Chapter 1333 - The Majiao Black Market

Yang Yun pondered as he walked.

To adapt to the changing situation, their Civil Affairs section had long since requested the Construction section to add kitchens to some dormitories under construction—or at minimum shared kitchens—creating residential-version dormitories suitable for families. Those seeking to buy housing could temporarily live there, with a promise that once new apartment buildings were completed, they would have priority purchase rights. For fairness, queue numbers had been assigned.

Now the standards for purchasing apartment buildings had imperceptibly risen: cadres, officers, and skilled workers had priority; those without sufficient rank were placed further back. Even if married, they could only move into the residential-version dormitories and queue. This had actually motivated those veteran workers who had practical skills but struggled with studying due to their age and felt resistance toward the Category B credential examinations required for technician qualification. The most enthusiastic students in the evening schools turned out to be them.

According to his current figures, excluding the guaranteed quotas for military and cadres, less than half of the naturalized citizens had fixed housing like dormitories or residences. The rest were in temporary housing.

Specifically: military, police, administration, and other special department naturalized citizens were all guaranteed; the agricultural and fishing sectors, since they mainly built their own bungalows, had housing of lower quality but could basically ensure each household had a dwelling; as for the industrial sector, the worst-off were construction workers and miners—since they followed construction projects and mines, aside from skilled workers, they basically lived in temporary work sheds at project sites, conditions even worse than the quarantine camps. Manufacturing, because of higher worker quality requirements, was better off—over eighty percent of regular employees had fixed housing. As for apprentices who were young, if they were orphans they were mainly placed in masters' work offices or warehouse gatehouse rooms.

Yang Yun's hands held some spare dormitory capacity, but less than three hundred residential-version units, and only a few dozen residential apartments reserved for outstanding newlywed cadres and officers—absolutely untouchable.

With residences so tight, a few months ago a civil construction branch had been specially established, but it had just started. The first batch of thirty buildings, even with compressed schedules, would take at least three more months to complete.

Moreover, after Operation Engine got underway, new batches of migrants would soon pour in continuously. If dormitories weren't freed up soon, future housing pressure would be even greater.

Engine migrants and typhoon migrants often brought their entire families—you couldn't force families to split up and live separately. So these people had to be settled by household, which in turn reduced dormitory utilization efficiency and increased pressure on civil construction.

These migrants were mostly farmers. Household sizes varied widely: some had one or two people, some five or six, some over a dozen. Though large households would be split by convention or assigned to agricultural companies to farm, while singles or couples were planned for the mines at Sanya, Hongji, and elsewhere, just the migrants who immediately needed housing arrangements already exceeded a thousand households. Even the ongoing dormitory conversions still had a large gap—let alone the migrants who would continuously pour in over the coming years.

The Majiao new community not only had to be completed on schedule so the freed dormitories could be used to settle these new migrants, but construction pace also had to accelerate. Otherwise, countermeasures would have to be devised early.

Currently, Lingao's land situation was rather chaotic. Though most land was firmly under transmigrator control, some plots were privately owned. Some of these plot owners, seeing the booming housing demand, had already built quite a few houses to rent and sell. Since current land policies hadn't been sorted out, there were no rules for handling these either.

When Yang Yun had commissioned the Grand Library to research materials, he happened to find a book called Research on the Housing Shortage in Modern Shanghai for leisure reading. He discovered that Lingao was currently facing that very situation. When that happened, the conflict between local migrants who had gotten rich from rapidly rising land prices and new migrants would generate massive social contradictions—a very dangerous trend.

By the time his calculations were roughly done, Yang Yun and Dai Xiu had reached Hundred Fathoms City's East Gate. Having already received notice from the General Office, the on-duty Guard Battalion platoon leader, leading a squad of guards, immediately stepped forward to salute, then ordered two prepared soldiers to fall out.

With expanded control area, new roads constantly being built, and strengthened control over Lingao, daily public order had continuously improved. The old inter-station checkpoint system no longer had much meaning and consumed considerable manpower. So now the Bai-Bo Road, Bai-Ma Road, Bai-Nan Road, and other major highways and railways had switched to key-area guards plus patrols.

This system had much longer response times to emergencies. With Lingao's population becoming more complex, transmigrators going out on solo official business now had personal guards. Though transmigrators themselves were also armed, safety came first.

Two young soldiers emerged smartly from the guard post, each diagonally strapping on two holsters containing the guard-issue long-barreled 1630 manual revolvers. The two ammunition pouches on their belts each held three loaded speed loaders. Counting the backup ammunition and grenades in their packs, even without the transmigrator's own firepower, the two guards were sufficient to handle a close-range ambush by a dozen people.

"Guard Battalion, First Company, Third Platoon, Second Squad! Reporting to the Leader, ready! Permission to depart!"

"Good, let's go."

Seeing his young soldiers so spirited, Yang Yun's mood improved considerably. With Dai Xiu and the two guards, he boarded the transmigrator-exclusive Dongfeng double-wheeled official carriage. This vehicle could travel along highways to anywhere in Lingao and could also enter the VIP section of East Gate Market Train Station, from where they could board first-class and travel via Lingao's existing railway in all directions.

Though some had clamored for a transmigrator-exclusive train, such wasteful and efficiency-reducing practices currently had little support.

The carriage bypassed East Gate Market. Inside was bustling and clamorous as always, with crowds streaming back and forth from both the county seat and Bopu directions—citizens, porters, gentry, and even women and daughters in new clothes—a scene of peace and prosperity.

The train soon departed. Since it was morning, quite a few transmigrators, naturalized citizen cadres, and local merchants were going out. Yang Yun exchanged greetings with those he wasn't very familiar with and made small talk with those whose names he knew, before settling into his seat with the four others. The two guards sat facing each other, alert and focused as trained, ready to nip any possible incident in the bud. Dai Xiu rarely got to ride in first class and was obviously excited, her gaze darting about, frequently looking out the window.

Because a transmigrator was aboard, specially trained female attendants were assigned to this first-class car—normally they mainly checked tickets and provided information; only when transmigrators were aboard would they board to provide special service, highlighting the transmigrators' status.

The young female attendant, carrying a basket, respectfully delivered drinks and snacks, asked if anything else was needed, and seeing Yang Yun wave his hand in dismissal, bowed and withdrew.

Nearly an hour later, the train reached its destination—Majiao New District.

Yang Yun checked his watch. There was still an hour until noon, so he wanted to wait until after the lunch break before going to find someone. He took out his pocket phone and called Zhang Xingpei, but the other party either didn't hear or something—no answer.

I'll just go directly later. Yang Yun then led the three toward Bopu, turning onto the Bo-Ma Road. After walking two kilometers, he could see on the southern hillside about one kilometer away a dozen bungalows and one apartment building, while closer was a substantial cluster of several dozen sheds. The dirt road under his feet passed right through them. Though the road had never been properly paved, it had obviously been leveled, and even had a layer of fine coal cinders spread on top.

This Dai Family Village, though having only the Dai surname, was a mere dozen-plus households, located quite far from Hundred Fathoms City. This village had sold grain and vegetables to the transmigrators very early and was fairly cooperative with various civil affairs matters—a local native community with good relations. Though registered in the household system, they hadn't been overly disturbed. Yang Yun knew Dai Xiu's family was from here.

At this moment, Dai Xiu beside him was somewhat surprised, occasionally glancing at that familiar yet strange place across the way, then turning back to watch Yang Yun's expression. It had been over half a year since she'd been home, and she hadn't expected it to have grown to this scale.

Previously, when they had begun building the Bo-Ma Highway here, her father had leveled the fields near the road and set up two sheds to sell tea, food, and sundries to the road workers. Later, other village families followed suit, and some small traders from Chengmai who couldn't afford the expensive shops at East Gate Market discovered the foot traffic here and proactively came to rent land and build sheds to sell goods.

Last time Dai Xiu had seen her father at school, she had learned that the family no longer grew vegetables. Just the income from renting out land and the built sheds was many times more than they used to make selling vegetables each day. But she was still surprised at today's thriving scene.

Though it wasn't yet lunch break, just the portion of worker families willing to walk a few extra li for cheaper prices had already made this place quite lively. In these crude shops, there was not only local produce from all Hainan counties but also various goods transported from Guangzhou and elsewhere. Though the tax department had long had its eye on this place and issued tax tickets, because rent was cheap and transportation convenient, prices here remained quite competitive.

What Dai Xiu didn't know was that the newly built two-story wooden long building on the hillside was actually an inn her father had just finished constructing. Ever since train service had started, business had been extremely brisk. Besides traveling merchants switching here from the docks for lower prices, many male and female workers who were seeing each other but not yet married would come here for fun. Moreover, quite a few naturalized citizen cadres, abandoning the noisy dormitories, rented the hillside-facing rooms here for extended stays—and naturally weren't staying alone.

Yang Yun knew from the reports his apprentice had sent that after the crowds had arrived, local farmers also came here to sell fruits, vegetables, daily necessities, and snacks, forming a complete marketplace. And after Majiao New District construction had picked up steam, reportedly even prostitutes were renting rooms at that inn for business—workers visited even more diligently. Of course, public order had also begun to become somewhat chaotic—reports forwarded to Civil Affairs from the Police General Bureau mentioned that thefts, unlicensed prostitution, brawls, gambling, and fraud at this location were all trending upward. Murders and robberies also occurred from time to time.

(End of Chapter)