November 20, 1641, New Chinese Colony.

A sudden rainstorm has finally kicked off the annual troublesome rainy season. Two days earlier, just after the large-scale dry season farmland harvest had ended, the freemen and slaves of Xinhuabao had narrowly collected about 1,000 tons of grain (200 tons of corn and 800 tons of sweet potatoes) into warehouses before the heavy rains came. Combined with the previous harvest and the remaining sorghum rice in the warehouse, the warehouse in Xinhuabao is now filled with more than 2,400 tons of various types of grain. At this point, this year's agricultural planting activities in Xinhuabao have all ended, and the next is a four-month rainy season fallow period.

The 2,400 tons of grain, together with some collected coconut fruits, seafood and more than 1,000 hump cattle, are enough to feed 10,000 people for a year. The current population of the New China Colony, including the Eight Banners slaves (more than 1,500 people), Malay slaves (more than 2,500 people), free people (more than 500 people), and personnel of the military and political enterprise system and others (about 450 people), add up to a total of nearly 5,000 people.

Moreover, after these Ming people came, they did not eat and drink for nothing, and the government of Xinhuabao would also organize them to build city walls, build forts, cut wood, quarry, burn bricks, reclaim wasteland and even dig coal mines. It would be a pity that such a large number of laborers could not be put to good use, after all, they would not be immediately transported back to the mainland, and they could have organized them to build a new Chinese colony in the intervening period waiting for the arrival of the ships. Now it's full of construction sites, and the natives who have recently been taken into custody by the government are lazy and stupid. Motivation to work is extremely low. I still dig hollow thoughts and run away. Annoying the overseers, a slave can only be used as a half.

As a last resort, after communicating with the Hezhong Fort side for the Eight Banner slaves in the second year, they artificially extended their service period by one year, that is, from one year to two years. The reason is that the new China region is no longer so dangerous, the incidence of various diseases, especially malaria, has dropped significantly, and the annual mortality rate of slaves has dropped to about 15%-20%, and it may be further reduced in the future. These Eight Banners slaves are down-to-earth and hardworking. Eat less, work more, and endure harsh conditions, many times better than those Malays who don't know how to do it. For this reason, Shi Qinjie even had an idea to send all the Malays here to South Africa and exchange some Eight Banners slaves with Fort River. But Mo Ming is not stupid, these Malays are not easy to manage, they are lazy to eat, and he also has a headache. However, the Xinhua Fort side is not good at all, so the exchange of races has been carried out on a small scale in the past two years.

The rainy season is coming. Most of the work had to be stopped. Water facilities, logging and road construction have all stopped, but no one dares to stop building forts and walls, and the wooden houses for the new immigrants are also under construction in the rain. In addition, the ship's technicians and newly recruited craftsmen are also trying to build small fishing boats for offshore fishing. It is important to know that the waters around Madagascar are extremely rich in fishery resources, especially shrimp, swordfish, barracuda, lobster, sea cucumber and other seafood are famous specialties of this place in later generations. Building more fishing boats to catch more fish and shrimp for the local area can not only increase the protein supplement for all residents, but also greatly reduce the rate of food consumption.

More importantly, the Executive Committee was determined to develop the shipbuilding industry in the New China Colony, so starting with the construction of simple fishing boats, it was also possible to train some shipbuilding talents as soon as possible, so as to accumulate experience and skills for the construction of larger tonnage merchant ships in the future.

The days passed like this, until more than a month later, in 1642, when the time crossed into 1642, the long-awaited Ming immigrants in the New China region finally arrived. On the afternoon of January 1, 1642, five large Portuguese sail galen ships anchored outside the headland of New Huaxia Bay and asked to enter the port. After sending people to carefully inspect these Portuguese ships, the east coast side allowed them to enter the harbor in turn, and sent the new Ming people to the shore in batches.

Almost all of the city's residents were mobilized to help settle the new Ming immigrants on the docks, and even the 3rd Army Company, which was stationed in the fortified areas of Batteries 1 and 3, sent some of its soldiers back to the docks to maintain order. The more than 400 Irishmen, who make up the majority of the residents of Fort Neunew, looked at the newcomers with complicated expressions, silently preparing bathwater and sweet potato polenta for them.

According to the communication with the Portuguese, there were nearly 3,000 new Ming immigrants. However, there are also Koreans and Japanese, and even a few Vietnamese. The army soldiers in charge of screening them were pulled out one by one according to the official comparison manual, and then counted the numbers, ready to bargain with the Portuguese for a while.

It was still raining lightly in the sky today, and Shi Qinjie, accompanied by his secretary Rodrigo with an umbrella, walked slowly by the dock, carefully watching these newcomers. I don't know where the Portuguese came from, but the provenance seems to be very mixed, which can be seen from their looks, figures, and occasional accents. They could have been somewhat recognizable by their attire, but at the moment it seemed that most of them had no attire at all, in other words, they were all dressed in tatters.

Some of the children were even completely bare-bottomed, and they didn't care, and looked curiously and fearfully at the well-dressed, armoured-armed soldiers on the docks, and some of them even had beards, blue eyes, or blond hair that they had never seen before, much to their curiosity. However, they did not dare to look too much, and the fear of the unknown also affected them, causing them to turn their gaze only occasionally for a moment, but quickly retracted.

The adults are generally wooden, honest, and numb, and it can be seen that most of them are farmers who have stayed in the village all their lives to farm. Their knowledge of the outside world is limited to the narrow area of the village where they live, and their social relations are very simple, mostly confined to their neighbors or landlords. Many of them, like previous groups of immigrants, are likely to be unable to fully express their feelings or meanings in words at first.

They need a long-term transformation. Shi Qinjie sighed to himself, years of poverty, hunger, disease and war had severely destroyed their physical and psychological health, and they needed a long period of recuperation and transformation before they could slowly integrate into the existing system on the East Coast. I don't know where these Portuguese found them, these people all look like the common poor people in the north of the Ming Dynasty, weak and numb. It is no wonder that the Manchu Qing Dynasty was able to drive straight into China and occupy China, and years of war have completely collapsed the order in the hinterland of the Ming Kingdom. The landlords and literati were corrupt and degenerate, and the common people were impoverished and numb, and it was not in their interest to rise up against the Manchus, and even the new Manchu conquerors were not necessarily any crueler than the Han landlord class that had exploited them. What kind of fucking society is this, Shi Qinjie couldn't help but look up to the sky and sigh, if such a Ming Dynasty is not dead, then there is really no heavenly reason.

In the past few years, the Ming immigrants have become more and more miserable year by year, and it can be seen that the situation there has deteriorated rapidly. The traversers didn't even need to learn about these things from the pile of old papers, they only needed to see some clues from the state of the Ming immigrants who came to the east coast. And this is one of the reasons why many people in the military and the government are accelerating the opening of the Far East route.

The Irish militia grouped the disembarking migrants into groups of fifty and then led them to a large wood-framed house next to it, where they were separated from the men and women for personal hygiene activities such as bathing and washing their hair. There were several large bathhouses built of bricks and cement in the room, and some Eight Banners slaves poured buckets of boiled hot water into them from time to time. Thanks to the large industrial preparation of sulfuric acid, a certain proportion of valuable copper sulfate solution is also added to the bath water of the bathhouse, which mainly plays a sterilizing and disinfection role. After each group of people went in to bathe, the Eight Banners slaves standing at the door took off their tattered clothes and sent them to the stove to burn them, and then handed out a set of denim clothes and pants transported from the East Coast to each person who had finished bathing.

After taking a bath, the Ming immigrants were led to eat in the canteen next to the bathhouse. The meal was nothing but simple sweet potato polenta and pickles. At this time, only these foods are best suited for them. After all, their weakened bodies will not be blessed to enjoy those fragrant fish and meat for a short time, so it is better to take these simple foods to recuperate for a while.

The resettlement of the 3,000 Ming immigrants continued until the next morning. Whether it was the military and political officials of Xinhua Fort, or the Irish and Eight Banner slaves who were working below, everyone was too tired to look good. However, it is not yet possible to let go, because the wooden houses prepared for the new immigrants have not yet been completely completed, and in the next few days they will organize the new immigrants to do their own thing, using the remaining wooden planks from the wood processing factory to build temporary wooden houses for themselves. Moreover, the common sense of life in the tropics, some taboos and things to pay attention to in life must be explained to them clearly. Of course, before all this, the first thing to do is probably language learning, that is, to let these Ming people learn the official language of the East Coast country, so as not to communicate smoothly in the future. In short, things are complicated, and for a long time to come, everyone is probably going to be too busy to touch the ground. (To be continued......)