Chapter 152: The Foshan Trip, Part Eighteen

The Leizhou Sugar Company had recently found a wheelwright in Leizhou, where almost every sugarcane farmer owned an ox-cart. However, the wheelwright they found specialized in making a solid, spokeless type of wheel for the local sugarcane carts. While durable, these wheels were incredibly heavy and completely unsuitable for their needs.

“What kind of wheels does he make? Do they have spokes?”

“Would it be a wheel without spokes?” Huang Ande asked, puzzled.

The man he was talking about was named Bao Lei. He ran a wheel-making workshop in Foshan. Bao Lei was not a local; he had drifted down from the north and settled in Foshan over twenty years ago.

Technically, Bao Lei was a fugitive. His family had been official artisans for generations, specializing in making vehicles for the army, and he possessed a unique skill in wheel-making.

In the Ming dynasty, being an official artisan was a hereditary duty. It was a form of forced labor established by the first Ming emperor, not a welfare position. It was a far cry from the modern-day factory worker with high benefits and pay that everyone clamored for. In the Ming dynasty, the status of an official artisan was only slightly better than that of a slave.

Bao Lei grew up in such a family, inheriting the craft of wheel-making. But he soon discovered that being an official artisan was worse than being a slave. A slave owner at least knew to feed his slaves well so they could work, but an official artisan was practically starving.

So one day, Bao Lei ran away.

His escape was not dramatic; there were no wire fences to cross or walls to climb. He simply packed up his few belongings into a handcart he had made himself and left with his family. No one asked where he was going. After some time, the perfunctory government officials listed his entire family as “missing.”

Abandoning one’s artisan status without paying the exemption fee was equivalent to desertion. But in the late Ming dynasty, such things were no longer a big deal. Still, Bao Lei’s family was nervous, so they fled all the way to Guangdong, which in their minds was the southernmost part of the Ming empire. If they had known about Qiongzhou further south, they might have ended up on Hainan Island.

But life after escaping was not much better. He found that people here didn’t use carts much, and despite his skills, business was slow. Fortunately, Foshan was a commercially developed area with some cart businesses, so he could just about make a living.

Now, Bao Lei’s life had become unbearable. The government had somehow remembered him. With the province-wide cannon casting effort, the demand for gun carriages had suddenly surged, and all artisans related to vehicle manufacturing were conscripted. Bao Lei’s family was caught in the net. He and his sons were drafted. His eldest son, who had just completed his apprenticeship at a workshop in Guangzhou, was also conscripted to Foshan, resulting in an unexpected family reunion.

“If they are official artisans, how can we take them away?”

“Don’t worry, sir, they’ve been bought out,” Huang Ande whispered. “They were working day and night making gun carriages, not getting paid a single coin, and their food was being withheld. I hear many have already died. This Bao Lei sold his workshop and all his belongings in Foshan to bribe the supervising official and escape.”

He had escaped, but he was now destitute, his life’s savings gone. His eldest son, Bao Boqing, still had a place to go; he could return to his old workshop in Guangzhou. Life would be hard, but he could manage. But Bao Lei, his wife, and his younger son had nowhere to go, not even a place to stay.

“They’ve been living in a ruined temple all this time. The father and son have been doing odd carpentry jobs in the market to get by, but they’re about to go under. They are all willing to go to Lin’gao with you, sir.”

When Huang Ande brought Bao Lei, Huang Tianyu studied the man before him. He looked like the other common people he had seen in the refugee quarantine camp in Lin’gao—small, thin, and shriveled. His exposed skin was rough from years of labor, and his eyes were dull and lifeless. For a moment, Huang Tianyu thought he was blind.

The man looked very old. Huang Ande told him that Bao Lei was about fifty, which in this era meant he had one foot in the grave.

“You are Bao Lei?”

“Yes… I am Bao Lei,” he replied with the characteristic slowness of a man worn down by years of hard labor.

“You are a wheelwright?”

“Yes, I can make wheels,” Bao Lei said, then added, “I can also do general carpentry…”

“Are you willing to go to Lin’gao?”

“I am,” Bao Lei nodded. “As long as you’ll give me a meal to eat, sir.”

“Do you have any other requests?”

Bao Lei’s request was simple: he hoped they would also hire his younger son, so the whole family could have food. Huang Tianyu readily agreed, not only to hire the son but also to take his wife. There was plenty of work to be done in Lin’gao.

After taking in Bao Lei’s family, Huang Tianyu, through him, recruited a dozen more unemployed artisans who had been bought out or had escaped from the artisan camps. They had various skills related to vehicle manufacturing, enough to form a complete workshop. Although he hadn’t managed to recruit many foundry workers, he had at least assembled a full team of vehicle makers, which would be of great use to the Industrial and Energy Committee.

The workers recruited and the materials purchased in Foshan were all handed over to the Qiwei branch for transport. Liu San was busy attending banquets and visiting guests. After being invited by the Baihu, he had suddenly become a local celebrity. He and Yang Shixiang were happy to socialize; such business connections were always welcome.

“Doctor Liu has been running around to all the pharmacies these days,” a clerk reported. “He buys every kind of patent medicine—pills, powders, pastes, and elixirs. He buys several of each and writes labels for them. I don’t know what he’s planning.”

Li Luoyou sat in his study, listening to a young clerk report on the activities of Yang Shixiang and Liu San. His interest in these men far surpassed Lin Ming’s.

“A manager named Huang, who is with Doctor Liu, never goes to the pharmacies. He only visits the kilns and foundries, and frequents the teahouses. His men are recruiting workers everywhere…”

“Recruiting workers?” Li Luoyou listened intently and then asked.

“I’ve made inquiries. It seems they’ll take any kind of worker—pharmacy clerks, kiln workers, foundry artisans, carpenters, wheelwrights…” the clerk said. “He even takes old and frail artisans that other workshops don’t want, and he allows them to bring their families.”

In the old days, it was customary for larger businesses to provide food and lodging for their employees, who were not allowed to go home at night. They were given a few days off each month, or in some cases, only a few days a year. A clerk whose family lived far away might only be able to visit home once every three years. This applied not only to ordinary clerks but also to head clerks, managers, and even shopkeepers, as long as they were not the “owner.” So, allowing employees to bring their families was a very strange thing.

Li Luoyou nodded, gave the clerk five qian of silver, and dismissed him. It seemed the Australians were setting up their own factories and workshops in Lin’gao, which was why they were recruiting artisans from all trades. The so-called “Australian goods” were actually “Lin’gao goods”—or at least they would be soon.

Allowing them to bring their families was a way to ensure the artisans would work peacefully in Lin’gao, and perhaps also to prevent them from escaping.

“I would like to see what kind of medicine they are planning to sell in this gourd of Lin’gao.”

“Selling medicine?” Quark’s voice came from outside. He had just returned from inspecting a new shipment of silk samples and had selected a few.

“Yes, someone wants to sell medicine,” Li Luoyou said. “Have you made your selection?”

“I have.” Quark’s capital was not large. He was a typical small English merchant, like one from a Swift novel, who had crossed the seas with a few hundred pounds in search of fortune. He was very shrewd, always carefully selecting his goods from Li Luoyou, only buying what would yield the greatest profit.

Li Luoyou used him to establish contact with the English East India Company and even with England itself. He was no longer satisfied with just doing business with the Portuguese. As for the Spanish in Manila, Li Luoyou disliked them intensely. He considered them to be just like the Manchus—crude, barbaric, constantly exploiting the Han Chinese, and always restricting and viewing them with hostility. They were comparable to the Manchus. The Manila massacre during the Wanli era was a particularly sore point for Li Luoyou, and he never did business on the Manila route.

Quark’s direct connection to England also gave him the possibility of purchasing European books and instruments. He could get these things from the Jesuits, but it was clear that the Jesuits would not procure certain books that the Church disapproved of. In comparison, Protestant England was more lenient.

“You’re talking about those Australians, aren’t you?”

“The very same,” Li Luoyou smiled. “This group of Australians is always full of surprises.” He then recounted the news he had gathered from the clerk.

“…Building a fortress in Lin’gao is one thing, but this looks like they’re preparing to build workshops and factories there,” Li Luoyou said, shaking his head. “I really don’t understand. If it’s for trade, setting up a trading post and a fort would be enough. Why recruit so many workers?”

Quark listened and shook his head. “I don’t think the Australians are here for trade. It looks more like they’re here to colonize.”

“Colonize?” Li Luoyou was taken aback. He had some knowledge of colonization, which he understood to mean immigration and settlement.

“Unlikely,” he shook his head. “If they were colonizing, they would look for open, uncultivated land, like that place you told me about, what was it called, A-mei-zhou?”

“America…” Quark said.

“Exactly. I hear the land there is fertile and sparsely populated, with only some savages. It makes sense to immigrate and settle there. But Lin’gao is a county of the Great Ming, an official administrative region since the Han dynasty. Why would foreigners need to colonize it?”

“That’s hard to say,” Quark said. “I hear they are of the same race and culture as the Chinese. Perhaps they feel they have the right.”