Chapter 357 Oriental Pearl

"Don't look at me,"

Seeing Lin Xiao's strange expression, Yu Jifan pursed his lips and muttered, "I don't know Portuguese." ”

"I ...... You ......"

Lin Xiao wanted to speak and stopped.

"Okay, okay, you send someone to get her,"

Seeing Lin Xiao's stumbling appearance, Yu Jifan rolled his eyes angrily and interrupted Lin Xiao, "Find another translator, and I'll help you test her." ”

"Forget it, there's no hurry,"

Lin Xiao smiled self-deprecatingly, waved his hand and said, "Since she understands medical skills, it can't be better, let her follow......"

Actually, Yu Jifan did misunderstand what Lin Xiao meant.

He thought that Lin Xiao wanted him to verify how much medical skills the foreign woman knew, so he was very disdainful in his heart, the Europeans of this era, who had just come out of the ignorant Middle Ages, could have any clever medical skills?

As a regular physician by training, he was naturally familiar with the history of Western medicine, and in Europe and the Americas, until the beginning of the nineteenth century, the extremely backward "bloodletting therapy" was still commonly used to treat patients with high fever who suffered from "yellow fever".

And now, it's still in the seventeenth century!

"I want to ask you, what are you doing in Qinzhou during this time?"

Lin Xiao smiled and continued, "If you help me train another batch of medical soldiers, there will be nurses......

The reason why Lin Xiao wanted to speak and stopped was because he suddenly remembered that Yu Jifan was not his soldier, and it was impossible to follow him around him, in fact, the division of labor given to Yu Jifan at the beginning was only responsible for ensuring the health of the traverser.

Therefore, not making full use of the more than one month during the land reform period to open another training course for medical staff was actually his own negligence.

"Who knew you would expand your army so quickly?"

When Yu Jifan heard this, he smiled and teased, "I'm in Qinzhou, so I'm naturally working......

As he spoke, he winked at Lin Xiao.

Although Lin Xiao didn't know what he meant, he also vaguely felt that there must be something inconvenient to say in front of Qu Shiyun and others, so he immediately understood, immediately opened the topic, and turned back to Li Hanzhi to ask about the construction of the Hong Kong base:

"You've been in Hong Kong for more than 20 days, what's going on?"

"I'm about to report to you, I'm afraid the task you gave me will have to be revised......"

Li Hanzhi smiled, stood up immediately, and while answering, he took out a few maps from his shoulder bag, spread them on the table, and said......

Hong Kong Island, which belongs to Xin'an County, Guangzhou Prefecture (later known as Shenzhen City), in addition to the main island of about 80 square kilometers, there are more than 200 outlying islands of all sizes around it, the largest of which is called Lantau Island, which is much larger than the main island.

On the main island of Hong Kong, there are two bays in the north and south, the bay in the south is Seac Pai Bay, and there is a larger bay in the north, which was called Guanfu at that time, that is, Victoria Bay in later generations, and the north shore of Victoria Bay is the Kowloon Peninsula.

It's just that Hong Kong at this time is basically a desert island.

After the preliminary investigation of the survey team, it was found that there were only Stanley, Tai Tam Tuk and Shek Pai Wan in the south, some fishermen lived in Ah Gong Rock and Shuijing Wan in the east, and there were some small villages and bays in several other places such as Wong Nai Chung, Deng Di Chau and Seven Sisters, with a total of less than 3,000 residents.

According to Lin Xiao's previous plan, Li Hanzhi's first task was to build a naval base, a logistics support base, and a residential area for the families of officers and soldiers in Seac Pai Wan in the southern part of Hong Kong Island, and eventually build a large-scale military port.

When all the infrastructure is completed, this military port will be able to accommodate at least 20,000 naval officers and sailors and more than 50,000 family members, and become a veritable military town.

In Victoria Bay to the north, a larger port could be built, and Lin Xiao planned to build a civil port with a large shipyard as the core, supplemented by commerce and industry.

Of course, it will cost a lot of money, and there will not be enough manpower and building materials, so this is the second phase of the project, which will be completed within a year at the earliest.

In short, Lin Xiao hopes to build Hong Kong Island into a model city similar to the "Oriental Pearl" in later generations.

However, when Li Hanzhi retrieved several maps of Hong Kong from the offline map saved by the computer, including topographic maps and urban traffic maps, and compared them with the latest maps of Hong Kong Island drawn by the previous surveyors in this time and space, it was found that the development potential of Hong Kong Island itself was pitifully small.

This is because Hong Kong Island itself lacks vacant land, and the flat land is mostly concentrated along the coast of Victoria Bay in the north, and even here, the terrain is too narrow to make it difficult to supply enough land for industry and agriculture except for the pier.

In addition, one of the most fatal problems is that there is a severe shortage of water, a shortage of fresh water.

As far as Hong Kong Island itself is concerned, the local people mainly rely on a few small reservoirs built next to a few streams in the mountainous areas to supply domestic water.

Later generations of the Hong Kong government built a number of reservoirs in the mountainous areas by vigorously protecting the vegetation in the mountainous areas and increasing the water storage capacity in the mountainous areas.

Later, in the 1960s, there was a serious water shortage in Hong Kong, and Hong Kong Island residents had to calculate the water supply, and later, Hong Kong's water supply completely relied on pipelines from the mainland to meet the needs of the entire city.

As a result, Li Hanzhi found that his original ambitious plan to engage in large-scale industry in Hong Kong, especially the shipbuilding industry, was basically in vain.

Industry is a big water guster, and without an adequate supply of fresh water, production cannot function properly.

If you must set up a shipyard in Hong Kong, you can only choose to open a shipyard on the north shore of Victoria Bay, that is, in the Kowloon Tong area on the other side of Hong Kong Island.

The problem is that Kowloon Tong is not much better off than Hong Kong Island itself, and the local water source is not enough to support industry, because the flat land there is very limited and there are no big rivers.

From this point of view, Hong Kong is not a suitable location for both industry and agriculture.

Lack of water, food, energy, land, to be precise, mainly lack of flat land......

In later generations, before 1949, Hong Kong's economic standard was not only inferior to that of Shanghai, but also far from that of Guangzhou.

In the second half of the 20 th century, the reason why Hong Kong was able to become an international metropolis -- the "Pearl of the Orient" -- was actually due to the tremendous benefits gained after the liberation of the mainland as the only window to maintain contacts with the West and break the economic blockade of the hostile forces of the West.

At the same time, it also benefits from the supply of energy, fresh water and food from the mainland as a "window" to maintain the normal operation of the "window......

In the end, after holding a series of technical personnel meetings to discuss, Li Hanzhi decided that Hong Kong's positioning can only be based on military bases, supplemented by trade windows and material transshipment centers, and it will definitely not be able to develop industry.

Even if he gave up industry, Li Hanzhi refused to give up the military base, mainly because Hong Kong's geographical location is extremely important - it is located in the main waterway of the Pearl River estuary.

At present, the Portuguese colonists in Macao have just been wiped out by the captive army, and in order to maintain overseas trade, Lin Xiao has no intention of blocking the news, and legitimate Western merchants can still enter and exit freely.

Then, once the news of the murder of Governor Fissa reached Portugal, they would not rest on their laurels, and in the near future, as a base for the First Fleet, Hong Kong would become a reliable barrier to Macau and Canton.

After all, Lin Xiao was about to lead the main force on the Northern Expedition, and he was temporarily unable to take care of the South Seas, and if the Portuguese fleet took advantage of the situation and retaliated, the economy and people's livelihood along the Pearl River would be seriously damaged.

The First Fleet used this as a base to shield the Pearl River and prevent any Western forces from attacking and harassing the Pearl River.

At present, the captives are about to attack Taiwan, and Hong Kong is a good base for advancement, and many supplies can be raised locally without having to be shipped directly from Qinzhou, and the supply line has been shortened by at least half.

After this tone was set, Lin Xiao's development plan for Hong Kong Island had to be greatly reduced.

……

(End of chapter)