Chapter 98: Salt Fields (Part 1)

The preliminary survey of Nanan dong took two days. With Aoya Fu accompanying them, the survey team's work proceeded smoothly. Fa Shilu and Cui Yunhong handled the agricultural, forestry, and mineral aspects respectively, while Mu Min investigated local social conditions. Nanan dong's resources proved remarkably rich.

First, there was timber—vast forests blanketed the mountains. Though the locals' shanlang slash-and-burn cultivation had destroyed some of it, substantial reserves remained. Fa Shilu finally discovered the forest of perennial woody cotton he had been dreaming of—clearly the source of what locals used for spinning and weaving. The mountains also held many wild banana, lychee, longan, and jackfruit trees, which served as supplementary food sources for the local population. Betel-nut trees grew in abundance as well, though they held no use for the transmigrators beyond serving as trade goods for resale.

Second, their paddies contained numerous original rice strains—extremely valuable genetic resources for breeders. Given enough strains, continuous cross-breeding could develop entirely new varieties. In the paddies near Nanan Village alone, Fa Shilu found seventeen different strains; on hillside shanlang plots, he discovered five upland-rice varieties—including indica, japonica, and glutinous types.

Hainan was a major area for Chinese wild-rice distribution, so the advantages of genetic diversity were obvious. In the twenty-first century, Lingao would become a major Chinese hybrid-rice seed-production base. Fa Shilu gazed at his collected samples and found himself laughing even in his dreams. China's "Father of Hybrid Rice" might just turn out to be himself...

Sweet potatoes were not yet grown here—the Li did not even know this new crop existed. But they cultivated other tubers, most surprisingly an Araceae species that was typically used only for medicine elsewhere. Fa Shilu was no traditional medicine practitioner, but he knew Araceae taro possessed mild toxicity. Could this really serve as food? Yet judging by the planted area, it was clearly a major crop. Another common type was the sweet yam, also called the hairy yam.

For coarse grains, he found millet. Fa Shilu had not realized Hainan grew millet at all. The post-Bairren-Rapids tribute had included millet, which had puzzled the Agriculture Committee. Locals explained it was "duck-foot millet," a common Hainan grain with a remarkably short maturation period.

Beyond grain, he found wild ramie patches. The Li apparently showed little interest in systematic agriculture—they adopted a laissez-faire attitude with no field management whatsoever. Fruit, ramie, and cotton grew wild; they simply harvested without ever cultivating systematically.

Pigs, cattle, chickens, and ducks free-ranged across the hillsides—no pens, no feeding—so the animals did not look particularly robust. Surprisingly, cattle numbers were high, encompassing both water buffalo and yellow cattle. But Fa Shilu was no livestock specialist; proper breed assessment would require experts later.

"What a waste," Fa Shilu sighed. "The agricultural conditions here are excellent, but their level of development is barely above primitive society."

"Don't sigh too much," Wen Desi said, patting his shoulder. "Even those paddies along the Wenlan River—how advanced are they, really? Still far behind farmers back home."

Cui Yunhong's findings proved less encouraging. Using maps from their original timespace, he had located important deposits: lignite that was shallowly buried and mineable, along with some mineral resources—limestone, perlite—in small quantities. But distance and poor roads limited their practical value. The rarest find was a small tungsten-ore vein, though it remained useless to the transmigrators at present.

The Li people maintained a wary distance from these strange Han visitors. They watched them carrying odd equipment, climbing trees one moment, wading through paddies the next, then standing aside and sketching for half the day. But children possessed maximum curiosity for novelty—first watching from afar, then gradually approaching, and finally handling the transmigrators' equipment. Thus communication began. Most transmigrators could not communicate with the children—only rock candy could express friendliness. Wen Desi had ordered it brought before departure. Mu Min felt an instinctive fondness for these alternate-timespace compatriots, and she also spoke Hainanese. Between the language barrier and the candy, by the second day she had acquired a following of children.

Watching these bare-bottomed, mud-splattered children running everywhere, Mu Min suddenly conceived an idea—one that would eventually become the transmigrators' first school in Li territory.

While the Li Territory Work Team conducted goodwill activities in the mountains, another transmigrator team led by Wang Luobin advanced toward the nearby Ma'ao Peninsula. Their goal was to permanently solve the salt problem.

Salt was both an essential human necessity and a key raw material for modern chemical industries. For the transmigrator regime, they urgently needed a tradeable commodity. In ancient societies with underdeveloped commerce, nothing suited exchange better than salt. This region's salt industry had been developed since antiquity. Lingao faced the Qiongzhou Strait, with numerous ports and inlets, abundant natural salt flats, and seawater with high sodium-chloride concentration—generally 1.5 to 2 Baumé degrees. During the dry season, high temperatures, strong winds, long hours of sunlight, and minimal rainfall created excellent conditions for sea-salt production. Salt had been produced here since the Tang Dynasty, originally using the boiling method. Thanks to favorable natural conditions, from the Yongle era onward, Hainan's salt fields had gradually adopted sun-evaporation for large-scale production. At Yantian Village on Xinying Bay in the southern part of the Yangpu Economic Development Zone, one of China's earliest solar salt-production sites remained—a well-preserved ancient salt field using primitive sun-evaporation methods, still operational in the modern era.

According to transmigrator historical records, the Ming-era Lingao salt field was located on the Ma'ao Peninsula, twenty-five kilometers north of the county seat, with one Salt Field Superintendent under the Haibei Salt Bureau. Annual production amounted to "1,417 yin, 230 jin." At three hundred jin per yin, this translated to more than two hundred tons annually—initially sufficient for the transmigrators' production and daily needs.

Such abundant resources the transmigrator regime naturally intended to seize quickly. Wang Luobin's mission consisted of two parts: an on-site investigation of this era's salt-evaporation technology, and consideration of modern-tech improvements to increase production—for modern chemistry, two hundred tons was far too little.

The Salt Affairs Team was better equipped than the Li Territory Team. Since the mission required transporting salt back, the team was fully mechanized—five farm trucks deployed. The trucks bounced along dirt roads for roughly two hours. Travelers were rare along the route; upon entering the Ma'ao Peninsula, the area proved virtually deserted. Only ruins and abandoned fields met their eyes, as though a great battle had swept through. Only scattered salt along the road confirmed they had not taken a wrong turn.

Wang Luobin was puzzled. According to his mission intelligence and historical records, this salt field employed more than a thousand salt workers. Including their families, five or six thousand people should live around it—meaning numerous salt villages should exist. Yet the road revealed only ruins after ruins.

Around noon, they found a half-abandoned flagstone path. Following it, they finally discovered a village with cooking smoke rising from chimneys. The houses here were all constructed from volcanic stone, the alleys deep and winding, but many homes stood tightly shuttered—some with tall weeds at their doors, clearly vacant for years. Collapsed structures dotted the village, grass already growing on them.

Only the elderly, children, and women remained—barely clothed, appearing extremely impoverished. They did not flee from the strange visitors; their expressions were numb, apparently indifferent to everything. Xiong Buyou asked around the village for a long time before locating the village head's home.

The head was surnamed Tan, a hereditary salt worker from a famous Hainan salt-making lineage. Faced with Xiong Buyou's request to buy salt, he had the salt warehouse opened: only five to six hundred jin remained inside. Such a meager amount shocked Wang Luobin. Upon questioning, he learned the explanation.

In Wanli 45, an earthquake had collapsed many salt-field flats—some sank into the sea. Ma'ao Salt Field's production never recovered to its original levels. But government-mandated commutation payments had not decreased. Many salt workers fled. Making matters worse, from late Wanli onward, pirates frequently raided the salt field for salt certificates. Salt workers were killed or scattered. Now only about two hundred workers remained in the village. Ancient salt-evaporation was entirely labor-intensive; fewer workers meant even poorer production. Annual commutation was never fully paid; government collection pressure remained intense. Able-bodied villagers usually hid out of sight. Fortunately, Ma'ao possessed ample land and river water for irrigation. Salt workers farmed grain on the side, managing to survive. But they lived in constant fear.

This situation dealt a major blow to Wang Luobin's expectations. Clearly, the salt field's production was extremely poor. The Committee's original plan—to control the field and simply buy all its output—needed revision. The transmigrators would need not only to control the field but also to organize production recovery and expansion. Suddenly, Wang Luobin felt like the land-reform work-team leaders he remembered from childhood movies—everything here needed rebuilding.

But organizing production recovery would not prove easy. Wang Luobin decided to first inspect the salt field itself. After giving the numbed Village Head Tan a Mexican silver dollar, the numb-faced, seemingly indifferent headman finally agreed to show him around.

(End of Chapter)