Traveling through 1942 with space

"Uncle, I know that everyone is fleeing famine, so it's really hard to find people.

So, tomorrow when we get to the village, we'll spend some money and ask the local officials. If there is really no news, I won't blame you.

Here are three dollars, uncle, take it and ask someone to help find out tomorrow." Hou Xiaoge took out three dollars from his pocket and handed it over.

"Oh! What a filial child.

Heiwa, you should keep the money yourself! During this period, your uncle has saved some money, so you don't need to take any money. "Hou Yangmin touched his sensible nephew and said with a look of relief.

"Thank you, uncle."

After spending some time together, Hou Xiaoge was quite satisfied with the attitude of his uncle and other family members.

There was no conversation that night, and the next day Hou Xiaoge was awakened by his second aunt's shouting.

Second Aunt and Younger Sister-in-law filled each person's bamboo backpack with water and gave each person a cake. After everyone finished eating, they packed their luggage and pushed it out the door.

After everyone had left the door, my uncle took out the iron lock from home and carefully locked the door.

"Children, this time you are really leaving your homeland.

Everyone should always remember Nangou Village as our hometown, and remember that our ancestral graves are here." Hou Yangmin said with tears in his eyes, touching the door frame and turning his back.

"I understand, Dad, uncle, and uncle." The children said in unison.

After watching for a long time at the doorstep, the adults got up and started pushing the wheelbarrows forward. However, Hou Xiaoge could clearly sense everyone's reluctance and slowed down his pace.

In Hou Xiaoge's opinion, this may be the Chinese people's obsession with home!

When Xiaoge's family gathered under the big locust tree at the entrance of the village, there were already quite a few people sitting under the tree waiting.

After waiting for about half an hour, all the villagers had gathered.

"kneel!"

At the shouts of the elders, more than 200 villagers from Nanjiagou knelt down and kowtowed towards the big locust tree and the village where they had lived for hundreds of years.

After three bows, at the urging of the elders, everyone began to move slowly upwards and leave the village.

I don’t know when it started, but cries began to be heard in the team, and eventually it turned into howling and wailing.

After climbing over a hillside, Hou Xiaoge looked back at the old locust tree, of which only a few branches and leaves were left at the top.

At this time, a breeze happened to blow, and the remaining leaves fluttered gently, as if saying goodbye to the villagers who had guarded them for hundreds of years, and also as if complaining about the grievance of having most of the leaves picked off.

"Heiwa, let's go! As long as we are still here, we will come back later." Zhou Xinmin, the uncle-in-law, patted Hou Xiaoge on the shoulder and said.

"Ok!"

Hou Xiaoge nodded, turned around, walked down the hillside, and disappeared from the sight of the big locust tree.

"Yes! As long as people are still here, they will always come back." Hou Xiaoge muttered to himself as he watched the team staggering forward in front of him.

After climbing up the ravine and walking about two miles, the team arrived at the main road, and Hou Xiaoge found that there were even more refugees.

In August, we would only encounter two or three groups of refugees a day. Now we encounter one group every one or two hours, and groups of three or five families fleeing famine are constantly seen along the road. It seems that the disaster has become more serious.

In the afternoon, when the team arrived at the seat of Hedi Township, the outside of the city wall was already densely packed with refugees.

"Oh my God! Our Hedi Township is just a small town with a population of 10,000 or 20,000 people. Now there are a large number of refugees living outside the city. It seems that there are more than the population of the entire township. There are too many victims!" Erda Houminyou's eyes widened when he saw the refugees outside the city wall, who were more than those in Fan Town last month.

"Our township is the last large township within a radius of dozens of miles. After our township, we are out of the jurisdiction of Luoning County. It is still twenty or thirty miles away from Dongli Township, the nearest township in Shan County. The refugees will definitely have to rest here for a few days." Hou Yangmin said with a somewhat grim expression as he looked at the refugee camp.

After the team found a campsite outside the city, the women took their children and began to set up tents, while the men went around looking for news, food or relatives and friends in villages.

While his uncle went to inquire about his mother's news, Hou Xiaoge was also trying to find out information from the refugee children nearby.

After asking about a dozen children from different teams, and adding the information brought by the adults in the village, Hou Xiaoge roughly knew the reason.

It turned out that in addition to local refugees, most of these victims had fled from central Henan or even near Luoyang.

Especially in some areas in central Henan, the Japanese began a large-scale sweep in the occupied areas last month.

The Japanese were not human. They committed all kinds of atrocities, such as burning, killing, looting and so on. This added to the man-made terror in the areas already suffering from severe natural disasters. A large number of disaster victims began to flee frantically to the Kuomintang-controlled areas.

The situation near Luoyang was also extremely difficult. After the Japanese attacked the capital of Zhongyuan Province, Luoyang became the temporary capital of Zhongyuan Province. Due to political and geographical reasons, the capital's natural advantages attracted countless disaster victims.

Now, there are disaster victims scattered across dozens of miles outside Luoyang City. People are living in misery every day, and it has even come to the point where people are cannibalizing each other. If they don't leave, they will only wait to die.

In the evening, Hou Yangmin brought back the news that he had asked someone to check and there would be news in two days at most.

Early the next morning, countless teams in the camp started heading northwest again, carrying everything on their shoulders.

By nine or ten in the morning, a large area outside the city was empty, with less than two or three tenths of the population left as refugees, most of whom were residents of the county, all camping near the city walls.

The team from Nangou Village did not move their campsite because they had to continue fleeing famine. However, at noon, some villagers still moved out of the camp with their families.

Hou Xiaoge asked his uncle and found out that many of these people were old and weak. The few remaining elderly people in the village some time ago were living in these families.

Because they were reluctant to leave their elderly behind, these families decided not to leave and temporarily took refuge in a relative’s camp in front of the city wall.

When the village landlord went out of town in October to recruit people to grow winter wheat, they would return to their hometown to help the landlord farm.

Hou Xiaoge nodded secretly after hearing this. Because Luoning County is mountainous and the Luo River passes through the entire county, the disaster is not particularly serious.

During this month of traveling, Luoning County has had two rains. Although the rains did not last long, they were still very effective for the dry farmland. Otherwise, there would be no wild vegetables for the refugees to pick.

If there are a few more autumn rains, by October when most of the disaster victims have left, the landlords who have harvested most of the farmers' land will look for an opportunity to leave the city and recruit tenant farmers to help them grow winter wheat.

If you are a local, you will have a great advantage in being recruited by the landlord. After all, it is much more convenient to use your own people, and refugees running around are obviously not so reliable.

The team from Nangou Village stayed outside the city for two days, and eventually about a quarter of the families took the opportunity to find new homes and were unwilling to leave.

They all fled here together, how could Hou Xiaoge not know the financial situation of these people? They just saved a little from fighting the bandits, and it would be hard for them to survive until the end of the year. He really didn't know what motivated these people to stay in their hometown. Could it be that they couldn't bear to leave their hometown?

Yes, it must be that it is hard to leave one's hometown, otherwise Hou Xiaoge really can't find any reason to understand why these disaster victims are unwilling to leave.

"Heiwa, you have to leave tomorrow. The brokerage firm in the village has already checked and found that there is no one left in the small mountain village where your mother was bought.

The escort said that they either fled deeper into the mountains or fled to the famine, so they couldn't be found for the time being." Hou Yangmin squatted on the ground with a sad face and explained the news to Hou Xiaoge.

"Yes! I understand, uncle."

Although Hou Xiaoge was mentally prepared for the recent situation outside the city, he couldn't help feeling a little discouraged when he heard about it.