Unfortunately, Macau City has been officially handed over to the Kingdom of Portugal, and not long ago, this was the news that Captain Ding Zhen, the captain of the light cruiser of the "Polaris", heard at the anchorage of Tanzai Island. However, although the city has been handed over, the Portuguese still politely allowed the warships on the east coast that arrived here, and arranged for people to deliver some supplies, of course, there was a charge.

After sending people to the Haizhu Island Merchant Station, the "Polaris" light cruiser, together with two "Yaksa"-class armed transport ships loaded with japonicas, drove towards Dinghai Port in Ningbo Prefecture along the sudden southeast wind and near-earth currents, and landed on May 31, 1665 and was anchored in the Dinghai Port pier.

There are now a large number of transport ships gathered on the docks of Dinghai Port. These ships were originally immigrant ships. They had just finished the 1664-1665 immigration transport season. Many of them had not yet been overhauled and maintained. They received orders to transport grain north to Shandong. They were very urgent. Without any hesitation, the navy could only divide the fleet into two parts. Some were nearby in Yantai, Jiaozhou, Jeju, Dinghai and other places to repair them. Some went to the ports of North Korea and Ningbo to transport grain and grain. Even two "Yaksa"-class transport ships were ordered to venture to Dabo Port, where there may be a few ice-ridden inside and outside the port. They carried a large amount of cured meat and salted fish back to Dengzhou from the underground ice storage there to deal with the upcoming food crisis in the local area.

The reason for this situation is actually related to the drought that is happening in Shandong today. The severe drought in Shandong, which occurred in 1665 in history, actually had some signs as early as the second half of 1664, but it did not attract much attention. As a result, after the beginning of spring, the spring rain, which was called "priced as oil", has not arrived for a long time. It has not fallen for three consecutive months. This has caused the people of the six prefectures in Shandong to panic. Is this going to have a drought? No wonder the people think so. In fact, droughts are not uncommon in history in Shandong. There is even a tradition of droughts in the local area. Therefore, after discovering that the rain has not fallen for several months and the spring drought has become a foregone conclusion, the people of Shandong immediately understood their situation. The harvest in this year's land is no longer considered.

In fact, Shandong has a warm temperate monsoon climate. Most of its precipitation is concentrated in summer. It is considered to be the same period of rain and heat. There is very little rainfall in winter and spring, and it is unstable. The threat of spring drought is relatively high. Now everything has come true. The arrival of "bottleneck drought" (spring drought) has basically turned the wintering wheat planted last year. The harvest of this season is over, and it seems that God has no intention of raining at all, so the people have no choice but to start a tragic escape from famine.

Some people may ask, will the Qing government not provide disaster relief? There are no 5 million people in the four Shandong and East governments (Jinan, Dongchang, Yanzhou, Qingzhou) and four million people. So many people are not dead. Will the Emperor Kangxi of the eternal emperor turn a blind eye? Cough, okay, it is definitely inaccurate to say that there is no disaster relief. So now, please introduce how "My Qing" is to provide disaster relief. According to the Qing Dynasty's records, the court issued "60,000 taels of disaster relief silver and 60,000 shi of rice". What is this? Well, in fact, it is almost less than 20,000 adult men's annual rations, but how many people are in Shandong? Millions! This bird court actually allocated only such a little money and food to save disasters. Isn't it forcing people to die?

What's more, at that time, the Qing Dynasty court only exempted the taxes from the Denglai Prefecture, which was less affected by the disaster, and the taxes that were owed in the past were required; while the Xi'an Prefecture, which was severely affected by the disaster, only exempted the taxes that were owed in the 18th year of Shunzhi (actually not much). However, the taxes that were owed in the four years since Kangxi ascended the throne were not less than a penny. It was so stingy that it had to make people angry!

Since the relief from the court is a drop in the bucket, the people of the four eastern and western prefectures of Shandong will inevitably face the great threat of hunger. In order to seek survival, they can only go to the neighboring Hejian Prefecture, Daming Prefecture, Guangping Prefecture, Guide Prefecture, and Laizhou Prefecture, Huai'an Prefecture, which was originally known as the hometown of fish and rice, is a good place to escape famine. However, if you don't mention it, before fleeing famine, in order to raise enough food along the way, they basically mortgaged oxen, farm tools, and food for seeds, and also brought the food that was left as seeds by their side for food on the road. It can be said that they have cut off any possibility of resuming production in a short period of time. This will be a catastrophic impact on Shandong's economy in the next few years.

At this time, people on the East Coast naturally had no time to take care of the so-called production recovery issues in the Qing Dynasty. Liang Xiangjian, who took office, was the most important task at this time to deal with the living problems of the people in the East Coast jurisdiction of the two Denglai Prefectures. Although the precipitation in the two Denglai Prefectures was relatively low last winter (it was much stronger than the four Xifu), relying on some reservoirs, reservoirs and irrigation canals that have been built intermittently over the past 20 years, the summer grain that counties are about to be harvested should be able to save some harvests, and winter wheat will not be harvested on a large scale. This undoubtedly makes people feel relieved. Historically, the two Denglai Prefectures were originally a "light disaster area" (of course, this is also relative). After all, the harvest in the ground has been saved by about 20% and 30%. Compared with the "second wheat (winter wheat and spring wheat) that have been harvested, autumn wheat cannot be sown", it is indeed a light disaster area.

However, even though the two Denglai Prefectures were less affected, Liang Xiangjian did not dare to take it lightly. While organizing people to carry water everywhere to irrigate the fields and strive for production and self-rescue, he began to ask the adjacent Blackwater Development Team and the southern Development Team for help, so that the two places could raise a batch of grain as soon as possible to transfer it to Dengzhou to deal with the soon-to-be-climbing food shortage. Because no one could guarantee whether the drought would continue (in fact, the drought in the two Denglai Prefectures in the second half of 1665 was greatly aggravated, and the whole summer was over. It was almost impossible to rain), and whether the planting of autumn grain would be affected, not to mention that according to the past experience of the people, there will be locust plague after drought, which will have an impact on agricultural production. Therefore, Liang Xiangjian really did not dare to be careless. He wanted to raise as much grain as possible to reserve. This grain plus some of the food stored by the people themselves should be very likely to survive this year. At that time, it depends on whether God will give you face and whether it will rain in the second half of this year.

Therefore, when Captain Ding Zhen's "Polaris" light cruiser arrived at Dinghai Port, he saw about seven or eight immigrant ships loading rice. These grains were all emergency reserves stored in barns in Yin County, Dinghai and other places, with a quantity of about 15,000 tons, accounting for almost half of the total grain imports of Ningbo Prefecture every year. If it weren't for the sake of precautions, Jiang Zhiqing would have planned to send all 20,000 tons of rice in the barn to Shandong. At this time, the last batch of ships traveling south to transport immigrants should have been anchored in the Maluku Islands and started loading grain. They can be loaded and returned to the mainland in almost mid-June. By then, more than 15,000 tons of new grain will arrive at Dinghai Port, and the grains in Dinghai and other places will naturally be filled again. However, considering the fact that just in case, Jiang Zhiqing still deducted 5,000 tons of grain and planned to wait until the end of June when the Nanyang new grain arrived at the port, and then sent it to Shandong for emergency treatment, so it should not be a mistake.

In addition, Jiang Zhiqing also sent someone to find Shao Shuguang, general manager of the Bank of Taiwan, and asked him to use all means to purchase at least 30,000 tons of rice from the Dutch East India Company. The delivery location is in the Malugu Islands. The required funds will be paid temporarily by the Bank of Taiwan. If it is insufficient, loans will be made from the Dutch East India Company. Even if the interest rate is higher, it doesn’t matter. After all, life is at stake. As for purchasing grain from the Nanming or Dashun regime, it is probably a bit difficult, because they have been uneven in recent years, and the food is already tight. In addition, they are preparing for a war, so there should not be much food left.

In order to save the people of the two palaces of Denglai, the eastern coast navy has sacrificed its life this time. You must know that they are risking the typhoon to transport food south. If it weren't for the severe drought in Shandong, they wouldn't have worked so hard. Summer and autumn are generally the time for them to rest and maintain their ships.

The 20,000 tons of emergency reserve grain in Ningbo and the 30,000 tons of rice purchased (if it is successfully transported back), this is 50,000 tons of grain. In addition, the 2010,000 tons of reserve grain in several barns of Denglai Prefectures, as well as the stored grains in local people (should not exceed 10,000 tons), can almost fool this year. Even after "borrowing" a lot of cured meat, salted fish and even living livestock in the Heishui area, these grains can still be surplus, and can be used to help some people from other places, if any.

Of course, the three major vassal states in the Far East of China have all launched their efforts to deal with the drought. How could the Kingdom of Korea, which is close to the corner? In mid-May, several North Korean envoys set off from Jianghua Island to Yantai Port and told Liang Xiangjian that North Korea would serve 200,000 shi of rice (about 15,000 tons) to help the country overcome the famine. As a result, they were intimidated by Liang Xiangjian. The North Korean envoy finally added 100,000 shi of rice with a bitter face, and a total of 300,000 shi of rice was donated to the Denlai Development Team for free, which made Liang a little satisfied.

In addition, Liang Xiangjian also wrote a document that Wei Boqiu, who is now in charge of economic affairs of the three major vassal states in the Far East, asked the East Coast North Korean company under his jurisdiction to find ways to purchase grain in the two countries. If there is no enough money, it is not necessary to take credit first, even if you take some tight strategic materials to mortgage it, you must try your best to buy food back. Wei Boqiu has replied to agree, saying that he will purchase as much as possible and then ship it to Yantai, Jiaozhou, Weihai, Penglai, Yexian and other ports for delivery to local officials for disaster relief.

Captain Ding Zhen sighed after hearing these things. It was really unexpected. Unexpectedly, the prosperous Denglai Qiangfu now became so difficult that he had to beg his grandfather and grandma everywhere. The 600,000 local people (including the population under the east bank of Laizhou Prefecture) was indeed a huge burden. When drought and locust plagues came together, you had to take on the heavy responsibility of supporting them, otherwise why do you do your best to instruct them in the future? Our East Bank is not as thick-skinned as the Tartars. He only gave four million people "60,000 taels of silver and 60,000 stones of grain" to provide disaster relief.

On June 2, after repairing and maintaining the ship and handing over all documents, the "Polaris" light cruiser also left Dinghai Port Pier and headed north to Yantai Port in Dengzhou Prefecture. Considering that almost all ships in the Far East have been mobilized to transport cargo, Captain Ding Zhen's ship (the cabin capacity is really not large) also transported some salt and salted fish (mostly big yellow croaker and small yellow croaker, and the gang people recruited by Guangzhou Prefecture were caught in Zhoushan Fishery) to Shandong, which was also considered to have made its own contribution.

On the afternoon of June 9, 1665, the light cruiser "North Star" arrived at Yantai Port Wharf. Captain Ding Zhen looked around and saw that in the huge harbor, there were masts, and a number of fishing boats that might be as high as sixty or seventy were entering and leaving. Dengzhou fishermen who used the sea as their ranch were also catching up on the time to go out to fish in the sea, thinking that they would make their own contribution to overcoming the famine. △≧.*(.*)△≧,

In addition to these fishing boats, large cargo ships are naturally indispensable in the harbor. The harbors on the dock are using their pulley booms to transport bags of grain ashore to store them, so that they can be taken out and distributed when the disaster is serious. At this time, most of the people in Dengzhou Prefecture still have some surplus grains in their hands, and they can collect some of them immediately (at last no collection), and they should be able to continue to hold on for a while. Therefore, it is not yet the stage of large-scale distribution of relief grains, unless a large number of Qing refugees come in Qingzhou Prefecture.

Perhaps because of the relatively high throughput efficiency of Yantai Port Terminal, Daqun Lifu soon came to unload the cargo in the cabin of the "Polaris". He also came with a customs official from the Corps Fort. When a large amount of canned food, high-end biscuits, chocolate, matte tea, butter, cheese, ham and other local foods were unloaded, the customs officials could only smile bitterly. Perhaps he felt that it was not appropriate for them to enjoy so many luxury foods at this opportunity in Shandong's severe drought.

"I want to meet Captain Liang Xiangjian and Liang. There are some documents here that need to be transferred to him, and there may be some documents there that need to be transferred to me and brought back to the local area." Captain Ding Zhen cleaned his clothes and hats and said to the customs official in front of him.

"Ah, it's a coincidence, Captain Ding." The customs official smiled helplessly and said, "Maybe you should go there again, yes, it's to Ye County in the west. Captain Liang took people to Laizhou for inspection of the disaster a while ago, and he shouldn't come back in a short period of time. You can only find him there. Of course, you can also wait in Yantai if you are not in a hurry."

Some prefectures and counties in Laizhou Prefecture are currently under the control of the East Coast people, so it is normal for Liang Xiangjian to inspect there.

"I'll go to Laizhou." Captain Ding Zhen said firmly: "Maybe there are any goods you need to take with me? Although my ship has limited capacity, it can carry some goods over to reduce your transportation pressure."
Chapter completed!