Chapter 30: Journey to Shilu

“Changhua is famous for its goats,” Xiong Buyou was well-versed in Hainan’s famous dishes. “Just as famous as Lingao’s suckling pig.” He smacked his lips, greedily eyeing the small goats nibbling on the shrubs. The coastal area of Changhua had many sand dunes, dense shrubs, and a variety of natural herbs and medicinal plants. The plants were rich in minerals and salt. The famous Changhua goats were raised on this natural fodder, so one could imagine their taste.

“Why don’t we hunt one and have a feast?” Huang Zhaizi was already eager to try.

“They look like they’re raised by farmers. It wouldn’t be right to hunt them. If we want to eat one, we can just buy one.”

“Easier said than done. Who knows how to slaughter a goat?”

“Slaughtering a goat is a piece of cake,” Huang Zhaizi said confidently. “I’ve dealt with wild rabbits before.”

The group walked along, discussing whether the butchering experience of rabbits and goats could be shared, and arrived at the gate of Changhua County town. The official name of the town was Changhua Qianhusuo (Thousand-household Command) City. From this name, everyone knew that the county yamen was just borrowing a place to work; the Ming army was the true master of this city.

The city was not large, about the same size as Lingao, with walls that looked to be about three meters high. They were fully brick-faced. The hardware of the Ming dynasty’s urban defense construction was quite well done. The software, however, was not so good. The city gate was wide open, and besides two figures who were probably yamen runners or sentries sitting at the entrance, there were no other security measures.

Xiong Buyou looked up and saw that the gate was named “Zhenhai” (Suppress the Sea). He smiled and said to the group, “This gate is quite fitting. It’s welcoming us.”

After giving the gatekeepers a few copper coins, the group entered the city smoothly. The city was even more deserted than Lingao. The entire county of Changhua had only a little over six hundred households, half of which were military households. There were not even two hundred households in the county town. The so-called county town was just a large village for this group of farmers with military titles. Naturally, there was no significant commerce, only a blacksmith shop for repairing farm tools and two grocery stores. Although everyone already knew what the urban commerce in Hainan was generally like from their experience in Lingao, they were still disappointed to see such a desolate county town.

“It’s so unfair,” Ye Yuming muttered to himself.

”?” The others were puzzled.

“How can other transmigrators so easily earn hundreds of thousands of taels of silver from a county town? We—we—” he pointed at the dusty and garbage-strewn streets of Changhua County town, “this place doesn’t even have a hundred copper coins!”

The poker-faced Fang Jinghan said, “This place makes me feel like I’m in a Western movie.” He even had a tape recorder in his luggage, which he said he planned to use for fieldwork.

Xiong Buyou tried to communicate with the locals and found that his linguistic talents were completely useless. The language spoken here was neither the Hainanese dialect of the Cantonese family, nor the Minnan dialect spoken by the Fujianese “shegeng” (slash-and-burn) farmers, and certainly not the Lingao dialect he was most proficient in. It was a rather strange dialect.

“This is ‘junhua’ (military dialect)!” Fang Jinghan listened for a while and understood. “The languages in Changhua are very mixed. One of the major dialects is junhua.”

So the task of communication was handed over to him. However, Fang Jinghan could only roughly understand what the other party was saying and couldn’t speak it himself. Communication could only be done through gestures.

Finally, with the help of the locals, they found a relatively large shop on the main street of the county. It was a warehouse, and the sign was from Guangzhou.

What kind of business were the Guangzhou merchants doing here? Xiong Buyou inquired at the counter. The shopkeeper was a genuine Cantonese man named Qian. He was suffering from being alone in this desolate little town with few people to talk to. Suddenly, a group of strange merchants who could speak Cantonese arrived, and his spirits were immediately lifted. He insisted on chatting with them and had a young apprentice serve them herbal tea. The group was also hot from walking, so they took the opportunity to rest and gather information.

It turned out that this warehouse specialized in purchasing local soapberries, medicinal herbs, and goats. Many wealthy families in Guangzhou liked the goats from here, and the owner, seeing the good business, had sent someone to set up a permanent purchasing station here.

Xiong Buyou pretended to be a small merchant who had come to Changhua for the first time, planning to trade in the Li territory, and inquired about the situation here.

Shopkeeper Qian said that the place was relatively peaceful. Pirates rarely came to Changhua. When they did, they would at most get some water from the shore and steal a few goats. The paddy fields around the county town all belonged to the Qianhusuo. Although the Qianhusuo was in a state of disrepair, it could still muster a force of two or three hundred men, so pirates generally did not come near the county town.

As for the Li territory, Shopkeeper Qian said the terrain was too rugged, with many mountains and rocks, and many malignant diseases. Most people were unwilling to go there. The Li people would come to the city in groups every half a month or so to sell some local products. Overall, it was quite peaceful, and he had not heard of any robberies or murders of Han merchants.

Shopkeeper Qian curiously asked where they were from. When he heard they were from Lingao, he didn’t show much surprise—this gave the transmigrators a full appreciation of how slow the transmission of news was in the past. They had caused a great stir in Lingao, but Changhua, less than 200 kilometers away, was completely unaware. Later they learned that Shopkeeper Qian’s boss only sent a ship from Guangzhou to Changhua once every six months.

When they saw the salt, white sugar, sewing needles, distilled liquor, and other small hardware that the transmigrators brought out, Shopkeeper Qian’s eyes lit up. Luxury items like white sugar and distilled liquor had been out of stock here for a long time. He immediately asked to buy dozens of jin of white sugar and distilled liquor, offering the Li people’s favorite hooked knives and iron farm tools in exchange.

The transmigrators took the opportunity to ask him to introduce a guide, and Shopkeeper Qian readily agreed.

“That’s easy. I’ll find someone for you.”

After achieving their goal, the exploration team returned to the Zhenhai to report the situation. Another batch of trade goods was unloaded from the ship.

The next morning, the fleet set sail and continued its journey.

Cui Yunhong’s exploration team had breakfast, packed their equipment and goods, and went to the riverside to meet the guide. The guide Shopkeeper Qian had found was an apprentice from his warehouse. Although the Li people were not cannibals, the Li territory was mountainous and densely forested, with a changeable climate, wild animals, snakes, and insects, as well as various miasmas. The Han people often regarded it as a place of dread. Generally, when going to the Li territory, one had to hire a “shou Li” (tamed Li) as a guide.

Although this apprentice was a Han, his mother was a local Meifu Li. His surname was Wang. Changhua had been a county with a high rate of intermarriage between Han and Li since ancient times. There were many such mixed-blood children. The guide was not only fluent in the Meifu Li language, but his maternal uncle’s family also lived in the middle reaches of the Changhua River. He was very familiar with the roads and local customs, making him an ideal candidate. Because he had been an apprentice since he was young, although he was only eighteen or nineteen, he was very worldly-wise. He always spoke with a smile. He was surprised to see this group of a dozen or so people. Although they were dressed in Han clothes, the men were all bald, and there was even a Gai Li woman among them. Everyone was carrying a large basket, and most of them had a long, cloth-wrapped pole on the basket.

The exploration team naturally couldn’t say they were looking for an iron mine, so they said they were a group of people going to the Li territory to purchase medicinal herbs. Cui Yunhong wanted to pay the guide his wages first, but the guide said it wasn’t necessary and that he could be paid after they returned. He only asked for a jin of white sugar to take home for his family to taste—white sugar was a rare commodity here.

After preparing everything, the group set off in the morning, heading upstream along the Changhua River.

After setting out, the group realized how wise their decision to hire a guide was. In this barren land, there were almost no landmarks. The Changhua River had a huge difference in water level between the dry and wet seasons, which made it very difficult to find its true channel during the dry season. The channels carved out during the rainy season were not only wide but also very scattered. Puddles and streams could be seen everywhere.

Cui Yunhong constantly used his compass and map to verify that the team was heading in the right direction. Their first target was to find the Shilu River. This tributary of the Changhua River was shown on the map to be about forty kilometers upstream from the mouth of the Changhua River. After finding this river, they would go upstream for another twenty kilometers to reach the Shilu mine.

The journey was obviously not going to be easy. Especially with a lot of equipment and a large quantity of goods, this stretch of road was even more difficult. The only hope was that the water level would increase as they went upstream, which would make it easier to travel by boat—even if there was no boat, it would be easy to build a bamboo raft.

After walking for more than ten li, the water in the river became slightly deeper, and the sand dunes became fewer. They knew they were approaching the inland area. The terrain became more rugged. Both banks were mostly hilly, with rolling hills and not very dense forests. Large areas of rock and sandstone were exposed in many places. Cui Yunhong saw that many of the hills here were made of limestone containing a large amount of clay. This type of limestone could be directly calcined to produce high-quality cement without any additives, so it was also commonly known as “cement rock.” He couldn’t help but feel a secret joy. This place could be built into the cement industrial base of the transmigrator nation.

Cui Yunhong didn’t know that in another time, high-grade cement in Hainan was often made from Changhua limestone.

Between the hills and the river banks, there were scattered patches of flat land, many of which had been reclaimed into paddy fields and dry fields. The unreclaimed areas were vast, barren grasslands. There were some villages scattered among them. The guide said that these were either Han villages or mixed Han-Li villages. Cui Yunhong saw nothing special about these villages and just had the survey team mark their scale and location on the map.

The survey team walked along, drawing the route on the map, marking the residential areas and places where fresh water could be obtained. In places where the terrain changed significantly, they would re-measure it. This data would be the basis for future road development.

The guide saw that they were not in a hurry to travel. They would stop every so often to write and draw, and some people would carry poles and boxes and wander around, fiddling with something. He felt strange and said to Cui Yunhong, “Shopkeeper, if we walk like this, it will take several days to reach the Li village.”

Cui Yunhong had to make up a story that they were looking for medicinal herbs. The young man naturally didn’t quite believe it. However, it was a rare break from the dull work at the warehouse, so he didn’t mind walking a few more days. He didn’t ask any more questions.