Lu Ming

After drilling in the reeds for a while, the boat quickly turned into the Zeng River and went down the river.At noon, He Biandan and Shopkeeper Wu saw the big blue and gold ship parked in Huangpu New Port again—this time they watched it closely, because the two were taken to the military port where the big ship was located.

Chapter 501

In Huangpu Military Port, the running duo temporarily settled down.

And from the moment they entered the gate, the shocking thousand-ton large ships in the military port, the uniform regulations everywhere, and the masculine temperament, shouting slogans and kicking the queue, made the two country bumpkins dizzy and at a loss .

The somewhat jittery duo was left to their mercy next.Covered in mud and with tattered clothes, they were first taken into a big house with black smoke to take a bath, and then received a set of military uniforms. In this way, two ancient men in olive green cotton training uniforms and buns appeared up.

Then came the "questioning" part: two nondescript Ming men were separated and questioned in detail, and took notes.

He Biandan, who was interrogated alone, showed no resistance this time.One is that shopkeeper Wu just explained to him, and the other is that he also knows what this place is - the camp of Marshal Cao who brought him a lot of work, so the young man who has a good impression of Marshal Cao pours beans out of a bamboo tube, He told all the situation of Guitouwa that he knew.

After He Biandan finished speaking, one of the three people in military uniform behind the noodle table stood up and walked over with the record.

After asking about He Biandan's illiteracy, the officer took He Biandan's hand without any surprises, touched some inkpad and pressed a few fingerprints on the transcript.

After that, the officer handed over the transcript to a person who had been sitting beside him silently.

After receiving the transcript, the man looked through the key points a few times, then raised his head, and said to He Biandan with a smile: "The young man can escape from the gangster's lair, and he also brought a burdensome old shopkeeper with him. Righteous!"

Although he couldn't understand the colorful seniority badge on this man's chest and the major general Venus on his shoulders that marked the cross-identity identity, He Biandan was not stupid, and he knew that the opposite party must be an officer with a military academy status, so he was honest. He replied: "My mother won't let me be a thief."

"Haha, good." The middle-aged man stood up when he heard the words: "Young man, haven't you eaten yet? Let's go, everyone, let's go to the cafeteria and eat first."

As soon as he stood up, He Biandan realized that this person was actually a head taller than him.One must know that He Biandan was originally considered a high school student in the Ming Dynasty, but today he met his opponent.

In the end, He Biandan obediently followed the official who promised to feed him, and came to the big dining hall.

It was already 2:[-] in the afternoon, so a few people came to the cafeteria and found that there was no one there, so they found a table and sat down.

Sitting down, He Biandan was still a little restrained, because even the large canteen in the military camp had been decorated beyond He Biandan's imagination: the smooth concrete floor was three inches thick, made of high-quality mahogany and painted with lacquer long wooden table.

In addition, the long glass window separating the operating room also made He Biandan speechless: he had only seen this thing in big families and big shops on the street, and never thought he could see it in a cafeteria.

The next moment, a soldier with a white towel around his neck ran over from the operating room, hurriedly stood at attention and saluted: "General, Wu Zheng, the monitor of the cooking squad, is reporting, please give instructions!"

"Well, let's come to eat." Wang Bo replied: "I'm starving to death, just watch the speed."

"Yes!" The cooking squad leader who received the order immediately turned around and ran into the back hall.

Wang Bo, the newly appointed commander-in-chief of the "Pioneering Army".

The so-called "Pioneering Army" is the official name, and some people privately call it the "Imperial Association Army". In fact, this is a semi-professional colonial army formed by the crossing crowd.

This colonial army is essentially no different from the colonists in history, and they are all used to grab the land of the natives in the vast world.

The colonial army, which is half army and half civilian, will be driven by a strong industrial engine in the future to fight efficiently in Southeast Asia, Australia, North America, New Zealand and the natives.In this process, the colonial army will take root in the places it passes along the way, and the veterans will stay in the unfamiliar land and transform into planters and ranchers on the spot, so as to truly expand the territory.

This time the new commander-in-chief of the Pioneering Army, Wang Bo, came to Huangpu Military Port precisely to prepare for the first combat mission of the Pioneering Army: to suppress bandits.

Wang Bo, who jumped out of the navy and pulled up a big mountain alone, has been really busy recently.

You must know that the "pioneering army" is different from the regular army. This armed force is somewhat similar to the agricultural reclamation corps. As long as it is well operated, the pioneering army can earn back its cost. People from later generations will naturally understand this.

Therefore, in theory, the formation of the pioneering army can be unlimited: one regiment, two regiments, up to two hundred regiments, anyway, when the time comes to lay down the territory, all demobilization on the spot will be enough, and the operation is very simple.

In this way, Wang Bo, the commander, has more work than other military leaders at the initial formation stage: he needs to build a set of investment-benefit business models to operate the pioneering army, which requires cooperation with many investors. Dealing with each other virtually increases the workload.

Not only that, but he also has to worry about bandits suppression: at the cabinet meeting a few days ago, it was decided to hand over the first phase of bandits suppression around Guangdong to the pioneering army for training, so after Wang Bo got the order, he came to Huangpu non-stop Hong Kong to collect intelligence, ready to wait for his subordinates who are still training to arrive.

So today, when he knew that two Ming people who had gone deep into the bandit's den were brought back by the investigators, he enthusiastically participated in the inquiry work, and then he also found a good young man, who seemed very suitable to serve as a soldier in the Pioneering Army young people.

……

He Biandan, who is sitting on the bench, has no time to worry about what Commander Wang is thinking—after escaping from Guitouwa last night, he drank a few sips of stream water, but he has not touched a drop of rice, so he will be hungry by now You have to stick your chest to your back.

What made He Biandan even more worried was that he could clearly see the chief cook's actions through the window... Bright yellow vegetable oil was poured into a black iron pot, and a pot of chickens with white shells was smashed one by one , bright yellow egg yolks and transparent egg whites were flying in the air, falling into the pot non-stop.

The next moment, a pot of chopped red fruit was poured into the pot, followed by blue smoke.

Then He Biandan drooled in public without dignity: He happened to share a small bowl of scrambled eggs with tomatoes not long ago, and he knew what it was like.

Not long after, the squad leader shoveled out a small pot of scrambled eggs with tomatoes from the cauldron, added a large pot of white rice, and served it to the table.Then, in the eyes of everyone smiling, He Biandan dug rice and scrambled eggs for himself and ate it like no one else was there.

The food on the table was quickly swept away by several soldiers and a big belly man.Immediately afterwards, seeing He Biandan who grabbed the rice bowl and started scraping the rice grains with his fingers, Wang Bo froze and stood up abruptly.

Although He Biandan said that he was eating hard, he was already prepared in private: he was beaten by various people countless times for being indecent and stealing food, and it seems that he will be beaten up today.

The next moment, another small basin full of scrambled eggs with tomatoes was pushed in front of the pole: "This is still a foodie, don't worry, eat slowly, no one will grab you."

He Biandan raised his head at this moment, revealing a horse face covered with rice grains, opened his mouth wide, and was completely stunned.

Chapter 502 Taipei ([-])

The continuous rain and fog flew by continuously, shrouding Huanggang in a blur.

Although Taipei has a rainy season in winter, there is also a lot of rain in summer. The monsoon from the Pacific Ocean brings endless water vapor, making the mountains and rivers in the north of the island often in a state of wind and rain.

In the plane of crossing the crowd, the Greater Taipei area in the seventeenth century still maintains its original style.This dark blue land covered by forests and mountains, including the entire Keelung Bay Port area leading to the Taipei Basin, is still a forest area.Most of the plots are undeveloped.

Even the only one that was rectified by all the time-traversing people was Sulfur Harbor.

The location of Sulfur Harbor is relatively remote, basically in the upper left corner of Taiwan.In later generations, Huanggang is a bit far from the most prosperous and core Greater Taipei area in later generations, and it is just a harmless port.

During this period of time, the only place in Taipei that can be called a "town" is precisely here.

Since the nearby river beach produces high-grade open-pit iron sand mines, Sulfur Harbor was designed as an industrial port of mining + sea-river combined transport from the very beginning.The crossing people not only made great efforts to build the port, but also expanded the place and built a town.

In fact, theoretically speaking, Taiwan is not suitable for large-scale development. The reason is simple: the wealth that plains can generate is far greater than that of mountains.

Compared with the vast plains of Australia, the Nanyang Islands, and the land of North America, Taiwan has no land available for large-scale development except for the two small plains of the Taipei Basin and Tainan.

However, in later generations, due to some well-known historical reasons, the result was the prosperity of the Greater Taipei area and the skyrocketing population of Taiwan.In fact, this is the same as the prosperity of Hong Kong. It is a special case that appeared under specific historical conditions and cannot be copied.

There is no need to travel through the crowd.

For the traveler, what Taiwan can provide at present is iron ore and sulfur from Taipei, oil from millet, and food crops from the Tainan Plain, that's all.

That is to say, in the eyes of the gentlemen, Taiwan is actually a large mine that provides primary raw materials, and its status is very low. After passing through the initial incubation stage, this place will definitely gradually fall silent.

Naturally, Crossover will not invest resources in Keelung Bay or even the Taipei Basin, which has little future, to build a Greater Taipei District, at least for now.As for the future... whoever wants to go, anyway, the territory is enclosed, and the descendants will naturally develop slowly if they really want to multiply to that extent in a few hundred years.

Because of this, all the few buildings in Keelung Bay were abandoned. For example, the San Salvador Fort bought from the Spaniards has now become a ruin—all the stones have been removed and shipped to Sulfur Harbor. Went to repair the trestle bridge.

Now, Sulfur Harbor, far away from Keelung Bay, is the heart of Taipei.

In the past three years, through the hard work of the crossing people, the originally inconspicuous Xihu District has been transformed into a regular town including ore docks, cranes, residential areas, slave camps and other fixed assets.

The total population of Huanggang District also reached 6000.

In addition to a regular army infantry battalion stationed here, there are also several small frigates stationed in the port for a long time to control the ocean surface - there are no strong opponents off the coast of Taipei, the most are Fujian ships and Japanese trading ships, so there is no need to use them. big ship.

The source of civilians in Huanggang Town is much more complicated.

In addition to Ming immigrants from various provinces, Taipei natives and Nanyang slaves also accounted for a large proportion of the population of Huanggang Township.

Starting from the Ketagalan people who have dealt with the crossing people from the very beginning, many natives have settled in Huanggang Town now.

Of course, the process of Taipei's "reformation of the native land" is certainly not smooth sailing.Huanggang here is different from Tainan, where most of the resources of the transversal people are gathered, and they can use various favorable conditions to recover the natives as peacefully as possible from the very beginning.

However, Sulfur Harbor was a construction site from the beginning, and there was nothing to ask for, and it was impossible to show the natives the advanced nature of civilization, so the method had to be "slightly tougher".

As a result, a series of battles took place along with the expansion of the traversing crowd around Huanggang.

In a real fight, the natives would naturally not be opponents.

When the Spaniards were dealing with the natives of Tamsui, like their Dutch fellows, they were tricked into a sneak attack and killed a group of soldiers.Immediately afterwards, the Spaniards sent a "big force" of hundreds of people, and then the Guirou Club, the largest in Tamsui, surrendered.

The fate of the losers was that they all migrated and were driven to the Danshui Estuary by the Spaniards.

The time-traversing crowd did the same.

A mining town that was developing rapidly and was in short supply of labor, there was not so much American time and the intrigues of the natives were gradually affected, so a series of wars of conquest took place shortly after the opening of the city.

In the end, except for the head snakes of the local Fengli Society, who were peacefully merged into the town due to their frequent dealings, almost all the natives of the surrounding ethnic groups either voluntarily, or were "voluntarily" joined " Civilization process" has been "enlightened".

In today's Huangang Town, there are no indigenous villages around.The ten-kilometer area around Huanggang town has been thoroughly cleaned up, and the road has been repaired to the nearby iron sand mine.

In addition, the dredged Huanggang River has also been connected to the river near Yangmingshan.In this way, the sulfur ore collected from the Yangmingshan volcanic community can be transported along the river to Sulfur Port, and then shipped to the sea.

On the whole, the mining structure in Taipei has now been completed and has met the design requirements.

Then in this process, naturally another important force cannot be missing: slaves.

Taipei in the [-]th century was a primitive wild land full of forests, rivers, lakes and swamps.Except for that bit of beach, the rest of the land is covered with dense vegetation, and there are man-eating leeches and flying mosquitoes everywhere. If you want to build roads and expand the easy-to-live site in such an environment, you don’t have to pay any price. is impossible.

The price paid by the crossing crowd is naturally slaves.

There is a saying that goes like this: Under every sleeper on the American railways, lies the corpse of an Irish worker.

This sentence mainly describes what happened when the first Pacific Railway across the North American continent was built.

In the vast and arid western plains, I don’t know if there are so many Irishmen buried there, but the travelers can guarantee that the number of slaves who died in order to open up the twenty-mile mining transportation line from Huanggang to the Yangming mountain area It is far more than Amtrak.

Chapter 503 Taipei ([-])

After a muffled "dong", the slave who was swinging the pendulum was hit on the back of the head with a hammer, and then the slave lay there motionless.

Don't underestimate this hammer: it is necessary to end the target's pain at once without causing the brain to splatter with blood. The strength in this hand must be mastered well, and ordinary people cannot hit this kind of five-star sap.

"Carry it away, quickly carry it away."

After Wu Sanye hit the killing blow, he waved the hammer in his hand and made a general waving gesture with a blank face, and then two strong slaves carried the body out of the hut.

Do not use knives, which will cause blood to splatter, pollute the grass shed, and attract terrible mosquitoes and various insects.Although the straw huts will burn down intensively after a period of time, there are still many batches of newcomers to live in before they burn down, so don't be careless.

So Mr. Wu and the others usually use hammers.

After dealing with the sick slave, the third master lowered his head slightly, and got out of the not-so-tall hut.Then he watched the corpses being carried onto the cart... There were already several corpses on the cart, and these would eventually be thrown into a nearby sinkhole.

Standing in the mountain depression in the northern section of Taiwan Island in the [-]th century, looking around at the beautiful natural scenery around, Mr. Wu's face is full of deep sorrow.

He reached out his hand to touch the pocket of the army green cotton training uniform, and found that the cigarette was gone, so the third master stretched out his hand: "Take a cigarette."

"Fuck your feathers, old man."

The person who spoke was a young man with a pale face, a gentleman, and even a little handsome: "You old man doesn't smoke enough cigarettes. If you don't have enough, you come to ask for it. The salary of the young master is blown by the wind?"

Wu Sanye, who is usually a leader, is actually able to stretch and bend at critical moments, so he was not angry when he was bullied, but put on a bearded smiling face and said: "Our three-acre land, which one I don’t know that Master Yusheng is a real rich man, how many cigarettes can make him poor?”

"Hmph, well, don't worry about the young master's pension money all day long. It's just a question of whether you can live to that day in this ghost place."

After the young man named Yusheng heard the third master's compliment, his complexion improved a lot.Although he was still nagging, he took out a blue tinplate cigarette case from his pocket and threw it over.

As soon as the third master raised his hand to take the cigarette box, he first opened the box cover and took out two middle-grade Taijiang cigarettes, and then took out a silver-cased ZIPPO carefully preserved in a velvet cover. After a "ding", he lit the two cigarettes together. After smoking, he handed one of them to the young man.

"Don't worry, I won't smoke you in vain. When I get my compensation for the demolition, brother, your good days will come."

Hearing the third master talking about the illusory demolition money again, Yusheng sneered while exhaling smoke: "Then, as a younger brother, I have to work hard for another thirty or fifty years, and I will probably be able to enjoy my brother's money." Blessed."

The next moment, seeing the two foremen smoking and chatting, several people in training uniforms standing around took out their cigarettes together.The supervisors started a rare time of Xiaotian on the valley mouth slope outside the dense forest in Taipei.

……

Jinguashi is an administrative region located in the northeast of Taiwan Island. Later, it belongs to New Taipei City. It is located between the northern branch of the Snow Mountain Range and the coast at the northeast corner.

Surrounded by mountains on three sides and facing the sea on one side, the Jinguashi area was once prosperous because of gold mining.

In the 16th year of Guangxu in the Qing Dynasty (1890), when a railway bridge was being built on the Keelung River, some workers found placer gold in the river, and then the gold diggers flocked all the way up the river to look for ore veins.Finally, after 3 years, a Chaozhou-born farmer surnamed Li discovered the small gourd golden vein near the Jiufen mountain area.

Not long after the little pumpkin was discovered, the gold diggers also found a big pumpkin outcropping nearby. The place name "Jinguashi" is named because the mountain shape of big and small pumpkins looks like pumpkins, which is what is called "golden melon" in Taiwanese.

Keelung Mountain, which was originally quiet, opened the glorious years of Jinguashi mining industry in the future.

For the time travelers, in fact, during the early time travel, everyone agreed that Jinguashi should not be developed.

The reason is simple: there are gold mines everywhere, there is no need to spend a lot of human life to feed mosquitoes in the primeval forest - everyone is precious in the time-traveling regime at that time, and it cannot afford to be "wasted".

However, in 1630, three years after the time traveler came to Daming, the situation changed fundamentally.

In addition to the continuous improvement of the most important industrial base and the general premise of rapid increase in social wealth, the number of slaves from all over Southeast Asia has also shown explosive growth.

The vigorous development of the slave trade is an inevitable process of social development.Unlike in history, the colonists who came to East Asia suddenly discovered in the past two years that they no longer have to worry about trade?

No matter who it is, as long as it transports a ship of slaves or other goods needed by the public, it can be exchanged for any one you want immediately, immediately, fairly, and without any obstacles in the large warehouses along the Taijiang River. Kinds of goods - unlimited quantity, unlimited types.

The only thing merchants need to worry about is whether they have enough silver coins in their pockets.

Raw silk, which had been at the top of the colonists' list of most desired goods for countless years, has now dropped to the top ten, because there are many "magic" things whose value has far exceeded that of raw silk.

For example, bleach can save the life of a boat or a city.