Chapter 33: Trouble in the Li Village

Using both their hands and feet, it took them nearly three full hours to reach the summit. From here, they could see an endless expanse of mountains, high and low. The nearby vegetation was a tropical savanna, while the distant forests were lush and dense.

They carefully observed the surrounding soil and vegetation, and even dug a few test pits in some places. The soil on the mountainside was a typical southern red soil, with no special mineral outcrops. Although this iron mine was said to be open-pit, it was still covered by several meters of soil. They had to determine which points had iron ore worth mining—the transmigrators did not have the powerful machinery of modern mining to remove the overburden over a large area.

After digging a few test pits, Cui Yunhong was still not satisfied and decided to use modern geophysical equipment to find the ore. He brought out his most prized possessions: a transient electromagnetic instrument, a rock bolt detector, and an ultrasonic detector. After a great deal of fiddling, he finally identified several locations suitable for development. He dug another test pit and found magnetite ore at a depth of less than one meter. He chipped off a piece and visually inspected it. It was indeed a rare rich iron ore.

Li Benqing saw the leading shopkeeper fiddling with a few strange things, then start digging a hole. He dug out a rock and put it in his pocket as if it were a treasure. But this stone was neither gold nor silver, nor was it the green stone that the Han people liked most. He was baffled.

Cui Yunhong led the team another dozen li down the mountain and successively found several more suitable mining sites. He also discovered an associated pyrite deposit. Unfortunately, the transportation was inconvenient; otherwise, it would have been a good fertilizer for the agricultural department.

As for the legendary malachite mine, they never found it, but Cui Yunhong didn’t mind—compared to iron, their demand for copper was very limited, and the Japanese red copper imported from Guangdong was almost enough.

The group trekked across the mountain slopes with their equipment, digging pits and setting up instruments to draw maps from time to time. Under the scorching sun, everyone was drenched in sweat, and fragments of cogon grass stuck to their skin, causing both pain and itching.

When it was finally time for lunch and a rest, they drank the saltwater that He Ping had prepared in the morning. Even the rice crackers that everyone agreed were hard to swallow were eaten clean. The physical exertion was simply too great.

“Are we continuing the survey this afternoon?” asked Jiang Muzhi, the representative from the industrial sector, panting. His physical fitness was relatively poor, and he had a bit too much fat. After a morning of exertion, he was already exhausted.

Originally, Cui Yunhong had not wanted to bring him on the survey team, but Bai Guoshi had gone with the ship to lead another survey team to Tian Du, and there was no one on the team who was knowledgeable about biology, plants, and animals.

“Of course. It’s not easy to come here once. We need to collect as much data as possible to take back.”

“God, let me go back to the 21st century! When will these days end!” Someone finally couldn’t take it anymore and let out a wail.

“I really want to eat KFC,” someone said, staring blankly at the sky. “And the lamb skewers, grilled chicken bones, and grilled corn at the entrance of our school…”

“It’s too late to think about that now. Just get back to work,” Cui Yunhong laughed.

“Such a big mountain, wouldn’t it be difficult to mine?” Jiang Muzhi asked.

“Mining isn’t difficult,” Ye Yuming interjected. “If we completely ignore the mine safety regulations, fifty workers would be enough for me. Pure manual operation, just one day shift, each person producing 2 tons of ore per day is no problem. That’s 100 tons of ore per day, which is almost forty thousand tons of iron ore per year.” He used to work in mine safety supervision and knew a lot about mine blasting and excavation.

“Aren’t you running a ‘black coal mine’?”

“Not really black, just average. Besides, this kind of open-pit mine doesn’t need tunnels at all. You just remove the overburden.” Ye Yuming looked around at the mountain. “Actually, the earthwork volume of this mountain is not that large. With enough explosives, we could blast the whole thing—”

Everyone gasped. A whole-mountain blast? Good heavens, to blow up a whole mountain, that was a grand undertaking.

Cui Yunhong, however, knew that this was not an exaggeration. Whole-mountain blasting was a common practice in open-pit mining, and there was not much technical difficulty—whether the transmigrator group had this capability was another matter.

“Forty thousand tons of iron ore a year, Ji Wusheng would be laughing his head off.”

“Such good rich iron ore, it can be directly used to make steel.”

“And that’s just with fifty miners, each working ten hours a day,” Ye Yuming said. “When the Japanese mined at Shilu, each worker worked 14 hours per shift with a quota of 8 tons. At that time, besides a few pneumatic picks, there was not much mechanization. With the capabilities of our transmigrator group, maintaining a mining team of two or three hundred people and producing one hundred and fifty thousand tons of iron ore a year is no problem.”

Cui Yunhong said, “Actually, mining this kind of open-pit mine is not that difficult, but we need to have the supporting infrastructure. Just feeding and housing the workers would require building a small village, and it has to be well-arranged. Mining and transporting ore are both high-intensity labor. If the living quality is too poor, the mortality rate will be very high. Unless we adopt a death-style mining like the Japanese, just throwing lives into it, the mine will collapse in a few months.”

Huang Zhaizi said heroically, “In the future, we’ll just capture Japanese men and bring them here to mine!”

“No matter who comes to mine, the amount of work will not be small,” Cui Yunhong said. “The difficulty with Shilu is the transportation of the ore.” He opened the map. “Originally, the Changhua River provided a convenient sea route, but unfortunately, Shilu Ridge is not on the banks of the Changhua River. The only feasible route is the same one the Japanese chose back then: build a railway from Shilu to Basuo, and then ship it out from Basuo.”

However, the construction of this route was quite difficult. The terrain along the way was complex. The Japanese army used tens of thousands of workers and took 5 months to complete this 55-kilometer railway.

Between Basuo Port and Beili, the terrain was flat. Between Beili and Baoqiao was a hilly area. East of Baoqiao was a mountainous region. The 15-kilometer stretch of hilly terrain between Beili and Baoqiao was particularly arduous. A total of 17 bridges were built along the line, including 3 large bridges, 3 medium bridges, and 11 small bridges, as well as 178 culverts. All were made of reinforced concrete or iron frames. A 250-meter-long tunnel was also built between Baoqiao and Shilu.

Basuo was originally a small fishing village. To accommodate ore ships of over ten thousand tons, it was expanded into an artificial port. The entire Shilu development, including the mine, railway, port, and power plant, mobilized a total of 140,000 laborers. The number of casualties was in the tens of thousands.

After hearing these numbers, everyone felt that mining here was not very feasible. Jiang Muzhi whispered, “In that case, didn’t we come here for nothing? The Executive Committee will definitely not develop Shilu.”

“I think so too. At least not in the first five-year plan,” Ye Yuming said. “If you ask me, instead of going to the trouble of building a railway to Basuo and then building an artificial port there, it would be better to just build it directly to Tian Du, connecting the two mining areas and shipping everything out from the natural harbor of Yulin.”

“The route is about 180 kilometers long, which is not easy either. The Japanese didn’t finish building it until 1943.”

After this discussion about the development prospects of the Shilu iron mine, the revitalized survey team continued their survey activities on the mountain. During this time, Cui Yunhong collected other types of ore, but the malachite still refused to show itself—was he just unlucky? Cui Yunhong was really puzzled. Shilu had been famous for its copper mines for hundreds of years, which meant that malachite outcrops should be very common. The search continued until it was almost dark before they descended the mountain.

On the second and third days, the survey team continued to conduct surveys and explorations around Shilu Ridge. During this time, they had an unexpected encounter with a black bear. After staring at each other for a few minutes, the black bear took the initiative to retreat. Although Huang Zhaizi was eager to fire his gun, it would have been a waste to deal with such a huge animal.

Seeing that further exploration would not yield any new discoveries, Cui Yunhong decided to break camp and head back on the morning of the fourth day. The journey back was uneventful. They returned to San Cha He, where the rafts were still in place. After a night’s rest, they boarded the rafts and headed back. The journey downstream was very fast, and by the afternoon, they had already returned to the Li village.

Unexpectedly, as soon as they entered the Li village, they were surrounded by a dozen or so Li men. They were all armed with knives and spears, their faces grim. In the distance, many of the ordinary villagers were watching. This scene startled Cui Yunhong. We didn’t do anything wrong, did we?

“Xiao Mu, what do you think your fellow countrymen are up to?”

Mu Min said helplessly, “I’m Li, but I don’t speak the Li language—”

Just as they were feeling apprehensive, a leading figure among them bowed and said a long speech to them, his expression very respectful. But they still couldn’t understand a word.

Fortunately, Li Benqing was there. It turned out that this person was an “aoya” (elder) of the village. He said that the “dongzhu” (village chief) of their village was very ill. He had heard that these Han merchants had a miracle drug that had cured Li Benqing’s “hanre bing” in one go, and he wanted to ask them for a few pills of the miracle drug to save the dongzhu.

Everyone was in a difficult position. If it was just malaria, it would be easy. They could just give him a few more tablets of chloroquine. But He Ping was only a half-baked medic. To have him treat a patient properly, if he happened to guess right, that would be fine, but what if he killed the patient—this was the family of the village chief! In the 21st century, people would chase and beat doctors and nurses in hospitals after their relatives died, let alone in a primitive village in the 17th century.

He Ping said, “Let’s go and have a look.”

“Are you really going to treat this dongzhu?” Mu Min was really worried.

“It would be worse if we don’t go. I think their attitude is quite sincere.”

“But you don’t even know what disease he has!” Mu Min said anxiously. “This is the chief of a village. If he dies, the whole village will vent their anger on you. We won’t be able to save you in time—”

“Don’t worry, I’ve been educated by Dr. Shi for a few months. I’m still confident in my basic medical skills. I can handle it. Besides, if we really want to leave, they might not be able to stop us.”

Huang Zhaizi nodded. “Indeed, at worst we can just fight our way out. If we’re afraid of implicating people, we can just take Li Benqing with us—”

“Don’t worry, if I find that I can’t treat him, I’ll just give him some placebo. At most, we’ll be driven away. We won’t kill him.”

So they agreed to treat the dongzhu. The group first returned to Li Benqing’s residence to sort through the medicine box in their luggage. Since it was for the survey team, it was fully equipped with all kinds of bandages, dressings, common medicines, and anti-inflammatory drugs. There were also simple surgical instruments and disinfectants.

As they were sorting through their things, Li Benqing, who had been wandering outside, quietly returned, his face full of worry. He said to Xiong Buyou, “Shopkeepers, I’m afraid the dongzhu’s illness can’t be cured with medicine—”

Xiong Buyou quickly asked what was going on. Li Benqing quietly told them:

It turned out that the dongzhu had been sick for seven or eight days. He had used Li people’s herbal medicine, but he hadn’t recovered. The villagers suspected that he had been “cursed.” The so-called “curse” was similar to the Han people’s belief in ghosts and spirits. It was generally believed that someone with magical powers had summoned a “ghost” to harm people. The dongzhu had asked a “daogong” (shaman) to perform a ritual to break the curse, but it couldn’t be broken no matter what. It was said that the “ghost” that had been summoned was very powerful, and now no one dared to meddle in this matter.

“You are Han people. Why bother to get involved in the affairs of the Li family?” Li Benqing kindly advised. “If the person who cast the curse gets angry that you’re interfering and curses you too, wouldn’t that be a disaster out of nowhere!”

The group naturally didn’t care about these things, but they couldn’t just say “we are atheist warriors” with great courage. This kind of talk would probably not be convincing.

“Don’t worry, old man,” Xiong Buyou comforted him. “We have science—”

“Is your science ghost very powerful?” Li Benqing’s counter-question left everyone at a loss for words. It turned out that the primitive religion of the Li people had no concept of gods; all supernatural forces were called “ghosts.”

As they were talking, Mu Min suddenly stepped forward and asked, “Since you said someone cast a curse, was it a ‘jin gong’ (male curser) or a ‘jin mu’ (female curser)?”

“I heard it was a ‘jin mu’. The aoyas have already had someone arrest this woman,” Li Benqing shook his head. “A good woman, I don’t know what evil possessed her.”

“This is bad,” Mu Min was a little anxious.

“What’s wrong?” Everyone was baffled.

Mu Min explained that whenever there was a so-called “cursing” incident, the daogong would name someone as the “curser.” A man was called a “jin gong,” and a woman was called a “jin mu.”

The person declared as a “jin gong” or “jin mu” was somewhat similar to the “witches” and “warlocks” of medieval Europe. Everyone was both afraid and resentful of them, believing that they could cast a curse to harm people at any time. As a result, once someone in a Li village was identified as a “jin gong” or “jin mu,” the crowd would often kill them. In some places, it was slightly more lenient, but they were still subjected to methods like torture and being forced to bathe naked, so-called “exorcism.” This phenomenon was only eliminated in the 1950s after strong intervention by the People’s Government.

Now that someone had been identified as a “jin mu,” this woman’s life was in danger.

[Note: The information about the “curse” of the Hainan Li people, including all the Li folk customs and social customs in this book, comes from the social survey materials of the Hainan ethnic minorities conducted by the government after the liberation. Many of the phenomena, customs, and habits mentioned in this book actually existed only from the Qing dynasty or even the late Qing dynasty. There is little available information on the Li people of the Ming dynasty.]