Chapter 256 Developing Yalong Bay
"It's not just a matter of money." Tao Donglai has personally contacted the people in power in North Vietnam and has a better understanding of their thoughts: "The warlord leaders in North Vietnam have never really seen the power of firearms troops on the battlefield. The reason why they buy our weapons is that they simply think that these weapons are powerful. As for how to train firearms troops, they do not have a clear understanding in their minds. Just like the peasant soldiers they recruited in the past, as long as each person is given a weapon and trained together for twenty or thirty days, they can be sent to the battlefield. "
"If they really think so, they will suffer big losses after going to the battlefield." After hearing Tao Donglai's words, Ning Qi was no longer optimistic about the situation facing North Vietnam.
"It's hard to say what happens on the battlefield. It also depends on many factors such as weather conditions, geographical environment, opponent's strength, officers' on-the-spot command, etc. Even if our personally trained fusilier militiamen are brought out to fight, they will not be able to fight a hundred battles. "Victorious." Tao Donglai's evaluation was very objective: "If they are lucky and the opponents they encounter are ordinary peasant soldiers, then just a few rounds of guns will be enough to collapse the opponent."
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"But if you are unlucky and encounter a large group of cavalry, you will die." Although Ning Qi is not a military enthusiast, he also knows that the greatest magic weapon for cold weapon troops to restrain firearms troops in field battles is cavalry.
"Fortunately, the South Vietnamese troops cannot have large groups of cavalry. Their area is not suitable for cavalry." Tao Donglai was not worried about what Ning Qi said would happen.
Even the Mongols, who used cavalry to sweep across the two continents of Europe and Asia in history, had to admit Tao Donglai's point of view. In 1284, the Yuan army invaded Annam in the name of attacking Champa. It was so unstoppable that the King of Annam abandoned the capital and fled to Thanh Hoa. However, the Yuan army was unable to take advantage of the cavalry due to the local jungle and water network environment. Coupled with supply problems and tropical diseases, they had to retreat back to Guangxi under a favorable situation. In 1286, after Kublai Khan had defeated Japan in the north, he launched another expedition against Annan. As a result, this larger-scale military operation still failed to completely defeat Annan. After a year of fighting, the Yuan army once again angrily defeated Annan. Withdrew his troops and returned to Guangxi. In 1293, Kublai Khan conquered Annam three times. Before the battle could be concluded, Kublai Khan died. Temur, who took over the throne, issued an edict to cease fighting and withdraw troops. This basically announced the complete failure of the combat system relying on cavalry in the Annan region.
After that, the Ming Dynasty's crusade against Annan failed to do better than the Mongols, and in terms of results, it was even worse than the Mongols. In 1427, the Ming army suffered a disastrous defeat in the last large-scale battle at Changjiang City in Annan. The entire Ming army of 70,000, including the commander-in-chief Anyuan Hou Liu Sheng, was wiped out. The Ming army had to take the initiative to sue for peace. The next year, Annan's military leader Le Li announced his independence from the rule of the Ming Dynasty in Hanoi. The founding of the country was named Dai Viet, and the capital was located in what was later Hanoi. It is worth mentioning that Anyuan Hou Liu Sheng, who died on the Annan battlefield, was the senior general of the Ming army who single-handedly founded the Shenji Camp.
From the several military operations against Annan in the Yuan and Ming dynasties, we can see that the superiority of armaments is not the only factor that affects the outcome of the war. The Yuan army has cavalry that can go anywhere, and the Ming army has the world-famous Shenji Battalion, but all of them have Failed in Annan. Of course, in the original history, they were not the end of this record. Hundreds of years later, the French and Americans equipped with advanced weapons also knelt in this ghost place. In a sense, this place to the east of Indochina Peninsula This area can truly be called the "Graveyard of Empires."
Of course, the Executive Committee is also very aware of Annan's history. With lessons learned from the past, the Executive Committee will certainly not make the same mistake again. Therefore, from the beginning of its contact with the North Vietnamese regime, the Executive Committee adopted a more cautious attitude, only providing a certain degree of military assistance and arms transactions, and had no intention of directly intervening in the domestic war situation in Annan. On the one hand, this is because the armed forces currently controlled by the Executive Committee are indeed limited in scale, and they cannot afford to lose if they are drawn out to fight a tough battle. On the other hand, they are worried about repeating the same mistakes. After all, the lessons of the Yuan and Ming dynasties in this regard are still fresh in our minds. Even the Military and Police Department dare not boast that they can do better than their predecessors.
Of course, the most important reason that is not humane to outsiders is that the Executive Committee believes that it is better for Annan to continue to maintain a state of civil strife, so that the Crossing Group can continuously import industrial products to it, and then introduce immigrants from there to expand its own strength. , and by the way, you can also take advantage of the civil unrest there to occupy a few more good places to stay in the coastal areas. It is no exaggeration to say that even if one day the North and the South want to cease war and negotiate, the Crossing Group will try to let them continue to fight - in the face of the greater collective interests, no matter what the doctrine is, it must be silenced, even if it is peace like Gu Kai The activists also very wisely did not raise any objection to this policy of the Executive Committee.
After a simple screening and a seven-day quarantine period, these new immigrants will be assigned to various units, and their main destination is still Tielugang Salt Farm. The naturalized people in the Victory Port area are mainly Ming people. For the sake of social stability, only a small number of North Vietnamese immigrants will be left to settle in Victory Port. Of course, for those prisoners of war and prisoners, a life of hard labor in labor camps also awaits them.
However, compared with the group of North Vietnamese immigrants who arrived in Hong Kong in October, this group of new immigrants went to a new place besides Tielugang, which was Yalong Bay between Victory Port and Tielugang. coastal areas.
Yalong Bay is half-moon shaped and located at the southernmost tip of the entire Hainan Island. It is most famous for its kilometers-long white sand beach and crystal clear water. In later generations, this place was a famous resort area, filled with various luxury villas, conference centers, high-end hotels and resorts and other facilities. There are two standard golf courses, which shows that the consumer market positioning here is very high-end.
This plain area along the coast of Yalong Bay is sandwiched between Liudaoling and Yalong Ridge. Its area is larger than Shengli Port and Tieliang Port combined. However, because its terrain is too open, it is almost undefendable facing the sea. , so the Executive Committee did not regard it as the main development target in the early stage - after all, the Executive Committee did not have the strong construction capabilities of later republics, and directly built several kilometers of breakwaters in Yalong Bay to seal half of the bay. It was used as a naval base.
At present, the Executive Committee considers safety more when selecting colonization sites. Therefore, natural salt fields such as Yinggehai and nearby plains such as Yalong Bay have been removed from the candidate list by the Executive Committee. Brush off. The reason why Yalong Bay was recently included in the development target again was the proposal of Mr. Yuan of the Ministry of Agriculture.
After the Crossing Group occupied the area from Shengli Port to Tiandu, the Ministry of Agriculture opened up a large number of fields along the Tiandu River for growing food crops and cash crops. At present, rice, which is the main food crop, has been harvested for two seasons, but the harvesting period of cash crops is much longer. It takes about a year to harvest quickly, such as sugar cane, and takes about 3 to 5 years, such as rubber trees and oil palms. Ineffective. Those mountain forests that were cut down in the early stage are now slowly being replanted with various economic trees. In particular, the diesel tree, which can be used to refine biodiesel and is known as Jatropha curcas among the people, has been continuously planted, and a small-scale supply of diesel is expected to be available in a few years.
The Executive Committee's hopes for the Ministry of Agriculture are not just about food - this is basically no longer a problem that plagues the crossing group after the opening of the North Vietnam route. Sisal that can be woven into canvas, as well as rubber and diesel required for industrial production, are not all the goals of the Executive Committee. Those economic crops that can be exported and create profits for the Cross Group are what the Executive Committee is currently focusing on. . In addition to the existing industrial products, Chuanchuan Group also needs more agricultural products that are available. Mr. Yuan believes that the most suitable cash crop for large-scale planting and the fastest yield is sugar cane.
In southern China in the 17th century, cane sugar was a very important product. Among the ocean-going goods purchased by Western merchants in Guangzhou, they were not dominated by porcelain and silk fabrics as in later generations. The unexpected cane sugar - about 80% of the cargo loaded on the entire ship was cane sugar produced in Guangdong, while porcelain and silk fabrics accounted for no more than 10% of the cargo. Of course, part of the reason for this is that the prices of porcelain and silk fabrics were too high and merchants did not have enough financial resources to purchase large quantities. But on the other hand, it also shows the degree of development of the sugar industry in southern China at that time and the popularity of sucrose in the market. degree.
Sugarcane can be harvested in only ten to twelve months, which is basically a short period among commercial crops. However, due to limitations in early conditions, the Ministry of Agriculture only planted more than 100 acres of sugar cane along the Tiandu River - such an area is enough for one's own sacrifices, but it is far from enough to mass-produce white sugar. .
However, now that manpower is much looser than in the early days, the Ministry of Agriculture has once again proposed a plan to plant sugarcane on a large area. This time, the Ministry of Agriculture has set its sights on the coast of Yalong Bay and plans to cultivate more than 2,000 acres of sugarcane fields at one go. Phase I project, and a complete development plan was written specifically for this purpose.
After studying the reclamation plan submitted by the Ministry of Agriculture, the executive committee approved it smoothly and urged human resources and other relevant departments to cooperate in implementation. This time the executive committee did not veto the proposal to develop Yalong Bay due to safety issues. There are actually several reasons. First, the Executive Committee really needs the Ministry of Agriculture to come up with some short-term and quick foreign exchange-earning projects to alleviate the shortage of export commodities in Victory Port. Secondly, the planned development area of the Ministry of Agriculture is only two miles away from the glass workshop on the east bank of the Tiandu River estuary. There is only a small mountain with an altitude of less than 100 meters in between. If there is an attack from foreign enemies, we can move inward in time. Retreat on land. The third reason is that the Military and Police Department has helped. They are preparing to move the coastal observation posts to expand the maritime warning range. An observation post is expected to be set up on the Luhuitou Peninsula in the west, while the location selected in the east is Huling, which can observe the entire Yalong Bay sea. As a result, the early warning range of the observation post has been increased by more than five times compared with the previous single post in Yulinjiao, and the defense forces of Victory Port will have more time to respond when encountering a situation.
Two thousand acres of sugarcane fields cannot be planted immediately. The deep plowing and ditching required before planting sugarcane are real hard work. Fortunately, this period has entered the off-season, and farm communes have a lot of idle labor available. As of the day the latest batch of immigrants arrived in Victory Port, farm commune workers had cultivated nearly a thousand acres of sugarcane fields in the Yalong Bay area. Some new immigrants will be assigned here after the quarantine period to be responsible for the planting and maintenance of sugar cane.
Three days later, Schneider also arrived at Victory Port on a cargo ship returning from Guangzhou, preparing to attend the year-end summary meeting. Returning with him were more than ten merchant ships from Guangzhou and surrounding areas, and their scale was even larger than that of the previous visit.
On the same day, the business building built by "Fu Ruifeng", the first foreign investor in Victory Port, finally completed all construction. In fact, the main building of the store was completed more than half a month ago, but the subsequent internal decoration took a lot of time. Because after the main building was completed, Li Nai remembered to request that all bathroom systems must be made by Haihan. As a result, the entire building had to be remodeled to meet the laying conditions of bathroom pipes. For this purpose, "Furuifeng" invested an additional 3,000 yuan in circulation coupons - this was a 20% discount given by the Ministry of Construction because they were acquaintances.
Li Nai himself didn't feel bad about this extra investment, because he knew that although the money was thrown away quickly, the speed of earning it back would not be much slower, because this business store was very important to "Furuifeng". In fact, it is an extremely efficient money-making machine.
Facing the Landscape Avenue, this business store is a restaurant. Although it only has two floors, the interior decoration and even the staffing are in accordance with the standards of high-end restaurants in Guangzhou. All the tables, chairs, doors, windows, and even cups, bowls and chopsticks in the store The dishes are all shipped from Guangzhou, and the chef is naturally specially invited from Guangzhou. Of course, its consumption level is also based on the level of the wealthy class in Guangzhou. If you ignore the local currency exchange rate, the cost of a meal here is not much cheaper than that of the most upscale Sijixuan in Guangzhou.
Li Nai is not worried about the hotel's customer base. At this stage, all the maritime merchants who can come here have certain economic strength, and it goes without saying that the Haihan people - the only local currency that can be used is printed by them. Yes, no one would be stupid enough to doubt their spending power.
As for the hotels that several other investors are going to open, Li Nai is not worried. After all, it is difficult to copy his own method of moving a complete hotel from the mainland. Even if he can copy it, it will be at least two or three months away. , by that time, the property purchased by the family in Shengli Port will probably have doubled.
Behind the hotel that serves as the front is a two-entry courtyard. This is the brothel jointly planned by the Executive Committee and "Fu Ruifeng". The current employees here are more than a dozen young women hired from Guangzhou by "Fu Ruifeng". In order to respond to the special requirements of the executive committee, there is no personal contract between these women and "Fu Ruifeng". Appearing here in the form of a hired worker - this is also what the executive committee specifically requested of Li Nai in order to avoid being criticized by feminists.
Of course, those twists and turns are all false and are nothing more than an excuse to do legal business. In order to ensure that this place can maintain normal "business order" and fully protect the health and personal safety of its own people, the executive committee has made very strict regulations on business hours, methods and service objects.
This brothel can only operate between 6 pm and 11 pm every day. All employees are not allowed to leave the business premises without any reason. They are not allowed to show up in the hotel facing the street to solicit customers. They must undergo a physical examination at least once a month. The most important thing is that this place can only receive people with special bills issued by the Executive Committee. As for the fees, the Shengli Port Management Committee and "Furuifeng" under the Executive Committee will settle the settlement according to the number of special bills. Once a month.
This is not that the executive committee directly uses money for bachelors to meet their physiological needs. In fact, the wool still comes from the sheep. This special bill that can be consumed in the brothel is registered by the time traveler with the real-name subscription at the civil affairs department. Every month Each person is limited to purchasing five tickets, and they must show their ID number plate when they go to consume. There will be a dedicated person responsible for checking and registering. It is basically the brothel version of the real-name system for train tickets.
These regulations may seem unkind, but they can indeed greatly reduce the frequency of jealousy, fights and other bad phenomena that are common in such romantic places. Anyone who causes trouble here will be easily traced. In addition, this measure is also conducive to the prevention and control of certain diseases - as long as you check a girl's business records, you can easily find out the people she has come into contact with.
In fact, before the emergence of brothels, some time-travelers had already "acted spontaneously" and had private relationships with some female naturalized people and even Li Miao mountain people. Although there are not many such cases, the executive committee does not fail to wipe the butts of these guys whose hormones are overflowing. If there is no legal place for the large number of singles in the time-traveling group to satisfy their physical needs, then sooner or later a civil strife will break out in Port Victory.
Of course, to solve this problem at its root, we still need to continue to introduce a large number of immigrants, especially young women with excellent qualities. However, this task is relatively arduous. People with good conditions will naturally not let their daughter go to this isolated overseas port to live with a group of unknown maritime merchants. There are also situations where naturalized citizens want to marry their daughters to time travelers, but this situation also faces legal issues - can relatives of women who marry time travelers also enjoy the same treatment as time travelers?
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(End of chapter)