Gou was a member of the imperial family in the late Ming Dynasty

Chapter 1239 The Current Situation of Yongguo
"May I ask this gentleman's name, and what position does he hold in Yongguo?"

"I am Huang An, the chief clerk of the Prince Yong's residence. May I ask who you are...?" Huang An replied politely, while asking in return.

"My name is Sun Hao. I am an official who is going to Xinjing to take up my post this time. I am new to this place."

"So it's Lord Sun." Huang An nodded with a smile, but he was also a little puzzled. He hadn't heard that the imperial court had recently sent officials to the New World to take up their posts! Yong and Song were both vassal states of the Ming Dynasty. Logically speaking, if the imperial court sent officials to Song, then Yong should also have officials sent. However, Huang An, as the chief secretary, had not received this news. Could it be that the imperial court had made a special arrangement because of the King of Song?
If that's the case, it's understandable. After all, the King of Song is not comparable to the King of Yong. The King of Song is the legitimate son of the current emperor. In addition, the Song Kingdom has developed much better than the Yong Kingdom in the past two years. Not to mention the discovery of gold mines, the population is several times larger than that of the Yong Kingdom. Under these circumstances, it is reasonable for the King of Song to request the court to send more officials.

After exchanging names, the two began to talk. Sun Hao told Huang An that he had just arrived in the New World by ship and was not very familiar with the situation there, so he had some questions he would like to ask Huang An.

Although Huang An was the chief clerk of Prince Yong's residence, he was very approachable and down-to-earth. Previously, Huang An was merely a minor official in the imperial court, and because of his honest nature, he didn't fare very well in officialdom. Later, when the emperor decided to bestow titles upon princes outside the capital, and was selecting officials for Prince Yong, for some reason someone recommended him.

Huang An had no connections or backing in the officialdom, held a low-ranking position, and had no money to pull strings. As an honest man, he naturally became one of the officials casually assigned to Prince Yong, eventually becoming the Chief Secretary of Prince Yong's residence. While this position was a promotion for Huang An, it meant being sent to a distant overseas post. Upon learning the news, Huang An had no choice but to reluctantly take his family and follow Prince Yong to the New World.

Over time, he gradually accepted his current identity. Although he was slightly dissatisfied with the different treatment of Prince Yong and Prince Song as the chief secretary of Prince Yong's mansion, he knew that this was not something he could decide. Moreover, when the fleet first arrived at the New World, it chose New Yongzhou as its base, and Zheng Hongkui asked Prince Yong and Prince Song whether they wanted to use it as their fiefdom.

However, at that time, the Prince of Song expressed his desire to explore the south, while the Prince of Yong, after consideration, decided to stay. After all, the Prince of Yong was not as powerful as the Prince of Song. As the son of the retired emperor, the Prince of Yong's status was somewhat awkward. If he declined the offer, he was worried that it would cause trouble later. In addition, although the new Yongzhou was located in the north and had a climate similar to Liaodong, it was actually quite a good place.

It not only has excellent ports, but also dense forests, mountains, lakes and rivers, and the land is quite fertile. There are not many local natives, so establishing a kingdom here can guarantee security. In addition, there is no shortage of natural resources, which is sufficient to meet the needs.

Thus, Prince Yong chose this place as his fiefdom, establishing the present-day New Yongzhou. Initially, Yong and Song were not much different, but who could have imagined that gold mines would later be discovered in the southern Song territory? This discovery completely changed the status quo between the two countries. Due to the discovery, Song gained enormous profits in a very short time. For this reason, most immigrants from the Ming Dynasty chose to go south to Song rather than stay in Yong, even though Prince Yong's palace offered more favorable conditions than Song to attract immigrants, it still failed to retain many people.

"How many people are there in Yongguo now?" Sun Hao asked.

Huang An shook his head with a wry smile: "Including this immigration, there are less than three thousand people. That's really not enough! Yongguo has a large territory and even more land that can be reclaimed, but how much land can all these people cultivate? Besides, it's impossible for them all to go farming, right? The royal palace also has guards and officials, plus the artisans in the city. The population gap is just too big."

Sun Hao nodded slightly. Huang An was right. Given Yongguo's size, three thousand people wouldn't be many, not even thirty thousand or a hundred thousand. Such a good piece of land, so few people were simply too few. It seemed the gold mines in Songguo were incredibly attractive; just the addition of a gold mine had drawn away most of the immigrants. No wonder Huang An's expression was so grim when accepting the immigrants earlier.

To avoid arousing Huang An's suspicions, Sun Hao didn't dwell on the topic and instead inquired about the current situation in Yongguo. Huang An didn't try to hide anything; everyone knew about Yongguo's situation anyway, especially since the Ming Dynasty's ocean-going navy was stationed there, and many matters had already been reported to the court.

There wasn't much to see at the dock, nor was it a suitable place for conversation, so Huang An immediately invited Sun Hao to visit Xin Yongzhou City and have some tea. Sun Hao readily agreed and followed Huang An to the nearby Xin Yongzhou. Xin Yongzhou was built entirely in the style of a Ming Dynasty city, but it was slightly smaller than a typical county town. Furthermore, the building materials weren't the common bricks used in the Ming Dynasty; they were stone quarried from the local mountains. Huang An explained to Sun Hao that this wasn't unique to Xin Yongzhou; even Xinjing (then known as Xin Jing) in the south was built this way. In the New World, firing bricks in kilns was less convenient than using stone directly. There were plenty of mountains here, making stone quarrying easy, and using stone as a building material incurred little cost other than labor. Firing kilns, on the other hand, required labor, technology, and other costs, making it more inconvenient.

Compared to the stone-built city walls, most of the buildings inside and outside the city were constructed of wood, and many of them used high-quality timber. Sun Hao was somewhat surprised to see this, so Huang An smiled and explained to him that wood was the most abundant resource in the New World. In the forests not far from the city, there were many trees that were dozens or even hundreds of years old. Some of these trees were particularly tall, with the tallest reaching three hundred feet in height, something that was simply unheard of in the Ming Dynasty.

These redwoods are plentiful, making them the best timber imaginable. Given this advantage, Xin Yongzhou naturally made use of them. Therefore, houses both inside and outside the city were built using this timber. Furthermore, Xin Yongzhou also harvested a considerable amount of timber for future shipbuilding. Unlike building houses, where timber can be used after slight drying and can be reused after a few years, shipbuilding is different. The timber must undergo several years of air-drying to ensure complete dehydration before it can be used as shipbuilding material. Otherwise, ships built from improperly treated timber will have problems once launched. Xin Yongzhou has only been established for a little over two years, and the timber is far from being usable yet.

"Yongguo is planning to build a ship?" Sun Hao asked, slightly surprised.

"We were forced into this," Huang An told Sun Hao with a wry smile. "There was no other way. Since we had this opportunity, why couldn't we take advantage of it?"
Yongguo's development lags behind Songguo's. With an insufficient population base, relying solely on farming will yield very little output. If this continues, Yongguo will fall further and further behind Songguo. Moreover, the two vassal states in the New World now need to purchase all their resources from the Ming Dynasty, money that the imperial court cannot afford to pay; they must provide for themselves.

Prince Yong's resources were already inferior to Prince Song's, especially now that gold mines had been discovered in Xinjing. Thanks to the gold mines, Prince Song was now incredibly wealthy, but Prince Yong was different. When he first arrived in the New World, he didn't have much capital, and all his development depended on himself. If he could only accumulate wealth slowly through farming, the Yong Kingdom probably wouldn't have developed much even after several decades. Therefore, the Yong Kingdom had to find other ways to expand its sources of income.

Without the gold mines of the Song state, the only thing the Yong state could think of besides farming, hunting, and fishing was to rely on the mountains and rivers for sustenance. Since there were countless high-quality timbers here, they naturally set their sights on them.

Besides selling these timbers to the Ming Dynasty to exchange for supplies for Yongguo's development, another way to use them for logging and stockpiling was to find a way to build ships. As an overseas vassal state, shipbuilding was a matter of course, especially since the imperial court had never restricted Yongguo from building its own ships, as long as it didn't build warships. Building some merchant ships and cargo ships was entirely feasible. Once Yongguo had the capability in this area, it could shift from selling timber to selling ships.

Compared to materials like timber, a seagoing vessel capable of long-distance voyages is now incredibly valuable in the Ming Dynasty, the difference being obvious. Furthermore, if shipbuilding technology improves in the future, Yongguo, once developed, could organize its own fleet to travel between the New World and the Ming Dynasty, generating revenue through trade. In addition, with ships, they could also access the territories occupied by the European countries to the south, thus revitalizing Yongguo's economy.

Listening to Huang An's explanation, Sun Hao couldn't help but nod. He had to admit that Yongguo's plan was quite good. Without the foundation of Songguo and with a severe shortage of population, coming up with such a method could indeed solve Yongguo's current problems.

"How long will it take for these timbers to be usable?" Sun Hao asked.

"If it's just air-dried, it's ready to use now. The fleet at the port is using this timber for repairing ships. But to build larger ships, some more advanced processing is needed; the timber needs to be coated with tung oil." At this point, Huang An shook his head. "The New World has no shortage of timber, but it lacks tung trees for oil extraction. Therefore, tung oil can only be purchased from the Ming Dynasty. Most of the tung oil in our Ming Dynasty is produced in Yunnan, and I've heard that things have been somewhat unsettled there recently. The amount of tung oil transported in the past six months has been far too small. So, we'll have to wait until we can actually build ships after we solve the tung oil problem."

Nodding, Sun Hao finally understood. No wonder there was such a large pile of timber in the city that wasn't being used; it turned out they were short of tung oil! He was also aware of the situation in Yunnan, since he hadn't been in the Ming Dynasty like Huang An. The rebellion in Shading Prefecture had caused quite a stir. Although the court had suppressed Shading Prefecture, the remnants hadn't been completely wiped out. So, Yunnan was currently short of tung oil, not only in the New World but also in the Ming Dynasty. Tung oil had many uses, not only in furniture and building, but also in shipbuilding. The Ming Dynasty was currently expanding overseas, and its domestic shipbuilding industry was booming. It was already quite difficult to squeeze out even a small amount to supply the New World.

(End of this chapter)