I am the prince of the Ming Dynasty, I don't give up

Chapter 197 Immigrants
Xie Zhongyi and Third Brother Wen chatted for an hour at home.

After Third Brother Wen left, Mrs. Xie came up to him with a worried look on her face, "Dad, do you think what Third Brother Wen just said is true?"

"Go back to the house and talk!" Xie Zhongyi scolded in a low voice.

When they returned to the house, the three children were already asleep.

"I don't think Third Brother Wen was lying just now. Third Brother Wen and I grew up together. We used to play naked together every day when we were little. He won't harm me." Xie Zhongyi said affirmatively.

"Did Boss Wen really settle down on that big island?" Mrs. Xie asked again.

Just now, Third Brother Wen came to tell us that his eldest brother who had disappeared a few years ago suddenly wrote to him and said that he had settled down on a big island overseas and was living a very good life. He asked Third Brother Wen to take his family to find him and also told them how to take a boat out to the sea.

"If Brother Wen is unable to find a place to stay, can someone bring twenty silver coins to Brother Wen III? That's ten taels of silver. How many families in our Xiejia Village can come up with that much silver?" Xie Zhongyi's eyes flashed with excitement.

Mrs. Xie was not as excited as Xie Zhongyi, and still looked worried, "Dad, what should we do?"

"What should we do?" The excitement on Xie Zhongyi's face disappeared.

He looked at his three sleeping children, his wife whose back was hunched from weaving all day, and the bare walls of his home. He took a deep breath. He had been holding the answer in his mind for quite some time.

"Go overseas!" Xie Zhongyi said firmly.

"You've lost your job as a helper, and you can't sell the cloth you weave at a good price. Without these two sources of income, the family can only sell grain for money, which we have to squeeze out of our own teeth. As a result, Mr. Xie's rent has increased by 60%, and it may increase further next year! And I have to do corvée labor. We can't live like this! If this goes on, our whole family won't even have enough to eat." Xie Zhongyi's face became somewhat ferocious.

"Our family still owes Mr. Xie money. We originally borrowed five taels of silver for our child's medical treatment. If I had worked hard as a laborer for half a year a few years ago, I would have been able to save up enough to pay it back. But now I can't find a job as a laborer, and the interest has accumulated to 20 taels. We can't even pay back the 20 taels even if we sell our children! Besides, are we willing to sell our children?" Xie Zhongyi said with a look of grief and indignation.

"Master Xie is not a good person either. If he hadn't done such bad things, how could such a capable man like Brother Wen be forced to leave his hometown. If our family falls into the hands of Master Xie, we will have to work like slaves for him for generations and will never be able to turn over a new leaf," said Xie Zhongyi in a low voice.

Mrs. Xie listened to Xie Zhongyi's words blankly, and couldn't help crying with her hands covering her face: "What's wrong with this world? We haven't done anything to harm the world. The two of us work hard every day and dare not be lazy at all. How come we have to go to the point where we can't even have enough food to eat?"

"I don't know what's wrong with this world, but I know that if we move, we will survive. Since we can't survive here, let's find a way to go somewhere else."

"But we are going to go out to sea, and our children are still young!" Mrs. Xie stopped crying and looked at the youngest child on the bed with tearful eyes.

Their youngest child is only six years old.

"Brother Wen said in the letter that the island is not far from here. We can get there in five or six days by taking a sea boat to the south instead of walking. We farm kids are tough and should be able to make it." Xie Zhongyi said through gritted teeth. "But." Mrs. Xie was still a little hesitant.

"Don't hesitate. A ship will dock here in three days. We have to make a decision quickly."

"When I was a helper, I went to a teahouse with my coworkers to listen to a storyteller. The story was about a man who went overseas to work hard. He was stranded on an island alone, and he reclaimed hundreds of acres of land and raised hundreds of cattle and sheep. That's how a real person should live. Didn't our family do better than that man after going overseas?" Xie Zhongyi continued to add weights to the scale.

"Can you believe what's written in this storybook?" Mrs. Xie was a little bit unconvinced.

"What the storyteller said didn't sound false to me. After he finished telling the story, he also said that the further south you go out to sea, the warmer it will be. There will be many islands. The land on each island is very fertile and you can grow crops three times a year, but no one goes there to grow crops yet." Xie Zhongyi recalled what he had heard.

"You're talking nonsense. How come no one is cultivating such good land?" Mrs. Xie said with a look of disbelief.

"People in the teahouse didn't believe it at the time, and they asked the storyteller the same question. The storyteller said that the people on the southern islands were particularly lazy. There were many fruit trees on the southern islands, and the people there lay under the fruit trees to sleep every day, waiting for the fruits to fall on their heads so they could pick them up and eat them. That way they wouldn't starve to death, so no one went to farm." Xie Zhongyi said excitedly.

"How can there be such a lazy person?" Mrs. Xie said in shock.

"The world is so big that there are all kinds of strange things! Brother Wen is on the big island in the south! He said in his letter that they can grow three crops a year there," Xie Zhongyi continued to encourage.

The wife of the Xie family was also moved by what she said, because the logic of this argument was correct.
"Marry a chicken, follow the chicken; marry a dog, follow the dog. I will follow you." Mrs. Xie said after a fierce ideological struggle.

"Okay!" Xie Zhongyi cheered and picked up his wife.

After making the decision, Xie Zhongyi hurried out.

"Where are you going?" asked Mrs. Xie.

"I'm going to find my brother and ask him if he wants to go overseas." Xie Zhongyi said and walked out the door.
Two hours later, Xie Zhongyi returned home exhausted and said to his wife in a disappointed tone: "My eldest brother is not going. He said that the overseas legends are nonsense. He wants to stay here and wait for the world to get better."

After hearing this, Mrs. Xie remained silent.
Xie Zhongyi's family's plan was carried out secretly, but no one would pay too much attention to such a poor tenant.

Three days later, they met up with Third Brother Wen and his group in the early morning, pushing their bags on a wheelbarrow. Third Brother Wen had convinced two more families in the past two days.

It was a full moon night. The moon, like a jade plate, hung high in the sky, emitting bright moonlight and illuminating the entire earth.

It also allows most of the people who suffer from night blindness to see the road clearly and avoid getting lost.
There are many such teams in the villages on the south bank of the Yangtze River, and they all have the same goal.
They arrived on time at a small hidden dock on the Yangtze River.
Xie Zhongyi was surprised to find that more and more people were gathering here, which made him feel nervous but also excited.
(End of this chapter)