1627 Rise of the South China Sea

Chapter 459 The construction progress of Changhua

On August 1629, 8, the tenth day of July in the second year of Chongzhen in the Ming Dynasty, Changhua County, Danzhou.

Almost all the cross-travelers stationed in Changhua came to the port to bid farewell to the chief engineer Liu Shanxia who was about to leave here.In fact, Liu Shanxia has not been here for too long, only about three months. According to the construction period of the whole project, this period of time is just the beginning.But he had to leave here early to preside over the next large-scale project according to the arrangement of the executive committee.

In order to be able to maintain a smooth construction progress for a period of time after Liu Shanxia left, the technicians in the Ministry of Construction, including Liu Shanxia, ​​have worked overtime in the past two months, and have made the construction plan for the next six months in advance to make Chang The planned railway line from Huagang to Shilu mining area is divided into several construction sections. As long as the construction is carried out in accordance with the technical standards, there is no need for Liu Shanxia to stay here to keep an eye on the construction site for the time being.

Of course, this journey is not without major technical difficulties. For example, the railway bridge crossing the tributaries of the Changhua River near Shilu is definitely one of the biggest engineering problems encountered by the Ministry of Construction after crossing.Fortunately, the span of this bridge is not large. Even with the current construction level, it is completely possible to build a railway bridge for freight trains. It just takes a little more time and the cost of building the bridge is a little higher.

After Liu Shanxia leaves Changhua this time, he will first return to the base camp to report on his work, and then he has to take a boat north to Hong Kong Island to organize and direct the preliminary work of local development.After construction started on Hong Kong Island, Liu Shanxia had to go back to Annam again.At present, the bilateral negotiations on the division of concessions in the Da Nang area have ended, and the development of Da Nang has entered the countdown stage. At that time, the base camp must also send engineers like Liu Shanxia who can take care of themselves to sit in the local area.

Several ports entered the construction stage almost at the same time. This kind of small-probability event came together and basically drained all the manpower of the Ministry of Construction.The main reason for this is, of course, that the Executive Committee is eager to expand externally, hoping to spread Haihan’s influence to a larger area in the shortest possible time. It seems that they are all opportunities not to be missed, even if it squeezes the already tight engineering strength even more, it is worth it.

This situation will continue for a long period of time in the future. Although the local technical personnel recruited successively have been receiving training and acted as foremen in some projects, they want to be in charge of the project independently. Sharing worries, but it still takes a certain amount of time to slowly accumulate experience.The requirements of this technical type of work are much higher than that of ordinary labor. Even professional craftsmen in this era still need a long time to adapt to Haihan-style engineering design and construction after entering the Ministry of Construction.

For the road construction project currently underway in Changhua, the temporary departure of technicians such as Liu Shanxia will have a certain impact on the progress of the project. However, compared with other areas under the Haihan rule, the strict military control implemented here in Changhua The system can, to a certain extent, minimize the negative impact.

Up to now, the total number of POWs and refugees transported from Annan to Changhua after March this year to offset war arrears has exceeded 5000, plus more than 1000 naturalized people transferred from the base camp and nearly 2000 hard labor As for slave labor, the population controlled by Haihan in Changhua is already nearly [-], which is more than twice the number of people under the jurisdiction of Changhua County.

From Changhua Port to the end of the construction site more than [-] miles southeast, thousands of people are working hard every day for the early opening of the Changhua-Shilu rail transit line.During this section of the road, a total of three immigrant camps and two larger forced labor camps have been built, and three companies of the militia army have been stationed with a total of more than [-] armed forces.

Changhua County, which was once regarded as a hidden danger in the early stage of construction, has now become insignificant.Just the two local hard labor camps where slave labor is held are larger than Changhua County and have a larger population.

However, the Changhua garrison commander Xiao Laosan who took the initiative to establish a relationship with Haihan at the beginning, has been living quite happily recently.After reaching a preliminary cooperation agreement with Haihan, Xiao Laosan soon received the so-called "office expenses" sent by the Haihan store in the city.According to the agreement, Xiao Laosan has since turned a blind eye to the Haihan armed personnel in the jurisdiction. Although these so-called militias have not marched into Changhua City, they can be seen almost every day on the top of the city. He led a large group of slave laborers to build roads at nearby construction sites.

Every day at dawn, you can see the Haihan militia armed with live ammunition escorting a long string of prisoners strung together with shackles to work on the construction site. These people are often lined up near the planned route, and then sit on the ground, The squares of stones brought in are slowly hammered into goose egg-sized gravel with a small hammer.When the weather is fine, the stone-beating queues are often several miles long, and the number of people exceeds a thousand. The sound of knocking has been echoing in the wilderness outside Changhua County all day long.In Changhua, a small place with a vast land and few people, the battle that the Haihan people put up is quite spectacular.

Xiao Laosan also went to the construction site outside the city to visit this inexplicable way of building roads. He really didn't understand what the Haihan people thought. Could it be that this kind of gravel should be used to pave a road?Can the road be bumpy and bumpy?
However, after he went there, he became more and more confused. The laborers piled up the gravel, buried sections of sleepers on it, and then lifted long iron tracks and laid them on the sleepers.Xiao Laosan also asked Qiao Zhiya several times, but every time Qiao Zhiya smiled mysteriously, just asking him to wait patiently.

Until one day, Xiao Laosan heard a roar from a distance outside the city from the top of the city, and soon saw a big black monster coming from the seaside along the gravel railway track with white smoke. Coming at a gallop.Xiao Laosan's eyeballs almost fell to the ground. He never thought that there are such strange things in the world. The Haihan people spent so much to build such a strange road, so that this big guy can Speed ​​through the wilderness.

Xiao Laosan didn't bother to ask someone to notify the county magistrate, so he went straight out of the city to the construction site after getting off the tower, intending to see what this big guy was up close.

After getting close, Xiao Laosan realized that this thing was far more complicated than he imagined. Just seeing the transmission spokes of those big iron wheels made people feel a little dizzy.And behind this big iron guy was dragging two wagons with only a chassis, all of which were packed with bundled sleepers, densely piled up like a hill.

Xiao Laosan walked around the big guy several times, but he didn't see what was dragging or pushing it forward.In the end, Qiao Zhiya stood up and answered the question in his mind: "Did you see the coal piled behind the front of the car? This car uses coal to boil water to propel it forward."

"Using coal? Boiling water?" Xiao Laosan only felt that the more he listened, the more confused he became. It is not uncommon to use coal to boil water. The Haihan shop in the city has always sold very cheap briquettes. It is better to burn water and cook than firewood. Much more convenient.But how this incident is connected with the big iron lump in front of him, Xiao Laosan is still puzzled.

"You don't have to think so clearly, you just need to know that after we build this road, it will only take about an hour to get there from here to the inland Shizidong by taking this new type of transportation!" Qiao Zhiya also understood that it was difficult to explain this kind of scientific knowledge to Xiao Laosan in a few words, so he only talked about the use and not the principle.

Xiao Laosan, the highest military officer in Changhua County, is very clear about the location of Shizidong. Starting from Changhua County, he traveled westward along the Changhua River. After a journey of about sixty or seventy miles, he arrived at The sphere of influence of Li people's cottage Shizidong.People with good legs can walk there in a day, but Qiao Zhiya said that this kind of big iron lump can shorten the journey to about an hour, which surprised Xiao Laosan again.

As a low-level officer who has received basic military training and mastered certain military theories, Xiao Laosan is well aware of the important role that mobility can play in combat, and the monster created by Haihan obviously has extremely high mobility, and It can also carry a lot of cargo - or a fully armed Haihan militia, if this thing is used in time of war, it is really a terrible tool.

However, the Haihan people don't seem to have such a plan, and the operating route of this thing is also very limited. It will take a lot of manpower, money and material resources to build this special road for its passage, and it will take two or three Yue also only built a road for about ten miles, and it must be impractical to use this thing for war.Of course, there is nothing in Changhua County that deserves so much attention from the Haihan people. Xiao Laosan is still very self-aware of this.The only thing he can conclude is that the Haihan people spent so much time building the road to Shilu, obviously not just to help the local Li people move their homes out of the mountains.

The doubts in Xiao Laosan's heart are destined to be unanswered in the near future. Except for the traverser and Huang Sanmu, the owner of Shizidong, in Changhua area, only a few naturalized civilian cadres know what this road leads to. What kind of treasure is buried there.And insiders will never reveal Shilu's secrets to the outside world because of their own interests. When the outside world learns the truth, it will probably have to wait until the Shilu Iron Mine is put into production.

The people resettled in the Changhua area, including prisoners of war who were assigned to hard labor camps, their mission here was not just to build tracks.Nearly [-] people live here, and the daily supplies they need are a number that cannot be ignored. The infrastructure projects here may last for several years with the development of the Shilu Iron Mine. Undoubtedly, it will take up quite a lot of shipping capacity, which is not a good solution for the Executive Committee who prefers to use the limited shipping capacity at sea for foreign trade.

In order to realize local supplies for basic living as soon as possible, a considerable part of the labor force assigned to Changhua took on the task of opening up wasteland and farming land.Due to the small number of residents in Changhua County, the unowned wasteland outside the county has become the target of reclamation.The geographical conditions and climate here are very similar to those of the Annan Red River Delta across the sea. The Ministry of Agriculture believes that it is very suitable for large-scale planting of rice crops.In the first two months of construction, under the command of the technical personnel of the Ministry of Agriculture, the laborers reclaimed more than 3000 mu of rice fields and more than [-] mu of vegetable fields along the Changhua River. Various fruit trees planted.

Of course, eating vegetarian food alone is definitely far from meeting the energy supplement needs of heavy physical labor.Relying on the few small fishing boats in Changhua fishing village obviously cannot meet the current situation. The Ministry of Shipping has transferred ten new fishing boats with a displacement of about 50 tons from the base camp to carry out fishing operations in the offshore of Changhua Port every day. In addition to supplying Haihan's nearly [-] people with seafood, there is also occasional excess production capacity that can be supplied to the people in Changhua County.In addition, the Ministry of Agriculture also sent commissioners to direct the construction of a livestock breeding center. Cattle, donkeys, pigs, chickens, ducks and other poultry were brought in from Daben. However, commodities that are in short supply, such as milk and eggs, are generally only supplied to the local area. The traverser cadres eat it.

In addition to basic food supply, the Executive Committee is also trying to gradually improve various infrastructure and permanent civil affairs management institutions in Changhua.Institutions such as hospitals, schools, and police stations are being built or have already entered the stage of operation.It is said that the preparatory work of the Changhua Port Management Committee has also been put on the agenda of the Executive Committee.If there are no major accidents, Qiao Zhiya, who has performed well here in the early stage, is very likely to be appointed as the chief executive of the Changhua area.Although he himself is also serving in the military, judging from the current personnel situation, there is no one more suitable for this position in Changhua area for the time being.

When Qiao Zhiya applied to be transferred from the chemical laboratory a few months ago, he probably never thought that he would get the chance to be promoted so soon.Although Changhua is sparsely populated and the living conditions are relatively poor, after the development of the Shilu Iron Mine in the future, a supporting coal and iron industry will be built in Changhua. It is a certainty that it will become an industrial hub on the island in the future. The outlook is still pretty good.Qiao Zhiya himself is engaged in chemical engineering. For him, a purely industrial city has a natural sense of closeness. This is why he responded to the call of the Executive Committee at the first time and was willing to come to Changhua often. One of the reasons for staying.

(End of this chapter)