Suzhou Hushu Pass.

Not far southwest of Guanzhen, there is a continuous mountain range, and the bottom of the mountain is full of dilapidated shacks and bamboo houses. Locals call it 'Nephew's Nest'.

The so-called nephew is a sarcastic title for Shandong people...... Well, it's a slurious name.

Of course, regional discrimination is widespread, and all provinces of the Ming Dynasty have similar slurs.

For example, Beijing Zhili is called 'Xiangma', and Shaanxi is called 'Leopard'. Shanxi is called 'melon'. Henan is called 'donkey'. Jiangnan is called 'water crab'. Zhejiang and Huizhou are called 'salt beans'. Zhejiang is also called 'stay'. Jiangxi is called 'preserved chicken'. In the Yuan period, Jiangnan was also called 'preserved chicken'. Fujian is called 'leprosy'. Sichuan is called 'rat'. Huguang is called 'dried fish'. Liangguang is called 'snake'. Yun Gui said 'elephant'...... In short, no one should escape a geographical attack.

As the name suggests, it is a place where displaced people in Shandong gather. Shandong has many people, few lands, and many vassal kings, and has always been a large family in exile.

Because the cities along the canal were relatively wealthy, the displaced people followed the canal from Shandong and begged all the way south, and when they were lucky enough to find work, they settled there.

If I didn't find anyone alive, I continued to go south, but when I arrived in Suzhou, I didn't leave anymore. If you can't find a job in the most prosperous city in the south of the Yangtze River, you can't hope anywhere else......

However, Suzhou has too many people, and the lord of the palace attaches great importance to the suffering of the people, and asks his subordinate officials to actively help the people get rid of poverty, hoping that there will be no people in extreme poverty in their own jurisdiction.

So the officials tore down all the shacks and bamboo nests along the streets, and drove the homeless and poor people ten miles out of the city. Everywhere Cai Guoxi looks, he can no longer see the poor people......

The displaced people had no choice but to find a vacant place to settle down in the suburbs of Suzhou. These old Shandong nephews built a large number of shacks at the foot of Dayang Mountain, and hundreds of households lived there. They take care of each other, communicate with each other, and live a difficult life here.

Wang Liu's family is one of them, and the ordinary one can no longer be an ordinary family.

Their family fled from Anqiu County, Qingzhou Prefecture, and if you want to say that Anqiu is a place, the land is actually quite fat, and the green onions that grow can be as tall as a person. Unfortunately, there is a king of Anqiu in the county.

King Anqiu is a line of King Lu, and Xuande was sealed in Anqiu County for ten years. After the death of King Lao Anqiu, one son attacked the king of the county, and the rest of the sons were named generals of the town.

The sons born to the general of Zhenguo were demoted to one rank and were all named auxiliary generals; All the sons of the auxiliary generals, who were demoted to one rank, were all named generals of the country; All the sons of General Fengguo were demoted to one rank and were all named lieutenants of Zhenguo; All the sons of the lieutenant of Zhenguo will be demoted to one rank and will be awarded the rank of lieutenant of the auxiliary state.

All the sons of the Auxiliary Lieutenant are named Lieutenants of the Blessed Kingdom, and all the descendants of the Lieutenants of the Blessed Nation are awarded the titles of Lieutenants of the Blessed Kingdom......

In the past 140 years, these generals and lieutenants in Anqiu County have added up to more than 1,000 people. These clan disciples not only led the imperial court, but also wantonly encroached on the land of the common people. In a small Anqiu County, the poor have no place to stand, and they have to bear the enslavement of the imperial court and are oppressed by the clan - Wang Liu's family can survive until three years ago before escaping, which is definitely the best of obedience.

Three years ago, there was a locust plague in Shandong, and the two of them were requisitioned by King Anqiu to repair the tomb of the king. Seeing that the grain tank at home was cleaner than his daughter-in-law's face. If the two of them leave, the old and young in the family will have to starve to death.

As soon as the two of them are combined, it really can't be done, let's escape. So he packed up his things, escaped from Anqiu overnight, and left Qingzhou.

The days on the way to escape were too miserable, and his mother begged for food in order to save food for the baby, but she fell ill with hunger, and soon died without a place to be buried.

Wang Liuye and his wife could only find a place in Yizhuang, begged their grandfather to tell their grandmother, and promised to help collect the dead for a month, so it was easy for the family to find a place to settle in the mass grave.

After the family worked for a month, they cried in front of his mother's grave, continued on the road, and came to Suzhou with great difficulty. Although he was uprooted from his hometown and suffered from discrimination, he had a lot of work here, and he didn't have to pay taxes to the government or serve forced labor, so his life was much better than before.

In the past few years, Wang Liuye and his wife have carried a big bag in Hushu Pass. His wife took his younger siblings and worked part-time jobs all over Suzhou. Silk reeling in spring, rice harvesting in summer, cotton picking in autumn...... The family worked hard, so they could have enough food and clothing.

But last year, his father bent his waist while carrying a bag, and he could lie down for half a year before he could get off the ground, but he could no longer carry a sack weighing one or two hundred pounds. Just open up the wasteland to grow vegetables in the mountains, and send vegetables to the tax customs to subsidize the family, which is better than nothing.

Moreover, the whole Suzhou market is sluggish, and many weavers and strong laborers have begun to do short-term work that they disdained in the past in order to make a living. Wang Liu's wife is a woman's family, and his younger brothers and sisters are young, how can they grab those laborers?

Even if they are used, they only pay half or even one-third of the wages they used to, and they can't find a job for a winter.

It's not yet the New Year, and no one is hiring short-term workers. The family relied on the little money that Wang Liu carried the sack to feed, and there were three small mouths waiting to be fed.

The family started to eat the last meal again, and they couldn't eat a grain of rice for several days......

~~

At this time, it is dark, and every house is smoking, and it is time for dinner.

What Wang's sixth daughter-in-law brought was a large pot of vegetable leaf paste soup...... It was a rotten vegetable leaf and vegetable gang that Wang Laohan brought back. plus a little rice bran that the owner gave when Wang Liu carried the sack. Boil two things together in water, and it's the family's dinner.

The adults and children were already numb, or they didn't even have the strength to speak, and they all silently bowed their heads and ate the porridge in the coarse porcelain bowl, and the atmosphere was so depressing that it made people desperate.

Only his three-year-old son, with a slender neck and a big head, kept chattering. 'I want to eat the nest, I want to eat the nest. ’

There are indeed a few small nests in the pot, which are made by Wang's sixth daughter-in-law with rice bran for him to eat tomorrow's lunch. The family pointed to him as a strong laborer, how could he carry a sack without something in his stomach?

Wang Liu really couldn't listen to it, so he asked his wife to get one for his son, and the kid quieted down.

"Brother, I'll go with you to carry the work!" His fourteen-year-old brother Wang Qi put aside the bare coarse porcelain bowl.

"No, if you don't grow up, you're going to die." Wang Laohan stopped Wang Liu for him.

"How do you grow without eating?" Wang Qi muttered quietly.

Seeing that his father was about to get angry, the eighth sister on the side hurriedly kicked the little brother secretly, and he bowed his head in a daze.

There was a dead silence in the house, until someone pushed open the hidden door.

"Wang Liu, have you thought about it? I'll pick you up tomorrow! Do you want to give me a letter! Before the man entered the door, the characteristic loud voice of the Shandong people sounded first.

Then I saw a swarthy and lean man in his thirties walk in. The man was thin...... Well, in this era, there are no fat people except for the rich...... But the spirit and spirit seem to be much stronger than Wang Liu's family, not only does he speak loudly, but his steps are not vain at all.

This is what a living person looks like.

ps. I slept all day during the day, felt much better at night, and got up and coded two chapters. I took the medicine and continued to sleep, hoping that tomorrow will be completely well.