Wind Rises in North America 1625

Chapter 543 The Rear (Part 4)

September 10, 1642, Yongning Bay, Xunyang County (now Santa Clara, California).

By the end of June, the entire Yongning Bay (now San Francisco Bay) settlement had a population of over 18,600 (excluding local natives), and was divided into three counties: Yuzhou County (now San Francisco), Yongning County (now Oakland), and Xunyang County, as well as two settlement sub-districts: Chang'an (now Sacramento) and Taiyuan (now Stockton).

After several years of arduous development, the cultivated land has exceeded 280,000 mu (more than half of which was cultivated in the last three years), mainly used for growing crops such as wheat, potatoes, and corn.

Although life there wasn't exactly affluent, the immigrants had largely achieved their goal of having enough to eat and were able to live and work in peace and contentment on this new land.

However, with the sudden outbreak of war between Xinhua and Spain, this peaceful colony was immediately given a new strategic mission.

Yongning Bay was designated as an important logistics transit base for the front line. It not only had to undertake part of the military food supply nearby, but also had more than 1,200 well-trained militiamen conscripted to accompany the Xinhua Army to Mexico to participate in the war.

Not long after, at the request of the military, the settlement government recruited more than 800 Native American warriors from the surrounding indigenous tribes to serve as auxiliary forces to reinforce the front lines.

The peaceful life in the colony was immediately shattered when war broke out.

The first thing to be affected was the soaring prices, with prices of everyday consumer goods such as sugar, flour, spices, meat products, canned goods, and alcoholic beverages, as well as production materials such as hardware, generally rising.

Despite the government's strict price controls on essential goods related to people's livelihoods, there was still a certain degree of shortage in the market, especially in Yongning Bay, a settlement far from Xinhua headquarters, where residents had to use ration coupons to buy necessities such as rice, flour, oil, and salt.

Fortunately, the local food supply is relatively sufficient, with enough potatoes and corn.

In addition, the most affected aspect is the shortage of labor.

Although mobilizing nearly 10,000 troops (including naval and army personnel, militia, and indigenous servants) would not have a serious impact on the national economy for Xinhua, which had a population of over 300,000, the mobilization of 1,200 militia and over 800 local strongmen in the Yongning Bay settlement, which had a population of only 18,000, still had a considerable impact on the local area.

Not to mention, as a logistics transit base for war, it also occupied a considerable number of people in order to complete the loading, unloading, storage and transfer of a large amount of materials.

It can be said that more than 30% of the manpower in the Yongning Bay colonization area has been "occupied" for this ongoing war.

During the winter wheat and potato harvest season in June this year, the colonization area mobilized almost all available manpower, with even government officials and soldiers rolling up their sleeves and rushing to the fields to harvest.

More than 30 new horse-drawn harvesters imported from the local area were also put into use, barely managing to complete the summer harvest.

With the autumn harvest approaching, more than 100,000 mu of corn and soybeans await harvest, and the shadow of labor shortage once again looms over the entire colonization area.

However, at this time, a new wave of immigrants arrived.

To alleviate the labor shortage in the region, the Immigration and Colonization Department specially sent more than 4,500 immigrants from the Ming Dynasty, Korea, and Japan to Yongning Bay.

Besides supplementing the labor force in the three counties, most of these new immigrants were settled in the two colonization zones of Chang'an and Taiyuan. They were tasked with expanding grain cultivation, experimenting with cotton planting, and making long-term plans for the development of Xinhua's cotton textile industry.

In Xianping Township (now San Jose, California), the mornings were awakened by the crowing of roosters and the ringing of bells signaling the start of the workday.

Wang Tugen stood at the door of the newly allocated wooden house and took a deep breath.

The air was filled with the smell of damp earth, the salty tang of the distant bay, and a sweet, slightly burnt aroma of grain that he had never smelled before.

The old immigrants said it smelled like corn stalks that had been moistened by the morning dew and then dried in the sun; it was a unique smell of this land called New Continent.

He has been here for twenty-five days.

More than three hundred Shandong natives and Koreans who had traveled from Dengzhou across the ocean were scattered like a handful of sand into Xianping Township of Xunyang County.

The hardships along the way were indescribable. They endured the raging waves in the hold and finally set foot on this legendary new continent. They were all emaciated and pale. Their eyes, besides the bewilderment of reaching the other side, were filled with uncertainty and expectation for the future, as well as a faint fear.

They were told that this was a newly opened territory of the "Imperial Court," a vast and sparsely populated area where they would have land to cultivate, food to eat, and clothes to wear.

There is indeed food, and it's three meals a day, all you can eat.

In the morning, there is thick corn porridge and boiled potato chunks. Lunch and dinner always include roasted or steamed potatoes. Occasionally, you can also eat white flour steamed buns and dried fish, and even a few slices of salted meat.

This scene, compared to the devastation of my hometown in Shandong, where people were forced to exchange children for food, is a paradise I never dared to dream of.

Clothes, too.

Tugen touched the slightly oversized but thick and durable indigo canvas work clothes he was wearing. These were provided free of charge by the government at the epidemic prevention camp, with two sets for each person, along with a pair of sturdy work shoes.

As for the tattered clothes and ragged pants from before?
When he was driven into the cleaning pool for disinfection and cleaning, he was stripped naked, his forehead was shaved bald, his old clothes were taken away, burned, and then buried deep in the pit.

It is said that the government did this to prevent them from bringing diseases into the country and infecting the local residents.

We stayed in a clean and tidy wooden house. Although the bed was covered with a lot of straw, there was a cotton mattress and a cotton quilt, which felt soft and warm against our skin.

This is the paradise you long to come to.

However, there are troubles even in heaven.

The shadow of war, like the perpetual fog on the distant sea, shrouded this seemingly peaceful land.

"Tugen, what are you daydreaming about! Hurry up! Liu Zhuangtou said we have to finish harvesting all the millet in that field on the east slope today! If we miss the work, we'll lose our meals!" Li Shuiwa, who was in the same room, urged from the side, her face showing a mixture of excitement and caution towards the new environment.

Tugen responded, picked up a brand-new sickle with a bluish handle from the doorway, and followed Shuiwa into the crowd outside.

On the dirt roads in the countryside, there were immigrants dressed in the same work clothes and carrying farm tools as them. Some were from Shandong, and there were also a few taciturn Koreans and dark-skinned Japanese. Led by government clerks and "old immigrants" arranged by the locals, they walked silently and quickly toward the fields.

The fields of Xianping Township were so vast that Tugen felt uneasy.

The vast plain stretches as far as the eye can see, with rolling hills in the distance. Large swathes of crops display different colors under the rising sun: the stubble fields that have already been harvested are earthy yellow, the potato fields that have been replanted are dark green, and the most eye-catching is the golden cornfield that seems to connect with the horizon.

The wind blew, and the corn leaves rustled like waves seen from a ship.

"It's...it's so wide..." Shuiwa murmured, his mouth agape. "How much grain can we grow here?"

An elderly immigrant with a heavy Cantonese accent, surnamed Zhou, whom everyone called Old Man Zhou, scoffed upon hearing this: "Wide? This is nothing! The two colonization zones in Chang'an and Taiyuan are even wider... They stretch as far as the eye can see!"

"Oh..." Wang Tugen smiled ingratiatingly and gave a perfunctory reply.

"What's that iron thing?" Li Shuiwa suddenly pointed to the edge of the field and asked curiously.

"A horse-drawn harvester!" Old Zhou glanced at him disdainfully. "This iron machine is worth the work of a hundred of you!"

"Is this iron thing for farm work?" Li Shuiwa's eyes widened.

"Of course!" Old Zhou laughed. "We have a small population in Xinhua, so we need to get more iron tools to help with farm work!"

As they were talking, two tall horses pulled the iron machine side by side, creaking and groaning as it came along the ridges of the field. At the front of the machine were rotating iron teeth, like the fangs of a giant beast, which "bite" and scooped up rows of corn stalks at the root. On the platform behind, two farmers wearing straw hats operated the machine, and the cut corn stalks were neatly laid out to the side and behind.

Tugeng, Shuiwa, and all the new immigrants were dumbfounded.

They had never seen anything like it before!

Back in my hometown in Shandong, harvesting crops relied entirely on manual labor, cutting them one sickle at a time, which was exhausting enough to break your back.

"See that? This is a horse-drawn harvester. This is how it works, isn't it amazing!" Old Zhou said with a hint of pride. "In the future, when there are more of these things, our work will be much easier! We won't need to cut the stalks. We'll just follow behind that iron machine, break off the fallen corn cobs, and throw them into a pile! Hmm, there will be oxcarts coming to transport them!"

Sure enough, after the harvester drove by, they followed the old immigrants into the fields, bending over, breaking off ears of corn, and tossing them into piles, their movements going from clumsy and unfamiliar to light and skillful.

Behind them came oxcarts and horse-drawn carts, with drivers shouting as they loaded the piles of corn cobs onto the carts and transported them to the drying yard in the distance.

The whole scene was busy yet exuded a strange sense of order, like a precisely operating machine.

The bell tolled to signal the end of the day, and people gathered under the shade of trees along the edge of the field.

The public canteen delivered lunch and water.

It was still potatoes and corn buns, and today everyone even got half a salted fish.

Tugen and Li Shuiwa sat down next to Old Man Zhou.

Shuiwa, being young, couldn't hold back his words and asked in a low voice, "Brother Zhou, I heard... that the war with the Western barbarians has taken away a lot of our men? Is the war fierce?"

Old Zhou paused in his munching on the pancake, and the wrinkles on his face seemed to deepen.

He sighed: "How could they not be powerful? The Western barbarians have a larger territory and more people than us. They're not some small, local state! To fight this war, our Xianping Township has conscripted over 120 militiamen, all good young men who are the pillars of their families! We've also recruited over a hundred strong men from the local tribes who have surrendered nearby..."

“Sigh, the cornfield you harvested this morning belongs to Old Zhao from the village. A few months ago, he was selected to go south with the government troops to fight the Western barbarians. Now, only his wife and three children are left at home. There's no one to do the work in the fields, so they're relying on the old folks in the village and you newcomers to help out. These past few months, his wife has been secretly wiping away tears while holding the children at night.”

The atmosphere suddenly became somber.

War, a seemingly distant concept, becomes concrete and poignant through the story of the Zhao family, weighing heavily on the hearts of every new immigrant.

They had just escaped the war and famine of the Ming Dynasty, were they about to be dragged into war again here?
"However..." Old Zhou changed the subject, raising his voice slightly as if to dispel the somber mood, "Our Xinhua army is formidable! According to the village clerk, reports of victories from the front lines come in every few days. They say we've won several battles in a row, captured several major cities of the Western Barbarians, and defeated tens of thousands of their troops. Everyone says that at this rate, we'll definitely finish the war by the end of the year! When that happens, all the men who were conscripted will be back, and they might even get a lot of rewards!"

His words carried a hint of optimism, both to comfort the newcomers and to comfort himself.

Several older immigrants chimed in, "That's right! The Westerners look fierce, but they're easy to defeat!"

"When our lads come back and get a good share of the spoils, life will be even better!"

The new immigrants listened, and the gloom on their faces eased a little.

News of victory is always encouraging, especially for those who desperately need to establish themselves and survive here.

They may not really care about the war in Mexico, but they care about the stability here and the expectation that "the war will be over by the end of the year."

Otherwise, they might be drafted into service at some point in the future and fight to the death with those Western barbarians.

The afternoon's work continued.

Tugen bent over, head down, breaking off ears of corn. The golden kernels gleamed in the sunlight, making one want to peel a few and pop them into their mouth for a few bites.

He heard two elderly immigrants talking in hushed tones not far away; their deliberately lowered voices became clearer in the wind.

"Old Wang, have you heard? The village general store has been out of candles, soap, and nails for days, and they say they can't restock. Sugar and pork prices have also skyrocketed. Luckily, the government is controlling grain prices, otherwise..."

"How could I not know? My wife wanted to buy some cloth the other day to make a suit for our eldest son, but she found that the price of cloth had gone up! They say that all the ships, big and small, are busy transporting military supplies, and goods from outside can't come in. Sigh, this war... Luckily, we have a good harvest here, so we don't have to worry about going hungry, otherwise..."

"Yes, it's really inconvenient to have to apply for ration coupons if you want to buy something in high demand... but what can we do? We just have to endure it and hope that the fighting on the front lines will end soon."

As the sun sets, it paints the fields, houses, and mountainous corn piles in Xianping Township with a warm orange-red hue.

The bell rang again to signal the end of the workday. Although the immigrants were exhausted after a long day, the sight of the grain piled up on the threshing floor brought a sense of satisfaction to everyone's face.

Wang Tugen and Li Shuiwa followed the crowd back.

Li Shuiwa rubbed her aching back and whispered to Tugen, "Tugen, can we stay here peacefully? Will the war really end soon?"

Wang Tugen remained silent and did not answer immediately.

He looked up at the village ahead where smoke was beginning to rise from the chimneys, and slowly said, "Here, the land is good, and there's enough food. The government... keeps its word. As long as the land is still there and people can work, we can keep going. This war... will eventually be over."

"It's a pity that my father and mother couldn't come here..." Shuiwa sighed.

"It's not easy for us to get here alive," Wang Tugen replied, seemingly unrelated to the question.

To escape famine, his family of eight fled from Laizhou, but only he, his two older brothers, and his younger sister survived and made it to the coast of Dengzhou.

After boarding Xinhua's immigration ship, his last three relatives disappeared, leaving him alone in Yongning Bay.

They may have died, or they may have been taken elsewhere by Xinhua's migrant ships.

Sometimes, just to survive, they need to exhaust all their efforts.

Fortunately, they arrived at the New Continent, which truly offered everyone a way to survive.

Every immigrant who arrived carried with them a resilience born from overcoming adversity and a glimmer of newly emerging hope.

This hope, like the lingering warmth of the setting sun, is not scorching, but enough to dispel the slight chill brought by the sea breeze.

When the sun rises tomorrow, this land will still be able to produce enough food to sustain them.

For these new immigrants who have nothing but strength, this may be enough.

War seems so close, yet so far away.

We still have to live each day as it comes.
-

(End of this chapter)