Republic of China Donkey Friends Travels No. 14: Mengzi, Qujing and Xuanwei Ham

Good book discoverer: Follow mr. Xue Zizhong, a scholar of the Republic of China, and look at the Republic of China in the eyes of ordinary teachers. The history of civilians is not the same perspective. Like please comment, follow, like, thank you! This article is excerpted from the "Travels of Qiandian River"

1. The special fat shortage of the governor of Yunnan County

Originally a deserted village in a mountain, after tin mining, it became more and more prosperous, and in the whole province of Yunnan, the city was prosperous, except for Kunming, there was no one who could stand out.

The territory is full of maundy mountains, the land is barren, the grain production is very small, and the rice is particularly scarce, so that the grain price is expensive, and the new Dian coin can only buy more than six catties of rice for one yuan. The price of vegetables is yuang, because it is mostly transported from hundreds of miles away.

The county town has no walls, in the valley, the climate is cold all year round, and cotton clothes are required on rainy days in summer and autumn. There is no precise statistics on the population of the county, that is, the population of the county town has not been determined due to the increase or decrease of the workers, but the population is very dense, and it is said that the population of the county town is about 50,000.

The county's ding grain is only more than 400 yuan per year, but the county magistrate is a special fertilizer shortage. In Yunnan, if there is "an old county magistrate in January, half a generation of food and clothing is not lacking; when an old county magistrate is a year, half a generation does not lack ocean money", the lack of fat can be known. The old county magistrate's method of getting rich is mostly due to the wrong teeth of the mine, and when the miners have disputes, disputes will be litigated, and the lawsuit is the opportunity for the county magistrate to get rich. If a miner opens a hole to find a good mine, and other miners dig another hole next to it to take it, if so, both parties must file a lawsuit, and when the county magistrate orders the hole to be sealed, both sides are not allowed to mine, so that both parties suffer losses, and both sides dispute to bribe the county magistrate, and the bribe is awarded to him, if both parties bribe more silver, it is judged to be an equal point hole, if both parties do not bribe silver, the hole is never opened. For every case in such a lawsuit, the county magistrate can make tens of thousands of dollars. Therefore, the term of office of the old county magistrate is also very short, ordinary mostly one year, because this special fat shortage can not allow one person to enjoy for a long time, and the income of the county magistrate for one year can already make lifelong food and clothing worry-

Second, the Self-Realization in Decline

On the seventh day, he returned to Kunming from the old one, because Mongolia was a famous city in southern Yunnan, so he got off at this place.

I remember that when I read geography before, there was "Mongolia is the first commercial port in Yunnan, and trade with France is very prosperous." The imaginary Mengzi is a modernized city, at least the bustling market of Khotan. To its land is a big disappointment, modernization can not be talked about at all, that is, the hustle and bustle can not be said, from the station to the city's stone paved path, the traffic is sparse a few people, the station is empty, the city is even more neglected pitiful, the hotel inn halfway street is unable to find a home, the so-called most prosperous Ximen inside and outside, can only be said to be similar to the northern ordinary county market. It is said that thirty years ago, the original prosperity was very prosperous, and there were many legal persons living in expatriates at that time, but recently due to the decline of the market, the legal merchants who lived in expatriates also went. So far, although there is still a French consulate outside the South Gate, the consul has gone early, only one Annan person acts as a consul, and there are only a few French and Annan people, most of which are of the nature of the janitor. There are two reasons for Chamon's decline: first, after the establishment of an old county, tin merchants have moved to this place, and the market has been neglected. Second, before the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway was opened to traffic, most of the foreign goods imported from Annam were transferred by land through Mongolia, and since the opening of the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway, the railway passed through the mountains more than ten miles east of the city, and all the goods did not pass through Mongolia, and the market declined.

Former Xinjiang governor Yang Zengxin is a Mongolian self-government, so although Mongolia and Xinjiang are far apart, there are many Mongolian officials in Xinjiang. After Yang Zengxin's death, these Mongol officials became disaster officials, wandering on the ground in the northwest, all of whom wanted to return.

Talk to college students about railways

On the Dianyue car returning to Kunming from Bise Village, there were six or seven students from the engineering college of a certain university in the same car, who were sent to Shiping to practice railway engineering in the summer of this year. When I visited the tin company in an old school, I met again, and I said goodbye in the car, that is, acquaintances, and each other's seats were close, so everyone talked. After asking each other "honorific surname, daimyo, and nobility," a college student asked me, "Is there a railway in Henan?" I replied, "There are many more railways in Henan than in Yunnan." There is only one railway in Yunnan and three railways in Henan. Then he asked, "Which country built those railways?" I explained to him: "Pinghan, Daoqing, and Longhai are all state-owned railways, and the equipment is much better than that of The Dianyue Road." This college student probably knew that Chinese would build his own railway, but he frequently nodded. At that time, because of the malaria attack, I took several quinine pills, was deaf and dizzy, and did not want to talk to people more, otherwise I might be able to talk to them more!

Fourth, risk taking the East Road

From Dian to Sichuan, there are two roads to go: one is to Yibin via Zhaotong Yanjin, and the other is to Luxian via Weining Bijie. The former is called Xida road, the latter is called Dongda road, and both roads are twenty-four stations. However, in the past few years, the people who have entered the river from Dian have all taken the West Road, and the East Road has been blocked by bandits for a long time. When we did not get off in Kunming, we hesitated repeatedly, thinking that taking the West Road, although it is safe, but everything on the road is relatively flat, although taking the East Road to take some risks, we must be able to see many things that we can't see on the traffic line, and what are the bandits afraid of him? There is no money, a few clothes, a camera, give him whatever he wants, and no matter how fierce the bandit is, he will never kill anyone when he sees him. The final decision was to take the risk of taking the East Road.

Yunnan long-distance buses, in terms of management and business, seem to be a little poor, the Highway Bureau only manages to adopt road fees, who pays the road maintenance fees, who can drive cars. On a road of less than three hundred kilometers, there are cars from more than a dozen companies, with different prices and no definite time for driving. As for the road maintenance, no one is responsible for this, it is raining, everyone waits for the sunny road to dry before driving, the bridge is broken, and everyone waits for the Highway Bureau to repair it. So the long-distance bus in Yunnan, people call it a pendulum (Dian language malaria) car.

The road from Kunming to Qujing was destroyed by water and has not been opened to traffic for a long time. The day before we set off, we saw a sign in front of Hengtong Automobile Company that read, "Tomorrow there will be a car to open Qujing", but asked the company whether its car could go directly to Qujing, and a staff member of the company replied that "I am not sure, walk and see". It seems a bit of a joke.

Five, Malone's night

He left Kunming on August 12.

When it was getting dark, we left the hotel and went to Hengtong Automobile Company, because the car that was difficult to arrive was only afraid of delay. But after arriving at the car company, the car got off the car and waited for almost three hours before the car officially started. The car was full of telegraph materials, there were only six or seven passengers, the initial road was still flat, about eighty miles to the vicinity of Yanglin, a bridge was washed off by water, the car detoured to Tanaka, stuck in the mud, and had to be dragged out after several twists and turns. Three or four times in the mud, once on the white mud slope in Malone, the wheels were trapped in the mud, which took up to four hours, gathered more than twenty villagers, and began to drag out at dusk, arriving at Malone at nine o'clock in the night.

In the same store, there is Zhong Hanqijun, an engineer of the Construction Department, Zhong Junxiang, a new person, who is the nephew of Zhong Xizhujun, the assistant of an old tin company, and the Japanese department is from Qujing, and on the way, because the car has repeatedly sunk in the mud, it is only a few tens of miles a day to stay here. When we first entered the store, the owner first asked about the place of origin, we told him that we were from Henan, the clock jun was by the side, misheard as Hunan, but rushed to us and asked: "Are the gentlemen from Hunan?" We explained to him: "It's Henan, not Hunan." Zhong Jun smiled: "Whether it is Henan or Hunan, they are all hometowns, I have been in Yunnan for more than four years, I have never met a hometown person, as long as people come from the east, I regard them as fellow villagers." "Extraterrestrial expressions of affection.

Zhong Junren was quite frank and his conversation was very straightforward, and he came from Xuanwei through Qujing, so he asked him about the situation on the way from Xuanwei to Bijie. Zhong Jun said, "This road has been deserted for a long time, and bandits are everywhere." I said to him: "Those of us who have traveled a long distance, the word bandit has long been ignored, all a little simple luggage, the bandit loves to want anything, you can let him take it." Zhong Junlian shook his head and said, "This is not enough, these bandits are not comparable to bandits in the interior, they cannot be understood at all, he does not rob things and does not kill people, he must kill people first, and kill people in the deep valley, so that the official hall will never be able to detect." After listening to Zhong Jun's words, I couldn't help but feel a little chill in my heart, but since I arrived here, there was no reason to return to the middle of the way. After asking Zhong Jun about the same topic of food on the way, Zhong Jun told him that everything must be brought by himself, otherwise he will not be allowed to eat all day long. Zhong Jun continued: "The people of the two provinces of Yunnan and Qianqian are very afraid of public servants, and they are particularly afraid of the military and police; Jun and others are dressed quite like military police, and they are also like public servants, and everything on the way must show some prestige, and everything must be a little arbitrary, otherwise food and accommodation will be very difficult, and it will be even more problematic to find footmen and guides." Zhong Jun's words should be empirical, but how can we adopt this method?

Sixth, qujing's dark politics

On the thirteenth day, ma long traveled east, and on the way, the car fell into the mud many times, and arrived in Qujing at more than ten o'clock. From Kunming, the journey was three hundred and fifty miles, and it was as long as two days.

Qujing was originally a government and an important town in eastern Yunnan, but the land in the territory was barren and the property was not abundant. The walls of the county town are still good, and the residents of the city are also dense, but the streets are paved with stones, rugged and narrow. The market is quite cold, the shops are all small business, it seems that there are no capitals of more than a thousand yuan. All the organs in the city, except for the county government, are now causing food panic because they have no funds. Education, there is a provincial middle school, most of the students come from the counties of eastern Yunnan. The county's education funds are only 2,000 yuan per year, and the United Nations currency is only more than 1,000 yuan, which is really pitiful. The monthly salary of the education secretary is less than ten yuan in national currency, and the salary of primary school teachers is only seven or eight yuan per month, and this amount cannot be received on schedule. The police of the Public Security Bureau were even poorer, and their clothes were torn to reveal flesh. The monthly salary of each police officer is nine yuan of the old Dian coin, and the United Nations coin is less than one yuan, and the food is also included. The police are part-time and have to call at their homes.

The population of all counties in Yunnan Province is sparse, but the area is very vast, and administratively each county is divided into more than seven or eight districts. The district chief is directly appointed by the county chief, who in turn can appoint the township mayor. Neither the district nor the township office has a fixed fund, and the funds are managed by the district and township chiefs themselves. However, the mayors of such districts and townships have a lot of people who are squeezing their scalps and scrambling to do it. During the term of office of the former county magistrate of Qujing, a district chief received a letter of appointment from the county chief, and the general exercise fee was required, but most of them were dismissed after three months. The county is divided into eight districts, the county chief appoints the district chief every three months, the district chief receives the letter of appointment, and can appoint a large number of township chiefs, and after a township chief is appointed by the district chief, he also has to pay sports fees, and each district is generally divided into ten townships, so that the district chief can profit about the cost. Of course, the mayor of the township is not a fool, and their capital and interest are naturally repaid by someone. This is not only the case in Qujing County, but also in the border counties of Qiandian and Yunnan. In places where transportation is more inconvenient, the more corrupt officials and local tycoons will be, and in china today, it is probably so certain.

Seven, Xuanwei's ham

On the fourteenth day, qujing went to Xuanwei, still took the hengtong company car, traveled thirty miles north to Zhanyi, the car stopped outside the north gate of the city for about an hour, and then got off the car and went into the city for a visit. The city of Zhanyi was snubbed abnormally, and it was heard that there were abundant coal and iron reserves in the territory, but it was not mined at all. After this northbound, the car was repeatedly stuck in the mud, and at about five o'clock in the afternoon, it arrived at the place of Songshaoguan South Yorishi, and the car was quite deep in the mud and could not be dragged out for a long time. When we were in Qujing in the morning, due to the rush to ride, each person at breakfast only ate a bowl of noodles, and at this point, we were hungry and went to Songshaoguan to forage for food. However, in a desolate village in the mountains, there is no food to buy, only one old woman has several pieces of dried tofu, and another woman has cooked taro and half a basket, all of which are self-eaten, but twenty pieces of copper yuan to buy five pieces of dried tofu, and half a basket of taro, and order the old woman to boil half a pot of boiling water, both eat and drink, although not hungry, but has been slightly better when hungry. At about seven o'clock, the car began to be dragged out of the mud, it was night, the rain was drizzling, the land was dark as paint, fortunately there were still electric lights on the car, but it had to continue to move forward. At about ten o'clock to a small river about five miles away from Xuanwei, the car was trapped in the mud, and the driver and the escort said that they could not drag the car out of the mud this evening, which was not far from Xuanwei, and the passengers were invited to get off the car and walk into the city. It rains and the road is slippery, and the darkness is not easy to see. Although the flashlight is frequently illuminated, it is inevitable that it will slip and fall repeatedly. At the south gate of Xuanwei, the defenders of the city are closing the city gates, and if they are a little late, there is no hope of entering the city.

Sherwin-Williams Ham

Xuanwei County has a population of 300,000, and the population in Yunnan Province is incapable of being superior except Baoshan County. However, the large population of Xuanwei is not dense, but because the area is too large. The county is full of mountains, and the soil is mostly purple-red, and the barrenness is abnormal. Agricultural products are mainly baogu, rice production is very small, and the rice produced in the whole county is only enough for the various organs in the city to eat. Xuanwei ham, famous, its preparation method is tied to the annual frost, salted pork legs in the jar, after years of removal. A few years ago, the people of the county were almost homeless in not picking ham, but recently because the price of salt is expensive and manipulated by merchants, the number of pickled ham has become unprofitable, so it is decreasing day by day. At present, there are three ham companies in the city, each with a capital of about 30,000 yuan, and most of its hams are not self-pickled, but are bought from the people, packed into cans, and sold elsewhere, with a total of 150,000 yuan of new Dian yuan (80,000 yuan of United States dollars) for export. When the author passed through Jinhua before, Jinhua ham was also eaten several times, and its taste seemed to be not as good as Xuan's leg, and the price was relatively high, but Jinhua's old county belonged to several counties, and the annual export of ham in each county was more than half a million yuan, and Xuan's leg was only the number of this district, and there was no other, status and traffic.

VIII. The people shall not file a complaint for unjust death

None of the organs of Xuanwei have fixed funds, and their sources of funds are apportioned to the people in the name of "donations from rich households". However, the so-called donation of rich households is not standard, for example, a certain amount of apportionment in a certain district is distributed by the district office to the township to which it belongs, and the township mayor designates a person as a rich household, and he must regularly serve as a rich household to donate. There are many people who have been referred to as rich households by the mayor of the township, but those who have donated to the rich households have not even tasted salt for three or five months. The ordinary people of Yunnan Province really have the spirit of unjustly dying and not filing a complaint, and they especially dare not make a sound about the fish and flesh of the township mayor, because if they oppose it or file a complaint of injustice, there will certainly be no good results.

Since the return of the Republic of China, the name of the Toastmaster of Yunnan Province has been abolished, but its authority still exists. In the northeast of Xuanwei and the borders of Qianzhi Weining, Shuicheng, and Dading, there are Anjia and Lujia, both of which were Yi people in that year, whose jurisdiction spanned two provinces, and whose tusi yamen still existed, and the people in their territory still had to pay land taxes to them, and when they met, they had to kowtow to them, and their families had to do things such as marriage and funeral or the construction of civil engineering, and the people had to do their due diligence, and they still had the right to kill and kill the people. Over the years, the government has never interfered with it because of its remote location, only hoping that it can rule the people in its territory and have peace with the government and the Han chinese.