As the storm that raged overnight subsided, more than 30 ships of various sizes took advantage of the sunny weather to sail south along the Somali coast.

The deck of the convoy was crowded with Chinese who had come out to breathe the wind, and a gust of sea breeze blew, and the rancid smell that permeated the deck was mostly blown away, and only in the center of the crowd could you smell the strange smell.

Drifting at sea for nearly three months, being able to get out of the deck and breathe fresh air is a cherished thing, in normal times, ordinary Chinese can only stay at the bottom of the cabin and suffer from turbulence, but the deck and upper cabin are left to the Foshan Shipping Association and those Han sailors who supervise the ship to live, and only in the early, middle and late parts of the month, ordinary Chinese have the opportunity to come to the deck to change air and rest three times.

After the Opium War, taking advantage of the opportunity of opening up the southern coast, Liangguang, Fujian and other places set off a wave of going abroad to make a living, and the traces of Chinese in Nanyang, the United States, Australia, Brazil, Peru and other places are all over the country.

The growing population of overseas immigrants has led to the development of related industries, and a number of industries have emerged in Guangzhou, Foshan, and Shantou in Guangzhou, Guangzhou, and Xiamen, and in Fuzhou, Xiamen, Fujian, and other places engaged in maritime shipping, overseas labor intermediaries, and even human trafficking, trafficking, and trading.

In the rural areas of Guangdong and Fujian, human traffickers would buy their daughters from poor farmers for less than 5 US dollars, about 7.5 Han yuan, and then these human traffickers would resell the little girls they bought to coastal ports such as Guangzhou and Fuzhou, and then the little girls would be sold to comprador groups in collusion with foreigners and the government, and the comprador groups would bribe the Manchu customs officers a sum of money, and the poor Chinese girls would be transported to Nanyang and the Americas like goods. Reduced to a tool for venting in a brothel, or a private slave in a rich family.

Smuggling and selling Chinese girls is a lucrative business, and after arriving in the Americas, the average Chinese girl can be sold for $200 to $500 in San Francisco, and the most beautiful girl can even sell for $1,000.

In 1862, the smallpox epidemic occurred in San Francisco, although the proportion of Chinese sick was less than 5%, but the US government-led investigative committee still blamed smallpox on the brothels in Chinatown, and American public opinion nakedly declared that "the laboratory of infectious diseases is in the heart of our city, emitting deadly toxins day and night, polluting our rich and intelligent streets, We must uproot this Chinese cancer."

Even the American medical community, which claims to be scientific, rigorous, and benevolent, shamelessly slandered the arrival of Chinese prostitutes and triggered the syphilis epidemic, because "Chinese women's ** is horizontal." ”

At this time, the Manchu government did not care at all about the situation of his nominal subjects, but accepted the conditions of the US government and recognized a series of humiliating laws formulated by the US government, while on the Han side, Li Mingyuan on the one hand formulated a response plan for evacuating the Chinese in the United States when he fell out with the United States, and on the other hand, starting from the source, using inducements, bribery and other means to support interest groups dependent on the Han State, and with the help of their connections in the southern region, intercepted Chinese women who were abducted and trafficked to the United States.

The Foshan Shipping Association is still essentially a member of the comprador class, but because their employer is the South American Han State, so the treatment of the Chinese people on the transport ship is slightly better, of course, compared with the comprador class who generally serve foreign companies, the treatment of the Chinese people is a little higher, but compared with the Han Ocean Shipping Company under the command of the government, the treatment of the Chinese immigrants is still much worse.

In the limited scope of expenditure, the company's senior management must not only pay the wages and salaries of the crew and sailors on time, but also complete the immigration task indicators stipulated by the government, so in order to save money, the senior management of the ocean shipping company will divide the remaining immigration funds into two after removing the company's operating expenses, and part of it will be used for the expenses incurred by the shipping company itself to transport immigrants, and the other part will be outsourced to the intermediary party in the south of the mainland. They are responsible for transporting migrants to transit stations such as Nanyang and Kismayo, and finally the ocean shipping companies will take over the transportation back to the mainland.

The outsourced transport task retains the most basic guarantee requirements, and the ocean shipping company only dispatches five to ten supervisors and one or two supervisors on each transport fleet, while the outsourcing transport company is responsible for the rest.

The Foshan Chamber of Commerce was the last Argentine pre-war transport of migrants, but due to a storm at sea, the convoy was delayed for a month in the South Seas and the Bay of Bengal, so that the convoy did not reach the waters near Somalia until early July.

More than 30 ocean-going transport ships carried more than 13,000 Chinese immigrants in total, because of the imbalance in the gender ratio of Han China in South America, it was more profitable to transport young Chinese women, so in addition to the 4,000 young and strong male Chinese, the remaining nearly 9,000 people were mostly Chinese women ranging in age from 12 to 35.

Space was limited on the transport ships, and in order to carry more migrants, the fleet did not enforce strict rules for the separation of men and women, and more than 1,400 younger Chinese men and women were mixed into three medium transport ships. In order to prepare for possible chaos on board, five supervisors and more than 20 sailors followed the owner of the Foshan Shipping Chamber of Commerce to board and inspect the three transport ships.

About to arrive at the transit station Kismayo, the more than 10,000 migrants in the transport fleet will be handed over to the person in charge of the Kismayo transit station, and the ship's owner, Liu He, will complete the transportation task.

With more than 20 sailors behind him inspecting the situation of the transport ships, Liu He's gaze swept over the decks of the ships one after another.

Most of the Chinese immigrants on the deck came from the coastal areas of Guangzhou, Guangzhou, and a small number fled from other places.

Unkempt and yellow-skinned are common characteristics of all Chinese immigrants, and in the midst of the dense crowd, small dots about half a person tall can be seen walking back and forth on the deck from time to time.

Liu He can easily distinguish the identities of those little ones, most of them are orphans whose parents died, and a large part of them are poor girls abandoned by their parents because of family poverty.

At the end of the Qing Dynasty, natural disasters and man-made disasters continued, and in many cases, children aged seven or eight, eight or nine years old were sold and no one wanted them, in order to keep the main labor force in the family alive, those girls who could not be sold were first abandoned by their parents and abandoned to fend for themselves.

The reason why those younger girls were allowed to be brought on board was also because the Han Shipping Company paid the Foshan Shipping Association at a price of 5 Han yuan per person as a price, otherwise Liu He, who was used to seeing his family ruined, would never have a conscience to find out and carry them on the ship for free.

"My lord, there is another girl on the boat who died without holding on."

In the medical cabin in the middle corner of the cabin, Lang Zhong said to the person in charge of the supervision of the Han Kingdom who came to inspect.

"This is the ninety-seventh."

The other party sighed and said, "Doctor Sun, there is still one day before the fleet can arrive in Kismayo, you and Doctor Li of the fleet will think of a way to save as many sick girls as possible." ”

"The dolls are young and can't withstand the bumps of the sea for a few months, and Doctor Li and I can only do our best, whether we can save the lives of the remaining fifty sick girls can only depend on God's will."

"If you don't bring these girls back to their homeland, they will only starve to death and freeze to death in the wilderness, and the homeland of the Central Plains will be ruined, and all we can do overseas remnants can do is to save as many lives as possible and leave some fire for the country and the nation."

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