The Ming Dynasty did not revolutionize

Chapter 167: Escaping from Famine and Smuggling
The drought and famine that have already spread, as well as the possible major epidemics in the future, make Ke Da, a paper fan craftsman, extremely worried.

But he couldn't make up his mind to leave his hometown and give up the business in his hometown that he had run for half his life.

The main reason is that the Ke family has not been pushed to their limit.

Even if the family continues to be in this stalemate, they can only survive for a while.

Because of concerns about winter expenses, Ke Da plans to send the two apprentices back home, which is considered a response to future crises.

But Cui Er himself, as a street urchin with nothing, really wanted to go to the South to try his luck.

The Ke family studied and discussed the issue for several days and finally decided to act separately.

Mr. Ke and his wife Ms. Cui stayed in Caozhou to continue taking care of their young son and daughter.

Cui Er took his eldest nephew, Ke Da and Cui Dajie's eldest son, Ke Sidi, who just turned twelve this year, and two apprentices to go to the south to make a living.

Ke Sidi's name is different from those of other family members. It was specially given by Ke Da, who asked a scholar in the county to give it to him.

Ke Da himself was a small shop owner. He could recognize common words used in daily life, keep and calculate his own accounts, and he also taught all his skills to his eldest son.

So now Kosidi can barely be said to be able to write and calculate.

The other two apprentices were already fifteen years old, which was barely considered adults in that era, and they had almost learned the master's craft.

If Cui Er and his three companions could find a place to settle down in the south, the family would have a chance to resume their old business.

If they could settle down in the south, they could find a way to ask someone to send a letter back to tell Mr. and Mrs. Ke that they were stable.

If the situation in the south is really very good, then we can also send a message to ask Mr. and Mrs. Ke to go to the south as well.

After finalizing the plan, the Ke family began to pack their luggage.

In this era, even in normal years, traveling far away is very troublesome and dangerous.

What's more, it is a year of disasters, and there are displaced victims everywhere.

If the government's power is not enough, there will be no obvious gap between the young and strong among the victims and the bandits, and they can almost switch to each other at any time.

After Cui Er and his men left, they might never come back, so they were very serious.

Cui Er brought an axe for chopping firewood and bamboo for self-defense, and asked his nephew and two apprentices to bring knives for cutting paper and bamboo strips.

Mr. and Mrs. Ke prepared travel expenses and dry food for Cui Er and three others. Cui Er also brought the silver dollars and copper coins he had saved.

Find the most tattered clothes and wear them, and pack up the slightly better clothes you usually wear.

At the same time, Cui Er went out every day these days to find his friends who he usually hung out with, and encouraged them to go south with him.

After working for more than ten days, Cui Er found four companions including Hao San.

Let them also bring whatever axes or knives they can find, or simple weapons such as sticks and spears.

Many systems of the Qing Dynasty were copied from the Ming Dynasty, and the road permit system was also inherited.

However, during the Qianlong period, after the Ming-Qing border was basically stabilized, the control of road passes became more relaxed.

Now it is a year of famine, and the road permit is in name only.

On August 16, the 50th year of Qianlong's reign and the 39th year of Xianning, Cui Er and his group of eight people, after celebrating the Mid-Autumn Festival at home, left the city and headed south together.

The county magistrate and the prefect hoped that all the starving people in the city would flee the famine so that the pressure on themselves to provide disaster relief would be a little less.

Not long after Cui Er and his group left the city, they saw other groups of people fleeing famine.

Now that the Mid-Autumn Festival has passed, it should have been the harvest season, but most of Shandong has no harvest and the famine has entered its first small peak.

Some of the refugees fleeing famine gathered together as a family of several people, some as a large group of people from a village, or some as a group of disaster victims who did not know each other slowly gathered together.

In fact, if you count it carefully, Cui Er and his eight-member team cannot be considered as refugees, but travelers who took the initiative to travel far away.

However, Cui Er and others still changed into dirty and worn-out clothes and dressed like real victims of the disaster.

We cannot expect the disaster victims who are everywhere to obey the law.

A few ordinary travelers walking alone would be perfect fat sheep if they encountered a large number of hungry disaster victims.

After Cui Er and others disguised themselves as disaster victims, they found a small group of more than a dozen people. Among them were men, women, young and old, and they should be a relatively large family.

Cui Er cautiously approached the other party and greeted him.

Ask them if they are going to Jiangnan and if they can go together so that they can have someone to look after them on the way and it will be safer.

Cui Er was afraid of encountering a large number of disaster victims or robbery by bandits, and that he and his men would have no way of resisting, so he wanted to gather people to form a group.

The family saw that although there were only eight people on Cui Er's side, they were all young and strong men and teenagers, so they became a little wary and simply ignored Cui Er.

Cui Er did not get entangled and continued walking forward. When he met other suitable small-scale disaster victims, he went up to them and said hello again.

After several attempts, Cui Er successfully picked up a group of more than a dozen victims.

The two teams moved slightly closer and headed south together.

Cui Er tried to chat with these people, continuing to introduce his own situation while asking about the other party's situation to enhance the understanding and trust between the two parties.

At the same time, it was agreed that the young and middle-aged men of both sides would guard the periphery, with the women, children and the elderly in the middle.

The two sides walked together for a day. After Cui Eryu discussed with his new companions, he went to say hello to a team of more than ten people.

Merge this team with your own team, gather the young and strong people together, and together they will guard everyone's family outside the team.

The group headed south. Cui Er looked at the situation on the road and gradually gathered several waves of refugees together. The entire team soon had more than two hundred people.

When it comes to fleeing famine, of course the more people who travel together, the safer it will be, and the safer you will be when encountering robbers.

However, the group fleeing famine is not safe itself.

Within a few days of Cui Er's group's departure, they had already witnessed various tragedies among other people.

There are cases of people robbing others while they are eating, raping other people's wives and daughters, fighting or even killing each other for various reasons. These cases happen from time to time.

Young and middle-aged people ganging up to bully others can be seen at any time.

Most of the disaster victims' groups were spontaneously organized and had broken away from the old social order dominated by the government.

Cui Er has four companions, two apprentices and an older nephew. No matter what type and level of items they have, they all carry basic weapons.

As a contact person, Cui Er dealt with the refugee families one by one and brought all the young and middle-aged people together.

They also proposed and enforced simple internal rules that prohibited fighting within the group and prohibited families from stealing items from each other.

These rules made Cui Er's team relatively safe and stable, and Cui Er became the leader of this group of refugees.

Because other disaster victims also hope to travel south safely.

Cui Er's maintenance of such simple basic rules can also gain basic support from other disaster victims.

In fact, it was also because the famine had just entered its first peak, and the scale of the victims and their suffering had not yet reached their peak.

The original social moral system had not completely collapsed, so Cui Er was able to use relatively simple agreements to establish basic order among the victims.

However, in order to maintain order, a basic material foundation is needed.

After all, when people are about to starve to death, they usually no longer abide by social order.

He was leading a group of disaster victims and they didn't have much food on them.

Cui Er didn't want to rob other victims.

It’s not that Cui Er, a street urchin, has a high level of morals, but Cui Er knows that there is nothing worth stealing from other victims.

At the same time, disaster victims will certainly be very protective of their food. I have seen several incidents where people have died because of a bite of food.

Cui Er sought out the leaders of the various families and villages in his industry to discuss the matter, and several people who were originally rural tenants proposed to rob the landlords' farms.

Any landlord with a decent scale must have a granary at home, storing more than one year's worth of food.

Cui Er readily followed the advice and immediately organized an attack to rob the landlord.

Since we are all going to surrender to the Ming Dynasty anyway, and we are already starving to death, it doesn’t matter if we commit a capital crime.

Cui Er asked his eldest nephew and two companions to lead a small number of young and strong people to protect the old and weak in the team and stay in one place to wait.

He and other young and strong men went out to look for a suitable target, and finally locked on a village in the south of Pei County.

Then they continued to scout the location for two days and finally locked on the location of the courtyard of the landlord's house in the village.

Cui Er led more than a hundred strong men and rushed into the landlord's yard in the middle of the night with axes and sticks. Although the landlord had guards, they were no match for more than a hundred hungry victims.

Moreover, this group of disaster victims deliberately scouted some places and launched sneak attacks at night.

Cui Er led the team to hack the guards to death in their beds, and then, led by tenants who used to work in the countryside, they went to find the place where the landlord stored his granary and livestock.

Then one group of people loaded food, and another group of people caught cattle, sheep, chickens and dogs.

By the way, he took away valuable items such as gold and silver from the landlord's house, as well as useful weapons such as knives, guns, sticks, and earth guns, and escaped from the village before dawn.

After joining up with other members of the team, we immediately headed south and walked for more than ten miles before stopping to cook.

Cui Er took everyone to a hearty meal, and the mood of the people around them changed a little, and then they continued to speed up and head south.

In this year, the local county government may not come out to deal with such matters, but it is still best to avoid it as much as possible.

Cui Er and his group walked southeast for a few more days and arrived at Xuzhou.

After leaving Shandong, the drought situation seemed to have improved slightly, but only slightly.

The fields along the roadside in Xuzhou were also extremely dry and hard. Many plots had only sparse weeds and no autumn corn was planted at all.

There is corn in some places, but the corn stalks are only about three feet tall, and there are not many of them. It is hard to say whether the cost of the seeds can be recovered.

At this time, the Yellow River was in a state of flowing into the sea through the Huai River, and the river channel was in the southern part of Caozhou Prefecture, along the line of Xuzhou, Suqian, and Qinghe.

At this time, both sides of the border between the Ming Dynasty and the Qing Dynasty could be considered the Yellow River flood area.

These places suffer from floods and droughts all year round.

The victims could not find any way to make a living in Xuzhou, so they could only cross the Yellow River in Xuzhou and continue their journey southward.

The group of people walked on the road for another ten days and robbed the grain stored by two more landlords.

Finally, on September 15th, we arrived at the bank of the Huai River. On the other side of the river was Bengbu Market, which belonged to the Southern Ming Dynasty.

Theoretically, this place belongs to the border between the Ming and Qing dynasties. There are a large number of troops stationed on both sides of the Huai River, and ordinary people should not be allowed to approach.

But there is always a big gap between theory and practice, and as long as there are interests, there will be loopholes.

Bengbu Market in Fengyang Prefecture, Nanming, is a small town opposite, and it is a well-known smuggling point in the circle.

When Cui Er's team arrived here, there were already more than 500 people.

Cui Er asked his eldest nephew and two companions to look after the team, and he took his two companions, two apprentices and several young men, and took axes to visit the town for a while.

Cui Er and a few of his friends were originally street stalkers in Caozhou Prefecture, and they knew where to usually find all kinds of despicable people.

They spent a little money in this town and found a way to smuggle themselves across the border that same day.

Cui Er has more than 500 people here, and he has the gold and silver robbed on the road to pave the way, so it can be considered a big business that can make money.

It is impossible to smuggle people through normal routes and regular docks. The local tyrants use small boats to carry people across the river in the wild, and there is no one on the other side.

The local tyrants worked for three consecutive days before they managed to get everyone to the other side.

The local tyrant took the money and reminded Cui Er and all the victims to untie their braids and tie them into a typical Southern Ming bun on the boat.

According to the local tyrants, once you reach the south bank you can just go straight into the city and you won't be caught or beaten.

Cui Er was a little bit unconvinced, so he followed his habit on the North Bank and left the old and weak in one place while he took a group of people to the town to check the situation.

When Cui Er approached Bengbu Market, the first thing he saw was the towering chimneys in the urban area.

"What's that chimney? Why is it so big?"

"Is it a kiln for making bricks?"

"Isn't that a bit too much?"

When Cui Er and others were discussing what was happening while looking at the chimney, a strange clanging sound was heard in the distance.

Several people turned around subconsciously and saw a large iron cart emitting white smoke, dragging a series of large iron carriages towards Bengbu Market.

Cui Er looked at those large carriages and couldn't help but widen his eyes and scream:
"This... so many carriages? There must be more than a dozen, right? This smoking iron carriage is pulling so many iron carriages?!"

Cui Er's companions were also shocked when they saw this thing:

"This thing is too powerful!"

"No, even if the carriage was empty, four horses couldn't pull it!"

"I see it's full..."

"What the hell is this?"

Cui Eryi and his gang had no idea what a train was and were completely confused when they saw it.

Cui Er swallowed his saliva and took a few companions to the place where the train passed. He found that there was a barbed wire fence outside the place where the train passed, preventing people from approaching.

Looking inside through the wire fence, you can see two tracks laid on the ground where the big iron car passed by.

Some of Cui Er's companions had worked in coal mines and had seen similar tracks before, but they had never seen such a long track made of pure steel.

These things triggered a series of shouting:
"This... this net is made of iron..."

"The tracks on the ground look like they're made of iron too?"

"Can this be made of fucking iron? So much iron, spread out on the ground? They're built specifically for this kind of car."

"Isn't this old Southern Ming Emperor too rich? But being rich doesn't mean you should waste it like this!"

"But this thing can really pull things. Look, it can pull more than a dozen huge carriages at once, and they are all really full and can run..."

"Even a hundred carriages can't carry so much stuff."

The Ming Emperor had already built railways from the north bank of the river in Yingtian Prefecture to Fengyang and Bengbu.

Now the supplies from Yingtian Prefecture can be delivered to the current front line against the Qing Dynasty within one day, and on a huge scale with almost no loss.

Cui Er and others certainly didn’t think of this; they just felt that the iron on the railway was a waste.

Before the Industrial Age, iron was a commodity of such high value that it was often incorporated into state-run industries.

Steel, which is higher than iron, is actually more expensive.

If Cui Er and others knew that these were not iron rails but actually steel rails, they would definitely be even more shocked.

Cui Er and his group were discussing here in astonishment.

The train had basically disappeared from their sight. Their eyes were all looking in the direction the train was leaving, and they didn't notice that ten patrolmen on bicycles were coming from behind.

The patrolmen saw Cui Er and his companions. One of them picked up a microphone made of iron sheet and shouted to Cui Er and his companions:

"This is an important railway site. No outsiders are allowed to approach. Anyone who damages or steals will be beheaded!"

Cui Er and others were frightened when they heard the sound. They immediately took a few steps back and then instinctively turned around and wanted to run.

Several soldiers were a little confused when they saw this scene.

"Why are these guys running? Could it be that they were planning to steal the railroad tracks, but we discovered them in advance?"

"Squad leader, do you want to chase him back?"

"You four go over there and stop them and ask them!"

The four soldiers immediately turned around and took out their revolvers. One of them fired two shots into space.
"Hold still or I'll shoot!"

Cui Er and others were frightened when they heard the gunshot. They didn't dare to run forward anymore and stood there with stiff movements.

The four soldiers quickened their pace and chased after him.

Cui Er and others turned around and were surprised by the bicycles ridden by several soldiers.

It only has two wheels, but it can carry a living person and move forward steadily. This is a bit beyond their understanding.

Four soldiers chased after them, left their bicycles aside, and questioned Cui Er and others with guns:

"Where are you from...?"

As the soldier was talking, he noticed that Cui Er and the others were wearing tattered clothes, just like the victims of the recent disaster.
"If you were a disaster victim, you would go to the Bengbu market town, get food at the disaster refugee camp, and then take a steam train to Yingtianfu.

"Don't wander around outside the city, and don't try to get on the railroad tracks, or no one can save you."

(End of this chapter)