Chapter Eleven: The Trading Post

The difficulty was not in terms of reliability. According to the report from the Li and Miao Affairs Office, at least all the Li and Miao villages within Lin’gao’s territory “wholeheartedly supported” the new regime. The work of the past three years had not been in vain. The problem was that a large number of the Li and Miao population were malaria patients. The gazetteers of Hainan Island mentioned that “the Li people are often sick.” Although observations by the health teams sent by the Ministry of Health into the Li areas showed that most of the malaria cases among the Li and Miao were benign, the intermittent attacks made it difficult to fully utilize them as either general labor or soldiers.

“I don’t see it as a big problem. Don’t the Li people often revolt? If they have the strength to revolt, don’t they have the strength to be soldiers?” Si Kaide said. “Besides, there must be a portion of them who are resistant to malaria. Otherwise, how could the Li people have survived in the mountains for so long?”

“That’s why the Li people revolt frequently, but their combat effectiveness is limited. The Ming Dynasty can keep them in check with a bunch of beggar-like garrison soldiers guarding a few stockades,” Dongmen Chuiyu said. “The army has to drill, train, and be on duty every day. But if the soldiers don’t know which day they’ll have a malaria attack, the army can’t be deployed.”

“It would be a waste not to use such human resources,” Si Kaide said, still fixated on the Li people. “Can’t we just treat them?”

“Let’s think of a concrete solution later,” Dongmen Chuiyu said, unwilling to reveal the military’s specific plans on this matter, and vaguely brushed it aside. Since the Executive Committee was currently reluctant to expand the military personnel by reducing the number of laborers under its rule, and the demand for military strength from all sides was increasing, the large number of highly dispersed security and internal defense tasks was affecting the army’s normal education and training. The idea of recruiting a batch of mercenaries to perform security tasks, thereby freeing up the troops from security and internal defense operations, was unofficially brought up in the internal meetings of the Military Affairs Directorate. The Li and Miao soldiers were just one of the options.

As soon as the Hong Kong development plan was announced, it immediately triggered a new wave of people vying for official positions. Although the Second Plenary Session had established the basic principle of “voluntary registration, organizational review” for the selection of officials, many people, in addition to registering on the internal network’s Organization Department website, also privately visited various figures they believed could exert influence. Ming Lang had to stay within the confines of the General Office for several days to avoid being dragged out to “have a meal and a chat.”

After a fierce round of on-stage and off-stage activities, a list of bureaucratic appointments for the Hong Kong region was finally announced: Luo Chen, a technician from the Tiandihui, was appointed as the commander of the Hong Kong Land Reclamation Regiment; Shi Zhiqi was appointed as the commander of the Hong Kong Garrison; Le Lin was appointed as the commander of the Hong Kong Naval Detachment; and Hong Shuiyin was appointed as the Hong Kong Commercial Representative.

In addition, a batch of technical cadres was sent to Hong Kong, including Shi Jiantao, who had been a strong advocate for building a shipyard in Hong Kong. He had previously worked in the Planning Institute and was very interested in the shipbuilding industry, so he volunteered to be the director of the Hong Kong shipyard.

Shi Zhiqi’s appointment as the commander of the Hong Kong Garrison was originally not going to pass. The Army believed it was unreasonable for all the senior military positions in Hong Kong to be occupied by the Navy. However, everyone finally reached a consensus: the commander of the Hong Kong garrison should be someone with amphibious warfare experience, and Shi Zhiqi was clearly the most qualified candidate.

In response to the increasing number of Senators being sent on external assignments, the Senate officially implemented the “Senator Committee” and “collective decision-making on major issues” system in all groups of two or more externally assigned Senators. If more than three Senators were stationed in one place, a local Senator Committee had to be established. All major policy decisions in the area had to be announced or even voted on at the Senator Committee meetings. The committee had to hold regular meetings, and minutes had to be kept.

Under the escort of two patrol boats, the “Qionghai Coal” slowly docked at Central Pier No. 1 in “Saintess Bay”—the Central Government Council had officially issued a document naming the place, formally renaming Xiangshan’ao to “Hong Kong Island,” Base 852 to “Central,” and Victoria Harbour to “Saintess Bay,” replacing the non-existent name of Queen Victoria.

On the deck of the “Qionghai Coal” stood a few men in gray and green uniforms, pointing at the Central base under construction. Their tall, sturdy builds and better clothing indicated that they were the so-called “Senators.” The soldiers working as stevedores on the pier whispered to each other, wondering if the arrival of another batch of Senators meant that a new operation was about to begin. After the military operations against the Pearl River Delta ended, many Senators had left Hong Kong one after another. Now there were only two or three Senators left on the island.

Towed by a large motorboat, the “Great Whale” slowly approached the pier, and a gangplank was set up. As the port officials boarded the ship for inspection, several Senators had already disembarked. A man in his mid-twenties, who looked like a Senator, had been in a small shed next to the pier and now hurried over to greet them.

“Engineer Mei! You’re here,” the young man greeted a Senator in his thirties who was coming off the ship. The man was Mei Lin from the General Construction Corporation.

“Little Shi, you’ve done a good job here,” Mei Lin said, looking around. “Four months, and it’s starting to take shape.”

A sharp whistle blew. The port authorities had noticed the red warning flag, symbolizing the highest level of danger, flying on the “Qionghai Coal.” The laborers and soldiers who had been working near Pier No. 1 quickly evacuated.

“What? Did you bring dangerous goods?” Little Shi’s face changed color slightly.

“Dynamite,” Mei Lin said curtly. “Didn’t you apply for dynamite to blast the mountains?”

“Right, right, let’s go first.”

The few of them didn’t have time for pleasantries and quickly followed the man called “Little Shi” towards the trading post of the Central base. The trading post was more than a kilometer from the pier. The construction team had built a standard-gauge track of wrought iron rails to transport goods and personnel between the two places.

Since the Pearl River Estuary Detachment landed in Hong Kong in September 1630, the development of Base 852 had been ongoing, and the planned Central base had begun to take shape. The trading post was the core building of the entire base, a fortress and foundation of their rule. This building was constructed based on the model of a 19th-century armed trading post, with reference to modern government public construction design experience. After comprehensive design, it was built. The area was not large, but it was well-equipped with various supporting facilities.

The entire main castle was a rectangular, multi-story hollow building. The structure was roughly a large open space surrounded by multi-story buildings. The four corners were four projecting bastions, each 5 stories high and 17 meters tall. The top was an open-air battery, and the floors below were respectively the guards’ quarters, ammunition depots, and a gymnasium… The lowest floor was the toilet, flushed with seawater.

Besides the bastions, all the buildings were 4 stories high and 14 meters tall. The first and second floors facing outwards had no windows. Windows only appeared from the third floor upwards, with iron protective shutters that could be closed in case of an attack. However, there were windows on every floor facing the inner courtyard for ventilation and light. The rooftops of the buildings were all equipped with defensive fortifications.

The building facing south was the external office area, with a hall and the main entrance on the ground floor. All departments that needed to deal with the public were located here. In the middle of the south building was a five-story clock tower. The east building was the dormitory area, where the guards, naturalized citizen staff, and cadres lived. Each floor was equipped with a large washroom. Part of the ground floor was a canteen and kitchen, and another part was an armory. The west building was also four stories high. The first and second floors were warehouses, the third floor housed a clinic and an inpatient department, and the fourth floor was also a dormitory. The north building was for auxiliary purposes, including a boiler room, a pump room, and a wind power station. It also had a temporary detention center and various storerooms—including a garage on the ground floor.

The trading post was not yet fully completed, but the four corner towers, the main entrance building on the south side, and the clock tower were finished. Although clock towers were present in many buildings designed in Lin’gao, not a single large clock had been manufactured so far—not because it couldn’t be done, but because the Planning Institute felt it was not an urgent need and decided to wait until the raw material supply was more abundant.

At the foot of the main city, roads were paved according to the model used to build the East Gate Market. The merchant’s guild and customs house were currently under construction. The area was filled with piles of yellow sand, barrels of cement, and stones of various sizes. Laborers bustled about, and the sound of their work chants and the chugging of steamrollers filled the air.

The labor force consisted of personnel from the purification camp established locally. The Guangdong civilians and government soldiers captured or who voluntarily followed during the Pearl River Estuary campaign served as construction workers while undergoing quarantine here. The Lin’gao General Construction Corporation had sent a Senator named Shi Dafu to be in charge of all construction projects in the area. Shi Dafu had a professional background in industrial and civil construction and had worked in a construction company, making him a pragmatist with both theory and experience.

Shi Dafu led the group into the main city and invited them to sit down in the conference room, which was located in the clock tower on the south side of the trading post. Only then did they introduce each other. Among the newly arrived Senators, Mei Lin was here to supervise the construction of several reservoir projects on Hong Kong Island. To get things started in Hong Kong, according to the Planning Institute’s calculations, they planned to complete a water storage capacity of 2 million cubic meters in the 1631-1632 period, and a total capacity of 7.7 million cubic meters by 1633. This would effectively supply the needs of industry and agriculture on Hong Kong Island.

“Most of Hong Kong’s reservoirs were built using the existing terrain in the mountains, so the amount of earthwork is limited,” Mei Lin said, bringing a full set of old-era Hong Kong hydrological data provided by the Great Library. “However, the cost is still very high.”

Under the premise of occupying all of Guangzhou after the end of the Second Five-Year Plan, the Planning Institute considered it not worthwhile to invest too much capital in Hong Kong. Therefore, the entire scale of industry and agriculture in Hong Kong was limited to a very small size. In the future planning for Hong Kong Island and the outlying islands, the total population of Hong Kong—including the garrison, workers, land reclamation personnel, and people awaiting purification, who would reside for more than 30 days—was not to exceed thirty thousand people.