The old people in Shiba Beach of Qingpu stubbornly believe that everything in the past is better than today.At that time, the sea ban had not yet been opened, and the flat-bottomed sand boats in the Beiyang and the bird boats and boats in the Nanyang had not yet floated from the distant horizon;At that time, no one took foreign medicines and no one believed in foreign religions. This land surrounded by mountains and seas was simple in the world, advocating etiquette and righteousness; the bright sun rose every day from behind the Daruan Mountain in the east of Ruanjiaji. , shining peacefully on the mountains and rivers of this land, and then sank into the seabed to the west in a reasonable way.The sea breeze with a damp and fishy smell comes from the vast and endless sea, gently blowing the good crops on the eighteen coastal beaches, season after season, year after year, and bringing them to the people on this land. Harvest blessings.At that time, although Qingpu Town was not as lively as it is now, the food was very cheap. The prices of rice and meat were much lower than today. The best white rice was six yuan per load, and the best soybeans were only seven yuan. Needless to say, the rich and powerful, even ordinary people don't have to worry about making a living.At that time, the Qing sage went to Shengmingli, and the imperial court imposed strict restrictions on the sea time and time again, and the inch board was not allowed to enter the sea, and those who had boats and nets at home were regarded as rebellious, and there was no pardon.On the top of the slope of the South Temple stands a large wooden signboard with seven characters inscribed;

Later, the imperial court lifted the sea ban. In order to collect the rare treasures of the southern countries, the emperor of the Qing Dynasty advocated sea transportation. He allowed the Guangdong, Taiwan, and Fujian merchants on the ground in Nanyang to form a fleet to trade, and ordered the magistrates of the trading ports to wear official uniforms. Take the lead, fire firecrackers, play drums, and welcome them. In the summer of the fifth year of Yongzheng, a Nanyang bird fleet came to Qingpu, turning this small natural village into a bustling commercial port for the first time.The fleet is composed of twenty-four large ships with two or three masts. The bows of the ships are oil red and painted with patterns of big birds.The county elders in Jinkou County braved the scorching sun and traveled more than 30 miles to meet him on the Nansi slope in Qingpu Town. Half of the people from Jinkou County flocked.When the Nanyang merchants disembarked, the firecrackers exploded suddenly, and the drums were played immediately, making the whole beach full of uproar and noise.After the drum music subsided, the local people started doing business with Nanyang merchants on Nansipo.Bird boats brought excellent sewing needles, copper buttons, Yangjiang lacquered leather suitcases, lacquered leather pillows, gold leaf, silver leaf, Shiwan tile porcelain, silk gauze, as well as fennel, star anise, and osmanthus Oil, various medicinal wines from the southern country, and various household items.Qingpu people feel that they have opened their eyes, and their self-esteem and self-confidence have been shaken since then.They didn't realize that this was an invasion at all, let alone what the arrival of the Nanyang Bird Ship would mean to their future life and to the future of Qingpu Sancun Shibatan!They are only greedy for the exquisite goods brought by the Nanyang people, and have forgotten the morality and responsibility of maintaining the simple world customs of this land.They frantically bought the imported goods on the bird ship.Chattering and praising the various benefits of these imported things.That time, the business of the Bird Fleet was extremely prosperous, and within half a month, all the imported goods were sold out.Copy silk and cloud yarns have since entered the streets and alleys of Jinkou County and Qingpu Town; Yangjiang lacquered leather pillows and lacquered leather suitcases have also broken into the inner rooms of wealthy and powerful families.

This is undoubtedly the beginning of Qingpu Shibatan's degeneration. The Nanyang Fleet only comes once a year, usually in early summer—the fleet has to travel a month or two at sea!There were also many changes in the things that were brought in. At first, they were copper buttons, sewing needles, leather cases, leather pillows, etc. Later, ivory, jade, cupronickel chimneys for smoking water pipes, large moisture-proof bricks, brown sugar, Oranges, bananas, etc.Later, feathers and feathers were imported—it was not an item used by ordinary people in Qingpu, it was sold exclusively to officials, and it was a respectable flower feather that was inserted on official hats.Southerners are so smart, as long as they can earn money, they can sell anything for money.The old people in Shibatan of Qingpu therefore believed that the barbarians in the southern country were immoral, they were half-foreigners, they could dig up their own ancestral graves and sell the bones of their ancestors.

To associate with this group of things, is Qingpu Shibatan still good? At the end of Qianlong's reign, Beiyang flat-bottomed sand boats came again.The flat-bottomed sand boats continuously transported soybeans, pork, beef and mutton from the north, as well as timber, wheat, medicinal materials, etc., and not only sold them to the local Qingpu people, but also made big deals with merchant ships from Nanyang.As a result, there was a commotion. The Beiyang Fleet and the Nanyang Fleet landed in Qingpu Town at the same time, bought a piece of street on the south temple slope along the coast, and opened more than a dozen commercial firms with different names. The town really has a scale of a town and has become another bustling place second only to Jinkou County.

That is, since then, foreign medicines appeared in Qingpu Town.The foreign medicine is also called Dayan. According to the old people in Qingpu, it was shipped from Nanyang.On the foreign medicine box, there is the word "Yangmaozi", which is not even recognized by the highly educated Master Xiaolian of the Lu Mansion in Qingpu Town, or the county parents in Jinkou County!As soon as the foreign medicines were brought in, they spread all over the land within a short time, and it became a fashion to eat foreign medicines, even officers and soldiers ate them!The Qing sage was extremely wise, knowing that this foreign medicine is not a good thing, and issued an order to ban it, but how can it be banned?Taking foreign medicine is addictive, as long as you take it three or five times, there is absolutely no reason not to take it.As soon as the imperial court banned smoking, the price of cigarettes went up immediately, selling foreign medicines made more profits, and Nanyang merchants sold even more frantically.Today, foreign medicine has not been banned, but spread more and more widely, causing many incidents.The second Ruan, a salt worker from the Ruan family, took foreign medicine in front of the cauldron to boil salt, and got drunk. He staggered and fell into the boiling pot, and was boiled to a bone.Lu Rongling in Qingpu Township almost lost all his family wealth within a few years because his family took a few foreign medicines.

Foreign religions have also been imported.The arrival of foreign religions was later than that of foreign medicines, and they were not so blatant.In the 23rd year of Jiaqing, when the Nanyang fleet brought exotic goods from the southern country, they brought two foreign hairs to Qingpu people.These two foreign men said they were here to do business, but they wore crosses around their necks. They spoke foreign Chinese and Chinese, one was James Jackson and the other was John Lee.They do business during the day and preach at night, saying that they want to spread the gospel of God to people and save them from being lost.They bought a house of a Nanyang businessman behind Nansipo, and secretly set up a Gospel Church. Now, it is said that there are many believers.Their believers also secretly hang a cross around their necks, and they also worship God, and respect an old man named "Jesus".The old people on the Eighteenth Beach of Qingpu had a question from this: They worship God and Jesus, do they want the emperor?Do you want the sage Kong?Do you want the loyalty, filial piety and righteousness of Confucius.This end is worse than foreign medicine!Foreign medicine poisons one's body, but foreign religion poisons one's heart.

This is not counted. It is said that in recent years, Nanyang bird boats and boats have returned to the peaceful Qingpu Township, and there have been bandits from the southern country!This made the gentry and elders on the Eighteenth Beach of Qingpu deeply disturbed!The gentry and elders knew that the gangsters rebelled against the Qing court. Their leader Lin Shuangwen once staged an incident in Taiwan, and was later wiped out by the court's officers and soldiers.What are these gangsters doing in Qingpu now?Don't you want to gather crowds to rebel?Gentlemen and elders are not very clear about the spread of bandits, but they have heard a lot about the activities of bandits...

At this time, how much the Qingpu old people who are loyal to the Great Qing Dynasty miss the good times that have passed!Even though they never saw those good times with their own eyes, they stubbornly believed that everything was better then than it is today!They all hope that the government can clean up the muddy water flowing on this land with royal authority, and return them a peaceful and peaceful world.They hoped to turn back time, and even hoped that the Great Qing Emperor would reset the sea ban, and then insert a large wooden sign on the slope of Nansi in Qingpu Town. The book said: "Residents who exceed the limit, the owl will show it!"...

Qingpu people are noble, clean and upright. They would rather not eat seafood for life, would rather not wear painted leather suitcases, and not wear silk gauze, but also have the bright and clear universe of the Qing Dynasty, and the simple world style that has never changed through the ages. As if understanding their psychology, the Nanyang fleet did not arrive at Qingpu Town in the normal May and June this year, and there was no news until late July.During this period, Beiyang's sand fleet came back twice. They couldn't wait for the Nanyang bird ship to hear, so they had to unload the pine wood and soybeans, packed some local products from Qingpu and sailed back north...

This year was quite strange, there were many disturbing signs on the ground of Qingpu, the bird boats and boats that were supposed to come did not come, and the natural and man-made disasters that should not have come came one by one. At the beginning of May, when the merchants of the Nanyang Commercial Bank and the Beiyang Commercial Bank on the Nansipo were looking forward to the bird fleet, a mass of black locusts flew from nowhere, and the crops on the eighteen beaches of Qingpu were gnawed overnight. Not even a single weed was left on the field ridge or in the wilderness. After the locusts passed, there was no grass on the ground in Qingpu. It was as if a fire had been struck, and more than ten thousand villagers in three villages and four villages wailed up to the sky and were in great pain.In Qingpu Town and Jinkou County, the victims of disasters are like ants, people die on the road, and there are countless people who fill the ditch.All the grass roots and grass roots on Shiba Beach were stripped off by the victims, and some even devoid of conscience went so far as to cook cannibals to survive.

Cannibalism happened a few times.At the end of May, Ruan Wuhai, Ruan Jiaji, hugged a three-year-old abandoned child by the official road in front of the village. After killing him, he cooked a pot and was about to swallow it when his neighbor Ruan Qingshan found out.At the beginning of June, an old woman at Hehuaqiao killed her grandson, cooked a pot of meat, and stored it in a clay bowl. Someone saw her, and immediately looked at the bowl, and found the child's fingers in the bowl. , was also turned over to the Yamen of Jinkou County.On June 12, Dougou and his wife, a peddler outside the south gate of Qingpu Town, stole the neighbor's son, washed and killed them, and were about to cook them.On June 13, the two men and two women were tied up outside the north gate of Jinkou County and executed with sticks.Chen Rongjun, the elder of the parents of Jinkou County, came to the prison in person. Dozens of tiger and wolf-like government officials beat the two men and two women with sticks no less than 200 times before killing them one by one. The event was unprecedented. On the second day after the two men and two women were executed with sticks, another ominous phenomenon appeared. In the afternoon of this day, dark clouds gathered in the sky over Qingpu Town, and the wind was strong, threatening to overwhelm the river and the sea. People in Qingpu had a premonition that something was going to happen.Sure enough, after the strong wind blew up, a thunderclap tore apart half of the dark sky.A white dragon descended from the sky on the south temple slope, more than ten feet long, soared in the wind, whistling in all directions, and then plunged into the bottom of the sea.Lu Tongpu's family on the slope of Nansi was dragged by the dragon to eight houses, where three men and two women were thrown into the sea.Anecdotes are divided: this is an ominous omen, the evil dragon enters the sea, and the master will be catastrophe. However, until the end of July, the catastrophe did not appear, and the minor troubles appeared once, which happened on the night of June 22.That night, more than a hundred pirates under the command of the three pirate monks sailed from the vast sea to Qingpu in two three-masted fast boats when the night was dark and the wind was high, and robbed Nanyang and Beiyang merchants on Nansipo A lot of property, the officers and soldiers in Jinkou County rushed to hear the news, and the gang of pirates fled into the sea. This is a year of disaster.This year is the second year of Xuanzong Minning Daoguang.In May of this year, people from Shaanxi and Qinghai rebelled against the Qing Dynasty. In July, Zhu Mazi of Xincai raised his flag to rebel, and chaos broke out in Henan and Anhui provinces.The Tiandihui in the southern provinces conspired to rebel after Lin Shuangwen, leader of the Shuntian Alliance, launched an incident in Taiwan and Meixian County, Guangdong. Its party members were numerous, and its spread area expanded to the coastal trading ports and the vast areas of the lower reaches of the Yangtze River...