King Kong asked the children and learned about the orphans.
The burning yard turned out to be the home of the children. The father died young and the family lived by renting out a few rooms in the yard. Unfortunately, a fire two and a half years ago turned the yard into a bare ground. My mother was injured while fighting the fire and soon died of exhaustion. With the help of the neighbors and the support of the "tenants" in the yard, the elder sisters managed to survive.
The tenants were also orphans and vagrants. The eldest among them was a boy named Liu Dalong, who was sixteen or seventeen years old and stammered, so he seldom spoke. He has a younger sister and a younger brother. The younger sister is called "Xiao Cui", who is thirteen years old. She also speaks very little and looks like a false mute. The younger brother, Xiaolong, is ten years old. He talks a lot, asks and says everything, and tells the family of three. He is nicknamed "Bagge", which means like a bird called a bagge, not the elder brother.
Dalong is not good at speaking but good at mending. He used to go to school by the side when Ade repaired the car. On the street, there are often people repairing wooden barrels (Shouting, "Circle!" He would watch and learn from those who mended POTS, bowls and umbrellas whenever someone was working. He is now an apprentice in a blacksmith shop and earns one or two yuan a month to take home. He only gets one or two yuan a month, saying it's because the business at the shop is not good either, and the master, knowing how pitiful he is, takes care of him and gives him this money. He was the only one in the yard who had a place to eat and a salary.
King Kong thought Sun Yutian of the blacksmith shop should be called a bad boss. The three workers in the shop, including Dalong, did not call him boss; they called him master. He was exploited by the boss and didn't know it, and he was called "master" and "master" very affectionately!
But later, when King Kong took a closer look at the income and expenses of the shop, he found that after deducting the costs, including their meals of course, Master Sun only earned a dozen or twenty yuan a month. He really took in Dalong to take care of him, because there was less work now, and he and one senior apprentice were enough to do it, so many people were not needed.
Another "family" child, perhaps with the surname Wu or Hu, the child himself doesn't know exactly which one, because the two surnames sound similar in Shanghainese. No names are known, only nicknames. The older boy is called "Monk", and no age is known. He has a younger sister named "Sister" who is about twelve or thirteen, and a younger sister named "Sister Head" who is about eleven. Now the monk goes out every day to shine his shoes, while the younger sisters, along with other girls, go out every day to sell vegetables and do housework.
There is only one orphan who knows his surname and given name and can write by himself! The big boy is Li Hongru, fifteen years old, from the suburbs of Wenzhou. He has a thirteen-year-old sister named Li Sishi and an eleven-year-old brother named Li Siru. The family had some money before, but they were robbed by bandits two years ago and the adults were killed. After the three siblings survived the disaster, they wandered to Shanghai because they had a cousin, Li Jingru, who was studying at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. This cousin was adopted by their family and was considered a biological brother. They had gone through all kinds of hardships to beg for food to come to Shanghai, and this brother was no longer at Jiaotong University. He had joined the revolutionary army with a few classmates. Before leaving, he must have written to his family, but he didn't know that something had happened to them, and thus they missed each other.
Li Hongru has received education. King Kong evaluated him and found that his Chinese (especially ancient Chinese) is at the level of a primary school graduate. Only in arithmetic can he perform addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. He is at the level of a second or third grade of primary school? Now Li Hongru's main occupation is farming, and his father is a good farmer, so Li Hongru has learned a lot. The younger brother and A Ping are making money by selling newspapers.
Having adopted so many children, staying in a hotel is no longer feasible. King Kong wouldn't agree to let the children stay in the original shed. So King Kong went to the area where Amao lived to find a place to rent. There's an "upscale" yard for rent. Entering is the front yard, facing a two-story house. In the middle of the lower floor is a hall, with a room on each side of the hall; There are four rooms upstairs. Through the hall, you can reach the backyard, which has four woodsheds and a well. The downstairs rooms, like the hall, have stone floors, but the upstairs rooms have wooden floors. The homeowner is asking for two yuan a month for a room; The woodshed, which is muddy and small, costs only eight cents a month. The big girls wanted to rent two small woodsheds, and King Kong decided to rent half of the yard, at least three rooms.
Da Nan is very good at bargaining. When the landlord agreed to rent half of the yard at six and a half dollars a month, King Kong immediately paid. Afterwards, Da Nan felt that he was too hasty and the rent was too high. If he had negotiated again, it could have been a few cents cheaper. But King Kong thought it was cheaper than the hotel he was staying at now.
Half a yard, that is, one downstairs, two upstairs, plus two woodsheds. This yard became the new home for King Kong and a group of children.
A month later, King Kong was richer and asked Da Nan to rent the whole yard from the landlord. Da Nan really rented the other half of the yard for five and a half yuan a month.
The next morning, Wannan's fever went down. But to prevent the emergence of drug-resistant "superbugs," King Kong had Wannan take the medicine for three consecutive days. To enhance nutrition, King bought milk powder and gave it to Wannan and two other children who were about the same age.
On the third day, while the children were moving, Dr. Hans came in, but King Kong was working at a chemical plant and not at home. Hans examined the girl and confirmed that her pneumonia was gone. Hans was surprised that she had recovered so quickly.
Two nights later, when King returned home, he found Hans with two other foreigners. The two foreigners were the missionary of the Church of Little Teresa, Father Whited and his assistant. They got to know King Kong by hearing about it from Hans.
The priest praised King's act of adopting the children and brought seven or eight old clothes for them. Of course, they also took the opportunity to promote their doctrine. They asked Vajra to go to church whenever he had trouble and to take the children to church for worship.
The old clothes were collected by the Salvation Army and transported all the way from Europe to Shanghai. In another time and space, it would be foreign garbage discovered by customs and immediately burned, with a fine added. In fact, the clothes are worse than the foreign garbage: at least they are much older, and many of them have been patched up. But the big girls were happy to take them and discussed who could have this modified one given to and that one was still made of wool!
King Kong is not interested in the church, but is grateful for their good deeds. Father Peter was also quite friendly to King Kong, because nowadays in Zhabei, the Chinese people, except for a very few "foreigners" (the "ha" of "Korean" a few decades later is also the ha of a pug, and there was no such thing as "foreigners" in Shanghai at that time), mostly kept their distance from foreigners. There are very few people like King Kong who treat them as equals.
Hans was also a very kind foreigner. Although his clinic was a private one, he did not turn a blind eye to those who had no money. If it's a rich person, of course he charges; if it's a poor person, he owes them first. The clinic is located in Zhabei, where there are many poor people, so his clinic often runs at a loss and one of his former partners has long since quit. Now he can't even afford a nurse.
Fortunately, Hans has a good relationship with the church. He would have been unable to survive on his own money, and now he has to rely on the church for support.
Hans came to ask questions about the "precious native medicine", and he was very eager to learn and not ashamed to ask. Properties, effects, effects, sources? King Kong knew some of the previous questions, but when it came to the source, King Kong had to say that he got it from his master. He also wanted to make it, but the production conditions were very difficult. So it is very precious now.
Hans had known before that King Kong was very knowledgeable about lung "gongs" and such, and today when he heard King Kong talk about germs and the decomposition and excretion of medicine, it was completely like a Western doctor. But ask King Kong if he graduated from a medical school? Do you have a medical license? King Kong doesn't. King Kong is in engineering and technology.
Fortunately Hans knew that the local doctors in the Great China had no diploma, no license, and were passed down from master to apprentice. So this antibiotic whose origin cannot be identified is, of course, a kind of "traditional Chinese medicine and folk medicine". Chinese medicine and folk medicine are mysterious, and some are really hard to explain. It's not easy for King Kong to say so much, Hans didn't ask any more.
Hans thought, it seems that the Chinese medicine and folk remedies of the Great China sometimes have some effect.
Can production be stable? Can some be taken back for testing?
King Kong, of course, also hopes to produce antibiotics, but where does he have that right now? You don't need to test it to know the effect. This drug is so precious now, I'm really sorry, I don't want you to test it.
Later, King Kong also took the children to church once and found that the vast majority of these foreign missionaries were very contemptuous of the Chinese. They rejected the religion of China and only saw some bad habits in the lives of the Chinese, such as foot-binding, taking concubines, and drug abuse, but did not see the diligence and eagerness of the Chinese. They regarded the people of China as fools and savagery natives. They claim to be saviour, believing that only by completely giving up their cultural traditions and way of life and being completely Christianized, that is, "completely westernized", can the Great Chinese be saved.
These people think that King Kong must be a very Westernized person, "God's people". They are wrong. King Kong is from the 21st century. Although he is not averse to some Western things, he definitely does not think that China is going to be completely westernized. In terms of medicine, the medicine of China in the Middle Ages was far superior to that of the West. Even before penicillin came out now, Western medicine was only a little better in surgery, but not as good as traditional Chinese medicine in terms of anti-inflammatory drugs. Of course, in the following decades, Western medicine focused on extracting and synthesizing the active ingredients of drugs and gradually surpassed traditional Chinese medicine. Nevertheless, it still failed to completely replace traditional Chinese medicine.
Looking into the eyes of these foreigners and listening to their "teachings", King Kong felt even more that he should create some technological products for future generations to shatter their tinted glasses and boost the spirit of the great Chinese people.
After that, King Kong did not go to church. On the one hand, he was busy; on the other hand, he was afraid that the child would be influenced by foreign superstitions.
King Kong has to go to work, and the moving is mainly done by the children themselves. Fortunately, the new home is not far from the burning yard. And they had nothing to move except for a few tattered clothes or something.
The big girl got a room, two upstairs, one for the boy and one for the girl, and slept on the floor. Fortunately, it was a wooden floor. King Kong took a room downstairs by himself and made a bed for him with bricks and stones and planks placed on it. He raised his wooden box with bricks to make it a bedside table.
King Kong gave the money to the bargain girl to buy daily necessities. Quilts, clothes, kitchenware,... . They bought a coal stove. The kids used to burn the firewood they picked up, and to save money, they always drank raw water. This coal ball was only seen by King Kong in this time and space. It was not a round ball but a flat oval ball, like a peach pit that was twice as big. The big girl bought old clothes and quilts as much as possible to save money.
Leave the food expenses to the big girl as well. King Kong's rule: three meals a day, at least two dishes and one soup per meal, and at least two meat dishes a week, otherwise they would eat too sparingly. (Children feel happy to have two full meals a day!)
The big girls cooked their meals and waited for King Kong to go back and eat. According to the custom of the time, they would give the best food to King Kong, which is contrary to the custom of giving the best food to children in another time.
Vajra, of course, was not accustomed to this custom, and as a result, he did not eat, and neither did the children. Everyone ate very little food, and the good dishes were all left over. Finally, King Kong ordered the food to be divided equally among the number of people, and then he picked his own first. He always picked the least bowl first, so that the divider would distribute the dishes evenly. The children followed his example and gave way to each other.
When there are many children and they are about the same size, it's easy for King Kong to make mistakes. The names of the girls were not pleasant either, so King changed their nicknames. The boys were called "dragon" from age to age, and the girls were called "phoenix".
The big dragon is Liu Dalong, sixteen years old; Erlong is Li Hongru, fifteen years old; Three Dragons are the "monk" fourteen (fifteen?) ; Si Long is Wang A Ping, thirteen years old; Five dragons are Li Siru, twelve years old; The sixth was Liu Xiaolong, eleven years old, still called Xiaolong; So the youngest, Wang A Liang, is called "Mi Long", nine years old. In Shanghainese, "mi" means very small.
Da Nan means Da Feng, fifteen years old; The second feng is Liu Xiaocui, fourteen years old; Three is Li Sishi, thirteen years old, four is "Sister", twelve years old (thirteen?) ; Wufeng is "Meitou", nine years old; The youngest of the five girls is Xiaofeng, six years old.
People of this age are malnourished and look a little younger than their actual age.
Children don't even know their birthdays, and some are not even sure how old they are. So people of the same age probably have to queue up by height.
Li Hongru and his siblings were the last to move into the big girl's yard. After he moved in with his younger siblings, with their consent, he cleared a few plots of land of one or two square meters from the debris in the yard to grow crops. He also opened up a few square meters of wasteland outside the village, which was littered with garbage, to grow vegetables.
A small landowner in the village wanted to take the land over, claiming it was his. All the children in the yard went to quarrel with Li Hongru, and all the villagers said the little landlord had no conscience, which alarmed Mr. Liu Wenbo, who spoke the most in the village.
Mr. Liu Wenbo, who was also the richest industrial and commercial landowner in the village (with workshops, shops and fields), not only determined that the few square meters of land belonged to Li Hongru, but also leased his good acre of land to Li Hongru at a discount.
At that time, the rent in Shanghai was that 40 percent of the harvest of the main crop, that is, rice, belonged to the landowner. If the landowner provided the seeds and fertilizers, he would generally have to pay 50 percent of the harvest. But other vegetables, or a single crop of wheat (all called by-crop), do not have to be distributed to the landowner. Mr. Liu Wenbo provided Li Hongru with rice seeds and only asked him for 40 percent rent, which was considered a discount.
Think about the 21st century, the hardest people are farmers, but at least the yield of farmland is much higher and the proportion of grain paid is much lower. Look at this era. If farmers rely entirely on the land they rent, it's really hard for them.
In fact, the Congress Party government has been implementing the "25 percent rent reduction" since the year before last (1927), that is, to reduce the rent set by 25 percent in all places. But many landowners did not enforce it, or did not enforce it in a disguised way, such as including the by-crop harvest in the rent collection.
Li Hongru and his men are small, but they work hard on the land and have high technical skills. Last year, the yield of rice in this field reached 400 jin per mu! At that time, the average yield per mu in Shanghai was only around 300 jin, and some were only around 200 jin! Li Hongru and his group paid the rent and harvested 240 jin of rice.
The land is still cultivated by Li Hongru and his men. Others have already planted rice this year, but they still have only a little rape, radish, etc. in their field. It's not that they don't want to grow rice, but that they agreed to grow the seeds themselves this year, and the seeds they left behind were eaten.
It was almost June and it was a bit late to plant rice. The yield would be a little lower, but it was still possible. Now that they have adopted it, they are negotiating with King Kong to use some money to buy the seeds.
At this moment, King remembered that the bag of rice seeds he had with him had not been used. This is definitely better than the current rice varieties and should be promoted.
King Kong told Li Hongru and his men that the seed was the preferred variety of his "scientist master" and could yield 800 to 1,000 jin per mu (that's what the instructions said). The yield was not high at another time, so little Z chose the low-yield seed because the primary condition was that the rice could be passed down from generation to generation without special breeding. But when Li Hongru and the others heard about the yield, they were all astonished. If they could really harvest so much, this rice seed would be a treasure.
King Kong talked to Mr. Liu Wenbo about changing the land rent to a fixed rent. A fixed rent means paying a certain amount of money or crops every year, regardless of the harvest. Mr. Liu is easy to deal with. He has set the land rent at 130 jin of rice or nine yuan.
At that time, the rice planting techniques were quite different from the planting guidebook that King Kong read. For example, the guidebook said that this bag of seeds was fifteen jin, which was exactly the amount needed for one mu of land. At that time, people usually planted only seven or eight jin of seeds per mu. What about raising seedlings in the seedling field, transplanting seedlings with soil, and planting closely (when rice was grown, the plant spacing was very large) was guided by the King Kong theory, and Li Hongru and his team followed it. The other farmers on the side laughed at them, saying they had never seen such farming before. Especially when transplanting rice, King Kong took a ruler and measured the plant spacing according to the book, making the farmers laugh at him for months. He laughed so hard that he wondered if what was written in the book was wrong.