Chapter 165: The Nanbao Highway

Wu De returned to the Executive Committee meeting room. “It will take twenty days for the goods to arrive! Wu Nan Hai will definitely have an opinion.”

“There’s nothing to be done, even if he has an opinion. The road from Nanbao to Bairen is not short by ancient standards, and Nanbao itself is hilly, so the road is not easy to travel,” Ma Qianzhu said, looking at the map for a long time. “Let’s just move up the plan to build a simple highway to Nanbao, which was originally scheduled for next year. For a one-time emergency requisition, we can have the villages deliver it. But for long-term utilization of the resources there, a highway is essential.”

The Nanbao area was a concentrated region of Lin’gao’s mineral resources, including lignite, limonite, peat, kaolin, and limestone, as well as many agricultural and forestry resources and tungsten ore from the Li ethnic areas. It had great practical value for the transmigrators’ industry and agriculture. However, due to long-term transportation difficulties and the presence of a Ming army garrison near Nanbao, the transmigrators’ connection with Nanbao was weak. So far, only the exploration team, the bandit suppression detachment, and the trade caravans to the Li areas had been there. Building a highway would not only be of great benefit for utilizing the local resources but would also further strengthen the connection with the Li areas of Lin’gao. Currently, due to the inconvenient roads, a trade team was sent to Nanan Dong only once every two or three months. The resources of the Li villages could not be fully utilized, and the penetration and control over the Li areas were insufficient.

“I support building the highway,” Wu De said. “Otherwise, if this kind of requisition becomes a regular thing, it will become a great tyranny. I often have contact with the local elders, and I feel that what the common people fear most is endless corvée labor. I can understand this. The most important thing in the countryside is able-bodied men. A family without a strong laborer is like the sky has fallen. With a highway, travel will be much more convenient, and we can also use vehicles to transport goods, which will increase transportation efficiency.”

The distance to Nanbao was not far by modern standards. From Bairen City, following the Wenlan River upstream and taking the S306 highway, passing through Lin’gao County town and heading south into the hilly area, one would soon reach the modern location of Nanbao Town. The entire journey was less than 31 kilometers, a 20-30 minute drive by car. But in this era, it was a two or three-day journey. The dirt roads in the wilderness, and the villagers having to carry the coal on their shoulders or push it in handcarts—the amount of labor consumed was imaginable.

He rang the bell on his desk. A young boy of fifteen or sixteen appeared at the office door. He wore a black native cloth student uniform with a standing collar and a wooden access badge on his chest.

“You called me, Director?” the boy asked respectfully in his less-than-fluent Mandarin.

“Please ask the People’s Commissar for Transportation and the manager of the General Construction Company to come to my office,” Ma Qianzhu said with an air of authority.

“Right away, Director!” The boy gave a solemn nod and turned to leave.

The office etiquette education was not bad. Ma Qianzhu appreciated the superior-subordinate etiquette in the offices of leaders in Soviet films—serious, formal, and imbued with a meticulous Soviet style.

The boy’s name was Hou Wenyong. He was an orphan who had been taken in by the Guangzhou station with his sister. Because the siblings had a good cultural foundation, his sister had entered the Ministry of Health and was now receiving nursing training. Hou Wenyong quickly passed the Class B diploma examination at the national school. Just as the General Office needed to add a batch of reliable administrative trainees to serve the various departments, Hou Wenyong, after passing the political review by the Political Security Bureau, was admitted to the Military and Political School. He studied at the school for three days a week and worked at the Planning Committee for three days.

The People’s Commissar for Transportation, Shan Daoqian, was racking his brains at the Bopu railway dispatch center, designing a block signaling system for the railway operation. The track layout in the Bopu area was quite dense, and the original simple flag signaling was too inefficient.

He was somewhat surprised to be suddenly summoned to the Planning Committee office. The transportation department had not had much to do recently, mainly maintaining and upgrading the existing roads.

When Ma Qianzhu saw that both of them had arrived, he presented them with the idea of building a simple highway from Bairen to Nanbao.

“It’s too hasty,” Mei Wan felt it was abrupt. “The rainy season has just begun. If it rains continuously, it will be very difficult to build the road. It would be the same to build it in the dry season.”

“The purpose of building the road is to transport the mineral resources from the Nanbao area,” Ma Qianzhu said. “Right now, Nanbao has the resources we urgently need, but we can’t get them out!”

“If the Executive Committee agrees, our Ministry of Transportation has no objection,” said Shan Daoqian. Although his specialty was railways, he could manage with highways. He looked at the map and asked:

“The outbound goods are mainly minerals?”

“Yes.”

“How many vehicles are expected to pass through per day?”

“It’s unclear,” Ma Qianzhu said. The development potential of Nanbao’s mineral resources was great, but it was still hard to say what the mining capacity would be.

“For bulk cargo transportation, the most reliable means of transport we have are ox-carts,” Shan Daoqian calculated. “I’ll have to find Li Chiqi and order new heavy-duty freight carts. We also don’t have enough oxen.”

“As for the oxen, contact the Foreign Commerce Committee. They are now in charge of the Changhua Fort. Have them purchase another batch from the Li people. The Changhua Fort itself has some oxen in stock.”

“Alright.”

“The road surface requirements for this kind of highway are not high,” Mei Wan said. “But the Nanbao area is a hilly region. The road may have many ups and downs, and heavy-duty freight carts may not be able to pass.”

Ma Qianzhu said, “The Nanbao area is hilly, not mountainous. It won’t be so massive as to require cutting through mountains and digging tunnels. At most, we can take a detour and try to make the road surface as flat as possible.”

“I’ll have someone check the route selection for the S306 highway from Lin’gao County town to Nanbao Town in the 20th century,” Mei Wan said, flipping through his work manual. “I’ll organize a survey team when I get back.” He then remembered something else:

“There’s a patrol station in Nanbao that specifically inspects people entering and leaving the Li areas…”

“It’s fine. The patrol inspector there is very sensible,” Ma Qianzhu said, indicating that it was not a problem. “After we reached a peace agreement with the county, this patrol inspector also got a share of the benefits. He has never bothered our trade caravans to the Li areas. He probably won’t bother us about building the road either.”

“And there’s the garrison town discovered in mission 221629050705.”

“The garrison town is relatively remote. The highway can bypass it. But we don’t need to bypass it by much—we’ll handle it the same way as the county town.” As the chief of the general staff, Ma Qianzhu had long known about the situation of the town and scoffed at the combat effectiveness of this so-called military fortress. “They’ll just hide in the city. I think we should just let the army handle the road construction this time. If the Ming army in the garrison doesn’t know what’s good for them, we’ll just carry out a ‘rectification’ of this garrison town.”

And so, the matter of the Bairen-Nanbao simple highway was decided. The Agriculture Committee, led by Wu Nan Hai, still did not know that their farmland development had triggered a series of subsequent events like a butterfly effect. At this time, the Agriculture Committee was concentrating its efforts on the construction of the Meitaiyang farmland water conservancy, while also strengthening the late-stage management of the first batch of rice planted in the spring in February, striving to set a record in the experimental fields to build momentum for the subsequent promotion of the Heaven and Earth Society’s agricultural technology.

According to the accumulated temperature of modern Lin’gao, rice could be planted in January. But out of caution, Wu Nan Hai still followed the local farmers’ custom and delayed the sowing period to February. Facts proved that his worries were somewhat justified; in January, there was an extreme minimum temperature of 3-5°C.

During the rice seedling stage, the temperature must be at least 10°C. Although he did not have the full year’s accumulated temperature data for Lin’gao, Wu Nan Hai judged that in 1629, Lin’gao could probably only plant two crops. The first crop, due to insufficient accumulated temperature, would have to be delayed until May or June for harvest, and the second crop, with a shorter growing period, could probably be harvested in October. This was consistent with the information he had gathered from the farm workers. It was clear that there was a reason why Lin’gao in this era did not plant three seasons of rice.

The first batch of rice sown in February covered five hundred mu, of which two hundred mu were high-yield experimental fields that had undergone farmland water conservancy transformation last year and had been given sufficient base fertilizer. The other three hundred mu were so-called “rain-fed fields.” In these three hundred mu, besides the hybrid rice, Wu Nan Hai also experimentally planted some short-stalk, lodging-resistant rice varieties to see what kind of results they could achieve without the support of modern agricultural resources.

After sowing, without herbicides, chemical fertilizers, or pesticides, and relying entirely on traditional farming methods, Wu Nan Hai and Fa Shilu squatted in the rice fields every day, constantly exchanging farming experiences with Wang Tian and the farm workers under their command, trying to come up with various local methods to deal with the problems they faced.

Farming without modern agricultural resources was initially a very painful experience for the members of the Agriculture Committee who were accustomed to modern agriculture. None of them had ever truly foreseen how great the petrochemical agriculture, which was so reviled by the environmentally conscious yuppies, was.

Originally, only about 50 kilograms of chemical fertilizer per mu were needed to ensure a high yield. Now, half a ton of base fertilizer was needed per mu, plus several top dressings. The two hundred mu of high-yield fields had almost consumed all the fertilizer accumulated by Wu Nan Hai over the past six months, resulting in a serious shortage of fertilizer for the other three hundred mu.

Then came the weeds, rice rust, rice blast, insect pests… all the problems of the rice growing season appeared one by one. These problems were easy to solve in the modern era, but here they became arduous labor. Before the chemical industry department could produce calcium chlorate, weeding was done manually by Wang Tian and the farm workers. As for pesticides, they searched for various local pesticide formulas in the Great Library and even set up a manual workshop to prepare them. When one didn’t work, they would try another… one by one, they overcame the difficulties.

Now that the rice was about to finish its grain-filling stage, at Wan Lihui’s suggestion, they began to drain the paddy fields for sun-drying. Sun-drying could reduce lodging, reduce the occurrence of insect pests, and harden the ground, which was beneficial for harvesting. It was very beneficial for increasing the yield. But mastering the timing had a certain skill—judging the right time was the most important task of the key farming personnel. Wan Lihui’s family had been growing rice for generations, and he had a lot of experience in this.