The Imperial Age with the Resurgence of Han Style

Chapter 302 Copper Mine
The afterglow of the sun gradually disappeared, and the copper mine near Luxi Town, Jing'an Prefecture, Luzon Governorate (now Mabini Town, Davao Region, Philippines) was slowly shrouded in the dim sky.

But in a huge open-pit ore processing plant, groups of workers are still busy, squatting on the ground, cutting ore, or swinging hammers and chisels, the sound of hammers echoing in the valley.

The workers' clothes have been stained by copper dust, and the sweat and dust have mixed together, making it unrecognizable. In the dim night, countless shadows are moving, carrying baskets of ore and silently dumping them in the yard. They are like numb and lonely ghosts, floating in the huge mine.

"Pa pa pa", is the sound of the hammer falling continuously.

"Crack, crack" is the sound of workers smashing stones violently.

"Crackle, crackle" is the sound of torches.

"Tatta-tatta" is the sound of the mine wheels rolling.

The workers' faces showed expressions of fatigue, pain and anger. They were experiencing hunger, injuries, exhaustion and exploitation.

The mine was damp and dark, like hell, and the air was filled with the pungent smell of copper.

Huge piles of ore are the result of workers mining and picking day and night. After countless hard work, the copper mine is hidden deep underground. Only this group of brave and tenacious workers know of its existence, and even more so the blood and sweat behind it. Then they use their own hands to mine it out bit by bit.

Their sweat dripped onto the stuffy cave walls and evaporated onto the surface of the copper mine.

Dusk had passed, and the mine was gradually surrounded by darkness. Torches were lit all around, but they were still working.

Deep in the mine, there was endless darkness, with torches occasionally lighting up the surroundings dimly, making them feel a tormenting sense of oppression in the narrow space. Sometimes they seemed to hear bursts of mournful screams, which were from people who had worked with them and were ruthlessly buried deep in the mine.

Copper resources are very precious, so the workers are very cautious and, under the guidance of supervisors and mine technicians, ensure that the copper ore is mined intact.

The copper ore they dug out would be sent to nearby smelters for preliminary processing, made into huge copper ingots, and then shipped back to Hanzhou or exported to the Qin State on the mainland. Finally, in factories and workshops, it was made into various copper products for industrial and daily use.

Mining is a very dangerous job. Mines or tunnels often collapse, and if workers are not careful, they will be buried in the mines.

"Dang Dang Dang..."

"Rest! ...Rest!"

"time to eat!……"

As a gong sounded, the supervisors began to shout loudly, reminding the workers that they could stop working and prepare for dinner.

When Jiro Kawano heard the sound of the gong and the supervisor's shouting, he immediately let out a long sigh, then straightened up and looked towards the entrance of the mine.

Perhaps because he was too tired, he felt dizzy and quickly grabbed the pickaxe in his hand, trying to support his shaky body.

"Be careful!" A pair of strong arms held him tightly.

"Oh, thank you very much..." Kawano Jiro turned around and saw that it was his fellow Yokohama native Takezawa Uemon, so he said gratefully: "I'm fine, I'm probably... hungry."

"Then we must eat more tonight." Takezawa Uemon said, "I don't know if there will be fish tonight. ... I haven't eaten meat for several days."

"It's good enough to have a few more bites of dry biscuits, how can we expect to eat fish." Kawano Jiro laughed bitterly, "According to the meal arrangement of the mine, there will be fish soup and salted fish every seven days. If I remember correctly, we only had dried fish five days ago."

"Oh, I didn't expect that even in such a heavy and boring job, you can still remember every day so clearly." Takezawa Uemon carried the iron rod in his hand on his shoulder and walked towards the gathering point with Kawano Jiro.

"If I don't think about something in my heart, I don't know how I can get through the day." Kawano Jiro laughed at himself, "Only when I think about something in my brain can I feel like a human being, not a walking animal."

"Hold on a little longer, three years will pass quickly. Even though it's hard here, at least we can have enough to eat and won't starve to death in Japan."

At this time, the widespread food shortage in Japan caused by abnormal climate had spread from the Kansai region to China, Shikoku, Kyushu and other places. The disaster spread to nearly fifty feudal domains in western Japan, causing the most serious famine in Japanese history - the Kyoho Famine.

The famine lasted for more than a year, resulting in the number of people affected in Japan being close to eight million, with more than three million people suffering from severe hunger, and the number of people who died of starvation reaching a horrific number of over 969 (according to the Tokugawa Jitsu, 900 people starved to death).

The whole of Japan was in mourning. Cities, villages, fields, and roads were filled with corpses of people who had died of starvation. Even the Eta had no time to move or burn the bodies, leaving them exposed in the wild or being eaten by wild dogs and beasts.

Under such circumstances, the various states in the Xia Dynasty and the overseas colonies of Qi, which were in urgent need of population and labor, would naturally not miss the opportunity to recruit immigrants. Even the Dongdan and Bohai states in the north of the Ling Mountains commissioned merchant ships to help bring a large number of Japanese starving people back to their respective countries to fill their vast and empty territories.

At first, the Japanese shogunate took active restrictive measures to prevent the famine victims from fleeing the country in consideration of the existence of the isolation order, and issued severe warnings to merchant ships anchored in the waters near Japan, prohibiting them from entering various ports.

However, as the disaster spread, more and more people starved to death, and the shogunate and local feudal states were increasingly unable to provide relief. They gradually relaxed entry and exit restrictions, allowing a small number of foreign merchant ships to enter the port and transfer some Japanese starving people to "work" abroad.

It was under such circumstances that Jiro Kawano and others were stuffed into a merchant ship at Yokohama Port in April and arrived in Luzon with more than 200 Japanese compatriots.

After disembarking at Jing'an Port, these Japanese starving people were divided up among several mines and abaca plantations after seven days of quarantine. They then boarded another ship, crossed Jing'an Bay (now Davao Bay), and arrived at the copper mine in the small town of Luxi.

In fact, for ordinary Japanese at that time, going to sea to make a living was not something that people could not accept. As early as 70 or 80 years ago, a large number of downtrodden warriors and landless farmers secretly boarded the merchant ships of Qi State, left their hometowns, and went to the distant Hanzhou continent and the vast Nanyang region to fight for Qi State or open up wasteland, and they all received rich rewards.

Most of these Japanese ancestors who went to sea to make a living stayed in the mainland of Hanzhou or the islands of Nanyang, started families and businesses, and took root in the local area, becoming the enviable people of Qi. However, there were also a few "seafarers" who secretly returned to Japan because they missed their relatives at home or their hometown. After returning to their hometown, these people, without exception, brought back a large amount of gold and silver coins and various rare toys from Qi, which aroused the envy of the villagers.

Of course, there were many people who were reported or arrested by the local government for violating the "isolation order". Not only were all their belongings confiscated, but they were even sentenced to be beheaded in public to warn local people not to go out to sea privately and to strictly abide by the "isolation order" issued by the shogunate.

However, there were also politically enlightened local lords who would absorb these people who had seen the world and sailed to sea into the political system or army of their feudal state, and use the advanced ideas they had learned from the Qi people to help their feudal state develop the local economy and strengthen the construction of a modern army.

Through two Qi-Japan wars, Qi easily defeated the powerful southwestern clan of Satsuma Shimazu and the shogunate Tokugawa clan, which shocked the whole of Japan and made many "knowledgeable people" immediately and deeply aware of the huge power gap between Qi and Japan. People across the country also developed a certain fear and respect for Qi.

A few years ago, the shogunate knew that the Choshu Alliance was secretly supported by the Qi people, which led to repeated defeats in the battlefield and forced the shogunate to stay in the Chugoku region to maintain a confrontation with the Qi people. However, the Tokugawa clan did not dare to speak harshly to the Qi people about this matter, let alone take any radical actions against the Qi people. They could only hold their noses and acquiesce to the Satsuma-Choshu Alliance to split the southwest.

Against this backdrop, the starving Japanese people were overjoyed whenever they could board a Qi merchant ship.

In their minds, as long as they arrived in Qi, they would not only be able to have enough food to eat and not have to worry about food and clothing, but they would also be able to earn a lot of money, thus achieving a reversal in life and becoming rich.

However, when Kawano Jiro and other hungry people arrived at the mine, they were shocked to find that their dream of getting rich had not yet come true, and all of them owed the mine a high amount of travel fees.

That’s right, the boat ticket from Japan to Luzon was not free, and each person had to pay fifteen dollars for the fare.

What? In the past, Japanese immigrants going to sea were all free, and when they arrived at their immigration destination, they were given housing and land, and provided with all the supplies necessary for their lives?
Tsk, what year's almanac is this? !
In the past, immigration was an official act led by the government, with a lot of financial subsidies. It was free of charge to bring you back from Japan thousands of miles away.

What are we?
We are a mine, recruiting workers and transporting immigrants are naturally private activities, so we must pay attention to cost recovery!

Therefore, you have to pay for the journey from Japan to Luzon by yourself. Considering that you are all starving people with nothing, the mine will advance the money for you. You can write an IOU first, and it will be deducted from the labor fee every month.

According to the signed labor agreement, workers in the copper mine can receive five dollars a month in wages, but two dollars for food and fifty cents for work clothes and work tools must be deducted, leaving a net profit of two dollars and fifty cents, which means they can save about thirty dollars a year.

Compared with the heavy work and dangerous environment in the mine, and compared with the average wage level in Qi State, this salary is really a rip-off.

But for most of the Japanese starving people who had just arrived in Qi territory, it was a very generous salary. You should know that the annual income of an ordinary samurai at that time was about 32 taels (due to the large outflow of precious metals, Japan had to adopt a rice-based economy during the Edo period, that is, income was calculated in terms of rice, about 2.5 koku = 507 taels), the annual income of a hatamoto samurai was about taels, and as for ordinary farmers and citizens, the income was even lower.

The salary paid by the mine was 5 yuan per month, which was equivalent to more than 15 taels of silver, or more than 180 taels per year. If all of it was used to buy rice, it would be more than 400 taels, which was more than ten times the income of ordinary samurai and almost as good as the treatment of hatamoto samurai.

Even though half of their income would be deducted in the name of food expenses and work clothes and equipment fees, all the Japanese workers who came to the mine were extremely satisfied.

This treatment is close to that of a hatamoto samurai. If it were still in Japan, it would definitely be a rare opportunity.

Because in the whole of Japan, there are only more than 4,000 samurai with the status of hatamoto, usually composed of some disqualified daimyo and the youngest sons of some daimyo families. For ordinary samurai and civilians, it is an insurmountable class.

However, for Jiro Kawano, who was once a samurai, he was not willing to do the job of a laborer in a mine, as he thought it was beneath his samurai status.

He would rather be a brave warrior like his predecessors who were incorporated into the Qi army, fighting on the battlefield and using the samurai sword in his hand to gain wealth and glory in his life.

However, more than 30 years ago, with the increasing size of the Qi army and the strengthening of the military strength of various countries, the Qi State had stopped recruiting Japanese wandering samurai to form non-staff armed forces such as the Loyal Army and the Han Association Army. Even the large number of local militiamen faded out of the formal combat sequence of the Qi State army and became a paramilitary force to maintain local order and deal with sudden local military incidents.

Therefore, those wandering warriors who wanted to make achievements on the battlefield could only join the armies of the three countries of Beiming, Dongdan and Bohai, and risk their lives for a bright future.

When they arrived in the territory of Qi State, these down-and-out warriors either became coolies in mines or worked as farm workers on plantations. If they were lucky, they might be able to get a job as an armed guard to supervise the working coolies, thus maintaining a little dignity as a warrior.

The world is at peace in Qi State. It seems that warriors like us have no chance to stand out!

"Dang Dang Dang..."

A shrill gong sounded, immediately interrupting the workers' meal.

Several military police officers in black uniforms appeared at the mine. Managers, supervisors, and guards gathered around them, talking to each other in low voices, seemingly arguing about something.

The leading gendarmerie officer had a stern look on his face, and seemed very impatient with the words of the people in the mine. He glanced sharply at the people present, and waved his right hand vigorously to stop them from continuing to speak.

Then, a mine guard holding a torch walked to where the workers gathered to eat, cleared his throat and shouted loudly.

"What did he say?" Jiro Kawano asked in a low voice to an old Japanese miner.

"…The natives in the inland areas are in turmoil, and the Qi people want to recruit thirty people from our mine to participate in the military operation to suppress the rebellion."

"Anti-rebellious natives?...What conditions did the people of Qi offer?" Kawano Jiro's mind moved.

Is this my chance to make a name for myself?

"...add three dollars per person, and then...go fight the natives for your life."

(End of this chapter)