Forty-eight years of Qianlong

Chapter 438 Sauron Recruits
In late September, five large inland river sailboats full of passengers traveled eastward from Heilongjiang City and finally arrived at Boli Town on the east bank of the confluence of Heilongjiang and Wusuli Rivers.

"Beep~~beep~~"

"Attention all recruits! Disembark! After disembarking, stand in line and don't move around!" Following the officer's loud order, more than 200 recruits on five ships began to disembark and line up one after another.

This is the first batch of recruits Sheng Haizhou recruited from Heilongjiang City to Humar under Wang Yuanfang's order, that is, Sauron soldiers.A small half of them were wounded soldiers left behind by the Qing army's retreat from Heilongjiang City. After being treated by the military doctors of the Beihai Navy, they have basically recovered, and each of them has become vigorous again.

Wen Dai, an Ewenki recruit, first checked his carry-on backpack and confirmed that there were quite a lot of things in it, and then he fastened the mouth of the bag.The people in front hadn't finished walking, and the boat tent was a bit messy; Wen Dai waited for the comrades around him to get up, then put his backpack on his shoulders, and stood up.

When he stepped out of the tarpaulin-covered boat canopy, snowflakes fell on Wen Dai's body.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 on the pier, the hustle and bustle of people came into view immediately.The noisy scene made the recruits dizzy. Except for going to Heilongjiang City to pay the poll tax every year, they had never seen so many people in any place before.

"This, this is too lively!"

"Let's go together~~"

Under the leadership of the officers, the recruits who had finished queuing up maintained a relatively neat formation and went to the military depot two miles away to the east of the pier to rest and eat.In the afternoon, they will continue to go south by boat; go down the Ussuri River, cross Xingkai Lake, pass through the Niyalinbila River, turn to the Lefu River, and finally transfer to land transportation to the training base in Beihai Town .

The people on the road saw hundreds of Bei Haijun coming in line, and they all stepped aside, looking enviously at these people who ate the "imperial court" meal, and commented.Among these people, there are Hezhe people, Oroqen people, Xibe people, Feiyaka people, Han people, and even a few islanders with Yuedai heads.

Li Bi, a former prisoner exiled by the Qing court and now the clerk of the Ministry of Civil Affairs of Beihai Town in Heilongjiang City, served as the Manchu interpreter accompanying the team. He was wearing a grass-green cold-proof suit without armbands and badges, and a green cotton hat with drooping ear protectors. He walked slowly behind the team.

In a small tavern, several Xibo people in animal skins were listening to the opera broadcast from the electric speakers, babbling and imitating.Li Bi smiled when he heard it, and couldn't help but hummed while shaking his head.

".I also sent people to inquire. After inquiring, Sima led the troops and went west. It wasn't because Ma Di had no plans and few talents. It was because of the generals' disagreement that he lost the street pavilion."

Different from those new recruits, Li Bi just dropped by this time and worked as a translator part-time, which was part of the temporary recruitment of the army.Because he cooperated with Guo Dalu in Heilongjiang City to manage it in an orderly manner this year, after Guo Dalu reported to the Civil Affairs Bureau for approval, Li Bi was allowed to go to Beihai Town Central Hospital for scar surgery to remove the tattoo on his cheek.

Li Bi burst into tears when he received the notice, and kowtowed three times in the direction of Beihai Town to show his gratitude to Zhao Xin.The shame that accompanied him for many years was finally able to get rid of, and no one would stare at his cheek in the future.

At this moment, his face no longer had the gloom of the past, and he looked at the shops and stalls on both sides of the road with a smile while walking, and he was in a very good mood.

Li Bi heard from Guo Dalu that the emerging town where he is now will be the most important water and land hub of Beihai Town in the lower reaches of Heilongjiang, connecting the upper and lower reaches of Heilongjiang and Wusuli River.At the same time, the planned railway will also be built on the opposite bank of the river, connecting it to Aihui City.

A road paved with steel!Li Bi was fascinated by Guo Dalu's general description at the beginning, and he really wanted to see the day when the project would be completed as soon as possible.

Since all kinds of 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 some of them have to be transferred to Heilongjiang City. There is an endless stream of cargo planes and sailboats here every day.

Especially now that winter is approaching, the task of transporting materials is even more urgent. Coupled with the border residents who come from all over the country to trade, the traffic on the Heilongjiang waterway is almost as busy as the Grand Canal.After the flat-bottomed sailing boats waiting on the pier are filled with cargo, they will make a "chug" sound and head westward.

Beginning last year, after the Northern Navy occupied Ninggu Tower and Sanxing City, the waterway and land communication between the Qing court and the entire middle and lower reaches of Heilongjiang and the Wusuli River Basin were completely interrupted. The system of "rewarding Wulin" for many years has collapsed.

Although Shang Wulin is gone.However, the "barter" trade had to be maintained, otherwise the border residents in the middle and lower reaches of Heilongjiang would have difficulty surviving, so the "large financial subsidies" that the Qing Dynasty gave to the border residents every year were transferred to Beihai Town.

In June last year, the trade department headed by Shen Jingdan sent dozens of clerks, escorted by the Beihai Navy, to carry a large amount of supplies to the wooden city of Delengen on the shore of Qiji Lake.Through the form of barter trade, a large amount of food, cloth, satin, cotton and needles and threads were sold cheaply to rural tribes in the outer northeast.

At this moment, the border residents of different surnames and villages finally let go of their worries.They still offered items to Beihai Town in the form of tribute, hoping to get a reward.

However, to the surprise of the border residents everywhere, the "official messenger" of Beihai Town made it clear that from now on, the method of tribute and reward will no longer be implemented, but the method of barter and fair trade will be adopted.The Beihai Trading Company under the Ministry of Trade purchased all kinds of mountain goods brought by the border residents, and then sold various daily necessities to the border residents.

Because Liu Sheng's wife is from Hezhe, the villagers from Balk Village easily accepted this method, and it quickly spread among the border residents.However, to the dismay of some border residents, no one wanted the costin they used to pay tribute to.

However, to the surprise of the border residents, the goods that King Zhao gave them through trade were actually more than what the Manqing had given them before.

In addition, those Feiyaka and Ainu people who came from Bitter Leaf Island thousands of miles away for the reward of food and brocade, because Beihai Town already has many strongholds on Bitter Leaf Island for trade, so they came to There are very few people.

What's more, every time the Thor and the Thunder go to Bitter Leaf Island to refuel, they will bring a batch of living supplies to resupply the villages and towns along the way, so it is easy for the Sakhalfyaka and Ainu to exchange their supplies from those villages and towns. needed goods.Barter is also okay, if you don’t have any goods, you can do odd jobs for a few days, dig coal, chop some trees, help repair roads, and you can make money no matter what.

What surprised the border residents the most was that there was a magical "white iron pot" among the goods provided by Beihai Town. This kind of pot can stew food like an iron pot, and it is also very light. And a heavy iron pan is a hundred times better!
In the previous trade of "rewarding Wulin", the Qing court was extremely strict with the export of ironware. Except for needles, no ironware would be rewarded to border residents.In fact, the Qing Dynasty hoped to maintain the stability of the outer northeast through this method, so as to avoid fires in the backyard.You must know that Nurhachi and Huang Taiji slaughtered too many border residents in the campaign to conquer the wild Jurchen tribes in the outer northeast.

Zhao Xin also didn't want these frontier residents to recast weapons after obtaining iron, so he introduced aluminum products.It is said that in another time and space, there are only more than 7000 pieces of aluminum plates per ton. If you buy a few hundred tons just to cast a cauldron, it is estimated that it will last for decades without any problem.

People from the trade department announced to the border residents at the "Outer Northeast Trade Conference" last year that the next year's trade conference will be held in Khabarovsk.In order to make it easier for everyone to go, an inland river passenger ship will be specially opened from Delengen to Boli Town. It takes one day to go downstream and two days to return.

So starting from June this year, every day, border residents carry large and small bags of goods, take the chug and roar of inland river boats to Barley Town for barter, and more people drive fast horse boats full of goods and alone. The canoe comes here.

During the two months from June to August, the river bank of Khabarovsk Town was full of canoes and fast horse boats.At the peak, more than [-] people gathered inside and outside the town, an unprecedented grand occasion.

At that time, the bonfires on the river bank lit up the sky at night, and the Imakan songs of the Hezhe people came and went, just like the song contest in the later movie "Liu Sanjie".Zhao Xin, who was on the front line of Xiaobai Mountain at that time, was fascinated by it after hearing about it, and decided to visit it next year.

Although it is almost winter now, in the newly built big market in Boli Town, there are still people from Oroqen, Hezhe, and Feiyaka who came from the lower reaches of Heilongjiang to sell their own goods, hoping to sell well After the price, change some living supplies for the winter.

There are pine nuts, hazelnuts, mushrooms and other mountain products picked from the mountains in autumn; there are processed fish hairs, dried fish, and various dried meats, as well as leather products and fish bone pendants skillfully made by Hezhe women; There are rare oriental pearls as big as soybeans and as small as rice grains, wild ginseng, deer skin, bear skin, fox skin, badger skin and so on.

Some of these commodities will be purchased by Beihai trading companies and shipped to Fuerdan City or Beihai Town for sale, while some will be exchanged among the border residents.

The "Beihai Trading Company" in the big market in Boli Town is the largest local entity engaged in private trade. It sells food, oil, salt, sauce and vinegar, needles, thread, cotton cloth of various colors, satin, aluminum kitchen utensils, fishing nets and fishing lines needed by the frontier residents. Steel hardware tools produced in Beihai Town.

Don't worry, steel is not the same as iron.The frontier people have the ability to melt iron, but they can't do anything to steel.

Because of this, the trading company also sells well-made steel short knives and feather arrows with steel arrowheads.Although many frontier hunters are greedy, they must be residents who have settled in the town if they want to buy these. Not only must someone guarantee the purchase, but they must also be registered in the register so that the local security police will come to check from time to time.

In addition to the big market, the most popular among border residents is the medical point opened by Beihai Town Central Hospital in Khabarovsk.At present, the doctors and nurses in Beihai Town have been known among the frontier residents as the "White Angels"; those wind-cold miscellaneous diseases and trauma that were difficult to treat in the past can be cured as long as they go to Khabarovsk.The youngest sons of many frontier families were saved from premature death because of the medicine in Beihai Town.

As a result, more and more border residents settled around the town of Laiboli, and large and small settlements appeared on both sides of the river.

With more people, the law and order situation has become more and more complicated. Conflicts between border residents have occurred frequently, and even bloody fights and homicide cases have begun to appear. The local security police are very troubled.Faced with this situation, the Public Security Police Department not only dispatched personnel from Beihai Town, but also selected honest and responsible border residents from local residents to join the security police;

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 sailing convoy transporting recruits finally arrived at the pier upstream of the Lefou River.The recruits will transfer from here to the car and go to the North Navy training base more than 100 kilometers away.

Since Beihai Town acquired Ninggu Tower and Hunchun, Zhao Xin considered moving the training base to Zhuergen City in order to make room for Zhao Liang's factory area.

At the beginning of September, the engineering survey team under the Civil Affairs Department went to 25 kilometers west of Juergen City to survey and select a site for the new training base.The entire project is expected to be completed in the next year. By then, the new training base will cover an area of ​​1 square kilometers and can accommodate up to [-] people for training at the same time.

This year, Beihai Town expanded the scale of the salt factory, and newly opened a hardware factory, a casting factory, an ordnance repair shop, and a workshop for imitating walking tractor motors.In addition, in order to produce imitation rifled guns for the "servant army", the military factory has to expand its scale and open a "fire cap" production workshop.

To put it simply, the manufacture of flash caps is not as some people think, only thunder mercury is enough.The priming charge of a flash cap contains multiple components such as thurmercury, dextrin lead nitride, and tetrazene; and the ratio, density, particle size and dosage of each component have strict requirements.Its ignition effect determines the ballistic performance, and the reactants generated after the explosion cannot damage the weapon.

After the samples are manufactured, various tests on temperature and humidity, sensitivity, ignition ability, and even transportation vibration are required.

How about if the optimal ratio is not researched and various tests are not carried out, what should the soldier do if he blows it up?This is not something that can be done by a group of Taoist priests who are good at alchemy!
After the recruits got off the boat and landed, the first thing they saw were a dozen grass-green covered trucks parked 100 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 cattle in the front of the truck.

"Attention everyone! All are there, and get on the bus in units of shifts! Two shifts per car!"

"Yes!" After Li Bi translated the order, more than 200 Ewenki and Daur recruits responded in simple Mandarin.

The rules of the Beihai Navy are more than those of the previous Manchu Qing court. The recruits only underwent preliminary queue training in Heilongjiang City, and they were required to be able to answer orders in Mandarin, and they were not allowed to say "嗻".

After Wen Dai and his companions climbed into the truck compartment, a group of recruits started whispering together, trying to figure out what kind of animal the truck was pulled by.

A recruit named Rapini sitting next to Wen Dai said confidently, "It's either a horse or a cow, what else can there be?"

Wen Dai touched the back of his head and said, "But there isn't even a shaft at the front of the car."

"Everyone sit down! The car is about to leave!" Li Bi followed the officer's order and yelled loudly in Manchu.In fact, he didn't know how to drive the car, but he just heard what the officer said about "gas car" on the boat.

It's so fresh, what does Qi have to do with the car?Thinking of this, Li Bi couldn't help blowing into the snowflakes all over the sky, 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, not knowing why.So the driver shook his head helplessly, and leaned over to help him buckle it up.

"Boom boom boom!" The roar of the truck's engine finally interrupted Li Bi's wild thoughts. With the slight sway of the vehicle body, Li Bi's upper body leaned back, and the car started slowly.

"What, what's the point?!" Li Bi's chin almost hit his feet, and he turned his head back and forth, left and right to look at him.

"Sit down, don't move!" The driver was also Bei Haijun, he just said one sentence and ignored it.This kind of scene has been seen too much. When he first learned to drive, he was so scared that his ass drenched.

At this moment, those Sauron recruits who were more demented than Li Bi were those huddled at the rear of the carriage they were in, staring dumbfoundedly at the roaring truck behind it that had neither cows nor horses.

After the convoy drove on the road for more than ten minutes, the speed gradually increased.Suddenly, a group of silly roe deer jumped out in front of the first truck. The driver slammed on the brakes, and the following trucks also slammed on the brakes.Boom~~ People in the carriage suddenly turned upside down, and those recruits who were standing and watching suddenly fell down in the carriage.

"Ouch!"

"Rapini, you crushed me to death!"

"Wendy! Move your ass away!"

Li Bi didn't get any better, the violent brakes brought him forward, his chest hurting from being strangled.If it weren't for that wide green tape, he would have stuck his forehead to the windshield.

(End of this chapter)