Chapter 884 - Simple Rations Continued

To facilitate preservation, relief rations were thoroughly dehydrated, rendering their texture excessively hard. Consumers generally had to smash them with a hammer and wash them down with water; swallowing without water was virtually impossible. More commonly, consumers would add vegetables and boil them directly in a pot, producing a gruel.

Relief rations were essentially simplified individual rations, unable to compare with ordinary military MREs in taste or nutrition. Due particularly to their hard, rough texture and peculiar flavor, almost no one praised them except starving refugees. Once, due to a logistics department error during a business trip, Scardal had been forced to subsist on relief rations for a week. His assessment was acidly succinct: "A person can survive for half a year on the Grassland series, can live seven days without eating at all, but can only endure three days eating only relief rations." During the Mainland Campaign, relief rations earned the nickname "Teeth-Grinding Bricks."

Some efforts were made to improve the taste of relief rations. Within a few months of development, the R&D team patterned their work after modern instant noodles, adding various spices and seasonings to develop cumin, spicy, numbing spicy, seafood, and scallion flavors. Naturally, changes in flavor didn't significantly increase appetite—except for the starving, ordinary soldiers and laborers still gave them poor reviews. As Dongmen Chuiyu—who had sampled every instant food produced or in development during R&D—observed: "For starving people, varied flavors can't fill an empty stomach; for people who eat their fill normally, no amount of seasoning can make relief rations palatable."

From the commencement of "Operation Engine" transporting refugees until the conclusion of the Mainland Campaign, tens of millions of relief rations were produced, saving millions of refugees from starvation. These rations were wrapped in oil paper and neatly stacked in standard twenty-liter wooden crates constructed of nailed planks—these crates were identical to ammunition crates, so they were generally painted in alternating red and yellow colors for distinction. Later, when the Imperial Army embarked on expeditions, they sometimes carried supplies to stabilize public sentiment or compensate migrant workers. During this period, striking bold characters were printed on relief rations: "A Gift from the Senate and the Imperial People."

The shelf life of relief rations was established at three years. In practice, in relatively low-temperature and dry environments, some batches produced later under improved processing conditions remained safe to consume after twenty years of storage. Such rations, of course, became incredibly hard—almost unchewable. They had to be boiled with copious water into paste before consumption. Due to their exceptional storability, in some remote Imperial border outposts with extended logistics lines, or in trading posts and expedition stations deep in wild territories, relief rations were sometimes tightly sealed and used as internal non-load-bearing walls in certain rooms, serving as ultimate emergency reserves. This measure saved the lives of numerous soldiers and exploration personnel stationed in remote locations, enabling them to hold out under barbarian siege until rescue forces arrived.

"Because relief rations are exceptionally sturdy and troublesome to eat, expired rations frequently appear in military and Planning Commission warehouses everywhere due to insufficient consumption. The standard disposal method is handing them to the agricultural department for grinding into earthworm feed. However, some with better appearance are selected out. Some soldiers in their leisure time carve relief rations with bayonets into various crafts or small daily items. For example, this pipe you see was carved personally by Elder Shi Zhiqi, Admiral of the Marines, using a relief ration. Additionally, Elder Pan Da, General of the Engineers, collected relief ration pipes from every year since their introduction. Please observe—these are private collections donated to our museum by Elder Pan. They carry distinctive scents: the seafood flavor of Year 5, the cumin and numbing spicy notes of Year 6, the coconut scent of Year 7. As for the Year 8 vintage, due to the bumper harvest of potatoes and sweet potatoes resulting from expanded fertilizer plant capacity the previous year—which in turn stimulated animal husbandry—granules of corned beef were added. This was unprecedented at the time. We can still observe whole corned beef granules on the pipe's surface. Therefore, pipes made from Year 8 relief rations are also called Bumper Harvest Pipes..."

—Commentary on Relief Ration Pipes by the guide at the Imperial Military Museum

Whether naturalized citizens or indigenous people, everyone in Lingao understood: the Australians were preparing for a large-scale operation.

This wasn't baseless speculation. Anyone with even slight knowledge of the "Australians'" or "Short-haired Thieves'" methods recognized the unsettling omen revealed by the frantic activity at the Ministry of Light Industry's food factory.

In the new workshop of the food factory along the Wenlan River, relief rations were entering large-scale production, and Grassland dry ration output had also increased threefold over normal levels. Beginning in March, the food factory's mandate was to produce 100,000 portions of No. 1 Relief Rations and 20,000 portions of Grassland series dry rations every month. The Planning Commission's directive: Complete 400,000 portions of No. 1 Relief Rations and 50,000 portions of No. 1 Instant Soup Blocks by the end of June 1631. Complete total annual orders of 1.2 million portions by year-end. Additionally, orders for other instant foods were issued, including fish sauce, salted fish, pickles, kimchi, biscuits, and candy.

All food enterprises under the Ministry of Light Industry and the Agricultural People's Committee—Grain Processing Plant, Seafood Processing Plant, Food Factory—expanded their scale and increased personnel. Some 850 naturalized employees were divided into two shifts, with all leave cancelled. Production proceeded twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

Roads from Bopu to the various food factories were renovated, all upgraded to high-grade cinder-hardened surfaces. Heavy ox carts and lighter Purple Lightning handcarts traversed these roads, wheels rolling continuously. Except for the constant stream of vehicles entering and exiting factory gates from morning to night, the facilities appeared no different from those in other industrial zones. However, when producing instant foods containing large amounts of added spices, people nearby could smell potent aromas.

Many vehicles entered and exited the food factory daily to transport goods. Some even delivered in vehicle-mounted refrigerated cabinets: 150-kilogram baskets of vegetables; 50-kilogram bags of unpolished rice, rice flour, and beans; 100-kilogram packs of dried sweet potato and flour; 50-kilogram baskets of fruit; 50-kilogram packs of cane sugar and salt; 5-kilogram packs of spices; 50-kilogram crates of salted and fresh fish; 5-liter packs of fish sauce... Finally, the scarcest food category: fats and oils. Packaged in 5-liter wooden barrels or ceramic jars, the contents varied: besides common soybean oil and lard, there was pungent fish oil and various edible vegetable oils.

The floors and walls of newly constructed workshops were completely tiled. Lighting came from rows of glass windows; ventilation windows were fitted with multi-layer screens, progressing from coarse mesh to fine mesh fine enough for making clothes—capable of blocking even the tiniest flying insects. Workers entering and exiting workshops had to wade through lime water pools, change clothes, and wash hands meticulously. Workers wore white work clothes, head covers, and masks, with oilcloth overshoes for processing raw materials. Most raw materials were ground into powder; vegetables and fruits were processed into paste or dried products. Then various ingredients were constantly poured into large pots according to formulas for processing. Water was added in mixing pots for stirring—mixing pots were powered by steam engines transmitting force via overhead drive shafts. A newly installed large mixing pot could stir 250 kilograms of raw materials at once.

The industrial sector couldn't produce stainless steel yet, and couldn't manufacture aluminum due to cost and energy constraints. Thus most processing equipment in the food factory used tin-plated iron sheet; a few smaller pieces used copper, while some utilized glass or ceramics.

The evenly stirred paste was steam-heated to 100°C, ensuring the food was completely cooked. Then the paste was poured into molds. Molds installed on rotating chain plates were conveyed into gas-heated continuous kilns for drying. Biscuits shrinking during drying automatically fell from the molds onto large tinplate trays when the chain plate turned around.

Lacking latex gloves, workers disinfected hands with disinfectant before entering workshops and were prohibited from touching food and wrapping paper with bare hands during packaging. All operations were performed with tongs.

Packaged relief rations were placed in sterilization rooms, heated to 120°C with superheated dry steam from specialized boilers, then cooled to 40°C. After sterilization, rations were packed into standard twenty-liter wooden crates. Crates were lined with oil paper coated with persimmon oil, ensuring water impermeability. A packet of lime was inserted into each crate as desiccant. The lime packet was printed with striking black characters: "Recyclable Material, Note for Recovery!"—Not just lime packets; paper boxes and wooden crates bore similar warnings.

Besides relief rations for individual immediate consumption, the food factory also produced relief rations for multiple persons. The composition was identical, but manufactured in 2.5-kilogram blocks. When used, they were smashed and boiled with water into paste—designated "No. 1 On-site Relief Ration." This ration was employed when recruiting refugees at relief stations established in disaster areas.

To guarantee vitamin supply and prevent beriberi and scurvy from monotonous diets lacking vitamins, besides producing instant soup blocks, the food factory would also manufacture 15,000 kilograms of dehydrated vegetables and dried fruits. Additionally, the Grain Processing Plant had to prepare 50,000 kilograms of brown rice—for preparing meals at transit camps. Brown rice was also processed: first cooked into rice, then thoroughly dried. This allowed it to be boiled into porridge with minimal fuel. In emergencies, it could also be eaten directly without cooking.