is a commercial street, with people and cars coming and going. The residents of Manchester's South District are mostly the country's high-income and affluent people. The pedestrians walking through the commercial streets at this time, regardless of whether they are men, women, old or young, are all well-dressed. They generally wear improved European-style suits tinkered by later generations of time travellers, and their faces are quite healthy. and ruddy, almost the same as modern society, and there are basically no unkempt and hungry people to see - at this time, in most cities in the East and the West, such sloppy and poor people are everywhere.
Although in order to ensure domestic harmony and stability, the Chinese-American Republic spends huge sums of money to collect East Asian immigrants and recruit Native American Indians. At the same time, it controls the annual entry quota of European immigrants. Legally, it only allows 5,000 to 6,000 Europeans each year. Immigration and naturalization are a two-pronged approach in an attempt to maintain a higher proportion of yellow people in the country. But Wang Qiu sat in the cafe and looked at the streets here. He found that among the pedestrians, whites and mixed-race people still made up the majority. There was no way, Europe was currently in the turmoil of the Thirty Years' War. , Britain, France, Germany, and Spain are all engaged in tragic foreign wars and civil wars. People are displaced in the war and flee overseas, trying to find a peaceful and prosperous new home. The Chinese-American Republic is obviously very ideal. destination. Since the trade exchanges between Europe and North America have become increasingly frequent, the number of illegal immigrants pouring into the Chinese-American Republic every year is quite alarming, and it cannot be turned away with a piece of paper.
Therefore, it is impossible to tell whether this is Manchester City in the 17th century or New York in the 20th century just by looking at the modern Western-style (time travel style) clothes of the people walking on the street, as well as the yellow, white and black skin colors of the people. ...Of course, as long as you listen carefully Listening to their conversation, you can immediately notice the huge difference - although it can also be called the "melting pot of the world's nationalities", the official language of the Chinese-American Republic is not American English, but Chinese that is forcibly promoted by the time-travelers who take advantage of their dominance. ……
——But...why do their accents sound so strange? Also mixed in some incomprehensible words?
"...Hello, dear sir, here are the 'sugar candies' and milk you want."
A red-haired European maid came over and brought Wang Qiu a small plate of sugar cubes and a small glass jug with milk. Although she seemed to speak Chinese, she had an indescribable and awkward accent. It is completely different from any dialect Wang Qiu has ever heard.
"...Uh...Thank you. By the way, Prime Minister Qi, sugar cubes are just sugar cubes. How do you call them 'sugar cubes' here?" Wang Qiu picked up two sugar cubes and threw them into the coffee cup. Then he gently mashes it with a teaspoon and stirs it - he has never been used to drinking bitter coffee, so he asked curiously.
Qi Jianjun also seemed a little confused. He turned around and called one of his European personal servants, and then he figured out the origin of this "new word" - Zucker, which is the homophone of Zucker in German, plus the addition of The word "sugar" constitutes the special vocabulary of machine-made square sugar in this era of China and the United States, and the literal meaning is very consistent: square-shaped sugar with a crisp texture.
Because the Thirty Years' War, with Germany as the main battlefield, created a large number of refugees, and people who traveled through the Chinese-American Republic had excessive expectations for "high-quality German workers", many German immigrants were assigned to settle in the capital Manchester City over the years. As a result, some German vocabulary has also entered the public consciousness In daily conversation - in fact, the current "Manchester dialect" is very different from later generations of Chinese Mandarin and any Chinese dialect. If a modern time traveler is directly thrown into Manchester to live, You definitely encounter many communication barriers in your daily life.
But this is something that can't be helped. At the beginning of the founding of North America, time travelers also tried to formulate certain rules for standard spoken language. However, from the beginning, few of these modern people from all over the world (mainly Cantonese) could pass the Putonghua proficiency test and truly speak standard Mandarin for later generations. Later, it was only in the inner circle of the public that one could speak an "authentic upper-class Manchester accent". In the wider popularization of Chinese language education, even if the later advanced Latin alphabet notation pronunciation method is used, it is still faced with non-standards in daily popularization teaching and problems of the teachers themselves - many teachers trained in this time and space, themselves I can't speak Mandarin very well.
Those Chinese immigrant teachers who speak with a southern accent from the Ming Dynasty or European immigrant teachers with a characteristic European accent from the 17th century are destined that their students will "imitate" each class...The result is that students from the East and the West will Among the citizens of Manchester, a Manchester accent has gradually emerged that is quite different from the people across the country and is also very different from any Chinese dialect. It even incorporates the pronunciation characteristics of a large number of Europeans speaking Chinese. On some occasions, even travel fans sometimes have to imitate this "local dialect" in order to communicate smoothly with the teenagers in Manchester City...
"...Now sometimes when I go to school, I find that I can't quite understand the words of the children - especially those children who were born after time travel, and all kinds of weird new words. Keep jumping out! This is something we old people cannot understand at all. We are scratching our heads at this situation! But even in the 21st century, China, with such advanced information exchange and twelve years of compulsory education, has not been able to eliminate dialects, especially Cantonese... With us Not to mention the conditions here.”
Prime Minister Qi Jianjun shook his head and smiled bitterly while drinking coffee, "...the same is true in the East Coast Republic of South America. Those immigrants from all corners of the world must pass the accelerated Chinese course in a few years. Lower your standards as long as you can barely understand and interact with each other. If we want to make Mandarin education more standard, we have to forget about it if we communicate with each other and have some deviations in pronunciation. Unless we, the time-travelers, do nothing and replace all the Chinese teachers all day long to provide services for hundreds of thousands of immigrants. Decades of language teaching..."
"...Well, I think I can understand your difficulties, but things like dialects will continue to arise and cannot be eliminated."
Wang Qiu shrugged and drank all the coffee in the cup, "...For example, in modern society, computer networks have only been popularized for a few years, and all kinds of Internet terms are already overwhelming, and those that are not Even if people who surf the Internet have studied for a Ph.D. in Chinese language and literature, they still can’t understand and I don’t understand. For another example, with the rapid changes in the proportion of the modern American population, more and more Spanish words and even a small amount of Chinese words have appeared in American English... This is what any immigrant Something that no country can avoid..."
"...Well, you mean...any social influence is interactive. Although we travelers have greatly changed the world, the indigenous people of this world are also constantly influencing us, right? ?”
After Qi Jianjun thought for a while, he said to Wang Qiu, but then the conversation was interrupted by two "ding, ding" sounds that sounded at the same time, "...Huh? It's just a coincidence that our mobile phones are all the same." Ringed? Oh, it’s today’s "Daily Military Intelligence"..."
——Using Doraemon’s magical props, sixteen [mini communication satellites] launched into orbit in this time and space serve as transit. Travelers from all over the world, at least within the urban areas of the capitals of several union republics, currently rely on With the signal transceiver device on the ground, the traversers have realized network communication between computers and mobile phones. The Huameng headquarters also frequently releases some latest announcements to all travelers through text messages or emails. "...News from the North China Theater in the Chinese battlefield: Lu Xiangsheng defeated Jizhou, and the Tianxiong army retreated? The capital was closed under martial law, and the Guan Ning cavalry forward has arrived in Tianjin? Tsk tsk, the Guan Ning army has suffered repeated defeats against the Jiannu, but Once you turn around and chop down your own people, it’s really sharp!”