Chapter 500 - 35: Knowledge (2)
If a situation occurs during the cow’s birthing that cannot be handled, resulting in the cow’s death, this is a risk the indigenous herders cannot afford to bear.
Moreover, Chen Zhou is very familiar with Simmental Cattle; this breed is large and has good genetics. The calves they produce are larger than local cattle even in the womb, making dystocia a common occurrence during birthing.
Sometimes, in cases like a difficult birth compounded by the umbilical cord wrapped around the neck, not even professional veterinarians can handle it, let alone this indigenous person who has only shepherded sheep for a year or so.
Chen Zhou insists on being present to oversee the cow’s delivery and manage the situation, hoping to shoulder most of the pressure for the indigenous herder.
With the Leader present, there’s no need to question fairness.
Even if the precious cow does die, with his intervention, other indigenous people won’t dare say much, and the herding native will feel much better.
...
On August 18, 1663, belated clouds covered the entire island.
The heavy rains, expected to arrive on the island by mid-August, were delayed by several days, seemingly gathering strength, and when they finally fell, they were much stronger than in previous years.
Below the factory, the rain hammered a dull drumbeat on the roofs of neatly arranged wooden huts of the indigenous people.
A layer of water quickly gathered on the stone path leading to the factory.
At the doorsteps of the indigenous people’s homes, the flat dirt roads raised hot dust with every drop of rain, soon turning into small pits that quickly filled with more water.
With the arrival of the rainy season, most activities are forced to pause.
Especially on such stormy days, movement and vision are obstructed; even the cattle and sheep on the hillside are driven back to the pens, not to mention the people.
The gloomy weather makes the already dim small huts of the indigenous people appear even dimmer.
Indigenous people who perform well at work are rewarded with a lot of oil, luxuriously lighting lamps, and begin carving wood at a small table by the window.
Social natives, holding woven straw hats, hurriedly rush out the door, and into someone else’s house—
He is making friends over chess, eager to fiercely compete in a few games of chess on his day off.
There are also indigenous people with reserved and taciturn personalities who shut their windows tightly, huddle on their beds, staring blankly at the ceiling, reminiscing about past bits and pieces.
...
The diverse new life makes most natives forget about their past.
They have learned a lot, seen a broader world, and simultaneously experienced a different culture and novel forms of entertainment.
Board games like Gomoku and chess have long spread, and recently, someone learned a few new games from the Leader.
One such game is called Tic-tac-toe, very simple, without needing a board. You can find a piece of land at the field’s edge, draw some lines with a tree branch, and pick up some stones to play.
However, Tic-tac-toe is limited in variation, and after playing a dozen games, you can basically understand its pattern, making it unappealing to those who pride themselves as "smart."
Another game is much more complex than Tic-tac-toe, called poker.
Poker requires high-quality equipment, a full set of 54 cards.
According to the Leader, high-quality poker is made of paper. A stack of 54 cards is just a thin layer, easily shuffled in hand.
But the indigenous people can’t even get paper, having to use white clay slabs for their homework. Asking them to make paper poker cards is indeed too difficult.
However, necessity is the mother of invention. Now, the indigenous people have learned a variety of skills and indeed found a way.
The zebra is responsible for manufacturing 54 uniform and thin small wooden planks, and a native skilled in painting sketches patterns on these small planks.
Either "hearts," "spades," or "diamonds," "clubs," or "JQKA," or "joker/king."
It didn’t take long for the idle natives to make a deck of cards and started playing according to the rules explained by the Leader.
Compared to the two-person games like Gomoku and chess, poker has more varied gameplay and can involve more players.
From the simplest card comparison to Three-card poker, to Blackjack, each has its unique charm.
People are inherently prone to gambling; for these indigenous people who have never been exposed to gambling before, card games are instantly more interesting than board games.
Especially when chips are at stake, the game becomes even more tense and exciting.
Among the indigenous people now, there are roughly two kinds of popular "currency."
One type is the precious "brown sugar," which, except for Saturday’s distribution, basically has no other method of acquisition. Only those who perform outstandingly at work can earn a few pieces.
Brown sugar can be eaten directly, used for cooking, or making chocolate, having a sweet taste. Among the indigenous people, it is hard currency with a high price. Except for those natives caught in the gambling fever, few are willing to use brown sugar as a bet.
The other barter currency is food and various ingredients.
In this regard, the natives responsible for fishing have the advantage because they only submit a small part of the highest quality fish caught daily; the rest they handle themselves.
While others cook rice and stew, they can always fry a fish nicely or steam a crab or boil some shells, arousing envy.
To satisfy their appetite, the natives responsible for planting often negotiate with the fishing natives, hoping to exchange rice and flour for some meat.
However, the fishing natives also do farm work regularly, so they aren’t short of grain.
Thus, this trade relationship becomes a seller’s market, gradually raising seafood prices.
Of course, this unstable trading relationship doesn’t last long.
When the rainy season comes, and everyone has idle time, the fish prices plummet—
Everyone from the same tribe, who can’t dive to catch fish, can always make a fishing rod and try fishing themselves. Anyway, they have plenty of time; fishing is both interesting and saves them from negotiating with others. Why not indulge in it?
...
Besides the two types of common "currency," there are some genuinely rare items.
For example, wooden furniture made by zebra, small wood carvings, wooden chessboards and pieces, etc., are fabulous things with no market price. Besides being willing to spend "money," one also needs a good relationship with the zebra for them to make time to create.
There’s also a native skilled in vine weaving, producing useful and beautiful rattan handicrafts, chairs, baskets, etc., which are in high demand.
The indigenous people who’ve lived through tough times only realized what it felt like to eat sufficiently after reaching the island.
In the past, they didn’t dare dream of exchanging precious food for useless wooden items someday.
...
While the natives are busy spending their leisure time, the factory’s second floor presents a different scene.
In Chen Zhou’s office, there are no bright LED lights, only two oil lamps lit—
During the rainy season, solar panels are highly inefficient. To save electricity for critical uses, he’s had to move from extravagance to frugality, lighting oil lamps again.
Outside the window, the rain poured down as occasionally lightning flashed in the distance, illuminating the room intermittently.
On the tidy long table lie several heavy books.
These are mysterious rewards delivered on July 15 and August 14. Upon opening them and seeing that they were valuable knowledge-based rewards, Chen Zhou was thrilled.
However, once he read the book titles, his face changed.
The heavy volumes delivered on August 14 were titled "Russian Language Introduction," "Traveling Russia," and "Black Russian," with "Russian Language Introduction" divided into three books, and "Traveling Russia" into four.
The books delivered on July 15 were very professional English medical journals filled with headache-inducing medical terms and various diagrams.
Even during his university years which he loved the most, Chen Zhou wouldn’t have been willing to tackle these kinds of books.
He originally planned to shelve these books, intending to sell them on a second-hand platform once back in modern times.
But while arranging the self-study Russian books on the shelf, Chen Zhou suddenly recalled that he had once violently opened a safe filled with many Russian documents.
He knew nothing of Russian, and although curious about what was written in those documents, he couldn’t decipher them.
Now, with these books and plenty of free time during the rainy season, why not try researching them?
Driven by curiosity, Chen Zhou reorganized those documents and began studying the books carefully in his office.