Chapter 612: Guangzhou's Daylight

On the broad river, a great flock of private boats swarmed around the blunt-bowed ferry, like a school of fish swimming around a giant turtle.

This motley shoal, after departing from Guangzhou's South Gate Dock, took a full forty minutes to cross the vast, misty expanse of the seventeenth-century river bay, slowly arriving at the New District Pier on the opposite bank of the Pearl River.

Under the glow of the newly risen sun, the New District, which brought boundless wealth and hope to the natives, shimmered with a faint golden light, appearing warm and brimming with vitality. Once the shoal reached the shore, it scattered in an instant, vanishing among the rows of specialized piers.

By this hour, the New District had long since awakened and begun its daily operations. In fact, due to the development of its lighting systems, factories, and steam power, this industrialized city, much like those of later generations, never truly slept anymore.

Seeing the large fleet of boats entering the harbor, the dockworkers who had taken over from the night shift were already prepared. The moment a vessel docked marked the start of their busy work. They had to operate various lifting equipment, unload the cargo as quickly as possible, and then transport the goods to their designated destinations.

The first batch of goods shipped in by boat was mostly fresh produce. This included not only purely organic vegetables grown with farmyard fertilizer, but also various types of rice, lotus root, melons and fruits, fungi and yams foraged by mountain folk, as well as freshwater and saltwater fish, among many other things.

Agricultural products were usually packed in bamboo baskets and hoisted onto the dock by simple devices like chain hoists. Due to a subsidy policy, the loading and unloading fees for produce were very low. Once all the goods from the boat had been lifted onto four-wheeled carts, the deeply wrinkled farmer could disembark and push his own produce to the large agricultural wholesale market.

The carts rented out at the dock were standardized products, fitted with bearings and perfectly round, machine-made wooden wheels, making them very effortless to use. The farmer and his wife could easily push several hundred jin of goods to their destination along the smooth "dragon dung" road.

Lined up along the southern side of the New District Pier was a series of large wholesale markets. Here, there were not only agricultural trade markets, but also specialized markets for construction materials, labor, seafood, and more.

After arriving at the agricultural market, the farmer and his wife found a familiar wholesaler. These merchants all had substantial capital and usually owned permanent shops and warehouses within the market.

What followed was weighing and settling accounts, the entire process high-speed, smooth, and without obstacles—no harassment from local thugs, no bullying by corrupt government clerks. To retain old customers, the wholesalers, far from shortchanging them on weight, usually paid a fair price. And so the farmer quickly received a few paper notes and several shiny, gleaming coins.

Nowadays, many of the natives who frequently dealt with the New District and the entire Crossing Faction no longer rejected the "paper money" printed with Cao Zong's large portrait. This paper money was not only exquisitely printed but could also be used to buy all kinds of goods in the New District and to pay taxes.

In this way, the various advantages of paper currency—its portability and anti-counterfeiting features—became apparent. Promoting the new currency was a gradual, patient effort; no forced implementation was necessary. As time passed and the faction's power grew, the currency would naturally be accepted by its followers.

After receiving the payment for his goods, the farmer, beaming with joy, pushed his cart and bought some cheap, coarse-grain salt on the spot, then took his wife to the neighboring general goods market for a major shopping spree—the farm goods had been pooled from the village, and the daily necessities they bought had to be distributed back to everyone.

During this entire process, the farmer was not taxed by anyone.

The current New District Government still maintained a very tight grip on food security. Any transactions involving grain were basically taxed at the lowest rate, and small-scale deals like this one were not taxed at all. In the entire wholesale market, only large-volume grain trade incurred some nominal fees.

It must be understood that the Crossing Faction was not only responsible for feeding the people under its direct control around Guangzhou. Now, including the construction zones in Fujian and Jiangnan, the Transmigrators were "intervening" nationwide, and even shipping grain by sea to distant Tianjin and Guanglu Island for covert operations—all these actions required additional grain reserves.

Furthermore, in a newly emerging industrial city like the New District, the massive working class that had appeared out of nowhere all needed to eat "commodity grain."

As a result, food security had become a blade perpetually hanging over their heads. Moreover, this was the Little Ice Age, and the climate everywhere was turning colder. Even a traditional grain-producing region like Guangdong was affected by the low temperatures.

In short, before the Transmigrators could establish tropical rice production bases in Vietnam and Thailand, grain would remain the strategic issue demanding the highest level of response.

Just as the farmer was off on his shopping spree in the general goods market, another type of "cargo" that had arrived on the same boats also found its buyers.

This batch of cargo was people.

Since the current construction speed of the New District could not keep up with the influx of surrounding labor, just like in later times, natives now arrived daily on commuter boats from nearby areas to work.

Most of these natives had shaved heads or kun hair, wore thick blue or yellow work clothes, and carried various tools over their shoulders. Aside from being generally shorter in stature, at first glance, they were no different from construction workers of later generations.

All natives qualified to come and work were registered laborers, effectively already incorporated under the New District's governance. Although the Transmigrators currently lacked the capability to climb the camera technology tree—even for black-and-white photos—these governed workers were still uniformly issued identity tags containing simple personal information, serving as the first-generation identity cards.

The natives treasured the "number plates" issued to them. Because with a number plate, it meant they were working for Grand Commandant Cao and could enjoy the various advanced public services of the New District, such as kindergartens with free meals, public mess halls, and welfare housing allocation.

Although the housing allocated to bottom-tier laborers was nothing fancy, even at its worst, it was built to the Transmigrators' standards—at the very least, red-brick dormitory buildings with public toilets and kitchens. Compared to the bamboo and thatch huts these farmers usually lived in, the difference was like heaven and earth.

Not to mention that these houses were practically free—for the Ming natives, a house where the whole family could move in first and pay it off over twenty years in installments was truly as good as being given away.

Besides these "old" workers, who could be identified at a glance as laborers in the New District, there were always more or fewer newcomers arriving with the boats each day.

These newcomers mostly wore tattered, homespun cloth robes and carried a floral cloth bundle on their backs. Standing in the "modernized" pier district where all kinds of large machinery danced, the newcomers looked timid and withdrawn, unsure where to step.

At this moment, the dock supervisor, wearing a peaked cap and a red armband, would make his appearance. After using a short stick to herd the newcomers together, the supervisor would lead them to the nearest registration point.

The registration point was a row of temporary structures made of long awnings, and inside each shed sat an adviser wearing glasses.

Next, the adviser would question these newcomers in detail. This process usually took quite a bit of time, because many of the dull-witted farmers had communication difficulties—as the local saying goes, you couldn't beat a fart out of them with three poles.

After recording the newcomers' names (many had no formal name), age (many couldn't state their exact age), native place (many couldn't clearly articulate which village they were from), and other identity information in as much detail as possible, the adviser would finally use a hard pen to issue them a stiff-paper temporary identity card.

After receiving their identity cards, these people would be taken by dedicated personnel to bathe, have their heads shaved, undergo a physical examination, and be issued clothes, becoming glorious members of the working people.

During this process, any skills the newcomers possessed would also be coaxed out of them. Most farmers had no skills, and their final destination was the construction site. But those with additional skills, such as carpenters, shoemakers, or bamboo weavers, would be scheduled to work as apprentices in the corresponding workshops.

Usually by the afternoon, boats carrying the third batch of cargo would also arrive at the New District Pier from surrounding areas, traveling along Guangdong's ubiquitous network of waterways.

The third batch of cargo was mostly industrial raw materials. For example, coal from Shaoguan, iron ore from Yuanzhou, limestone from Zengcheng, cement and red bricks, and mirabilite from Jieyang, among others.

Upon reaching the New District, these heavily laden boats would enter the dedicated mining piers. Here, there were coal-gas and steam-driven cranes, and the docks were also equipped with supporting steam trains on iron rails to serve as transport.

An industrialized city possesses an immensely powerful capacity to absorb resources from the surrounding agricultural regions. Ever since Regional Commander Cao had come to Guangzhou, the radiating area centered on this point had seen the surrounding agricultural regions turn into "resource providers" without any resistance.

Even the provincial capital, Guangzhou City, just across the river, had supplied the New District with a great deal of lifeblood—most of the New District's lower-level clerks came from within Guangzhou City, which had the highest literacy rate.

Moreover, the wealthy residents of Guangzhou City had also successively provided considerable investment funds to the New District over these years. This capital flowed into high-end real estate, as well as into industry and the service sector, powerfully supporting the New District's construction.

In this way, with the continuous injection of human and industrial resources from the surrounding areas, the industrial pulse of the New District grew a little stronger with each day's dawn.

This trend was irreversible, and once industrialization accumulated to a certain degree, there would even be an explosion: the steel plants and fertilizer factories currently under accelerated construction would mostly be completed in the first half of 1636. At that time, the entire Crossing Faction's industrial production capability would see a qualitative leap.

However, as the saying goes: fortune is as unpredictable as the weather.

Just as the construction of the New District was proceeding like wildfire, the heavens truly turned hostile.

Starting in late October of 1636, regions including Fujian and Guangdong were hit by a wave of bizarre weather: temperatures dropped in many areas, significantly exceeding the levels typical for that time of year.

Although this situation had been slowly developing over the previous decade or so, the temperature drop had been minor, so most southerners hadn't felt it very keenly.

Yet as time moved into 1636, the Ice Age climate that had ravaged the north arrived south of the Five Ridges—a region famed for its year-round spring-like weather—for the first time, carrying with it full, unbridled malice.

At that time, the temperature across the entire Guangdong region plummeted, and a biting wind howled, leaving the natives, who had never known what cold meant, utterly dumbfounded.

A month later, the real blow came. Historical records state: The Wusong River froze three feet thick, and Guangzhou suffered consecutive years of blizzards.

Indeed, starting from the eleventh month, heavy, unending snow fell across most of Guangdong, and production and daily life throughout the entire region suffered a catastrophic disaster.