Chapter 2957
Six hundred miles southwest of Cam Ranh Port is Vung Tau Port, another port under Hai Han's rule. After the Annan Civil War in the early years ended, this place was assigned to Haihan by Annan as one of the conditions for Haihan to help the war.
Although the two countries have nominally designated the land as a concession, Hai Han can renew the lease indefinitely, which essentially means that Vung Tau Port has been included in Hai Han's own territory.
Due to environmental constraints, the size of the port here is far less than that of Cam Ranh Port, which has unique natural conditions. However, due to its special geographical location, Vung Tau Port has become one of the most important ports on the Indochina Peninsula.
Vung Tau Port is located exactly at the junction of Annam and Champa. Nearby is the most densely populated Saigon area at the southern tip of Indochina. Vung Tau Port, located on the east bank of the Dong Nai River, belongs to Annan's territory, while the west bank of the Dong Nai River belongs to the Champa State supported by Haihan.
Champa State was also considered one of the major powers in Indochina hundreds of years ago. Half of the current territory of Annan was once Champa territory. But now there is a huge gap in strength between the two countries, and the territory occupied by the city has been shrinking repeatedly. If it were not for Haihan's support, I am afraid it would have been divided up by neighboring Annan and Cambodia.
The only product that the Champa Kingdom could produce was rice. Champa happens to be the estuary of many rivers in the Mekong River system. The fertile soil of the Mekong Delta provides an excellent rice planting environment. Coupled with the late rice planting technology provided by Haihan, rice can be harvested here twice a year. This industry alone can ensure the food and clothing of the people in Champa.
However, the entire territory of Champa is a coastal alluvial plain, and the coastline is all tidal flats. There is no decent shipping port at all. The large amount of rice produced can only be concentrated and sold overseas, which can only be achieved through the nearby Vung Tau Port.
Since Champa and Annam have been at war for a long time, it was of course difficult for such a trade channel to operate smoothly before Haihan controlled the port of Vung Tau. However, now that Vung Tau Port has become an international trade port, there will no longer be any obstacles for rice from Champa entering Vung Tau Port.
After entering October, the late rice grown in various places in Champa has also entered the harvest period. This year there was abundant rain and sunshine, and there were no pests or typhoons. It can be said to be a rare good year, and rice farmers generally achieved a bumper harvest.
But what the bumper harvest brings to farmers may not be the results they expected.
The Champa court has announced that for the sake of national security, it will expand the size of the Champa navy and land forces and build multiple large fortresses on the border to withstand the military pressure of Cambodia and Annan.
Whether it is to expand the army or build defense lines, they are quite expensive projects. The main financial revenue of Champa comes from agriculture, so the taxes collected from farmers this year have almost doubled compared with previous years. Obviously, the imperial court also realized that this year's bumper grain harvest was a rare opportunity to raise taxes, and it wanted to take advantage of this opportunity to extract a lot of money from the private sector.
However, misfortunes never come singly. Due to the bumper harvest of grain, the supply on the market exceeds demand. Grain merchants who purchase grain in various places in Champa also take the opportunity to significantly lower the purchase price, which is almost half lower than in previous years.
With this ups and downs, the income of grain farmers, instead of increasing due to the bumper harvest, is actually lower than in previous years.
Some people who have seen the world do not intend to sell grain in this traditional way. They know that there is a large grain merchant in Hai Han in Vung Tau Port, and the purchase price there is much higher than the price offered by local grain merchants. Therefore, in order to increase their income, a large number of farmers decided not to sell their rice to the grain merchants who came to buy it, but to ship it themselves to the port of Vung Tau, hundreds of miles away. Anyway, after the local grain merchants purchase it, they also transport it to Vung Tau Port. Instead of giving it to the grain merchants, it is better to earn it yourself.
Of course, this cross-country trip to sell grain is not easy for most farmers. Those who can farm may not be able to drive a boat, and those who can drive a boat may not be able to go to sea and find the location of Vung Tau Port. Otherwise, in previous years There will not be so many people selling grain to local grain merchants.
As a result, many villages organized their own grain transport fleets, led by people with rich experience in sailing. Some villages lack such people and even have to spend money to hire ship bosses who have been to Vung Tau Port to lead the team.
In late October, large and small grain transport fleets began to move down the Mekong River, Dong Nai River, Xun Ku River, Ku Xie River and other rivers, transporting large amounts of grain to Vung Tau Port. On the sea near the Mekong Delta, groups of small boats can be seen everywhere, and even fishing boats have temporarily acted as grain transport ships. The scene is truly spectacular.
On Pier 3 of Vung Tau Port, there is a large signboard that is two feet high. On such a large signboard, there is only one unusually eye-catching big character - meter.
Most people who have been to Vung Tau Port know that Pier 3 is actually a private property. When Hai Han developed Vung Tau Port, the large merchant Fulifeng invested 100,000 taels of silver to participate in the port construction project. These three piers were the official return to Fulifeng.
With such a big deal, Furifeng certainly didn't just want to build a dock far away from the mainland of Haihan. In the more than 20 years since Vung Tau Port was put into use, Fulifeng has gradually increased the scale of its operations here, and a large number of commodities produced in Daming and Hai Han were imported into Champa and Saigon areas through this place. For a long time, local people have associated the name of Fulifeng with Haihan goods.
Of course, in addition to selling goods, Furifeng will also purchase some local specialties and traffic them back to the country. Although the commercial profits from cross-border sales of these agricultural products are limited, this is also one of the measures taken by Fulifeng to maintain its influence locally. Even if it does not make money, it will still continue to operate for a long time.
Champa rice is not an agricultural product that Furifeng is interested in, because the main advantage of local rice is its low price, so that it can be exported to countries including Haihan. But low prices mean low profits. Of course, the profit of transporting a ship of rice is far less than that of other commodities. Furifeng often just assigns the task of transporting rice to returning cargo ships to reduce transportation costs.
However, this year's situation is a bit special. Shopkeeper Jia of Fulifeng recently received an order from his superiors, asking him to purchase 500,000 kilograms of rice at Vung Tau Port, and there are certain requirements on time limit and quality, because this batch The purpose of rice will be as military ration.
Shopkeeper Jia actually didn't quite understand why Furifeng had to step in to purchase so much military rations. You must know that the purchase of military rations in previous years was always the responsibility of the military's logistics department. Furifeng could only help out and provide temporary maritime transportation capacity for the army.
But this order came from Linai, and Furifeng's business in the entire South China Sea region was under his control. Even if Shopkeeper Jia didn't understand it, he could only start to complete this task immediately.
He ordered people to erect huge advertising signs on the pier, so that both local rice merchants and farmers who came to Vung Tau Port to sell rice would notice the movement of Pier 3 as soon as they entered the port.
(End of chapter)