Chapter Eighteen: The Slaves of Tiandu

The air was filled with the acrid dust and smoke from the dynamite explosions, a choking haze that hung over the mine pit and refused to dissipate. A train of mine carts, pulled by a small, puffing steam locomotive, clattered towards the excavation face on Huangni Ridge—it was a commuter train carrying the mid-shift workers. Simple benches were installed on the flatcars. The workers, some sitting, some standing, were all fully equipped: rattan safety helmets, 24-layer gauze masks, safety goggles made of glass and coconut shells, thick miner’s work clothes, and towels tied around their necks. These were naturalized citizen workers, the core team of the Mining Bureau and the mass base of the Ao-Song regime in Sanya. Providing them with full labor protection reflected this consideration—the most difficult period of Sanya’s development was over, and it was uneconomical for the Senate to continue expending trained, purified laborers in a life-or-death style of development.

The sun shone down on the barren valley. The once lush, subtropical valley had become a bald mountain, exposing its red soil. The dense vegetation had been cleared, and a network of mine cart tracks and telegraph poles crisscrossed the valley floor and hillsides. Steam engines installed in various locations intermittently spewed black smoke and steam, and the roar of machinery echoed from the Tiandu repair shop.

The Tiandu River had been reduced to a turbid stream in the center of its bed, carrying industrial wastewater from the mines and the small machinery factory in Tiandu. The domestic sewage was used to irrigate the few fields that had been developed nearby.

The reason for the reduced river flow was the completion of a reservoir upstream of Tiandu Town, which intercepted the upstream water to supply the town’s domestic needs and the mine’s industrial use. The Tiandu River’s flow was not large, and without a reservoir, a stable water supply could not be guaranteed.

It was now the dry season of winter, and the upstream water flow had decreased significantly. The reservoir no longer released water, and the natural flow of the lower Tiandu River had been completely cut off.

A group of half-naked slaves was unloading cartloads of iron ore that had just been transported from the mining face at the ore yard in the valley. Their half-naked bodies were covered in ore dust; straw hats and strips of cloth wrapped around their faces were their only protective measures. “Foremen,” selected from the most reliable naturalized citizens, supervised the slaves’ labor. There was one foreman for every fifty slaves. They did not carry whips or sticks, but rather a cloth bag full of bamboo tokens.

Upon completing the loading or unloading of a basket of ore, the slaves would receive a bamboo token from the foreman. To eat their fill, they had to meet the work quota and collect the required number of tokens. The consequence of slacking was not getting enough to eat, having no energy to work the next day, and eventually starving to death under the heavy physical labor. Slaves who refused to work were executed directly, their bodies hung on the gallows in the slave camp to air-dry until a new victim took their place.

The foremen monitored the entire labor process. They did not carry weapons. No matter what weapon one carried, one person had no chance against fifty. Carrying a weapon would only result in it falling into the hands of the rioters in case of a rebellion.

As a backup, at any site where slaves worked collectively, at least one squad of soldiers was stationed on guard duty, ready to be deployed for armed riot control at any time. Sentinels in the watchtowers built on the hillsides and hilltops constantly monitored every corner of the mine and valley with telescopes. According to orders, these sentinels had the authority to shoot any “suspicious” slave at any time.

At first, the slaves’ work efficiency was not high, but after a few days, they fully understood the “Ao-Song’” employment policy, and their production efficiency immediately increased. In fact, the efficiency of slave labor in the mines and on the roadbed projects in Sanya was much higher than many Senators who questioned slave labor had estimated. The former HR professionals in the Planning Institute did not believe this was the result of high-pressure policies, but rather of effective labor management.

“If a sweatshop with basic human rights can be managed, why can’t slaves who don’t even have the right to survive be managed?” a Senator who had once worked as an HR in a sweatshop said. “If the labor efficiency of slaves is really so bad, why would the southern slave owners spend so much money to buy slaves from Africa and even fight a war over it?”

The arrival of the first batch of Southeast Asian slaves finally gave the Sanya Special Administrative Region a consumable substitute. Of course, there were still too few slaves for large-scale consumption, but at least it could free the naturalized citizen workers from some of the most dangerous and arduous jobs. In a meeting with Wang Luobin, Quark Qiong stated that he could guarantee the import of 1,500 slaves per month until the end of March 1631. If more could be found and the supply from Batavia was guaranteed, 2,000 people per month would not be a problem.

Wang Luobin made a rough calculation: with 1,500 slaves arriving per month, 15,000 could be brought in during the ten months from March to December. After accounting for a certain amount of permanent attrition, the total slave population in Sanya should be around 10,000 by the end of the year. This would not only be enough to guarantee the mining tasks in Tiandu but also to exploit the manganese and phosphate mines in Damao, while also freeing up a considerable portion of the labor force for ports, roads, and other infrastructure construction.

Compared to the Planning Institute’s slow and meticulous allocation of manpower, where every accident and death rate per ten thousand tons had to be carefully calculated, using slave labor was much more straightforward. As long as the Planning Institute could provide Sanya with enough sugar and rum to trade for slaves, labor would no longer be a bottleneck for development.

From the start of mining at the end of October to now, it had been almost two and a half months. Despite labor shortages and intermittent supplies of explosives, by mid-January 1631, the iron ore excavated from the Huangni Ridge open-pit mine had formed several small hills, a dozen meters high, in the stockyard. At this rate, the conditions for officially opening a regular iron ore shipping route between Lin’gao and Sanya were met—although the first shipment of iron ore would be a month later than Wang Luobin had expected.

For the export of iron ore, the railway from the mine to the Anyoule Port had been completed, but the loading and unloading equipment at the port was not yet in place. Without rubber, there was no convenient and effective belt conveyor. The General Manufacturing Directorate could only first trial-produce a chain bucket elevator. This equipment was originally scheduled to be installed and commissioned by the end of December 1630, but due to quality issues with the chains, the equipment had not yet been seen even after the New Year.

Ji Runzhi inspected the ongoing infrastructure construction site of the Jinling Industrial Zone. The place was still a barren hillside. Ji Yuan was conducting a survey with an instrument, while Ji Shu held the leveling rod. This was the Jinji Ridge area west of Tiandu Town. Although it was called a “ridge,” it was actually a gentle slope with a large area of flat land. The nearby Sanya River provided an abundant water supply, making it convenient for developing manufacturing industries.

The industrial enterprises planned for Sanya—a coconut processing plant, a soap factory, a food factory… all these industrial enterprises were to start construction in 1631 and be completed and put into production within the year. In particular, the production of coconut oil from the joint coconut processing plant was a urgently needed project for the Lin’gao industrial system, which was short of materials and faced bottlenecks everywhere.

“I wonder how those guys are celebrating the New Year,” Ji Runzhi muttered, jotting down a few key points in his notebook. If it weren’t for the need to further refine the Sanya development plan, he would not have had to stay in Sanya. However, he considered that if he went back for the New Year, there would inevitably be a whole set of public and private affairs, such as debriefings, writing reports, and socializing, leaving him with little time to draft the overall Sanya development plan.

If the plan could not be adjusted in time, it would cause a lot of trouble for the subsequent construction—especially the material allocation and large-scale equipment scheduling of the Planning Institute. In the end, Ji Runzhi decided not to return to Lin’gao for the New Year but to stay in Sanya to continue drafting and revising the plan.

The past plans for Sanya were quite rudimentary and had many unreasonable aspects, especially in the layout of Sanya City. After arriving in Sanya, Ji Runzhi re-drafted the overall plan for Sanya.

First, he modified the use of Anyoule. The old plan was to build Anyoule into a port and commercial city, as a model for the transmigrating nation. But after on-site investigation and research, Ji Runzhi believed that this piece of flat land was too small. It was just over 1 kilometer long from north to south and over 600 meters wide from east to west. It was barely acceptable as a town, but as a model city to display the image of the transmigrating nation, it was really inadequate. In the new plan, the status of Anyoule was greatly reduced, serving only as a dedicated port for exporting iron ore.

For the site of Sanya City, Ji Runzhi believed it should follow the layout of the old world and be located at the mouth of the Sanya River. Although the mouth of the Sanya River could not be used as a large port, there was a large area of flat, open land around it, suitable for urban construction. It would serve as the living and commercial center of the entire Sanya Special Zone. The mouth of the Sanya River would be used as a small fishing port.

The military and port functions would be centered around Yulin Fortress, located east of Gouling Mountain and along the west coast of Yulin Port. The coastline here was 5 kilometers long. In the old world, it was the location of the Yulin military port. In this era, it would also be used to build army and navy bases and a large commercial port. At the same time, large-scale cargo storage and a logistics center would be arranged here.

Southwest of Yulin Fortress, the seaside slopes of the Dadonghai-Luhuitou area were designated as a future resort and recuperation zone. Although the Senate had no intention of carrying out such construction at this stage, the protection of the local vegetation and ecology to avoid pollution from industry and shipping could be started first.

Although there were mountains in the Dadonghai area, they were very low. In fact, it was the transportation corridor connecting the Yulin base and Sanya City. It would not be difficult to build a road or even a railway connecting the two places.

The role of Tiandu remained unchanged: besides being the location of the Mining Bureau, it would also, together with the Jinling Industrial Zone to its west, constitute the industrial center of Sanya.