Chapter 5: Naturalization

For many years, Li Siya had been the brains, and she the brawn, stirring up storms at sea and reaping rich rewards, with a considerable surplus every year. However, for the sake of the future, she had to save more. A portion of the profits Li Huamei earned from each voyage was deposited into Li Siya’s account at a Jewish bank in Macau, and another portion was given directly to her mistress.

Li Siya gave her 5% of the net profit from each voyage. By the standards of the time, Li Siya’s favor to her was already remarkable. After all, she, Li Chun, was just a house slave of Li Siya, and it was her duty to work for her master’s income. It would have been nice if her master had given her some extra money, but to give her a share of the profits was a great act of grace.

Although she had this share of the profits, most of the money, except for a small portion she carried with her, was still in the bank in Macau—also managed by her foster sister. Li Huamei had never paid much attention to money, always feeling that with her mistress managing the finances, she would not be at a disadvantage.

However, her mentality had recently undergone a subtle change. In the past, she always felt that she and her foster sister were one family, without any distinction. But as she grew older, especially when she secretly lamented the passing of her youth, she was shocked to realize that she had nothing, not even the Hangzhou, which was her sister’s property.

She had to start planning for herself a little. Her mistress would not be doing this business in Macau for the rest of her life. When her mistress left, what would she do? Continue to follow her?

Li Chun had been troubled by such questions recently. She had even thought of taking advantage of this opportunity to join the Australians and make the pretense a reality, completely breaking free from her foster sister’s control. In the past, she was surrounded by people from the Li family, and the ship was also the Li family’s. This time, the blind Danes had sent a large amount of money and sailors.

The sale of the spoils of war from the ship, and the income from selling the ship, after deducting the expenses and expenditures along the way, amounted to more than twelve thousand pesos. The profit from transporting goods for the Australians was not included—this part could not be considered income from piracy.

According to the rules, the profits from the spoils of war obtained from robbing the Griffin were distributed with 50% to the captain and 20% to the leaders. The rest was divided equally among the sailors. She herself received six thousand pesos.

In addition to the six thousand pesos, she also obtained Captain Visby’s private property from the captain’s cabin of the Griffin, including a bag of gold coins and a small pocket full of Ceylon rubies, emeralds, and crystals. Miss Chun, who had always been proud of her integrity, did not hesitate to pocket the items this time.

With this capital, it would not be difficult to get a ship—although every time she thought of this, she cursed herself in her heart for being heartless and ungrateful, but this idea became more and more stubborn…

No matter what happens in the future, let’s settle down here first, Li Huamei thought—I can be considered to have officially joined the Australians.

The matter of Li Huamei’s formal application to “join the group” had been on the desk of the People’s Committee for Civil Affairs for a long time. The reason why they said they had to wait for three months was mainly because Liu Muzhou was currently rather vague about the Executive Committee’s and the Senate’s policy on naturalized citizens. This matter concerned national policy, and he felt that he should not make his own decisions before receiving a clear policy.

So far, the Executive Committee had not had a clear regulation on how to define and manage naturalization. Generally speaking, as long as they came to Lingao to settle down, they were all considered “immigrants.” Regardless of whether they were organized immigrants or spontaneous immigrants, they had to enter the quarantine camp for purification after arriving in Lingao, and then be assigned to various places to live.

These people were all registered and then uniformly assigned to various communes. In addition, the population of the villages in the various counties of Hainan Island that had already been incorporated into the communes, had completed the consolidation of villages and the division of households, and had established basic organizations at the grassroots level, formed the “directly managed population” under the control of the Planning Institute. A considerable proportion of this population were “indentured servants.” The so-called naturalized citizens referred to this part of the “directly managed population.” The Senate recruited soldiers, workers, and students from the naturalized citizens, and selected cadres.

The naturalized citizens were under very strict control. The People’s Committee for Civil Affairs, the Police Headquarters, and the Political Security General Bureau jointly established a strict household registration system. Free migration was prohibited, and any movement of the permanent population had to be accompanied by household registration transfer procedures. A precise form was used to control the specific whereabouts and movements of each naturalized citizen.

The population of other villages and towns that had not been incorporated into the communes paid taxes and provided labor to the Senate. However, they were not included in the category of naturalized citizens in the statistics. At present, the People’s Committee for Civil Affairs had only preliminarily completed the census of their population and the survey of their land, and had issued land certificates and household certificates. In addition, effective grassroots rule had not yet been established in the various villages. It was basically the same old pattern of rural self-government, and the gentry and clans still enjoyed great prestige and power. However, due to the establishment of the National Army system and the severe crackdown during the pacification war—especially the cleansing of a large number of gentry and clans in the name of “collaborating with bandits” during the pacification war—the arrogance of these traditional rural forces was much less than before.

At present, the reason why they were not included as naturalized citizens was purely due to the current shortage of cadres. Moreover, the entire Hainan region was vast, and it would take more than a day to complete this work. What’s more, the main energy of the People’s Committee for Internal Affairs was currently focused on the resettlement of immigrants. It would take another two or three years to complete the “naturalization” of the entire Han, Miao, and assimilated Li populations of Hainan.

However, it was not difficult to become a naturalized citizen. As long as one volunteered to join the army, work as a worker or employee in an industrial, commercial, or agricultural enterprise under the Senate, or go to a national school, one could be included in the category of naturalized citizens. In short, a naturalized citizen was basically a class that one could join if one wanted to—as long as one could firmly “serve the Senate and the people.” It did not matter what one’s background, gender, or age was.

Although it was very simple in theory, in practice, there had always been a debate in the Senate about who could be included as a naturalized citizen. For example, could a landlord be considered a naturalized citizen? According to the Senate’s current rural work thinking, it encouraged and supported the development of large-scale farms by business-oriented landlords. Since they were the objects of encouragement, it was obviously not a problem to include them as naturalized citizens. However, whether tenant landlords could become naturalized citizens caused a great controversy in the Senate.

Tenant landlords were the objects of “elimination,” but at present, there were also many tenant landlords who actively supported the Senate. Many of them had even sent their children to national schools and factories and enterprises. There were more than ten such landlords in Lingao alone. In particular, the Liu family, the father-in-law of Xun Suji, although they had also joined the Heaven and Earth Society and started to run large-scale farms, their family still had a lot of rented land and tenants under their name.

Similar detailed issues made the identification of the status of a naturalized citizen difficult to operate. At present, Ma Jia was leading the drafting of a legal document on this content to completely regulate this matter.

People like Li Huamei, who had a certain amount of property and professional skills, would generally be approved to “naturalize” and become a naturalized citizen. However, the Political Security General Bureau’s political appraisal of Li Huamei was not high—although there was no clear evidence of her relationship with Li Siya, various signs indicated that it was not groundless. According to the Political Security General Bureau, she had “historical problems and complex social relations.”

So this matter had been hanging in the air. However, there were quite a few fans of Li Huamei among the young turks of the navy. Hearing that Li Huamei was willing to “seek freedom,” they came to Liu Muzhou’s office all day long to do work. Liu Muzhou was so annoyed that he deliberated again and again and decided to report directly to the Executive Committee and ask them to make a decision—anyway, Li Huamei was a person that everyone in the Executive Committee had heard of.

Li Huamei did not know that the Australians were having a heated discussion about how to deal with her. After distributing the money, she went to the trading post to see if there was any mail for her. Forwarding mail was also a service of the trading post. Of course, the Political Security General Bureau would not miss the opportunity to inspect the mail.

The letter was from her mistress—of course, the letterhead was from a trading company in Macau, and the content was not about reporting the sale of goods. She returned to her bedroom, heated the inside of the envelope with the flame of a gas lamp, and a few lines of handwriting soon appeared.

Li Siya wanted her to gather information on the recent movements of the Australian navy. In addition, she also wanted her to provide detailed information on the “three-masted ship that spewed black smoke,” including how many cannons it had, what size cannons it fired, and whether it had a secret means of propulsion besides sails.

Li Huamei lit the letter with the gas lamp and watched it turn to ashes. She knew that her sister had given her another difficult task. Of course, the reason her sister wanted her to join the Australians was essentially to gather intelligence on them.

“The big three-masted ship that spews black smoke”—the Lichun—she had seen it several times in Bopu. But this time when she returned, the Lichun was nowhere to be found. According to the intelligence she had gathered on her previous visits to Bopu, the Lichun had most likely gone to Kaohsiung in Taiwan—a port that the Australians had built in Taiwan.

However, even if the ship was not here, she could still get some useful information from her “fans.” What’s more, there were some smaller “smoke-spewing ships” in Bopu. If she was lucky, she might even be able to go on board for a tour—she had even been on the holy ship back then.

As long as she could find an acquaintance, she was 70-80% confident. In addition, she also wanted to take the opportunity to find out the whereabouts of her sister—since her mistress said that her sister was here with the Australians, then she was most likely in Lingao, the Australians’ old nest. It was very likely that she was in Bairen City, not far from here.

To avoid trouble, she did not tell the Australians that she was looking for her sister, Li Mo. She would first find someone to find out the situation. The servant girl, Li Ying, was the only African in Lingao and was too conspicuous, so she was left at home. In fact, a woman of her height of 165 cm was already conspicuous enough. It was only because the Australians had recently transported a lot of northerners that she did not seem so eye-catching. Li Huamei changed into an old uniform of a naturalized female worker, put on a straw hat and straw shoes, hung her temporary residence permit around her neck, and carried a bamboo water bottle on her back, barely looking like a big girl from Shandong.