Chapter 7: The Latrine
“From the moment you pulled out that chainsaw, I knew there was no future for China’s environment!” At the Third National Environmental Protection Work Conference, Dai Xie’s speech kicked off a firestorm of criticism against the Minister of Forestry, Wu Kuangming. Comrade Wu Kuangming, who had fought on the forestry front for more than twenty years, had to make a profound self-criticism at the meeting before resigning sadly, subsequently taking up the post of president of the Forestry University. But back on that day, thirty years earlier, he was hailed by the Executive Committee as a labor hero who “did the work of an entire team by himself”—of course, his high productivity was mainly due to the other loggers being too useless, not just the merit of the chainsaw.
Of course, there was more than one chainsaw, but no one dared to venture near the contraption that could sever a limb at any moment. Wu Kuangming gave a crash course to two people and then demonstrated the technique of felling a tree with an axe: first, swing the axe and circle the trunk, cutting repeatedly. The cut gradually deepened towards the heart of the tree. As soon as the tree began to sway, he immediately stood to the side, pushing the tree with the axe while shouting. The tree fell. It looked easy, but it involved arm strength and skill with an axe, which was not so simple. As he chopped, he casually gave pointers to the people around him.
The various logging groups felled trees along the forest line. The thud of axes and the hiss of saws rose and fell. From time to time, someone would shout, and a large tree would fall. Logging was arduous work for these modern people. Most were amateurs; they swung their axes fiercely, but the cuts were not deep. When they used a saw, it would either get stuck or bind, making it extremely strenuous. They could barely fell one tree in half a day, but they managed to break quite a few saws and axes, making the faces of the people in the Planning Commission in charge of distributing materials and tools grow long.
Wu Kuangming, holding his chainsaw, worked alongside everyone. He wasn’t really an expert either. The chainsaw was heavy, and it took a lot of strength to keep it stable when it was running. After felling a tree, he was often drenched in sweat.
He restlessly went around to inspect the work. Under a large Bruguiera tree, Shao Zong and Hu Yicheng were sawing, pulling and pushing with great effort. In the not-so-hot sun, both men were already panting like bulls. He reminded them, “Be careful, don’t break the saw blade. The guys at the Planning Commission are already looking pissed.”
Hu Yicheng sighed and said, “I’ve lost all hope! The Executive Committee is blind! I’m a high-tech talent, and they have me pulling a saw! If my classmates knew I was researching biology like this, they’d laugh their heads off.”
Wu Kuangming said, “Experts use skill, amateurs can only use brute force. Just learn as you go. When I offered you the chainsaw, you all refused!”
“No way, I want to keep my arms and legs. I can’t handle that thing.”
“With my physique, if I were to become the Texas Chainsaw Massacre killer, I’d probably chop off a few pieces of myself first,” Shao Zong said with a sad face as he pulled the saw. “I originally thought the communications group would be easier, that I could build China Telecom with my own hands. I didn’t expect to be preparing telephone poles first.”
Just as Wu Kuangming was about to say something to encourage them, he suddenly heard someone scream, “Oh my god! A snake!” Before he could react, he saw three or four people scrambling and crawling out of the woods, having lost their wits, their axes and saws dropped all over the ground.
He quickly stopped them. The guys were still in shock, unable to speak coherently. Wu Kuangming looked down on these urban otaku—it was perfectly normal for a logger to encounter a snake. He had heard from an elder friend who had been a forestry worker that when they spent the night in the forest, they had to shake out their bedding. In the autumn, when it got cold, snakes would crawl into the workers’ sheds, and they had to smoke them out before they could go to sleep.
The semi-swampy environment of the mangrove forest was, needless to say, also a habitat for reptiles. That was why he had equipped all the loggers with high-top rain boots—not for waterproofing.
Liu Zheng, however, perked up. He casually picked a forked stick from a pile of cut branches and said to Wu Kuangming, “Team leader, I’ll go take a look. If I catch it, we’ll have an extra dish for dinner tonight.”
Wu Kuangming said, “Didn’t the Executive Committee say we’re not allowed to eat wild animals?”
“To hell with them. How can we not eat such a pure, natural, wild thing?” Wilderness exploration was a profession for Liu Zheng, and skinning an unlucky snake that fell into his hands for an extra meal was commonplace. He guessed they had probably encountered a common Guangdong water snake or a rat snake, or possibly a venomous snake like a cobra or a krait. He was experienced in catching them, and he was well-equipped; his backpack even contained several bottles of Jidesheng snake medicine. He excitedly took the stick and followed the escape route into the woods. But after searching for a while, he found nothing. Wu Kuangming, afraid he would go too deep and get lost, quickly called him back.
While he was talking to and calming down the frightened transmigrator men, and giving a safety lesson at the same time, there was a sound of a branch splitting, followed by a scream. He quickly turned his head and saw that a person had been knocked down by a felled tree. He rushed over. The young man’s face was covered in blood, and he was lying on the ground, groaning in pain. The few people around him were so scared they didn’t know what to do. Fortunately, there were always health group members patrolling the beach. A call on the walkie-talkie brought a small yellow farm truck with a Red Cross flag. A quick examination determined it was not a major injury, just a laceration. After dressing the wound, they put him on the truck and sent him away.
This incident made Wu Kuangming uneasy. After all, he wasn’t very familiar with logging himself. And it was his first time leading so many people in such a dangerous job. This was the first personal injury accident since the landing, a dishonorable record. He lost the heart to work, carrying his chainsaw around to inspect, urging everyone to be careful. When he saw someone who really didn’t know how to chop, he would go up and solve the problem with his chainsaw.
The felled timber was simply dragged to the beach and trimmed. The branches and leaves were also piled to one side for later use. Freshly cut wood has too high a moisture content to be processed. If used immediately, it will soon shrink and deform, and even cause mold and pest problems. Generally, it needs to be dry-stacked for a period of time to remove excess moisture or be artificially dried. The transmigrators had no drying equipment at the moment, but fortunately, they were not planning to build any long-term structures right now. The few watchtowers and a row of toilets were all temporary, so using wet wood was acceptable.
Dai Xie took a deep breath. The fresh, slightly salty sea breeze was refreshing. The seawater here was not much different from that of his own time. Perhaps it was because this was the ocean, the cradle of life, and its self-cleaning ability was naturally far greater than that of rivers that could not withstand industrial pollution.
Perhaps there really was such a thing as being guided by fate. Otherwise, how could he explain how an ordinary office worker like himself would participate in such a heaven-defying plan, even leaving without a proper suicide note? He had originally chosen to leave silently so as not to worry his family, but to have so lightly severed more than twenty years of family ties, upon reflection, he felt he was a bit heartless. But what was done was done, and there was no turning back. After personally witnessing that thin mirror-like surface vanish in a flash of white light, Dai Xie understood that from now on, everything in the present world had been abandoned. All that was left for himself and his comrades was one resolution—”to build a new world.”
Due to his physical strength, myopia, and previous professional experience, Dai Xie had been doing calculation and statistics work in the modern world. He knew a thing or two about strategic planning, so he was assigned to the Planning Commission. His task was to manage the materials and tools needed by each group, distribute them, and inspect and record the use and consumption of these resources. Since coming to this world, every modern tool and material was one less when used. To prevent possible waste, the management of precious materials was the main job of the Planning Committee. At the same time, the committee was also responsible for the warehousing and redistribution of locally collected and manufactured raw materials and finished products. The work was quite busy.
At this moment, his task was to use a handheld PDA to count the number of felled trees and track the destination of the collected timber. He watched as Wu Kuangming brandished his chainsaw with a savage grin, and trees of all sizes crashed down into the muddy water, startling the water birds into a noisy, scattered flight… It’s over. With such a weapon in hand, there is no future for China’s environment. He closed his eyes in pain.
“Timber! Get out of the way!” Wu Kuangming’s unique shriek suddenly woke Dai Xie from his environmentalist reverie. He immediately did a rolling dive, moving several feet and narrowly avoiding the crashing tree, thus saving himself from becoming the first martyr.
“Your sister! Did you do that on purpose?!” Dai Xie, covered in mud, jumped up in a rage and roared at Wu Kuangming.
“Brother, I don’t have a sister…” Wu Kuangming looked at Little Dai with an innocent expression. The first grudge between the two was thus formed.
Zhuo Tianmin resolutely waited by the tree for the rabbit, and finally got priority access to the timber. Then, the construction group found a place with a solid foundation near the sea and began to dig pits. Tian Jiujiu’s specialty was drainage, so building toilets for the transmigrators became his first job. The latrine was an important facility to ensure the sanitation of the camp, its importance even ranked before the cafeteria.
As a professional water supply and drainage engineer, building a simple toilet was certainly not a complicated matter for Tian Jiujiu. He had all kinds of plans at his disposal. But right now, let alone bricks and cement, there wasn’t even a single adobe brick. The only thing available was a small amount of wood.
His original plan for the toilet was extremely simple: build a high platform over a water channel near the beach, lay wooden planks on it with gaps in between, and then cover the four sides with branches and leaves. The excrement would go directly into the sea, which was simple and convenient. Some environmentalists and the agriculture group strongly opposed this. The environmentalists accused it of polluting the environment, while the agriculture group was still counting on using this stuff as fertilizer. He had finally come to understand how stingy Wu Nanhai was—the fervent expression on his face when he talked about this stuff was as if he were talking about gold and silver treasures.
Apparently, the Executive Committee was swayed by his impassioned speech, and the toilet plan was revised to a pit-style one. If it were just a pit latrine, it would also be very simple. Lay wooden planks over the pit, similar to his over-water toilet. But this type of pit latrine generally does not consider the use of feces; when it is almost full, you just sprinkle lime on it and fill it in. If you want to use the feces, you have to use a night soil collector for the pit latrine.
“Since the agriculture group likes this stuff so much, let them be the ones to collect the night soil,” Tian Jiujiu said angrily—the biggest problem with pit latrines was the large amount of earthwork.
To build a toilet for nearly 600 people, considering one squatting position for every 50-60 people, the men’s toilet would have 10 squatting positions and 1 urinal trough; another 2 squatting positions would be set up for the women’s toilet. The pit was long and narrow, with a sloped bottom to facilitate the flow of feces and urine into a collection pit. The collection pit was located outside the toilet, with a wooden cover on top for easy cleaning and collection. Under normal circumstances, the bottom and four walls of the pit should be smoothed with cement, or at least lined with bricks, otherwise it would easily cause waste to seep into the groundwater and cause pollution. But at this time, they didn’t have the conditions, so they could only use a rammer to compact the earth as much as possible. Fortunately, the groundwater here was already brackish and unusable, so a little pollution didn’t matter.
After using an excavator and several “basic labor” groups, the pits were finally dug. Without bricks, they used tree trunks as the pit edges and buried them with earth. Without wooden planks for the squatting positions, they used branches trimmed from the logs, tied together with vines to form rafts instead. A frame was erected on all four sides. There were no bricks for the walls, so they used an old method: first, they sparsely planted sticks upright, then they repeatedly wrapped a large number of vines brought from the mangrove forest around these sticks, and then inserted many small branches in between. Finally, they mixed leaves and weeds with sticky mud and piled it on this wattle-and-daub wall, smoothing it inside and out with a trowel. Except for the bumpy surface, it looked quite neat. But Tian Jiujiu knew that the materials in these walls had not been dried, and they would definitely have problems after a few days of sun exposure.