Reborn as King of South America

Chapter 338 Transition Period

The setting sun hangs at the end of the plain, and the fiery red sunset dyes half of the sky in the distance. A group of late-returning South American geese slowly pass through the sunset, and the occasional low cries echo in the vast red sky.

The flying geese brought back memories of their homeland. Looking up at the banks of the Paraná River and the scenery at the end of the Pampas, Lu Rongting and Wang Shizhen followed the boat under their feet with an indelible melancholy and gradually disappeared into the sunset.

Bringing the old and the young, they traveled across the ocean to the South American continent. Some common scenes in life often evoke the Chinese people's memories of their hometown.

Homesickness lurks in people's hearts. In order to miss their hometown and commemorate the memories of their difficult life in their early years, the Chinese people moved the traditional customs of their hometown to South America intact.

Just near the river port where Lu Rongting and others hurriedly left,
The people of seven or eight settlements put aside their disputes and jointly decided to designate the 15th day of the eleventh lunar month as the day for holding the temple fair every year.

Temple fairs are a traditional custom of festival celebrations. Usually every town will have different forms of temple fairs and street fairs. Even if two towns that are relatively close to each other have the same dialect and cultural customs, the dates of their temple fairs may be far apart.

Most of the native immigrants from the Han Dynasty were from Guangdong, Guangxi and southern Fujian. After the Dingshu famine, a large proportion of the people from various provinces boarded ships from the northern coastal ports. Because the immigrants came from different regions, there might be 10 to 20 different customs and habits in a settlement of two to three thousand people. If the people in each place chose a specific date to hold a temple fair according to the previous customs, there would be too few participants to form a festive atmosphere and achieve the purpose of holding a temple fair.

Pingquan County, Songzhou, a county town under planning, welcomed the first temple fair festival after the relocation of the Chinese people in the evening.

After a busy day on the wasteland allocated by the government, the Chinese women loosened the headscarves tied on their foreheads, changed out of their coarse cloth short clothes, put on new clothes purchased with their spare money, carefully put on the silver jewelry they brought as dowry, and took their babbling children with them, followed by their husbands, and the entire family went out together to watch the temple fair performances near the riverside port, and at the same time purchased some items for adults and children.

Pingquan County has thirteen immigrant settlements under its jurisdiction, eight of which are relatively close to each other and gathered together. They negotiated that each settlement would contribute 30 Han yuan, and together they would raise 240 Han yuan to invite a troupe to perform in the center of the county.

In the evening, in the center of Pingquan County, which is near the coastal port, on a newly leveled open space, a troupe of more than ten men and women were setting up a stage. The troupe owner was outside greeting several county officials, while the martial artists and actresses in the troupe were behind the scenes, putting on makeup and rehearsing the opera programs to be performed.

"Captain Zhou, most of the people of Pingquan County, young and old, have come to support you. You must show off all your special skills tonight."

"Don't worry, my lords. The troupe has recruited two young female actors. They are excellent in singing, reciting, acting, and fighting. We guarantee that we will not disappoint the elders of Pingquan County."

"That's perfect. If the troupe's performance satisfies everyone, the county will raise some extra money and, at today's price, invite Mr. Zhou and the troupe's mainstays to stay in Pingquan for one more day, so that the county's people can watch the performance one more time."

"Thank you for your kindness, my Lords. However, the troupe has accepted a job in Chang'an City. We will perform in Chang'an City for three days starting from the day Your Highness ascends the throne. We really cannot spare the time to stay in Pingquan for one more day. I hope you will forgive us."

"Yes, there are not many local opera troupes to begin with. It's only in the past two years that some opera troupes have come from the Central Plains. In a few days, His Highness will ascend the throne and celebrate with the country. At that time, opera troupes from all over the local area will gather in Chang'an City and sing for three days. It must be very lively." "His Highness the King of Han ascended the throne, which is a great event that only happens once in a hundred years. Although we opera singers were not favored by the government in the early years and did not get any land, when we received the notice to perform, an adult named Sun said that after His Highness ascended the throne, all local people would be treated equally, whether they were opera performers, jugglers, or street craftsmen who carved wood carvings, they could all get land reissued by the government. I have been singing opera for twenty years since I was a child, and I am used to being a playboy and a low-browed person. When I reached middle age, I started a troupe, and I still wanted to find a decent livelihood for the young men and women under my command. They are still very young, and they can't live their whole lives in a low voice like me."

"The situation has changed. It's different now than it was before. In the past, there were wars every other day in the country. The common people were worried about the attacks from the Brazilian and Argentine whites. During the slack season, the men under the age of 50 in the settlements had to undergo military training every day. They would sleep with their muskets in their arms, in case someone attacked them at night, so that they could gather in time with their muskets to welcome the emperor.

At that time, there was a shortage of young and strong local laborers, and the transportation capacity of ships traveling between Southeast Asia and the mainland to South America was limited. Every young and strong man had to be used on the edge of a knife, so how could they afford to recruit a large number of opera troupes to listen to operas and sing songs?

Now the conditions are better. After more than ten years of development, the people who immigrated in the early years have accumulated some money. In addition, Argentina and Uruguay were destroyed by the army led by His Royal Highness the King of Han, and Brazil was split into two countries. Our Han country is one of the most powerful countries in South America.
The country is stable. Even if there is another war, it is Brazil and Chile that are afraid of being defeated by our army. The people have extra money on hand and don’t have to worry about the land distributed by the government being taken back by the whites. Gradually, they are in the mood to listen to opera performances, or spend more money to buy clothes, jewelry and other items. "

Compared with the collective organizational model during the Peruvian uprising, from the beginning of the founding of the country until before the Argentine War, the Han Dynasty was essentially military-oriented, with an integrated military-industrial complex system of economic, agricultural and industrial development, like an enlarged military machine, with agriculture, industry and economy each responsible for their own responsibilities, and everything was aimed at military construction and improving the overall combat effectiveness of the army.

The eleven-year-long military collectivization life maximized the country's war potential, but also deprived ordinary people of any entertainment and recreational activities other than survival. Every day they either went to the construction site for collective labor or were gathered for military training. The women were also busy looking after the land allocated by the government, as well as spinning cloth, weaving thread, raising cattle and sheep, and other livestock.

Compared with the life in the mainland where people are not able to get enough food and may starve to death if they slack off a little, life in South America is much better. However, decades of boring and high-intensity work day after day will also consume people's energy and reduce their support for the government. Therefore, as the country ends its eleven-year foundation period and enters another ten-year transition period of development and construction, it will be more conducive to the healthy development of society to appropriately relax the government's interference and control over the daily lives of ordinary people, give them a certain amount of time to relax and entertain with their families, and maintain a proper degree of relaxation so that society can maintain appropriate vitality.

The traditional entertainment and recreation industries are gradually recovering.
The spacious open space is filled with a row of temporary stalls selling jewelry, candied haws, small wooden toys, tables and chairs and other items.

The adults were holding children aged one or two. Some accompanied their children to stare at the shadow puppets, listening to the children's giggling sounds with joy. Some tasted the wine and sweet potato wine brewed by the Chinese people, nodded in praise, and then bought eight or nine kilograms of them and left them aside, waiting to take them back when they returned.

Northern noodle snacks, southern glutinous rice cakes, duck eggs and other foods were placed together. At first, Chinese people from different regions also selected various foods according to their own preferences and took them home for adults and children to taste. The sky gradually darkened, and the lights on the riverside were bright.

The county officials and the young men who helped put the cooked whole pigs, cows, sheep and seasonal fruits in a long row and began to offer sacrifices to the gods and ancestors, praying for the gods and ancestors to bless them. The next spring, the county's grain harvest will be better every year, and the cattle, sheep, pigs and other livestock will be fat and strong, free of plague and disease...

The prices of food and livestock in the local area are low, and each Chinese family generally raises dozens to hundreds of cattle and sheep. The cattle and horses left behind by the Spaniards on the Pampas hundreds of years ago have evolved into wild buffaloes and wild horses.

If there were retired young men in the newly migrated Chinese families, seven or eight people would gather together and often hunt down a lot of wild buffaloes. Because the cost of obtaining horses, cattle and sheep was low, Pingquan County held temple fairs with rich offerings for worshiping gods and ancestors. After the worship ceremony, eight or nine cooked cattle, sheep and other offerings were all pushed into the Parana River. In name, they were offered to the river gods and ancestors, but in fact, they were used to save the fish and shrimp in the river.

(End of this chapter)