Chapter 501: Taipei (I)

Endless veils of rain and mist swept past, shrouding Sulfone Port in a blur of haze.

Though Taipei's winters are rainy, summer brings no shortage of rain either — the monsoon from the Pacific carries boundless moisture, keeping the mountains and rivers of the island's north constantly battered by wind and rain.

In this plane where the Transmigrators have arrived, the greater Taipei region of the seventeenth century still retains its primeval character. This deep-blue land, blanketed by forest and mountains, including the entire Keelung Bay harbor area leading into the Taipei Basin, remains forested territory. The vast majority of the land has yet to be developed.

The one place the Transmigrators have truly poured effort into renovating is Sulfone Port.

Sulfone Port lies in a rather out-of-the-way spot, basically at the upper-left corner of Taiwan. In later generations, Sulfone Port would be somewhat distant from the most prosperous and central parts of greater Taipei — just an insignificant, unremarkable harbor.

Yet in this time period, it is precisely this place that qualifies as the only true "town" in all of Taipei.

Because the nearby river flats yield high-grade exposed iron sand ore, Sulfone Port was designed from the very start as a mining and river-sea transshipment industrial port. The Transmigrators not only poured major effort into building the port, but also expanded it along the way, constructing a town.

In theory, Taiwan is actually unsuited for large-scale development, for a very simple reason: the wealth plains can generate far exceeds that of mountain land.

Compared to the vast Australian plains, the South Seas Archipelago, and the North American continent, Taiwan — aside from the Taipei Basin and the Tainan plain — has no land suitable for large-scale development.

Yet in later generations, due to certain well-known historical reasons, greater Taipei flourished and Taiwan's total population exploded. This, much like the prosperity of Hong Kong, is a special case that emerged under specific historical conditions — one that cannot be replicated.

The Transmigrators naturally have no need for such a path.

For the Transmigrators, what Taiwan currently offers is iron ore and sulfur from Taipei, plus oil from Miaoli and grain crops from the Tainan plain — nothing more.

In other words, in the eyes of the higher-ups, Taiwan is really just a large mining site providing primary raw materials, with very low status. Once the initial incubation phase is over, this place will surely fade into quiet obscurity.

The Transmigrators will naturally not invest resources into building some grand "Greater Taipei" in Keelung Bay or the Taipei Basin, which hold little promise — at least not for now. As for the future... whoever wants to go can go. The territory's already been staked out anyway; if descendants a few centuries from now truly multiply to that point, it will develop on its own in time.

Precisely because of this, the few structures previously built in Keelung Bay were entirely abandoned. For example, Saint Salvador Fort, purchased from the Spanish, has now become a pile of rubble — the stone blocks were all dismantled, loaded onto ships, and transported to Sulfone Port to build jetties.

Now, Sulfone Port, far from Keelung Bay, is the true heart of Taipei.

In three years, through the Transmigrators' arduous labor, the once-unremarkable Xiehu area has been completely transformed into a proper town, complete with fixed assets including an ore dock, cranes, a residential area, and a slave camp.

The total population of the Sulfone Port area has likewise reached as many as six thousand.

In addition to a regular army infantry battalion stationed here, several small escort ships are permanently moored in the harbor to control the sea lanes — there are no powerful adversaries off the coast of Taipei; the most common vessels are Fujian ships and Japan trade ships, so large ships are unnecessary.

As for the civilian population of Sulfone Port Town, its origins are far more complex.

Besides Ming immigrants from various provinces, the local Taipei natives and South Seas slaves also make up a significant portion of Sulfone Port Town's population.

Starting with the Ketagalan Tribe, who have dealt with the Transmigrators from the very beginning, quite a number of natives have now settled in Sulfone Port Town.

Of course, the process of "replacing native chieftains with direct rule" in Taipei was certainly not smooth sailing. Sulfone Port is different from Tainan — there, the Transmigrators concentrated the vast majority of their resources and could use every favorable condition from the start to peacefully win over the natives as much as possible.

Sulfone Port, on the other hand, was a construction site from the very beginning, lacking everything. It was impossible to demonstrate any civilizational superiority to the natives, so the methods had to be "slightly more forceful."

Thus, as the Transmigrators expanded around Sulfone Port, a series of battles occurred.

Once the fighting truly began, the natives were naturally no match.

Back when the Spanish dealt with the Tamsui natives, just like their Dutch cousins, they were first deceived and ambushed, losing a bunch of soldiers. Immediately after, the Spanish dispatched a "large force" of over a hundred men, and then Guirou Village, the largest in Tamsui, surrendered.

The fate of the defeated was wholesale relocation, driven by the Spanish to the area around the mouth of the Sickle Water River.

The Transmigrators have done much the same.

A rapidly developing mining town desperate for labor doesn't have that much time to waste on mutual deception and gradual persuasion with the natives. And so a series of conquest wars broke out not long after the Transmigrators opened the port.

In the end, apart from the local power brokers of Wind Force Village — who, due to relatively extensive dealings, were peacefully incorporated into the town — virtually all the surrounding native tribes, after the gunshots rang out, either voluntarily or "voluntarily" joined the "civilization process" and received "enlightenment."

Today, around Sulfone Port Town, aboriginal villages no longer exist. The area within a ten-kilometer radius centered on Sulfone Port Town has been thoroughly cleaned up, and roads have been built to the nearby iron sand mines.

Additionally, the dredged Sulfone Port Creek has now been connected to the rivers near Yangming Mountain. This allows the sulfur ore collected from the Yangming Mountain volcanic cluster to be transported along the river to Sulfone Port, then loaded onto ships and sent out to sea.

On the whole, Taipei's mining framework has now been fully constructed and meets the design requirements.

In this process, one other crucial force could not be absent: slaves.

Seventeenth-century Taipei was a primeval, savage wilderness covered in forests, rivers, lakes, and swamps. Beyond that sliver of beach, dense vegetation claimed nearly all the land, and everywhere there were man-eating leeches and swarming mosquitoes. To build roads and expand habitable territory in such an environment, sacrifices were unavoidable.

The sacrifice the Transmigrators made was, naturally, slaves.

There is a saying: beneath every sleeper of the American railroad lies the corpse of an Irish laborer.

This saying chiefly describes what happened during the construction of the first Pacific Railroad that spanned the North American continent.

Whether that many Irishmen were truly buried beneath the vast, arid western plains is unknown, but the Transmigrators can guarantee this: to open a mere twenty-kilometer mining transport line from Sulfone Port to the Yangming Mountain area, the number of slaves who died far exceeds that of the American railroad companies.