Chapter 168: Timber

Under Zhao Yigong’s “mediation,” the Haitian left the Qiantang River waters the next day and returned to the sea. During this time, the Hangzhou government presented some rice, chickens, ducks, vegetables, and fruits as a “farewell gift.” Watching the Haitian gradually disappear with its black smoke, the officials and gentry in the city breathed a sigh of relief. As for the common people, the sudden arrival and disappearance of the Haitian served as a topic of conversation for several days, and then it was gradually no longer mentioned.

After receiving four taels of silver, Gao Xuan once again walked into the Wanbi Bookstore. But this time, he became a contracted writer for the Wanbi Bookstore. In his busy schedule, Zhao Yigong began to build a writing team for the Wanbi Bookstore Publishing House and created a magazine, “Tianshui Life Weekly,” that was close to social hot spots. The first issue’s topic was the recent Hangzhou religious case debate.

In the early morning, just as the sky was dawning, Lingao awoke to the sound of steam whistles.

Hai Lin yawned a few times, fumbled under his pillow for the watch that his life secretary had wound for him last night—it was already six o’clock. He reluctantly climbed out of bed and brushed his teeth and washed his face in the bathroom, which was full of blue-and-white and underglaze-red porcelain. The toothbrush was a locally made horsehair toothbrush. The toothpaste was gone, replaced by “finely ground bamboo salt.” The towel was still a product from the old timeline; locally made towels still couldn’t compare to the old timeline’s products in appearance and texture.

He dressed with the help of his life secretary—so-called dressing up was nothing more than a set of locally made blue cloth work clothes. Hai Lin sat down at the huanghuali wood table in the living room-cum-dining room. A set of fine Chenghua official kiln porcelain tableware was already on the table—this was one of the countless spoils of war from the Pearl River Estuary campaign. A portion of it had been auctioned off among the Elders at the time.

Breakfast was buns, porridge, and two small dishes of “Tianchu special pickles” made by his life secretary. Buns were a rarity in Lingao. It had been less than three years since wheat cultivation began in Lingao, and apart from the land directly under the farm, few ordinary farmers grew wheat. Flour was a very precious ingredient. Apart from a portion supplied to the catering enterprises under the Ministry of Commerce to make high-end pastries to withdraw circulation coupons, the rest was supplied to the Elders for consumption. Even so, wontons, noodles, buns, bread, and biscuits were still rare on the Elders’ dining tables.

Due to the insufficient supply of meat, the General Office only supplied pork or mutton to the Elders on Saturdays, and chicken on Wednesdays and Fridays. So the buns Hai Lin ate today were filled with red bean paste. Hai Lin had no interest in sweet buns, but vegetable and dried tofu buns or cabbage, vermicelli, and lard residue filled buns interested him even less. The canteen was said to supply deep-fried fish buns, but he didn’t know what they tasted like.

“When will we be able to eat as many big meat buns as we want…” Hai Lin muttered as he ate the red bean paste buns.

To Hai Lin, these buns were not well made, far from the quality of the ones made by the old lady Elder in the canteen—the dough was a bit sticky and not fluffy enough; the dough hadn’t risen well. However, for a life secretary from the south, it was passable.

“Sir, your schedule.” Seeing that he had almost finished his buns, the life secretary handed him a locally produced work manual. It recorded the daily work arrangements, some of which were notices from various departments, and some were various matters from Hai Lin’s own enterprise.

He flipped through the work schedule while eating his bun. The lives of the Elders in Lingao were extremely busy. The daily work schedule was already very heavy, and Operation Engine had brought endless pressure to the production departments. The Planning Commission was like a beast with a good appetite, endlessly demanding a large number of sacrifices from the industrial and agricultural departments.

Regarding the work arrangements, Hai Lin was full of resentment towards the Executive Committee. In the past, the Central Government Council, led by Ma Qianzhu, had paid very little attention to forestry, believing that the coal-iron complex could solve everything. This resulted in the low status of the forestry department, its low ranking in resource and manpower allocation, and very poor treatment, while the workload was very heavy. Now, the forestry department had been transferred to the Manufacturing General Directorate, but its situation had not improved much. As Wu Kuangming said, “Without Ma Qianzhu, there’s still Niu Qianzhu.”

Who was this Niu Qianzhu? In Hai Lin’s view, all the Elders who intentionally or unintentionally ignored the importance of the timber industry and forestry to modern industry were—and unfortunately, there were quite a few such people in the Senate.

“This bunch of idiots are just giving blind orders. They don’t know the role of timber in modern industry at all,” Hai Lin thought bitterly. “One day, I’ll replace all these idiots.”

Hai Lin hadn’t thought carefully about who would replace them. Some people had hinted that they could do better, but Hai Lin didn’t have much hope for that.

After breakfast, Hai Lin hurried out the door. He rode an electric bicycle onto the Bairen-Bopu road.

The woodworking factory was one of the earliest enterprises established by the Senate. It was initially located in Bopu to be close to the source of timber—until recently, a considerable part of Lingao’s timber supply still came from the mangrove forests near Bopu and the Li areas of Lingao—and to facilitate the import of timber from other places.

However, the mangrove resources were limited. Indiscriminate logging would affect the coastal ecological environment and damage the coastal fishery resources. So, before the mangrove forests at the mouth of the Bopu River had completely disappeared, the forestry department had to consider alternative sources of timber.

Lingao had several sources of timber. Currently, the Li areas of Lingao supplied most of their required timber, and the cost of obtaining it was very low. The Ministry of Commerce could exchange large quantities of timber and bamboo and rattan products with just cheap salt and a small amount of ironware. The second source was from Sanya and the mainland.

Due to the increasing demand for timber, the Vietnam Trading Company under the Colonial Trade Department had recently opened up a trade route for importing timber from Vietnam. Part of it was transported by Dabo Shipping, and part by the ships of the Dutch East India Company.

The timber imported from the mainland and Vietnam was large in quantity and good in quality, including some high-quality tree species. But the supply was not very stable—it was related to the problem of maritime transport capacity.

There were more raw materials, but the processing capacity was far behind. Hai Lin’s first task today was to go to the freight yard at Bopu Port to check the backlog of imported timber. The Planning Commission wanted him to submit a report specifying how many days of production the current timber reserves could sustain, so as to determine the amount of timber to be imported and felled next month.

In the forestry department’s dedicated timber yard in Bopu, about twenty thousand logs were currently stored, piled up like mountains. But this timber was far from enough.

Most of the timber was stacked in piles, covered with branches and leaves to maintain humidity. Naturalized citizen workers constantly watered the piles to keep the timber moist.

Hai Lin randomly checked a few piles of wood. The preservation condition was acceptable. There were many high-quality hardwoods, including the lychee wood and ironwood that were currently used in the military industry to replace oak, as well as various precious woods—most of which were imported from Vietnam.

But this timber was far from enough. He had calculated it himself: just building a refugee camp for ten thousand people would require an astonishing amount of timber. Just ten thousand beds of 1.810.01 meters would require 180 cubic meters of timber. Assuming the wood was pine trees with a bottom diameter of 15cm and a height of 4 meters, then one cubic meter of wood would require about thirty to forty trees, for a total of 5,400 to 6,200 trees.

According to the standard of 20 people per house, with an area of about 4.5*7.5m, 500 standard houses would be needed, requiring 500 main beams with a diameter of more than 25cm. If 40cm wide tiles were used, one house would need 40 rafters of 8-10cm, and for 500 houses, that would be twenty thousand rafters.

Building a camp for ten thousand people would require the felling, transportation, preliminary processing, drying, and cutting of nearly thirty thousand trees. The workload was unimaginably large. This was the 17th century. Apart from the few chainsaws that the Senate had brought from the old timeline, all the loggers in the world were using axes and large saws. The production efficiency was pitifully low. It would probably take a very long time to supply enough raw materials.

According to Hai Lin’s estimation, it seemed that the Planning Commission now had a way to mobilize enough raw materials. It all depended on whether his side had the ability to process them.

He walked around, estimating the current daily processing capacity of the woodworking factory, and then got on his electric bicycle with a grim face and rode towards the woodworking factory, which was spewing thick smoke.

Hai Lin was responsible for the production of all woodenware for the entire Lingao system. The woodworking factory had expanded from over a hundred people to a thousand. Before the second anti-encirclement campaign, during the emergency preparations for war, the military industry department demanded a significant increase in the production of rifles. At Hai Lin’s strong request, the first expansion was carried out. Before Operation Engine, a large amount of various building materials had to be prepared, so a second emergency expansion was carried out.

After the expansion, the woodworking factory finally had a relatively better office and production environment. The wooden plank house that Hai Lin had been resentful of finally became history—it was replaced by a two-story brick-and-wood structure. More importantly, the office building was now much farther from the drying kiln, so he no longer had to endure the huge heat radiation from the drying kiln in the scorching summer.

The first thing he did upon entering the factory was to rush to the conference room for a production work meeting. Now, the middle-level managers in the woodworking factory were all naturalized citizens. Seeing Hai Lin come in, they all stood up and greeted him, “Good morning, Chief!”

“Don’t be polite. Let’s start the meeting.”

Only after Hai Lin sat down did all the naturalized citizen cadres sit down. The head of the production department and other middle-level naturalized citizen cadres reported on the work of their respective departments.

When he heard that there had been two “explosions” (the band saw broke, and the saw blade shattered and flew out) in the band saw workshop last night, injuring six people, Hai Lin couldn’t help but feel a wave of annoyance. Now, the band saws were all produced in this timeline, and their quality was very unreliable. The already insufficient manpower would become even more strained if someone was injured.

Next, the director of the drying workshop reported that due to the rush to complete the work, a large area of dry cracks appeared in the dried timber that came out of the kiln this time. When Hai Lin heard this, his anger flared up. He slammed the table, and everyone’s face changed color. They all lowered their heads.