On August 25, 1684, the west wind blew fiercely and bitterly cold.

The Patagonian highlands are in the midst of one of the toughest winters of the year. At this time, the grass withered and the people were gone, and even the perennial sheep disappeared and returned to the shepherd's fold, trembling and huddled together to keep each other warm for the harsh winter.

There was a "boom" in the wind, and no one familiar with the situation knew it, it was the sound of an industrial windmill that never tired of turning. This sound is very kind to the shepherds, because it is the monotonous sound of the mechanical turning of the leaf fan that brings them the flour on which they depend, the water that they carry from the deep valleys, and the power to process all kinds of tools and apparatus.

The wind is not only an ordeal faced by the people living on this land in winter, but is it not a gift?

"I heard that Commissioner Ma Wenqiang Ma will soon return to the central government." After the hard physical labor, the two young soldiers of the Corps Fort sat opposite each other, drinking fragrant milk tea and chatting about political gossip.

The "Commissioner Ma" just mentioned is Ma Wenqiang, who has worked in the Patagonia Plateau for many years, and was later transferred to the captain of the Southern Pioneer Team, and has served for several years now, and it is time to return to his homeland to take up his post. At present, in Dongfang County, the capital, many high-ranking officials are exchanging lists of members of the executive committee of the new Founders Council, and Ma Wenqiang, captain of the Southern Pioneer Team, Liu Jianguo, captain of the Denglai Pioneer Team, and other second-generation backbone officials are among the members of this list.

It has been more than 50 years since the founding of the East Coast Republic of China, and the older generation has withered away, and it is time to recruit new members into the cabinet. The second generation, such as Ma Wenqiang and Liu Jianguo, who started step by step from the grassroots level, are not confused when they are old, their energy is still abundant, and they are not lacking in experience, and they are a good age to do great things, so it is also the proper meaning to recruit them into the cabinet and form a transitional government with a mixture of old and new.

This is the township of Mayue, located near the later town of Patagonia Rio Mayo, on the south bank of the Mayue River (Maio River), an inland settlement dominated by agriculture and animal husbandry. The Mayue River is one of the tributaries of the Rong River (i.e., the Senkol River, which is formed by the confluence and fusion of the two rivers), the source of which is the meltwater of the ice and snow in the Andes.

In recent years, the East Coast government has continued to expand into areas such as the Pampa Plain, but its expansion in the Patagonia region has never stopped. It's not because they attach much importance to it, but because there's really not much resistance to expansion here, and neither the Tverche nor the Araukan are any match for the people of the East Coast, so there's no strong obstacle to expanding in this vast land. The organized aboriginal resistance forces were wiped out many years ago, and now all that remains is just surviving, and it is difficult to protect themselves, let alone fighting with the East Coast army, they are not even as good as the aboriginal forces in Africa and New China, and they are already completely weak****** the Tagonia region can also be allocated thousands of immigrants every year, in addition to continuing to fill the population of the old towns, after many years, it was finally decided to continue to push the control area south, and set up several settlements again. Among them, Mayue Township, which was established in the later Riomayo Town, and Honghe Township, which was established in the later Riosengel Township, will form Shuanghu County together with Shuanghu Township, Nanding Township and Houtu Township. The county has four townships, one town and five settlements, with a total population of more than 8,000, and is the 130th county-level administrative unit in the country. The establishment of the county at the beginning of this year means that the East Coasters have moved the edge of the zone of control further south to the 46th parallel, which seems to be relatively weak, but it is already very good.

The economy of Mayue Township, like that of most inland towns on the Patagonian Plateau, is dominated by the wool industry, that is, the residents make profits by grazing sheep and collecting wool, which is not bad in the context of the increasingly popular wool industry, not much worse than the traditional farmers who focus on grain cultivation, and even slightly more.

However, for the inland towns of the Plateau, including Mayue Township, to further develop, a railway connecting the settlements to the main wool-producing areas was essential. Just as the British invested in the construction of a special line for wool transportation in Patagonia in the 19th century, today's East Coast Republic of China also needs such a railway to connect the inland hinterland, not only wool, meat, leather, but also daily necessities. After all, as a country that has regarded Chile as its own dish, it is still necessary to have a railway that goes deep into the eastern side of the Andes and then sends all kinds of goods to the west side of the mountain through various passes, so as to better communicate the economic and trade ties between the two places.

The wool transport line, to some extent, can really be regarded as a low-profile backup version of the Southern Cone Two Oceans Railway!

"I don't know if Commissioner Ma - ah, I'm afraid I won't change his name to Commissioner Ma - after entering the cabinet, will he still remember the places he once struggled for. Alas, Patagonia is really too remote and too poor, and as long as Commissar Ma exerts a little effort to let the massive amount of investment from the central government leak through his fingers every year, it will be enough for us to eat for a long time. A cadre sprinkled various spices into the milk tea and said with a wry smile: "Actually, it doesn't have to be Committee member Ma for personal gain, the conditions in our Shuanghu County are actually quite good." Houtu Township and Nanding Township are both important fishing ports, and there are also kaolin outputs nearby, Mayue Township and Honghe Township are close to the big river, the water and grass are abundant, the number of sheep that can be shepherded is very large, and the wool output is also very large. Needless to say, Shuanghu Town is a good development, which can completely produce a large area of fertile land, which is rare in the entire southern Patagonia region, and it is really worth investing. ”

In fact, as this cadre just said, there are two large lakes near Shuanghu County, which are vast in area. The lake on the west side of the lake (Lake Musters) covers an area of 434 square kilometers and has a depth of more than 100 meters, which has a huge water storage. The lake on the east side was formed by the overflow of the lake when the lake was full of water in the west, and although the average depth is only a little more than 4 meters, it covers an area of 803 square kilometers, making it one of the largest lakes in Argentina in later generations.

The size of the lake, the amount of water stored – even in some dry years, the two lakes have never been exhausted and still have considerable storage capacity – is enough to sustain a certain scale of agriculture, and what the Shuanghu town government is doing now is proof of this: they organize people to widen and dredge the channel of the Ronghe River into the lake almost every year, and they also clean up the overflow channel from the West Lake to the East Lake, and last year they have dug it into several standard artificial canals. This prevents the lake from flooding too much during the high season.

In the future, the Shuanghu town government also intends to further clear the floodplain land, rivers and small lakes to open up more fertile land and grow more food on these alluvial soils. This desert oasis doesn't need to be big for agriculture, but it's worth a lot. Not to mention anything else, the large amount of grain it grows can be supplied to pastoral areas hundreds or even thousands of miles away, which saves a lot of transportation costs, which is a great achievement.

But in the final analysis, Shuanghu County and even the entire Patagoniatai region are indeed somewhat insignificant in the eyes of their superiors. They are positioned in Patagonia to be a good supplier of wool, a fishing base and a supplier of dairy products, and nothing else. Therefore, the number of immigrants and the amount of investment allocated here every year are numerous, but the budget is at the lowest level, and there are only thousands of people and hundreds of thousands of yuan of funds every year, which is also pitiful.

Therefore, these two cadres just mentioned that they hope that Ma Wenqiang will increase investment here with incense after joining the cabinet executive committee, which is a bit wishful thinking. In the budget formulated by the central authorities, every penny has a place to go, and the more you have, the less others will have, especially in the current situation where military spending has increased sharply and all kinds of civil affairs expenditures have been greatly reduced, it is already very good to be able to keep your old quota unchanged, let alone others.

"It is unlikely that we will increase investment in our Shuanghu County." Another cadre said in a slightly melancholy tone: "Even if the central government agrees and the money is allocated to the bottom, it is still up to the local government to decide how to use it, and the regional administration will still be withheld if it is not guaranteed." I've heard that those people want to set up two more counties south of us, south of the 46th parallel. The establishment of these two counties probably also marks the complete completion of the digestion of the Patagonian Terrace region by our government - at least on the surface - the old men of the regional administration department have paid great attention to this, and they have been planning for several years, but they have not been implemented before, and now it seems that they are going to be serious. So, you better save some snacks, it's not very likely, the money won't fall on our heads. ”

"The southern latitude is so high, the climate is cold, dry and water-deficient, and the soil texture is not as good as ours. The regional administration actually wants to circle two more counties there, this investment is not cost-effective at all, what are you doing? The cadre was immediately dissatisfied, raised his voice and said: "It's better to build our Shuanghu County well, isn't it better than throwing money into the yellow sand?" This news is really frustrating, there is not much money in the first place, and there will be two more counties to divide it in the future, how difficult it is these days. Is it really that important to expand the pastures and collect a little more wool? Is the velvet market really so hot now? ”