Chapter 245: Construction and Prospects

Historically, after his recruitment and amnesty, Zheng Zhilong rose steadily through the ranks by relentlessly striking at pirates, so much so that five years later he became the Nan'ao Deputy Commander; and after wiping out the last pirate band under Liu Xiang, Zheng Zhilong smoothly advanced to Fujian Regional Commander.

In the Transmigrators' plane, because the pirates were almost all wrapped up in one go, and the only one who escaped with an intact force, Liu Xiang, fled far away to Yuehai, Cao Chuan's merit this time is far greater than in history — now it all depends on how big an official hat Brother Chongzhen will send down.

Early the next morning, multiple memorials from the Fujian bureaucracy began their journey along the urgent military dispatch routes. And at the same time, another official document from the Grand Coordinator's Office went out from Fuzhou City to every part of Fujian.

This document contained the immigration plan the Transmigrators had long been waiting for. In it, Xiong Wencan explicitly instructed all local Parent-Officials: they could gather the disaster victims produced by the great drought and send them to Fuzhou or to Xiamen's Zhongzuosuo, where these people would be received by Mobile Corps Commander General Cao Chuan.

Historically, this was exactly how Zheng Zhilong sweet-talked tens of thousands of immigrants into going to Taiwan to clear wasteland: "Three taels of silver per person, one ox per household." In truth, once the immigrants reached Taiwan they would discover that the silver was there, but there were definitely very few oxen — so Zheng Zhilong was a huge con man.

The Transmigrators would of course learn from this lesson. In the immigration notices posted afterward in Fuzhou City and across Southern Fujian, no silver or oxen were promised — only job opportunities, housing, and sufficient food.

August 29, 1628, the tenth day after the Zhangzhou Bay pirate annihilation battle was launched, at Zhongzuosuo City south of Xiamen Island.

Large numbers of workers were busy near the pier. And a square, flat-decked strange ship was using the crane on its bow to successively hoist up the vessels sunk along the shore and transfer them onto land.

This ship was the flat-deck engineering vessel "Seabed Scoop Type-3," the latest product from the Taijiang Shipyard. The Seabed Scoop Type-3, fitted with bulwarks, was the shipyard's key project for 1628; it was not only equipped with a crane but also had a diesel power system, allowing it to cross straits under mild sea conditions at a speed of 5 knots — a high-end ship type that consumed a large amount of import goods.

The Seabed Scoop had set out from Dayuan three days earlier; escorted by a large number of vessels, this thing had taken two whole days to crawl its way to Zhongzuosuo.

At this moment, the situation in Zhangzhou Bay had already rapidly quieted down. Under the joint search-and-capture operations of the government troops at sea and the Guard Post Soldiers on land, the majority of the scattered pirates had all been thrown into prisoner-of-war camps within a week... Do not assume Guard Post Soldiers have no fighting strength — at a reward of 3 taels of silver per head, that was enough to make fifty Guard Post Soldiers, roaring with reddened eyes, charge at ten pirates who had fled ashore.

Once Zhangzhou Bay was cleaned up, the Transmigrators were going to start construction on Xiamen Island.

Geographically speaking, Xiamen Island, which sits right at the mouth of Zhangzhou Bay, is more suitable for overseas trade than Yuegang.

Historically, it was by leveraging Zhongzuosuo's geographical advantage that Zheng Zhilong massively expanded foreign trade and built Xiamen into his old nest and international trade port. First, by striking at Yuegang and other pirates, he monopolized foreign trade rights in his own hands; next, he began selling flags of command: 3,000 taels of silver per flag — anyone running maritime trade knew the score.

This kind of crude management style suited Zheng Zhilong, but it does not suit the Transmigrators.

Old Zheng went for monopoly, whereas the Transmigrators cast a wide net. For a crossing faction that had already linked up the trade strongpoints of Hangzhou—Fuzhou—Dayuan—Nagasaki, Xiamen, in the grand commercial scheme, was merely one node in the network — nowhere near as vital as Zheng Zhilong considered it, as if his life depended on it.

You have to understand that in the Transmigrators' planning, in two or three years at most, the bosses were already intending to go to Panyu to speculate in real estate, or at the very least seize the Portuguese territory and build casinos. So in this plane, Xiamen Island was just an ordinary trading port, not worth launching a major campaign over.

Of course, for the moment Zhongzuosuo was still very important, and the necessary structures could not be shorted: a cargo transfer pier, warehouses, inns, blockhouses... and of course, the most important — the boiler room and the joint power unit.

As the first wave of Fujian ships returning from transporting pirates to Dayuan arrived, large numbers of skilled construction workers and building materials were also brought to Zhongzuosuo. The pier district, originally a stretch of dilapidation, was now buzzing with furious construction activity.

The first thing installed and put in place was a boiler system housed in a simple wooden shed.

This boiler system, named "Jingsang Type-1," was a three-pass horizontal atmospheric fire-tube boiler independently designed and built by the Kiln Area Base, modeled after commonly used later-era boiler types and adapted to its own conditions. The "Jingsang" boiler series came in a full range of models, from 0.5-ton to 5-ton grades, and had by now become an indispensable staple item in Dayuan society.

The particular boiler brought to Zhongzuosuo was not large, about the size of an ordinary cargo crate, in the 3-ton grade. Because welding processes and large-scale plate rolling processes were beyond their capabilities, all the boilers currently produced in the Kiln District uniformly had square, riveted outer shells.

Riveting is an industrial joining method with relatively low requirements. The Kiln District side used a small number of riveting machines combined with manual operation, and the results were quite good. After all, these boilers were all atmospheric fire-tube boilers — the requirements were not that high.

Compared to water-tube boilers, fire-tube boilers are admittedly a bit low-end.

The heating surface of a water-tube boiler is composed of many curved tubes; this type of boiler can withstand high pressure and has high thermal efficiency. With the addition of a superheater, economizer, and preheater, boiler efficiency can reach over 90%.

The drawbacks of water-tube boilers are their complex structure, large size, and higher demands on automation control and operational skill — they are only suitable for large and medium-sized factories and power plants.

Given the Transmigrators' pitiful industrial base and capability, they could neither build this thing nor properly maintain it... at least for the time being.

So fire-tube boilers ruled supreme.

Fire-tube boilers are simple and compact in structure, and have lower water quality requirements than water-tube boilers, making them the most suitable boiler for primitive industrial production. Although fire-tube boilers have low thermal efficiency and are sensitive to pressure, the Transmigrators had no shortage of fuel and no need for high pressure, so these two defects didn't matter.

The fuel was the hull planks of those wrecked ships.

The Zhongzuo Wharf district originally had over thirty wooden ships sunk by cannon fire. Since these ships were blocking the shipping lanes, they had been dragged ashore by the Seabed Scoop at the earliest opportunity, awaiting demolition.

Next came those dilapidated fishing ships. Of the nearly 700 vessels of various types the Transmigrators had captured, these broken-down fishing ships, their holds crawling with rats and cockroaches, accounted for nearly half.

All of the above wrecks, with their low cargo capacity and no ocean-going ability, would ultimately be burned in the boilers. As for the remaining 300-plus Chinese-style ships, primarily Fujian ships, Guangdong ships, and bird ships, the Transmigrators would sell them all off to stimulate the local economy — if any entrepreneur could utilize Fujian's dense waterway network to procure goods the Transmigrators needed, such as coal and iron, then this side might even "lend" him a ship to transport the goods, with the Transmigrators not even charging interest.

For a certain faction whose industrial capability was growing stronger by the day, they disdained using these motley vessels. In the Transmigrators' eyes, the "New Lock Ship," most of whose parts could be replaced with standard components from the warehouse, was the future backbone of transport.

Since the fuel was all waterlogged timber, the boiler shed belching thick black smoke was extremely conspicuous in the pier district. And next to the boiler shed, what was being hurriedly built was a brick generator house. The core inside was a set consisting of a Kiln District self-produced wood gas generator plus an imported gas generator.

The electricity would bring searchlights, street lamps, and future lighthouse illumination to the pier district.

A construction army of nearly 2,000 people was now fighting hard at Zhongzuosuo.

And these people were not all sent from Dayuan by the Transmigrators. At least 500 of them were laborers hired in Yuegang by the Comprador Merchant Group led by Xu Xinsu. These men were tasked with building a commercial firm and warehouses for Big Boss Xu.

Ever since hitching his wagon to the Transmigrators, Boss Xu had first escaped from a certain-death situation, then step by step reversed his disadvantages and gained a firm foothold, and finally, in the Transmigrators' operation against Zheng Zhilong, Boss Xu had jumped and scurried about, contributing his own share of effort.

Now, having achieved the two great feats of "surviving against all odds" and "the underdog's comeback," Boss Xu had begun playing the role of Homecoming Corps Leader back in Yuegang.

Recently, the Corps Leader had not only been rebuilding Yuegang but had also, following the Zhongzuosuo blueprints provided by the Transmigrators, purchased land, ready to lead the comprador merchants in a major push.

And the Transmigrators, for their part, were naturally happy to see it happen. You have to realize that the players in Big Comprador Xu's group were all merchants with purchasing and distribution channels in the Southern Fujian region — they were natural regional distributors. These people could not only procure all sorts of industrial raw materials for the Transmigrators, but also men and women.

And the Transmigrators' job now was very simple: they only needed to establish the Southern Fujian Industrial Goods Wholesale Corporation, then assign each of them their own exclusive sales territory, and that was it. After that, Boss Xu could be promoted to Zhangquan Region General Agent and walk the peak of his life in perfect contentment.

In short, once the majority of the pirates who had plagued the coastal area were swept away, the entire Fujian region would soon welcome a wave of economic rebound and a construction boom. And this situation, stirred by the crossing faction, would gradually evolve into a deep-level storm of social transformation, pushing everyone inexorably onto a path of thorough reinvention.

The dividends from eliminating the pirates went far beyond this. Just as planned beforehand, after this battle, a certain remote frontier faction, formerly confined to a corner, had officially stepped onto the stage of the late Ming conflicts and registered its name with the Great Ming Court.

And given the Great Ming Court's current predicament, deteriorating with each passing day, the Chongzhen Emperor would inevitably have to "trouble" the Transmigrators more and more in the future to help him safeguard his realm and preserve the state — which suited the secret schemes of certain people with ulterior motives perfectly.

Unlike Zheng Zhilong, who historically refused to leave his nest no matter what, the Transmigrators here were more than happy to "give a brother a hand."

Whether it was the black soil beyond the passes where the Jian slaves ran rampant, or the central plains heartland swarming with rebels, the Transmigrators were perfectly willing to tour these places, setting up their trade lines and rumbling machinery there, turning them into strongpoints that controlled the situation.

And the Ming Dynasty, after the crossing faction's arrangements were complete, would, at an appropriate time, meet its proper end.