Walking on the road, looking at the fields full of flowers, Wang Xiaolie couldn't help but feel much more relaxed. This is the most beautiful time in spring. If it were in a peaceful era, I don't know how many people would help the old and the young out to see this nature.

It’s just that wars have happened one after another, and people have lost their nature. Some people are struggling to survive, some are fighting on the battlefield, and others are working hard.

This is the main road leading to Tangzhou, and civilian workers summoned from nearby are repairing it. In the past, when going from the north to Xiangyang, they usually took Huyang across the Bi River. Then they entered Fuzhou and then turned towards Xiangyang. Fuzhou was not returned to Wang Xiaoxingguan

, so the roads in Xinye were newly built.

After walking for a while, I saw a peach blossom blooming very brightly on the roadside. It was particularly conspicuous in the bright spring light. Wang Xiaolie stood in front of the tree and looked at it for a long time. It has been nearly a year since he came to this world, and it is rare now.

Relaxation time.

After watching for a while, Wang Xiaolie saw two people moving stones there. One had gray hair, and the other was young and strong.

Walking forward, Wang Xiaolian asked: "Where are you two from? How long have you been working here?"

The old man stopped, wiped his sweat and said, "We are from Nanyang County, father and son. It has been thirteen days since we arrived here."

Wang Xiaolie said: "Building roads is hard work. You have been doing it for so long, but you can still do it?"

The old man said: "What we people fear most when doing hard service is not tiredness. It is lack of food and clothing and excessive fatigue. Officials, if it were in the past, every time the government started to serve, many people would die? It's different here. How many hours do you work every day?

, there are no mistakes. And it’s hard to feel full even if you eat two meals a day. So I’ve been doing it for more than ten days, but I still don’t feel that much.”

After hearing this, Wang Xiaolie was a little happy. This was his special order. These people who came to serve must be ensured that they have enough food, clothing, and a place to live. Logistics must be done well, and they must not be made to sweat or exert force.

, not enough to eat and not warm enough to wear.

Seeing that the old man looked good, Wang Xiaolian said: "If that's the case, you can put in more effort to build the road as soon as possible, and then you can go back."

The old man sighed: "My lord, it's spring now, and it's time for spring plowing. If we don't go back early and miss the spring plowing, we will miss a year's worth of food. Our father and son are discussing that we can go home for spring plowing alone and stay here.

I work here alone."

Wang Xiaolie was startled. He had overlooked it, but the farmers had to plow in the spring. At this time, there was a lot of corvee work, and it was easy to miss the farming season.

In fact, spring plowing has already started at this time. However, the ground in this area is warm and spring plowing takes a long time, so it can be postponed. Especially in this era, there is only one season a year here, and the farming time is not strict.

After thinking about it, Wang Xiaolian asked: "How much land does your family have? What do you want to plant?"

The old man said: "My family only has ten acres of fields and two acres of paddy fields. In addition, we also plant twenty acres of the big households in the village. The paddy fields are naturally used to grow rice, and the rest of the land is planted with millet and hemp.

The rest is just miscellaneous grains.”

"Why don't you plant wheat? If you plant wheat, you don't need to do spring plowing at this time."

The old man laughed and said: "The officials are joking. Wheat needs good land and no shortage of water to grow well. Although there is no shortage of rain here, spring is still dry and wheat does not grow well. I heard that the climate in the Jianghuai area is similar to ours.

You can grow wheat there. I don’t know how they grow it.”

Wang Xiaolie said: "There is no shortage of rain, but we are afraid of spring drought. That is because there are few water channels in the pond."

The old man said: "What the officials said makes sense. But if we can get water, we will stop planting wheat and plant rice instead."

Wang Xiaolie said: "You can grow rice in the summer and wheat in the autumn, so you can have two crops a year. Now the government collects taxes and the owners collect rent, which only counts as one season of food. If you can grow two crops a year, wouldn't life be much easier?"

"

The old man shook his head repeatedly: "If you can plant two seasons a year, how can you be so busy? Besides, there is no shortage of land, so why be so tired? I heard people say that in the Jianghuai area, when the wheat is ripe, people have to be hired to do wheat service.

.”

Wang Xiaolie nodded. Indeed, in the areas where wheat is grown in the Jianghuai area, wheat merchants are hired when the wheat is ripe. However, unlike later generations, most of the current wheat merchants come from the south of the Yangtze River. They go north along the river, and wheat comes from the south.

It begins to ripen, and the further north you go, the later it gets. After one harvest of wheat, Mai Ke’s income is about the same as farming his own land, which is a way for people in the south of the Yangtze River to make money.

I think of my previous life, even in the Hebei area, there were two seasons of planting a year. During the rush to harvest and sow, men, women, old and young all came together, and even schools had a wheat holiday. The primary school students went to the harvested wheat fields to pick wheat.

Sui has become a trend of the times. In this era, because China's population was still small and its land was still large, it was very different from that of later generations.

After thinking about it, Wang Xiaolie understood that the farming system at this time was different from that of later generations. The promotion of planting wheat only replaced millet in most places. Only densely populated areas had the motivation to plant two crops.

Why do government taxes and household rents only count for one season? Because it counts for two seasons, and no one will plant in the second season. It’s not a lack of land, so why bother? If you want to harvest more grain, just plant more land.

In previous lives, people often talked about how Chinese culture was. For example, relocation, diligence and thrift, having more children, favoring sons over daughters, and so on. In fact, the Chinese are not necessarily like this. It is just formed under special conditions.

These habits have evolved. When external conditions change, these will also change. These habits are far from being called culture, they are just forced by conditions.

Some literati are unable to think deeply about cognitive issues, but only look at superficial phenomena. In order to show that they are different, they often make blind assumptions about culture. For example, the Chinese people relocated to their hometown and entered the industrial society, and China's Great Migration

It is rare. It is said that Chinese people have many children and are blessed, and they favor sons over daughters. In fact, after industrialization has reached a certain level, the birth rate has dropped significantly. And as the burden of marriage on men increases, the status of men and women in society is about the same, and many people begin to like daughters.

For example, Chinese people are diligent and frugal. In fact, after becoming rich in material resources, Chinese people are no less extravagant and wasteful than other countries. This is a phenomenon that happened to Chinese people in a certain period, and it is far from being called culture.

This problem is generalized, and there are more. Most people who are originally uneducated regard some phenomena as culture to show that they are educated people. For example, during the Manchu and Qing Dynasties, there were many Eight Banners disciples in Beijing, and they formed some habits over hundreds of years.

, it is called traditional culture by some people, and some people proudly call it the exquisiteness of Beijingers. Even speaking of traditional culture, some people invited some old people among these people to come out and say that they want to teach modern people about old etiquette. What old people

Etiquette? Most of them are just some habits of banner people when they were rich and poor.

For another example, some of the habits of Peking Opera troupes in Beijing are also called traditional culture. Such as serving tea and kowtowing, this group and that group, in fact, most people in vast areas of China do not have this habit.

What is culture? This should be a serious word with a heavy connotation. It’s just that some people, who have no culture and pretend to be culture, have dragged this word from the sky to the earth. No matter what it is, just talking a few words is traditional culture.

.Eating is culture, playing is culture, drinking is culture, anything with a bit of history is called culture. Especially the snacks in some places, they make up stories about Qianlong and Cixi, and they are blatantly called culture. In the end, apart from the real culture, it is not

Culture, everything you make up is culture.

Looking back now, Chinese culture in previous lives was actually very poor. The only ancient civilization that has survived in the world, with its thousands of years of history, is not of much help to modern Chinese culture. To promote Chinese culture to foreign countries, it is Chinese Kung Fu.

, Chinese food, this cow, that European. The real culture, but no one talks about it.

In the past life of Chinese culture, it was very rare for those who were truly willing and able to study Chinese culture to exist. In the late Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China, those who spoke a half-baked foreign language were considered intellectuals. In New China, those who could speak foreign languages ​​and read foreign documents became the new

Cultural people. In fact, most of the culture they talk about has little to do with China. Even in some developed areas of China, children learn foreign languages ​​from an early age, attend foreign schools, and take pride in working abroad after graduation. This has become a social trend.

At the beginning of the reform and opening up, when the country was first opened, mainlanders said that people from Hong Kong and Taiwan spoke effeminately. Especially some vocabulary, such as men and women, regardless of age, are called boys and girls. For example, different grades in a school are called seniors and junior girls. For example, food

Instead of calling it a meal, it should be called a kind of cuisine. For example, literature and art are not called literature and art, but called arts and crafts. Some of these words have historical reasons, and some come from Japanese.

Twenty or thirty years later, when people who despise Hong Kong and Taiwanese grow old, they suddenly look back and find that their own children and nephews have begun to speak like this.

Even the language is like this, so how can culture be called developed? To a large extent, it has been four hundred years since the Ming Dynasty's demise and about one hundred years since foreign invasion. The decline of culture is far from getting back on its feet.

When New China was founded, great men said that the Chinese people had stood up. However, Chinese culture has been far from standing up in the past hundred years. No one has yet told the Chinese people’s own stories and thoughts.

People often complain that China has developed so well in the past few decades, but why are Chinese people still so disdainful in the eyes of the world? Are those white, black and foreigners of various colors born noble? Or are their eyes blind? In fact, no. Yes.

Because China's culture has not yet developed. It is not that the culture is far behind the West, but that its own culture is lacking.

Thinking that one's own culture lags behind the Western world, and that China's development means moving closer to the Western world, is another symptom of some Chinese literati. Some people even think that if they know a little bit of Western knowledge, they should preach to China. There is even a place in the law

, when it was forbidden to eat dog meat there, it was said that civilized areas such as Hong Kong and Taiwan would not eat it. What kind of disease is this?

Chinese culture has nothing to do with how much Western culture it has learned. China has lagged behind for a period of time. It has to learn from the West and from many places in the world. Even if it is not lagging behind, it still has to learn. Learning knowledge means learning knowledge and building its own culture.

Then another question.

Looking at the flowers blooming in the fields and the people working hard, Wang Xiaolie suddenly understood that after traveling through the millennium, he came with the knowledge of a thousand years later, not the culture of a thousand years later. The culture of a thousand years later,
Chapter completed!