The air after the rain is extremely fresh, which makes the people of Ping'an Township who have just been far away from the foul smell suddenly feel relieved, and the air is full of the smell of grass, which is really good!

This is Baoan Township, the northernmost township of the East Coast Republic, and belongs to Ping'an County in the North Yazi Lake area. Before today (March 10, 1648), the population was just over 1,000 years old, consisting mainly of Ming immigrants from Northern Zhili and an equal number of European immigrants (mostly women) from Livonia and Ottoman. Today, the arrival of another 1,000 Ming immigrants allocated by the Ministry of Civil Affairs has made the population here exceed 2,000 at once, and it is now possible to officially start the construction of large-scale farmland and water conservancy facilities.

The Sinos River outside the settlement was dredged last winter, and then the county and district governments mobilized local residents, garrisons and government officials to take turns to widen the river and dig irrigation canals. Even when it snowed, the river construction site did not stop working for even a day, and the nearby residents, men, women, and children, worked hard to improve the local wild natural environment.

The East Coast has only been established for more than ten years, and the government has a strong enforcement power, and various laws and regulations are also strict. Therefore, even Bai Siwen, who is the president of the North Duck Lake District Circuit Court, has no choice but to honestly spare part of the time to go down to the river to dig in the mud in accordance with the regulations. For a country like the East Coast, if your leader doesn't lead by example, then the people below will also respond to the story, and the atmosphere will be corrupted. Moreover, everyone has more resources and benefits than the people at the bottom, in this era of great shortage of labor because of the war. Regularly visit the front line to take the lead in doing physical work. What's the point? The country was first established. It is precisely this spirit of hard work and perseverance that is needed. In this way, we can open up living space for the country and the nation and seize the land under the sun!

In the wilderness, there were still a large number of "Brazilians" (from mixed sources, but mainly Portuguese, Italian, and British) from the northern hills, most of whom had just arrived in the New World. Unable to get along in the Old World, they dreamed of becoming rich overnight, and crossed the ocean to Brazil, where the legend is full of gold, to make a living. However, Brazil's harsh natural environment, continuous wars, and scarce jobs put them in a difficult situation, and most of them came to the New World with debt, so they had to sell their labor in the Eastern Republic under the organization of some labor brokers (to whom the captain had transferred his debts). to gradually repay the debt.

These people generally work in places such as lumber yards and construction sites that require heavy laborers, and the work is quite profitable. There is no arrears in the daily payment of wages, so the cooperation between the two sides is quite pleasant. It is fair to say that it is the perseverance of the Portuguese and Brazilian merchants in the mountains to the north that has prevented the shortage of labor in the North Duck Lake area of the Republic of China on the east coast of China.

It's not for nothing that the Portuguese work so hard. Although they were at war with the Spaniards, the tragic beating of them by the East Coasters at La Plata still made the Portuguese feel sad. The Kingdom of Portugal, which was weak and was still at war with Spain and the Netherlands, naturally did not dare to go to war with the east coast, but finding the opportunity to trick more immigrants from the Old Continent into Brazil to enrich the local white population was unanimously approved by the Portuguese government.

As a result, a large number of Italians, Scots, Irish, and Portuguese residents who "did not know the truth" were deceived into the New World by traffickers and captains in various ways. It then became another target of exploitation by many "labor brokers" active on the East Coast and in Brazil.

However, this is not a bad thing for the people of the East Coast, because many projects that require a lot of manpower, such as river dredging, road construction, and house construction, are gradually completed with the help of these people. Many of them even paid off their debts two or three years later, and then became freedmen and settled in the nearby towns of New Dundee, Blacksmith Town, and Captain Ricardo, which led to a significant increase in the number of new Brazilians in the Gérard Mountains.

The East Coast knows a lot about the Brazilian mind. However, there is still a request for the other party, so it is inconvenient to have another incident. After the city of Colonia was closed due to the war, a large number of merchants who were active in the trading city began to move to the Gérard Mountains and started the border trade on land again. After all, although the trading market no longer exists, the vast consumer market has not disappeared. As a result, many merchants from Chile, Chalcas, Peru and other places began to move to the Gérard region, and began to develop a prosperous border trade with the private merchants on the east coast of Ping'an County.

The East Coast authorities tacitly accepted this kind of border trade, and also sent personnel to collect taxes, and strictly restricted the trading place to a makeshift market in Baoan Township, so as to prevent lawbreakers from disguised as merchants to spy on all kinds of intelligence on the East Coast. Realistically speaking, this kind of border trade has greatly alleviated the economic difficulties of the East Coast. Because the Portuguese gathered many small craftsmen from the Old World, and then produced all kinds of small objects such as fish hooks, sewing needles, pins, etc., in the four towns between the Gérard Mountains, and as large as tools that were inconvenient for large-scale industrial production by the people of the East Coast, all these things flowed into the territory of the East Bank through the border trade market, so that the shortage of materials in the East Bank Republic was alleviated.

The trade volume between the two sides is also increasing year by year. In the beginning, this border trade was intermittent, and on average only a few hundred yuan per month. After a year of development, at the end of last month (February 1648), the turnover had exceeded 4,500 yuan, a record high. In March, which has only passed 15 days, the current turnover has reached more than 3,000 yuan, and there is almost no suspense for a new high this month.

Because of the frequent border trade, shopping, and tax payments, many merchants, craftsmen or ordinary laborers from Portugal have also accumulated more and more East Coast banknotes, which undoubtedly makes a huge breakthrough in the circulation range of East Coast banknotes, and began to try to enter the Brazilian market for circulation, which is of far-reaching significance.

It is precisely because of this that the East Coast authorities have tacitly and even encouraged this trade, as can be seen from the dozens of merchant licenses issued in one fell swoop to private businessmen who apply to do business here. The expansion of trade meant a recovery of the economy, and trade between the two sides would flourish over time as more and more Portuguese settled in the Gérard Mountains. Moreover, through guò as a trade channel, the East Coast could easily sell its own goods, after all, relying on the Genoese or the Dutch West India Company for everything was not very safe, and it was easy to lose the pricing power of goods. And if these Portuguese merchants can open the market of Portugal and its colonies, it will also be a lot of income, you must know that at this time, the market of Portugal itself across Asia, Africa and Latin America is still relatively broad.

In this trade, Portuguese inflows into the East Coast were handicrafts, livestock, sugar, tobacco, cotton, fruits, and other agricultural and mineral products; Comparatively, the East Coast flows into Portugal at a much higher level of goods, such as textiles, dyed leather goods, metal farm tools, hardware tools, building materials, high-end furniture, steel, medicines and food.

In particular, the last two cases were due to the increasing focus of Portuguese plantation owners on the pursuit of high profits over the years, so that plantations such as cotton, tobacco, sugar cane, and cocoa became popular, while the area under grain cultivation became smaller and smaller, and finally even imported food from the east coast to solve the shortfall, and concentrate on growing high value-added cash crops.

The business is now being taken over by the Dafeng Food Processing Factory in Xihu County, which exports refined flour to local white farmers, and then mixes the black wheat bran that falls from the machine with grains such as sweet potatoes and potatoes, and also exports it to the slaves on the plantations, whose owners are reluctant to buy high-quality grain for them. In addition, residues such as soybean meal left over from soybean oil extraction on the East Coast are also exported to Brazil, where many ranchers buy the stuff to raise livestock.

At the same time as the grain exports increased greatly, the drug aspirin began to be gradually recognized by Portuguese businessmen, and its export value began to rise month by month, under the conscious promotion of the East Coast officials. At present, the East Bank authorities have set up a new settlement in the later town of San Montenegru, west of Baoan Township and on the banks of the Kaj River, and have begun to transplant willow trees in large numbers as a source of raw material for the production of aspirin, so the settlement is also commonly known as the Willow Camp by the crossing people.

In today's financial difficulties, the Executive Committee and the Government Council have also liberalized a lot, and some things that were previously afraid to be produced and exported on a large scale due to various factors, such as soda ash (widely used in textile, printing and dyeing, leather, papermaking, metallurgy and other industries), aspirin, soap and other commodities have also begun to prepare for gradual large-scale industrial production. At present, they are going to test the waters with Portuguese border traders in the Guò Gérard Mountains, and then vigorously promote it at the Qingdao Autumn Commodity Fair in May, and then they can start exporting them in large quantities as a key commodity.

And this will undoubtedly bring about economic recovery. (To be continued......)