In late September, five large inland river sailing boats full of passengers traveled eastward from Heilongjiang City and finally arrived at the town of Khabarovsk on the east coast of the confluence of the Heilongjiang and Ussuri rivers.
"Du~~du~~"
"Attention all new recruits! Get off the boat! Once ashore, stand in line and don't move around!" Following the officer's loud order, more than 200 recruits on the five boats began to disembark and line up.
This is the first batch of new soldiers that Sheng Haizhou recruited from Heilongjiang City to Humar in response to King Yuanfang's order, that is, Sauron soldiers. Less than half of them were wounded soldiers left behind after the Qing army retreated from Heilongjiang City. After being treated by military doctors of the Northern Navy, they have basically recovered, and each of them has become more vigorous and fierce again.
Wen Dai, an Ewenki recruit, first checked his backpack and confirmed that there were a lot of things inside, and then buttoned the bag. The people in front hadn't finished walking yet, and there was a bit of chaos in the canopy. Wen Dai waited for his comrades beside him to get up, then put his backpack on his shoulders and stood up.
When he walked out of the boat canopy covered by oilcloth, falling snowflakes fell on Wen Dai. But Wen Dai didn't feel cold at all. Compared with the distant upper reaches of Heilongjiang, he felt that it was much warmer here.
When Wen Dai stepped onto the pier, the bustling crowds of people immediately came into view. The noisy scene dazzled the recruits. Apart from going to Heilongjiang City every year to pay the head tax, they had never seen such a large number of people anywhere.
"This, this is too lively!"
The newly formed soldiers, led by the officers, maintained a relatively neat formation and went to the military station two miles east of the pier to rest and eat. In the afternoon, they will take a boat to continue south; go south along the Ussuri River, cross Xingkai Lake, pass through the Niyaringbila River, transfer to the Lefu River, and finally transfer to land transportation to reach the training base in Beihai Town. .
When people on the road saw hundreds of Northern Navy troops approaching in formation, they all moved out of the way. They looked at these people eating "court" meals with envy and commented on them. Among these people, there are Hezhen people, Oroqen people, Xibo people, Feyaka people, Han people, and even a few islanders with moon generation heads.
Li Bi, a former exile from the Qing court and now the clerk of the Ministry of Civil Affairs in Beihai Town in Heilongjiang City, serves as the Manchu translator accompanying the team. He wears a grass-green cold-proof suit without armbands and nameplates, and a green cotton hat with ear protection hanging down from the top. , strolling behind the team.
In a tavern, several Xibo people wearing animal skin costumes were listening to the opera coming from the electric speakers, babbling and imitating it. After hearing this, Li Bi smiled and couldn't help but shake his head and start humming.
"...I also sent people to inquire about it, and after inquiring about it, Sima led the troops and headed west. It was not because Ma Su had no plan or talent, but because the generals were at odds with each other that he lost the street pavilion."
Unlike those new recruits, Li Bi was just on the road this time, working part-time as a translator, and was temporarily recruited by the army. Because he had cooperated with Guo Dalu in the governance of Heilongjiang City in an orderly manner this year, Li Bi was allowed to go to Beihai Town Central Hospital for scar surgery to remove the tattoo on his cheek after Guo Dalu applied for civil affairs approval.
When he received the notice, Li Bi burst into tears and kowtowed three times in the direction of Beihai Town to show his gratitude to Zhao Xin. I can finally get rid of the shame that has been with me for many years, and no one will stare at my cheeks anymore.
At this moment, his face was no longer as sad and gloomy as before. As he walked, he looked at the shops and stalls on both sides of the road with a smile, and he was in a very good mood.
Li Bi heard from Guo Dalu that the emerging town where he is now will be Beihai Town's most important water and land hub in the lower reaches of Heilongjiang, connecting the upper and lower reaches of Heilongjiang and the Wusuli River. At the same time, the planned railway will also be built on the other side of the river, connecting it to Aihun City.
A road paved with steel! When Li Bi heard Guo Dalu's general description, he was immediately fascinated and really wanted to see the day when it was completed as soon as possible.
Since various supporting factories related to the railway must be built in Heilongjiang City and Boli Town in advance, the equipment and large quantities of engineering materials produced from Beihai Town must first be transported to Boli Town, and part of them must be transferred to Heilongjiang City. Therefore, There is an endless stream of cargo planes and sailing ships coming and going from south to west every day.
Especially now that winter is approaching, the task of transporting materials is even more urgent. Coupled with the border residents coming from all over the country to trade, Heilongjiang's waterway traffic is now almost as busy as the Grand Canal. After being filled with cargo, the rows of flat-bottomed sailboats waiting on the pier will make a "chugging" sound and head west.
Starting last year, after the Northern Navy occupied Ninggu Pagoda and Sanxing City, the waterway and land transportation between the Qing court and the entire middle and lower reaches of Heilongjiang and the Ussuri River Basin were completely interrupted. This also meant that the Manchu Qing implemented a campaign in the outer northeast. The "wulin reward" system that lasted for more than 150 years collapsed.
Although the reward for Ulin is gone. However, the "barter" trade must continue, otherwise the border residents in the entire middle and lower reaches of Heilongjiang will find it difficult to survive. Therefore, the Manchu Qing's annual "large financial subsidies" to the border residents were transferred to Beihai Town.
In June last year, the trade department headed by Shen Jingdan sent dozens of clerks, escorted by the North Navy, carrying a large amount of supplies to Deleng Enmu City on the shores of Chiji Lake. Through barter trade, large quantities of food, cloth, satin, cotton, needles and threads that they urgently needed were sold to rural tribes in the outer northeast at low prices.
At this time, the border residents of all surnames and villages finally let go of their worries. They still presented items to Beihai Town in the form of tribute, hoping to receive rewards.
However, to the surprise of border residents everywhere, the "official officials" of Beihai Town made it clear that from now on they would no longer implement tribute and rewards, but would instead use barter and fair transactions. The Beihai Trading Company under the Ministry of Trade purchased various mountain goods brought by the border residents, and then sold various daily necessities to the border residents.
Because Liu Sheng's wife was from Hezhe, the villagers from Balke Village easily accepted this method and quickly spread it among the border residents. However, what makes some border residents feel depressed is that no one wants the Haidongqing they used to pay tribute to.
However, what surprised the border residents was that the goods that King Zhao gave them through trade were actually more than what the Manchus had given them before.
In addition, the Feyaka and Ainu people who originally came all the way from Kuye Island for the rewards of food and brocade came because Beihai Town already had many strongholds on Kuye Island for trade. There are already very few people.
Moreover, every time the Thor and the Thunder went to Bitterleaf Island to refuel, they would bring a batch of living supplies to supply the villages and towns along the way. Therefore, the Kuhafiyaka and the Ainu people could easily exchange supplies from those villages and towns. Get the needed goods. You can also barter. If you don't have any goods, you can do odd jobs for a few days, dig coal, cut down some trees, or help build roads. You can make money no matter what.
What surprised the border residents the most was that the goods provided by Beihai Town actually included a magical "white iron pot". This pot can not only stew food like an iron pot, but is also very light and different from the shabby ones at home. And the heavy iron pot is a hundred times better! A hundred times!
In the past "wulin reward" trade, the Qing government was extremely strict on the export of ironware. Except for needles, no ironware would be rewarded to border residents. In fact, the Manchu Qing Dynasty hoped to maintain stability in the outer northeast through this means to prevent fires in the backyard. You must know that Nurhar and Huang Taiji massacred too many border residents in their campaign to conquer the wild jurchen tribes in the Northeast.
Zhao Xin also did not want these border residents to recast weapons after obtaining iron tools, so he introduced aluminum products. In another time and space, a ton of aluminum plates cost more than a thousand dollars. If you buy hundreds of tons just to cast a large pot, it is estimated that it can be used for decades.
People from the trade department announced to border residents at last year's "Outer Northeast Trade Conference" that next year's trade conference will be held in Khabarovsk. In order to make it easier for everyone to go there, a special inland river passenger ship will be opened from Deleng to Khabarovsk. It takes one day to go upstream and two days to return.
So starting from June this year, every day, border residents carry large and small bags of goods and board the roaring inland river ships to barter in Khabarovsk. More often, they drive fast horses and independent boats filled with goods. The wooden boat comes here.
In the two months from June to August, the river bank in Khabarovsk was filled with densely packed canoes and fast boats. At its peak, more than 10,000 people gathered inside and outside the town, and the occasion was unprecedented.
At that time, the bonfires on the river bank lit up the sky at night, and the Hezhe people's Imakan singing came one after another, which was as lively as the singing competition in the later movie "Liu Sanjie". Zhao Xin, who was on the front line of Xiaobai Mountain at the time, heard about it and was fascinated by it, so he decided to go and see it next year.
Although winter is coming soon, in the newly built large market in Khabarovsk Town, there are still people from Oroqen, Hezhe, and Feyaka who came from the lower reaches of Heilongjiang River selling the goods they brought, hoping to sell well. After paying the price, exchange for some daily necessities for the winter.
The owner of the valley has pine nuts, hazelnuts, mushrooms and other mountain products picked from the mountains in autumn; some are processed fish feathers, dried fish, various kinds of meat jerky, as well as leather products and anchovy bones made by the skillful hands of Hezhe women. There are also rare pearls as big as soybeans and as small as rice grains, wild ginseng, deer skins, bear skins, fox skins, badger skins, etc., a dazzling array.
Some of these goods will be purchased by Beihai trading companies and transported to Fuldan City or Beihai Town for sale, while some will be exchanged among the border residents.
The "Beihai Trading Company" in the large market in Khabarovsk is the largest local entity engaged in private trade. It sells grain, oil, salt, soy and vinegar, needles and thread, various cottons, silks and satins, aluminum kitchenware, fishing nets and fishing lines needed by the border residents. Steel hardware tools produced in Beihai Town.
Don't worry, steel is different from iron. The border people were able to melt iron, but they were powerless with steel.
Because of this, the trading company also sells well-made steel daggers and feather arrows with steel arrowheads. Although many border hunters look at it with envy, those who want to buy these must be residents who have settled in the town; not only must someone guarantee them when buying, but they must also be registered in the register so that the local security police can come to check from time to time.
In addition to the big market, the most popular one among border residents is the medical point opened by Beihai Town Central Hospital in Khabarovsk. Now the doctors and nurses in Beihai Town have been known as the "white angels" among the border residents; those wind, cold, miscellaneous diseases and trauma that were difficult to treat in the past can be cured by going to Khabarovsk. Many young sons of border residents were saved from premature death because of the medicine provided by Beihai Town.
As a result, more and more border residents settled around the town of Boli, and large and small settlements appeared on both sides of the river.
As the number of people increased, the security situation became more and more complicated. Conflicts between border residents occurred frequently, and even bloody fights and homicides began to occur, which caused a huge headache for the local security police. Faced with this situation, the Public Security Police Headquarters not only dispatched personnel from Beihai Town, but also selected honest and dedicated border residents from local households to join the public security police; at the same time, it adopted the approach of the Manchus and implemented the "Baojia and Sitting System".
So in the past two months, the number of fights has finally decreased. No way, legal education has a long way to go!
Two days later, the motorboat fleet transporting new recruits finally arrived at the dock on the upper reaches of the Lefou River. The recruits will take buses from here to the Northern Navy training base more than 100 kilometers away.
Since Beihai Town acquired Ning Guta and Hunchun, Zhao Xin considered moving the training base to Jurgen City to make room for Zhao Liang's factory area.
Starting from the beginning of September, the engineering survey team under the Civil Affairs Bureau went to 25 kilometers west of Jurgen City to survey and select a site for the new training base. The entire project is expected to be completed in the year after next. By then, the new training base will cover an area of 400 square kilometers and can accommodate up to 10,000 people for training at the same time.
This year, Beihai Town expanded the scale of its salt factory and opened a new hardware factory, a casting factory, an ordnance repair shop, and a workshop that imitates walking tractor motors. In addition, in order to produce imitation rifled guns for the "servant army", the military factory must expand its scale and open a "flash cap" production workshop.
To put it simply, the manufacture of flash caps does not just require mercury fulminate, as some people think. The detonating charge of a flash cap contains various components such as mercury fulminate, dextrin lead nitride, tetrazene, etc.; the ratio, density, particle size and dosage of various components have strict requirements. Its ignition effect determines the ballistic performance, and the reactants generated after the explosion cannot damage the weapon.
After the sample is produced, various tests on temperature and humidity, sensitivity, ignition ability, and even transportation vibration must be carried out. The presence of mercury fulminate will not make the journey smooth at all.
If we don’t research the optimal ratio and go through various tests, what will happen if the soldiers carry it with them and it explodes? You can't just leave this to a team of Taoist priests who are good at alchemy!
After the recruits disembarked from the ship and landed, the first thing they saw was a dozen grass-green covered trucks parked a hundred meters away. These recruits from the upper reaches of Heilongjiang had never seen a truck before, and they were very surprised to see that there were neither horses nor cows at the front of the truck.
"Attention everyone! Everyone is here, get on the bus in classes! There are two classes in each car!"
"Yes!" After Li Bi finished translating the order, more than 200 Ewenki and Daur recruits responded in simple Mandarin. The Beihai Navy had more rules than the previous Manchu Qing court. The recruits only underwent preliminary formation training in Heilongjiang City. They were required to be able to answer orders in Mandarin and were not allowed to say "嗻".
When Wen Dai and his companions climbed into the cabin of the truck, a group of recruits began to whisper among themselves, trying to figure out what kind of animals the truck was pulled by.
A recruit named Rapini sitting next to Wen Dai said confidently: "It's either a horse or an ox, what else can it be?"
Wen Dai rubbed the back of his head and said, "But there's not even a shaft at the front of the car."
"Everyone, sit down! The car is about to leave!" Li Bi shouted in Manchu according to the officer's order. In fact, he didn't understand how to drive this car. He just heard it once on the ship and the officer said "gas car".
It’s so fresh. What does anger have to do with the car? Thinking of this, Li Bi couldn't help blowing at the snowflakes in the sky, and then followed the instructions and sat in the passenger seat of the second truck and closed the door.
"Fasten your seat belt!"
"What?" Li Bi turned to look at the driver, confused. So the driver shook his head helplessly and leaned over to help him buckle it.
"Boom, boom, boom!" The roar of the truck engine finally interrupted Li Bi's random thoughts. As the car body swayed slightly, Li Bi's upper body leaned back, and the car slowly started moving.
"What, what's the point of this?" Li Bi's chin almost hit his feet, and he turned his head back and forth to look around.
"Do it well, don't move!" The driver was also Bei Haijun. He just said this and ignored it. He has seen too many scenes like this. When he first learned to drive, he was even scared to the point of urinating.
The ones who were more demented than Li Bi at this time were the Sauron recruits. They were crowded at the rear of the carriage where they were, staring dumbfoundedly at the roaring truck behind them that was driven by neither cattle nor horses.
Ten minutes after the convoy drove onto the road, its speed gradually increased. Suddenly, a group of stupid roe deer suddenly jumped out in front of the first truck. The driver suddenly braked, and the trucks that followed also braked suddenly. Boom~~The people in the carriage suddenly turned upside down, and the recruits who were standing looking at the strange things immediately fell into the carriage.
"Ouch!"
"Rapini, you crushed me to death!"
"Wen Dai! Move your butt!"
Li Bi didn't fare well either. The violent braking forced him forward, and his chest was sore from being strangled. If it hadn't been for the wide green belt, his forehead would have been smashed against the windshield.
