Not long after Li Zhuo got married, he finally ushered in the Chinese New Year's Eve of the fourteenth year of Zhenguan, at the end of this year, every household cleaned the house, and kept the New Year, greetings, and set off firecrackers, and it is worth mentioning that the custom of eating dumplings during the Spring Festival had not yet been formed in the Tang Dynasty, but because of the influence of Li Zhuo, many people in the north, especially in Dengzhou, have become accustomed to making a delicious dumpling during the Spring Festival.

In fact, with the improvement of living standards, the diet of the people in Datang has gradually become richer, and meat such as chickens, ducks, fish and other foods have also appeared on the tables of ordinary people, even in the cold winter, northerners can also eat some fresh vegetables, but the price is much more expensive, and there are all kinds of canned food, and now with the canning factories blooming everywhere, the price of canned food has already dropped, and the cheapest canned sea fish can be bought for only five cents.

In fact, for the problem of difficulty in eating vegetables in the north in winter, Li Zhuo also has a solution, this solution is the cabbage of later generations, originally cabbage is a hybrid variety, it can be said that it is original to the Chinese, and in the Tang Dynasty, it has appeared, but unfortunately there are not many people who plant, Li Zhuo saw this cabbage by chance, immediately ordered people to collect seeds, and now is ordering people to promote, I believe that in a few years, the whole north will be popular with this kind of cabbage that makes people eat and vomit in winter.

During the Chinese New Year, people on the land naturally eat whatever they want, even if they don't have it at home, they can take the money to the market to buy it. But it is a pity that for the crew members of the seagoing ships, even if they have more money, there is no place to buy what they want to eat.

The night's storms passed, and the dark clouds in the sky were blown away by yesterday's strong winds. When the sun rises, the whole sky is blue. Like a flawless piece of jade, and under this blue sky. It is a vast and endless sea, and it is also a blue ocean, which is connected to the sky, and it looks magnificent.

It's a pity that Feng Shijie on the Nanyang has long been tired of seeing this kind of beauty, and this morning before dawn, he got up according to his usual habits, and if he was on land, he had to wash up. Unfortunately, this is a ship, surrounded by the vast sea, and the fresh water on board is extremely precious, so it is very difficult to wash up on land.

But people will always have a way, Feng Shijie hit a bucket of seawater, pounded it in his mouth with a toothbrush he bought in Dengzhou, and rinsed his mouth with bitter seawater. After returning to the cabin, he poured some precious fresh water on the towel again, according to the regulations. He gets a cubic meter of fresh water to drink every day, but he squeezes out a little of it every day to scrub it. After wetting the towel, he wiped his face with a wet towel, but he did this extravagantly. But it made the people in the cabin feel distressed.

After taking care of personal hygiene, the sun had already risen outside, and Feng Shijie picked up the measuring tool. I first measured the latitude and longitude where they were, and found that the ship was somewhat off course. It is estimated that it was blown off by the wind and waves last night, but it is not a big problem. He immediately reported to the captain Lu Wan, who immediately asked the helmsman to correct the course, and the whole fleet continued to move forward.

Today is the thirtieth year of the Chinese New Year's Eve, although everything on board is simple, but this year still has to be passed, and when most of the crew get up, the whole fleet begins to get busy, a material ship with the function of a fishing boat immediately went to the net, a net to catch hundreds of pounds of fresh fish, although everyone on the ship eats fish and wants to vomit, but the New Year, but can not be missing a fish dish, take a surplus of color every year.

However, the captain Lu Wan also understood the crew, so he only prepared a fish dish in the kitchen, and the others were all kinds of canned food, and he also took out a lot of honey and cane sugar, and canned fruit to make desserts. In addition to preparing these dishes, the most important thing is to make dumplings, Taiwan is Li Su's territory, and he is the most heavily influenced, and Lu Wan's crew are all from Taiwan's slave catching team, and a considerable part of Taiwan's slave catching team is from the Dengzhou slave catching team, so most of the crew on the ship have the habit of eating dumplings during the New Year.

At noon, all the crew members ate hastily, and then proceeded to prepare dinner for Chinese New Year's Eve. When Lu Wan and the others left Keelung, they knew that they were going to spend the New Year at sea, so they prepared a lot of flour on board, in fact, flour is more damp than rice, so the staple food on the ship is generally prepared rice.

The cook on the ship took out the well-preserved flour and rolled the dumpling skin with the dough, and as for the dumpling filling, the canned mutton, the canned pork, and a large number of canned vegetables were opened, and then chopped and together, although the taste was not as fresh and delicious, but it could only be done.

Feng Shijie was the ship's surveyor, and his status was only below the captain, and they had five large ships in their fleet, as well as dozens of small boats, but only two, which shows the importance of this position. Each big ship in their fleet carries five small boats, and the galleys are only available on the big boats, and if the people on the small boats want to eat, they usually take turns to eat on the big boats. It is precisely because of this that there are a lot of dumplings to be made on the big ship, and as long as the crew on the ship is not worth it, they are all called to the kitchen by the master to help.

Feng Shijie grew up in the Wa Kingdom since he was a child, and his father was a southerner, so he had never eaten dumplings, let alone made dumplings, so he couldn't help in the kitchen, so he could only sit on the side and watch the crew busy.

The surveyor's work is not heavy, usually three times in the morning, noon and evening to measure the direction of the fleet, and two people take turns, so the daily work is lighter. In fact, the work of a surveyor can be done by only one person, and it is enough to carry a surveyor on the general fleet. However, their exploration fleet is important, and there are also unknowable risks, so they have prepared two people, mainly to prevent that if one of them has an accident, the other can be on top of it, so as not to affect the navigation of the fleet.

It was still early before the evening measurement, Feng Shijie left the kitchen and walked to the deck, most of the people on the ship were preparing for the New Year, even the captain Lu Wan was no exception, some crew members from Dengzhou said that they wanted to paste the Spring Festival couplets, it is said that this is a rule from the palace of the king of Qi, but the number of people who have drunk ink on the ship is really limited, and finally they have to turn to the captain Lu Wan.

Lu Wan is a southerner, he has never heard of what the Spring Festival couplets are, and waited until a few crew members told the appearance of the Spring Festival couplets, and also casually said a few pairs of more widely circulated Spring Festival couplets, and immediately made Lu Wan understand what the Spring Festival couplets are, and did not shirk at the moment, let people prepare the pen and ink, and after a little thought, he wrote a few well-intentioned Spring Festival couplets, and then ordered someone to paste them on several important cabin doors.

It was precisely because of this that the deck of the ship seemed a little empty, and Feng Shijie felt very bored after turning around twice, so he simply went back to the cabin to take out the binoculars, and boarded the watchtower on the ship to look into the distance.

Feng Shijie and their fleet went all the way to the south, and after crossing Luzon, they did not go to the familiar southwest, that is, Borneo and Java, but to the relatively unfamiliar southeast, and now they are moving along an island chain, which is the Maluku Islands in later generations, because this island chain is rich in spices, so it is now called the spice islands by merchants from the Tang Dynasty, Tianzhu, Persia and other countries.

The Spice Islands are composed of more than a thousand islands, and the demand for spices in Datang is not very large, so merchants from Datang rarely come here, and they are not very familiar with the sea routes here. Lüvan's fleet was mainly trying to explore the sea routes of this island chain.

Now they had been sailing for nearly three months, and along the way they stopped and found a number of islands, among which the larger ones were generally inhabited by natives, and in the beginning, most of the natives they met were docile and willing to trade with them. For example, Feng Shijie brought a large amount of cotton cloth and silk, and now almost all of them have been replaced with gold or various colored gemstones, and the rough estimate of these transactions alone has reached tens of thousands.

In addition, they have basically explored a reliable sea route, and it is through this sea route that they have now reached the southernmost point of this island chain, and they have not seen any new islands for more than ten days, which means that this island chain is likely to have reached the end, and there is no need to go any further, so if nothing else, Captain Lu Wan is already thinking about the return arrangement.

Thinking that he would be able to redeem his sister's freedom after going back, Feng Shijie couldn't help but smile a little, he felt that it was too worthwhile to participate in this exploration operation, although he encountered a lot of wind and waves along the way, but because of the existence of the spice islands, as long as they did not deviate from the course, they could generally find the island anchor, so there was not much loss along the way, but several small boats were damaged in several strong storms, and some personnel were lost, and when resting on some islands, they were attacked by cannibals several times, They also lost some men, these people were only a small number after all, and if they were face to face, they were not afraid of those damn cannibals at all.

Thinking of the risks and gains encountered along the way, Feng Shijie also felt a little emotional, in fact, along the way, their biggest gain was not their respective private goods trading, but the discovery of the natives on each island, the number of natives on these islands is huge, and the area of each island is also small, there is no room to hide at all, and it is easy to arrest, so as long as they go back and report to the association, they can get one percent of the total profits of the slave trade here as a reward, although he can't calculate how much this one percent is, But it's definitely much bigger than what he got from a bootlegged deal.

It's a pity that the natives of the Spice Islands go south, the more cannibals there are, and the attacks they encounter are all on the islands at the southern end, if there is a chance in the future, the association must send someone to destroy all those disgusting cannibals, so as to avenge those brothers!

Just when Feng Shijie was thinking about how to rectify those barbaric cannibals, the telescope in his hand happened to move to the south of the bow of the ship, and at this moment, he suddenly saw in the camera that at the intersection of the sky and the sea in the distance, a touch of black appeared! (To be continued.) )