Chapter 262: Moving In

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A blank sheet of paper is best for painting.

The Chikan New District, built from nothing, is now a large residential area with over a hundred thousand people under its jurisdiction.

This number of people is nothing in later generations, but in the 17th century it was not small. Apart from first-tier cities like the capital, Hangzhou, and Guangzhou, the rest of the Great Ming's second-tier cities had only about this many people. One must know, many county seats in this era normally had a permanent population of only one or two thousand.

On the coastal plain east of Taijiang, the land within a 10-kilometer radius is being developed one after another. Burning, clearing, altering river courses, hardening the ground, building roads, assembling prefab houses... everything has become a fixed procedure, just follow the steps.

All districts are built as squares, the shape easiest to manage, as much as possible. For this, the builders do not hesitate to fill in those spiderweb-like streams.

There is a reason for this approach: as seen from the recent wind disaster, shallow surface streams are actually useless when mountain floods erupt; their water storage capacity is too low, and many districts were flooded at that time.

After gaining a deep impression of 17th-century typhoons and mountain floods, a grand and vigorous river course renovation project began recently here in Chikan. Coal-gas shovels belching black smoke were mobilized to the river courses near the populated residential areas, starting large-scale deepening operations.

This kind of excavator with a big butt, looking very low-end, is driven by components like coal gas, steel cables, gears, and connecting rods. Although the failure rate is high and excavation efficiency is low, they do not require imported hydraulic parts, and were the main force excavators of 19th-century Western industrial society.

These several excavators will cooperate with a large number of infrastructure workers to dig the river courses, transforming the original spiderweb into a main river course encircling the new district, in order to resist future mountain floods. This project is long-term in nature, because the communities here in Chikan are constantly expanding, so the deep trenches made by the excavators will keep extending eastward.

The fishermen from Chengwei Village who escaped from Putian to Dayuan have their new home right next to the excavator construction site. "Free" newcomers who have passed preliminary quarantine are generally assigned to some peripheral district for a period of "house arrest," usually lasting half a month.

And the person receiving Yu Chengde and his group was Ma Ming, the Street Office Director managing several nearby districts.

Ma Ming was a thin, forty-something man. Before coming to Dayuan, this person had served as a village head in the countryside of Hangzhou, so he was very proficient in his work.

After bringing a few subordinates to pick up Yu Chengde and the others from the medical station, Director Ma first called the roll one by one, then cheerfully introduced himself, and next the group set off for the Passenger Transport Terminal.

The terminal was located right behind the Pier District and was currently the largest transportation hub of the Transmigration Nation. Multiple pairs of buses departed from here every day, which workers from the districts would take to work in the Kiln District.

There were two types of buses in total.

The first type was the city rail. Since the largest passenger flow was fixed between the Kiln District and Chikan, every morning and evening, multiple trains driven by coal-gas locomotives would run on the iron rails. This type of locomotive and the flatbed cars behind it all used solid iron wheels, so the speed was relatively slow.

The locomotives for short-distance buses and the city rail were basically the same, only the wheels differed: the short-distance buses, with only two or three cars, used large-diameter riveted wooden wheels.

The short journey to the station had already frightened the fishermen badly: the streaming tide of people, all kinds of roaring steel machinery, bizarre buildings, and the loudly bellowing iron oxen... Medieval migrants accustomed to a slow, quiet rhythm were instantly scared silly.

Director Ma Ming, having seen this situation too many times, was very experienced. He and his men coaxed and pushed, constantly lifting up the people squatting on the ground. The group led by the shaven-headed Yu Chengde ultimately, timidly and hesitantly, boarded the rumbling bus.

After running slowly eastward, stopping and starting for over half an hour, the No. 4 bus finally docked at the terminal: Ding 9 District. All districts in Chikan were named using the Heavenly Stem + Number system. Ding 9 District was currently the newest district built furthest to the east, under the jurisdiction of the Street Office where Ma Ming worked.

If measured by the standards of later generations, the user experience of this bus trip was certainly abysmal.

Firstly, the wooden wheels had no shock absorbers or rubber layers. Secondly, except for the showpiece Chikan Avenue and the Pier District, which used cement-hardened road surfaces, the roads in the outlying districts were still gravel paths, so the bus ride was extremely bumpy — even though these were already the flattest, highest-capacity roads of the 17th century.

So when the newcomers stepped off the bus onto the firm gravel road surface, everyone's legs were weak; some were dizzy, and a few even started retching.

Motion sickness was simply too common here. Most migrants had spent the first half of their lives walking on bare feet; they had never even ridden in a horse cart or sedan chair, let alone a faster coal-gas cart.

The suddenly increased displacement speed, jolting, starting and stopping caused the balance signals emitted by these mud-legged folks' inner ear vestibular organs to rapidly amplify. Central nervous systems that had never received such strong signals began to react, and so the poor wretches started feeling dizzy and retching — luckily they hadn't eaten yet, otherwise they would have vomited on the way.

This phenomenon also appeared on a large scale for a period in later generations after the Reform and Opening Up: farmers bound to the land began to flow nationwide, people's opportunities to contact vehicles increased overnight, and thus a wave of motion sickness and seasickness erupted.

There were not many buildings inside Ding 9 District yet, only a sparse twenty or thirty residential houses. Since it was the newest expanded district, besides essential buildings like public toilets and the Water Room, shops and bathhouses were not yet equipped, and the roads were still rammed-earth paths, gravel not even laid yet.

However, people like Yu Chengde came from a fishing village. What did a fishing village have? Weed-choked paths, low shacks and thatched huts, garbage everywhere, and the eternal, unchanging stench of fish... So they had no resistance to the beautifully tung-oiled wooden houses, clean and tidy, perfectly horizontal and vertical district.

Director Ma, cheerfully pulling a string of keys from his back pocket, quickly opened several wooden houses that exuded the smell of tung oil.

The wooden houses nowadays had developed to the third generation. The houses, entirely composed of standard components, absorbed the experience of previous versions, and had greatly improved in both structural strength and comfort.

In fact, aside from lacking a cement basement and a swimming pool, the houses of the Transmigration Nation, purely in terms of quality, surpassed the American wooden houses of later generations — at least the foundation piles and panel thickness here were more robust.

This was also a matter of having no choice. When American houses were blown away by tornadoes, insurance companies would step in, but here in Dayuan there was nothing. The Transmigrators, now once bitten, twice shy, after being hit once by a typhoon, comprehensively raised the quality standards for houses.

Generally speaking, the floor area of these houses was between 30 and 40 square meters. This design was aimed at migrant families: a 30-square-meter house could be partitioned into 3 to 4 rooms, completely providing living space for a family of four.

One must know, the houses here had no toilets, and the vast majority of people did not cook at home: the Mess Hall's meals were subsidized, so the price was cheap.

With the toilet and kitchen eliminated, 30 square meters was actually quite spacious. If a family also had elderly and more children, they could apply for a larger house.

In fact, this situation was not common: children over 6 years old were all forced to board at school, only returning home on Sundays... A 6-day work system was implemented here in Dayuan.

And young people over 16 usually did not live with their parents either: they were either at school or in the factory's collective dormitory. Therefore, parents only needed to set aside house space to support the elderly; they did not need to worry about the young people. The resources the masters invested in the nation's flowers far exceeded the imagination of their biological parents.

Under the migration rules of the Transmigration Nation, the large families common in the medieval era did not exist: a sister-in-law would certainly not live under the same roof as her brother-in-law, and all families of non-direct lineal relatives would certainly be broken up.

After placing the straw-woven bags in their hands into the new homes, Yu Chengde and the others were taken to the Mess Hall to eat. The Mess Hall was in the neighboring district; the group excitedly discussed their new homes while following Director Ma to learn the way.

Most of the utterly destitute people who came to Dayuan needed to work for one or two months before their finances turned around. After arriving at the Mess Hall, Ma Ming first filled out forms and signed according to regulations, then collected a month's worth of meal tickets for everyone based on headcount.

All the meal tickets, houses, clothing, including some daily sundries, were actually all loans... wool comes from the sheep's back; the leeks would ultimately need to repay in installments using their monthly salaries.

Although he still had some "paper money" exchanged from silver on him, Yu Chengde was not in a hurry to take it out to buy meal tickets: since the meal tickets were lent for free and had no interest, he might as well use them first.

After eating a large bowl of the seafood and mixed-vegetable rice porridge, the essential "initiation" meal for newcomers, the villagers followed Director Ma again to the Street Office to press their fingerprints and collect sundries.

Including daily necessities like bedding, washbasins, slippers, and toothbrushes, the Street Office had them all ready. After arranging for two young lads to push them back and forth on a cart, Director Ma formally began assigning houses to everyone.

For Yu Chengde's family, there was nothing much to say; a house of over 30 square meters was enough for his family of four to settle. And when Ma Ming saw Yu Sibao's form, he pointed to a line on it and told them: Yu Sibao should soon be summoned by some department for training, because his specialty was "diving," a very sought-after skill.

Most families were quickly settled. And for someone like Ba Grandpa, a solitary old man who could kick the bucket at any moment, the villagers who had fled together here naturally would not abandon him. So Director Ma arranged the old man at Monkey's house: Monkey lived with his mother and had a spare room.

As for the old man's retirement support, according to precedent, the Transmigration Nation's Ministry of Civil Affairs was responsible for paying for it, and would not add a burden to the villagers.

That evening, the villagers ate a housewarming dinner with mixed feelings. Looking at the bright oil lamp on the table, and then at the children laughing and playing on the floor, Yu Chengde could not help but silently pray to heaven, feeling grateful that there was always a way out.

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