Chapter 811 China's Good Times (Part 1)

In April, the wheat fields near harvest on the Huanghuai Plain are like a golden sea, and the waves of wheat swaying with the wind are the waves of the sea.

This area has been an important grain-producing area in China since ancient times, and it is still one of the largest grain-producing areas in the country.

So much so that when outsiders mention the Central Plains and Anhui Province, the first reaction is that they are important agricultural areas, so that the achievements made by the two provinces in recent years in the development of industry, animal husbandry, etc. have been buried in the sea of ​​wheat.

The Second Sino-Russian War has been going on for a whole year, but the impact of this war on China seems to exist only in newspaper propaganda. Whether it is industry, commerce, or agriculture, it seems that there is no impact at all.

At least those foreigners who make a living in China and do business in China have not felt the slightest impact.

Two hundred thousand troops fought on the battlefield. Such a large-scale war would surely be of concern to the whole country in Europe and affect the lives of thousands of people. However, in China, this war did not even cause fluctuations in domestic grain prices.

The war situation in the northeast was supported by the northeast, which had been developed for ten years, and the war situation in the northwest was supported by Xinjiang, which had been developed for so many years.

All food, clothing, shoes, medicine, cooking oil, meat, ammunition, and livestock were solved locally.

The traditional Han area could not feel it at all.

For many European countries, 200,000 people are much more than their standing army, but for China, for the latter's standing army of one million, this is just a local war.

The northeast and northwest were originally the key defense areas of the Chinese, and they were stationed with heavy troops. The total force of the local military district was far more than 200,000.

Even the Chinese themselves could not feel the "impact" of this war on their lives, so how could foreigners feel it?

Bankou Town, under Huaining County, the seat of Chenzhou Prefecture.

A thriving town, it is the only way to Zhoujiakou and Huaining, the capital of Chenzhou Prefecture.

Since the Ming and Qing Dynasties, this small town has been rising and falling with Zhoujiakou, taking Zhoujiakou as a weather indicator.

History has been changed, and sea transportation is replacing river transportation as the main channel for the transportation of materials between the north and the south of China, but this is a "great cause" that takes a long time to complete, and it has not yet been completely "changed".

The unblocked waterway of the Jialu River has made Zhoujiakou an important commodity distribution center connecting Jianghuai in the south and Shanxi and Shaanxi in the north. In the past two hundred years, Zhoujiakou has prospered because of this, and it is still prosperous now.

The one who is close to the water gets the moon first, and Bankou, which is next to Zhoujiakou, still lives a delicious life.

The public carriage drove slowly and stopped at the bus station outside the east gate of Bankou. The so-called bus station is actually a large yard with a seven-foot-high wall outside, with haystacks and a well inside. There is a garage in the yard. The two rooms on the west end have large "doors" on the south side, which can accommodate four cars. Among the remaining three tiled houses, one is a storage room for fine materials for horses, one is a storage room for various parts and repair tools for carriages, and there are three beds. The last one is an office, which is also the residence of the staff on duty.

There are six people in the entire bus station, including the stationmaster of the supervisory accountant.

"Lao Liu, don't go. I can't let you go today no matter what." Liang Guangliang grabbed the arm of Liu Lei, a technician at the town's agricultural and animal husbandry station, and kept shouting: "It's noon, let's go to eat first. If you want to leave, you have to finish your meal before leaving."

Liang Guangliang is the stationmaster of the bus station, but he also has another identity as a farmer. Even though his family's land has been sown with alfalfa, he also found his comrades to raise funds to start a cattle farm. His family can also be considered a farmer.

Because none of his three sons were good at studying, and the youngest son, who had the highest level of education, failed to get into high school, he was unwilling to let his sons join the army or work in the factory. Liang Guangliang himself came from the battlefield. He was a poor man back then. It was the war that made the Liang family, which was originally penniless, have such a small fortune now. He was reluctant to let his children suffer.

The sons had no education, and they had to work hard wherever they went.

There was a Huayao company in Bankou, with a large output value. Its subordinates included machinery manufacturing, ironware manufacturing, and leather. The workers' wages were not low, but the management was very strict, and they suffered a lot in the factory. The most important thing was that the power structure of this company was simple. In addition to the managers and deputy managers of the three branches, the workshop directors and chief engineers in charge of production were below them. The chief engineer did not even have a deputy. Below them were technical backbones, that is, the masters you just entered - the team leaders, and then the most basic workers. Even if you work there for ten years, unless the masters above you retire or something happens, you will not be able to move your position.

Therefore, Liang Guangliang's three sons are all in their own cattle farm, one is in charge of the overall work, one is in charge of logistics, and the other goes to various places to sell.

Although Liang Guangliang is clinging to his position as the bus station manager, the cattle farm is the foundation of the Liang family, and the shares here are the main capital of the Liang family.

Liang Guangliang usually flatters the technicians of the agricultural and animal husbandry station. Because breeding is something that cannot be done for a long time without technical support. Although Guangliang's cattle farm has not had a major epidemic, there are more farms across the country, and there are more and more cases of bankruptcy due to the epidemic, which are often seen in newspapers.

The cattle farm needs the agricultural and animal husbandry station!

During festivals, Liang Guangliang and the shareholder representatives of the cattle farm would prepare a generous gift to reward the agricultural and animal husbandry station.

Of course, all of this is within the scope of the law, and is the gratitude of the people to the comrades of the agricultural and animal husbandry station, and it is definitely not enough to commit bribery.

Liu Lei was hungry at the moment, so he did not refuse and walked to the restaurant outside with Liang Guangliang. He is the deputy director of the agricultural and animal husbandry station and the first person to move the animal husbandry major of the agricultural and animal husbandry station.

Liu Lei was not polite to Liang Guangliang, just a simple meal. He helped Liang Guangliang a lot. If it were twenty years ago, Liang Guangliang would not take the initiative to deliver the silver to the door, that would be Liang Guangliang himself.

Liu Lei had just applied for two European breeding cattle from the upper level, the Simmental cattle originating from the Alps in western Switzerland. The main production areas of this cattle are the Simmental Plain and the Saanen Plain. It is a large and excellent dairy, meat and draft breed. In other words, this kind of cattle not only has a high milk production, but also has meat production performance that is not inferior to that of specialized beef cattle breeds, and its working performance is also very good. It is simply a perfect cattle breed.

Eight years ago, this kind of cattle was introduced from Europe to China, and was first raised in Shandong to improve the local yellow cattle in my country. The effect was very obvious, and the production performance of the hybrid generation can generally be improved by more than 30%.

Then this kind of cattle began to be introduced on a large scale from Sweden as breeding cattle, and improvement experiments were carried out in different breeding farms such as grasslands, mountains and plains, and the results were generally good.

So in just a few years, the distribution of Simmental cattle has spread all over the country, from the forest grasslands and Horqin grasslands in the northeast to the Nanling Mountains and its mountainous areas in the south to the vast grasslands and Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in Xinjiang in the west.

However, the result is that the number of breeding cattle in various places is limited.

The cabinet can only ensure that the number of breeding cattle in the two major breeding bases in Luxi and Nanyang is not too small, and as for the others, they can only be let go, rain and dew are evenly distributed.

The agricultural and animal husbandry station in Bankou has applied to the higher authorities for four years, and only two breeding cows have been allocated so far.

The cattle farm run by Liang Guangliang is the largest farm in the entire Bankou town, and it is also one of the few cattle farms. Zhoujiakou started out by relying on the cattle market, and there is a tradition of raising cattle in the local area. The "seed base" for these two breeding cows is the Liang family's cattle farm.

Not far west of the bus station is the security office at the east gate of Bankou. There is a policeman standing in the small pavilion outside the security office. This is Chen Han's policy requirement that there must be someone on duty in the security office at all times. However, the policeman's demeanor is lazy. Everyone is eating, and he is standing guard here alone. It is really boring.

After passing the security office, you will enter the commercial area of ​​Bankou Town.

The so-called commercial area is just that. It is definitely not comparable to Huaining and Zhoujiakou, but it is still prosperous compared to ordinary towns. Department stores, grocery stores, grain and oil stores, clothing stores, cloth stores, tobacco and alcohol stores, and restaurants are crowded with people at mealtime.

Liu Lei and Liang Guangliang walked one after the other. The ground was a concrete pavement. It has been several years, but it looks smooth.

There are many kinds of goods in the shops along the street, from large farm tools and carriages to small needles and thread, from production tools to daily consumer goods, almost everything is available. The supply in the fruit store is not inferior. From the south and the west, mangoes, durian, wax apples, loquats, raisins, dates, dried chestnuts, and many things that northerners have never seen appeared on the stalls. There are also people buying cooked food. Liang Guangliang bought two sausages on the stall, cut half a salted duck, and also bought tofu skin and peanuts.

Liu Lei did not stop them. He enjoyed it with peace of mind. If the two breeding cows were to end up at the Liang family's cattle farm, regardless of whether the future benefits would be good or bad, it would be a good advertisement for the Liang family's cattle farm.

And the effect of Simmental cattle is really good, which is a fact that can be seen with the naked eye. The birth weight of the first generation of Western hybrid cattle is 60 jin, while that of local cattle is only 45 jin, which is one-third shorter.

The average daily weight gain of hybrid cattle at 6 months old is 1.2 jin, and 18 months old is 1 jin, while that of local cattle is 8 liang and a little less than 7 liang;

The weight of hybrid cattle at 6 months old and 18 months old is 300 jin and 650 jin respectively, while that of local cattle is less than 200 jin and 430 jin respectively. This gap is huge!

——Chen Han has now officially abolished the original 16 liang system and changed it to the 10 liang system that Chen Ming is more adapted to. The weight of one Chinese jin is not much different from the original weight, which is 600 grams, which is slightly larger.

The two walked a little further, and then there were several small private restaurants on both sides of the road. Liang Guangliang took Liu Lei into a newly opened store. To be honest, this store is not big, with only seven or eight tables. It was lunchtime and the store was full of people. But when the owner saw that Liang Guangliang was here, he immediately cleared a table in the bedroom in the inner room.

Why? Because his beef soup restaurant, which was named after Luoyang, got its beef from the Liang family's cattle farm.

"Boss, two bowls of beef vermicelli soup, a plate of braised beef, and two side dishes." Liang Guangliang shouted. The cooked food he sold on the street had long been thrown to the boss, who put it on a plate and served it together.

"When drinking beef soup, you have to put chili in it. There is enough chili in the soup, and the taste is really tempting. This boss is really good at cooking beef soup."

This is Liu Lei's first time here, because he had gone to the prefectural agriculture and animal husbandry bureau to ask for cattle before. This shop was just opened during his time away from the city. After taking a small sip, I immediately felt the rich aroma, the self-stickiness without starch, and the thickness. It tasted really good. He knew that Luoyang had a lot of soups, and the locals often said: "A bowl of Luoyang soup in the morning is worth more than a god."

"Where is this boss from? His accent doesn't sound like Luoyang."

Liang Guangliang laughed, "He is not from Luoyang. He just moved here."

"When he joined the army, I brought him into the army."

"But this kid is a coward. He didn't become a soldier, but a fireman. I don't know who he learned this skill of making soup from. I have been discharged for six years."

"He was discharged the year before last. He had opened a store in Kulun, but the war scared him again. He packed up his belongings and ran back with his wife and children..."

Liu Lei looked strange. He turned around and looked at the busy figure of the store owner. No matter how he looked at him, he didn't look like a soldier at all. "Could he be a soldier?"

...

In such a big country like China, the people who are busy in April and May are not only farmers and herdsmen, but also surfers on the sea.

After years of operation, Beihai Company has deeply engraved the high-end impression of its brand in the hearts of countless Chinese people. As the floating ice in the sea melts and the weather warms up, the hunting operations in the North Pacific fishing grounds have become active again. In such a large sea area south of Kamchatka, the Kuril Islands and the Aleutian Islands, west to the waters off Japan, and east to the waters off North America, whaling ships are setting sail.

On the small islands in the North Pacific, the simple whale processing factory is once again emitting black smoke and boiling a foul smell.

At the inner harbor pier of Oha Port, a Chinese-style whaling ship slowly raised its sails and prepared to sail to the open sea. This ship is the most common whaling ship in China now, with a tonnage of more than 500 tons and four sampans hanging outside, which can drift on the sea for years.

The deck of the ship is wide and clean, and the sailors can pull the hunted whales onto the deck for processing, such as cutting whale blubber, skinning, etc. Under the deck is a miniature oil refining workshop. In order to process the captured whale oil in time, a steam oil refining furnace is installed in the workshop so that the most valuable oil part of the whale can be extracted at the first time. However, due to the small internal space of the cabin, the processing capacity on board is still relatively limited. But if a whale only takes the most valuable part and discards a large amount of whale meat, then such a ship is enough.

Such a ship is also loaded with a certain amount of fuel, drinking water, whaling equipment, barrels, food, medicine and self-defense artillery.

Its standard displacement has reached 500 tons, and its full load displacement is nearly 700 tons. There is not much crew needed. Chinese sailing ships are not fast enough, but they are easy to operate.

More and more people in China have used whale oil. In addition to lighting, making candles, and acting as lubricants for machinery, the role of whale skin and bones is needless to say. If a sperm whale is shot, it is likely to find ambergris. At this time, the elastic whalebone was used as plastic. The popular women's corsets were made of whalebone, and the demand was very high.

Nowadays, whalebone has become a hot commodity among China's exports to the West. This thing is not very useful in China. It can also be used for carving, but almost no Chinese people like it.