Nanyang Storm 1864

After the celebratory dinner, everyone dispersed.

After returning to the palace, Dubai's King Chu-Zheng Tao took a hot bath and emerged feeling refreshed; the slight intoxication he had felt earlier had long since vanished.

He wasn't drinking any date wine, just mint and brown sugar water.

King Chu-Zhengtao of Dubai was a very thoughtful prince from a young age. Although he was born into a very noble family, with so many children of his father, what was he compared to them?
From birth to adulthood, he had very few opportunities to have close contact with His Majesty the Emperor, and they never exchanged more than a hundred words.

Deep down, he longed to gain his father's approval, which would be the highest honor.

Chu-Zheng Tao's biological mother was not of noble birth; she was one of the three Mei sisters who were originally housed in the Bandar Seri Begawan Palace. She was only brought to the Manila Royal Palace after having a royal heir.

How difficult it is to stand out among all the princes!
What excited King Chu-Zhengtao of Dubai the most was not this resounding victory, but a telegram he received this morning from the royal family in the empire, which came from his father's oral decree.
I am very pleased that my son, Chu-Zheng Tao, has developed the Kingdom of Dubai in a very orderly manner.

I hope you will remain humble and prudent, forge ahead with determination, and thus achieve great things and live up to my expectations!
Now, this royal telegram is placed neatly on the royal desk. Dubai King Chu-Zhengtao solemnly washes his hands, burns incense, and bows three times before the royal desk.

He raised his head, his eyes already glistening with tears, and solemnly reported;
"Father Emperor"

Your unfilial son, Zheng Tao of Chu, weeps and bows from afar. Your father is already sixty years old, and your son cannot be by his side, which is already the greatest act of filial impiety.

“The father’s words were earnest and tireless, day and night.”

Wherever the emperor's favor extends, mountains and rivers are moved.

Your Majesty, I will obey Your Majesty's orders and constantly examine myself, daring not to fail Your Majesty's high expectations!
I kowtow and bow again, begging only that Your Majesty be healthy and safe, that the empire be forever secure, that the world be at peace, and that there be a glorious era in which all nations come to pay tribute.

Your unfilial son kowtows and bows twice!

In the eyes of Dubai's King Chu-Zheng Tao, his father is an insurmountable, towering mountain, a wise and virtuous ruler whom he has worshipped since childhood, and no one can compare to him.

From the bottom of my heart
King Chu-Zheng Tao of Dubai aspired to be like his father. After establishing the Kingdom of Dubai, he worked diligently and painstakingly to find a viable path for its development.

Turning Dubai into a smuggling kingdom for the entire Persian Gulf was a last resort.

Due to harsh natural conditions, the Kingdom of Dubai inherently lacks the foundation for developing agriculture, and the space for developing animal husbandry is also very limited, with a poor carrying capacity for land and population.

This is an indisputable fact, and we must find another way.

these years
The relationship between the Great Chu Empire and the Ottoman Empire was always fraught with difficulties and did not develop smoothly.

This was mainly due to the Ottoman Empire's incompetence and tyranny, coupled with extreme corruption in its government and differences in culture and religion, which often led to a lot of messy situations and made everyone unhappy.

Located between Eurasia, the Ottoman Empire maintained close ties with the upper classes of European countries due to religious and historical barriers, but the middle and lower classes and remote provinces were steeped in conservatism and rampant corruption.

Such a social environment cannot adequately protect the business freedom and property security of Chinese businesspeople.

Within the Ottoman Empire, extortion and bribery were commonplace, and murder and robbery were not uncommon; the business environment was absolutely terrible.

The corrupt Istanbul regime's control over the provinces within the Ottoman Empire has been greatly weakened by the current chaos, with numerous warlords emerging and a situation of warlordism forming within the country.

For example, in the border provinces of Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Hejaz, and Azerbaijan, the Pashas are powerful warlords who control their own armies and have held power for generations, creating a situation where they are too powerful to control.

To do business with a country like that, you have to be armed with both guns and goods, and use mercenaries to expand the market.

If they can trade, they will; if they can't, they will rob, kill, and burn, using methods that Arabs can understand to conduct transactions.

these years
East African mercenaries made a name for themselves throughout the Arabian Peninsula and the countries along the Persian Gulf, selling massive quantities of imperial goods and amassing great wealth, including fine horses and women; their smuggling business flourished.

Without real strength to back it up, you simply can't do these highly profitable businesses.

Whenever a wealthy Chinese businessman is robbed or assassinated, these East African mercenaries retaliate fiercely, often massacring entire villages and towns; there are more than a dozen violent clashes every year.

Most of these ended in victory for the Chinese mercenaries, but there were also a few instances of disastrous defeats.

Every year, between three and five hundred Chinese mercenaries die in the vast Gobi and desert, whether from conflict, attack, or tribal fighting. They are truly risking their lives venturing into the peninsula.

Risk is everywhere, and the root cause that drives East African mercenaries to take risks is the huge profits.

The Great Chu Empire had a wide variety of goods, ranging from everyday items like needles and thread, oil, salt, soy sauce, and tea to clothing, shoes and socks, iron pots, copper kettles, plastic basins, and so on. As long as these goods were sold to countries around the Persian Gulf, they could fetch a good price.

A two- or three-fold increase is nothing unusual; a ten- or even more-fold increase is not surprising.

Sometimes a copper kettle could be exchanged for two women or a valuable Arabian horse, which were considered hard currency by smugglers.

Reselling them back to the empire would yield profits of thousands of silver dollars.

Many wealthy merchants in the Great Chu Empire were fond of those young and beautiful Arab girls and were willing to pay a high price to buy them as concubines, making a fortune from it.

If you encounter an exceptionally beautiful girl, she can fetch an astronomical price of four or five thousand silver dollars.

Among those Persian or Arab tribes, these little girls didn't even have shoes and lived in extremely harsh conditions, where even getting enough to eat and wear was a struggle.

If they could be sold back to the Great Chu Empire, at least they would have no worries about food and clothing, and could wear fine silks and satins whenever they wanted. It would be like a mouse falling into a rice jar – a blessing in disguise.

From a certain perspective, this can also be considered doing a good deed.

Because of the extremely high profits, Dubai's King Chu-Zheng Tao set his sights on the smuggling business, which perfectly aligned with the country's development of port and shipping industries, making it far better than the arduous task of growing crops.

His judgment proved correct; smuggled goods originating from the Kingdom of Dubai brought a steady stream of revenue to the kingdom's finances, quickly putting it on the right track for development.

Large cargo ships from the Great Chu Empire would arrive every two or three days, continuously delivering massive amounts of goods into the warehouses.

Then, using smaller smuggling vessels, the goods were shipped out in small, scattered batches, connecting dozens of smuggling routes that spanned the entire Persian Gulf coast.

In just one Iraqi province, there are as many as a dozen smuggling routes. Most of these Chinese smugglers have murky relationships with local Arab tribes, who have become stable distribution channels for their goods, forming clandestine alliances of interest.

These Arab tribes paid their bills with gold coins, gems, saddles, Damascus knives, carpets, horses, cattle, sheep, or women. For example, plastic basins and buckets, which have become popular in the Great Chu Empire in recent years, are also used for traditional lanterns and kerosene lamps.

Both sides get what they need and form a long-term trade relationship, which is a stable smuggling route.

The Kingdom of Dubai can collect a stable tax on the import and export of goods, even if it is only 8%, the monthly turnover can reach six or seven hundred thousand silver dollars.

Once the Abu Dhabi smuggling port is built, the Kingdom's monthly tax revenue will increase several times over, and that's when we'll really make big money.

Goods from anywhere that enter the Kingdom of Dubai are subject to taxation, which is a major source of revenue for the kingdom.

The so-called smuggling kingdom refers to the Kingdom of Dubai as a transshipment port for smuggling to countries along the Persian Gulf. It is not about smuggling to the Kingdom of Dubai; those are two different things.

The Kingdom of Dubai actively participated in several important smuggling channels and profited handsomely, which rapidly expanded the kingdom's coffers, enabling it to continuously drive urban and road development, as well as subsequent port projects.

At this stage
Due to funding constraints, the Kingdom of Dubai can only focus on the development of its two major coastal cities, Dubai and Abu Dhabi, while neglecting other inland cities.

After this successful raid on the Kingdom of Oman, there will be a relatively abundant labor force.

Based on this, we can begin to vigorously construct trunk roads and bridges from Dubai to Al Ain, bringing them up to the high road standards of the Great Chu Empire.

These roads, worn down by countless footsteps over the years, are rugged, winding, and in very poor condition.

The road needs to be widened and straightened, roadside trees planted, milestones erected, and the roadbed repeatedly compacted during road repairs.

Only by building wide and straight trunk roads can the transportation capacity of horse-drawn carriages and automobiles be fully utilized, greatly promoting the development of urban logistics and bringing about a more prosperous economic prospect.

This requires a large investment of labor. Following the principle of "main lines first, branch lines later," several large-scale infrastructure projects will be launched in the near future to greatly improve the infrastructure level of the Kingdom of Dubai.

The King of Dubai, Chu-Zhengtao, came from the Great Chu Empire. From a young age, he was exposed to high standards of road and city construction, as well as the government officials.

Therefore, when building the Dubai Kingdom, they subconsciously adopted the standards of the Great Chu Empire, and this was also the case in the other kingdoms.

The influence of the Great Chu Empire can be seen everywhere, from the selection and appointment of officials to the education system from primary school to university, textbook knowledge, urban architecture, and other aspects.

Even the construction standards of Chinese villages and towns were no different from those of the Great Chu Empire.

The colonial officials of these small kingdoms in the Arabian Peninsula were originally graduates of Cebu Administrative College. The knowledge and colonial experience they learned in textbooks were naturally applied when building their new kingdoms.

For example, in Chinese new villages
Next to the village guild hall, there would definitely be a village temple and ancestral hall. A large drying ground would be set up for drying grain during the harvest season. A well would be dug, and several large stone rollers would be essential production tools.

During the off-season, villagers hold meetings, watch operas, hold weddings, funerals, and ancestor worship ceremonies, which are usually held in the large threshing ground, making it the main activity venue in the village.

The main roads in the village must be at least five meters wide to allow two horse-drawn carts loaded with rice to pass each other.

A typical farm family's plot of land is about five fen (approximately 0.2 hectares). It is planned with a garden in the front and a toilet in the back. The main house usually has three to four rooms, with a varying number of side rooms on each side.

In front were vegetable gardens, barns, haystacks, stables, and large livestock sheds; in the back were toilets and pigsties.

Arranged horizontally in rows and vertically in columns.

Instead of letting the village be in a mess, where buildings can be built wherever they want, that won't do.

The village's manure piles are all located downwind of the village. Human and animal excrement must be composted and fermented before being distributed to each household and spread in the fields to increase soil fertility.

Human and animal excrement that has not been composted and fermented is poisonous if it is scattered on the ground, which is unacceptable.

During its decades-long colonial history, the Great Chu Empire
A complete and mature system of colonial settlement has been developed, with standards for everything from management and agriculture to village and town construction, which has been validated by the history of development.

In the Kingdom of Dubai, you simply follow the instructions, saving a great deal of time and energy and skipping the trial-and-error process.

Given the current size of the Dubai Kingdom government, it would only be a county government in the Great Chu Empire, and a newly established agricultural reclamation county with a small population, not a well-developed industrial county.

However, Dubai's King Chu-Zhengtao cherishes everything he has now, and he firmly believes that the kingdom will develop better and better, just like his father's arduous journey.

Decades ago
The Great Chu Empire was just a small force of a few hundred thousand people. It has gradually developed into a world-class power that has attracted worldwide attention. Its vast territory stretches for tens of thousands of miles from east to west. What a glorious achievement!
Chu-Zheng Tao never dared to hope to be on par with his father, the emperor. He would be proud enough to achieve even 1% of his father's accomplishments.

What is the standard for a 1% achievement?

That is to develop the Kingdom of Dubai into a relatively powerful kingdom with a population of over 1.5 million, an economic output of over 150 million silver dollars, and a territory of over 170,000 square kilometers.

The current Dubai Kingdom doesn't even reach one of those standards.

Mesopotamia is one of the cradles of human civilization, with an extremely long history and numerous ancient kingdoms surrounding it, where both culture and religion flourished.

Although the Arabian Peninsula has a small population, Syria, Iraq, and the Kingdom of Iran are all densely populated areas, and most of the Ottoman Empire's territory was located in Asia.

The Ottoman Empire alone has a population of over 23.8 million. Add to that the Kingdom of Iran with a population of over 10 million and more than a dozen other countries of varying sizes, and the total population of the Persian Gulf region is quite staggering.

Even if the Kingdom of Dubai grows to a population of 150 million, it will only be a medium-sized country in the region, and its geographical area will be even smaller.

Thought of here
Chu-Zheng Tao rode his horse freely through the main hall and into the side hall where the map was hanging. He crossed his arms, rested his chin on one hand, and stared intently at the large, finely drawn map in front of him.

Judging from his expression alone, he looks remarkably like Emperor Zheng Guohui of the Great Chu Dynasty.

Many of Emperor Zheng Guohui's habits were inherited by his princes in an identical fashion.

For example, his love of looking at maps, the way he lightly taps his fingers on the chair armrest when thinking, and his fondness for standing on a hilltop with his hands behind his back—all these traits have been perfectly replicated. (End of Chapter)