Chapter 6: Sanya City

Hu Xun, left with no other choice, had to agree. He had considerable property in An You Le Market. Besides his residence and the movable assets at home, there was also a large amount of salvaged cargo from shipwrecks, which he had stored in the public warehouse, waiting for an opportunity to sell. Now, it all fell into the hands of the transmigrators.

The natives hid in their homes, inns, and shops, peeking through cracks in windows and door panels at the scene outside. The streets were quiet, with only the “pirates” in their uniform tight-waisted jackets, carrying long muskets, patrolling back and forth. There were no fires, no smoke, and no cries of slaughter or rape. Everyone calmed down a little.

After a while, they heard someone beating a gong in the street, calling for all shopkeepers, ship owners, and heads of households to come out and attend a meeting at the temple on the east side of the street. No one dared to refuse, and they all cautiously made their way out.

He Fanghui, holding a large iron megaphone, stood on the stone steps with a serious expression. His sharp eyes scanned the dozens of people below. Like an auctioneer in the old world, he gathered his qi in his dantian and shouted in a loud voice:

“Elders and fellow countrymen!” His voice was loud and resonant. He spoke in the local Hainanese dialect. In addition to this, He Fanghui could also speak Cantonese, Wenchang dialect, Teochew, and Hakka. He had been dispatched as the civil affairs liaison for the Sanya region. The so-called civil affairs in the Sanya region consisted only of An You Le Market, so He Fanghui became its de facto local emperor.

Following the instructions of the command headquarters, He Fanghui first announced the “requisition” of materials. All goods, grain, and assets within An You Le Market that the Australians needed were to be requisitioned. Receipts would be given for the requisitioned items, to be compensated for at a later date.

He then announced several new regulations: no one was allowed on the streets after dark; all able-bodied men and women had to obey the dispatch of the “Construction Command Headquarters” and work for the “Australians”; and no one, except those on work assignments, was allowed to leave An You Le Market.

“If you serve us honestly, we guarantee the safety of your families and property,” He Fanghui said into the iron megaphone. “Obey the commands of the police force. No resistance or delay is permitted!” With that, he swung his hand down sharply.

“Bring out the criminals who took advantage of the situation to loot and intended to riot!”

The police team brought forward three ragged, unfortunate souls.

“Anyone who violates our orders or has other intentions will meet the same fate,” He Fanghui said sternly. “Hang them!”

The police team immediately erected a simple wooden gallows in the middle of the street in An You Le Market and publicly hanged the three looters.

The crowd was silent as cicadas in winter, trembling as they watched the unlucky men still kicking on the gallows. A few of the more timid ones wet themselves.

The owners and managers of the ships docked here, knowing their vessels and cargo were unlikely to be spared, turned pale as ashes. He Fanghui ordered them to immediately report their cargo lists. Needed goods would be “harmoniously purchased” at Guangdong market rates, while unneeded goods could be kept by the ship owners. They could keep their ships, but all manpower on board was to be at the disposal of the Australians.

“…When the favorable winds arrive, you will naturally be allowed to leave. Until then, you should all behave yourselves.”

Of course, the ship owners dared not say no. They obediently handed over their cargo lists.

He Fanghui and his men occupied the public office of An You Le Market as their command headquarters. The sanitation team disinfected the building. He Fanghui’s main task was to cooperate with Sun Xiao to extract the maximum resources from An You Le Market.

He Fanghui toured An You Le Market, inspected the overall situation, and immediately rushed back to the public office to assign tasks.

Upon arriving at the office, the air was thick with the smell of disinfectant. Desks, chairs, and stationery were already arranged. Several “abacus hands” from the Planning院, brought by Sun Xiao, were gathered around several tables, their abacuses clattering. The sound mingled with the rustling of clerks writing with their dip pens, ink bottles hanging from their necks. The clerks from the Planning院 were incredibly busy, sealing and requisitioning materials and tools everywhere, and registering the population.

This kind of work efficiency is truly delightful, He Fanghui thought. There were already several documents on his desk. He glanced through them; they were all survey and statistical data. The most important among them was the household register of An You Le Market.

Hu Xun’s secretary had been very cooperative and handed over the town’s household register. This was not the “Yellow Register” used to fool officials, but a genuine population register.

“You killed three people in one go. What a waste. Weren’t they ready-made free labor?” Sun Xiao complained. “Besides, these people look like they’re from the laboring masses. To lose their lives so ambiguously.”

“Killing to establish authority,” He Fanghui said. “How can we make this bunch obey without killing a few?”

He Fanghui and Sun Xiao discussed the matter and decided to first conscript the town’s “professional personnel.” In no time, cooks and kitchen helpers were gathered and sent to the public canteen. Then came the blacksmiths, carpenters, and masons, who were sent to the construction teams. Finally, there were the prostitutes. An You Le Market had three brothels and several independent prostitutes.

“Less than a thousand people in total, and there are sixty or seventy prostitutes!” Sun Xiao exclaimed, looking at the household register.

“That’s a good thing. This way, we don’t have to force good women into prostitution,” He Fanghui said.

“Prostitutes also come from poor backgrounds,” Sun Xiao said, sympathetic to the working people. “The so-called ‘not forcing good women into prostitution’ is just a fig leaf.”

“We can talk about liberating the prostitutes later. For now, let them serve the great cause of transmigration,” He Fanghui said nonchalantly. “We can also make use of the existing facilities, so we don’t have to build special houses.”

The rest of the town’s population, the able-bodied men and women, were organized into teams by age, ready to be dispatched by Zhuo Tianmin at any time.

Construction began simultaneously at various sites. Building materials were unloaded from the ships and piled up everywhere. A large number of prefabricated housing components greatly increased the speed of construction. These houses used an elevated structure with low foundation requirements, very suitable for construction on sandy soil like that found in a port.

Work was underway at four sites at the same time: Yulin Fort, Lu Huitou, the mouth of the Tiandu River, and An You Le Market. Of these, the outpost at the mouth of the Tiandu River had the smallest workload. The earth-and-wood outer wall, trench, and several houses were completed in less than half a day. The purpose of this outpost was to control the mouth of the Tiandu River, ensuring smooth traffic between Yulin Fort and the future Tiandu Town. The planned small railway from Tiandu Town to Yulin Fort would be laid along the Tiandu River.

On the leveled ground outside Yulin Fort, a labor camp was quickly built. Rows of houses were laid out in a grid pattern. In the center of the grid was Zhuo Tianmin’s engineering headquarters. He had declined the dedicated bedroom in Yulin Fort, stating that it was more convenient to work from the headquarters in the labor camp.

The labor camp had an attached clinic with fifty beds and a simple operating room capable of performing minor surgeries. To ensure sanitation, a shower room was also built. The water for bathing was pumped from the Tiandu River by a water pump, passed through a sedimentation tank, and then disinfected with bleaching powder. The wastewater from the showers was used to flush the public toilets. The drinking water for the laborers and soldiers was supplied by the water storage station. The treatment process was the same as for daily use water, but with the additional step of boiling.

The warehouse was built on the original cargo yard of Yulin Fort. The construction team worked quickly to add a roof covering one-third of the open-air yard. It was then divided into several sub-warehouses for storing grain, weapons and ammunition, goods, and valuable tools and equipment.

Grain was the most important resource. The grain warehouse not only contained a large amount of “Grasslands” series rations but also a large quantity of brown rice, dried vegetables, and salted vegetables. This food was to feed all the laborers and soldiers for a month. Because grain was so important, it was all packed in sealed iron barrels instead of straw bags.

These supplies were so crucial that the loss of even a part of them would be a serious setback for the entire Project Giant. The Sanya command headquarters guarded the warehouse with extreme vigilance. Not only was a marine platoon stationed in Yulin Fort around the clock, but they also brought in a water pump and fire hoses for fire prevention. All open flames were forbidden inside Yulin Fort, no one was allowed to smoke, and all lighting at night was electric.

The immigrants led by Hu Wumei were settled 200 meters outside An You Le Market. For now, only the able-bodied men and women of this group had arrived. They had to live in tents until the new An You Le Market—or rather, “Sanya City”—was built.

Sanya City was not planned to be built on the site of the old An You Le Market but would be a completely new construction. In terms of municipal construction, Sanya City would adopt a brand-new urban plan and architectural model.

Sanya City was laid out in a grid pattern. First, a municipal office was built. The office was a five-story, fortified brick-and-stone building, serving as an administrative center, a fortress, a shelter, and a warehouse. The immigrants had their own separate reserves of grain, medicine, clothing, and tools. If one warehouse was destroyed, the other could still provide support for a period of time.

In front of the office was a square, which served as a marketplace and gathering place. Two streets were laid out in a cross shape with the municipal office square at the center. The buildings around the square would all be commercial, with no residences. Under the streets were brick and stone drainage ditches. Although not so exaggerated that one could sail a boat in them, they were large enough for maintenance workers to walk through and would facilitate the future laying of other pipelines.

The discharged sewage, along with the city’s garbage, would be fermented in a biogas digester. The generated biogas would be used to light the street lamps. The treated wastewater would be used for agricultural irrigation, and the residue would be used as fertilizer.

Ji Tui Si also planned to build a dry distillation furnace here. Yulin was the transmigrator group’s source of timber, and there was a lot of leftover material from barrel making. In the future, coconuts would be processed locally in Sanya, producing a large amount of coconut shells. This waste could be used for carbonization. The resulting wood tar would be shipped back to Lin’gao as a chemical raw material, and the gas would be used for civilian lighting and industrial purposes in Sanya. And the carbonized coconut shells would make excellent activated carbon.

As for running water, the transmigrator group still lacked a plentiful raw material for mass-producing pipes—there was no PVC in this era. Using lead like the Europeans would be convenient, but it was toxic. Bronze was suitable but too expensive. That left cast iron, which was still limited by raw material production capacity. So, in the end, the water system designed by Tian Jiujiu for Sanya continued to be a canal model: water was pumped from the source, transported through covered channels to a sedimentation tank for settling and disinfection. The disinfected water was then transported through a main cast-iron pipe to public reservoirs in the city. The reservoirs were made of reinforced concrete with openable lids for easy cleaning. Multiple taps were installed on the walls of the reservoirs. The machinery factory even designed a coin-operated payment system. Inserting one token would allow the tap to run for a time sufficient to dispense 20 liters of water.

Sanya City did not have high city walls. According to the Executive Committee’s plan, Sanya would continue to expand over the next few years to accommodate more people and businesses. Building walls now would mean having to tear them down later to build a ring road, which would be a waste of labor. Therefore, Sanya’s defense system consisted of wide earth ramparts and moats. The ramparts had trenches with parapets, and several towers were built on them. The edge of the ramparts was a defensive belt made of standardized bamboo spikes. Further out was a deep moat filled with seawater.

This type of fortification was quite effective. If the city needed to expand, the earth ramparts could be easily converted into the roadbed for a ring road. Even the moat would not be wasted—it could be lined with bricks and stones and used as a sewer.

The Executive Committee spared no expense in building Sanya with the aim of making it a model for new cities in the future transmigrator nation. It was not only to face the local natives but also the merchants traveling between China and Southeast Asia, to display their strength—a clean, orderly, and well-managed new city.

Another reason was that everyone was very fond of the scenery in Sanya and hoped to be able to come here with their life secretaries for a vacation in their leisure time. To meet this demand, a clean, orderly city with complete facilities was indispensable.

The immigrants’ job was to work on their own new city. Over six hundred male and female immigrants worked as laborers on the construction site, while the actual construction was carried out by specialized construction teams. To supply the bricks and tiles needed for the large-scale infrastructure projects, three or four ships full of building materials arrived at the port every day, unloading their cargo and departing in a hurry. Zhuo Tianmin hoped to be able to fire bricks and tiles locally instead of waiting for building materials to arrive every day. Currently, all kinds of building materials were in short supply. If they could produce bricks and tiles on-site, the saved space could be used to transport more cement, bamboo, and steel rebar.

This request was quickly approved. Since Sanya was a key construction project, the volume of infrastructure work was naturally large. They couldn’t always rely on transporting bricks and tiles from Lin’gao. Self-sufficiency was a must. Eventually, the survey teams found suitable clay near the mouth of the Tiandu River. A small brick kiln was then built on the spot.

The fuel for firing the kiln was planned to be a local specialty—various wood scraps and branches. These were neither sufficient nor very effective. In reality, they still mainly used coal. There was no coal supply around Yulin Fort, so the fuel coal would be transported from Lin’gao. Considering the large number of coal-using facilities here, it was not an exaggeration to open a dedicated coal transport line.