Chapter 936 – Timber
Under Zhao Yingong's "mediation," the Haitian departed from the Qiantang River the next day and returned to the open sea. The Hangzhou government had gifted them more rice, chickens, ducks, vegetables, and fruit as a "farewell." Watching the Haitian trail black smoke as it gradually receded into the distance, the city's officials and gentry breathed a collective sigh of relief. As for the common folk, the ship's sudden arrival and abrupt disappearance served as a topic of conversation for several days before gradually fading from memory.
After receiving his four taels of silver, Gao Xuan once again walked into Wanbi Bookshop. This time, however, he had become one of its contracted writers. Amid his busy schedule, Zhao Yingong had begun building a writing team for Wanbi Bookshop Publishing House, creating a magazine focused on social hot topics called Tianshui Life Weekly. The first issue's subject matter was drawn from the recent Hangzhou Religious Case controversy.
Early morning. Dawn had just begun to break when Lingao stirred awake amid the wail of steam whistles.
Hai Lin yawned several times and fished out from under his pillow the watch his life secretary had wound for him the night before. Already six o'clock. He climbed out of bed most unwillingly and made his way to a bathroom full of blue-and-white porcelain and underglaze red, where he brushed his teeth and washed his face. The toothbrush was locally manufactured, made of horse bristle. Toothpaste was long gone, replaced by "refined bamboo salt." The towel was still an old-timeline product; locally manufactured towels still couldn't match the old ones in appearance and quality.
Properly dressed with his life secretary's help—"properly dressed" meaning nothing more than a locally manufactured blue work suit—Hai Lin took a seat at the huanghuali rosewood table in the combined living and dining room. On the table sat a set of fine Chenghua official-kiln porcelain dinnerware—one of countless spoils from the Pearl River estuary battle. A portion had been auctioned among the transmigrators at the time.
Breakfast was steamed buns, congee, and two dishes of "Tianchu Special Pickles" made by his life secretary. Steamed buns were a rarity in Lingao. Wheat cultivation had been promoted there for less than three years; aside from directly managed agricultural estate lands, ordinary farmers grew little wheat. Flour was a precious ingredient. Beyond the portion supplied to Food Service Department restaurants for making high-end pastries to recover circulation vouchers, the rest went to transmigrators. Even so, wontons, noodles, buns, bread, and biscuits rarely appeared on transmigrator dinner tables.
Because the meat supply was insufficient, the General Office only supplied pork or mutton to transmigrators on Saturdays, and chicken on Wednesdays and Fridays. So the buns Hai Lin ate today were filled with red bean paste. Hai Lin had absolutely no interest in sweet buns, but green vegetable and dried tofu buns or cabbage, vermicelli, and oil-residue buns interested him even less. Allegedly, the cafeteria was serving fried fish meat buns—he wondered what those tasted like.
"When will we ever be able to eat meat buns to our heart's content..." Hai Lin muttered as he ate.
To his palate, the buns weren't quite right—far from as good as those made by the older female transmigrator at the cafeteria. The wrapper was a bit sticky, not fluffy enough; the dough hadn't risen properly. But for a life secretary from a southern region, it was passable.
"Chief, your daily schedule."
Seeing that he had nearly finished his buns, the life secretary handed him a Lingao-locally-produced work notebook. It recorded his schedule day by day: some entries were notices from various departments, others pertained to matters from Hai Lin's own enterprise.
He flipped through the schedule while eating. Transmigrator life in Lingao was extremely busy. Daily work was already heavy, and Operation Engine had brought endless pressure to the production departments. The Planning Commission was like a ravenous beast with a bottomless appetite, endlessly demanding massive offerings from the industrial and agricultural sectors.
Regarding work assignments, Hai Lin resented the Executive Committee. Previously, under Ma Qianzhu's Central Administrative Council, forestry had been greatly undervalued; the prevailing belief was that the coal-iron combine could do everything. This had left the forestry department with low status—last in line for resources and manpower allocation, poor treatment, yet a heavy workload. Now the forestry department had been placed under the Manufacturing Supervision Department, but its situation hadn't improved much. As Wu Kuangming had said: "After Horse-Thousand-Pillars, there'll be Ox-Thousand-Pillars."
Who was this "Ox-Thousand-Pillars"? In Hai Lin's view, any transmigrator who deliberately or carelessly ignored the importance of the timber industry and forestry to modern industry qualified—and unfortunately, there were quite a lot of such people in the Senate.
Those idiots just love giving orders blindly, with no idea how important timber is to modern industry, Hai Lin thought resentfully. Someday I'll have all those idiots replaced.
Who would replace them? Hai Lin hadn't thought carefully, though some people had hinted they could do better. But he didn't hold out much hope.
After finishing breakfast, Hai Lin hurried out. He got on an electric bicycle and rode onto the Bai Ren–Bopu highway.
The wood products factory was one of the earliest enterprises established by the Senate. It had been located in Bopu with consideration for proximity to timber sources—until recently, a considerable portion of Lingao's timber supply had still come from the mangrove forests near Bopu and the Li regions—and for convenience with imported timber.
But mangrove resources were limited. Excessive logging would damage the coastal ecosystem and harm offshore fishery resources. So even before the mangroves at the Bopu River mouth had completely disappeared, the forestry department had to consider alternative timber sources.
Lingao's timber came from several directions. Currently, the Li regions supplied most of what they needed, and the cost of obtaining it was very low. The Commerce Department needed only cheap salt and a small quantity of iron tools to trade for large quantities of timber and bamboo or rattan products. Sanya and the mainland provided the rest.
Because timber demand grew by the day, the Colonial Trade Department's Vietnam Trading Company had recently opened a trade route for importing timber from Vietnam. Part came via Dabo Shipping, part via Dutch East India Company vessels.
Timber imported from the mainland and Vietnam was plentiful and of good quality, including some excellent wood species. But supply quantities remained unstable—tied to the question of maritime shipping capacity.
Raw materials were more abundant, but processing capacity lagged far behind. Hai Lin's first task today was to visit the Bopu Harbor cargo yard and check on the backlog of imported timber. The Planning Commission wanted him to submit a report clarifying how many days' production the current reserves could sustain, so as to determine next month's import and logging quantities.
At the forestry department's dedicated timber yard at Bopu, roughly 20,000 raw logs were stockpiled. It could truly be called a mountain of timber. But these logs were still far from enough.
Most were stacked in piles, covered with branches and leaves to maintain moisture. Naturalized citizen workers constantly doused the stacks with water to keep the timber moist.
Hai Lin randomly spot-checked several stacks. The storage condition was acceptable. Included were excellent hardwoods—lychee wood and ironwood, currently used by military industry to substitute for oak—as well as various valuable woods, most imported from Vietnam.
But these logs remained far from sufficient. He had calculated it himself: the timber needed just to build a refugee camp for ten thousand people was staggering. Ten thousand beds measuring 1.8 × 1 × 0.01 meters alone would require 180 cubic meters of timber. Assuming the logs were pine trees with a base diameter of 15 centimeters and height of 4 meters, one cubic meter of timber would need thirty to forty trees—a total of 5,400 to 6,200 trees.
By the standard of twenty people per room, with an area of about 4.5 Ă— 7.5 meters, they would need 500 standard buildings: 500 main beams with diameters over 25 centimeters. If using 40-centimeter-wide tiles, one building would need 40 rafters of 8 to 10 centimeters; for 500 buildings, that was 20,000 rafters.
Building a camp for ten thousand people would require felling, transporting, preliminary processing, and drying of nearly 30,000 trees. The workload was staggering to contemplate. This was the seventeenth century. Aside from a few chainsaws the Senate had brought from the old timeline, every lumberjack in the world used axes and great saws. Production efficiency was abysmally low. Supplying sufficient raw materials would require considerable time.
By Hai Lin's estimate, the Planning Commission seemed to have means to gather enough raw materials. The question was whether his end had the capacity to process them.
He made a circuit, estimated the wood products factory's current daily processing capacity, and with a grim face got back on his electric bicycle and headed for the smoke-belching wood processing plant.
Hai Lin was responsible for all wood product manufacturing for the entire Lingao system. The wood products factory had expanded from the original hundred-plus workers to a thousand. Before the Second Counter-Encirclement Campaign, during emergency war preparations, the Military Industry Department had demanded a significant increase in rifle production. At Hai Lin's insistent request, a first expansion was carried out. Before Operation Engine, large quantities of building materials had to be prepared, triggering a second emergency expansion.
After expansion, the wood processing plant finally had a somewhat better office and production environment. The wooden plank buildings that had long irked Hai Lin were finally history—replaced by two-story brick-and-timber structures. More importantly, the office building was now much farther from the drying kilns, so he no longer had to endure their tremendous heat radiation during the sweltering summer.
His first task upon entering the factory was to rush to the conference room for a production meeting. The middle management at the wood products factory now consisted entirely of naturalized citizens. Seeing Hai Lin enter, everyone rose and greeted him: "Hello, Chief!"
"No formalities. Let's get started."
After Hai Lin sat, all the naturalized citizen cadres took their seats as well. The mid-level managers, led by the production department director, reported on their departments' work.
When he heard that the bandsaw workshop had suffered two "blowouts"—bandsaw fractures, with saw blade fragments flying out—the previous night, injuring six people, Hai Lin couldn't help feeling irritated. The current bandsaws were all manufactured in this timeline, with very unreliable quality. Manpower was already insufficient; injuries would make things even tighter.
Next, the drying workshop director reported. Due to the rush work, this batch of timber coming out of the kiln had extensive drying cracks.
Hearing this, Hai Lin's anger surged. He slammed his palm on the table. Everyone's face changed; they all lowered their heads.