Chapter 796 – The Slaves of Tiandu

Acrid smoke from the explosives still hung in the air, the choking haze lingering over the mining pit at Huangni Ridge and refusing to disperse. A train of ore cars rattled along behind a small locomotive that puffed and hissed steam, heading toward the extraction face. This was a commuter train carrying the mid-shift workers to their posts. Simple benches had been installed on the flatbed cars, and the workers sat or stood as the train moved along, every one of them fully equipped: rattan safety helmets, twenty-four-layer gauze respirators, safety goggles fashioned from glass and coconut shells, thick mining work clothes, and towels tied around their necks. These were all naturalized workers—the core workforce of the Mining Bureau and the foundation of mass support for the Ausong regime in Sanya. The generous provision of labor protection reflected this consideration: the most difficult period of Sanya's development had passed, and continuing to expend trained and purified laborers in a human-wave approach to development was simply uneconomical for the Council of Elders.

The sun beat down upon the barren valley. What had once flourished with lush subtropical vegetation had been stripped bare, exposing the red earth beneath. The dense plant cover that once filled the valley was gone, and ore car tracks and telegraph poles now formed a web across the valley floor and hillsides. Steam engines installed at various points periodically belched black smoke and white vapor while the roar of machinery emanated from the Tiandu repair shop.

The Tiandu River had dwindled to a murky trickle running down the center of its bed—carrying nothing but industrial wastewater discharged from the mines and the small machine shop at Tiandu. Domestic sewage was diverted to irrigate the few cultivated fields nearby.

The river had shrunk because the reservoir built upstream of Tiandu Town was now complete, intercepting the flow to supply drinking water for the settlement and industrial water for the mines. The Tiandu River's volume had always been modest, and without the reservoir, a stable water supply could not have been guaranteed.

Now it was the dry season of winter. With upstream flow dramatically reduced, the reservoir had ceased releasing water, and natural flow to the lower Tiandu River had stopped entirely.

A group of half-naked slaves were unloading freshly delivered iron ore from the extraction face in the valley's ore yard. Their bare torsos were coated with ore dust; straw hats and cloth strips wrapped around their faces served as their only protection. Overseers selected from the most reliable naturalized citizens supervised the slaves' labor—one overseer assigned to every fifty men. They carried no whips or clubs, only cloth bags filled with bamboo tallies.

For every basket of ore loaded or unloaded, a slave received a bamboo tally from the overseer. To eat their fill, they had to meet their work quota and collect the prescribed number of tallies. The consequence of slacking was hunger, leading to weakness the following day and eventually gradual starvation under the burden of heavy labor. Slaves who refused to work outright were executed on the spot, their corpses hung on the gallows at the slave camp to dry—remaining there until a new victim replaced them.

The overseers monitored the entire labor process but carried no weapons. No matter what weapon one bore, a single man stood no chance against fifty. Should resistance occur, any weapon would only fall into insurgent hands.

As a backstop, at least one squad of soldiers was stationed near any site where slaves worked collectively, ready to deploy for armed suppression at a moment's notice. Sentries in watchtowers built on slopes and hilltops used telescopes to monitor every corner of the mine and valley at all times—per their orders, these sentries possessed authority to shoot any "suspicious-looking" slave on sight.

Initially, the slaves' work efficiency had been low. But after a few days, once they fully grasped the "Hair-Clippers'" labor policy, productivity soared. In fact, slave labor efficiency at the mines and roadbed projects in Sanya far exceeded the estimates of many Elders who had questioned the use of slave labor. The former HR professionals in the Planning Commission didn't attribute this to high-pressure policies—the key was effective labor management.

"If a sweatshop with basic human rights can be managed, why can't slaves who don't even possess the right to survival?" remarked one Elder who had once worked in HR at a sweatshop. "If slave labor efficiency were truly that poor, why would Southern slave owners have spent good money purchasing slaves from Africa and even gone to war over it?"

The arrival of the first batch of Southeast Asian slaves finally gave the Sanya District expendable replacements. Naturally, slaves remained few in number—insufficient for large-scale consumption—but at least the naturalized workers could now be freed from the most dangerous and arduous tasks. In his discussions, Quark Qiong had told Wang Luobin that he could guarantee the import of 1,500 slaves per month through the end of March 1631. If more investors could be found and supplies from Batavia held steady, 2,000 per month would pose no problem.

Wang Luobin made a rough calculation: at 1,500 arrivals monthly, the ten months from March to December would bring 15,000 slaves. By year's end, after accounting for permanent attrition, the total slave population in Sanya should reach approximately 10,000. This would be more than sufficient to guarantee Tiandu's mining operations, enable extraction of manganese and phosphate ore from Damao, and still leave a considerable labor surplus for ports, roads, and other infrastructure projects.

Compared to the Planning Commission's painstaking allocation of manpower—constantly fretting over accident rates and death rates per ten thousand tons—using slave labor was refreshingly straightforward. As long as the Planning Commission could supply Sanya with enough sugar and rum to exchange for slaves, labor would no longer represent a bottleneck constraining development.

From the start of mining at the site in late October to the present—a little over two months—the iron ore extracted from the Huangni Ridge open-pit mine had already formed several small hills ten meters high in the ore yard, despite labor shortages and intermittent explosives supplies. At this rate, conditions for establishing regular cargo shipping of iron ore between Lingao and Sanya had been met—though the first shipment would arrive about a month later than Wang Luobin had originally projected.

For ore export, the railway extending from the mine to the Anyoule dock had been completed, but the dock's loading and unloading equipment had not yet arrived. Without rubber, convenient and efficient conveyor belts remained impossible, so the Manufacturing Directorate had been forced to prototype a chain bucket elevator first. This equipment was supposed to have been installed and tested by the end of December 1630, but due to quality issues with the chains, the machinery had still not materialized even after the New Year holiday.

Ji Runzhi surveyed the construction site of the Jinjiling Industrial Zone, still in its foundational stage. The area presently comprised nothing but desolate hillside. Ji Yuan was using surveying instruments to take measurements while Ji Shu held the ranging pole. This was the Jinjiling area west of Tiandu Town; though called a "ridge," it was actually gently sloping terrain with large flat expanses. The nearby Sanya River provided ample water, making it convenient for manufacturing development.

All of Sanya's planned industrial enterprises—the coconut processing plant, soap factory, food processing plant—were scheduled to break ground in 1631 and commence production that same year. The coconut oil production at the integrated coconut processing plant was especially urgent for Lingao's material-starved industrial system, which faced bottlenecks at every turn.

"I wonder how those fellows enjoyed their New Year celebrations," Ji Runzhi grumbled as he jotted down several key points in his notebook. Had it not been for the need to further refine Sanya's development plan, he wouldn't have needed to stay. But he had calculated that returning for the New Year would inevitably mean debriefings, report writing, and a whole array of official and social obligations that would leave him little time to complete the master plan for Sanya's development.

If the plan couldn't be adjusted in time, it would create considerable difficulties for subsequent construction—especially for the Planning Commission's material allocation and large equipment scheduling. In the end, Ji Runzhi had decided not to return to Lingao for the New Year, remaining in Sanya to continue revising the plan.

Sanya's previous plan had been rather rudimentary and contained many irrational elements, particularly regarding city layout. After arriving in Sanya, Ji Runzhi had drawn up an entirely new master plan.

First, he revised Anyoule's designated function. The old plan had envisioned building it into a commercial port city—a model for the transmigrator nation. But after on-site surveying and research, Ji Runzhi concluded that this plot of land was simply too small. It measured just over a kilometer from north to south and barely 600 meters from east to west—adequate as a small town, but utterly inadequate as a showcase city representing the transmigrators. In the new plan, Anyoule's status was significantly downgraded: it would serve merely as a specialized port for iron ore exports.

For the site of Sanya City, Ji Runzhi felt it best to follow the layout of the old timeline, locating it at the mouth of the Sanya River. While the Sanya River estuary couldn't function as a major port, the surrounding area offered extensive flat land suitable for urban construction. It would serve as the living and commercial center of the entire Sanya Special Zone, with the river mouth functioning as a small fishing harbor.

Military and port functions would center on Yulin Fort, arranged along the coast east of Gouling Mountain and west of Yulin Harbor. The coastline there stretched five kilometers; in the old timeline, it had been the site of the Yulin Naval Base, and it would serve the same purpose here—as an Army and Navy base and a major commercial port. Large cargo warehousing and logistics centers would also be located there.

To the southwest of Yulin Fort, the sloping seaside land from Dadonghai to Luhuitou would be designated as a future resort and sanatorium district. Though the Council of Elders had no intention of developing this area at present, protecting the local vegetation and ecology while preventing industrial and shipping pollution could begin immediately.

Though the Dadonghai area contained some hills, they were low—essentially serving as the transportation corridor linking the Yulin base with Sanya City. Building a road or even a railway connecting the two would not prove difficult.

Tiandu's role would remain unchanged: in addition to serving as the Mining Bureau's headquarters, it would combine with the Jinjiling Industrial Zone to its west to form Sanya's industrial center.

(End of Chapter)