Wind Rises in North America 1625

Chapter 525 The Rear (Part Two)

In early summer, Westlake Country (now Lake Oswaygo, Oregon, eight kilometers south of Portland) is bathed in bright sunshine, with golden waves of wheat rippling across the fields, a sign of the upcoming harvest.

Early in the morning, Katsuguro carefully placed a jar of white sugar on the cushion of the oxcart and weighed it down slightly with a flour sack to prevent it from rolling off when the oxcart moved.

The shoulders under that coarse cloth jacket were a whole size wider than they had been four years ago. His once thin and bony chest was now thick and strong. His tanned face no longer showed the timidity of yesteryear. Only the faint scar at the corner of his eye remained a trace of his time in Nagasaki.

He affectionately patted "Big Black," the gentle ox beside him, which he had borrowed from a neighbor, intending to take his wife and daughter to visit his sister who had just given birth.

"Ayumi, are you ready?" Katsuguro called into the house in broken Chinese.

His wife, A-Yue, came out of the wooden house, holding their ten-month-old daughter, Xiao-Hua, in her arms.

He had acquired this gentle Chinuk woman last year in exchange for a bag of flour and three pounds of pork from her parents. Although they couldn't communicate verbally, they had developed a unique way of communicating through their daily interactions.

A-Yue was wearing a Han-style dress specially made for her by Katsugoro, with her long, shiny black braid hanging down her shoulders and her bright eyes filled with laughter.

“…Okay.” A-Yue replied in Chinese, which she had only recently learned, and carefully held her daughter in her arms.

The child, with wide, round eyes, curiously observed the ox in front of him, reaching out his little hand to try and touch it, but his mother laughed and grabbed his hand back.

"Then let's go." Katsuguro nodded in satisfaction, pinched his daughter's little cheek, and then, holding the cow's rope, slowly walked towards his sister's house in the neighboring village.

Neat rows of fields line both sides of the road, with lush green corn seedlings already half a person tall, wheat fields beginning to turn yellow, and potato fields dotted with white flowers.

In the distance, wisps of smoke rose from the chimneys of several houses, mingling with the morning mist.

"Yes, this year is going to be another good year!" Katsuguro said with a look of satisfaction and anticipation.

Four years ago, when he set foot on this land with his younger sister Sayoko, did he ever imagine that he would have the peace and fulfillment he has now?
During his four years of service in land reclamation, he did all sorts of hard and tiring work, including logging, clearing land, and building canals.

Despite the hardship, his body grew stronger day by day because he could eat his fill every day.

When the reclamation period ended last year, the government indeed granted him the land title for forty acres of fertile land as promised, and also allocated an old wooden house.

What moved him even more was that the township proactively offered him a loan from the rural credit cooperative, enabling him to purchase necessary agricultural supplies and seeds.

The village's agricultural affairs officer also explained to him the benefits of planting various crops.

“Wulang, your land is close to the water source, so it’s suitable for growing wheat,” the agricultural official said, pointing to his plot. “The land north of the valley is more suitable for growing barley. The county has built a brewery there, so you can make a lot of money from it. In addition, diversifying your planting can also reduce the risk a bit.”

This feeling of being treated like a human being by the government was something Katsuguro had never experienced while in Japan.

There, farmers were merely objects of trampling by samurai lords, and had no voice whatsoever.

The oxcart creaked along, and about an hour later they arrived at a neat farmhouse in a neighboring village.

This is the home of the younger sister, Sayoko. Her husband, Li Dagu, was an immigrant recruited from Shandong five years ago, arriving in Xinzhou a year earlier than Kasuguro.

From afar, Katsuguro saw his brother-in-law, Li Dagu, standing in the yard chopping wood. When the axe fell, wood chips flew everywhere, but not a single one splashed onto the baby in the cradle next to him.

Upon seeing Katsuo Roshi driving the oxcart, Li Dagu paused for a moment, then straightened up, wiped his sweat, and shouted gruffly, "Goro's here! Come inside quickly, your sister is making chicken soup, we'll all have some meat for lunch!"

Hearing the noise, the door creaked open, and Sayoko ran out with a happy expression.

"Brother!" Sayoko exclaimed joyfully, her Chinese already quite fluent.

Although she is still petite, her complexion is rosy and healthy, no longer the thin and pitiful little girl she once was.

"Brother, look at my baby!" Sayoko took the baby out of the cradle and proudly handed him to Katsuguro. "Look, this baby will be a month old in a few days. Otani says he looks like me!"

Katsuguro carefully took his nephew. When his fingertips touched the child's warm cheek, he suddenly remembered that four years ago on the immigration ship, Sayoko timidly clutched his clothes, her eyes full of panic and fear.

Back then, he was always afraid that he wouldn't be able to protect his sister. Now, seeing his sister safe and happy, his eyes suddenly welled up with tears.

Now my deceased parents can rest in peace.

Li Dagu watched from the side with a simple and honest expression, rubbed his hands together, and said to his wife, "You take Brother Wulang and Sister Ayue inside to sit down first. I'll go to the village's supply and marketing cooperative to buy a pot of wine on credit."

Without waiting for a response from the crowd, he strode towards the village.

Sayoko warmly welcomed her brother and sister-in-law into the house. The room was simply furnished but clean, with strings of dried chili peppers and corn cobs hanging on the mud walls, and a tablecloth that Sayoko had embroidered herself covering the wooden table.

Katsuguro placed the gifts he brought on the table one by one: three feet of cotton cloth, half a bag of freshly ground wheat flour, a jar of white sugar, and two catties of pork.

A-Yue followed behind, took out a small purse made of animal hide from her bosom and handed it to Xiao Yezi. Inside were a few pretty pebbles, which she had specially prepared for her baby who was less than a month old.

Sayoko took Xiaohua from Yue's arms and teased her affectionately, saying, "Xiaohua is getting prettier and prettier. Her eyes are like her mother's, big and bright." As she spoke, she scooped a piece of sugar from the sugar jar and fed it to the child.

Lunch was very plentiful: braised fish, corn tortillas, stewed game with potatoes, several plates of seasonal vegetables, a large pot of delicious chicken soup, and a pot of local wine.

The men drank and ate heartily, while the women held their children and spoke softly to each other. They sat together, enjoying a harmonious and joyful atmosphere.

Katsuguro drank two bowls of sake, and as the alcohol took effect, he vaguely recalled how arrogant samurai lords in Japan used to wear long swords and straw sandals, and how they would drink freely from sake jugs, displaying their unrestrained and flamboyant manner.

They would walk along the dusty village paths with their eyes fixed straight ahead. If any civilian accidentally bumped into them or couldn't avoid them, they would draw their swords, cut the person to the ground, and then walk away as if nothing had happened.

“Heh, back then, we…” Katsuguro’s voice trembled slightly, and the sake bowl in his hand shook a little. “It was a sin to even look at the face of a samurai. Their swords could be drawn at any time, and our lives were not even worth as much as a weed on the edge of a field.”

His gaze passed over the window and landed on the newly planted apple tree in the courtyard, where moonlight streamed through the branches and leaves.

“But here…” He took a deep breath, a warm glow gradually spreading across his face, “no one dares to trample on our lives, and no one dares to bully us. We are so lucky in this life!”

“Yes, we poor people get bullied everywhere.” Li Dagu gulped down the wine in his bowl and picked up half a dried fish with his chopsticks. “Moreover, we can’t get enough to eat, and there’s nowhere to keep warm in the winter. One of my sisters died at home from the cold and hunger in the winter. Hehe, only when we came to Xinhua did we finally live like real people!”

"Come on, bottoms up!" Katsuguro raised his wine bowl and clinked it against Li Dagu's. "From now on, our lives will get better and better, and we will have more and more children. They will no longer go hungry or suffer from the cold."

"Cheers!" Li Dagu downed the rest of the wine in his bowl in one gulp.

"The wheat is growing well this year. I estimate that it can yield more than two bushels per mu." Li Dagu picked up the wine pot and poured another bowl for Sheng Wulang, his face showing some excitement. "Your sister and I are discussing that after the summer harvest, we'll exchange some money to buy two more sheep. In the winter off-season, we'll build a sheep pen. We can sell some wool every year."

"Buy sheep?" Katsuguro's chopsticks stopped. "Brother Otani, I heard that wool is hard to sell this year, and the price has dropped by several cents. Several sheep farmers in our village are complaining that wool merchants keep driving down the price, claiming that wool mills in the north are not buying wool anymore."

"Why?" Li Dagu looked at him in surprise. "I heard from the village clerk a few days ago that we are fighting with the Westerners, and we won't be buying wool from them for a while. So the price of wool from Xinhua will definitely go up later."

“Brother Otani, we’re fighting with the Westerners, so we can’t buy wool from them, but we also can’t sell them the wool fabrics produced in our factories!” Katsuguro said. “Think about it, if they can’t even sell the goods they produce, why would they need to buy so much wool?”

“Hiss…” Li Dagu was stunned. “You know what, it really makes sense! The village clerk said that those wool factories in the north can produce hundreds or even thousands of bolts of wool fabric every day. In a year, that’s… tens of thousands of bolts! There are too few of us in Xinhua. Even if each person buys a few bolts, we still can’t buy up all the wool fabric in the factories. If this stuff can’t be sold, there’s really no need to continue buying wool. We might even have to close down for quite a while.”

"Yes, this war will have a significant impact on Xinhua," Katsugoro nodded and said. "If the war drags on, I don't know if it will harm our people."

"Probably not?" Li Dagu thought for a moment and said confidently, "The Western Barbarians are still far away from our Ziwu River Special District, we definitely won't let them come knocking on our door."

"I hope so!" He and his sister had experienced the Shimabara Rebellion and knew how terrible war was.

If the Spanish attack...

All this beauty will be shattered in an instant.

“However, I’ve noticed that many things in town have gone up in price.” Li Dagu held his wine bowl, looked at the wine inside, and said with a wry smile, “I remember last year, a pot of wine was only three cents, but now it’s three cents and eight cents. Other drinks, like spirits and beer, have also gone up quite a bit, and even many farm tools have increased in price a little.”

Katsuguro frowned: "It's not just alcohol and farm tools; other things like cotton cloth, sugar, and leather goods have also gone up in price. I guess it's because of the war with the Westerners."

Two months ago, the Republic of New South Wales officially declared war on Spain, and its army marched south to attack Spanish territories in the Americas.

Although the war is thousands of miles away, its effects have already begun to reach the Qiongjiang River Valley, which is far in the rear.

Sayoko held the child and patted him gently, her face filled with worry: "Can we defeat the Western Barbarians?"

Li Dagu gulped down the wine in his bowl: "How could we not defeat the Western barbarians? Ten years ago, Xinhua defeated them. There's no reason why we could lose to them again after all these years!"

“A few days ago, the village clerk read us the imperial court’s report of victory. The government army has captured several cities of the Western Barbarians, and our gunboats have blocked the Western Barbarians at their doorsteps, preventing them from coming out.”

"Our village's militia captain, Lao Ding, used to fight the Westerners. He said they were terribly weak; a few volleys of gunfire were enough to wipe them out. He also said that the Westerners' soldiers weren't as strong as our militia; we could take them down in a face-to-face fight!"

Sayoko felt slightly relieved after hearing this, but still had some worries: "But prices are constantly rising. If the war drags on, won't things get even harder?"

Katsuguro pondered for a moment and said, "There will definitely be famine during this war. I think we should prepare early and store more food. Just in case... just in case something happens, we can manage for a while."

Li Dagu listened but didn't take it seriously: "What if? The government has said that the Western barbarians are nothing to worry about. After a few victories, they will naturally admit defeat and submit to us in Xinhua. Besides, we harvest so much grain every year, how could we lack food, let alone stockpile some?"

"But I'm afraid..." Sayoko held the baby in her arms tightly.

"What's there to be afraid of?" Li Dagu patted his chest and raised his voice slightly. "Our Xinhua army is in front of us, and we men are protecting us from behind. We will never let the Western barbarians ruin this good life!"

"We've worked so hard to clear land, farm, build houses, have children, and have enjoyed a good life for only a few years. If anyone tries to take all of this away, I'll be the first to object! We participate in militia training every year during the off-season, isn't it all to protect all of this?"

Infected by his brother-in-law's emotions, Katsuguro also boldly gulped down the wine in his bowl: "Brother Otani is right. Although I, Goro, am not a samurai, I still have some spirit. For our family, for our children, and even more so for this hard-won good life, I, Goro, will fight to the death with everyone!"
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(End of this chapter)