Nanyang Storm 1864

Chapter 262 Promoting Offshore Island Construction
March 1868, 3

Cebu Port Terminal

King Zheng Guohui of Chu, with a ruddy complexion and high spirits, was wearing a neat white marshal's uniform. Beside him stood the accompanying officials, and the fully armed guards extended the cordon to hundreds of meters away.

Further away, the local garrison is on guard.

There was a guard post every three steps and a sentry every two steps. The dock was heavily guarded. Almost half of the Cebu Port dock was on alert, and many people who came to watch the excitement were kept outside.

More than two years have passed

This large central island, which was first occupied by Spanish colonists, has undergone tremendous changes. The original Cebu Pier has been widened by two times, and five new stone piers have been added.

Among them, two ore terminals, two bulk cargo terminals and a passenger terminal were added.

Cebu Island, located in the center of the archipelago, lies between Bohol and Negros. Measuring 221 kilometers from north to south and 41 kilometers from east to west, with a total area of ​​4694 square kilometers, it boasts a long history of development.

The city, which originally had a strong Spanish architectural style, now has a large number of Chinese-style buildings. Tall coconut trees have been planted on both sides of the spacious roads, stretching far into the distance.

Under the beautiful blue sky and white clouds, the blue sea and white sand, the red walls and green tiles, the clear sea water lapping against the rocky headlands, the scenery is beautiful and like a dream.

The infrastructure construction vigorously promoted by the Chu State has yielded fruitful results on this island.

One standard road after another is flat and wide, stretching out to towns in all directions, crossing hundreds of bridges along the way, ensuring unobstructed traffic.

By the clear river
The tall Dutch windmills slowly turn, pumping clear river water into irrigation canals, which then flow quietly to a green rice field in the distance.

Based on the terrain, many small and medium-sized reservoirs have been built on the island to nourish the rice fields during the dry season and ensure increased production and harvests.

These small and medium-sized reservoirs were built by Chinese immigrants from local villages and towns during their spare time, with the combined efforts of everyone involved.

Whichever village or town benefits from the local reservoir will provide manpower to work, bring their own food, and work without asking for compensation, organized by the town.

The expenses for building new small and medium-sized reservoirs were provided by the Royal Colonization Bank through bank loans, which were mainly repaid by villages and towns, and finally shared by each Chinese immigrant.

In the end, the beneficiaries of such spending are themselves, and local Chinese immigrants welcome it with open arms.

The method of implementing this water conservancy construction is called "whoever benefits, whoever contributes, whoever invests, the village and town acts as a guarantor, and the expenses are shared equally." This is a mutually beneficial and cooperative reclamation method first proposed and promoted by Fan Zhicheng, the former magistrate of Jinsha.

This shows that this person is indeed a man of great learning and a pillar of talent.

After being vigorously promoted in Jinsha County, the Chu government organized visits and studies from all over the country, and then it was fully promoted in all prefectures and counties of Chu, and was greatly welcomed by grassroots farmers.

This has also led to the emergence of hundreds of small and medium-sized reservoirs across the kingdom, laying an excellent foundation for agricultural production and harvest.

Fan Zhicheng, the former Jinsha County Magistrate, received excellent evaluations for two consecutive years and was promoted to Cebu Governor and conferred the title of Baron.

At this moment, he was standing slightly behind King Zheng Guohui of Chu, with an extremely respectful look.

"Lord Fan, I am convinced by you. Okay, then, build a copper smelter here, but avoid this beautiful area to avoid polluting the environment."

"Thank you, Your Majesty! The 50-plus people of Cebu are deeply grateful. We are so fortunate to finally receive Your Majesty's grace!"

"We are all my subjects, what are the differences?"

"After all, I am still far away from the Holy Emperor, and His Majesty's favor is not as great as in Manila. I feel lost and helpless in my heart, and I hope Your Majesty will understand." The prefect Fan Zhicheng had a look of grievance on his face.

King Zheng Guohui of Chu smiled nonchalantly and said, "Haha...everywhere is within my reach; all is my kingdom's territory. Even the mountains and the sea cannot limit me."

"Your Majesty occupies a high position in the government, and your mind is far beyond the waves. Your artistic conception is lofty and far beyond the reach of stupid people like us. You should carefully study and comprehend what you have learned today, hoping to make progress." The prefect Fan Zhicheng was very good at flattery and he flattered without leaving any trace.

Viscount Wehorst, Minister of Ports, Shipping and Transportation, and Viscount Zheng Guotai, Minister of Industry, who were accompanying His Majesty the King of Chu on an inspection tour, looked over one after another, feeling ashamed of his shamelessness and becoming alert.

This person may not look good, but he actually has profound skills!

Because there was no provincial level, the prefect was already a high-ranking official in the Chu government.

If you climb up further, you will become the deputy director of each department, which is equivalent to a deputy minister and joins the government's decision-making level.

Go into town
Even though Father Weghorst had a devout heart to serve God, he still lost his original intention under the temptation of huge benefits of wealth and nobility.

He may not care about wealth, women, repeated setbacks and slander, but he cannot ignore the European people's deep-seated yearning for aristocracy, which is the pinnacle of dreams.

His Majesty the King of Chu has given so much, who can refuse?

Father Weghorst coughed twice with a solemn expression, looked at King Chu Zheng Guohui, and a humble smile appeared on his face, and he said softly;
“Your Majesty, the Almighty, please allow me to take this precious opportunity to introduce to you the original intention of the Cebu Port Expansion and Reconstruction Project, which is also part of our overall development strategy for ports, shipping and transportation.”

King Zheng Guohui of Chu had a general understanding of this, but it was impossible for him to know the details of every port.

This is because Chu itself is a country of thousands of islands, and almost 80% of its auxiliary lines are located in bay ports. The ports have excellent innate conditions and are endowed with unique conditions for developing shipping and port industries.

For example, the Shangri-La Islands, the world's second largest island with a total area of ​​78 square kilometers, has only two prefectures, one in the east and one in the west.

To the west is Xi'an Prefecture, and to the east is Donggang Prefecture.

Just think about it, the vast Shangri-La Archipelago has a coastline of more than 1 kilometers and has hundreds of excellent bays.

The two ports, which are selected from the best, are undoubtedly world-class deep-water ports with top-notch conditions in all aspects. It is not easy to find any faults.

This situation is mostly the same in other islands. For example, Mindanao has only developed three major provincial ports: Zamboanga, Davao and Cagayan, plus county-level ports such as Jinsha, Dipolog, Medan and Lingshui.

The huge island of Mindanao covers an area of ​​more than 100,000 square kilometers, and there are at least dozens of bays around the island's coastline. Although it is not as exaggerated as the Shangri-La Islands, the conditions of each bay are one in a hundred.

The same is true for Cebu Port. The Chu State has no shortage of seaports with excellent conditions, and Cebu Port has its own advantages.

That is, it is located in the Hainan Islands. The nearby inhabited islands are not far away, the closest ones are a few kilometers, more than ten kilometers away, and the farthest ones are thirty to fifty kilometers, seventy to eighty kilometers, or even more than one hundred kilometers away. The sea transportation is very convenient.

It is a little further away from Manila and Mindanao. It is 311 nautical miles from Batangas Port, 392 nautical miles from Manila Port, 962 nautical miles from Hong Kong, and 252 nautical miles south to Zamboanga Port, which is in the middle.

Viscount Wehorst, Minister of Ports, Shipping and Transportation, explained that as the government department in charge, they were attracted by the advantageous geographical location of Cebu Island and wanted to build it into a hub port for maritime transportation.

A very appropriate metaphor is to build Cebu Port into the "waist of Chu State", a strong waist that connects north-south shipping and east-west trade routes, and embarks on a road to prosperity driven by a regional shipping center.
This plan is quite insightful, thoughtful and practical. Combined with the original intention of developing local industry, the future of the central island region is bright.

King Zheng Guohui of Chu listened to the introduction, looking into the distance with deep eyes. After a moment, he slowly nodded in approval. This was a good development plan.

The Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Transportation has invested a lot of effort, manpower and money to expand the Cebu terminal. It turns out that this idea has been in place for a long time.

The entire Cebu Port expansion project lasted one year and 10 months, and employed more than 31300 indigenous workers at its peak, making it a major move by the Ministry of Transportation.

After Father Weghorst's detailed introduction, King Zheng Guohui of Chu looked at the busy scene of hundreds of sailing cargo ships shuttling back and forth in the harbor and nodded.

“Cebu Port has the conditions to become a regional transportation hub port, and this overall development plan is very good.

It is indeed insightful to suggest that it will be able to play a stronger role in the future by connecting it with roads, mines and railways.

With Davao in the south, Cebu in the middle, and Manila in the north, the construction of these three regional port transportation centers will have a strong radiation effect on the surrounding discrete islands.

Now that the construction of outlying islands is underway, we must strengthen our efforts in this regard.”

"Your Majesty, please rest assured that the Ministry of Transportation is making every effort to promote the construction of basic infrastructure for off-island roads and bridges, and simultaneously build suitable ferry terminals to provide convenience for immigration and colonization." Father Wehorst quickly assured.

King Zheng Guohui of Chu said, "This is the next focus, especially the outlying island ferry terminal. After construction is completed, we must strive to achieve regular shipping."

"I will follow your Majesty's orders and will not slack off," Father Wehorst replied.

After more than three years of large-scale infrastructure construction, the three main islands of the Hainan Archipelago, namely Hainan Island, Tongzhou Island and Cebu Island, have basically built a well-connected road network and relatively complete port facilities.

Among them, the indigenous labor camps were the main force of construction.

After completing the above tasks, some of the laborers in the indigenous labor camps moved to outlying islands in batches, opened roads in the dense tropical jungle, burned wasteland to open up new land, built bridges and roads, and constructed ferry terminals and warehouses.

According to the statistics

There are currently about 28.7 indigenous convicts who have been gradually entering the outlying islands for construction, including Bohol Island and Negros Island around Cebu, Mindoro Island, Verde Island, Boracay and more than a dozen inhabited islands in the north.

Road and port planning and transportation construction are the affairs of the Ministry of Transportation, while supervising the construction of labor camps is the business of the General Administration of Punishment and is coordinated by the Royal Government.

The financial expenses required for construction, mainly food and some steel, supplemented by a small amount of steam machinery and the purchase of tools, were borne by the royal government.

Every quarter, progress reports are submitted, and the Chu King's Household Department will provide financial subsidies of varying amounts based on the situation, mostly in the form of material allocation.

Actually

Even the King of Chu, Zheng Guohui, was in control personally. Without his order, the Imperial Household Department could not allocate a single penny.

The royal government did not spend much in this regard, because the Punishment Bureau was paid by the Chu King's Household Department, which was the main manpower expenditure and had been borne by the royal family.

The royal family also subsidized expenses for construction tools, materials, steam machinery, etc., and allocated a certain amount of food to ease the government's financial pressure.

All the government has to do is allocate supplies, mainly food, and do some other work to fill gaps.

What could the Aboriginal labor camps cost?
An average of two steamed buns a day, plus cassava and kelp soup, that’s basically it.

As the island's food supply increased, a certain amount of food would be allocated to the convict camp, mainly used to cook kelp and salty rice porridge, which was a common food eaten by the indigenous convicts. Each meal was also accompanied by a kelp steamed bun.

Why is there kelp in porridge and steamed buns?

The key is that there are so many of these things, and you can catch them for free. Three or four people can catch a boatload of them in half a day at sea. They are almost endless.

Come back and grind it up, mix it into porridge or steamed bread. This will not only provide the convicts with enhanced vitamin nutrition, but also reduce food consumption by half. Why not do it?

Sometimes when there were no steamed bread, each person would be given a piece of cassava, which was also a common food for the indigenous people.

In tropical regions

These cassavas have a very high yield and are easy to grow and manage. Therefore, every time the labor camp sets up camp in a new place, some of the more obedient prisoners will be arranged to open a field and sow and plant cassava seeds that have been cut into small pieces.

After the harvest, cassava is used to make pickles, which can be eaten raw by washing them in river water.

We are now vigorously promoting the reclamation of offshore islands, mainly the inhabited islands within the Hainan Islands and some deserted islands with conditions suitable for farming, which need to be developed step by step.

The first thing to do is to build bridges and roads, burn tropical jungle shrubs and plants, and remove the burned large trees. This will create the basic conditions for introducing Chinese immigrants to colonize the area.

Most of the hard and tiring work of the advance troops was undertaken by the labor camp.

Due to the heavy labor day after day, the population of the indigenous labor camps was also rapidly decreasing, basically reaching an average of 12 to 15% per year.

In just over two years, the amount has been reduced by nearly 30%.

For this matter, King Zheng Guohui of Chu specifically instructed Viscount Zheng Jiabao, Director of the General Department of Corrections;
"Treat the convicts well, give them half a day off every week, and while we can't guarantee they'll have enough to eat, we should also improve their living conditions appropriately..."

The potential meaning is
The kingdom's construction projects are complicated, with so much hard work and mining. The labor of these indigenous convicts must be saved for long-term use.

"Your Majesty, look... the ship is coming." With a surprised call, King Zheng Guohui of Chu couldn't help but look out into the distance at the sea.

I saw a black dot faintly emerging on the blue sea in the distance, and soon it became clear, and I could see the white sails on the tall masts.

When King Zheng Guohui of Chu saw the ship, a satisfied smile appeared on his face.

He stayed at the dock for so long just to wait for this important submarine cable-laying ship, which was a submarine cable-laying ship sailing from Kaleyan Province in the Tongzhou Islands.

We are driving along the way, laying submarine cables along the way, and we are about to arrive at the main island of Cebu smoothly.

By then, the entire Hainan Islands will be fully connected through submarine cables, information will be available overnight, and the more than 7,000 scattered islands will be connected into a whole.

Its far-reaching significance cannot be overemphasized.

(End of this chapter)