Chapter 316: The Wokou Grocery Store

The commercial port at the mouth of the Yangtze goes without saying — it is, of course, the ten-li foreign quarter of Great Shanghai!

Shanghai's geographical position on the map of East Asian trade is absolutely heaven-blessed. Not only is it at the mouth of the Yangtze, it also sits at the junction of the Northern Sea, the Southern Sea, and the Eastern Sea — in the age of sail, the Northern Sea and Southern Sea used different ship types. The Southern Sea has strong winds; the Northern Sea has shallow waters. So the Southern Sea uses sharp-bottomed ships, while the Northern Sea uses flat-bottomed ships. And the Yangtze and the Grand Canal use river boats.

Once Shanghai opens as a port, all three ship types — sharp-bottomed, flat-bottomed, and river boats — will converge on Shanghai. It would be hard for the city not to prosper!

So historically, within a few years of Shanghai opening as a port, it stole Guangzhou's limelight and became the central city of China's foreign trade.

Even a thousand-year trading port like Guangzhou was once made quiet by post-opening Shanghai — let alone Taiwan. What did Taiwan have in the late Ming? Apart from deerskins, nothing but all sorts of deadly infectious diseases. The foreign devils living there were trading their lives for money!

If there were a prosperous, bustling, and safe Great Shanghai to go to, then whatever Fort Zeelandia, whatever Fort Provintia — they would surely turn into ghost towns.

The Dutch East India Company came to make money. As long as Fort Zeelandia and Fort Provintia became bottomless money-losing pits, selling them off cheap would be the inevitable choice.

And on the Great Ming side, if we displayed a certain amount of strength — for example, by establishing a truly combat-capable European-style army of twenty or thirty thousand men, enough to make Holland, that distant Western power, unable to sink its teeth in — then it would be enough to begin discussing win-win cooperation.

But such trends and the entanglements of interest within them were not something Zheng Zhilong could figure out in a short while.

Zhu Cilang watched Zheng Zhilong sink into thought and knew that too much had been said today, and that Zheng Zhilong needed time to digest it slowly. So he smiled and said: "It is getting late. We shall return to the inner city first. Father-in-law, stay for the night in Commander Huang's garden. Tomorrow, let my senior brother take you to see the estate. This is a gift from Us to the House of Quanguo. Although Father-in-law has not yet been formally enfeoffed, you may stay there first. Once Father-in-law is settled, come to the palace for an audience. At that time, we can discuss matters slowly."

With those words, Zhu Cilang rose and left, while Zheng Zhilong, Huang Binqing, and Zheng Sen all rose to see him off respectfully.

Zhu Cilang had taken only a few steps, just reaching the doorway of the main hall, when he suddenly remembered something. He turned back and said to Zheng Zhilong: "Father-in-law, can you lend Us the four hundred Japanese soldiers you brought?"

Zheng Zhilong smiled and said: "Thousand Years, the four hundred Japanese soldiers this subject brought were meant for Your use. All four hundred are skilled in musketry and swordsmanship, fierce and battle-hardened — fully capable of fighting the Tartar infantry in close combat!"

"Good, good," Zhu Cilang said with a smile. "We have need of them. Can they all speak Chinese?"

Zheng Zhilong said: "The several leaders can all speak Chinese."

"Fine," Zhu Cilang nodded. "Tomorrow, have my senior brother bring them to Dagong Ward for an audience."

The wokou leader who had followed Zheng Zhilong to Nanjing was a scruffy old man in his fifties, named Zahe Pu, born in the poor, remote backwater of Zahe Village in Kii Province, Japan.

Kii Province was also an extremely troublesome place in medieval Japan. It was close to Heian-kyō, the capital of Japan, and ought to have received better development, but because its mountains were many and its forests dense, with little flat land, there was not much value in developing it. And those arable valleys tucked between the deep mountains and dense forests could not support any powerful daimyo, and could only become soil for the growth of "village-chief"-level local strongmen.

At the same time, from the Heian period onward, the temples and shrines that flourished increasingly within Japan also took the mountains and dense forests of Kii Province as places of ascetic practice. Temples and shrines, and local strongmen, gradually formed lord-vassal relationships.

So by the time of the surging Sengoku period, Kii Province — located in the Kinai region, very close to Heian-kyō — had become a region dominated by temples, shrines, and local strongmen.

And although this region had many mountains and dense forests, it was not closed off. Not only was it coastal, it was also close to Heian-kyō and Sakai, the great commercial port of Japan. So the "teppō" brought by Western merchants had entered Kii Province very early, becoming a sharp weapon for the local strongmen to fight their village wars — once teppō became widespread, they were actually a cheap weapon, very suited for use by the local strongmen of Kii Province.

Later still, the local strongmen of Kii Province became famous for their skill with teppō and began forming mercenary groups, hired by daimyo and temples and shrines. The more famous among them were the "Negoro-shū" and the "Saiga-shū." And this Zahe Pu was a member of the Saiga-shū.

But he had not met a good era. He was fifty years old this year, born in 1594. By the time he had grown old enough to serve as a mercenary, the Battle of Sekigahara had already been over for many years. So he had no choice but to hire himself out to the declining Toyotomi clan, participating in the Winter and Summer Campaigns of Osaka. After the fall of Osaka, there were no more opportunities within Japan. He wandered for several years, never waiting for the Toyotomi clan to rise again, and instead saw a Japan growing ever more stable, where heroes no longer had any place to use their skills.

So going abroad to work became the only way to earn some money to support his family.

Zahe Pu, who came from the Saiga-shū, did quite well overseas because he was skilled with the teppō and also wielded the long sword well. First he worked as an enforcer for the Dutch, and later he was poached at a high price by Zheng Zhilong, becoming the "lead man" of the Zheng family's Japanese soldier unit.

Although they drew high pay from Zheng Zhilong, Zahe Pu and the group of Japanese soldiers under him each carried a samurai's dream — to become true samurai, to serve a feudal lord, and to possess a small fief of their own.

But Zheng Zhilong, that "merchant-style" warlord, did not practice lordship at all, and had no interest in opening up territorial domains on land. Moreover, he did not trust the Japanese devils. Zheng Zhilong only trusted his Fujian fellow-provincials — he did not even trust Cantonese, let alone Japanese.

So Zahe Pu did not have much spirit in serving under Zheng Zhilong, until not long ago, when Zheng Zhilong summoned him and said he was to follow the Great Ming's Grand Marshal of All Under Heaven and the Crown Prince Who Soothes the Army to fight the Tartars. This was a rare opportunity!

Grand Marshal of All Under Heaven!

It sounded about the same as the Great General Who Subdues the Barbarians, and moreover it was held by the Crown Prince, possessing the supreme mandate of righteous cause!

If he followed such a great general — oh, such a grand marshal — surely he could earn himself a samurai with a fief, right? If the grand marshal did not make him a samurai, was he supposed to make him a jinshi instead?

And he was extremely confident in his teppō skills. He was a Saiga-shū of hereditary black-powder gunners, and he was also versed in swordsmanship, a master of the Ittō-ryū style. He was surely worth an annual stipend of 250 koku.

But his "dream of 250 koku" began to waver, half-awake and half-asleep, after he saw the Grand Marshal's "Teppō Hatamoto."

Because he discovered that the Great Ming Grand Marshal's "Teppō Hatamoto" was far more formidable than the legends said! Their heavy teppō fired very accurately — that was nothing remarkable — but their light teppō units were extremely distinctive.

The first thing that shocked him was that the Grand Marshal's "Teppō Hatamoto" formations were dense to the point of standing shoulder to shoulder — Zahe Sheng, well-versed in gunnery, knew that a formation of such density could easily cause chain-ignition accidents when loading ammunition. But if that could be overcome, the concentrated firepower would deal lethal damage to the enemy directly in front!

And what surprised Zahe even more was that the light teppō of the "Teppō Hatamoto" could actually be fitted with bayonets, turning them into short spears five or six chi long.

Zahe, who had experience in many brawls, knew that a short spear five or six chi long was no less powerful than a long sword three or four chi long. Moreover, a short spear was easier to train with than a long sword, and was suited for formation fighting and group combat.

With the bayonet, was the Ittō-ryū sword-slashing technique he had painstakingly trained in for half his life now without a place to be used?

Could he still get his stipend of 250 koku of brown rice?

"Hey, what's your name? How much stipend do you want? You little old man, can you understand Chinese? Why don't you answer?"

A somewhat impatient young voice interrupted Zahe Sheng's thoughts. Only then did Zahe remember that he and several leaders of the teppō unit had followed Zheng Sen to the residence of the Ming Crown Prince for an audience.

Naturally, the Crown Prince was not so easy to see, so Zahe and a group of his men were waiting in a small room. As they waited, his mind wandered, and then he drifted off.

He hurriedly looked up and saw a young eunuch dressed in a python robe, holding a fly whisk, who had at some point entered the room and was now standing before him asking questions.

"Ah, me, Zahe Pu," Zahe Sheng quickly spoke. "Annual stipend requires 250 koku of brown rice."

"Got it. Grocery Store, 250."

Huang Xiaobao carefully recorded Zahe Pu's name and required stipend in a notebook, but in a moment of carelessness, he wrote Zahe Pu as "Grocery Store." Then he went on to ask the other wokou their names and the stipends they sought.

(End of Chapter)