Sunday, October 20, 1641.

Early in the morning, Su Zining was woken up by the sound of footsteps outside the bedroom, and the fatigue of working overtime and meeting late at night yesterday had not dissipated, which made Su Zining feel extremely unwell.

"Fang Qi is going to participate in the 'Manchester City Festival' organized by the Ministry of Culture and Education at noon today, and tomorrow she will leave for Haizhou Fudan University as an exchange student, and she will not come back until the Spring Festival next year, don't you plan to accompany her more on the weekend?" His wife, Yuan Xinyi, gently pushed open the door and walked to the side of the bed, looking at each other's faces a little worriedly while tidying up the quilt for her husband.

"Today? How do I remember it's next weekend? Su Zining sat up straight with difficulty and took off the clothes on one side, "There are so many famous Ivy Leagues, I thought they would always maintain their style of 'not eating fireworks in the world'...... I will also go to Haizhou to conduct research before the Spring Festival, and pick her and Fang Wei back when the time comes. ”

"Dress modestly, there are other guests in the restaurant." Yuan Xinyi took out her husband's formal clothes from the closet, and gestured with a smile, "It's the child's classmates, all of whom are converging at our house, and they are all excited, and they probably can't wait to leave the house to live by themselves." ”

"That's because you're usually too strict with discipline, by the way, don't let other children get up, it's rare for children to sleep more on a weekend." Su Zining took the coat with a smile and expressed his unfazed attitude at the eldest daughter's class reunion at home early in the morning.

"Well, it's no better than the 21st century, where children are less distracted, but they're also out of touch with us...... If you don't restrain and guide, it will be a question of whether they can grow up normally. Yuan Xinyi sighed lightly, still incomprehensible to her husband's long-term "laissez-faire" attitude towards the children.

……

Under the service of the nanny, the class reunion in the restaurant was very lively. Several young girls in their prime are chattering around the dining table, even if they are wearing elegant and strict Ivy League school skirts, they still can't hide the restlessness of youth.

"I heard that the boys at Fudan University are much more interesting than the boys in our school! They even sail to the waters of the Azores to paint! ”

A European girl licks a small cake with envy in her eyes. As the youngest daughter of Adelaide. Angelia's personality is similar to that of his father, and she is full of infinite curiosity in her big grin.

"So how can you paint, won't they get seasick? The last time I went to Yacheng with my father, I stayed in the cabin all the time, and I was very uncomfortable......" Chang Kun's Chang Zilian and Su Fangqi were admitted to the Ivy League finance major in the same year. The family discipline of the Chang family is a well-known strictness in the gorgeous nouveau riche family, and at this time he is sitting upright, eating elegantly and carefully, and his voice is very quiet.

"It's called life experience, and the old-fashioned boys in our school don't understand it! Listen to Dad. The small island they went to has an active volcano that erupted even a hundred years ago! On the other side, An Shu, the second daughter of An Shaoqing, a senator and professor emeritus of geography at Capital National University, was holding a small knife and fork and stirring on the cream on the top of the cake in front of her, "I think that kind of place." It should have the mysterious power of nature! ”

An Shu, a Portuguese orphan who lost her biological mother not long after she was born and was adopted and raised by An Shaoqing's family. He is actually the tallest among the children of the An family. Although Ahn Sook just turned 17 not long ago. But he looks extraordinarily mature, and his academic performance is very good, and he graduated from high school and was sent to an Ivy League college by skipping the preparatory class, but he belongs to the same grade as Su Fangqi and other girls.

"But I've seen their work at this year's exhibition in Manchester City, and I don't think there's any fundamental difference between the landscapes they paint and the vineyards. Uncle Yan's paintings are very feeling, but unfortunately I rarely see new works. Su Fangqi, who was good at painting, snorted softly indifferently. While pouring tea into the cup in his hand, he also raised the teaspoon in his hand towards Chang Zilian, "Xiaolian, push the 'crisp candy' over a bit." Thank you. ”

A plate of square sugar was pushed over, and Su Fangqi picked up a piece very ladylike and put it into the teacup, and then gently mashed and stirred it with the teaspoon.

"Well, speaking of which, didn't Yan Shuming and your younger brother Su Fangwei also be admitted to Fudan University this year? I heard that during the military training, Yan Shuming also got an excellent evaluation. Angelia suddenly remembered something, and looked at Su Fangqi opposite with a sinister smile, "He is versatile, and his level of painting and musical instruments is no worse than that of the art department!" Wouldn't there be a more apt comment for Miss Kiki, dear of Miss? ”

"So what, it's not a little kid yet!" Speaking of the follower who was one year younger than himself and couldn't be more familiar, Su Fangqi turned his head disdainfully, "It's really boring, my brother is still in the same major as him...... Hurry up and eat, and I'll have to go back to school to change my clothes for the Manchester City Festival! ”

The little gossip passed quickly in laughter, and soon, the girls' topic shifted from the boys of Fudan University to this year's exchange of subject students and the content of Qingcheng City, and they all had a different excited attitude towards being away from home this time.

……

Around the corner outside the restaurant, Su Zining and his wife Yuan Xinyi seemed to be very interested in the chat of their juniors, and did not show up to interrupt them immediately.

"I'm usually fine at home, but why do I have this accent when I'm with my classmates? And Adelaide they have a tone...... Sugar cubes are sugar cubes, how do you call them 'crisp candy'? Su Zining looked at his wife with a puzzled expression, as if for the first time he heard his daughter chatting with her classmates in a strange Manchester City accent.

"Of course you are a big man, you are either in Congress or the cabinet all day, and the time you can walk on the street is estimated to be either the first half of the night or the second half of the night, how much time do you really live with ordinary people and your daughter?" Yuan Xinyi walked lazily towards the door of the restaurant, unimpressed by her husband's vomiting.

Crisper, which is the homonym of the German word for sugar (Zucker), together with the word sugar, constitutes a gorgeous special word for machine-made square sugar, and the literal meaning is also very consistent: crispy checkered sugar. Su Zining was "inexplicably surprised" by this kind of foreign word that did not know when it was quietly "qualified".

The accent between her daughter and her classmates in the cafeteria, if you judge it in later generations, is a typical Mandarin pronunciation on the southeast coast of China, mixed with a lot of Zhejiang, Fujian, and Cantonese Chinese pronunciations.

For the promotion of standard Chinese Chinese Mandarin, in fact, after the catastrophe, the people also tried to set certain "rules". However, from the very beginning, few of these later generations from all over the world could really speak the standard Mandarin of later generations.

In the inner circle or family of the traversal, this phenomenon may not be strict enough. The children who have lived with their parents for a long time can still "inherit" an "authentic Manchester City high accent". However, in a larger range of general national education, even if the advanced Latin alphabet pronunciation method is used, it also faces the problem of non-standard daily universal teaching and the teacher himself, which leads to the infinite "error" of the Chinese teaching demonstration in a certain direction.

Teachers who speak an ancient Chinese southern accent or a 17th-century European accent are destined to "learn the same" from each class of their students. This kind of Chinese teaching quality, hoping to complete a Chinese American Chinese language project to popularize the standard Mandarin teaching of later generations, is a complete "disaster".

For immigrants from all over the world who have come in at different times, it is not easy to quickly learn Chinese Chinese in a few years. The compromise of "I can understand it anyway, and there is no big problem with standard pronunciation deviations or anything" will inevitably happen and acquiesce. If you want Chinese education to be more standard. Unless the people do nothing, instead of all the Chinese teachers, they will teach hundreds of thousands of immigrants for decades.

As a result of 20 years of universal education in the country, a Manchurian accent from the East and West has gradually emerged that is quite different from that of the cross-sectional people, and even has a large number of European-speaking Chinese pronunciation characteristics. On some occasions. Even the Travelers sometimes have to turn to mimicking this "vernacular" in order to communicate with the City teenagers.

"How can 500 people resist the strong local-language environment of the 'local population'...... Hehe, interesting. ”

Think again. I was still a little excited. Su Zining was relieved.

……

Before the time for the annual Manchester City Festival, Su Zining and his wife, who were bringing their daughter, were chatting with the parents of several other families by the dock. As we approached noon, more families flocked to the port area, and the number of luxury carriages representing the identity of the people in the port area continued to increase.

The first Manchester City Festival. It was October 20, 1620. At that time, it was only a little more than a month after the catastrophe, and the people who had just migrated to Manchester City were still working hard to build a new home. A few elderly women built under the construction of the people, and the people of the time stopped what they were doing. A small mass memorial service was held on the shore to observe a moment of silence for the victims of the catastrophe and to cheer for the survivors.

An informal social event, or once every two or two years, or once every two or three years, slowly, this simple act of expressing the special sorrow of the group gradually became an annual Manchester Bay memorial event. As the pain of the past faded away, new busyness and hope filled life again, and in the past 21 years, fewer and fewer people came to pay their respects, while more and more ordinary citizens spontaneously participated.

It is not known how this kind of memorial spread, but it is said that the first pioneers to set foot on Manchester City soil went through great hardships and sacrifices at sea to create the glory of Manchester City today.

The truth is always a secret, but the imagination of the people is clearly brilliant and poetic. In 1637, Mao Jian, then the mayor of Manchester, officially designated the day as the city anniversary, and carried it forward, so that later immigrants could experience the city's history to the greatest extent. Previously, only the city of Twin Bays in Bermuda, led by Di Zugong, had established a number of city commemorative festivals.

In accordance with the rules that were laid down at some point, a non-steam-powered fishing boat, carrying a bamboo basket full of flowers, slowly sailed out of the pier and headed for the middle of Manchester Bay, driven by the city's oldest sailors.

On the side of the wharf, more than 200 pairs of girls from major colleges and universities stood quietly in memorial dresses, holding clay pots, sickles, iron drills, saws and other pioneering tools that symbolized the hard work of the past.

"Sasha, I always feel that this ribbon is uncomfortable, it should be in the wrong place, right?" In the crowd, Angelia fiddled with the complicated ribbon of the oriental dress, always feeling a little uncomfortable, and couldn't help but whisper to her best friend An Shu, and also used the other party's nickname.

"No, don't they all wear like that...... Shhhhh The teacher is watching from behind......" An Shu gently opened the other party's hand that kept playing with the ribbon around her waist, and lowered her voice.

The small sampan moved slowly, flowers were thrown down, and a long swaying ribbon of flowers floated on the water. The "friendly participation" of the coast guard at the Inner Bay Fortress in Manchester City also sounded a salute at this time, and the crowd of spectators on the shore bowed one after another. A few old immigrants are still triumphantly recounting how small Manchester City was and how they worked in the swamps or forests.

"How did these rituals come out, just like the real thing...... We were just ......."

In the corner, Yuan Xinyi was muttering with a strange smile, but in exchange for a silent reminder from her husband.

The intricate memorial service lasts about an hour. Su Zining saw that his wife was too tired to stand, so he took the other party to the other end of the port area, planning to find a small bar to sit in.

……

At the edge of the fishing pier in the far corner of the port area, an ornamental pier dance is being carried out to the accompaniment of piccolo and guitar. The rhythm is bright, and there is a melodious long note with an undulating transition from time to time. Sounds very pleasant.

It's a wharf harvest dance that has been taking place in the lower floors of Manchester City for more than a decade, usually after a successful fishing catch. Owners of the bumper harvest will distribute a portion of the seafood to passers-by at the pier free of charge. Then take the opportunity to sell to the incoming vendors. Over time, a fixed mode of dock performances took shape, and even became a small event for sailors returning from a long voyage to celebrate their safe return with their families and friends.

"We beautiful people sail away, and God guides us across the seas and oceans. In search of loved ones, travel to all the seaports of the world......"

The dance was accompanied by the "Hymn to Navigation", which came out more than ten years earlier than the original time. The sailors took their families around in a circle with simple gestures, stepping on the rhythm, with a colorful face, humming uniform lyrics. The young citizens on the sidelines were clapping their hands to the rhythm. Both Chinese and European Americans were intoxicated with joy.

The content of the lyrics is no longer a celebration of the Dutch merchants of this era, but has become a gorgeous sailor. The lyrics were written by Vondel (1614-1663), the youngest contributing lyricist of Manchester City Entertainment. Vondel emigrated to Manchester City in 1623 with his father, a merchant, at the age of nine. Shakespeare, who came to be known as Shakespeare in the Netherlands, showed a talent for literature at an early age, and has now become the youngest lecturer in poetry at an Ivy League university in Manchester City.

There were a lot more bars near the port, a group of sailors and a few merchants crowded at the door, making a lot of noise about settling the salary of the voyage, and a policeman who rushed to hear the news was patiently mediating, but at the moment it seemed that the contradiction was a little irreconcilable, and the possibility of finally going to the judicial process was very great.

At the door of a port hotel, a few citizens held newspapers and chatted with each other, expressing their views on the news that the fruit and vegetable production in Bermuda's overseas territories had been drastically reduced due to hurricane weather this fall.

Along the way, there are many fewer Chinese immigrant couples who used to keep a certain distance one after the other, and it has become common for a new generation of young couples to push strollers and hold hands with each other, which makes Su Zining feel inexplicable again.

Suddenly, Su Zining suddenly found a lot of small changes in his surroundings, including clothing, language, etiquette, and those pictures that he had been familiar with for 20 years were actually mixed with more and more unfamiliar small details that he had never noticed.

The steam-blown whistle sounded, and a merchant ship from the twin ports of Butterfly Island in the Caribbean was slowly entering Manchester Bay, and the last part of the ceremony of the Manchester Festival had just ended.

……

In the past 1641, the number of newborns in China and the United States is expected to reach 31,000, and the mortality rate of newborns within one year of age will be reduced to less than 30 per thousand for the first time. This kind of "chilling" newborn swelling has undoubtedly once again aggravated the pressure on the whole society to raise and educate, and also contains huge business opportunities in the maternal and child products market.

The 1642 budget is about to be released, and the Cabinet and the Diet have been debating for a long time whether to continue to increase the budget for social and people's livelihood and education in the coming year. In the face of the upcoming "historical strategic harvest period," it is obviously not a wise move to once again aim the butcher's knife of budget reduction at defense spending. However, for Huamei, which has a population of more than 630,000, the number of newborns per year will exceed the number of new immigrants in the next few years, and the social upbringing and education of minors will be one of the biggest burdens for the country in the next two decades.

Most of the most powerful people in the prime of life have entered middle age, and they can only be active for more than 20 years, so perhaps tracking the changes in domestic society in advance and making strategic adjustments to relevant policies will be an important mission related to the future of the country that those in power in Huamei must treat with heart.

Of course, the good side is also emerging, tens of thousands of local new generations born before 1625 have grown up and have entered the society, with the passage of time, this local new generation of demographic dividends will be released like a big snowball, the country's social localization process will be faster and faster, more and more obvious. (To be continued......)