Chapter 431 - 3: Imparting Knowledge (Part 3)
If wandering near the sea during the dry season on a good day is leisure and relaxation,
then going out to sea during the rainy season is like lighting a lantern in the toilet, looking for trouble.
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Barely restraining his restless heart with reason.
Due to the lack of metal materials available for forging and consumable fuel, Chen Zhou’s life inevitably became more leisurely.
Although the parts for the watermill had been completed, affected by the weather, they could not be taken out for assembly for a while—
Chen Zhou planned to build a wood-and-stone structure millhouse spanning both sides of the river for the watermill, which would facilitate grain processing and the maintenance of the watermill.
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No more clanging sounds could be heard in the Forging Room.
He rested in the cave for two days, feeling restless and bored, and eventually couldn’t stay idle, finding himself some new work to do.
Such as continuing to draw educational materials, or drawing a design for a sailboat capable of going out to sea.
Or communicating more with the natives, not to master their language, but at least to gather some information from them.
As the saying goes, "Knowledge comes in steps, and expertise has its focus."
Though Chen Zhou far surpasses the natives in breadth and depth of knowledge, he really couldn’t manage to start a fire by friction, hunt with a Wooden Bow and Arrow, dive to catch fish, or throw a Wooden Spear, as the natives did.
Half out of curiosity, half out of the need to pass the time.
Every day when the natives finished their work and returned to their wooden huts to rest, Chen Zhou would join them with Sunday, exchanging conversations with them.
Over time, he truly learned a lot of the native language words, and also gained some understanding of the skills the natives possessed.
Especially in the aspects of fire-making by wood friction and crafting Wooden Bows and Arrows, after a few attempts, he could also quite clumsily ignite a bonfire using the most primitive methods.
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While drawing knowledge from the natives, Chen Zhou also contemplated which skills he possessed could be taught to the natives.
Indeed, upon careful thought, there were quite a few.
In the most basic cooking skills, there were techniques such as pan-frying, stir-frying, boiling, deep-frying, and the use of chili, garlic, spring onion, and mint.
Coincidentally, among the finished products Chen Zhou forged were several kitchen knives and a couple of not-so-round iron pots.
When teaching the natives how to cook, he conveniently brought these kitchen utensils to the natives’ little kitchen, letting them watch and try their hands at practice.
Once the natives gradually understood the cooking tricks, Chen Zhou also taught them another skill—vine and grass weaving.
However, even Chen Zhou hadn’t fully grasped vine and grass weaving, so he could only teach the most basic to the natives.
As for complex and advanced woven products, he couldn’t demonstrate or explain them clearly, so he simply copied from a weaving book, drawing the relatively basic weaving techniques on clay boards to hand over to the natives.
As long as they put in the effort to learn, they could gradually master the skills of vine weaving and independently create practical items like vine chairs, vine cabinets, straw hats, and straw mats.
This way, Chen Zhou would save the effort of worrying for them, and might even benefit from the natives, allowing himself to enjoy the distinctive charm of intangible cultural heritage sooner.
Aside from culinary arts and vine weaving, Chen Zhou’s other contributions to the natives were closely related to their lives.
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He had always been puzzled about why the natives had the ability to build canoes and could sail but still worried about food.
Even if food resources on the island were severely lacking, the fish, shrimp, and crabs in the sea were extremely abundant.
Even if they only collected seafood daily, catching shrimp, crabs, mollusks that washed ashore, picking seaweed and dead fish, they shouldn’t be driven to living on cannibalism.
Only after communicating with the natives did he realize that the natives had no idea that shrimp and crabs were edible, nor did they recognize edible shellfish.
Moreover, their only cooking method was roasting, or perhaps, burning.
And when not thoroughly cooked, there was no way to kill the parasites in sea creatures or eliminate the toxic substances within them.
Under these circumstances, many "brave pioneers" died a few days after consuming strange sea creatures.
Their deaths led the elders in the tribe to firmly believe that shrimp, crabs, and all mollusks were poisonous, and even avoided eating many types of sea fish.
Information about toxic creatures being passed around, making the natives still afraid to consume most sea creatures now, daring only to catch a few types of sea fish they were familiar with.
Even at the feast on August 1st, faced with cooked shrimp, crabs, and scallops that retained the shape of sea creatures, few of them dared to try, fearing poisoning.
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"This can’t be eaten, and that can’t be eaten, it’s really hard for you to live to this age!"
Learning about the harsh life the natives led in the tribe, Chen Zhou generously taught them about all kinds of edible sea creatures and plant fruits he had verified.
The previously focused paintings came in handy at this time.
To indicate which animal was non-toxic, he only needed to show the natives the picture book, letting them remember the key features of that creature.
After all, toxic sea creatures were relatively rare and had very distinctive appearances.
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Teaching the natives how to identify sea creatures was initially unintentional, Chen Zhou never expected that after seeing the picture book, the natives would bring him an unexpected surprise.
Since setting foot on the island, he had occasionally encountered giant lobsters during seafood collection and once found a type of giant crab. Surprisingly, the natives had seen them with their own eyes.