Wind Rises in North America 1625

Chapter 443 Fertile Land (Part Two)

"Of the 4,000 immigrants allocated to our Jinchuan region this year, I plan to transfer a quarter of them to Wangjiang Fort (now Abbotsford). Can you handle that?"

On September 21, as soon as Zhao Zhanpeng, the commissioner of the Jinchuan Prefecture Administrative Office, disembarked, he posed a question to Xia Shichang, the person in charge of Wangjiangbao, who had come to greet him.

Xia Shichang took a half step forward and bowed, mud stains falling from his coarse cloth trousers.
“No problem, I can handle it!” Xia Shichang hesitated for a moment, then took half a step forward, bowed, and gave an affirmative answer: “However, I request that the regional administrative office transfer more grassroots management personnel over here.”

He turned and pointed to the rows of wooden houses being built on the east side of the dock and the fields being leveled in the distance: "More than fifty wooden houses have been built for the immigrants to live in, which can temporarily accommodate three or four hundred people. The more than 1,800 mu of swamp land that was drained half a year ago has also dried up, just waiting for the new immigrants to come and clear the land."

"However, half of the clerks in the seven settlements are immigrants who just arrived last year. They only attended night school for a few days and can't even use the measuring rope properly. We need to fill in some better materials for the basic framework."

Zhao Zhanpeng smiled and took a list from the clerk behind him: "Five graduates from the New Zhou Management Training Institute, all majoring in agricultural policy and water conservancy, will come by boat tomorrow. I've also selected ten veterans; all they need is a shovel and a musket to lead the new immigrants into the wasteland."

He paused, then tapped the list heavily with his fingertip. "There are also one hundred old immigrants from Raozhou (now Surrey) and Jinchuan (now New Westminster, Vancouver). They are all experienced farmers who have worked in the polder fields for three years. Each family will bring their farm tools and livestock and will move over one after another. This will help the new immigrants get used to the 'three essential tools for land reclamation'—plow, harrow, and waterwheel."

"In this way, your Wangjiang Fort colonization system should be initially established and able to play its due role. With so much support, I hope that within three to five years, the Wangjiang colonization area will become an important grain production base for the entire administrative region."

"Commissioner, I also need a large number of livestock for clearing land and farming."

"I'll grant your request. In a few days, I'll have 150 cows and 50 horses sent from Jinshatan."

"Excellent! I guarantee I will complete the task assigned by the Commissioner." Xia Shichang puffed out his chest and solemnly promised, "Commissioner, by next autumn harvest, the wheat bins in Wangjiang Fort will be piled high up to the eaves."

“I want more than just wheat storage.” Zhao Zhanpeng patted his shoulder, his gaze drifting to the reeds in the distance. “Come back in three to five years. I want to see schools, shops, and a road for horse-drawn carriages connecting to other counties and towns. Wangjiang is the vital link on the south bank of the Jinsha River. We need to make sure we can get things moving.”

The Wangjiangbao Colonization Area was established two years ago, located precisely between Raozhou and Jinshatan (now Qiliwak City), connecting the entire south bank of the Jinsha River.

Currently, the settlement area consists of only one fort and six villages, with a migrant population of over 400 and more than 5,000 mu of arable land, and has not yet achieved food self-sufficiency.

However, after investigation by agricultural experts, it was found that the agricultural conditions in this area were in no way inferior to those in the river delta where Zhenjiang is located.

Located at the confluence of the Jinsha River and the Xiaoliang River (now the Sumas River), this area has a large alluvial plain with an alluvial soil layer 3-5 meters deep. The soil is also covered with a layer of volcanic ash (originating from the nearby Baker Volcano), and the phosphorus and potassium content is 20%-30% higher than in other areas.

Some veteran farmers are very confident that once these lands are developed, they can be cultivated sustainably for more than ten years without crop rotation, relying solely on their natural fertility.

What's even more remarkable is that the annual sunshine hours in the Wangjiang colonization area are more than in other areas of Jinchuan, and the frost-free period is more than 180 days.

In other words, apart from rice cultivation which may face the problem of insufficient accumulated temperature, all other food crops can be grown in this area, and with a little development, it can become excellent irrigated land.

The difficulties of reclamation are also clearly evident.

Every spring, the Jinsha River and Xiaoliang River overflow their banks. Last year, a flood destroyed more than 160 mu of newly reclaimed farmland. Now, more than 30 migrants are building dikes on the riverbank with shovels, and the shouts of ramming the earth can be heard far away on the wind.

Even more challenging are the mixed forests to the west and south. Some of the redwoods and spruces have trunks so thick that it takes three people to encircle them. When an axe is used to cut them, it only leaves a white mark. The logging team has to burn the roots first and then use an oxcart to haul them away. They might not be able to clear even half an acre of land in a day.

Wolf howls can often be heard at night. Last month, an immigrant who was tending the fields was scratched on the leg by a brown bear and is still recovering in the fort.

But these difficulties were utterly insignificant in the face of the indomitable spirit of the new generation of Chinese.

From the arduous pioneering work on Qiming Island, to the clanging of picks and chisels at the Fenzhou Coal Mine, and then to the bright lights of the Jinshahe Gold Mine, which piece of land wasn't warmed up little by little by flesh and blood?
The hardworking and simple immigrants from the East are gradually transforming the New World into their ideal paradise on earth.

However, since the central government established a strategy of prioritizing southward expansion five years ago, the number of immigrants allocated to the Jinchuan region has decreased year by year. Last year, affected by the Luzon incident, the scale of Xinhua's immigration was only slightly over 10,000. After meeting the manpower needs of the headquarters' industrial and agricultural production and key development areas, only a mere 1,000 immigrants were finally allocated to the Jinchuan region, which was quite frustrating.

It's important to understand that in this pre-industrial colonization era of the 17th century, before technological advancements had made significant strides, population size directly determined the upper limit of productivity.

A strong adult laborer with a shovel or hoe may not be able to cultivate even a small plot of land each day, while supporting an immigrant family requires the continuous output of at least ten acres of cultivated land.

In the days before the widespread use of steam engines and chemical fertilizers, every load of grain, every meter of irrigation canal, and every roof beam depended on the accumulation of flesh and blood and time.

In this wild land, manpower is the yardstick for measuring the land, the fortress for resisting hunger, and the only means to turn the swamp into a granary.

Even the most fertile black soil, without enough farmers bending down to sow and wielding sickles to harvest, will ultimately remain a wasteland inhabited by wild beasts.

The Jinchuan region was established single-handedly by Zhao Zhanpeng, who devoted ten years of his life to it. He cherished it as if it were a child he had personally raised and watched grow up.

Faced with the annual reduction in immigration quotas, he naturally felt some dissatisfaction.

It should be noted that the Vancouver metropolitan area, where the Jinchuan region is located in later generations, is the most important economic and industrial center on the west coast of the Maple Leaf Country, and it has a vast hinterland for development. If development efforts are increased and the area is cultivated meticulously, it may well replace the Qiming Island headquarters centered on Shixing City.

The results of it?
The central government, however, temporarily designated the Jinchuan area as Xinhua's agricultural base, providing a continuous supply of agricultural raw materials for the industrial development of Qiming Island headquarters.

Perhaps for this reason, when the "younger generation" proposed the so-called "Southward Advance Plan" in June, Zhao Zhanpeng, who should have firmly stood on the side of the "conservatives" such as Luo Zhenhui and Li Xianqing, turned against them and chose to support the plan.

This political compromise was not in vain. It not only secured a stable quota of 4,000 immigrants per year, but also earned him limited approval from the central government for his long-cherished "Eastern Exploration Plan".

This broke the deadlock of resource competition where "exploration to the south and exploration to the east were mutually exclusive," and the exploration plan was not completely shelved by the central government, allowing it to enter the initial planning stage.

In this plan, he intends to establish several colonization outposts to the east over the next ten years, modeled after the Russian conquest of Siberia, extending his reach to the central steppe region.

The core of the Eastward Exploration Plan is to gradually advance into the central grasslands with the profit driven by fur and precious metal minerals. The survival of the colonization bases established in the early stage depends first and foremost on the supply of food and materials.

Zhao Zhanpeng regards consolidating the Jinchuan agricultural base as a "major rear area project" for the eastern exploration: by striving for immigration quotas, he focuses on developing the river delta where Zhenjiang is located and new expansion areas such as Wangjiangbao, expanding the cultivated land area and increasing grain production capacity.

He demanded that "an important grain base be built in three to five years," which, in addition to continuing to supply agricultural raw materials to the Qiming Island headquarters, was essentially a "mobile granary" for the East Exploration Project.

The rations for the colonization teams and garrison troops advancing eastward in the future can be directly allocated from the cultivated land of Jinchuan, avoiding the failure of the plan due to logistical disruptions.

To this end, he drew heavily on the experience of Tsarist Russia's "chain expansion of strongholds" in conquering Siberia and planned a three-step gradient advancement strategy.

The first step is to explore new avenues, and that has already begun.

Two years ago, he sent an exploration team eastward along the Jinsha River and its tributaries to draw topographic maps, mark usable water sources and arable land, and record the distribution and activity areas of indigenous tribes.

Over the next four to five years, several temporary outposts will be established in safe areas that have been explored and confirmed, such as river confluences and plains and valleys. These outposts will be equipped with simple fortifications, warehouses, and a small amount of arable land, serving as transit points for further advances.

Once these forward outposts were initially secured, they used them as a starting point to gradually expand eastward. Every 50-100 kilometers they advanced, they built new secondary outposts, connecting them with rivers, valleys, and dirt roads to form a chain structure of "outposts - relay stations - farmland," ultimately extending their influence to the central grasslands.

Since capturing Kashlyk (near present-day Tobolsk), the capital of the Siberian Khanate, in 1581, opening the gateway to the East, and then reaching the Sea of ​​Okhotsk in 1639 to establish its first Pacific coastal outpost (present-day Okhotsk), Tsarist Russia completed the feat of traversing Eurasia in just 58 years.

Zhao Zhanpeng hopes that his Eastward Exploration Project will allow the new Chinese to touch the waters of the Atlantic Ocean twenty years from now.
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(End of this chapter)