Chapter 611: A Morning in Guangzhou

One early morning in late October of the 16th year, the Jacob's Wife prepared to set sail.

At that hour, the colors of dawn had not yet appeared — it was the darkest moment just before daybreak. But with the advanced industrial coal-gas lighting equipment on the New District Pier, the crewmen aboard the merchant ship had already completed their sailing preparations during the night shift.

Now they were only waiting for the important personages to come aboard.

Bidding farewell to friends on the pier were Mr. Robert Crowley, the general agent for European black tea selected by the Crossing Faction, and Old William, the Dutch regional manager.

As for those seeing them off, they were naturally the relevant personnel from the Ministry of Commerce, led by Li Hao.

"Li, believe me — our enterprise is sure to prosper, so long as I can make it back to Britain this time."

After such a long time together, Crawley had long since come to regard Li Hao as a true brother. Now, in the flickering light of the pier lamps, Crawley's blue eyes seemed to glisten just a little.

Yet despite his surging emotions, Crawley maintained the bearing befitting a member of the Nobility — he stood ramrod straight and clasped Li Hao's hand tightly, shaking it twice.

Li Hao's eyes shone just as brightly in the night. His tone was gentle yet firm: "Be careful on the journey — safety always comes first. Take care!"

After the brief farewell ceremony, the passengers turned around and stepped onto the gangplank. In the end, however, Mr. Crawley could not hold back the gratitude in his heart; he turned back around and embraced Li Hao lightly.

Old William, already aboard the ship, watched this scene. He took a sip of rum from his silver flask and murmured, "A child blessed by God."

As a participant in and witness to the entire affair, Old William could now only attribute everything to God's favor.

One had to know that, at present, what was stored in the hold of the Jacob's Wife was not only tea and other matching cargo, but also quite a few "gifts" from the "manufacturer" for the distributor to use in "opening up the market."

These so-called gifts, in Old William's long memory, were things that Western merchants usually had to pay for with gold coins, base tricks, and even cannons and blood to obtain — for instance, handfuls of top-grade pearls, complete sets of gold-traced Porcelain, large barrels of kerosene and glass Kerosene Lamps, top-grade palace-use chiffon silk, as well as pure silver lighters and other exquisite and beautiful presents.

The value of these so-called "gifts" listed above already far exceeded Crawley's entire personal fortune. Old William had once found this impossible to accept: it had always been Western merchants who were cheated by native Ming merchants, but this time it was reversed — the ordinary merchant Crawley had given nothing at all, yet had obtained the right to use such an enormous amount of wealth.

All of this left Old William utterly baffled.

Of course, limited by his own level of education and breadth of vision, Old William did not realize just how important Mr. Crawley was to the Transmigrators. He could not be blamed for this — after all, Old William was merely an illiterate old mercenary. As for the commercial proposition of "how to select the right person to smash open the black tea market of Western high society," Comrade Old William truly did not understand it.

Not long after, when the first streak of morning light rose from the horizon, the fully laden Jacob's Wife raised her sails at the same moment, caught the fierce north wind, and slowly departed from the New District Pier.

Only after the ship had sailed so far away that the pier was out of sight did Mr. Crawley lower the hat he had been ceaselessly waving. In that moment, he was full of hope and anticipation; his heart surged with emotion at his fantastical journey to the East, a hundred feelings mingled together.

In this silent dawn, Mr. Crawley sailed away into the distance. Like those other trading vessels that caught the monsoon and departed, he left quietly, taking no clouds with him — though he did take quite a lot of black tea.

The importance of this matter, even if everything went smoothly, would not become apparent for several years. Therefore, on this day, apart from the group from the Ministry of Commerce, very few people in the entire Crossing Faction — and even in the now bustling and lively New District, Natives included — realized that the tea trade between East and West had, in this moment, stepped onto the track of history.

The moment the morning light rose, Mr. Crawley sailed into the distance. At the same time, the ancient Eastern city, aged with years, also awoke to the sound of morning bells.

As the bells rang out ceaselessly — "Clang~ Clang~" — the various gates of Guangzhou, this famous southern city, opened in response. The Natives who had long been waiting in the darkness of night streamed through the city gates, hurrying toward their respective destinations.

Generally speaking, the first wave entering the city were mostly fishmongers, vegetable vendors, butchers, and other suppliers of non-staple foods. These peddlers had it rather hard — they had to prepare fresh fish, meat, and vegetables in the middle of the night, then wait outside the city gates before dawn, so that the moment the gates opened they could deliver their goods into their clients' hands. Only then, when the masters of the households rose, could they enjoy fresh fish porridge.

Most of those entering the city were delivering goods, while those leaving the city were delivering "labor."

The first batch of Guangzhou Natives to leave the city, braving the white belly of the eastern sky, mostly wore patched, coarse cloth short jackets, their legs bare, carrying clubs, ropes, and other such tools over their shoulders — many of them simply had clean-shaven heads, the so-called trendy laborers of the day.

The moment the gates opened, these trendy laborers jostled and shoved, rushing out of Guangzhou's Great Nanmen in an impatient horde.

Once out of the Great Nanmen, the vast mass of laborers immediately surged toward the ferry pier. There, a vast mass of boats was already waiting for passengers.

It was unclear when it had started, but the pier outside Nanmen had begun an endless series of renovation and expansion projects.

The area outside the Great Nanmen of present-day Guangzhou City had long since become a completely different place from a few years ago. Stretching before the City Wall, the broad and straight Nanmen Avenue, the solid and thick cement embankments, and the classified piers that seemed as if they would never be finished — all of it left onlookers sighing in wonder.

The laborers, of course, had no time to lament the meaning of life. Right now, there was no poetry in their eyes — only the big ferry.

The so-called big ferry was a steam-powered contraption built by the Transmigrators. Broad and flat, slow-moving, belching black smoke — the same concept as the tourist ferries of later generations.

And the reason the laborers scrambled to board the big ferry was because the ticket was cheap: one copper coin for the bottom hold, free for children.

Without a doubt, this mode of transport, which clearly carried the nature of a government subsidy, was yet another routine cooked up by the Transmigrators.

The routine was still very effective. After all, for impoverished Natives, every copper coin saved was a copper coin earned. So not long after the Great Nanmen opened, the ferry's bottom hold was already stuffed full of laborers.

The laborers, reeking of sweat, gathered together, and the smell in the bottom hold quickly became foul. Fortunately, they were all hard-labor folk, and no one felt disgusted by anyone else. Those who were acquainted would even pull a bit of tobacco dregs from their pockets, or a single wrinkled Cigarette, and pass it around — puff by puff, while also launching into idle chatter.

For these laborers, the topics of conversation never went beyond a few things: somewhere a new factory was about to break ground, somewhere else a new factory was hiring, so-and-so had successfully applied for a house and had already moved their whole family there, and so on.

That last topic was the hot topic of the moment.

The current policy of the New District was this: anyone who worked in the New District year-round was eligible to apply for "Affordable Housing." Once the application was approved, the house could be rented long-term, and when they had the money in the future, they could also buy the deed from General Daren.

Natives who had not been battered by the real estate booms of later generations were not sensitive to the various future implications. On the contrary, the clean and tidy environment, the low rent, and the large red-brick tiled houses equipped with glass windows held an extremely strong practical appeal for impoverished Natives.

For a time, people applying for houses were like carp crossing the river. However, production capacity was limited, and those whose applications failed still had to take the ferry to the New District every morning to work.

After the bottom hold was filled by laborers, the next wave of passengers came. This wave left the city later, because they were mostly peddlers and merchants, and their goods could only leave the city after paying the release fee to the soldiers at the city gate.

When the merchants left the city, some used single-wheeled carts, others carried loads on shoulder poles — each displaying their own resourcefulness to get their goods onto the ferry deck. The next step was to wait for the ticket seller to come and verify the volume of the goods, buy a ferry ticket, and then they could sit on the deck, enjoy the breeze, and wait for departure.

Generally by this time, the sky had already brightened, and the ferry's steam system had begun pressurizing. However, the ferry departed on the hour, so there was no rush — there were still passengers who had not yet arrived.

Along with the ever-increasing flow of people leaving the city, the last wave to board the ferry was, naturally, the city's masters.

Having finished their fish porridge, the masters stretched their legs out steadily as they stepped down from their sedan chairs and stood on the cement ground of the pier.

The masters' attire varied widely. There were those wearing traditional straight-hem robes and head-scarves, and also those in long gowns and mandarin jackets, holding a walking stick; there were also quite a few progressive gentlemen with short hair, wearing gauze formal hats and a full suit of Western-style Trousers.

Of course, a master was a master — no matter what a master wore, there were always domineering servants by his side, bullying others on his authority. These lackeys, their faces full of ferocity, shoved aside those clueless bumpkins all along the pier to clear a path for their master.

When the masters took the ferry, they naturally could not squeeze together with the bumpkins. The masters bought tickets for the business cabin, which was the tea lounge on the ferry's Second Floor. Here, it was not only spacious and bright with good scenery, but there was also a small bar counter selling beer, Cigarettes, peanuts, and various other snacks.

As time passed, when the business cabin was also nearing full capacity, the Nanmen Ferry Pier entered its first busy period of the day.

At this time, the morning sun had just risen, and large crowds of people wanting to go to the New District had also arrived at the pier. Having missed the cheap "public bus," they had no choice but to carpool on private boats.

The proprietress, wearing a short, floral-patterned, front-buttoned jacket, leaned half her body against the window. Paying no heed to the complaints of the packed passengers in the cabin, she stretched out a fair, bare arm, still soliciting the scattered customers on the pier: "Come on now, just one more — one more and we're off!"

Around the proprietress of the big-bellied Black Canopy Boat, there also roamed various "motorcycle taxis" that darted through the pier like fish. These shuttle boats were exactly like prowling black fish, occasionally slipping into the gaps between the large ships, "snatching" a few passengers before turning around and fleeing.

"Woooooo~~~~~"

With a long, piercing shriek of the steam whistle, the crewman pulled in the gangplank, black smoke billowed from the stern, and with a rumbling roar, the big ferry set off toward the New District Pier.

In that moment, Nanmen Pier suddenly seemed to come alive. The various large and small boats originally clustered around the pier all set sail in succession, following behind the big ferry, swaying their heads and wagging their tails, streaming like a school of fish toward the place where the sun was rising.