Late Ming Dynasty: Conquering the world starting from riding and cutting

[Recite the URL silently three times. Do you remember it? If you don’t remember, I’ll ask again in the next chapter. It’s best to share it on Facebook for me]

Two hills sloping into the sea form a small sheltered bay. The gentle coastline of the bay kisses the silver-white beach. Under the setting sun in the distance, several small fishing boats were putting away their fishing nets and heading towards the shore. A few cheerful urchins were jumping on the beach, chasing the waves and waving their little hands towards the fishing boats.

Yantian Village is located on the seaside on the west side of central Taiwan Island. As the name suggests, it is used to dry salt.

As households moved here, the originally deserted beach gradually became alive.

As the officer in charge of the salt field, Li Chun has not taken a break since he was recruited by Qin Hao. He is either busy or on the road. He used to make bricks and water trucks, and now he is here to supervise the salt drying.

But for him, even though it was so hard, he didn't feel any discomfort. Instead, he had a full sense of accomplishment and was happy with it.

With such a satisfied mood, Li Chun worked even harder. On the first day he came, he asked the salt households who had just registered in Yantian Village to start building salt ponds, brine ponds, and crystallization ponds to use seawater to dry salt. hold up.

Even with such hard work, within three or four days, all the preliminary preparations for drying the salt were ready.

That night, taking advantage of the moonlight, all the salt households began to light bonfires to cook. The women would disembowel all kinds of big and small fish that their husbands caught at sea, rinse them with clean water, and put them directly into the boiling water. Time to add some kelp and oysters for seasoning.

High-end ingredients often require only the simplest cooking methods!

Soon the entire coast was filled with fragrance, refreshing the soul.

The children sat around the big iron pot, sniffing the aroma from the pot eagerly, waiting for such a bowl of delicious food to be eaten.

"Adults, dinner is ready." The soldiers walked into the wooden house carrying two bowls of rice with fish soup and reminded Li Chun and Li Yi.

"Put it down first." Li Yi glanced at the sky-blue sea bowl placed on the wooden table and replied lightly.

In the past half month, he and Li Chun basically didn't eat on time. Either they were busy until late at night and the food was cold and no one heated it, or they didn't sleep all night, and the next morning's breakfast was mistaken for yesterday's dinner.

However, the salt ponds have been built in the past few days, and the first pond of salt will be released tomorrow, and it is not as busy as before.

After a little leisure, I felt hungry. I picked up the sea bowl on the table, picked up my chopsticks and started to devour it. Li Chun, who was calculating on the side, also raised half of his body lying on the table, smelled the delicious fish soup, and unconsciously picked up the bowls and chopsticks to eat with Li Yi.

"This fish soup is so fresh." Li Yi held the sea bowl and drank the fish soup fiercely, making a sound of admiration.

"It's indeed good." Li Chun agreed.

The fish are all freshly caught and cooked freshly, retaining the most umami flavor. You don’t even need to add salt to the soup to make it so delicious. This was the life of the salt farmers in the future. They boiled salt continuously, but probably never ate much salt in their lifetime. The seafood was rich in salt crystals, which was a unique blessing.

"It would be great if the general could drink it." Li Yi muttered softly, and also wanted to tell Li Chun.

"It's probably just a few days." Li Chun had received a letter from Zhuge Xuan before. The letter said that Qin Hao had returned. Li Chun estimated that it would only take a few days. The master would definitely come back to Yantian Village to have a look. This place is A treasure trove for the future.

After dinner, the two worked for another half an hour, made preparations for tomorrow, and then went back to their houses to rest.

It was night, everything was safe, and there were no more wild beast attacks.

When I first arrived, due to the salt ponds I built first and the houses and tents I stayed in at night, many wandering beasts rushed into the camp and caused a lot of noise. Fortunately, there were no casualties. The worst thing was that they were killed. A wild boar humped and lay in bed for several days.

Early in the morning of the second day, before the sun had risen above the sea, Li Chun got dressed and stood up. As soon as he opened the wooden door, the salty and humid smell of the sea hit his face.

At this time, there were already many busy figures in the salt ponds on the coastline. Salt farmers picked out all kinds of seaweed and fish that were washed up on the coast last night. They stirred up the salt water to prevent the salt from being exposed to the sun. Very good crystallization.

Soon after, the mellow sun crossed the sea and illuminated the earth with red clouds. The sunlight gradually became dazzling, and the air became a bit dry. The seawater began to recede, revealing salt pools surrounded by blue bricks on the beach.

Now is the most leisurely time for salt households. They don’t have to do anything. They just need to wait until the sun slowly evaporates the seawater and precipitates crystals.

As time went by, the sun became scorching above the head, and Li Chun, Li Yi and others waiting on the beach were sweating profusely.

But the seawater in the salt pond was only a thin layer, and no sea salt appeared as expected. After waiting for so long, there was no result, and the surrounding salt households became anxious and uneasy.

Salt farmers have never heard of this method of drying salt, and they don’t know whether it is true or not.

However, they did not doubt in their hearts that the adults were wrong. Instead, they were secretly worried about whether they had failed to follow the requirements set by Master Li Chun.

In fact, this is not to blame for Li Chun’s method, nor is it to blame the salt farmers, but this place is not the best place to dry salt. The best place to dry salt on Taiwan Island is on the southwest coast, where the terrain is flat, with plenty of sunshine and little rain. It is very suitable for drying salt. You only need to build a salt pond to produce salt.

But this is the central and northern part of Taiwan, where there is a lot of rain and the conditions are not that good. Therefore, Li Chun asked the salt farmers to build several brine ponds and crystallization ponds to further promote the evaporation of seawater.

Li Chun calmed the salt households and told them not to worry, and then ordered them to introduce the seawater that had been initially steamed and dried in the salt pond into the brine pond.

After receiving the order, the men of Shiotou immediately installed a water pumping truck, pulled in two strong buffaloes, and slowly pumped the salt water to the brine pond on the shore.

After several brine pools were filled, Li Chun ordered them to make lunch. There is no need to wait here. This salt-drying is not a day's work. If God rewards you, you can see the sea salt in two days. If not, you will have to wait for a while. After a few heavy rains, all the efforts of the previous days were in vain and we had to start all over again.

Fortunately, these days have been good days and everything went smoothly. After half of the drying time, the salt water in the brine pool was introduced into the crystallization pool and the final steaming and drying process began.

In fact, there are ways to speed up the precipitation of sea salt, which is to pour the preliminarily evaporated salt water into an iron pot and cook it over high heat, so that salt can be obtained in one day.

This is a relatively common way of cooking salt in the Ming Dynasty. A salt farmer once proposed it to Li Chun, but he refused. Firstly, it was not efficient and would cost a lot of firewood. Secondly, this kind of salt boiling method was very common in the Ming Dynasty. This method is not good for the human body. During the evaporation of sea water, a large amount of harmful substances will be emitted. People who cook salt may have their hands and feet ulcerated, or even die.

If Qin Hao knew about it, Li Chunshao would have to be scolded, and the gain would outweigh the loss.

A few days can be said to be fast or slow, and it will pass in the blink of an eye.

"There is salt, there is salt, it has really come out." When the salt households guarding the salt fields saw the sea salt precipitating in the crystallization ponds, they immediately shouted excitedly, followed by bursts of cheers.

[At the beginning of the chapter, I asked you to read it silently three times. Do you remember? Share on Facebook and there may be surprises]