Chapter 368: Village Consolidation and Settlement (Part 1)

Wen Desi stood in front of the Suwon-dong estate.

The weather was fine, almost idyllic. The battle from more than ten days ago had not left many traces, except for a row of heads along the newly paved road in front of the estate. Those were the heads cut off after the great victory at Suwon-dong more than ten days ago. Most of them were cut off by members of the White Horse Team. Xue Ziliang felt that since they had already been cut off, it was better to display them to deter potential enemies.

The Yuanlao had become very indifferent to heads. A Yuanlao like Wen Desi only felt that there were still too few heads to form a real road of skulls.

More than ten days ago, the Executive Committee had secretly ordered the Grand Library and the Ministry of Health to find a way to collect the skulls of the important leaders of the enemies the Senate had conquered and defeated so far, preserve them with anti-corrosion treatment, and store them properly.

Wen Desi wore a fine canvas hunting suit, with one hand tucked into the front of his coat, looking out over the Suwon-dong pasture. The first standard village would be built here, as an affiliated village of the “State-owned Jeju First Livestock Farm.”

The headquarters of the First Livestock Farm was located at the site of the former Suwon-dong estate. There were existing buildings here that could be temporarily used. Both Nick and Xue Ziliang had moved their headquarters here. Xue Ziliang believed it was more convenient to command the punitive expedition from here.

The pasture on the hillside was lush. Spring was the season when the pasture was lush, and groups of horses were leisurely strolling and grazing among the pasture. It was a beautiful pastoral scene.

Wen Desi was not very interested in raising horses, but he was very fascinated by cavalry. In addition, Jeju Island was the first area where standard villages were set up entirely according to his plan, so he had come here in person. It was a rare thing for a person to be able to implement a part of his own rhapsody.

Of course, certain rhapsodies were destined not to be accepted by the majority of the Yuanlao in the Senate. At this thought, Wen Desi sighed inwardly again.

He had just listened to Xue Ziliang’s specific report on the “security strengthening” action. The punitive expedition had roughly completed the “rectification” of one-third of the settlements on the entire Jeju Island. At present, the people of these settlements were gradually being relocated to ten temporary camps set up across the island, including Suwon-dong and the three cities of Jeju. In these ten camps, the people would undergo civil registration and “purification.”

“Won’t this cause the refugee camps to be insufficient?” Wen Desi very much approved of this “thoroughly break up and start over” approach, but considering that there were tens of thousands of Korean people on the island, this would be equivalent to adding a workload of forty to fifty thousand people to the purification work out of thin air. As the chairman of the Executive Committee, although Wen Desi did not handle specific work, the problems that were fed back layer by layer would eventually reach him. At every Executive Committee meeting, specific solutions had to be found.

Feng Zongze quickly added, “It’s not a problem. We’re playing with the time difference.”

He explained that the first batch of Shandong refugees had already completed their purification and quarantine period. The refugee camps had a certain number of empty beds that could accommodate a portion of the island’s population. They could be utilized just before the next large wave of Shandong refugees arrived.

The main shortages were disinfection drugs and clothing needed for purification.

“What about food?” Wen Desi thought, isn’t this creating tens of thousands of extra mouths to feed out of thin air?

“Each household has a certain amount of grain reserves. We have registered them all and issued them grain cards as proof.” Feng Zongze said that the grain reserves of these people were not enough. Most of them relied on the rations given to them for working for landlords and pasture owners.

“…Now the grain of these landlords and pasture owners has become ours. We are just using the grain of the Korean landlords to relieve the Korean people. There is no need for extra expenditure. The main extra expenditure for the Planning Commission is medicine and clothing—we have a large shortage of these two.”

“The shortage of clothing and medicine will be difficult to solve for you in the short term. I will mention it at the meeting and focus on solving it for you.” Wen Desi listened while paying attention to the horses on the horse farm. His eyes were attracted by a horse. This horse was obviously taller and larger than the other horses. It was one and a half meters tall, with a light black coat, a long neck, and looked very spirited. It was like a crane among chickens in the herd of horses, whose average height was not yet one meter and twenty centimeters. A herdsman was riding a horse specifically to look after it.

“That horse is so beautiful! What kind of horse is it?”

“It’s Aranchi’s son, ‘Black Prince’,” Nick said in a tone full of tenderness, as if the horse were his son. “It was bred using frozen English thoroughbred semen.”

Since Aranchi was over twenty years old, his best breeding age as a stallion had passed. If his remaining reproductive capacity was not fully utilized, he would soon become worthless.

So Nick had spent a lot of effort in recent years to artificially inseminate him. The semen came from frozen English thoroughbred semen in a liquid nitrogen tank. The characteristics of good breeds of livestock generally come from the sire. Using the semen of a good breed of horse to breed with a relatively poor local mare can also produce good horses, but there is no value in breeding a poor sire with a good mare. In particular, Nick’s intention was to maintain and breed English thoroughbred stallions.

Breeding English thoroughbreds was of course not for racing or showing off. Genetically, the genetics of English thoroughbreds are particularly strong and are particularly effective in improving other horse breeds and increasing speed. As for horse breeding, it is an indispensable stallion. So he spared no effort to artificially inseminate Aranchi. In recent years, several foals have been born, but the English thoroughbreds born were either mares or died due to the excessively hot and humid climate of Lingao—English thoroughbreds are very “delicate” and have poor adaptability to the environment. This was the only colt that had survived. Nick named him “Black Prince,” and he was now just one year old. As soon as the situation in Jeju stabilized, he moved all these horses to Jeju and let them graze in this unique mountainous horse farm.

“So beautiful!” Wen Desi exclaimed, imagining a hussar in a magnificent short cape riding on it. Feng Zongze’s cough brought his attention back.

“Wen Zong, do you think you could get the Planning Commission to approve a clothing factory for me here? We have enough female labor here. We also confiscated a lot of cloth in the warehouse, which can be used for self-production and self-sale. In the future, we can also supply other areas…”

Wen Desi considered for a moment and said, “This request is reasonable. But you have a problem here: Jeju Island does not produce cotton, let alone cotton cloth. Neither Korea nor Japan produces it. Without a cotton cloth supply chain, setting up a clothing factory here would require shipping cotton cloth from outside. It’s a bit redundant.”

Feng Zongze was unwilling to give up this idea. He continued, “Wen Zong, although Jeju, Korea, and Japan do not produce cotton cloth, Jeju is very close to Songjiang. There is a large amount of cotton cloth in Songjiang, which can be shipped from there. Zhao Yigong wants to start a cotton textile industry there. The cloth he produces can’t all be consumed, so a portion can be shipped to Jeju Island. Besides, the clothing factory in Lingao now also uses cotton cloth from India…” He then added, “In the future, whether the Executive Committee launches operations on the mainland or goes north to Liaodong and Korea, or east to Japan, Jeju Island will be an important transit base. Setting up a clothing factory here can provide supplies nearby.”

Wen Desi nodded. “You have a point. You can write a report. We’ll discuss it.”

Feng Zongze was very happy to hear him relent. He then introduced the other supporting work.

To meet the demand for building materials for large-scale development in Jeju and Taiwan, the Planning Commission planned to invest in a comprehensive building materials factory on both Jeju and Taiwan islands. Each comprehensive factory would have a brick and tile factory equipped with steam-powered automatic brick-making machines, mixers, large continuous kilns, lime kilns, and cement vertical kilns; and a timber processing factory. Taiwan itself has rich forest resources. Although the forest resources of Jeju Island are not particularly rich, the Korean peninsula and Liaodong have sufficient forest resources for development.

But this equipment could not keep up with the progress of the new administrative villages. Therefore, for the time being, the engineering team sent from Lingao served as the core, and a local construction team composed of carpenters and other construction workers from the refugees was dismantling some redundant houses to recycle building materials.

The process of “village consolidation and settlement” produced a large number of abandoned settlements. The buildings in these settlements could be demolished to recycle building materials. The buildings in Jeju, regardless of wealth, all used a large amount of stone—there was a large amount of volcanic gravel available for construction here. Recycling these stones and wood, combined with the building materials shipped from Lingao, could meet the construction needs of the first batch of standard villages.

The demolition work in Suwon-dong was also underway. Among the demolition ranks were many newly incorporated members of the labor service corps. The propaganda that they would live in new houses after demolishing the old ones had already spread among them: the Chiefs would let everyone live in spacious and warm new houses.

Originally, they didn’t quite believe it—this was too great a good deed. But then they saw the administrative officers really come to announce the news.

“Look! This is the drawing of the houses that will be given to everyone!” A building effect drawing printed in Lingao was opened, showing a checkerboard-like pattern of fields and houses.

The houses were built according to the standard residences that had already been built in Lingao. However, since the first batch of villages were all animal husbandry villages, the structure was slightly adjusted.

“Look, this is the village that will be built for everyone. In the middle are the residences, surrounded by fields, and outside the fields are pastures. This is the residence for everyone. All the houses are arranged in a square, a total of 38 households. Each household has a two-story building of 12.5 meters square. The first floor of the corner towers also has public toilets! Everyone can also pour horse manure into it, which can be turned into biogas for cooking! There is also a well in the middle—in places where wells cannot be dug, a cistern will be used. Outside the residences are public stables, and there are also special drinking troughs for horses!”