newbobooks Chapter 275 Planting Sweet Potatoes
Chapter 275 Planting Sweet Potatoes
Sunrise and sunset, clouds drifting by, a day passes in the blink of an eye. Lin Ping lay in bed in a daze, the rice porridge on the table getting cold again and again, only to be reheated by his mother each time.
The silence of one person makes the entire mansion feel lifeless.
Lin Xiaomei had no interest in practicing swordsmanship, and Lin's mother had no time for tailoring. Even Lin Fugui had Mingyue Tower close early and paced anxiously at the door. They all knew Lin Ping's personality and dared not disturb him rashly.
In other words, although the Lin family disliked Lin Ping marrying into the family, they genuinely liked Jiang Yunying as their daughter-in-law, and their separation left them feeling uneasy.
“My son has grown up and has his own ideas, so let’s not bother him.” Lin Fugui blocked the doorway, preventing his mother from entering.
Lin's mother also felt that the daughter of the old Wang family next door was not good enough for Lin Ping. "My son is a man who divorced the princess. He is a treasure that thousands of women are fighting over. I must raise the bar in the future. Matchmakers without martial arts skills should not even think about entering."
“That’s right, brother seems to have said he wants some peace and quiet. I wonder which girl she is. I’m determined to find her and personally propose marriage.” Lin Xiaomei said confidently, mistakenly believing that Lin Ping had fallen for someone else and that the girl named Jingjing had stolen her position as the eldest sister-in-law.
"Then that's it. The daughter of Old Wang next door seems to be named Song Jingjing. We should hire a famous talk show host another day and make sure this marriage goes through." Madam Lin then reached into her pocket for the few thousand taels of silver she had left, which represented the entire wealth of the Chen family.
Most of the profits earned by Mingyue Tower were squandered by Lin Ping. If he hadn't forced Lin Fugui to take a portion, these people would probably still be living on air.
Now that it's summer and northwest winds are rare, the situation is even worse.
Logically speaking, Lin Ping hated these people's constant chatter, but now he felt an inexplicable warmth towards them.
Regardless of their intelligence, at the very least they are concerned about themselves, which would never happen in the City Lord's Mansion.
Lin Ping's heart became at ease, no longer hanging in the air, constantly worrying that the enemy would stab him in the back.
Lin Ping had no idea how long the argument outside the door would go on, but he slept soundly inside.
The next day, before dawn, he quietly left the room and the Lin residence.
The whole family, including Lin Xiaomei, knew that Lin Ping was grumpy in the morning. They would never dare to wake him up until the sun was high in the sky, and would just wait quietly outside the door.
"Brother, have you had enough sleep? Little sister is going to practice her swordplay for you again." Lin Xiaomei said softly from outside the door, but dared not knock on the door.
These words seemed to sink without a trace, and after a long time, Lin Ping still did not reply.
"If brother doesn't answer, is little sister going to come in?" Lin Xiaomei asked tentatively. Although Lin Ping was grumpy when he woke up, it was unusual for him to still be silent at this hour.
At the very least, you should yell: Get out!
When Lin Xiaomei realized that her brother was indeed sleeping, she readily replied, "Okay!" and then excitedly slipped away.
But now Lin Ping isn't saying a word, which is completely abnormal.
Sure enough, after Lin Xiaomei burst into Lin Ping's room, she screamed, "Brother has run away from home!"
These words were like a bomb, immediately spreading throughout the Lin residence. Lin's mother rushed over like lightning, and Lin Fugui, who was about to open the door for business, was forcibly pulled back.
The three of them blocked Lin Ping's bedside, searching high and low for his whereabouts, even looking into the nooks and crannies.
Does your son possess the ability to shrink his bones or burrow underground? Is it really necessary to dig into the ground to see what's going on?
Just as the group was in a panic, a clanging sound came from outside the door, and dozens of servants dressed in blue robes entered the courtyard.
As the leader, Lin Ping was naturally the last to appear, and his arrogant gait reverted to that of a spendthrift son.
"Dig it up! Dig it all up, except for the connecting corridor!" Lin Ping shouted, pointing at the spacious courtyard.
These servants, each holding a shovel, exchanged glances, unsure whether they should take action.
The layout of a courtyard is a matter of pride for a wealthy family, yet Lin Ping is now digging up the entire courtyard. Either there's treasure buried underneath, or he's got a screw loose.
"It's my son! My son didn't leave!" Lin's mother was as happy as a little sparrow, and she flew to Lin Ping's side, not caring what kind of trouble he was going to cause.
"What are you all standing there for? Don't you understand my son's orders? Dig now, dig as deep as possible!" Lin Fugui scolded the group of servants with displeasure.
With the head of the family's permission, these people simply rolled up their sleeves and got to work. Their sharp shovels quickly dug up the ground and continued to dig deeper, genuinely believing that there was treasure buried underground.
"Old man, come here." Lin Ping beckoned to Lin Fugui, his tone quite irritating.
These words delighted Lin Fugui. "My son has finally started squandering money again. I no longer have to live under someone else's roof. Father is still young and can earn money. You can just squander it."
"What a huge cart of taro! If we pickle them all, it'll be enough for us to eat for years!" Following Lin Ping's gaze, Lin Fugui spotted the cart full of taro-like food and was so happy he almost jumped for joy.
"You uncultured old man, this is a sweet potato, not a pickled taro." Lin Ping gave Lin Fugui a disdainful look and didn't bother to explain to him.
The so-called sweet potato is the familiar sweet potato, but few people in the Wu Kingdom have ever seen it.
In the history that Lin Ping was familiar with, sweet potatoes originated in South America and were introduced to China in the mid-Ming Dynasty, where they were only grown in a small number of places in Fujian.
Because of its extremely high production volume, the price was very low, and only the poor would occasionally eat some.
In Wuguo today, nearing the mid-Ming Dynasty, sweet potatoes have been introduced to Fujian and have begun to be cultivated on a small scale. It took Lin Ping half a day to gather all the sweet potatoes from Jiangcheng Prefecture, just enough to fill a cart.
Lin Ping was quite satisfied with this, knowing what the widespread cultivation of sweet potatoes would mean.
Today, the main food crops are still rice and wheat, which are no longer sufficient to solve the problem of a growing population.
Some researchers have studied the reasons for the sudden increase in population during the Qing Dynasty, attributing a large part of it to the cultivation of sweet potatoes and corn.
These introduced species not only have exceptionally high yields but also adapt to barren land. If they were widely promoted throughout the Wu Kingdom, grain production would definitely double. The number of impoverished people living below the poverty line would decrease dramatically.
This will not only make Lin Ping a fortune, but it will also be a great event that benefits the entire Chinese nation.
Of course, Lin Ping also had his own selfish motives; yes, he wanted to eat roasted sweet potatoes...
"Old man, exchange all these silver notes for land, the more barren the better, and then plant sweet potatoes on this land." Lin Ping took out a thick stack of silver notes, worth two or three hundred thousand taels.
Before heading to Yancheng, Lin Ping had already saved up 500,000 taels of silver, and later he robbed the Lord of Shancheng of another 500,000 taels.
However, half of it was used as start-up capital for oil extraction, and half of the remaining 500,000 taels was left to the city lord's mansion, while he kept the other half for himself.
In other words, this is all of Lin Ping's assets. If he used it all to buy fertile land, he could only acquire 10,000 mu at most. But if he bought barren land, or even desolate mountains and wilderness that no one cared about, he could buy at least 50,000 mu, or even more.
If all this land were planted with sweet potatoes, Lin Pingzhen couldn't even imagine the yield. After all, Xu Guangqi's "Complete Treatise on Agriculture" once said that "one mu (unit of land area) yields tens of shi (unit of dry measure), which is twenty times better than planting grains."