Chapter 58: Sweet Harbor Storm - Vietnamese Rice

Zhang Dabala didn’t know where they were going. The Guangning area was not a target for pirates, except for those small bands of sea bandits who were neither Vietnamese nor Chinese, both fishermen and robbers of fishermen, who were interested in operating here. Zhang Dabala looked down on these people. Chang Shide confirmed a principle from him: every social group has a hierarchy.

However, Zhang Dabala was familiar with the sea conditions in this area. When he first started his career, whenever he was down on his luck, he would slip away to Jiangping to lie low. This place was on the border between China and Vietnam, considered to be under Vietnamese jurisdiction, and the residents were water-dwellers who were half fishermen and half bandits.

At this point, the first dispute arose. Bei Kai wanted to go to Hon Gai—his mission was to find coal. It was only then that Chang Shide knew he was from the exploration team. Chang Shide, on the other hand, wanted to get rid of the sugar as soon as possible. Although he was ignorant of ancient Vietnamese geography, it was clear that there would be no buyers for sugar in Hon Gai.

“It doesn’t matter if you want to dig for coal. You can take your time to investigate and explore. But what about the sugar on the ship?”

In the end, Chang Shide won—the bags of sugar clearly couldn’t last long under the scorching sun of the South China Sea.

The ship, under the command of Zhang Dabala, sailed north. The number of ships on the sea increased, all of them two-masted fishing boats. Zhang Dabala told everyone to get their weapons ready. They took up positions around the ship’s rails and at the high points.

“Pirates?” Chang Shide was a little nervous.

“When they can’t beat you, they’re fishermen,” Zhang Dabala spat. “The monkeys’ eyes are sharp. If they don’t dare to rob, they’ll come to steal, anything they can get their hands on.”

“What is the Le dynasty’s attitude towards Ming merchants?” This was Chang Shide’s first time engaging in foreign trade, and he was a little nervous.

“They charge a thousand taels of silver a year for a document, so of course they welcome them,” Zhang Dabala said dismissively. He knew a little about the origins of the Australian sea merchants and was not impressed by their possession of guns, cannons, and iron ships while holing up as landlords in Lingao. “If we go to a more desolate place, we probably won’t need that much.”

“Where are we going?”

“Why ask so many questions? You’ll know when we get there,” Zhang Dabala waved his hand, showing no politeness to his boss.

The bandit spirit is still strong, Chang Shide cursed silently. Suddenly, he became worried. Zhang Dabala must have many accomplices in the pirate gangs. The thousand dan of sugar on the ship was worth thousands of taels of silver. What if he got any funny ideas… He broke out in a cold sweat, touched the pistol at his waist, and hurried to find Bei Kai. He whispered about what to do if this dark, fat pirate was unreliable.

Bei Kai said, “I can’t do anything about his reliability. Didn’t the Foreign Affairs Department find him? We have our New Army brothers on board. Can’t we handle him with thirty or forty guns? It’s fine.”

Before long, a town appeared on the coastline. It looked very similar to a small Chinese county town like Lingao, but it had no city walls. It seemed to be the mouth of a large river. Along the riverbank, there were stone piers and wooden jetties, crowded with ships of all sizes, some of which were clearly large ships from China.

Zhang Dabala told everyone to put the rifles and cannons below deck. There were Le dynasty officials stationed here. Before they could dock, a small boat rowed over. A man with shifty eyes and a small, thin build, wearing a greenish-blue official robe similar to that of a Ming official and a black gauze cap, climbed aboard with unusual agility. Zhang Dabala hurried to greet him. After the two of them chattered in a language no one could understand, Zhang Dabala turned to Chang Shide and said, “He says we can register our ship under the name of another Chinese ship that has already paid the fee, but we have to give him two hundred Spanish silver dollars.”

“Damn it, all crows under the sun are black,” Chang Shide cursed. Seeing the big man’s unfriendly expression, the Le dynasty official couldn’t help but puff out his small chest and adjust his black gauze cap to show his “authority.”

“Alright, give it to him. Is there any other money to be spent?” Chang Shide knew that unless he commanded a fleet to bombard this place, he couldn’t hope to get ashore without paying.

“There’s also the tax on goods coming in and out,” Zhang Dabala said. “If you spend a little money, you can pay less.”

“Damn it,” Chang Shide’s cursing escalated. But this was good; at least he could spend less money. “Deal.”

Zhang Dabala turned and whispered with him for a while, and finally, they settled on a price of three hundred and ten Spanish silver dollars—a large sum for private benefit and a small sum for taxes. As for what the cargo on the ship was and what they planned to transport away, this official, who was like a monkey in a hat and gown, didn’t care. Not only that, but he even issued the import and export documents, which were all written in Chinese characters. It seemed that everyone was happy, except for the Le dynasty government.

The ship then entered the port. According to Zhang Dabala, this place was called Hai Duong, a natural trading port. Chinese sea merchants often came here to trade, bringing large quantities of salt, porcelain, raw sugar, cloth, ironware, and other goods, and taking away mainly raw silk and betel nuts.

Chang Shide asked curiously, “How do you know about these things?”

Zhang Dabala scratched his head. “Our old boss was also a sea merchant back then—”

“Oh, right, right,” Chang Shide remembered. In this time and space, sea merchants and pirates were basically the same group of people.

Bei Kai whispered to Chang Shide, “This should be Haiphong.”

“How do you know?”

“The map,” Bei Kai opened his notebook and pointed. “This river should be the Kinh Thay River. It’s located on the northeast side of the Red River Delta, on the northwest coast of the Gulf of Tonkin. Based on the topographical features, it can only be here.”

Le Lin also came over and said, “That’s right, I just calculated the latitude and longitude…”

“Just forget it. Yesterday you said we were near Saigon.”

“I made a mistake yesterday! Today’s is correct—” Le Lin still wanted to argue.

“Alright, alright, let’s go ashore.”

Chang Shide and Bei Kai went ashore under the guidance of Zhang Dabala. They brought ten soldiers in plain clothes with them for protection. Although the houses here were small and simple, the market looked very prosperous, with people coming and going. Most people wore ocher-colored coarse cloth clothes. Besides their appearance and stature, their dress was quite similar to that of the Ming Dynasty. There were also people who were clearly from the Ming Dynasty. This place, like all the places in Southeast Asia where Chinese sea merchants had set foot, was a city of mixed Chinese and Vietnamese residents. Chinese merchant ships continuously brought in goods. Large quantities of goods tied with straw ropes were piled up on the pier, the amount quite astonishing.

“There are many people from the Ming Dynasty here,” Zhang Dabala said enthusiastically. “Some have taken local women as wives and have lived here for several generations. The sea merchants who come here all like to take concubines here—women are cheap, and it’s a comfortable nest to have when doing business.”

Chang Shide couldn’t help but think of his planned trip to Vietnam again, which was unfortunately nipped in the bud by his wife.

He had no mind to look around. He was in an unfamiliar place and could only trust Zhang Dabala. He inquired about the sugar price at several trading firms, and the price was between seven and eight taels. Then he inquired at a grain store here, and the price of rice was five qian per dan. He was absolutely satisfied with the price, but he soon discovered a fatal problem: the trading firms here were accustomed to buying on credit. After handing over the sugar to them, the account would only be settled the following year. But buying rice required ready cash.

Moreover, the merchants of these trading firms were clearly distrustful of his unfamiliar face. They would wait a long time before answering any of his questions.

“What kind of rule is this!” Chang Shide was very annoyed. He was about to say “these monkeys,” but then he remembered that the owners of these few trading firms, judging from their clothes and appearance, should be Ming merchants.

“Let’s go and check the grain store’s prices.”

Zhang Dabala said, “Manager Chang, you don’t necessarily need silver. Rice is also fine.”

“That’s right. I came here mainly to buy rice,” Chang Shide said.

“That’s easy,” Zhang Dabala said. “Hai Duong is a small place. Besides the Ming merchants, I’m afraid no one can come up with eight thousand taels of silver. But there are many local rich people who can exchange rice. We can just trade the sugar directly with them.”

“Are they willing?”

“Of course they are. They know what the sugar market is like. The Cochinchinese are not fools. It’s just that they don’t have that much silver, so they can’t get involved.”

So they rested for a while at a teahouse on the street and replenished their water. Zhang Dabala said that they would then go seven or eight li inland, where there was a plantation owned by a local big landlord, Vu Ngoc Giap.

“Vu Ngoc Giap’s ancestors were also Chinese,” Zhang Dabala introduced. “I heard they came here to escape the chaos at the end of the Yuan Dynasty and have been here for over three hundred years. His family has a lot of land and has raised several thousand retainers. Even the Le dynasty emperor is polite to him.”

“What a monkey in a hat and gown! Only the Ming Dynasty is qualified to be called an empire!” Chang Shide was already in a bad mood, and now he exploded.

Zhang Dabala found it strange. These Australians shouldn’t have much affection for the Ming Dynasty. He said casually, “He’s just playing emperor in his own home, just for the fun of it.”

After a short rest, the group continued to advance inland. It was spring now, and the subtropical land of Tonkin was already bright and beautiful. On both sides of the dirt road were vast fields of green and gold. The green was the rice seedlings trembling in the gentle breeze, and in the golden fields were the unharvested rice paddies. Under the hot sun, the fragrance of rice and seedlings filled the air. Farmers in purplish-brown coarse cloth were busy transplanting and harvesting.

A place that could harvest three seasons of rice a year was truly a natural granary. Chang Shide couldn’t help but show a greedy expression. Villages were scattered along the road, low and simple, but they looked peaceful. Around the villages were green bamboo forests, banana and papaya trees, and slender, straight betel nut trees that rose above all the other trees, their leaves swaying like flags.

From time to time, they could also see some farm women working in the fields. They wore triangular bamboo hats and tight-fitting purplish-brown cloth clothes with many patches, their heads, foreheads, cheeks, and chins tightly wrapped in brown cloth. Chang Shide couldn’t see their faces, but they all had the typical physique of Champa women: a long waistline, a slender and flexible waist, and low, wide hips. Although not the full-breasted, wide-hipped type he liked, they had a unique charm. This made Chang Shide’s heart begin to stir again.

“This is also a neglected resource,” he thought. I wonder how much it costs to buy a woman.

There were probably many who felt the same as him:

“This is a really good place,” the army soldiers whispered to each other.

“To be able to farm and live in a place like this, it’s worth dying for.”

“You have to have your own land. If you’re a tenant farmer, you’ll suffer for a lifetime.”

Chang Shide turned around and said to the soldiers, “If we give you land here, are you willing to come?”

The soldiers all laughed. “Of course we are!” “My whole family is willing to come.”

“What if the people here want to drive you away?”

“Then we’ll drive them all away!” they answered in unison.

“No, we have to leave the women behind! I don’t have a wife yet,” a young hothead interjected.

The group burst into laughter, which attracted the gazes of the nearby farmers in the fields.

Zhang Dabala could understand some Mandarin and also laughed. “Manager Chang, are you planning to buy land here?”

“That’s for the future,” Chang Shide said casually, just to boost morale and give the soldiers and workers some not-so-distant hope.

As they were talking and laughing, an elephant slowly came down the road. Most of the soldiers had never seen this behemoth and were a little scared.

“Don’t be afraid, it’s an elephant. They’re very timid. Don’t startle it!” Chang Shide instructed.

Zhang Dabala whispered, “Don’t panic, Manager. That’s the plantation steward of Vu Ngoc Giap on patrol.”

“Riding an elephant for a stroll? What a grand display.”

“Manager Chang, you just urinated on Vu Ngoc Giap’s land.”

“…” Chang Shide was instantly deflated. The ostentation of this big landlord was truly impressive.

The person riding the elephant was wearing black clothes and a conical hat, holding a long whip. Although small and thin, he looked quite majestic. He was followed by more than a dozen retainers in black clothes.

Zhang Dabala ran over and seemed to be talking. After a while, he returned and said, “The steward invites you to the plantation for a visit. This is a good sign!”

Although he still had some doubts about Zhang Dabala’s reliability, he couldn’t just say there might be a security problem and not go. So he braced himself and went along.

Chang Shide’s group was taken by the steward to a plantation. The plantation was a somewhat strange Chinese-style courtyard, with carved railings and painted beams, very ornate, but it just didn’t look right. Chang Shide and Bei Kai did not receive the expected warm and lavish reception. After waiting for a long time and drinking tea until it was tasteless, a middle-aged man came out. He looked quite respectable. After some communication through Zhang Dabala, Chang Shide learned that this person was just a steward in the plantation. He couldn’t help but feel a pang of being neglected—he was now a high-ranking official in the transmigrator group, and he couldn’t even see a Vietnamese landowner?!

[Note: Because I couldn’t find enough ancient Vietnamese historical materials, most of the details about Vietnamese history in this article and the following are speculation. Whether Haiphong was called Hai Duong is to be verified, but the general location is similar.]