Chapter 200: Trade Exhibition

There was a reason the Yuan Dou left the mouth of the Jilong River and headed straight west.

The iron ore sand of Taipei is located on the beach dunes between the Wanli River mouth and Jinshan Zhongjiao — a zone of high-grade ore with the greatest mining value, situated near Sulfon Harbor and Shuiwei on either side of Jinshan Cape.

The location described is, in fact, the coastal strip of what later generations would call Taipei's Jinshan District, near the upper-left corner of Taiwan.

The Yuan Dou set out now precisely to make straight for Sulfon Harbor.

Because the mouth of Sulfon Stream — which connects to the Datun Volcano Group — lies right beside Sulfon Harbor, this place was already the Crossing Faction's designated key sulfur export base. Now, with the iron sand mine added, Sulfon Harbor in days to come was bound to flourish on the strength of these two industrial raw materials: sulfuric acid and iron.

By the time the Yuan Dou reached the waters off Sulfon Harbor, the sky had long since darkened. In the 17th century, the Sulfon Harbor area was still an unbroken stretch of sandy beach and lagoon; the fine harbors and neat Seaside Boulevard of later eras were nowhere to be seen.

Early the next morning, the weather finally turned clear, so the Yuan Dou began lowering boats to scout the mouth of Sulfon Stream. To their surprise, before the Yuan Dou could even enter the stream mouth, there were already natives on the shore waving and jumping.

When the ship sailed into the river mouth and they looked more closely, it turned out to be a Ming man with his hair in a topknot doing the waving, with five or six natives wrapped in cloth skirts around the waist following behind him.

Lei Jian stood at the bow, watching the people on the shore running alongside the ship without pause, and couldn't help thinking of the year he'd ridden a green train and the village women who sold roast chicken outside the train windows. After a brief moment of reflection, he shook his head and said to Pan Mingzhong beside him, "Looks like the intel was accurate — there were Ming people living permanently in Taipei during this period."

"The natives don't really mind outsiders building a piece of territory. Otherwise, how did Manhattan come about?" Pan Mingzhong nodded. "The Japanese and Ming people in Dayuan both have their villages, don't they? Besides, before the Dutch deliberately stirred up conflict, Ming peddlers could eat and sleep freely in native villages — not a single murder ever happened."

"The ones over here in Taipei might not be so easy to talk to."

"True. We'll take it one step at a time. Best not to kill anyone — once you kill, your reputation's ruined."

"Yeah, if it doesn't work out we can just run drills. The old method."

"Heh heh."

As the two chatted idly, the Yuan Dou, guided by the boats and the Ming man running along the shore, had already docked in a river bend on the east bank of Sulfon Stream.

In the 17th century, Sulfon Stream's widest points far exceeded forty meters across, and the current was swift — Taipei's rainfall is so high that its major streams and rivers run full all year round.

And this river bend where the Yuan Dou docked was clearly a convention center used year-round for receiving foreign guests: the river-bend land was flat; in the distance stood a row of grass sheds for temporary rest; in the open space between the ships and the grass sheds were several large smooth stones and a few tree roots as thick as round tables... the trading counters were all set up.

"Ha ha ha, the ancients had quite a strong sense of service!" Lei Jian burst out laughing once he'd taken in the layout.

Pan Mingzhong was equally unable to suppress a smile. Chuckling, he said, "Looks like after over a thousand years of trade, the natives did learn a thing or two after all."

"Bullshit. One look at this layout and you can tell it was done by Ming people."

"Alright, alright. We'll know once we go down and ask."

Once the Yuan Dou had docked and was secured, the Fujian translator aboard the ship disembarked and immediately made contact with the Ming man.

As expected, this Ming man was a Fujian native who lived here permanently. His name was Liao Tianding, a merchant who also concurrently served as Village Chief of a Ming village about three li away. The village had only a dozen or so permanent residents and normally sustained itself by stockpiling goods and guiding in the ships of Fujian Merchants.

In fact, the Yuan Dou had been spotted early this morning. Seeing this large Sand Ship with a deep draft, slowly putting out boats to scout the way, Liao Tianding knew the Yuan Dou had come to trade — pirate ships used a shallow-draft sneak-attack style, not this approach.

With a local fixer running things, everything went much more smoothly. Next, Liao Tianding first introduced Pan Mingzhong and the others to the several natives.

The several natives — holding spears, wearing feather ornaments on their heads, necklaces around their necks, and short ramie-cloth skirts wrapped around their waists — were the Village Chief and Warriors of Wind Force Village, under the Ketagalan Tribe, the village nearest to this spot.

The Ketagalan Tribe, which once held sway over the Taipei area, had long since vanished in later ages. Nothing to be done — this land was, after all, the earliest place Fujian Immigrants set foot. Over the course of the Qing dynasty, waves of immigrants arrived here, and so the Ketagalan Tribe quietly disappeared.

The several Wind Force Village natives Pan Mingzhong and his group met today were all wrapped in cloth aprons — definitely belonging to the wealthy stratum of a wealthy village. Judging by their attitude and body language, they clearly had rich experience in external dealings, much like the ethnic minorities in the tourist zones of later generations.

Excellent. Pan Mingzhong could not have been more satisfied with the current state of affairs. Using the native etiquette he had just learned on the spot from Liao Tianding — tapping the left fist lightly against the forehead several times — this group of yellow-skinned people with black hair and black eyes thus acknowledged kinship. The next moment, the Crewmen on the Sand Ship carried down some trade samples and laid them out on the smooth stone surfaces.

Seeing the goods brought out by these Kun-haired people who called themselves Sea Merchants from Dayuan Island, Liao Tianding could not help but be overjoyed.

Among these goods were not only the various cloths and porcelain bowls the natives loved most, but also some ingenious daily-use items and straw-woven goods. In addition, there was salt.

Living by the sea does not mean you can eat salt by the handful: before the invention of iron-pot salt boiling, people by the sea could likewise only eat the bitter, astringent mixture of salt and mud.

This principle was even more directly evident among the natives: a people who didn't even have iron spearheads had no way to boil out salt grains. As for the technically more demanding salt pans... better not to trouble these bare-bottomed warriors with that.

So when Liao Tianding saw these large sacks of salt grains, he was still very welcoming. One must understand, the occasional bit of salt the Ming village boiled using an iron pot was all kept for their own consumption.

Nothing to be done — no one knew when the next trade ship would arrive, or whether it would have an iron pot aboard. The so-called iron material of this era was all low-temperature kiln output with substandard phosphorus and sulfur content — an entirely different concept from the iron pots of later ages. If you boiled salt freely with it, the pot would be ruined before long, and there were no professions like blacksmith or pot-mender around here.

Besides the Coarse Salt, some other fine, top-grade salt also made Liao Tianding click his tongue in wonder. In truth, no Fujian Merchant would ever bring this kind of salt to trade with natives for sulfur. Fujian itself was desperately short of salt, let alone this top-grade refined salt that required salt-making households to expend several times the cost to boil.

Liao Tianding's astonishment was, to the Transmigrators, entirely unnecessary. The Yuan Dou's trip to Taipei this time had exploration and reconnaissance as its main objectives, so they had brought a little of everything, regardless of the goods. Once they recorded which products were marketable, the next ship could come with a clear target in mind.

After looking over the goods on the display platform, the several natives chattered a few words among themselves and then left. Liao Tianding cheerfully told Pan Mingzhong: they've gone to prepare their trade goods, the natives will be back very soon.

Since that was the case, the Crewmen soon carried even more goods down from the Yuan Dou.

Pan Mingzhong at this point pulled this fellow Liao aside and questioned him in detail about the local customs, people, and trade patterns.

Liao Tianding naturally told him everything he knew: he was still hoping that when the Yuan Dou left, they would give him the leftover goods on credit.

Based on his experience, the goods from the Ming village and Wind Force Village today would be the first wave of trade teams to arrive.

Since the Ming village and Wind Force Village had already dispatched messengers to the surrounding area according to the preset rules, the day after tomorrow and the day after that would be the climax of the trade exhibition: the nearby tribes would all send people to exchange goods.

Pan Mingzhong nodded at this. Next, he asked some more about the volcanic sulfur situation.

The straight-line distance from Sulfon Harbor to the later Yangmingshan Forest Park was less than ten kilometers. The entire Datun extinct volcano group lay within the park.

Yangming Mountain was originally called "Grass Mountain," a term broadly referring to the mountainous area encompassing Datun Mountain, Qixing Mountain, Shamao Mountain, and Guanyin Mountain, rather than designating a single peak. The entire volcano group possessed beautiful scenery, with volcanic cones, craters, fumaroles, hot springs, geothermal heat, and other natural sights — and of course, most importantly, it had natural sulfur blocks.

The name "Grass Mountain" originated because, during the Qing dynasty, the local government, worried that bandits might hide in the forests to steal sulfur, periodically set the mountains on fire, so that only silvergrass could grow across the entire mountain range.

The sulfur from Taipei's extinct volcano group was, right up to the late Qing, a vital strategic resource: in fact, this was the only easily obtainable sulfur resource in the entire country.

Of course, in the 17th century, entering the volcano group was no easy task: that ten-kilometer distance only referred to the outer perimeter. To enter the core sulfur-producing area, one still needed the natives to bore through the mountains and into the forests to collect it.

"Looks like we'll just have to wait for the main force to arrive and open up Sulfon Stream before we can talk further." By the time Pan Mingzhong had chatted with Liao Tianding to this point, he had basically grasped the difficulty of mining sulfur.

That very noon, the Ming village and Wind Force Village — these two groups enjoying the advantage of proximity — came running with quite a lot of sulfur, deerskin, air-dried deer meat jerky, air-dried fish to trade. In addition, there was also some of the Taiwanese natives' staple food: rice.

The poverty-stricken Spanish had declared they would not sell grain to the Yuan Dou, yet the natives, at the sight of blue-and-white porcelain bowls and cotton cloth, delivered the grain right to the Transmigrators' doorstep of their own accord.

Pan Mingzhong indicated they would refuse no one.

The natives' pitifully limited variety of trade goods was exactly what satisfied him. Unable to produce sufficient goods to exchange, and faced with the Transmigrators' ever-increasing stream of industrial products in the future, they would have no choice but to intensify their sulfur collection efforts.

The day's trading was soon concluded.

Most goods had customary, established exchange prices — except for the refined salt the Transmigrators brought out. This problem was quickly resolved: it didn't take Liao Tianding long to agree on a price with the natives.

That evening, the Transmigrators used a large iron pot, venison, salt, and five-spice powder to treat the dozen or so villagers of the Ming village to a good meal.

During the meal, the following agreements were reached: First, starting tomorrow, the Ming people, now freed up, would send someone to lead Lei Jian's team to survey the nearby iron ore sand.

Second: before the Yuan Dou departed, they would leave behind a translator and a portion of leftover goods stored in the Ming village, so as to continue purchasing the natives' sulfur thereafter.

As compensation, Liao Tianding and his people received a high-grade cast-iron wok produced in the Kiln District — this was extremely precious, because steel and iron were currently controlled materials and would not appear on the usual trade manifests.