Chapter 55: The Saltworks (Part 1)

The preliminary survey in Nanan Dong lasted for two days. Accompanied by Aoya Fu, the survey team’s work went very smoothly. Fa Shilu and Cui Yunhong were responsible for agriculture/forestry and minerals, respectively, while Mu Min investigated the local social conditions. The products of Nanan Dong were quite abundant:

First were the various forest resources. There were large tracts of forest in the mountains. Although the locals’ primitive cultivation techniques for shanlan rice had destroyed a considerable amount, the reserves were still quite rich. Fa Shilu also found the forest of perennial woody cotton he had been dreaming of—it was clear the locals used this cotton for spinning and weaving. There were also many wild banana, lychee, longan, and jackfruit trees on the mountains, which served as a supplementary food source for the locals. There were many betel nut trees, but they were of little use to the transmigrators except as a trade commodity for re-export.

Second, a large number of native rice species were discovered in the paddy fields here. This was a very useful gene pool for breeders—with enough rice varieties, new and improved breeds could be continuously crossbred. In the paddy fields near Nanan Village alone, Fa Shilu discovered seventeen different rice species. He also obtained five types of shanlan upland rice from the mountain slopes, including indica, japonica, and glutinous varieties.

Hainan Island itself is a major distribution area for wild rice in China, and the genetic advantage of its diverse rice species is very obvious. In the 21st century, Lingao was a major seed production base for hybrid rice in China. Looking at the various samples he had collected, Fa Shilu would smile even in his dreams! He might just become the father of hybrid rice in China…

Sweet potatoes had not yet been introduced here; the Li people didn’t even know about this new crop. However, they planted some other tubers, the most common of which was surprisingly a species from the Araceae family (like taro/Arisaema). In other places, this was often used for medicinal purposes. Fa Shilu was not a traditional Chinese doctor, but he knew that the taro of Arisaema was slightly toxic. Can this thing be eaten as a staple food? But judging from the planted area, it was clearly one of the main crops. Another common one was the sweet potato, also called hairy potato.

In terms of miscellaneous grains, he discovered millet. Fa Shilu had not known that millet was grown in Hainan. After the battle at Bairen Beach, the locals had sent miscellaneous grains that included millet, which had puzzled the entire Agriculture Committee for a while. After consulting the locals, they learned that this was foxtail millet, a common miscellaneous grain in Hainan with a very short maturation period.

Besides grains, he also found large patches of wild ramie. It seemed the Li people were not very concerned with agriculture; it was basically a laissez-faire approach with no field management to speak of. Fruits, ramie, and cotton were all in a wild state; they were simply gathered and used, without any planned cultivation.

Pigs, cattle, chickens, and ducks were all free-range on the hillsides, without pens or feed. So they didn’t look very robust. The number of cattle, however, was surprisingly large, including both water buffalo and yellow cattle. But he was not a student of animal husbandry and didn’t understand the breed issues. He would have to send a professional to take a look later.

“It feels like such a waste,” Fa Shilu lamented. “The agricultural conditions here are excellent, but the level of agriculture is only slightly better than in a primitive society.”

“Don’t be so sentimental,” Wen Desi patted him on the shoulder. “Just look at the paddy fields on both sides of the Wenlan River. How much better are they? They are far behind the farmers in our hometowns.”

Cui Yunhong’s findings were less encouraging. Using the map from the other timeline, he found the important product: lignite. It was shallowly buried and could be mined. There were also some stone resources, such as small-scale reserves of limestone and perlite. But the journey was long and the roads were bad, so they were of little value. The rarest find was a small-scale tungsten ore vein, but it was of little use to the transmigrators.

The Li people maintained a respectful but distant attitude towards this strange group of Han people. They watched them holding strange things, climbing trees one moment, going down into the fields the next, and then standing aside drawing for half a day… However, the children clearly had the greatest curiosity for novelties. From watching from afar at the beginning, they slowly approached, and finally began to play with the transmigrators’ equipment and items, and gradually, communication began. Of course, most of the group couldn’t communicate with the children, so they could only use a little rock sugar to show friendliness—this was something Wen Desi had instructed them to bring before departure. Mu Min had a natural affinity for her compatriots from this other time. She could also speak Hainanese, and with the power of sugar, by the next day, she had a group of little followers.

Seeing this group of naked, mud-caked children running around, an idea suddenly occurred to Mu Min. This idea would eventually become the transmigrator nation’s first school in the Li district.

While the Li District Work Team was busy with its goodwill activities, another team of transmigrators, led by Wang Luobin, advanced towards the nearby Ma’niao Peninsula. Their goal was to solve the salt problem once and for all.

Salt is not only an indispensable necessity for human survival but also an important raw material for the modern chemical industry. For the transmigrator regime, they also urgently needed a commodity that could be circulated and exchanged. In the backward commodity economy of ancient society, there was no more suitable exchange item than salt. Moreover, the salt industry here had been very developed since ancient times. Lingao faces the Qiongzhou Strait, has numerous harbors and estuaries, and a large number of natural salt flats. The sodium chloride concentration in the seawater is very high, generally above 1.5-2 Baumé degrees. During the dry season, the temperature is high, the wind is strong, the sunshine is long, and there is little rain, making it a good place for sea salt production. Salt had been produced here since the Tang Dynasty, at that time using the salt boiling method. Due to the superior natural environment, from the Yongle era onwards, the saltworks in Hainan successively adopted the solar evaporation method for large-scale production. Yantian Village, on the shore of Xinying Bay south of the Yangpu Economic Development Zone in Hainan, is the earliest surviving solar salt production site in China and a well-preserved ancient saltworks using the original solar evaporation method. This saltworks can still produce normally.

According to the historical data held by the transmigrators, the saltworks of Lingao in the Ming Dynasty was located on the Ma’niao Peninsula, 25 kilometers north of the county seat. It was managed by a Saltworks Ambassador and was subordinate to the Haibei Supervisory Office. It could produce “one thousand four hundred and seventeen yin and two hundred and thirty jin” of salt annually. Calculated at three hundred jin per yin, this saltworks produced more than 200 tons of salt per year, which was initially sufficient to meet the production and living needs of the transmigrators.

Such a rich resource, of course, had to be quickly taken over by the transmigrator regime. Wang Luobin’s task was to inspect the solar salt technology of this era on-site and consider how to use modern technology to improve and increase production—for modern chemical engineering, 200 tons of salt was simply too little.

The equipment of the Salt Affairs Work Team was better than that of the Li District Work Team. Because the mission involved transporting back some salt, the entire team was fully mechanized, with five agricultural vehicles dispatched. The vehicles bounced along the dirt road, and after about two hours of driving, they rarely saw any pedestrians. After entering the Ma’niao Peninsula area, it became even more deserted. On the road, they only saw ruins and abandoned fields, as if a great battle had once taken place here. Only the scattered salt on the road assured everyone that they were on the right track.

Wang Luobin was very confused. According to the intelligence he had received for the operation, historical records indicated that this saltworks had more than a thousand salt workers. Including their families, there should be at least five or six thousand people around the saltworks, and there should be many salt villages. But all along the way, there were only ruins.

At noon, they found a semi-abandoned stone slab road. Following it, they finally found a village with smoke rising from it. The houses here were all built of volcanic rock, with deep alleys. But many houses had their doors tightly shut, and some had tall weeds in front of them, clearly uninhabited for many years. The village was also scattered with many collapsed houses, already overgrown with grass.

There were only some old people, women, and children in the village, barely clothed and looking extremely poor. They did not hide when they saw this group of strange people arrive, their expressions numb and indifferent. Xiong Buyou asked around in the village for a long time before he found the village chief’s house.

The village chief’s surname was Tan. He was a hereditary salt worker here, from a famous salt-producing family in Hainan. In response to Xiong Buyou’s request to buy salt, he had someone open the salt storehouse: there were five or six hundred jin of salt inside. Such a small amount of salt surprised Wang Luobin. Upon asking, he learned that in the forty-fifth year of the Wanli era, an earthquake in Lingao had destroyed many of the salt flats. Some areas had sunk into the sea, and the production capacity of the Ma’niao saltworks had never recovered to its original level. However, the amount of silver equivalent tax stipulated by the government had not been reduced at all, and many salt workers had fled. To make matters worse, from the end of the Wanli era, sea pirates often came to the saltworks to rob the salt vouchers. The salt workers were either killed or fled, and now there were only over two hundred salt workers left in the village. The ancient method of solar salt production was a completely labor-intensive industry. With fewer people, production became even more difficult to sustain. The annual silver equivalent was always in arrears, and the government pressed hard for payment, so the able-bodied men of the village usually hid. Fortunately, there was still plenty of land in Ma’niao, and the Ma’niao River provided irrigation. In addition to producing salt, the salt workers also cultivated some land to grow grain, which was enough to feed themselves. They just lived in constant fear.

This situation was a big blow to Wang Luobin. It was clear that the production situation at this saltworks was extremely poor. It seemed that the Executive Committee’s original plan to control the saltworks and buy up all its output had to be changed—the transmigrators not only had to control the saltworks, but also had to organize the restoration and expansion of production. For a moment, Wang Luobin felt like the land reform work team leader in the movies he watched as a child; everything was in a state of ruin, waiting to be rebuilt.

But organizing the restoration of production was not an easy task. Wang Luobin decided to go to the saltworks to see for himself first. After giving the apathetic Village Chief Tan a Mexican silver dollar, the chief, whose face was a mask of indifference, finally agreed to take him to see the saltworks.