Lu Ming

Chapter 502 Taipei ([-])

The continuous rain and fog flew by continuously, shrouding Huanggang in a blur.

Although Taipei has a rainy season in winter, there is also a lot of rain in summer. The monsoon from the Pacific Ocean brings endless water vapor, making the mountains and rivers in the north of the island often in a state of wind and rain.

In the plane of crossing the masses, the Greater Taipei area in the [-]th century still maintains its original style.This dark blue land covered by forests and mountains, including the entire Keelung Bay Port area leading to the Taipei Basin, is still a forest area.Most of the plots are undeveloped.

Even the only one that was rectified by all the time-traversing people was Sulfur Harbor.

The location of Sulfur Harbor is relatively remote, basically in the upper left corner of Taiwan.In later generations, Huanggang is a bit far from the most prosperous and core Greater Taipei area in later generations, and it is just a harmless port.

During this period of time, the only place in Taipei that can be called a "town" is precisely here.

Since the nearby river beach produces high-grade open-pit iron sand mines, Sulfur Port was designed as an industrial port of mining + sea-river transport from the very beginning.The crossing people not only made great efforts to build the port, but also expanded the place and built a town.

In fact, theoretically speaking, Taiwan is not suitable for large-scale development. The reason is simple: the wealth that plains can generate is far greater than that of mountains.

Compared with the vast plains of Australia, the Nanyang Islands, and the land of North America, Taiwan has no land available for large-scale development except for the two small plains of the Taipei Basin and Tainan.

However, in later generations, due to some well-known historical reasons, the result was the prosperity of the Greater Taipei area and the skyrocketing population of Taiwan.In fact, this is the same as the prosperity of Hong Kong. It is a special case that appeared under specific historical conditions and cannot be copied.

There is no need to travel through the crowd.

For the traveler, what Taiwan can provide at present is iron ore and sulfur from Taipei, oil from millet, and food crops from the Tainan Plain, that's all.

That is to say, in the eyes of the gentlemen, Taiwan is actually a large mine that provides primary raw materials, and its status is very low. After passing through the initial incubation stage, this place will definitely gradually fall silent.

Naturally, Crossover will not invest resources in Keelung Bay or even the Taipei Basin, which has little future, to build a Greater Taipei District, at least for now.As for the future, whoever wants to go, anyway, the territory has been enclosed, and the descendants will naturally develop slowly if they really want to multiply to that extent in a few hundred years.

Because of this, all the few buildings in Keelung Bay were abandoned. For example, the San Salvador Fort bought from the Spaniards has now become a ruin—all the stones have been removed and shipped to Sulfur Harbor. Went to repair the trestle bridge.

Now, Sulfur Harbor, far away from Keelung Bay, is the heart of Taipei.

In the past three years, through the hard work of the crossing people, the originally inconspicuous Xihu District has been transformed into a regular town including ore docks, cranes, residential areas, slave camps and other fixed assets.

The total population of Huanggang District also reached 6000.

In addition to a regular army infantry battalion stationed here, there are also several small frigates stationed in the port for a long time to control the ocean surface - there are no strong opponents off the coast of Taipei, the most are Fujian ships and Japanese trading ships, so there is no need to use big ship.

The source of civilians in Huanggang Town is much more complicated.

In addition to Ming immigrants from various provinces, Taipei natives and Nanyang slaves also accounted for a large proportion of the population of Huanggang Township.

Starting from the Ketagalan people who have dealt with the crossing people from the very beginning, many natives have settled in Huanggang Town now.

Of course, the process of Taipei's "reformation of the native land" is certainly not smooth sailing.Huanggang here is different from Tainan, where most of the resources of the transversal people are gathered, and they can use various favorable conditions to recover the natives as peacefully as possible from the very beginning.

However, Sulfur Harbor was a construction site from the beginning, and there was nothing to ask for, and it was impossible to show the natives the advanced nature of civilization, so the method had to be "slightly tougher".

As a result, a series of battles took place along with the expansion of the traversing crowd around Huanggang.

In a real fight, the natives would naturally not be opponents.

When the Spaniards were dealing with the natives of Tamsui, like their Dutch fellows, they were tricked into a sneak attack and killed a group of soldiers.Immediately afterwards, the Spaniards sent a "big force" of hundreds of people, and then the Guirou Club, the largest in Tamsui, surrendered.

The fate of the losers was that they all migrated and were driven to the Danshui Estuary by the Spaniards.

The time-traversing crowd did the same.

A mining town that was developing rapidly and was in short supply of labor, there was not so much American time and the intrigues of the natives were gradually affected, so a series of wars of conquest took place shortly after the opening of the city.

In the end, except for the head snakes of the local Fengli Society, who were peacefully merged into the town due to their frequent dealings, almost all the natives of the surrounding ethnic groups either voluntarily, or were "voluntarily" joined " Civilization process" has been "enlightened".

In today's Huangang Town, there are no indigenous villages around.The ten-kilometer area around Huanggang town has been thoroughly cleaned up, and the road has been repaired to the nearby iron sand mine.

In addition, the dredged Huanggang River has also been connected to the river near Yangmingshan.In this way, the sulfur ore collected from the Yangmingshan volcanic community can be transported along the river to Sulfur Port, and then shipped to the sea.

On the whole, the mining structure in Taipei has now been completed and has met the design requirements.

Then in this process, naturally another important force cannot be missing: slaves.

Taipei in the [-]th century was a primitive wild land full of forests, rivers, lakes and swamps.Except for that bit of beach, the rest of the land is covered with dense vegetation, and there are man-eating leeches and flying mosquitoes everywhere. If you want to build roads and expand the easy-to-live site in such an environment, you don’t have to pay any price. is impossible.

The price paid by the crossing crowd is naturally slaves.

There is a saying that goes like this: Under every sleeper on the American railways, lies the corpse of an Irish worker.

This sentence mainly describes what happened when the first Pacific Railway across the North American continent was built.

In the vast and arid western plains, I don’t know if there are so many Irishmen buried there, but the travelers can guarantee that the number of slaves who died in order to open up the twenty-mile mining transportation line from Huanggang to the Yangming mountain area It is far more than Amtrak.

(End of this chapter)