Wind Rises in North America 1625

Chapter 445 "The Inn" (Part 1)

As dawn broke over the spruce forest on the right bank of the Jinsha River, pale golden rays pierced through the layers of branches and leaves, casting dappled shadows on the damp, decaying leaves.

The first wisp of smoke rose from the wooden fence of the Tong'an (now Hope City) mining area. The smoke did not disperse in the damp morning mist, like a clump of pale blue cotton hanging on the low wooden roof.

Pan Dongqing finished the last mouthful of corn porridge in the rough porcelain bowl, the crisp sound of the bowl hitting his teeth echoing in the damp morning mist.

He wiped the porridge stains off his stubble, reached out and touched the iron pickaxe on the corner of the table. The morning light streaming through the window grille illuminated his cracked palms, marks etched from his three years of mining, each line seemingly inlaid with indelible gold dust.

"Brother Pan, it's drizzling and foggy today. The mine along the river is probably even more damp. Should we still go to work?" came the voice of Xiao Ji, a young miner, from the side, carrying a hint of timid anticipation.

This child fled from Dengzhou last year. It is said that he worked as a miner in the Zhaoyuan Gold Mine with his father for a year before being assigned to Xinhua.

His once youthful face was now stained a dull yellow by the dust of the mine, with only his eyes still shining.

He was carrying a heavy gold-sifting tray, the edges of which had been worn smooth and shiny. The tray was engraved with fine anti-slip patterns, which he had painstakingly carved himself with a carving knife, saying that this would prevent the gold from slipping out of his hand when sifting.

Pan Dongqing glanced at the innermost private room in the canteen. The wooden door was ajar, and he could see the dim yellow oil lamp inside. The foremen and master craftsmen were eating around a square table, on which were laid out braised meat and white steamed buns. The rising steam condensed into water droplets on the windowpane. They were still eating at a leisurely pace, occasionally letting out a few words of laughter, without making any attempt to urge the miners to work.

"It's raining heavily outside, and the weather is getting colder. Maybe they won't be going to work?" he said uncertainly.

"Hehe, that would be perfect." Xiao Ji threw the gold sieve plate on the ground, slumped onto the dining table, and rested his elbow on a coarse steamed bun. "If you're not going to work, you can go back and take another nap wrapped in a quilt."

“But if I don’t work, I won’t get paid for my labor.” Pan Dongqing sighed. “My service period at the mine will end next July. When I get the land, I need to build houses, buy farm tools, and buy livestock. It will cost a lot of money.”

"Brother Pan, why do you insist on going to the land redistribution?" Xiao Ji asked, tilting his head. "I think the mine is pretty good. There's food and drink, meat during festivals, and wages. If you can find enough placer gold, there's an extra bonus. All year round, the income is no less than farming!"

"Hehe..." Pan Dongqing laughed, "Xiao Ji, how old are you this year?"

"Seventeen, oh no, eighteen..." Xiao Ji looked at him in confusion.

"Do you want to get married?"

"Uh..." Xiao Ji blushed slightly upon hearing this, "It's still early... I'll wait until I've saved up enough money before... before I go find another one..."

"Tch!" Pan Dongqing sneered. "Eighteen years old? That's not early at all! Some kids get married and have children at fourteen or fifteen. You're eighteen, and you're still not thinking about finding a woman?"

"But... but I've only been at Xinhua for a short time..." Xiao Ji stammered, unsure of what to say.

"That's bullshit!" Pan Dongqing reached out and ruffled Xiao Ji's hair. "We common folk believe that of the three unfilial acts, the greatest is to have no offspring. Now that Xinhua has food and clothing and can save some money, if he doesn't hurry up and find a wife and have children, does he want to wait until he's old and sleeps on a cold bed?"

"If this were the Ming Dynasty, we wouldn't even have enough to eat, so we wouldn't be thinking about getting married and having children. But things are different now. Xinhua has given us a way to survive, so we have to make a living."

"Oh..." Xiao Ji nodded blankly.

"You idiot!" Pan Dongqing laughed and scolded, "You can earn a lot of wages working in the mine, but look around here, is there even a single woman in sight?"

Xiao Ji subconsciously looked around. There were groups of miners gathered in the canteen. Some were still eating, while others, like them, were sitting on chairs chatting and laughing, waiting for the mine manager to give the order to start work.

At first glance, all the men were young and strong; there wasn't a trace of femininity about them.
He scratched his head and didn't say anything more.

“If you keep working like this in the mine, even if you can earn a hundred yuan a year, you will never be able to find a wife,” Pan Dongqing said. “The mine managers and armed guards are rotated every year or two. Do you want to spend your whole life here?”

"Oh..." Xiao Ji blinked, "Then can I get married, have children, and then go back to work in the mine? Besides mining for gold, I don't know how to farm!"

"Oh, you've gotten married, are you really going to let your wife stay in an empty house all year round?" Pan Dongqing said with a smile. "Besides, what's so hard about farming! As long as you have some strength, you can learn diligently from the old farmers in the village. Sow in the spring, tend to it in the summer, and harvest in the autumn. Forty acres of land is enough for a family to eat for several years!"

"Little Ji, don't listen to Old Pan's nonsense!" A miner with a full beard laughed loudly. "He's a bit obsessed, always thinking about farming and growing crops. I guess he was terrified of starvation in the Ming Dynasty and is afraid of not having enough to eat. If you want to make a lot of money, what's faster than panning for gold in the mine! Last month I panned for a gold nugget the size of a fingernail, and the reward money was enough to buy three bushels of rice!"

"You don't know anything!" Pan Dongqing retorted, turning around. "In the eyes of us ordinary people, nothing is more important than owning our own land, and nothing brings more peace of mind than having enough to eat."

"I was terrified of starvation in the Ming Dynasty! You don't know, my family of six starved to death there because we had no land to farm. We had to rent land from landlords, and the harvest wasn't even enough to pay the rent. Now that Xinhua is giving us a chance to get land, I'll seize it even if it kills me!"

"Yes, yes..." the bearded man said with a wry smile, "You're right, land is important, but having enough to eat is even more important. But don't you think about where we are now? New Continent! According to the officials above, there are vast tracts of fertile land here, and they're all unclaimed."

"With this, you think Xinhua would lack land? I heard that old immigrants who settle in the Ziwu River or Xinhua Bay area are allowed to buy an additional 40 mu of hillside land and woodland, in addition to their 40 mu of allotted land. With so much land, can you even farm it all?"

"That's as if Xinhua's land is endless!" Pan Dongqing curled his lip. "Think about it, during the Hongwu era of the Ming Dynasty, didn't all the people in the country have land to cultivate? But hundreds of years have passed, the population has increased, but the land has not increased accordingly. In the end, there was no land left to cultivate."

“How many people does Xinhua have now, and you’re already thinking so far ahead!” The bearded man stared at him blankly. “Didn’t those officials say that this New Continent is bigger than the entire Ming Dynasty? ... How much land and how many people would it take to fill this place?”

"Anyway, this land will eventually be filled up. People will keep being born, but land doesn't grow out of thin air. We should take advantage of the fact that we've come early and acquire some land in advance to pass on to our descendants. Otherwise..."

"The manager is here!..." someone whispered, and the miners put down their bowls and chopsticks and stood up, and the canteen fell silent instantly.

Liao Deming, the general manager of the Tong'an mining area, wearing a dark blue woolen short-sleeved shirt with silver thread patterns embroidered on the cuffs, walked out of the private room surrounded by several managers and the captain of the guard.

"It's raining today, so we'll take a break for the day." Liao Deming's voice wasn't loud, but it was very penetrating. He glanced at everyone. "However, the camp needs to be tidied up. The rooms need to be cleaned, and the drainage ditches in the kitchen need to be cleared to prevent the spread of disease. Also, we need twenty strong laborers to go to the neighboring settlement to help build the stockade wall."

The miners looked at each other, wondering if helping to repair the stockade wall at the neighboring settlement would count as work hours.
“It’s considered normal working hours,” Liao Deming smiled slightly. “Moreover, they also provide lunch, which is white flour steamed buns with fish soup.”
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"The smoke from the chimneys at the settlement over there seems to rise half an hour earlier than in the mining area. They look to be working even harder than us." The group, wearing straw hats and raincoats, walked along the muddy path towards the settlement.

The rain slanted down onto the straw hat, making a rustling sound. The mud reached up to my ankles, and every step made a "squeaking" sound. The clothes under the raincoat were quickly soaked and became heavy.

Xiao Ji looked up at the settlement camp several hundred meters away, took a breath, and showed a curious expression: "What do you think these settlers are doing, leaving the good land in Jinchuan to suffer here?"

Pan Dongqing followed his gaze and saw a dozen wooden houses looming in the rain and mist on the slope not far from the riverbank.

The rooftops were covered with neatly trimmed spruce bark, and wisps of smoke rose from the brick chimneys, mingling with the fragrance of pine wood as they drifted across the river.

Before May of this year, the area was a dense, impenetrable forest. Now, a large flat area has been carved out, and dozens of strong young men are swinging axes and hoes with great force, making the miners in the area uneasy.

What are these people doing?

"Who cares what they do!" The bearded man spat, mud splattering onto his raincoat. "It's good that they're clearing land and farming here. When they have a harvest next year, we won't have to travel over a hundred miles to Jinshatan to buy food. Last year, the Jinsha River flooded, and the supply ships were delayed for more than half a month, almost causing us to run out of food."

"Yes, Lao Luo has a point." Pan Dongqing nodded. "If this place develops and a market is set up, it will be so lively!"

As they spoke, they arrived at the entrance of the settlement. The wooden gate was ajar, with a wooden sign hanging on it that read "Tong'an Fort" in regular script.

Several men were working together to lift a thick spruce log, chanting as they tried to erect it. Judging from the appearance, it seemed like they were building a lookout or similar structure.

In a corner of the camp, a short, thin man was chopping wood with a large axe. The "crack" of the axe falling was crisp and clean, and the chopped firewood was stacked neatly like a small mountain.

Strings of salmon strung together with hemp rope hung under the eaves, their eyes bulging, their flesh dried to a pale white from the sun, emitting a faint salty and fishy smell.

Many others were using pickaxes and shovels to level the foundation, with wooden wedges marked with graduations inserted along the edges, clearly indicating that they were working according to regulations.

The mine manager, who was leading the team, found the person in charge of the settlement. The two exchanged a few pleasantries and then the manager turned around and pointed to the miners: "Manager Liao asked me to bring twenty skilled men over here, to be at the command of Village Chief Zhang."

The person in charge was not tall, but exceptionally strong. He was dressed in short, tight-fitting clothes, with a short, sheathed knife with a handle at his waist. The edge of the sheath was polished to a shine.

He walked up to the miners, nodded slightly to them, and said in a loud voice, "My name is Zhang Meng, and I am the village head here."

The calluses on his hands were even harder than those on Pan Dongqing's, and his gaze swept over the crowd with a sharpness born of years of experience.

“A few days ago, a brown bear broke into Tonganbao, ate half of the stored potatoes, and injured two brothers on night patrol.”

Zhang Meng pointed to the fence on the west side, "The original fence was too simple, the wood was rotten, it needs to be replaced with a solid wall to keep out wild animals and local people."

He led the group westward, saying as they walked, "The timber is all ready, it's thoroughly dried spruce, we just need skilled hands. As the old saying goes, a close neighbor is worse than a distant relative. Our Tong'an Fort is right next to the mining area, we should look out for each other. If the mine ever needs our help, just ask, and we'll definitely repay you!"

Pan Dongqing looked around curiously at the settlement. It was not large, only about fifty or sixty meters square, much smaller than their mining camp.

However, the houses here are much more orderly than those in the mining area. Although they are also built of logs, the gaps are carefully filled with mud.

Several fields were cultivated on the east and south sides of the camp, where lush green radishes and cabbages were planted. Several men wearing raincoats were harvesting with hoes. A few chili pepper plants were also planted beside the vegetable plots, with bright red fruits hanging from the branches.

To be honest, since the settlement was established in May, these miners had never been this close to it, nor had they ever interacted with the people here.

They were constantly busy with construction, logging, building houses, leveling land, burning wasteland... they never seemed to have a moment to rest, and they seemed to be working even harder than the gold miners.

"Hey, brother, why did you choose such a place to settle and cultivate?" Pan Dongqing quietly asked a migrant from the settlement next to him. "I'm wondering why you chose this place when Jinchuan is flat and the soil is so fertile. Look at this riverbank, it's all rocks and trees. It'll be so hard to cultivate!"

The thin man paused for a moment, then stammered, "I... I'm not quite sure... about this matter. The superiors... gave the order, and I will follow it... and carry it out."

He spoke with a heavy accent, and his pronunciation was not very clear.

"Are you Japanese?" Pan Dongqing's eyes revealed a hint of disdain.

Although he was from Shandong, his grandfather's generation migrated from the Jiangnan region. As a child, he heard many stories from the elders about the brutality and savagery of the Japanese pirates, saying that they cut off people's heads like watermelons.

"Yes, I come from northern Kyushu," the Japanese immigrant said, bowing his head.

Pan Dongqing snorted and ignored him, but a question arose in his mind: Why would Xinhua send Japanese people to reclaim land?
With his tiny arms and legs, even a wolf running into the woods could snatch him away!

“You’ve been digging for gold here for years, you should know that this Jinsha River is a golden waterway, right?” Zhang Meng walked over. “Upstream it leads to Lixi (now Yale Town), and downstream it connects to Jinchuan and Zhenjiang. In the future, when we go deep into the inland, Tong’an Fort by this river will be a resting place.”

"The higher-ups said that gold is important, but the land beneath our feet is even more important. By settling down here, building warehouses, and stockpiling food, we can start our eastward exploration team from here and go all the way to the eastern Kunlun Mountains."

"Eastern exploration?"

"That's right! Tong'an Fort is the first supply point for our eastward exploration. After we, the new Chinese, fill both banks of the Jinsha River, we can cross the East Kunlun Mountains through these pre-established outposts and stations like Tong'an Fort to explore the more fertile lands inland."

"Perhaps there are countless gold mines to the east, waiting for you to mine them."
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(End of this chapter)