Xia Nan sent a guard to communicate with the locals, and under the guidance of the locals, they finally found a fairly large shop on the street, which was a store, and the name was still in Guangzhou. Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info

What do the merchants of Guangzhou do here? Xia Nan went to the counter to inquire, and this shopkeeper was a genuine Cantonese.

The shopkeeper was struggling to stay alone in this wild town, and he couldn't even find anyone to talk to. Suddenly, a group of strange vendors came, and they were immediately in high spirits, so they dragged everyone to chat, and called a young man to bring herbal tea. Everyone walked hot, and they just stopped by to inquire about the news.

It turned out that this warehouse was dedicated to the purchase of local soaphorns, medicinal herbs and goats. Many big families in Guangzhou City like the sheep here, and the boss sees that the business is good, so he specially sends people to sit here to buy them. There are many sand dunes along the coast of Changhua, dense shrubs, and many natural herbs and herbs, which are rich in minerals and salt. Changhua sheep are eaten such natural feed to grow up, the taste is quite delicious, Changhua sheep to the 21st century are Hainan specialties.

Xia Nan pretended to be a small trader who came to Changhua for the first time and was going to Li District to sell goods, and asked how the situation was here. The shopkeeper said that the official name of the county seat of Changhua is the city of Changhua Thousand Households, and the county government is just borrowing a place to work, and the army is the real master of the city. Because it is an army station, although the thousand households are dilapidated, they can still pull up a team of two or three hundred people, so it is quite peaceful here, and the pirates rarely come to Changhua, and the most they come to is to draw some water on the shore, grab a few sheep or something, and the paddy fields around the county are all owned by thousands of households.

As for the Li District, the shopkeeper said that there are many mountains and stones, and there are many evil diseases, and ordinary people are reluctant to go to the Li District. The Li people went into the city together for half a month and a month to sell some local products or something. It's still quite peaceful, and I haven't heard of any robberies and killings of Han traders.

Seeing that the two sides had a good chat, Xia Nan took the opportunity to ask him to introduce a guide, and the shopkeeper agreed, "This is easy, I'll find someone for you." ”

The guide the shopkeeper found them was a guy in his store. Although the Li people are not eating life, the mountains and forests in the Li area are dense, the climate is changeable, and there are all kinds of miasma, which the Han people often regard as fearful. When ordinary people go to Li District, they have to ask "Shuli" to be a guide.

Although this guy is a Han Chinese, his mother is a local Li person, and his surname is Wang. Not only is he proficient in the language of the Li nationality, but his uncle's family lives in the middle reaches of the Changhua River, and he is very familiar with the road and people, so he is a very suitable candidate. Because he was a buddy from a primary school apprentice, although he was only a teenager, he was very familiar with the world, and he smiled when he opened his mouth.

Xia Nan naturally couldn't say that they were looking for iron mines, so he said that his group went to Li District to buy medicinal materials, and gave them five yuan of silver. The guide didn't have a lot of money a year when the warehouse guy, and this time it was five dollars of silver, and he smiled.

After preparation, the group set off from the county seat and went upstream along the Changhua River. After setting off, everyone realized how wise the decision to ask the guide was.

In this barren land, there is almost nothing to call a landmark, and the Changhua River is a river with a particularly large drop in the dry and wet season, which makes it difficult to find its true course during the dry season, when the channel washed out is not only wide but also very scattered. Pools of water and runoff can be found everywhere. From the guide's mouth, I learned that the mouth of the Changhua River is a trumpet-shaped, divided into two natural ports in the north and south, and they landed on the north port, because the mud of the port is black, it is called Wuni Port by the locals.

A group of people along the road, here is a typical savanna climate, belongs to the hottest place in the whole Qiongzhou, although now close to the end of the year, belongs to winter, but the temperature is still not low, the group walked more than ten miles, actually sweated.

Seeing that the water in the river is slightly larger, and the sand dunes are becoming fewer and fewer, I know that it is close to the inland area. The terrain became more and more rugged, with most of the banks being hills undulating, and between the hills and the banks of the river, there were scattered flat lands, many of which had been reclaimed into dry and dry fields. Those uncultivated areas are large barren meadows. During this period, there were some villages scattered around. The guide said that these are all Han Chinese or Han Li mixed villages.

Along the way, Lin Weiye secretly wrote down the route and the places where fresh water could be obtained along the way, and paid attention to when he would find the Shilu River, a tributary of the Changhua River, which is shown on the map to be about 40 kilometers upstream of the mouth of the Changhua River.

On the third day, the exploration team came to a Li village in the middle reaches of the Changhua River, which was the village where the guide's maternal uncle was located. The group decided to stop here and inquire about the distance below, and the Wang man was not very familiar with the road after passing Lizhai.

This Li village is completely different from the Li village in Lingao. If it weren't for the literate Li women at the door and their ethnic costumes, it would be really difficult to distinguish them from the ordinary Han villages in the local area.

The village here is very large, with nearly 100 families and neatly arranged houses. The riverside flat land outside the village has been reclaimed into paddy fields for planting rice, and unlike the Li people in other places, they do not plant "mountain fences", so it can be seen that both the living standard and agricultural production are higher than those of other Li people. Men wear their hair in a bun and earrings, women wrap their heads in black and white scarves, and men and women wear a black cardigan without buttons.

According to Wang, the Li people here are called Mei Foo Li, and this name also reveals that they are latecomers on the island, and "Mei Foo" is their self-designation, which means "guests who live in the lower road", and it is obvious that they arrived later than other Li people.

Mei Foo Li occupies good fields on both sides of the Changhua River, and can grow rice, not "mountain fences". Textile technology is also superior to that of other Lebanese. The original commune of Mei Foo Li has few elements, and there are obvious social differences, such as ancestral halls, genealogy, and generational arrangements, and conflicts between clans.

The river is abundant and shallow, but it is crystal clear, and the banks are full of tall trees. When I got closer, I saw a lot of soybean pods hanging under the branches. Lin Weiye was very curious and hurriedly asked everyone to take a look.

The king man smiled: "This is a soaphorn tree, what is rare." There are many in our hometown. "Soaphorn is the natural soap of this time and space, and people in the Ming Dynasty used it for washing clothes and bathing.

When the group came to the gate of the village, Ding Zhuang, who was guarding the village, came to interrogate. Because the king's companions led the way, and brought salt and iron tools, he called himself a trader, and easily entered the stockade.