Chapter 101 What do you want?

Almost every month, in Pudong Port, Shanghai, China, a cargo ship comes from Singapore in Nanyang. When the cargo ship lifts its cargo compartment cover and unloads the full cargo, pieces of gray and white things half a meter square. This is a natural rubber sheet.

China, perhaps the industry is not developed, but for China, it has the world's largest automobile factory, the world's first mass-produced car, the first truck. Since the automobile factory was put into production two years ago, Tianma Automobile Company in Pudong has produced 80% of the world's cars. 80% of tires, also cars and tires, make China the world's largest rubber importer.

Similarly, rubber is one of the most important strategic materials. Airplanes, cannons, car wheels and ship seals, wires, wires and wires, etc. must be made with it, but now, no country in the world has realized that rubber, which is condensed from the milk of the Brazilian three-leaf rubber tree. It is expected that it has been integrated into human social life almost everywhere.

However, in China's official documents, rubber, steel, coal and oil are collectively known as the four major industrial raw materials of modern economy and society, which is also a problem that China is trying to solve.

"Our economic conditions determine that we need to use coins to import machinery, not rubber as a raw material!"

In the Nanjing Imperial Palace half a year ago, in the face of a huge import of more than 10 million yuan of rubber every month two years later, a dialogue between His Majesty and his "businessman" spread to Yuan Shikai, who had just been promoted to Minister of Internal Affairs.

Yuan Shikai, as the Minister of Internal Affairs, after making full preparations after asking some overseas Chinese in Nanyang, naturally walked into the palace and recommended to His Majesty that the Ministry of Internal Affairs should be responsible for solving the problem of "localization of rubber".

"You can try to cultivate land and plant rubber trees around Hainan. Seeds and technologies can ask for help from overseas Chinese in Nanyang!"

Since ancient times, Jun has no jokes. In one sentence, the emperor made a final decision to reclaim land and plant rubber gardens in Hainan. Yuan Shikai, who is good at speculation, naturally regards this matter as the first important thing of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Rubber may be the most powerful bargaining chip for him to ask His Majesty for credit.

In May, when most of China's land is in the bright tail of spring, Hainan Island is full of flowers everywhere. No... There is no winter here at all. Hainan Island, located in the tropics, has just sent away a typhoon. The rainstorm brought by a typhoon has turned mountain streams into rivers. The river turns into a flood peak.

But at night, Hainan, which is full of primitive forests, is still as quiet as before. In the middle of the quiet rainforest, the buildings that can be seen are just dozens of neatly arranged simple thatched roofs made of bamboo and wood, gray and scattered in the open space surrounded by miscellaneous trees.

The cold moon is in the sky, the insects and beasts in the forest, and the owl's call makes people particularly panic. In a courtyard surrounded by barbed wire, in simple bamboo sheds and wooden sheds, people sleep on the Datong bune with their heads and feet out.

Sleeping like this has a sense of dependence and security, which is also to prevent the invasion of beasts, especially the cloud leopard. Cloud leopards often bite the neck and throat first. There are cloud leopards on Hainan Island. In the reclamation farm here, it is well known. Workers sent to the reclamation area from all over the country must carry out safety education. How to prevent the invasion of beasts is one of the most important contents.

When people who have finished a day of heavy work rest in the simple shed, under the beam of searchlights, they can see soldiers patrolling back and forth from time to time. There is no difference between their military uniforms and the guards. The only difference is probably the "inside" on the embroidered armband. The word "department".

But even so, there are still people sleeping in the shed, and people can be heard whispering in the shop from time to time.

"If the cloud leopard comes, they can shoot it with one shot! But what if the python comes!"

Although it was muttering, after more than ten hours of work, people were tired and fell asleep one after another. In the second half of the night, suddenly someone jumped up in the women's shop, and everyone woke up. People thought it was a beast. Someone picked up the bamboo poles, such as machetes, saws, hoes and other tools, which have to be handed in after work every day. Self-defense can only be made with bamboo poles and wooden sticks.

The scream from the shed made the female soldiers standing outside the door patrolling anxiously. With a flashlight, a thick-armed snake crawled back to the field from the floor and disappeared into the grass.

"Okay! It's time to go to bed!"

The words of the female soldiers have a strong Cantonese accent. The guards of the women's battalion are female soldiers, and most of the female soldiers come from Liangguang. Because most of the women are not wrapped in their feet in these two places, they pass the inspection when recruiting female guards in the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

Being so scared, it was difficult for the women in the shed to close their eyes again. They sat up and chatted. A young woman looked at the moon in the sky foolishly, and tears flowed out in the blink of an eye.

"When will this bitter day come to an end!"

The woman's sigh is just bursts of sighs, tired and haggard faces, and there is no hope for the future.

"What a sin has been done!"

Then the crying sounded in the shed. After the child was awakened by the previous screams of the adults, he also began to cry.

"Why are you crying? There will be a living tomorrow!"

The cry came out of the door, and there was a female voice shouting.

"Oh, don't cry, you have to work tomorrow!"

After a sigh, people fell asleep again.

In the early morning, there was a loud and long horn sound over the work camp. In the command, there were bursts of people queuing up in the open space of the work camp, gathered, went out, lined up in a neat line of more than a dozen columns, and then shouted slogans with the command of the commander next to the team.

"One, one, two, one, two, three-four..."

In the muddy and heavily trampled work camp in the depths of the rainforest, after drinking a bowl of porridge, the workers rushed along the road to the construction site with dry food and carrying farm tools.

The so-called road is just an open space opened by people in the primitive forest with machetes, axes and saws, and then two deep ruts rolled out by ox carts on the red land. The rainstorm brought by the typhoon makes the road slippery and mirror-like. The wet mud powder is glued together and thicker on the wheels. Every time they walk, the workers have to shovel off the mud with a shovel.

The red mud sticks to the sole, and you can't shake it off. The more sticky it is, the heavier the shoes are, and the thicker the soles are. Therefore, the workers here are barefoot. In order to deal with mud, their ox carts and wooden wheels were wrapped around the iron sheet, and they also used sacks to wrap the hooves of the cattle pulling the cart, which were all learned from the locals.

People always have amazing adaptability.

When the men were walking towards the reclamation area, the women drove ox carts around the camp to reclaim arable land. According to the self-sufficiency policy of the concentration camp, they had to grow the first batch of rice before "weaning", and more women used the rattan brought by the men to work in the shed to make rattan chairs and a Some simple tools.

In the hydraulic sawmill of the river, the logs floating along the river are processed into wooden boards after drying in the drying room. In addition to a small part of the work team to build houses, more wooden boards will be sent to the seaside and shipped to big cities such as Guangzhou and Shanghai.

A few minutes later, with a burst of smoke rising from the distance from the distance of the invisible red land, the rainforest became noisy again. At this time, the deep green of the primitive forest was fading one by one. Now there are hundreds of farms gathered on Hainan Island. Nearly 300,000 workers are like silkworms eating mulberry leaves, nibbling on the forest and grassland covering this red land. You can see the thick ashes left by the mountains and the burned thorns and grass everywhere.

The reclamation work is a combination of man and fire. Most of the trees, vines, thorns and small shrubs are cut down artificially. Only awn grass and weeds are set on fire. Everything here should be fully utilized. Trees are sawed into logs, and the remnants and thorns serve as dry fuel. As for vines, they need to weave various tools and chairs. Wooden boards, rattan chairs, rattan hats and tea bottle shells are now the main output products of work camps in Hainan.

In the primitive forest where no one has been deeply penetrated for thousands of years, there are many trees in the sky. The waist of the big trees is thick and the branches are dense, and the roots are mixed at the bottom. The treatment of this kind of tree is a hoe, a machete and a big iron saw. For the reclamation team, their nightmare is to encounter a huge tree like a banyan tree. Use a saw to cut off the atmospheric roots on the ground one by one, cut off the branches that stretched out like umbrellas, and then concentrate on dealing with the trunk. Several people took turns to pull the large board saw. When it was almost sawed, they tied a thick rope to the top of the main trunk, and gathered more than a dozen people to grasp the reverse direction. The tree was about to fall, and the commander shouted, and the palm saw quickly dodged. Everyone pulled the tree down with all their strength. To saw off such a large banyan tree, it will take more than a day for more than a dozen people to work hard, not to dig up the roots stretched around like snakes.

The reason why it is a nightmare is that their workload has always been linked to food. For the officers, no matter what "blannel tree is difficult to nibble", they need to nibble off the green here, and then use human and animal power to plow and rake ** land, and divide it into squares it into squares according to the area of 100 mu. One large square, leaving the position of the protective forest around it. In the square, the soil hole of the rubber seedlings is dug out, and the line is aligned horizontally. This is the future rubber forest section. Moreover, in mountainous areas, after clearing the mountain, we have to build terraces around the mountains along the slope.

What are worker ants? Perhaps for thousands of workers working in this primitive forest, they are valued worker ants, but next to these worker ants, there are guards holding rifles and holding military dogs. It is under the supervision of these guards that they are as diligent as worker ants!

"Ah..."

Suddenly, a busy worker made a scream, attracting the attention of nearby guards. Looking there, I saw a full-body python coiled in the woods. The snake's head shook leisurely, and the corners of its half-closed eyes were covered with mucus, and the eyes showed a crystal blue light. This kind of python, commonly known as the southern snake, the flesh of the esophagus and abdomen is like a stretchable rubber. With a big mouth, it can swallow a pig into the abdomen. Of course, the python can also swallow a person in one bite.

"Hurry up! What are you still doing? Let's kill it. Everyone will have meat to eat at night!"

The guard who blew the air conditioner shouted at the scared people. As soon as he heard that there was meat to eat, everyone's eyes lit up at the same time, remembering the python meat he had eaten a while ago. Just as the python was about to escape, dozens of big men surrounded it with thick bamboo poles and began to hit the python with bamboo poles and hoes. The angry python stretched its head higher than people, exhaled in its mouth, its foamy saliva spilled several feet away, and its tail frantically wrapped the small trees around it.

After more than ten minutes of fighting, the python's head was flattened under a random stick. The foreman wearing the armband of the "ban" in the crowd began to shout that the workers should clean up the python with thick thighs. Although he was the monitor of the foreman, he said that he was in harmony, but he ate better and slept better than others in the work camp, even for him. He also has his own room, and his wife and children live with him. That alone is enough to make others envious of stomach cramps.

"Be careful, be careful. The skin must be peeled carefully. I estimate that this skin is worth at least 100 points. This is a day's work for ten people!"

Qing Na, who was wearing the "ban commander" armband, shouted from time to time. The leather looked beautiful. As for the leather that would become the leather shoes or small wallet of the lady and lady, he didn't care. What he cared about was the competition with Class 45.

"If we win this month, the officer said that the class won the title of labor commando, and that class will live in the tall house first. If we win for ten months in a row, the wife and children will come back!"

Qingna couldn't help shouting. His words made the guys who only had meat in their eyes suddenly be careful. A beautiful python skin of more than ten meters long was quickly peeled off, and now a guard came over.

"S sir, look at this skin,..."

Qing showed the skin to the officer flatteringly, and the code was checked with no expression on his face. Finally, the guard's face finally squeezed out a smile. The pattern of the leather was more beautiful than expected.

"Lao Qing, 103 points! At this time, you are almost 110 points more than Class 45! There are no days this month. Eleven people a day's work is enough for them to catch up!"

Finally, the guard added a serious sentence.

"You have to work hard and transform it to get a new life, understand?"

"Yes! Thank you, sir!"

Qing Na hurriedly thanked, and there was some more expectation in his eyes.

"I will do a good job and live up to the kindness of national reform!"

As soon as the afternoon thunderstorm passed, the sun came out hot again. The raindrops stained with treetops are not dry yet, shining, reflecting a dazzling piece in the sun. The wet ground was roasted by the scorching sun, and steamed up. In this difficult land, thousands of workers are still transforming themselves in the red land.

The people who bent down and lined up to dig holes there looked very tired, their faces were gray and yellow, their cheeks were sunken, and their eyes were deep. The clothes on their bodies were half dry and half wet, and there was a faint salt white on the edge of the water. This was a wet and dry, dry and wet head in the sun, and the feet were steaming. At this time, to accurately describe the situation on their foreheads, we had to use this already used idiom again - sweating like rain.

But even so, the work always needs to be done. They dig rubber holes in the red land and send a bamboo stick for each hole. When counting the progress of the operation, it is also used as a basis for individuals to get work points. If this kind of work is diligent, one person can get 20 or 30 points a day, while it only takes ten points for meals, and the rest The work points can be exchanged for some more money.

Money, working here also has a reward. Although it is limited, when receiving money every month, it always makes adults and children excited for a long time. For adults, that money carries their hope for the future. Although it is only one or two yuan, the people in the work camp know that when they "renew" After making it, you can take the money and do some small business to do something, which is always enough for the family to make a living.

As for the children's happiness, it is because when they give money, some small pieces are either folded into candy or broken into soap or something. They can eat a candy, which is enough to make them happy for several days.

"... 20,000 soldiers and 570,000 forced workers. Before the arrival of the planting season in July, the whole region needs to reclaim 1.5 million mu of rubber..."

When checking the progress of the project, Mu Qiangguo did not go to see the workers, but muttered in his heart the orders given by the Ministry of Internal Affairs. In the past, he opened a rubber park in Nanyang, but now he is a technical consultant here. Since he came here two months ago, he has been muttering in his heart whether Lord Yuan's rubber park can If it is completed.

But now he doesn't doubt that here, the guards always have a variety of ways for the workers to complete their tasks as scheduled, and these workers seem to be working hard one by one.

"Are you tired?"

Looking at a worker who was digging a pit next to him who was covered with mud and didn't even look in his eyes, Mu Qiangguo asked casually.

"If you go back to the officer, I'm not tired. I will definitely reform well and live up to the re-made of the country!"

When the man said this, Mu Qiangguo noticed a flash of brilliance in his eyes, as if he was expecting something.

"Mr. Mu, you asked this question..."

After listening to his words, the officer wearing a black military uniform and hanging the rank of captain immediately laughed. It was the commander of the 095th Battalion who laughed loudly. In fact, he is the highest officer of the battalion, and in theory, he holds the power of life and death in the whole camp. When he is mentioned, all the workers will show a look of awe.

However, when Mu Qiangguo came to this camp, he didn't seem to see what he used to maintain "personal authority".

But he can feel that sometimes he just needs to look at the worker without showing any eyes, which is enough to scare those people.

"You should ask them what they want, not whether they are tired or not!"

Mu Qiangguo was stunned first, and then looked at the person who worked hard again. What did they want?

He raised the whip made of the beautiful black python skin in his hand and pointed to the workers. The officer spit out a word indifferently.

"Work for freedom!"

(to be continued)