Chapter 95: Dredging Xingang Creek

The morning sun rose in the east, its light flooding the land — another fine, clear day. The bare stretch of rotting land by the banks of Xingang Creek finally welcomed large-scale development today.

A stream of people surged over from the direction of Chikan, carrying all manner of tools. After reaching the planned Kiln Area Base, they split into several groups, each busying themselves with their tasks.

Tainan has a distinct dry-wet climate, with 80% of the annual rainfall concentrated in summer, so the local rivers' flood and dry seasons are equally pronounced.

It was already November. Standing on the riverbank, carved out by summer floods with a drop of a full four meters, one could clearly see the Xingang Creek flowing slowly below. The creek surface was now only a bit over ten meters wide, with a riverbed span of more than ten meters to either bank. This made it easy to calculate: when summer floods raged, Xingang Creek could easily exceed thirty meters in width.

A large number of laborers found two gaps in the riverbank. Most went straight down to the riverbed, while a smaller group used shovels and pickaxes to carve earthen steps out of the two gaps for easier access.

On the bank, people were already installing a derrick. One end of the metal derrick, painted a rebellious 'hue,' jutted out over the riverbank, a chain hoist mounted at its tip.

For the first time on this primeval, chaotic riverbed that had existed since time immemorial, traces of large-scale human activity appeared.

All stones were picked up and loaded into baskets — whether cobbles polished by years of scouring or large mountain rocks that had arrived with floods in recent years. The baskets were carried to the base of the riverbank, then tied to the iron hook lowered by the chain hoist. At the sound of a bamboo whistle, several men hauled the stone-filled bamboo baskets ashore with a rhythmic chant.

Dealing with wood was even more arduous. After the floods passed, the riverbed and creek surface were littered with large trees washed down from upstream, lying every which way. Some of these great trees became natural bridges linking the two banks. Though the bridges' positions changed each year, walking upstream or downstream always turned one up.

People first used axes and short saws to strip the extraneous branches from the large logs, then, judging by the tree's length, organized the manpower. With a concerted effort and a rhythmic chant, they carried each log back to the bank.

The primitive rivers of the 17th century were full of shoals. For now, the Transmigrators lacked the capability to fully dredge Xingang Creek, but the channel near the southern bank had to be dredged. Any sandbar shoal south of the central channel would be temporarily dammed to dig diversion channels; all the sand would be excavated and used for building houses and paving roads.

The work described above would extend all the way downstream, right to the mouth of Xingang Creek. The lagoon near the river mouth would also be refurbished as circumstances allowed.

In short, the Transmigrators' ultimate goal was this: a boat loaded with construction materials would set out from the Kiln Area Base, follow Xingang Creek all the way out to sea, then circle around the string of sandbars along the open sea, enter through the mouth of the Dayuan Channel, cross the Taijiang Inner Sea, and unload its cargo at Chikan Wharf.

This was the logistics plan designed by the Infrastructure Department.

One must realize, the Kiln Area Base was on the middle reaches of Xingang Creek, over 3.5 kilometers in a straight line from the Chikan New District. With no Cummins engines and no asphalt roads at present, if the construction materials produced in the Kiln District traveled by land, the efficiency would be maddeningly slow.

A laborer carrying a shoulder pole or pushing a cart would be half-dead from exhaustion just to deliver a few hundred jin of goods at most. But a single boat with two or three boatmen, whistling a tune, could deliver two or three tons. It seemed a longer route, but in reality, water transport held a huge advantage.

The only special arrangement needed was stationing some trackers at the mouth of Xingang Creek. On the odd occasion when the wind direction was unfavorable, the trackers would pull the boats back to the Kiln District. The return boats were all empty, requiring only a few trackers, so they probably wouldn't reveal those looks of profound bitterness and resentment. Besides, in the Transmigrators' plan, all laborers were to be paid wages — it was just that the foreign laborers didn't get the three social insurances and one housing fund.

Thus, the grand and vigorous construction of the Kiln District began.

Chen Dong, dressed in a denim work suit, stood on the riverbank. He lifted the mesh face shield off his head and silently watched the laborers bustling on the riverbed below.

"The project's progressing quite well. Why the long face?" asked Feng Guanjie beside him, also wearing a bamboo hat and dressed like he'd stepped out of the Longmen Inn.

"Ah, the progress is fine. I'm just afraid we can't sustain it!" Chen Dong said, frowning.

"You mean malaria?" Feng Guanjie caught on. "Wasn't the order already given to prioritize filling in stagnant water?"

"Think no one will die when we fill in those pits?" Chen Dong curled his lip.

Feng Guanjie chuckled. "Nothing to be done about that. What engineering project has no fatalities? We don't even have enough protective gear right now, and we're doing river works in the 17th century. Heh heh, just thinking about it gets the blood pumping."

"Ah..." Chen Dong let out a long sigh. "Too many deaths will definitely impact the schedule. The malaria medicine wasn't approved?"

"Tch..." This time it was Feng Guanjie's turn to curl his lip. "Have you not seen the flame wars on the forum? Right now, it's just a bit of reserve samples. For large-scale use, Bai Shuchao would be the first to object. This stuff builds drug resistance!"

"Besides, who gets it and who doesn't?" Feng Guanjie shook his head. "Honestly climbing the chemical technology tree is the proper path. Everything else just treats the symptoms, not the root cause."

"Mm, I suppose that's the only way." Chen Dong nodded. "Send word down: river channel clearing will henceforth be the responsibility of foreign laborers. Upstream must be cleared for at least five kilometers, downstream to the river mouth. Also, get the drying kiln built as quickly as possible."

The drying kiln was the most urgently needed structure and also one of the simpler types among the various material kilns: when drying wood, the internal temperature of the kiln usually did not exceed 80 degrees. Compared to other kilns that easily surpassed 1,000-plus degrees, the drying kiln required no refractory bricks and had lower construction requirements.

The long-dragon-shaped drying kiln was built from cobbles, river sand, and precious stockpiled cement. To save materials, the first drying kiln the Transmigrators built was only 2.5 meters high, 3 meters wide, and 20 meters long.

For this, Cao Chuan even made a special trip back to the later generations, bringing back two sets of atmospheric-pressure boilers and some pipes. The bellies of the boilers were stuffed full of all sorts of accessories, many of which would be needed for future projects — even the pipes were crammed with components.

The two-meter-high, cylindrical atmospheric-pressure boilers were installed dead center on the exterior of the kiln body. Boilers and kiln were connected by pipes, and a crude shed was hastily thrown up overhead to finish the job.

The pipes leading inside included intake and return air ducts. The pipes were installed above the kiln body, level with the kiln. The hot air intake duct connected to the boiler's air outlet, and the return air duct fed into the fan. The kiln roof had moisture exhaust windows and an axial flow fan. Since there was no electricity at present, anywhere a fan was needed was operated manually.

The complete installation and debugging of the drying kiln took five days. Given how small this project was, although it held some commemorative significance, practically none of the big shots showed up for the ignition... After a simple ceremony, Comrade Zou Guoqing, the head of the Industry Department — who had been keeping his tail between his legs for some time now — smiled broadly and tossed a lit piece of firewood into the boiler furnace.