Nanyang Storm 1864

By July 1898, Manila had developed into one of the world's most populous international metropolises, with a population ranking third in the world after London and New York.

马尼拉的人口从1882年末的188.62万人，发展到1897年末303.19万人口，15年间，城市人口规模突破300万大关。

This has surpassed the total population of Paris of 293, making it the third largest modern metropolis in the world.

Today, Manila has become the largest and most prosperous metropolis in Asia, the undisputed financial, commercial and industrial center of Asia, a world-class shipping center, and has a developed cultural and educational industry.

The entire Manila area includes more than ten industrial towns such as Cavite, Batangas, Angeles, Binan Olan, Baliuag, and Cabanatuan, forming a metropolitan area with a highly dense population and developed industry and commerce.

According to statistics at the end of 1897
The total population of Metro Manila reached 1872.84 million, accounting for a little less than 1/5 of the country's total population.

If the entire Hainan Island (note: formerly Luzon Island) is included, the total population reaches 2655.17 million, accounting for about 1/4 of the country's total population.

The economic output of this region accounted for 46.63% of the total economy of the Chu State. It had tens of thousands of factories and mines, as well as an even greater number of businesses, shops and small workshops.

The level of industrialization is the highest and the people are generally wealthy.

The entire Hainan Archipelago needs to import large amounts of grain, oil, sugar, as well as agricultural and sideline products such as beef and mutton from Tongzhou Island, Shangri-La Island, Sumatra Island and other places every year to meet the needs of the urbanized population.

Hainan Island is also the most developed area in the Chu State, with an overall development level of over 60%. Only the northern Wuxing Prefecture still has a large amount of pristine tropical jungle areas that have not been effectively utilized and developed.

In the bustling city of Manila

One skyscraper after another is rising from the ground, 11-story, 12-story, 16-story and even the 22-story BMW headquarters building under construction, constantly setting new heights for the world's buildings.

From a certain side

It also testifies to the silhouette of Manila's prosperous industrial and commercial development, which is like a galloping carriage, with an unstoppable momentum.

The land in the city center of Manila grew rapidly. In 8, a residential land of 16 meters by 1865 meters was worth more than 120 silver dollars.

In just 10 years, it soared to 1500 silver dollars, a 12-fold increase.

It's not over yet

Today, the transfer price of such a large piece of residential land in the prime downtown area has reached a staggering 13800 silver dollars, and it is still hard to get.

Land in downtown Manila is extremely expensive, which in turn makes property owners and developers more willing to build high-rise buildings to spread the cost.

It would be unfair to build only two or three floors on such expensive land. It should be at least five floors.

The government is now building the Third Ring Road, which will form a fast lane for vehicles through the bridge and Tunnels No. 3 and 4 across the Pasig River to maximize traffic flow.

At this time, the foresight of the construction of Bay Avenue and Glory Avenue can be demonstrated.

Both avenues were built to the highest standards. Bay Avenue is 72 meters wide and Glory Avenue is 128 meters wide. Both have astonishingly wide green belts dividing the center of the highway, forming a 60-kilometer-long city center garden.

These two parallel avenues connect the east and the west, and together with dozens of wide north-south roads and city ring roads, they constitute Manila's smooth traffic arteries.

In addition, the extensive tram lines continue to extend to the suburbs and satellite cities, providing convenient travel options for Manila residents.

Because of this
This southern metropolis with a population of over three million rarely experiences congestion.

As early as three years ago, the number of cars in Manila exceeded 1897. By the end of 16322, this number had rapidly climbed to , with a very rapid growth momentum.

The rapid increase in car ownership has posed a more severe challenge to the traffic in the metropolitan city of Manila.

The mixed traffic of hundreds of thousands of horse-drawn carriages, animal-drawn carts, human-drawn carts, trams, and cars was too much to bear even with relatively advanced transportation facilities such as wide roads, roundabouts, and overpasses.

at the end of 1897
The Manila City Government took the lead in introducing a time-limited ban on animal-drawn vehicles entering the city. After 9 a.m. and before 5 p.m., all freight animal-drawn vehicles are not allowed to enter the city, and violators will be severely fined.

After the introduction of this new policy, freight trucks became popular and were sold out by various manufacturers.

In the first three months of 1898 alone
Manila added 3644 registered freight trucks, issued regular license plates, and took on the daytime freight tasks originally carried out by tens of thousands of animal-drawn vehicles.

More than a dozen tram companies are not far behind and have launched tram freight services. From 4:7 a.m. to 7:12 a.m. and : p.m. to : p.m., trams undertake the task of transporting materials to the city during periods when there are few passengers.

This municipal ban did indeed cause hundreds of thousands of animal-drawn vehicles to lose a large portion of lucrative transportation work, but it also created new jobs.

For example, truck drivers, tram drivers who work overtime, and some warehouse workers and porters.

What's more, the Manila City Government will not just punish everyone with one blow.

Before 9 a.m. and after 5 p.m., animal-drawn carts could still enter the city to transport and unload goods, but the only requirement was getting up early and working in the dark. Bringing goods from the towns surrounding Manila still required heavy-duty animal-drawn carts with large transport capacities.

At least for the next five or six years, freight trucks will not be able to completely replace heavy-load animal-drawn vehicles.

After the implementation of this new policy, the sanitation and noise environment in Manila city have been greatly improved, and traffic pressure has been greatly alleviated.

This also received strong support from local residents, and soon attracted major cities in the country such as Batangas, Cavite, Cebu, Davao, Zamboanga, Bandar Seri Begawan, and Pontianak to follow suit and introduce local policies to ban animal-drawn vehicles from entering the city.

This, in turn, boosted the sales of freight trucks.

After several generations of improvements, the car of 1897 was basically the same in appearance as later cars.

Trucks are basically equipped with a body, a front windshield and manual wiper blades, which is good news for drivers as they no longer have to endure the pain of sun and rain.

A truck has a carrying capacity of about 2 to 3 tons, which is similar to a heavy-loaded four-wheeled mule-drawn cart.

But trucks do not need to rest and do not produce feces. They can carry more and run faster. In the same amount of time, their transportation efficiency is equivalent to that of two heavily loaded horse-drawn carriages.

In addition, the use of cheap gasoline or diesel makes the cost more than half that of raising mules and horses, saving time and effort.

The combined advantages of various classes have made more conservative Chinese businessmen addicted to the new technology and willing to try it, which has led to an increasingly hot truck sales market.

It is said that truck orders have been placed until the middle of next year, and major domestic automobile manufacturers are recruiting people in an effort to expand production and take advantage of this boom to make a fortune.

in today's world

The only city with a population growth rate comparable to Manila is Chicago on Lake Michigan in the United States.

As early as March 1837, 3, when the city of Chicago was founded, its population was less than 4, making it just an inconspicuous small city.

With the explosive growth of industry in the Great Lakes region, a steady influx of population was also brought in. By the end of 1882, Chicago's total urban population reached 127 million, ranking fifth in the world.

Only slightly inferior to Manila, Chicago is an important industrial city and agricultural product distribution center in the Midwest of the United States. It has convenient water and land transportation and is also the central city of the Great Lakes.

By the end of 1897, Chicago's population had grown to over 170 million, but its growth momentum had slowed and it was far behind Manila.

The reason
As a purely heavy industrial city and agricultural product distribution center, the resources gathered in Chicago are far less than those of Manila, so its lag behind is understandable.

As the capital of the Great Chu Kingdom, Manila brought together the best financial, industrial, commercial and educational resources of this emerging industrial power. Naturally, it has been making rapid progress and has shown no signs of exhaustion so far.

The United States is a North American country with a population of over 8000 million. It was able to cultivate New York, the world's second largest city with a city population of 340 million, mainly due to the influx of a large number of European immigrants.

The same was true for the State of Chu, a large immigrant country with a population of hundreds of millions.

Manila's development process is very similar to that of New York. Both cities have relied on immigration and industrialization to stand out in the world.

In this megacity

There are many powerful people and wealthy businessmen everywhere. If you take a rickshaw in the city, the rickshaw drivers can talk to you about business secrets and myths of getting rich through colonialism from all over the world.

There are as many as 60,000 to 70,000 expatriates from Europe and the United States living in Manila, and they live a very comfortable life in this warm tropical metropolis.

Many foreigners can speak fluent Jianghuai Mandarin. Without this ability, it would be almost impossible to do business in Chu State and they would not be able to get any big jobs at all.

The promotion of the national language has been going on for more than 30 years. No matter where the subjects of the Chu State are, the Jianghuai Mandarin is now widely used, and local dialects are being used less and less.

If you want to be an official, do business, teach, become a doctor, professor or lawyer, you must be able to speak authentic Jianghuai Mandarin. This is the minimum requirement.

On the five mainland islands, plus Shangri-La Island and the Pacific Islands, it is now difficult to see the original indigenous ethnic groups, who have disappeared among the vast Chinese population.

Even if there are any, they are only old miners in remote mines and they don’t have much time left.

It is said that the area with the largest indigenous population is under the jurisdiction of the Governor of the Congo River, where there are more than 130 million black indigenous people, more than 40% of whom are women, and the vast majority are between 50 and years old.

After a few years, when the population of these black indigenous peoples naturally decreases and eventually disappears into the long river of history, the issue of ethnic minorities, which is most likely to cause internal conflicts, will be completely resolved.

This is of decisive significance to the long-term stable development of the Great Chu Kingdom.

This will be the world's
The effective way to completely resolve the problem of foreign races through non-violent suppression has attracted the attention of old colonial powers such as Britain and France, and they are studying the possibility of implementing it in their own colonies.

In the end, they discovered that no one had the nearly limitless Chinese immigrant resources of the Northern Divine Land, which was the key to rapid assimilation and solving the problems of the indigenous tribes. They had no choice but to give up. (End of this chapter)