Reborn as King of South America

Chapter 444: Migration of Orphaned Children
The passing of time and the old shadows, the frozen memories.

The rumbling sound of the steam engines at the mouth of the Rio de la Plata will become a permanent memory engraved in the hearts of immigrants.

The mouth of the Rio de la Plata is the starting point for entering the mainland's interior and the largest destination for overseas immigrants arriving in the mainland.

About 40 percent of overseas immigrants set foot on South American soil here, and then dispersed to the vast land of the mainland through the Paraná River tributaries and the Chang'an-Songjiang railway line.

Sending off large ships flying the British flag,
Welcoming batches of trawlers loaded with marine fishery products, on the busy waterway of the La Plata estuary,

With its firm and broad mind, the Han Empire welcomed a Far East immigration fleet consisting of more than 60 large and medium-sized ocean-going transport ships.

After nearly two months of long sea voyage and enduring the bumpy and boring cabin life, the immigrants on the transport ship were so excited that they ran to the deck and looked at the end of the ocean, the familiar yet unfamiliar land.

The reason why they are familiar with it is that before arriving in South America, they had learned a lot about the customs and habits of the South American Han Kingdom from their neighbors and friends. For example, the South American Han Kingdom is full of fields growing wheat, sorghum, and rice, and there are countless cattle and sheep in the mountains and grasslands. The people there have mountains of food piled up in their homes. They can eat rice every day and don't have to worry about starving.

In southern Fujian, Jiangsu and Zhejiang, Guangdong and Guangxi, and even in the northern coastal areas, all kinds of magical legends about the Han State are circulating everywhere.

The common people who had never traveled far and had never stepped out of a hundred kilometers around their homes did not believe the rumor when they first heard it. They just regarded it as a curiosity. According to their inherent experience, working hard for the landlords all year round and being able to eat two meals of coarse steamed bread and stale food every day was a rare happy life. Being able to eat fine rice and steamed buns every day and meat once every three to five days as the rumor said was simply a life like a god. Ordinary people could usually just listen to it as a joke, but it was almost impossible for them to expect such a good thing to happen to them.

Being at the other end of the world, coupled with the blockade and backwardness of the areas under the rule of the Qing Dynasty (in the 1890s, there were only more than 100 government-run and private industrial enterprises, and the degree of blockade can be imagined.),

Not only do ordinary people not understand the real economy and living standards of the Han Kingdom in South America, even those officials who claim to be proficient in Western affairs know very little about the real situation in the Han Kingdom in South America.

The people who have heard of or know something about the Han Kingdom in South America account for less than one-tenth of the total population in the Far East. However, even this proportion of less than one-tenth of the population has brought an immigrant population to the mainland that far exceeds the transportation capacity.

It accepts 40 to 50 immigrants every year, and more overseas immigrants are resettled in Songkhla, Lanfang and other places.
The huge and magnificent wave of overseas immigration changed the population structure of the Han country in South America, and also changed the fate of nearly ten million Chinese in the Far East.

The transport ship docked at the shore, and the pale, skinny and bony immigrants lined up in a long queue and, under the guidance of government officials in charge of immigration affairs, moved to the shore in an orderly manner to repair and rest.

Not far from the La Plata estuary, where the Songjiang Prefecture's coastal port is located, in order to accommodate and transfer a large number of immigrants, the local government has built a total of more than 20 independent brick houses within a radius of kilometers from the port, and equipped them with enough living and medical supplies to accommodate immigrants for temporary residence and repair at one time.

Absorbing Chinese immigrants is a basic national policy along with encouraging childbirth, establishing education, and developing industry.

The Han government vigorously absorbed and resettled Chinese immigrants, not only out of the needs of local development, but also out of morality and responsibility to the nation and the country.

Looking at the orphans aged four or five, seven or eight years old walking down the boat one after another, and looking at the fear and terror in their eyes as they hold their younger brothers and sisters in their arms, any passionate young man with a conscience will not let them go.

The Emperor of Han was famous for his emphasis on helping and raising orphaned children on the mainland. The young naval officers who had just graduated from military academies and entered the ocean-going transport fleet as ordinary sailors for a one-year internship took the emperor's teachings and ideas as their beliefs. Every time they returned with the immigrant fleet, they seemed to have become fighters with chicken blood, and their blood was excited and full of inexhaustible energy. According to the young officers of the army and navy, this is called national responsibility and sincere patriotism. In their eyes, every Chinese child who migrated to South America and lost his parents is the future and hope of the country. Seeing their pitiful appearance at the beginning of immigration, they felt sad and blamed themselves, but also more motivated and passionate!

If the youth are strong, the country will be strong! If the youth are weak, the country will be weak! The orphaned children are a generation that has suffered. Young officers have the responsibility and obligation to strive for the rise of the country. They do not want to see what the orphaned children have experienced repeated in their descendants!

The words that the young officers of the Songjiang Port Naval Base often said appeared in their minds. Han Guoxing and the shipyard's deputy director Niu Shangzhou did not have a deep understanding of them at first. However, after seeing the frightened and helpless eyes of the orphaned children and their poor physical condition, Niu Shangzhou's mood changed drastically.

Niu Shangzhou (born in 1861, a member of the first group of Chinese students studying in the United States) was born into a wealthy family in the south. When he was a teenager, he went to study in the United States in accordance with the instructions of the Qing court.

Because he left home at a young age, Niu Shangzhou did not know much about the real living conditions of ordinary people in his hometown. Later, in 1881, the Chinese Children Studying in America Program was terminated. Niu Shangzhou, Xu Zhixuan, Kuang Rongguang, Tan Yaoxun and others were recruited by the Han Kingdom and returned to South America one after another. After that, he studied in Germany for another five years. He returned to China in 1887 and was sent to work at the Xinghe Shipyard. As a result, he had more and more contact with young officers at the naval base near the Xinghe Shipyard. Niu Shangzhou had a deeper understanding of the fundamental reasons for the backward rule of the Qing Dynasty and the difficulties and hardships of ordinary people in the Far East.

Until today, because Li Mingyuan and several central officials were coming to Xinghe Shipyard to inspect the construction of a 5000-ton ship, Niu Shangzhou, the factory director Tong Longfu, ship technical consultant Thomas Villar and others went to the port to greet them in person. Taking this opportunity, Niu Shangzhou truly experienced the true feelings of those young naval officers when they witnessed the lost children.

Near the offshore dock of Xinghe Shipyard, there were disheveled children wearing ill-fitting grey cloth clothes that had obviously been changed. Although there was a hint of redness on their faces (the immigrant fleet had different standards for material distribution, and young children were weaker, so they received more food and medical care), the sequelae of long-term hunger were still evident on their faces.

After all, the living and medical standards on the transport fleet are not as good as those on land. Although the young children received better care than ordinary young and middle-aged immigrants, such care was only enough to meet their basic living and medical needs on the ship, which was far from sufficient.

In the temporary resettlement base for immigrants, the orphaned children are of different ages, including children aged three to five years old and teenagers aged eleven or twelve. Some have migrated from the Jiangnan region, and a few are from the northern region.

In the group of young migrant children totaling two to three thousand people, Niu Shangzhou even saw many children pulling each other. They were either biological sisters, brothers, or close relatives with blood ties. However, no matter how close or distant their blood relationship was, what moved Niu Shangzhou the most was that they, who were young and faced the threat of death, could support each other when they lost their parents and adult relatives.

Xinghe Shipyard is like a small society. Every year, the shipyard recruits a group of orphans who have received primary education to work as apprentices in the factory.

In Niu Shangzhou's impression, although many orphans are just 14 years old, their physical strength and technical experience are not as good as those of secondary school graduates.
But perhaps because they have experienced more difficult lives in the past and know how to cherish the hard-won opportunities in front of them, they are very focused when learning technology and their skills are improving very quickly.

In September 1888, when Niu Shangzhou was promoted to deputy director of Xinghe Shipyard, he heard a German engineer who was about to return to Europe after his contract expired sigh: "The entire process of shipbuilding is done by Chinese workers, and their skills are no less than any workers in European factories. What's more, some of their apprentice workers who were orphans are even more shocking. They are surrounded by Chinese workers and European technical engineers every day, and they carefully write down every step and operation of the engineers. Their spirit of learning is very admirable. A country with such a group of workers is both respectable and terrifying."

The performance of the Han skilled workers and even orphan apprentices may seem incredible to European engineers. However, after experiencing the propaganda and public opinion of the Han people and seeing with their own eyes the tenacious character of the Han people inherited from ancient times, as shown in those innocent and pure orphaned children,
Niu Shangzhou became accustomed to the comments made by the European technical experts hired by his local government at high salaries.

"Han shipbuilding workers work very flexibly and quickly. They obviously have a natural skill in controlling and using machine tools. In every respect, except for their physical weakness, Han workers are comparable to workers in any other country in the world."

After the first domestically built 5000-ton ocean-going ship completed its trial voyage, similar exclamations from foreign technical experts were often heard.

Faced with more and more praises, Niu Shangzhou simply expressed polite gratitude and did not become complacent, because he knew that compared with the European powers, the civilian shipbuilding industry of the Han Dynasty was only at a second-rate level. The civilian shipbuilding industry of Xinghe Shipyard still had a long way to go if it wanted to reach the level of a first-class industry.

(End of this chapter)