Chapter 126: New Year Meeting

The year 1628 after crossing over was destined not to be a peaceful one. The roar of cannon fire echoing around Dayuan reminded everyone that war could come at any moment.

Ignoring the noise outside the window, the Great Office was packed to capacity, convening the first expanded meeting of the Crossing Faction for the year 1628.

The meeting was chaired by Xia Xianze.

The first agenda item was to review the blueprints for the Imperial City, soon to break ground in the center of Dayuan Island. The blueprints were provided by Designer Feng Guanjie, with several preliminary drafts discussed on the forum beforehand; today was the final approval date.

Looking at the final effect picture Feng Guanjie had posted on the display board, most faces in the room still wore that disdainful expression reserved for bumpkins.

"Isn't this still just a two-and-a-half-story residential building?" someone grumbled, discontented by any shortcoming.

"You wanted Neuschwanstein Castle, didn't you? Damn it, where are the materials? Where's the manpower?" Feng Guanjie, already seething with frustration after being attacked from all sides, jabbed a finger against the glasses on his nose and reflexively snapped back with ferocity: "With these paltry resources, forget the enthronement — by the time we relocate the capital, your beloved Neuschwanstein Castle still won't be finished. By then, all you great lords will have gone to the other shore to build new landmarks, and this thing will just be an unfinished building!"

... That shut everyone up.

What appeared in the effect picture was a rectangular two-story residential building all too familiar to the transmigrators, topped with two loops of a full-access Supermarket Hall; the entire structure was shaped like a double-square block, blocky and utterly devoid of personality...

"The soil quality in Dayuan is poor, so the basement is only one level." Feng Guanjie, having calmed down, held a bamboo pointer and began tapping at the blueprint: "The basement has a raised ceiling of three-point-two meters. From now on, all of Cao Zong's import boxes, including all important import goods, will be sorted and stored in the basement."

"The first and second floors above ground are brick-concrete office buildings with communal offices and public toilets. The windows are double-layered — wood boards on the outside, and the inner layer of plate glass will have to wait until our own glass kiln is operational." At this point, Feng Guanjie glanced at Xia Xianze, then continued: "The third floor is a column-free, fully open Business Hall. Future plenary sessions and the enthronement ceremony will be held here."

Hearing this, many people subconsciously glanced at Chairman Cao, who was sitting beside Xia Xianze, listening with a cheerful grin.

Even though the debate over the future political direction was still ongoing on the forum, a constitutional monarchy was already a consensus reached by all factions beforehand; thus, the originally planned Government Building had been renamed the Imperial City... "So he's really going to be Emperor!" These middle-aged men, born under the Red Flag, had been feeling a complex mix of emotions whenever they saw the Chairman lately.

"The hall has a relatively high technological content." Feng Guanjie had no time to notice these architectural illiterates' expressions and pressed on: "A steel-reinforced concrete, fully open hall with an exterior glass curtain wall. Since there are no columns or partition walls, that small stock of round steel bars in the warehouse will need to be used with soil cement to pour the roof. Additionally, we have no stock of the floor-to-ceiling tempered glass walls and some aluminum fittings — that will require one box of quota. This..."

At this point, Feng Guanjie stopped and looked toward Xia Xianze and Cao Chuan.

"Is one box enough? Don't come back halfway through asking to increase the budget!" General Manager Xia, it seemed, had been burned plenty by construction crews back in his real estate days and was still haunted by the experience.

"Absolutely enough!" Feng Guanjie habitually lowered his voice to emphasize his sincerity: "Two-centimeter-thick tempered glass, fifty panes stacked up, barely reaches one meter high — and that's even accounting for future breakage. The glass will be custom-sized to match the transmission space specifications: square blocks with two-point-eight-meter sides. The remaining space will hold spare parts, and there'll even be a little room left to squeeze in some spotlights. When the lights hit at night, the effect will be absolutely stunning!"

Xia Xianze turned and exchanged a few whispered words with Cao Chuan. Cao, it seemed, had realized that he would be enthroned inside it in the future — this supermarket was apparently going to be his Ceremonial Hall at Buckingham Palace — and so he nodded lightly. Xia Xianze swept his gaze around, saw no objections, and nodded as well. One box of quota was thus allocated.

With the "Imperial City" blueprints finalized, the next project was the Taijiang Shipyard.

The shipyard itself drew no objections; the debate centered mainly on its supporting facilities. Wood was not in short supply, but the transmigrators' industrial system had now encountered its first major bottleneck: iron.

Resources were limited. Should they invest their current resources into mining the iron sand deposit in Taipei, or into purchasing pig iron from Fujian and Guangdong? Both proposals had their supporters, and like the later-era debate over "building vs. buying," this matter was still under discussion.

In the 17th century, Taipei did have natural iron sand deposits. Though the total quantity was modest, it was enough to sustain the Crossing Faction through the initial phase. However, rushing off to open a base in Taipei right now would expose the transmigrators' transport line to enormous military risk: including the Spanish entrenched in Taipei, and the Fujian immigrants settled around the Bunka area in central Taiwan, who were subjects of Zheng Zhilong.

To peacefully develop Taipei's iron and sulfur resources, they would first have to drive out the Spanish and occupy Bunka — yet all of the transmigrators' current energy was tilted toward basic industry; they simply had no spare resources to wage war against Lao Zheng and the round-faced ones.

Therefore, temporarily purchasing Ming pig iron from the three provinces of Fujian and Guangdong became the second resolution passed at today's meeting. This plan also spawned two additional decisions: importing an electric furnace for the Kiln District, and digging a cable trench between the Kiln District and the Chikan New District.

The electric furnace was a necessity, no debate there. But importing nearly three kilometers of cable and power fittings just so the people of Chikan could use electric lights and the shipyard could use electric saws — this non-essential project met fierce resistance at the meeting: Think about the people in Africa still eating grass, and you want electric lights upstairs and downstairs and phone calls? — In the end, the proposal was neutered: dig the trench first, and when we've gathered enough copper from Japan to produce our own wiring, then we'll see...

By the time the bickering over these two agenda items was done, mealtime had long passed. The lords hastily finished their work meals and then began to "worry" about the natives.

Ostensibly worrying about the natives, it was really about screwing the natives over.

As with every other problem they encountered, whenever people wanted to do something, they always discovered a host of prerequisites that needed satisfying first...

The Salt Field.

The Jianan Plain was one of the most suitable areas in China for solar salt production: flat terrain, abundant sunlight, annual rainfall concentrated in summer, and high seawater salinity.

Historically, salt had been produced here for over three hundred years. Famous salt fields like Budai and Seven Shares each had annual outputs exceeding one hundred thousand tons.

Naturally, the transmigrators intended to produce salt as well. What was that saying? Cross over and don't make salt, and salt will be rubbed into your wound.

Salt was an important commodity, especially in certain salt-deficient provinces of the Great Ming, such as Fujian across the strait. Salt was also a vital chemical raw material; the Kiln Area Base's next step was to install equipment specifically for salt processing.

The transmigrators didn't need to travel over ten kilometers north to the Seven Shares area to make salt — the entire Tainan coast was suitable. However, considering that Xingang Creek had already become the industrial base's sewage discharge canal, the future Salt Field would be better situated slightly north, crossing Xingang Creek and selecting a site between the Zengwen River and Xingang Creek.

Yet this would expose the Salt Field to a very real threat: north of Xingang Creek lay the territory of the Madou Society and Xiaolong Village, and these two allied indigenous villages had, to date, not submitted to the Crossing Faction.