Chapter 276: The Typhoon Arrives

“There’s no problem with the carts. I’ll give you ten more, twenty ‘Purple Electrics.’ But the committee probably won’t approve any more loudspeakers,” Wu De said. “We can’t always be thinking about making noise. Think about other means that the masses would love to see, something simpler, preferably without electricity.”

“We must ensure the lasting effectiveness of the propaganda offensive,” Dingding instructed his “generals” at a special meeting of the Propaganda Department. “The interval for the propaganda vehicles to tour each village must be shortened as much as possible—”

“Report!”

“We are the Propaganda Department, not the army. There’s no need for that,” Dingding corrected the trainee from the propaganda training class who had stood up stiffly to report to him—these people had been trained by the army to have a conditioned reflex. “Just say it directly.”

“Yes,” the man gave a standard German-style heel-click salute. Ji Denggao had originally made a living as a fortune-teller in Guangzhou—a profession with a huge gap between rich and poor. Ji Denggao’s skills were not good, and he was on the verge of starving to death on the street when he was saved by a routine rescue operation by the Guangzhou Station. He was then sent to Lin’gao. After a few months of study, he came to the Propaganda Department to use his glib tongue.

“There are still too few propaganda vehicles. It takes forty days for them to complete a cycle and return,” Ji Denggao reported. “A few more would be great. The big loudspeakers are very useful.”

“We have the carts, but no more big loudspeakers,” Dingding shook his head. Just as Wu De had estimated, because the high-powered loudspeakers were equipment that could not be self-produced in a short time, the Planning Committee was very strict with them and refused to give out any more.

“Can we have more gongs and drums?”

“Sure.” Although he said so, there might not be any in stock. Gongs and drums were simple things, but they couldn’t be bought in Lin’gao—in this remote small county, any handicraft with a little technical content was unavailable. They had to be bought from at least the prefectural city.

“With more gongs and drums, we can organize a few lion dance teams…”

“Lion dance?!” Dingding realized, how could he not have thought of this! This was a mass cultural and recreational activity that the Chinese people loved to see.

“There are artisans who can make the lions, and there are people who can perform the dance,” Ji Denggao was from Guangdong and was very familiar with activities like the lion dance. “The country folk love a lively scene. With a lion dance, it’s easy to gather a crowd.”

“Good. That’s a great idea,” Dingding wrote a note in his notebook: slogans should be written on the lions’ bodies.

Ji Denggao’s first suggestion was accepted, and his face was flushed with excitement. “Thank you, sir!”

“You’re in charge of this,” Dingding wrote a letter of authorization and stamped it with the great seal of the Propaganda Department. “First, organize ten lion dance teams. I’ll go to the Planning Committee for the gongs and drums and the materials for making the lions.” He added, “It’s an amateur activity, but we can give them a small allowance. It’s good for everyone’s entertainment.”

“Understood, I’ll get right on it!” Ji Denggao knew he had been entrusted with a great responsibility, and his eyes shone. He couldn’t help but let slip some “old talk.” The natives called the Mandarin spoken by the Australians “new talk,” and the local dialect “old talk.”

While Ji Denggao’s lion dance teams were still being formed, a common autumn typhoon in Lin’gao arrived. The strong winds and heavy rain washed away the slogans and notices, temporarily extinguishing the fiery propaganda offensive and halting the Transmigration Group’s whirlwind Great Leap Forward.

The combined effect of the typhoon from the Gulf of Tonkin and the cold air from the north brought this typhoon to a level 11 or higher, far exceeding the several force 8-9 gales of the summer.

The cold air and the tropical typhoon stirred up monstrous waves, and the rain poured down. The Wenlan River rose rapidly—summer was originally the rainy season in Lin’gao, with abundant rainfall, and the water level of the Wenlan River was already high. With this heavy rain, floods immediately broke out in the middle and lower reaches.

Before the typhoon arrived, the newly established meteorological observatory in the Gaoshanling area issued a timely weather warning—of course, not from satellite cloud images, but from barometers and radar. The weather radar on the Fengcheng was a true “divine artifact”; it predicted the arrival of the typhoon even earlier than the barometer.

The Transmigration Group had not encountered a typhoon in the autumn of 1628, but the Executive Committee was aware of the typhoon problem in Hainan. Lin’gao had an average of five gales of force 8 or higher per year. It was the place with the least wind damage on Hainan Island. The Transmigration Group had still taken certain precautions against wind and flood in its construction. It turned out that this extra investment was necessary—the typhoon of 1629 was fierce, with heavy rain, strong winds, and floods sweeping through the Wenlan River basin, destroying houses and fields, carrying away people and livestock, and submerging equipment… The Transmigration Group had taken all preventive measures in advance: reinforcing facilities, transferring materials, rushing to harvest grain, and evacuating personnel, but immovable buildings and heavy equipment were still damaged. The waves destroyed part of the wharf facilities at Bopu, throwing more than ten ships onto the shore. Half of the wooden houses in the quarantine camp were destroyed.

The industrial enterprises suffered great losses. The glass factory had part of its roof blown off by the strong wind, and three annealing furnaces were destroyed by the rain. The factory had to stop work for repairs. Some of the towers and pipelines of the chemical plant were blown down by the strong wind. Due to the destruction of houses and roads and the flooding of some factory buildings, all the industrial enterprises under the Industrial and Energy Committee were forced to stop production. The power lines from Bopu to Bairen were cut in the middle, and the wired telephone and the newly laid wired telegraph were also completely interrupted. The road was washed out in many places, and the road from Bopu to Bairen was completely cut off.

The breeding base of the Agriculture Committee suffered serious losses to its sheds and enclosures, but the livestock had been transferred and suffered no losses. Some fields were destroyed, but all the standardized farmland withstood the wind and rain with little damage, verifying the effectiveness of the standardized construction of farmland.

Hundreds of houses collapsed in Bairen City and the Bopu base. In particular, more than half of the simple dormitories in Bairen City were destroyed—fortunately, most of the transmigrators no longer lived in the dormitories. Their personal belongings had also been safely stored in warehouses converted from containers before the typhoon arrived.

Personnel and materials were evacuated and transferred in time thanks to the meteorological observatory’s warning, and the losses were not great. The National School was closed in advance, and all the children were transferred to the base in the Gaoshanling area for shelter. The materials of the Great Library and important equipment had also been transferred to the relatively safe Gaoshanling area long ago.

But the losses of the common people were quite serious, especially in the Wenlan River basin, which was flooded due to the rapid rise of the river. Many families who had not yet finished harvesting their grain suffered heavy losses. Many houses were destroyed, and there were many casualties among people and livestock.

The port of Bopu, just ravaged by the typhoon, was a mess. Debris from the sea and from the land floated in the water, including the bodies of people and animals, their bellies bloated. The primitive cranes built on the shore in the early days had been washed away, and tens of meters of the wooden pier had been destroyed. The ships that had been thrown ashore lay on their sides on the beach. A group of workers was dismantling the hulls to recycle the wood.

On the stone embankment of the wharf, there were scattered remnants of burnt incense and paper ashes. Many families who had lost their loved ones in the typhoon, with no sign of the living and no body of the dead, could only offer sacrifices on the shore.

The health department organized laborers to salvage the floating bodies of people and animals in the harbor. A stench of corruption from all kinds of corpses filled the port. The shadow of a plague loomed over the Transmigration Group.

The members of the Transmigration Group usually had no direct experience with natural disasters, only feeling their power on television. Now they found that they not only had to face natural disasters, but also their consequences—in other words, this time, the rescue and relief work was not the job of the People’s Liberation Army, but the job of the Executive Committee.

“Alright, we have to temporarily put aside our various tasks and focus on rescue and recovery work first,” Wen Desi said helplessly at the emergency meeting of the Executive Committee.

Shan Daoqian accepted the task and quickly repaired the damaged roads and communication lines to ensure contact between the various bases—without contact, people’s hearts would inevitably waver, and this was true for both transmigrators and native personnel. It was necessary to appease the people immediately. The Executive Committee sent out several teams to visit and comfort the bases that had been cut off. For this purpose, they even reactivated a few of the agricultural vehicles and off-road motorcycles that had been sealed away.

The Ministry of Health organized personnel to clean up the corpses and garbage, and to disinfect and prevent epidemics with bleach; the Agriculture Committee repaired the embankments and canals; the construction company repaired the damaged houses and facilities; the army and militia were stationed at key points to control the situation and clear the debris…

These were all expected matters, but the most difficult problem also followed—refugees appeared. In the three or four days after the typhoon, hundreds of refugees had already flocked to the county town to beg. They did not dare to go to the East Gate Market because there was a rule against beggars there.

News from all over indicated that the disaster was quite serious this year. Wu De sent people to various places to order the village liaison officers to come to a meeting immediately to report the situation.

“Prepare to set up gruel sheds and build temporary camps,” the Executive Committee issued an order to the Civil Affairs Committee. “Shelter and relieve the refugees!”

The refugees had lost their houses and grain and could only flee. This would not only result in the loss of valuable population, but a large number of mobile people could also easily cause an outbreak of plague.

The Civil Affairs Committee immediately set up a refugee reception station outside the county town and outside the East Gate Market to relieve the homeless refugees whose houses had collapsed. In addition, they also prepared to set up gruel sheds in several markets throughout the county and open the granaries to relieve the people.

“You should go and pay a visit to Wu Mingjin right away. We need to talk to him about the disaster relief.”

Wu Mingjin was also very enthusiastic about this matter. After Xiong Buyou visited him, he personally ordered the county granary to be opened and grain to be allocated.

“The situation of the county treasury, I believe you are much clearer about it than I am,” Wu Mingjin said with a worried look. “The accounts are balanced, but as for how much grain there is…” he said, giving a classic Chinese bureaucratic sigh and shake of the head, indicating that he knew the situation was very bad, but there was nothing he could do, and of course, he would not take responsibility.