Chapter 308: The Brothers' Reunion

Ruan Xiaoer ordered several dishes, including the famous local dish, roasted suckling pig. However, the waiter said that this dish had recently been banned by the “Great Official of Dongmen.” Dongmen Chuoyu held a position of great authority in Dongmen City. It’s unknown who jokingly gave him this nickname, but soon the natives started calling him that as well.

“The Great Official of Dongmen said that eating small pigs is a waste; they should be raised until they are bigger before being eaten. If you insist on eating it, you can, but you’ll have to pay an additional tax, and this tax is enough to eat ten small pigs,” the waiter said. “You see, it’s not worth it, is it? Our restaurant has another dish, roasted meat on a spit, which tastes very good. Even Master Liu loves it…”

“Alright, then give us a portion of roasted meat,” Ruan Xiaoer said.

The three brothers had not met for a long time. The opportunity to gather like this, drink, and talk was rare. Everyone’s life was very full—completely different from the past. Back then, they were busy every day looking for a livelihood, toiling all day without getting a full meal, and suffering all kinds of hardships. But now, their busy lives made them feel that their lives had meaning.

Ruan Xiaoer had become very proficient in operating the heavy cannons on the beacon tower. As a key NCO, he was now training new coastal gunners. Two new heavy cannons had been brought to the naval firing range. It was unknown where they would be installed, but the order to train the gunners was very urgent.

Ruan Xiaoer was good at operating the cannons and equally good at training new recruits. He had come up with his own set of gunnery rhymes, turning the procedures and key points of operating the cannons at each station into catchy jingles. This was not easy, because although Li Di supported his approach, he required the rhymes to be in “Newspeak.” The original Cantonese jingles that Ruan Xiaoer had composed were no longer catchy.

A few days after he raised this issue, Li Di found Wang Tao for him. Wang Tao was a semi-professional performing artist, and it was easy for him to compose jingles in Mandarin. This set of rhymes was used as it was composed and achieved good results. After Li Di reported it to Chen Haiyang, it was decided to promote this model. Ruan Xiaoer even received a commendation from the Naval People’s Commissar for this.

Ruan Xiaoqi was not only learning “advanced” subjects like mathematics, geometry, and physics, but also frequently went to the machine factory for internships to understand the structure and operating principles of steam engines, visited the Type 8154 fishing vessel to observe its hull structure, and studied the effect of waves on different ship models in the large naval tank built by Wen Desi.

All this opened up an unprecedented door for this fisherman’s child, making Ruan Xiaoqi incredibly excited. He absorbed all the knowledge instilled in him like a sponge. Sometimes, due to his poor basic knowledge, he would have indigestion, so he would rely on his memory to swallow it whole. Soon, Ruan Xiaoqi became one of the most outstanding students in the junior class of the naval cadet program.

All the things that children of his age liked no longer interested him. All his spare time was spent on studying. His favorite thing was the top-secret picture albums that could only be borrowed from the library with a naval cadet’s student ID, and they were not allowed to be taken out of the reading room. This kind of picture album was unique to the Australians. Everything in it was lifelike, containing warships that only the Australian navy had, giant ships of steel, cannons thicker than a man… Every time, Ruan Xiaoqi would be mesmerized.

This series of picture albums, which promoted the incomparable might of the Transmigration Group, was produced by a special team in the propaganda department, specifically for brainwashing the future native elites that the Transmigration Group was preparing to cultivate. All the pictures were selected and photoshopped to remove any content that was inconvenient to explain. There were also standards for selecting the content of the pictures. For example, the highest-class warships in the naval picture albums were only at the level of pre-dreadnoughts from before 1900, and only a few of them appeared from beginning to end. The picture albums featured a large number of sailing warships and old-fashioned sail-steam hybrid warships. This was to avoid giving the natives the impression that the Australians’ technology was regressing. In this way, they could later claim that dreadnoughts, aircraft carriers, and submarines were invented by the Transmigration Group. Of course, the captions for the pictures were also all fictional literature, written by Lin Shenhe. However, to avoid writing the captions too ornately and creating conflicts with the future fabricated history of the Australian state, he was required to keep the descriptions as vague and simple as possible to avoid having too many loopholes to patch up later. As for the year and date, they were all omitted to avoid affecting the future compilation of historical records.

The three brothers had rich and colorful experiences, but at this moment, after a long separation, they had a thousand words to say but didn’t know where to start. The concept of secrecy instilled in them by the navy prevented the Ruan brothers from making their exciting professional lives a topic of conversation.

Not knowing what to say, the three of them turned their gazes to the street outside the private room’s window.

Dongmen City had now become a small town. The thousands of immigrants brought in from the mainland by the Transmigration Group had expanded the customer base, and the wages paid to the employees, the remuneration for the laborers, and the payments to local suppliers provided the material basis for commercial prosperity. The prosperity of the market brought vitality, not only attracting many local people to settle nearby, but also many people from the mainland: small vendors, bankrupt craftsmen, unemployed clerks, down-and-out prostitutes, and many others who had nothing came to Dongmen City, hoping to get a piece of the pie from this prosperity.

The one vertical and two horizontal streets originally planned for Dongmen City had gradually been filled with houses, and there was not much of the original large open space left. Because of the good planning, not only was there space for shops, pedestrians, and vehicles, but also a reserved area for street vendors, with squares drawn with white lines. Some of the wasteland could also be used to set up stalls.

New coconut tree saplings were planted on both sides of the street. Using the biogas from the public toilets and the garbage disposal station, Wang Luobin had installed biogas street lamps for the entire Dongmen City. Recently, a gasifier had been built to specifically produce coal gas to supplement the biogas, which had an inconsistent supply and sometimes even went out suddenly.

Thanks to the sufficient supply of coal gas, not only were the street lamps extended from the main street of Dongmen Street to the side roads, but many large shops willing to pay the connection fee also installed gas lamps. The large sewer built under the street during the initial planning played a major role in laying the gas pipes. If it weren’t for the restriction on steel production to save steel, Wang Luobin would have wanted to completely gaslight the entire Dongmen City.

Even so, the night lighting of the entire Dongmen City was already quite brilliant. The dim old-fashioned lanterns lit by candles had disappeared from the lighting system of Dongmen City, except for decorative purposes. Even if someone still lit a candle, it was the much brighter “Australian candle.”

The cheap and bright lighting not only brought benefits in terms of public security but also led to the prosperity of a night market that Lin’gao had never had before, changing the lifestyle of many people who used to go to bed at sunset. The members of the Bairen Commune were already used to taking a stroll here with their families after dinner. Some women even brought their needlework to do under the streetlights of the market.

Under the bright gaslights, the vendors and clerks hawking their wares shouted loudly, and various food stalls were lined up in a row, looking both warm and comfortable.

“It’s different from before,” Ruan Xiaoer was the first to break the silence. “When we first came to Lin’gao, Dongmen City was mostly wasteland except for a trading post. There were few shops, all of them were stalls in sheds.”

“Yeah, I never thought it would change so quickly and become so big,” Ruan Xiaowu said, recalling the appearance of the three brothers when they first came to Lin’gao, and he was filled with emotion. “We brothers didn’t even have a complete set of clothes.”

“Little brother didn’t have any clothes at all, he came with his bare butt and exposed balls.”

Ruan Xiaoqi’s face turned red. “Second brother, can you even call what you were wearing clothes? A piece of tattered cloth, covering the front and bare in the back.”

“Speaking of which, when the chiefs came to purify us back then, they even looked at our butts… um, behind. I thought they wanted us to be rabbits. I thought, these chiefs want too many rabbits.”

“Hahaha.” The three of them laughed together. The embarrassment and fear of the past, when recalled in times of success, not only had no pain, but also added the sweetness of enjoying success.

“Lin’gao is really a good place,” Ruan Xiaoqi said.

“It should be said that our luck was not bad to have met the chiefs,” Ruan Xiaoer said.

“Who would have thought that we brothers could be like this today, sitting in this big restaurant eating,” Ruan Xiaoer sighed, looking at the table full of food and wine. “If Mom and Dad were still alive, I don’t know how happy they would be.”

He raised his wine cup and poured a cup on the ground. The three of them were silent. A distant sorrow emerged from each of their hearts, and the faces of their deceased relatives seemed to be still before their eyes.

Ruan Xiaoer refilled the three wine cups. Everyone started chatting again.

“Xiaowu, you’ve made it now!” Ruan Xiaoer patted his brother’s shoulder. “From now on, I’ll have to call you ‘sir’ when I see you.”

“Big brother is joking,” Ruan Xiaowu was a little embarrassed. “I wouldn’t dare.”

“In the army, you have to follow the rules of the army,” Ruan Xiaoer said. “Our instructor once said that even if the soldier is the grandfather and the officer is the grandson, the grandfather still has to salute the grandson. That’s what discipline is.”

“Hey, if only I had one,” Ruan Xiaoqi was very interested in his second brother’s officer’s short sword. He pulled it out and looked at it again and again, his heart full of joy.

“Soon, soon. As soon as you graduate and get a few months of internship on a ship, you can become an officer. This short sword was personally awarded by Chief Wen! I don’t know if you’ll have this luck in the future.”

“We don’t know when we’ll graduate,” Ruan Xiaoqi said. “The teacher said that it takes many years to learn to be in the navy, at least three or four years later. Unlike you, second brother, you’re already a captain now. When will I ever become a captain?”

“Haha, you’re such a silly boy,” Ruan Xiaoer was several years older and saw farther than his brothers. “Although you’re also in a cadet class now, you’re studying a lot more. I heard from Chief Li that you’ll all be of great use in the future. Maybe you’ll be promoted faster than Xiaowu.”