Chapter 263 — Wang Tao's Ideals
"What about materials?"
"Bricks, tiles, and cement. The fleet left us a few bags of cement, plus some bricks and tiles. We'll make the timber ourselves—after all, the conduit doesn't need much. As for iron nails and lime, we'll just buy them across the bay."
"All right. I'll go to Anyoule Market tomorrow and trade off some goods. That way we don't have to dip into those fifty taels of emergency reserves."
The next day, Wang Tao set out with Wang Degang, Shi Jinxi, and a few others. They changed into local clothes and crossed over to Anyoule Market. This time he brought modest gifts of four varieties—the customary token for a new neighbor paying respects after moving in. Hu Xun reciprocated in kind, sending back two soup-ready sheep as a return gift. He also took the opportunity to lament his hardships: maintaining order in the area was no easy task; the county coffers were empty; tax levies were heavy, the burdens on the locality great. Now that Shopkeeper Wang intended to establish an estate here, he would naturally need to deal with county officials, register a land deed, and participate in the usual miscellaneous taxes and contributions. His words were exceedingly polite. Wang Tao agreed to everything. Courting the tolerance and backing of local powers aligned perfectly with the current policy of cooperating with indigenous forces.
Wang Tao led his party through the market streets, trading distilled spirits and white sugar—both were well received—and collecting bits of silver and copper in return. He bought several bolts of indigo-dyed local cloth, intending to have native-style garments sewn for the marines; their Year One uniforms were far too conspicuous. No tailors operated in the market, however, so he had to impose on Hu Xun again, requesting that maids from his household sew the clothes. He also purchased rice, pumpkins, and vegetables to supplement their meals. Spotting iron pots and clay jars for sale, he bought several of those too. Just as they were packing up to leave, he noticed live chickens going for two fen of silver apiece. Wang Tao bought five or six, had the marines truss them up and sling them from carrying poles.
Passing through the stockade gate, they found a lime kiln on the shore—oyster-shell lime burning inside—and bought several sacks. Shi Jinxi haggled with the fishermen on the beach and, for one tael of silver, acquired a small sampan. The boat was tiny—seven or eight passengers at most—but perfectly adequate for use within the bay. Upon returning to Yulin Fort, Wang Tao ordered the pots and jars placed in the kitchen; from now on, they wouldn't have to cook everything in mess tins. At least they could boil soup and steam rice properly.
"You bought all those chickens to fatten us for a feast?" Old Di looked bemused.
"For the eggs. We're raising them." Wang Tao gestured for the birds to be set down. "With a courtyard this big, it'd be a waste not to keep chickens."
"Chicken droppings everywhere? The place will reek to high heaven."
"We'll fence off a pen."
"What will we feed them?"
"Leftover rice. Coconut meat works too. During the day, let them forage outside the fort; at dusk, round them up and give them a bit of grain. Very economical." Wang Tao spoke with complete confidence.
"Free-range chickens—all-natural. Fine, suit yourself." Old Di wondered if Wang Tao had suddenly decided to take up gentleman farming. Then he remembered something and pulled a telegram transcript from his pocket.
"What's this?" Wang Tao accepted the slip. It was an encrypted message; the originating call sign was the Hangzhou, receiving call sign Lingao Telecom Main Station.
"Odd. This isn't a Navy Secret message."
"Exactly. Shen Yuefeng received it and couldn't decode it with our codebook. Definitely not Navy Secret."
"That is strange. Before departure, they said the entire exploration team would use Navy Secret for transmissions. Even we garrison folks use Navy Secret for comms."
"And it originated from the Hangzhou, not the flagship Zhenhai."
"Probably a message from the Intelligence or Internal Affairs sections. Only they'd have that authority."
Wang Tao set his people to cutting branches from the woods and hauling crushed stone from the beach. They built a chicken coop along the courtyard wall of Yulin Fort, complete with a perimeter fence. In foul weather, the birds could wander safely inside the enclosure.
Some marines came from farming families and were well acquainted with such work. Seeing an officer engage so enthusiastically in animal husbandry, they warmed to the task. One suggested they grow vegetables—why waste all the chicken and human manure?
"Wait—we're using human... stuff?" Old Di looked stricken. Memories surfaced of the unforgettable aroma wafting from fertilizer pits beside roads during rural training exercises.
"Of course. Otherwise the latrine just fills up."
"I was planning to dig a drainage ditch and flush everything straight into the sea."
"That's a waste. Let's dig a pit outside the fort instead. Route everything there; put a lid on top. Won't smell much at all."
"I'll say this upfront: when it's time to shovel out the fertilizer, don't expect me to lift a spade—"
The vegetable plot was established outside the walls, in a sheltered corner. Coastal soil here was thin and sandy; planting directly would be futile. So Wang Tao had them first construct a raised bed of about fifty square meters, framed with large stones and fitted with drainage. Then he led the marines to dig mountain soil from the nearby slopes and cart it back with the handcarts the Zhenhai had left, load by load, filling in the bed.
Everyone marveled at this former corporate trainer's inexhaustible energy—he seemed intent on making this place his permanent home. Bai Guoshi finally asked whether he was planning to be stationed at Yulin Fort long-term. Wang Tao laughed heartily:
"Certainly not. My goal is that one day the Executive Committee will grant me a large tract of territory. Then I'll lead my extended family and a few hundred immigrant households to colonize and cultivate the land as a lord. All this—" he gestured around, "—is practice for that day."
"Oh?" Bai Guoshi was intrigued. "Where do you want to colonize?"
"Australia. Tasmania. New Zealand—any of them would suit me." Wang Tao was winded from the labor. He pulled a pipe from his pocket. Wang Degang, nimble as always, packed it for his master and fetched a glowing splinter from a nearby fire. Wang Tao lit up and took a few satisfying puffs.
"Pipe tobacco is so much better than those damned 'Holy Ship' brand cigarettes—" He exhaled blue smoke toward the sky. "As for China, let the Executive Committee crowd worry about governing it at their leisure."
Wang Degang asked curiously, "Master, where are these places you mentioned?"
"Across the ocean." Wang Tao pointed to the horizon. "Great islands that are green all year round."
"Maybe I'll be your neighbor someday." Bai Guoshi found himself suddenly yearning for such a life: blue skies, white clouds, green pastures, and snow-capped mountains in the distance—an impression probably implanted by behind-the-scenes features of The Lord of the Rings.
"Sure—but would your girlfriend agree to you taking a bunch of concubines?" Wang Tao teased, pipe clenched between his teeth.
"Zhao Xue isn't... she's not my girlfriend yet." Bai Guoshi flushed. "We'll see. No concubines, but surely I can bring servants and the like."
"Ah, a pure-hearted and obedient young man." Wang Tao chuckled. "But I don't think you'd truly enjoy that kind of life, Little Bai. As for the future—who can say? Maybe by then Lingao will have become a world metropolis greater than New York or Shanghai. Being a senior cadre in the New World's great metropolis wouldn't be half bad either."
Work on the vegetable plot continued for two days. The team erected a fence around the precious garden to keep out wild animals. Then they threw themselves into digging the conduit. Bai Guoshi and Shen Yuefeng went out on expeditions daily. Because Jiang Qiuyan's immigration plan was likely to be implemented, they surveyed not only resources but also potential colonial sites and arable land.
Old Di oversaw the conduit work himself. He had never done anything of the sort before, but the Great Library had printed a small pamphlet—Simple Surveying and Construction—for the exploration team's use. Following its instructions, he fabricated survey instruments like spirit levels. The intake channel wasn't large in diameter, but because it needed to be covered and buried, it had to be dug deep. The intake point was set at a sandy section of the riverbank, where the water ran relatively clean and was less likely to be discovered. Except during the dry season, the intake would remain below the waterline for most of the year.
The conduit passed beneath the fort wall and into the courtyard. A cistern already existed, but it had originally been fed by the moat, and the water quality was inferior to drawing directly from the stream. After introducing stream water, deposits could settle out before use. Overflow was channeled through a secondary conduit to the latrine to flush the pit; wastewater then flowed into a fertilizer pit outside the fort. The sandy soil absorbed excess moisture quickly. For safety and sanitation, the pit was sealed with a wooden lid. Wang Tao also bored a hole through the cover and inserted a length of bamboo with the nodes punched out.
"What's that for?" Everyone was puzzled.
"To vent the methane inside."
"Can't we use it for fuel?"
"Too little. But if someone flicks a cigarette butt in there, there'd be quite the shitstorm."
Finally, they covered all the conduits with curved roofing tiles, then buried them under dirt. After a few more days of weathering, the channel would be completely invisible.
While Wang Tao's team labored on infrastructure, Bai Guoshi and Shen Yuefeng bagged a muntjac during one of their expeditions. The small deer yielded tender, delicious meat. When they brought it back, almost nothing was left by evening—just a pelt and gnawed-clean bones. Even the intestines had been washed, salted, and hung under the eaves to dry.
Wildlife abounded here; they scarcely needed to venture into the deep forest. Hunting was primarily Shen Yuefeng's province. He had experience and far more seasoned marksmanship than Bai Guoshi. To conserve ammunition and avoid excessive noise, they used steel crossbows. Shen regularly returned with common game—pheasants, rabbits, the occasional boar. The entire garrison ate with grease running down their chins. For men engaged in heavy physical labor every day, having a skilled hunter like Shen Yuefeng was a genuine blessing.
Seeing him return with game every few days, Wang Tao conceived another idea. He proposed digging a well inside Yulin Fort.
"What for?" Old Di was baffled.
Bai Guoshi objected: "The groundwater here is surely salty. It wouldn't even be fit for watering the vegetable garden, let alone drinking."
"Who said anything about drinking the water?" Wang Tao grinned. "This is a refrigerator. A refrigerator—understand?"
In ages past, only northerners with frozen rivers could store ice in winter for summer use. Elsewhere, the sole practical method for preserving perishables like pork and mutton was the well. No matter how high the temperature outside, the interior of a well generally hovered around a dozen degrees Celsius—sufficient for several days' storage.
So they began digging. Well-digging was skilled labor and prone to accidents. Though Simple Surveying and Construction included instructions, Wang Tao dared not proceed recklessly. By now they were also running low on bricks and lime. Wang Tao made another trip across the bay to Anyoule Market for supplies. Noticing several wells in the market, he inquired and found a local who did occasional well-digging on the side. He hired the man to do the job.
The water table at Yulin Fort was very high; water appeared at only five or six meters down. Since the purpose was storage rather than drinking, the well's diameter was limited to about one meter, with brick-lined walls. The well-digger lavished praise on their cement-sand-lime mortar, whose bonding strength was superb. He offered to waive his fee if they would give him a few bags of cement. The garrison had no surplus to spare, so they politely declined, promising perhaps in the future.
"This shows many of our goods have a market," Wang Tao mused. "We needn't fixate on mirrors and white sugar. Cement itself is in demand right here—"
"Cement demand is negligible." Shen Yuefeng was skeptical. "You've seen what the locals use to build around here—lime mortar works well enough for them. Only for jobs like lining a well does cement mortar truly shine."
Wang Tao considered and agreed. There wasn't much around here that attracted particular demand. White sugar and spirits sold well, but the local consumer population was simply too small. The market would saturate quickly.
"Let's just focus on resource collection. Let the Foreign Affairs Ministry worry about the trading business."
After several days of surveying, Bai Guoshi identified a timber harvesting site. It lay about three kilometers from Yulin Fort but was close to the bay—logs could be dragged two or three hundred meters and floated out. Carrying each day's felled timber back to the fort on their backs would have been impossible.
Most marines spent their days at the site, felling trees. Logs were stripped and barked on the spot, then dragged to the shoreline with ropes. Five to ten logs were bundled together with rattan into rafts. Four or five rafts made a train, which the sampan then towed to the beach in front of Yulin Fort for hauling ashore.
Despite the sea transport leg, the overall labor remained grueling. Fortunately, Shen Yuefeng provided a steady supply of meat—modest in quantity but meat nonetheless. Shi Jinxi continuously delivered seafood. The chickens contributed eggs daily. The fare was tolerable. To boost morale, Wang Tao, however exhausted, told a storytelling episode every night. To raise the soldiers' political consciousness, he had set aside segments like Intrigues of the Bureaucrats and switched to The Complete Story of Yue Fei—ideological preparation for the future war against the Manchu barbarians. He also frequently laced the narrative with venomous barbs aimed at the Great Song Dynasty, drawing parallels to current events and extolling the Transmigration Collective's "great, glorious, and correct" image as saviors of China from the Great Ming's incompetent government. After the Yue Fei tale, Wang Degang would perform a solo crosstalk routine to lighten the mood before everyone turned in. Implemented thus, morale remained surprisingly high.
(End of Chapter)