The train slowly drove into the station and stopped beside the platform. A large number of vendors wearing special crotch (for identification) were like flies with rotten meat, rushing towards the carriages. They carried dustpans and baskets filled with food, raised to the windows, and sold to passengers in the car.

The hungry passengers poked their heads out of the car windows, bargained with the vendors, and then spent a few cents to buy food. One transaction was completed through the car windows.

There were passengers who got off the bus at the station and walked through the middle aisle of the carriage with their luggage towards the door. On the platform, there were passengers who wanted to get on the bus carrying large and small bags, waiting at the doors of each carriage to get on the bus.

The conductors guarded the doors of each carriage and tried their best to maintain the order of "going first and then going".

Both the car and the platform were very lively, with crowds of people, just like a market, which made Li Shousu, who was sitting in the car compartment, feel a little annoyed.

Looking at the hawkers outside the car window, he really wanted to pull up the curtains, but several officials in the same car bought snacks with fun, and he could only ignore them.

It is noon now, and the train heading south stops at Zhending Station. Although there are food trucks on the train to provide hot meals, the food sold by station vendors is richer and more delicious. Therefore, people with experience in riding will buy food sold by station vendors when the train is at the station.

The stations are located in different areas, and the food sold by hawkers is also different. It can be said that they are full of regional characteristics. From Jicheng, Youzhou, all the way south to the bank of the Yellow River, the special snacks at various stations along the route can make the gourts enjoy eating them.

Seeing that his colleagues bought smoked chicken, Li Shousu quickly asked his entourage to take out the lunch he had just bought from the dining cart.

The official saw that Li Shousu had already prepared lunch and smiled and said, "The smoked chicken at Zhending Station is a great choice. It would be a pity if you don't eat a bite after the station."

Another person immediately interrupted: "When this is said, Doctor Li is a child of Zhao County, why don't you know the taste of smoked chicken?"

The son of Zhao County, whose surname is Li, outlines Li Shousu's origin. Everyone suddenly remembered this county guard and felt that it was too rude to tear the smoked chicken in front of the gentry's children, so they quickly moved to the next door.

Li Shousu slowly ate lunch, drank the tea made by the waiter, smelled the fragrance of smoked chicken from the next door, and looked at the bustling crowd outside the window, and sighed in his heart.

Smoked chicken is of course delicious, but as a child of the Li family in Zhaojun, you should not lose your manners, and you should not tear the chicken in public with your hands, and eat it voraciously, so you can't eat it all over the mouth.

As an official of the Ministry of Rites, Li Shousu and his colleagues went to Youzhou for business operations. Now he has finished business operations and returned to Luoyang. So he took a train south in Jicheng, and then went to Heyang on the north bank of the Yellow River through Zhending and Yecheng.

According to the travel system, they can sit in the train's special carriage without hudging with civilians.

The private car is only for officials who go out to ride. The decoration is between the second-class car and the third-class car. There are sleepers and multiple toilets, so the comfort is quite good.

This is not the first time Li Shousu has taken a train, but every time he takes a train, he feels uncomfortable, because the seats in the car are set up on the opposite bench, and the passengers sit down with their feet hanging down and face to face with the person opposite. This is actually very rude.

As a noble family member, Li Shousu felt that the design of the train car was messy and did not consider the etiquette system at all. Passengers sat opposite each other, and it was not good to speak.

Also, whenever the train is at the station, passengers bargain for things through the windows and mercenary vendors on the platform, which is simply...

A harsh whistle sounded outside the window, interrupting Li Shousu's thoughts. The station attendant on the platform held an electric horn and shouted loudly: "The train is about to drive, it is about to drive. If you should get on the train, get on the train quickly, get off the train quickly!!"

After a while, the locomotive pulled the whistle, and the carriage slowly moved, and the people on the platform and above began to "retreat" backwards.

The train slowly left Zhending Station, and Li Shousu felt stuffy in his chest and had difficulty breathing: he felt like a sheep in a cage, being pulled away from the farm by a vehicle and headed to the slaughterhouse.

Every time he takes a train, when the train leaves the station, Li Shousu feels this way, because he feels that the carriage is too depressing, like a cage trapping himself, making him unable to be free.

Sitting in the carriage of a special car, he was forced to talk to officials with different identities, but it was difficult to lock himself in the sleeper box and not come out. The feeling of being forced to talk was very bad and he couldn't live a peaceful life.

Unlike traveling in a horse-drawn carriage or a ox carriage, there is a quiet space for your own.

The train travels very fast, and when sitting in the car, I always feel that something will happen in the next second: the train loses control and derails, and none of the passengers on the car are spared.

This possibility made him feel uneasy, but he couldn't change anything, just like a helpless sheep in the sheep pen, watching the butcher holding a knife and sweeping around himself.

If you were traveling in a carriage or a ox cart in the past, you could stop at any time, but the train would not work.

This new type of transportation, like a steamship, changes the world in Li Shousu's cognition. The world in his memory is not like this, but it has changed significantly now.

The new means of transportation, traveling thousands of miles a day, completely changed people's travel methods, blurring the distinction between high and low among passengers, and also allowing the fun of travel to disappear without a trace.

Train carriages are divided into passenger levels based on fares rather than doors, just as postage packages are loaded according to the destination (postage) rather than the value of internal items.

So, sometimes Li Shousu would feel that the passengers were more like packages, transported to the next "station" by trains or steamships.

The train departs on time (relative), arrives at the station on time (relative), and the stops are limited to the time, and the passengers taking the bus, regardless of their high or low, must grasp the time. The train will not stop particularly because of the identity of a certain passenger.

Because one train is delayed, it is easy to delay all trains on the entire railway, and no one can afford the losses caused.

Li Shousu thought about the unreasonableness of the train trip, but knew that it was just a boring complaint. The court could not live without the train that traveled thousands of miles a day, and more and more people began to live without it.

He looked out of the car window, and there was an endless plain outside. Looking up at the fields after autumn harvest, Li Shousu, a plain without markers, knew that he had entered the territory of Zhaozhou.

The train left Zhending and headed south and passed through the territory of Zhaozhou. Zhaozhou was the area of ​​Zhaoxian in the Han Dynasty and was also the location of his county.

The Li family of Zhaojun is the best-class gentry in the world, but now they are facing challenges brought by the great changes in the times: railways and canals.

When the Yongji Canal was opened, various parts of Hebei began to be affected to varying degrees, and Zhaozhou was no exception. A large number of idle labor gradually flocked to the canal, but it did not affect the manors in various places at that time.

But as time goes by, the situation gradually changes. The low grain prices and cloth prices that have lasted for many years have caused the income of the manor to drop significantly. Everyone realizes something is wrong, but they can't change anything.

Later, the railway passed through Zhaozhou, bringing a large number of affordable commodities, grain, and cloth to Zhaozhou, and transporting a large number of people to Yecheng to work, changing the original living order of this land.

A large number of cheap goods pouring into Zhaozhou have impacted every household, whether it is the commercial markets in the city, the county, or the grass market in the town, full of goods from Yecheng. Handicrafts in various places have gone bankrupt, and everyone yearns for Yecheng.

There are many large workshops in Yecheng, which recruit workers all year round, with good salary and good wages. Moreover, the grain prices in Yecheng are very low and the living costs are not high. If you go to Yecheng to work, one person can support the whole family, which is obviously more cost-effective than farming in your hometown.

Therefore, farmers flocked to Zhending on a large scale and took a train to Yecheng to work, which resulted in insufficient staff in many manors in Zhaozhou. In order to retain tenant farmers and farmers, the owners had to reduce the rent.

But even so, it is difficult to hire enough personnel, and the income of the manors has dropped sharply, and they have to pay rent and service to the government on time and in full, which has forced many manors to "transform" and start planting various types of cash crops.

Or open workshops, workshops, engage in industry and commerce, and get more income.

As people's minds changed, many large clans who had lived in their lives began to collapse. Because the court allowed "parents, grandparents were there, and their descendants were from different wealth", many large clan members went their separate ways and went along the railways and canals to the metropolis and commercial ports to pursue their own wealth dreams.

From the letters from relatives and friends, Li Shousu knew the tremendous changes in his hometown, the decline of many manors, and the fluctuations of people's hearts. He felt quite emotional, but he was powerless.

The railway began to change the Li family of Zhao County and the Lu family of Fanyang. During his business in Youzhou, he also heard the children of the Lu family of Fanyang sigh that "people's hearts are not the same" and that of the collapse of the original village order.

The Zheng family in Xingyang, where he is in Xingyang, the Wang family in Taiyuan, where he is in Jinyang, and the Li family in Longxi, where he is in Longyou. His original life has also been changed by the railways in his hometown and has become beyond recognition.

The trains that were traveling rapidly with thick smoke brought a large amount of goods to the areas along the route, destroying the self-sufficiency economy and taking away a large amount of labor. While everyone was enjoying the convenience of the train, they had no choice but to find that the times had changed and that their previous lives could never be returned.

The area where the Cui family of Boling and the Cui family of Qinghe is located is close to Yongji Canal. It began to face the impact of labor loss and cheap goods more than ten or twenty years ago, and the degree of "injury" is more serious than that of other gentry.

A large number of manors were forced to transform, and countless tenant farmers and farmers flocked to commercial ports along the canal, never returning. The economic income of the gentry plummeted and began to conceal the industry and commerce that had always been regarded as a low-level business.

If this continues, will the gentry still be a gentry?

Li Shousu was a little confused, looking at the view outside the window, looking at the railway extending to the distant horizon, and listening to the "besides, let alone" sound of the wheels pressing on the track, as if he had seen a big river and heard the roar of the river.

I and other passengers were the leaves wrapped in the river by the torrents, rotating and floating, and involuntarily heading downstream and never looking back.

A passage from the classic appeared in his mind:

The son said on the river: The dead are like this.
Chapter completed!