Wild North America 1846

Chapter 658 Soft Power

Author: Portuguese toothless

Chapter 658 Soft Power

For more than twenty days, Emperor Richard traveled between various provinces in Central America and gained a deep understanding of the region's overall economic development level, development bottlenecks, difficulties, and limitations.

The history of the development of ancient Indian civilizations in Central America, from the early Almec civilization to the middle Mayan civilization, to the Aztec civilization and Spanish colonial rule in the modern period, has left numerous relics.

This area has a long history of agricultural development, with relatively complete urban distribution and farmland irrigation and farming areas. After a large number of Chinese immigrants moved here, the agriculture and planting industry recovered very quickly, and quickly surpassed the heyday in history.

Today, roads in Central America extend in all directions. The main roads are paved with asphalt. The tall trees along the roads are dense and neat, with milestones and drainage ditches set up. The infrastructure is quite complete.

Some gravel roads can reach every village and town, and railways pass not far away, making it easy to transport agricultural and sideline products for sale by land, railway and water transport.

Heavy-duty horse-drawn carriages and a small number of cars are widely used in agricultural production, as well as many inland river ships ranging from tens to hundreds of tons, forming a relatively developed transportation system.

Chinese immigrants who have settled in Central America generally have a higher sense of happiness. Compared with their native countries, their incomes are lower, but the prices related to people's basic necessities, food, housing and transportation are also lower.

Therefore, the residents generally have enough to eat, warm clothes, and after working for a few years, they can buy a woman to start a family, maybe a Colombian woman, maybe a Cuban woman, maybe an Indian woman or a native white woman, and the price ranges from 1,780 to 1,700 yuan.

It ranges from Yuan Dynasty to five or six hundred Tang Yuan Dynasties.

The only regret is that there are fewer Chinese women, the prices are generally quite high, starting at at least 500 yuan, and most of them can only be imported from mainland China through mail-order brides.

The betrothal gifts for Chinese women in local families are very high, often in the thousands or more, and there are various conditions to choose from.

For example, the man's family is required to be wealthy, and he must be a big wife after entering the house. Planters and farmers are more popular, preferably retired officers and soldiers, with a stable government work background, etc. There are a lot of requirements.

Emperor Richard laughed and laughed after learning more about it, but he had no intention of influencing the local wedding customs, nor would he rigidly say whether it was good or bad. There must be an inherent reason for its formation.

The high number of boys and the low number of girls has always been one of the difficulties in the empire's demographic structure. However, through decades of aggressive colonial expansion and the plundering and trading of local white women, Central American Indian women, and Mexican women, this problem has been alleviated to a considerable extent.

.

It is precisely because of such a strong colonial policy that it greatly promoted national integration and social stability, and formed the basic social outlook of the current stability and prosperity of the Tang Empire. It can be said to have achieved unprecedented success.

This is only from the perspective of the upper class. If we look at it from another angle, from the perspective of the people at the bottom;

Among the social news that are often reported in newspapers, there are gossips such as wives and children being tortured to death, white women Hongxing being immersed in pig cages after being cheated on, and wives who had run away from each other for several years and were found in the next village. These are really gossips.

Countless.

However, these conflicts are limited to within families, or at the village, town and street level, and do not affect the overall prosperity, stability, and unity of society.

There is no such thing as equality between men and women in this era. The traditional concept of "husband is the guide for wife" is popular in Chinese society. The social environment and laws are more inclined to protect men and ignore the demands of women.

No matter what kind of woman she is, as long as she can shoulder the burden of the family and bear children, she is a good woman.

Adhering to this simple concept, most new Chinese immigrants are not selective in their choice of women. Central American Indian women are cheap, good-quality and very popular, so they are the choice of most new immigrants.

Native Caucasian women are relatively expensive, so as long as you have a certain financial foundation, of course you can choose the right one!

Of course, the most expensive ones were Chinese women. Since the empire strictly prohibited the buying and selling of Chinese women, and there were too many monks and too few people, they were all married off in the name of betrothal gifts, which often cost a thousand Tang Yuan or more.

The formation of this trend is inevitable in the marriage market. As a large number of second and third generation Chinese children born in the empire enter the marriage period, the abnormally high prices will inevitably be suppressed.

On the other hand, this has greatly improved the status of Chinese women. Anyone who can marry an authentic Chinese woman back home has almost gritted his teeth and given up most of his net worth. How can he not be treated well?

It's not nice to say something nice

Even if the Chinese wife Hongxing cheats on women and does not follow the rules of women, her husband's family will not bear to dip into the pig cage, because this is the real "daughter"!

After a round of inspection

Emperor Richard summarized several points that need improvement. The first point is the need to protect the remains of ancient Indian civilization, reduce damage and strengthen the collection of cultural relics to maintain the local characteristics of ancient Inca civilization for thousands of years. These are the highlights of the future development of tourism.

The proportion of the Chinese population in Central American provinces and villages is generally over 80% to 90%. They are not interested in some weird Almec civilization altars, Mayan civilization temples and ferocious sculptures. Many locals even take the initiative to demolish these things.

Or on the basis of ancient altars, Buddhist temples and Taoist temples were built, and village ancestral temples were built, which greatly changed the local historical and cultural environment.

in Central America

The relics of ancient Indian civilization have reached the stage of rescue and protection. It is necessary to introduce some protection policies in a timely manner to prohibit the random destruction and demolition of ancient relics.

Whether it is building temples or Taoist temples, abandoned land is everywhere in cities and towns. Even if the site is selected for construction, why do we have to raze ancient Indian altars and temples?

The second point is that under the conditions of relatively complete infrastructure in Central America, the appropriate development of light and heavy industries has become an issue that must be paid attention to in the next step.

There is no stability without farming, and there is no wealth without work.

Today, the bottleneck of Central America's economic development is that agricultural development facilities are relatively complete and farming methods are relatively advanced. Guano and chemical fertilizers, as well as artificial compost and retting manure, have been used in many agricultural productions. There is no possibility of further progress in agricultural technology in a short period of time.

.

If you want to further increase income, developing appropriate light and heavy industries has become the only way to go.

For example, the shipbuilding and building materials industry in Huwan City is one of the engines leading rapid economic development.

Central America should conduct a detailed survey of geological resources, select suitable locations to build steel plants, and develop copper, lead, zinc, aluminum, and coal resources to promote new economic growth points.

Cash crops such as tobacco, coffee and cocoa are also the focus of the next development. Cuban cigars are world-famous. The conditions of the Central American provinces at the same latitude are not bad, with mountains, water and sunshine, suitable for growing high-quality tobacco and

coffee.

The third point is to strengthen Chinese language education. Since most of the Chinese immigrants to Central and South America come from the coastal provinces in central and southern China, their accents are complicated and the local accents are extremely strong, which is very difficult for communication.

The scope of Chinese language education must be strengthened, starting from young children. This is the fundamental solution.

In cities and provinces in Central America, some officials and staff who are not proficient in using Chinese must be eliminated, and some police officers and teachers who are not proficient in Chinese must be eliminated.

Promote the people to pay attention to the status of Chinese education, consciously supervise their children's learning, and lead the right direction.

When Emperor Richard was inspecting various places, he discovered that some local officials had such strong accents that he couldn't understand them. They said "Jili Guala" but didn't know what they said?

No matter how capable such officials are, if they can't even communicate basicly, what else can they talk about?

It is obviously unrealistic to expect adults to change, we can only start from babies.

Nowadays, the development of higher education in the Tang Empire is quite good. There are tens of thousands of outstanding graduates every year, so there is no need to worry about lack of talent.

The next step is to systematically dispatch outstanding graduates to Central and South America on a large scale every year to further promote Chinese education.

Not just here, but also in the North and South of the United States, Canada and South American countries. The local Chinese expatriates also need high-quality Chinese teachers to promote standardized Chinese education.

September 12, 1878

The royal train arrived in Panama City. At this moment, Panama City and guests from all over the world gathered. The top 16 match of the Pan American Football League finals was also held in Panama City at the same time.

This has brought long-lost high popularity to Panama City. The arrival of tens of thousands of fans and dignitaries from various countries has given this large city in decline a shot in the arm and maintained its superficial splendor.

Throughout the Americas, the most successful professional sport is professional baseball, especially the North American Major League Baseball, which is the most well-run and standardized. It represents the top level of professional baseball in the world and is widely loved by the public.

The North American Professional Baseball League currently has 6 regions. The empire is divided into the Western Region, the North Central Region, the Southern Region and the Andean and Overseas Region, a total of 4 regions.

In addition, plus the United States of America Region and the United States of America Region, there are a total of 6 regions. Each region determines the top 4 professional baseball teams to participate in the annual finals.

Except for the 1872 championship, which was taken away by the New York Pirates, the other 15 professional baseball championships all belonged to the Tang Empire, which was also the most popular sport among the people of the Tang Empire.

Unfortunately, the promotion of professional baseball in Central and South America has not been smooth. People here are not very interested in this sport with complicated rules and high thresholds, and they are not very enthusiastic about participating.

On the contrary, the little-known English football has been popularized very quickly and has quickly become the most popular sport among people in Central and South America. The influence of football games has rapidly expanded.

With just a rubber ball, a group of men can play happily for most of the day.

Without a goal, just two trees will do, two rocks will do, or two wheat stacks will do, and it won't affect everyone's enthusiasm for playing football.

Seeing that the east is not bright but the west is bright, the Imperial Ministry of Culture, Health and Sports has organized a planned distribution of free footballs every year, and organized coaching training courses and various competitions.

Every year, 10,000 to 20,000 footballs are distributed free of charge to various countries in South America. This has greatly promoted the popularity of football in Central and South America, making it a sport that is popular across the Americas.

Of course, it is far less popular than Major League Baseball and basketball games in North America, ranking third only.

The reason why football is vigorously promoted is because the Imperial Ministry of Culture, Health and Sports shoulders the important task of promoting culture and sports.

As an aspect of soft power, what could be more appropriate than sports to embody the atmosphere of unity in a game of chess across America?

The Tang Empire pursued a "carrot and stick" policy. Conquest and flexing muscles in the military field were the "stick", and the fields of culture, health and sports were part of the "carrot".

In this area

The Imperial Ministry of Culture, Health and Sports has been unremittingly exporting Chinese culture, etiquette fashion and unique oriental music, tea ceremony and calligraphy to American countries, subtly establishing a Chinese cultural circle.

Various initiatives include establishing Chinese language schools in various countries in North and South America. Many charity schools will admit children of poor local residents, exempt them from tuition fees, and even provide them with a lunch.

Countries in North and South America in this era generally did not pay much attention to education. Children played on the streets when they were teenagers. More than 90% of them were illiterate. Going to school was a luxury that was unthinkable.

Being able to learn knowledge and have lunch at noon is simply pie in the sky!

Therefore, Chinese language schools subsidized by the imperial government and royal charity funds have sprung up in various countries in the Americas. Today there are more than 760, of which more than 90% are primary schools.

This is because free education in charity schools mainly covers the primary school level. If you want to continue your education, you have to pay tuition. There is no such thing as pie in the sky.

in these schools

Extensively carry out Chinese etiquette education, cultivate music, dance, tea ceremony and calligraphy hobbies, and instill the Eastern concept of "benevolence, justice, etiquette, wisdom and trust" to help these children establish a correct outlook on life and cultivate pro-Tang Dynasty potential forces during the important period of their growth.

The Imperial Ministry of Education, Health and Sports will also organize some external medical institutions to practice medicine in major cities and towns in North and South America to save lives and heal the wounded. Of course, this is mainly based on traditional Chinese medicine.

In addition, giving away some sports equipment such as footballs and basketballs, organizing football or basketball games on campus, and promoting sports in society are also within the scope of responsibilities.

In the policy effect feedback survey, the Ministry of Education, Health and Sports of the Tang Empire discovered an interesting pattern;

Countries that were severely beaten by the Tang Empire had a higher acceptance of the imperial culture, health and sports fields, with better results, better reputation, and smoother promotion.

For example, Brazil, Argentina, Peru, and Bolivia, not to mention Paraguay and Uruguay, the younger brothers of the Tang Empire. These two countries have been fully Tangized, and their Chinese population ratio is higher than that of many native provinces of the empire.

All the cultural education and traditions of Chinese society can be seamlessly integrated into these two countries, as smoothly as they should be.

The official languages ​​are Mandarin and Spanish. In fact, very few people can speak Spanish anymore, because the officialdom is basically monopolized by Chinese from the top to the grassroots, and many of them are outstanding graduates of Taoyuan Administration College.

The military commanders came from the major military academies of the Tang Empire, the president was also from the Tang Dynasty, and most of the parliament were also from the Tang Dynasty. They were no different from the overseas provinces of the empire.

As for those South American countries and regions that have not been taught a lesson, such as Venezuela, Chile, Dutch Suriname, French Paraguay, British Paraguay, Belgian Paraguay and other places, the effect is not satisfactory.

People in these countries and regions are generally highly resistant. Even the most popular charity schools are often questioned by the local society and churches, suffer from various restrictions from the administrative authorities, and have difficulty in promoting them.

(End of chapter)