Chapter 360: The Inspection Tour

Rao Sixiang's mindset changed remarkably fast. Back when they were swaying in the ship's cabin, Zuo Baoliu had been grinding his teeth in fury at the old accountant from the village: that damned old man was just too rotten — someday, when the men made it back to the village, he'd see...

But once Zuo Baoliu was assigned a house in the district and started working, he found himself brimming with gratitude toward the old fellow. Yes — aside from mistakenly remembering Chikan as Zhoushan, the old man really hadn't lied to him about anything else.

And so it was that Zuo Baoliu, at the Mulberry Cocoon Company under the Agriculture Department, quickly settled into a life that was both painful and joyful.

The joy came from life here being just like paradise: beautiful surroundings, abundant food, wages paid on time, no bullying by officials or landlords, none of the crushing pressures of daily life — an ordinary person only had to work honestly to live well.

The pain came from studying. Although Zuo Baoliu was a master hand at mulberry cultivation, his level of knowledge was clearly nowhere near enough here, so he had a very hard time at night school. A person lacking basic theory finds it extremely difficult to grasp concepts like bacteria, soil composition, microorganisms, and plant diseases and pests.

A life of ease tinged with a little hardship quickly transformed Zuo Baoliu inside and out. He was no longer that wooden, clumsy man whose whole body radiated misery and bitterness. The Zuo Baoliu of now enjoyed interacting with people, spoke loudly, and moved with a bustling, fiery energy — the fast-paced industrial society had already pulled his style off course.

The women of the Left Family were changing at the same time. That country farmwife who did not even have a name, Zuo Hu Shi, upon first registering after disembarking, immediately acquired a pleasant-sounding and fashionable name: Hu Yuehong.

After this, Hu Yuehong was assigned to the Silkworm Room. Then, as she came home after every shift and excitedly broadcast live, Zuo Baoliu simultaneously learned just how incredible the silkworm rooms under the General's Mansion were — he had at least been through training by now and knew who it was that paid his wages.

Then one day, Zuo Baoliu seized the chance while delivering mulberry leaves and finally embarked on a journey of wonders: first, he saw the inside of the silkworm room with his own eyes.

The industrialized clean heated room brought him enormous shock — heating, large-pane windows, thermometers, thick white cotton paper... Zuo Baoliu had heard about the functions of these miraculous things countless times from his woman, and now, seeing them in person, he could not help but marvel.

Compared to the crude folk methods the couple had used back in the village in years past, the silkworm room here was the difference between heaven and earth: basket after basket of pure white finished cocoons could attest to that.

Tainan is warm all year round, so sericulture can proceed year-round without pause. The large, uniform, pure white, glossy finished cocoons produced here were called "Shangche cocoons," meaning top-grade mulberry cocoons that could go straight onto the machines for reeling.

After delivering the mulberry leaves, Zuo Baoliu cheerfully got himself roped into more work, pushing a cocoon cart to the Reeling Workshop to deliver cocoons. Here he saw the semi-manual, semi-mechanized silk reeling production line. After watching the machine reeling with half-understanding, Zuo Baoliu got roped in once again, driving a horse cart and hauling finished raw silk to the Wharf Warehouse.

Raw silk produced from later-generation silkworm stock was of a quality rarely seen in this plane. Every merchant now knew that garments woven from Dayuan's own raw silk were not only glossy, even, full, and smooth, but also highly elastic, strong, and evenly dyed — the most top-grade silk products available.

Thus, the self-produced raw silk named "Chiffon" by the Textile General Company had now seized the very pinnacle of the East Asian raw silk market, its price soaring to 300 taels of silver per picul — and even at that, supply could not meet demand.

And there Zuo Baoliu's journey of wonders came to an end — after completing delivery at the Chikan Warehouse, he stood cheerfully at the entrance, craning his neck to watch a crowd of merchants auctioning raw silk. The next moment, several Red Hair barbarians and Black Hair barbarians somehow got into a fight, and then, amid the surrounding jeers, whistles, and the sound of police rushing over, an auctioneer's copper hammer came flying from nowhere and inexplicably smashed Zuo Baoliu on the head, after which he was sent to the Hospital.

The scene of Zuo Baoliu getting his head cracked open by a strange flying object, followed by police running over to arrest the Dutch and Spanish merchants, was witnessed in full by several people who were gazing at the Taijiang scenery not far away.

"Hmph — a riot of demons dancing, utterly devoid of culture and education, truly a disgrace to all that is civilized!"

The speaker was a fair, clean-shaven man with a square face, wearing a Husi straight robe, in his forties. With temperatures already rising in June, on the Tai River Dock, where work jackets and linen T-shirts were everywhere, this man still wore a soft-foot cap and full formal straight robe — without a doubt, this gentleman had come from the Ming domain.

"A trifling matter — Song Weng need not take it to heart." At that moment, a refined man in his thirties standing beside the middle-aged man, dressed in a thin robe, spoke with a smile as he waved a folding fan.

"Ah, a land beyond the reach of civilization..." The middle-aged man shook his head, his expression one of anger at its failure to improve. "Let us go. First, we shall observe the crops. Agriculture is the foundation of the state — it must not be treated lightly."

With that, he took the lead and headed toward the Taxi Company with a few men.

This gentleman's surname was Bo, and his given name was Bo Daxing.

Master Bo was a native of Xianyou County in Fujian, holding the titular rank of Assistant Surveillance Commissioner of the Fujian Surveillance Commission, with his substantive post being Deputy Military Defense Circuit Intendant of the Xingquan Military Defense Circuit, overseeing the reserves of Xinghua and Quanzhou. Understood in later-generation terms, this official position was roughly equivalent to Deputy Division Chief of the Provincial Security Headquarters and Deputy Head of a certain city's People's Armed Forces Department — in short, a sinecure.

So why had Master Bo, holding a sinecure, appeared in Chikan? That is a long story.

It is said that ever since Cao Chuan acknowledged Chongzhen as his superior and donned an official mantle, exchanges across the strait in all areas had rapidly increased.

This was a very natural progression. The subjects of a certain pocket empire were, in fact, overwhelmingly former Ming subjects from Fujian and Zhejiang; communication between the two sides was extremely close, with flights departing every day. And so, gradually, some high-ranking figures in the Ming court also began to take notice of this land beyond civilization, hanging alone beyond the sea.

Fujian's officials were the first to cast their gaze across the strait. After all, many of them had acquaintances — merchants, kinsmen, and poor relatives — who had gone to Dayuan to make a living, and with the distance between the two places so short, it was very easy for officials to obtain detailed intelligence about the opposite shore.

Moreover, the industrial goods flooding into Fujian like a tide — salt, construction materials, household chemicals, hardware, and so on — also forced the conservative, sluggish officials to begin taking this new power, the Cao Clan, seriously.

After all, the Transmigrators were different from the historical Zheng Zhilong: the Zheng Clan cared only for themselves and also collected exorbitant passage taxes on all sides, whereas the Transmigrators, from the impostor Cao Chuan and Zhang Dongdong on down, every single one dispatched to Fujian was, without exception, a legendary God of Wealth.

Now, in both official and commercial circles, there was a consensus: so long as one could establish a connection with the Cao Family, one was sure to make a fortune. There were far too many examples proving this point — countless figures who had taken some industrial product back to their old home to sell, or who had joined some development project, had become rich overnight simply because they seized the opportunity.

So officials nowadays were happy to deal with the Cao Clan, in both public and private matters: had they not seen that the backyard of the Grand Coordinator's Office now had a second floor, complete with a flush toilet? Whoever said officials did not repair their yamens — that was only because they had never met such enthusiastic people!

And so it was that Bo Daxing Laoye had recently received an official document.

This document had been forwarded to Master Bo by his immediate superior, Military Defense Commissioner Jiao.

The document's content: In view of the lax military preparedness in the Xingquan region, with the weapons and equipment of the various battalion troops and guard posts being mostly old, damaged, and decayed beyond use, the Xingquan Military Defense Circuit intended to dispatch a capable officer to Taiwan on an inspection tour — it was said that Taiwan had natives who were highly skilled at forging superior weapons. If the inspection confirmed this, the Military Defense Circuit planned to allocate this year's government procurement budget to this purpose.

When Master Bo first received the document, he was utterly baffled. He had to know — he, the Deputy Intendant, had never managed any affairs, and an important document like this, involving government procurement, was even less likely to be sent to him for issuance.

So after returning home, Master Bo sent someone to make inquiries. Once he did, he got to the bottom of it: Jiao Darao's brother-in-law had just recently gone over to the opposite shore, and upon returning, had become the Xinghua Prefecture General Agent for some damned Dengxilu Fire Sickle or whatever.

Once he understood the inner workings, Master Bo promptly cursed the whole lot of national parasites from his study.

Now, this Master Bo was a Three-rank Bottom Jinshi from the Wanli Era. Although his civil service exam results were mediocre, Master Bo was upright by nature and passionately devoted to studying the classics and their meanings, with considerable erudition in the Way of the Sages... In other words, he was rigid and unsuited for officialdom.

Fortunately, the Bo family was fairly well-off in Xianyou County; although there were few jinshi in the clan, there were many provincial graduates and licentiates, so they were not short of a moral gentleman like him. Thus, Master Bo's official career was rather leisurely: he had always rotated through deputy posts in various yamens and had never served as a chief official.

By the time the somewhat proud and unconventional Master Bo reached forty, he found he could less and less stomach the petty scheming of officialdom, and with fierce factional strife at court on top of that, he had sought out this sinecure near his old home, intending to finish one term and then return to his village to teach and nurture students.

He never expected to receive such a document at the very end. What displeased Master Bo most was that this document was clearly just sending him, a sinecure holder, on a trip to Dayuan to go through the motions. The document bore the seals and endorsements of two major yamens, the Prefectural Yamen and the Fuzhou Governor's Office — they had long since smoothed over all the connections and were just waiting to finish the formalities so they could spend public funds to cozy up to that sea bandit surnamed Cao!

This was the reason Master Bo cursed the whole lot of corrupt officials and sea bandits from his study.

Just as Master Bo was about to submit a memorial fiercely denouncing Xiong Wencan and the whole cabal of traitors, and then resign his seal and leave, someone talked him out of it.

The one who persuaded him was a junior who had come from afar. This junior's name would have some fame in later generations: he was called Fang Tangjing.

However, this Ming-dynasty Fang Tangjing was not the famous legal counsel of the late Qing; he was merely an ordinary failed licentiate.

Fang Tangjing had traveled all the way from Hangzhou; he was a Guest Retainer in the household of one of Master Bo's close friends from the same examination cohort. In coming to Fujian this time, Fang Tangjing was, firstly, representing his own master in paying a visit to Master Bo, and beyond that, his main purpose was to tour Taiwan — Hangzhou Station had likewise created a wealth miracle in its locality, so many literati with a keen nose had dispatched men to Taiwan to investigate.

So when Fang Tangjing learned the reason for Master Bo's fury, it suited him perfectly, and he hurriedly began to dissuade the gentleman, preparing to call on Old Bo to take a spin around Taiwan together: it was public funds anyway — not going would be a waste.