Chapter 1883 - Plague War (Part 2)
Comprehensive surveillance of the urban area and adjacent suburbs would require five to six hundred quarantine personnel at minimum. For the military, this burden was simply too heavy.
The Guangzhou garrison was already stretched thin. Were it not for the Pearl River Detachment of the Navy basing just outside the city, with rotating sailors stationed there in large numbers, Guangzhou would practically feel like an empty city bluff.
Troops could handle security duties—martial law and crowd control—but continuously assigning large numbers of personnel to epidemic prevention exceeded their capacity.
Civil service recruitment offered no solution either. Though the Cadre Department had granted Guangzhou authority to recruit local civil servants independently, hiring four or five hundred health department cadres at once was absurd.
It was Lin Baiguang who conceived a solution. He proposed using the former Ming soldiers currently undergoing training on Hong Kong Island.
After Guangzhou's liberation, all Ming troops in Guangzhou Prefecture—whether "operating soldiers" from local military households or recruited camp soldiers—had been shipped to Hong Kong Island for training. Not just them, but Ming officers and soldiers who had surrendered or been captured throughout the entire Guangdong Liberation Campaign had also been sent to Hong Kong for screening and training.
"Those soldier ruffians might be incapable of accomplishing anything, but they're first-rate at tormenting common people..." Lin Motian was already shaking his head.
"No—my suggestion is to use soldiers from local military households," Lin Baiguang said.
These military household soldiers, being local-born with local families, differed from the rootless "guest army" camp soldiers who came from elsewhere. They didn't dare be too unscrupulous, and their misconduct was comparatively restrained.
"...They're mostly locals, familiar with conditions here, able to speak Cantonese—far more convenient for communication than us. With their families mostly in and around Guangzhou city, they have no choice but to follow whatever we tell them. They must follow the rules!" Lin Baiguang said.
Lin Motian considered this a viable approach. These men had been in Hong Kong since the beginning of the year, so they couldn't possibly have contracted plague. Using them would provide peace of mind.
For ease of command and funding, with Liu Xiang's approval and after reporting to Lingao, the Epidemic Prevention Battalion was established under the Guangdong Brigade of the National Army using these soldiers as its foundation. To "strengthen leadership," fifty sergeants and soldiers were also transferred from the National Army to serve as squad and section leaders for the various companies and platoons.
Establishing the Epidemic Prevention Battalion took only three days. On the third morning, the newly formed battalion proceeded to the Wanshou Palace Training Center, where Lin Motian personally taught the courses.
Using quarantine inspectors without medical backgrounds would inevitably affect misdiagnosis and missed diagnosis rates during plague case screening. To ensure quarantine quality, he personally ran the training classes. Beyond teaching the Epidemic Prevention Battalion, he also prepared to tirelessly emphasize quarantine and isolation necessity to frontline administrative personnel and police. As for their protective measures, he currently couldn't produce highly effective methods—all he could guarantee was a mask for each frontline worker. Better than nothing.
Normally, plague prevention protection required full-body isolation suits plus goggles. They possessed some of these, but supplies could only be distributed to frontline workers requiring direct contact with patients, infected corpses, and contaminated objects.
A maritime quarantine zone was established on Changzhou Island. All ships arriving from the north had to undergo ten days of mandatory quarantine isolation at Changzhou Island's quarantine berths. Only after quarantine could they proceed to Guangzhou for cargo unloading and passenger disembarkation. All fur cargo was prohibited from unloading in Guangzhou—it had to be offloaded at Changzhou Island's quarantine warehouses. Anyone caught secretly unloading in Guangzhou would be dealt with as a plague ship—vessel and cargo burned on the spot.
After considerable hesitation, Lin Motian still didn't request a full lockdown. Since pneumonic plague hadn't appeared yet, plague transmission remained at a relatively slow stage. Existing policies would inevitably affect commodity circulation somewhat, and full lockdown would require more quarantine personnel and troops. With every department short-handed, the health department alone couldn't achieve population movement lockdown even if it wanted to.
Unfavorable rumors about him had already begun circulating among the Elders. Reportedly, some Elder had remarked privately: "Making a mountain out of a molehill! When has Guangzhou not had a few infectious diseases each year? It's managed just fine. I think he's deliberately exploiting a few patients to create a fuss—a stepping stone for his own promotion!"
Lin Motian placed his lockdown request back on his desk.
"I hope this won't be needed for a while—no, I hope it will never be needed." He gazed out the window at the quarantine inspectors wearing red armbands, silently sighing.
Lai Xiao stood by the ship's railing, staring at the increasingly gloomy sky and the churning river, calculating in his mind.
He had contemplated escape for some time, but now the thought of running was growing ever stronger.
At first, after being taken in, Lai Xiao had harbored thoughts of taking things as they came. Serving as a coolie for the Australians wasn't exactly fortune smiling upon him, but at least it meant a bowl of rice—a way to survive. He could hang around and see how things developed before making other plans. But ever since that old man had suddenly collapsed on the dock and was later said to have "died of sudden illness," the situation had changed dramatically.
Their group hadn't been able to leave. They had waited on the dock for an entire day. The ship that had originally berthed had hurriedly weighed anchor and departed. Then another squad of "National Army" arrived, surrounding the dock three layers deep—not a single person allowed in or out.
The dock, once noisy and bustling, had suddenly become eerily quiet. Besides the beggars waiting to board the ship, only a few Fake-Born remained to guard and escort them. Though they tried hard to maintain composure, their hasty donning of those things called face masks and their panicked, uneasy expressions told Lai Xiao that something major had happened.
With several years of begging experience, it wasn't difficult for Lai Xiao to guess that the old man who had dropped dead had caught a "seasonal sickness." This wasn't uncommon among beggars. From humid spring through entire summers and autumns, old, weak, sick, and disabled beggars suddenly dying from various "seasonal sicknesses" was routine.
But the Baldy Bandits were treating this particular sickness with extreme seriousness—sealing the dock, equipping the Fake-Born with masks. He knew about those things—the Baldy Bandits' doctors all wore them, supposedly for "epidemic prevention."
An epidemic was spreading! Lai Xiao's scalp prickled with terror.
He knew something of epidemic horrors. Lingao had experienced smallpox outbreaks. During his begging years in Guangzhou, when beggars would swap stories, those who had witnessed epidemics had spoken of the terror—"nine of ten houses emptied," "a thousand li without a soul." In his years wandering Guangzhou, he had also witnessed annual epidemics claiming hundreds or thousands. Beggars were often recruited as corpse carriers—the work allowed one to strip valuables and clothing from the dead, and many beggars were willing. Every year, quite a few died from contracting disease while moving corpses.
Had he also been infected? Lai Xiao was consumed with anxiety. When they were finally herded onto the ship, a rumor had already begun circulating: everyone at the dock that day—whether beggars like them or the Fake-Born—would be sent to a small island to "await death," to prevent them from spreading plague to others. The evidence was that the Fake-Born who had been supervising them at the dock had also boarded the ship.
"Damn those Baldy Bandits!" Lai Xiao cursed silently. "May they all catch the plague and die to the last man!"
He thought of how he had originally been doing just fine at the Gou family estate, serving as attendant to the second young master—never worrying about food or clothing. When going out, he had been imposing and impressive. Whether flirting with maidservants or the wives and daughters of tenant farmers and laborers, no one had dared say a word against him. Even in the county town, he had swaggered about—eating a watermelon without paying.
Who could have imagined he would end up like this! Not only could he no longer even remain a beggar, but he was about to be shipped to a deserted island to await death.
He couldn't sit and wait for doom—he had to run!
The river was wide here, but Lai Xiao prided himself on his excellent swimming skills. He moved freely in the bay; the Pearl River, far calmer than the ocean, would pose no challenge.
As long as he could climb out of the cargo hold and jump into the water, the Fake-Born would never catch him.
Lai Xiao secretly surveyed his surroundings. The vessel transporting them was a so-called "Australian barge"—not very large, over a hundred beggars crammed into the open cargo hold. The hold's walls rose higher than a man, with Fake-Born standing guard on decks at bow and stern. From their elevated positions, they could clearly observe every movement in the hold. Sneaking up there to jump overboard was impossible—one shot from those Fake-Born would punch a hole clean through him.
The sky was overcast. Distant thunder rumbled. The beggars aboard involuntarily hunched their shoulders. Lightning flickered faintly at the dark clouds' edges. The river wind strengthened, turning cool and chill.
A great storm was approaching. People on the barge began to stir. As the wind intensified, the vessel began to pitch.
The Fake-Born standing guard on the fore and aft decks gripped their rifles tightly, shouting constantly: "Don't move! Don't move! Everybody squat down!"
A gust of wind passed. A drop of water struck Lai Xiao's head. Then came rapid pattering. Almost simultaneously with lightning flashing overhead, thunder seemed to explode directly beside his ears. At that same instant, torrents of rain came pouring straight down from sky to earth. He couldn't distinguish individual streams—just sheets, waves of rain crashing onto the river surface. The water was instantly pocked with countless ripples, swallowed immediately by churning waves.
In mere moments, countless waterfalls cascaded down from the hold's walls, drenching everyone inside from head to toe. Lai Xiao crouched by the wall, tensely watching the sky. Heaven and earth had merged together, indistinguishable. Rivers poured from above while rivers flowed across the ground—dim and murky, yet sometimes brilliant white. A world made entirely of water.
The Fake-Born aboard were also caught off guard by the downpour. Some rushed for rain gear; others fumbled with rain capes blown askew by the wind, tying cords to their conical hats. In that brief moment of chaos when they had no attention to spare for the cargo hold, Lai Xiao scrambled up the ship's side using hands and feet, stepping on a beggar collapsed in the hold's bottom. A peal of thunder rolled overhead, and he leaped into the turbid, roiling waters of the Pearl River.
Author's Note: Starting today, Volume 7 will have multiple storylines running concurrently.
The already-published portion of this volume, "Volume 7: The Mainland," is renamed "Volume 7: The Mainland—Guangzhou Governance."
Simultaneously beginning serialization is "Volume 7: The Mainland—Liangguang Campaign."
The timelines of the various storylines run parallel, and I will serialize them alternately. Please pay attention to the storyline division when reading.
This storyline has not concluded and will continue to be serialized. Please stay tuned.
(End of Chapter)