Tuesday, July 18, 1634, Songzhou, Jintun Port.

Rainy days in the lower reaches of the Ford River (Connecticut) lasted for several days, soaking both sides of the river. However, on the west side of the Fuhe estuary, on the border of Songzhou, the wharf of Jintun Town did not slow down the pace of rain, and it was still very lively. Nearly 500 workers were involved in the port work on this rainy day, accounting for almost 80% of the town's working population.

Groups of dock workers in raincoats busily weave between the port and the storage area, and heavy steam cranes unload huge wooden containers painted with waterproof paint from river barges, and then send them to animal-powered rail trolleys, where they are towed to designated storage areas. Most of these containers filled with industrial and agricultural raw materials come from the towns of Fuhe and Dongfu in the north of the Fuhe River Valley. Perhaps it will not be long before other merchant ships will carry these goods to other towns and cities at home and abroad.

The establishment of Jintun Port at the mouth of the Fuhe River is not only to solve the rapid increase in population in recent years, but also to realize the foreign commodity logistics of the "Fuhe Valley Economic Belt" more efficiently. Otherwise, merchant ships wishing to go to Fuhe and Dongfu would have to travel 80 kilometers up the waterway from the mouth to the sea. Now, with the convenient location of Jintun Port, all goods entering and leaving the "Fuhe Valley Economic Belt" can be transferred here through low-cost inland barges, thus saving a lot of merchant shipping capacity, and Jintun Port itself is also an excellent fishing base.

Interestingly, the biggest gain brought to the country by the establishment of Jintun Port is not how much the shipping capacity of the Fuhe River has improved, but how much the country has truly established a standard for transportation and storage containers in line with economic development. This modern concept of the logistics and transportation industry has been ignored by the public before, or almost no one has really paid attention to it.

In fact, the maritime transportation power that the country has developed for more than a decade has wasted too much because of this neglected detail. The maximum cargo capacity of a short shirt-class flying shear merchant ship is 420 tons, but this is only the theoretical deadweight jù. There is also the implicit performance constraint of warehouse space. In many cases, because of the characteristics of the goods, the utilization rate of the warehouse space is very low, and it often feels that it is already full, but in fact, all the goods may add up to less than 300 tons, wasting the maximum capacity of the merchant ship in vain. Moreover, all kinds of non-standard cargo boxes also guide the process of loading, unloading, storage and transportation is very complicated, wasting a lot of man-hours.

On Children's Day in 1633, coinciding with the second anniversary of the establishment of Jintun Port, the Commission of Science and Technology officially issued the "Container Standard Specification" to establish a unified container standard for land and sea. and guide the construction specifications of the cargo hold of merchant ships. A variety of standard containers can maximize the storage and transportation of bulk commodities, and even live animals such as livestock have greatly improved the survival rate during long-distance transportation. Combined with the matching steam crane, the loading and unloading transportation efficiency can be at least doubled, which has great economic significance for Huamei enterprises that have been running high logistics storage and transportation costs.

According to the statistics of the actual application of the collection in the past year, after the adoption of container standards and specifications across the country, the average transportation and handling man-hours of several typical bulk commodities in ports have been reduced by 50%. The overall utilization efficiency of merchant shipping capacity has also increased by at least 10%, which is equivalent to an extra 10,000 tons of merchant shipping tonnage out of thin air!

……

"Shuangfu Town" refers to Fuhe Town and Dongfu Town in the middle and lower reaches of the Fuhe River, the core of the "Fuhe Valley Economic Belt". Because of the way the border between Songzhou and Haizhou hurts. The west of the Fu River belongs to Songzhou, and the east belongs to Haizhou. The two towns facing each other on the plains on both sides of the valley are under the administrative jurisdiction of the two states. But starting this year, with the construction of the Fuhe Bridge connecting the two towns. People began to associate the two towns and called them "Shuangfu Town".

Five years after the establishment of Fuhe Town and Dongfu Town, both of them have become important agricultural and economic towns in Huamei. So far, the official resident population has reached 4,500 and 3,600 respectively. Flaxseed oil, textile fibers, fodder, honey, beeswax, copper ore, livestock, and leather are the main export commodities of the two towns. Among them, the output of flax fiber, wool and feed has solved 30% of the demand of domestic related industries, and the large-scale flaxseed oil industry has reduced the domestic dependence on natural vegetable oil imports from 95% to 45% in one fell swoop.

The fertile geography, waterway transportation and natural climate of the Fuhe Valley basin are far from being fully utilized. Therefore, in the early spring of 1632, at about the same time as Gangneung City in the south, the "Heping City" of Haeju (later Springfield) was officially established at the end of the Fuhe River inland waterway and with a better geographical environment on the plain on the east bank of the river valley.

The mayor of Heping City is Huo Qian, the former commercial director of the state-owned import and export trade group, not because Huo Qian has much experience in local administration, but because he is the same as his name, he is serious and low-key and humble. What is even more commendable is that Huo Qian and Minister of Immigration Li Xiang have relatively similar views on their attitudes towards Indians.

According to Huo Qian, the local Wapinger people are almost a more gentle tribe than the Dravaares, thus avoiding the frustrating negotiation of land purchases. Heping City is a strategic support point in the interior of the Fuhe River, surrounded by abundant economic resources, and its establishment marks a new stage in Huamei's strategy of controlling the hinterland of the middle and lower reaches of the Fuhe River.

Heping City, which has only been established for two years, has a population of more than 2,500, and agriculture and animal husbandry have formed a certain scale, and combined with the nearby forests, sand and gravel, small iron and copper mines and coal resources, small hardware, cement building materials, wood products, glass and other light industries have also begun to enter the formal stage of development.

Heping City, Fuhe Town, Dongfu Town, Jintun Port, and the combined population of Chinese and American citizens in the middle and lower reaches of the Fuhe Valley have reached nearly 13,000, which has launched the signboard of the "Fuhe Valley Economic Belt". In the second "four-year development plan" implemented by the cabinet from this year, the Fuhe Valley area has also been directly mentioned as the first echelon of key development.

……

The rain continued, and on the east bank at the end of the inland waterway in the middle and lower reaches of the Fu River, Heping City, which had been established for two years, was still shrouded in smoke and rain.

Thanks to the support of Fuhe Town and Dongfu Town in the south, in addition to the population growth rate, Heping City has not been slow in the past two years.

Several river barges are still being unloaded, and a large number of local livelihood or construction materials are coming ashore in an endless stream, and in addition to local citizens, there are also a number of Indian Wapinger employees among the dock workers. These shy and shy native Indians were almost the mildest of the Native Americans they had encountered since the Great Tribulation.

The river terminal is also slowly expanding, but the dredging of the river has been temporarily halted due to the rising water caused by heavy rains. More than 2,500 citizens are already living in the newly built community. About 10 kilometers northeast of the city, by a small river, is a Wapinger village of several hundred people.

The main part of Heping City is about 1 kilometer from the riverbank, and if you go back in time, it is the famous Springfield Arsenal, which produces the Springfield rifles that military otaku will love. But in the thirties of the 17th century in the current New World, it was the seat of the town hall of the city of Peace.

In another year, Huo Qian will enter the year of no confusion, more than ten years have passed, and the former veteran courier has become an important manager in China and the United States. After so many years in the state-owned import and export group. Huo Qian seemed to be tired of that kind of unchanging work, so he took the initiative to ask Ying to become the mayor of Heping City.

His wife, Li Lin, stepped down from her post as minister of women and children last fall to become a lecturer at the National University of the Metropolitan Government, where she taught financial accounting courses and took care of her three children. The state of the two of them being divided into two places has not caused any contradictions, but it makes people see Huo Qian's usual demeanor of "treating his wife in a good way".

Looking at the drizzling rain outside the window, Huo Qian couldn't help but fall into a daze, and his mind appeared the scene of several Wapinger people carrying a serious illness to ask for help yesterday. In order to prevent accidents, Huo Qian, who had obtained a lot of knowledge of Indian history in his long-term relationship with Li Xiang, still gave instructions for the isolation of patients very carefully.

Even several ports of entry have strict health and quarantine regulations. Smallpox, gonorrhea and the like are strictly prohibited from entering the country, coupled with the introduction of smallpox and other vaccines, basically it is difficult to have a large-scale epidemic of infectious diseases in the past few years since the founding of the United States. But other infectious diseases like measles and rubella or brought by European immigrants. Inevitably, it was transmitted to the indigenous people of North America through contact with the Guò Indian trade.

The most typical example was the measles epidemic that occurred the year before, when a massive outbreak of measles virus infection occurred in the village of Mohicans in Indian Trading Post on the other side of the river Porter City, killing more than 200 Mohican people in a month. The city government of Porter had to send a National Guard to quarantine the affected area, so that the remaining few hundred Mohicans escaped with their lives.

For residents of Chinese or European descent who have lived in the "mature old world" for countless generations, the measles or rubella virus is not some formidable evil. But for the Mohicans of North America, it was a real catastrophe.

Although the attenuated vaccines for measles and rubella were initially isolated from the biomedical laboratories of the state-owned pharmaceutical group in 1632, large-scale production was still too early for the current level of pharmaceutical manufacturing. Even for newborns in the country, the cost of a measles and rubella vaccine is as high as US$10, and it is simply not possible to vaccinate it on a large scale and free of charge like the smallpox vaccine.

"Your Excellency, there is very bad news."

Almost saying something, the director of Heping City Hospital, which had only been established for two years, walked in and put the latest situation on Huo Qian's desk. But looking at the expression of this European doctor who has been working in the Huamei Capital National Hospital for more than 12 years and has followed Su Zining through the plague in London, Huo Qian knows that the worst outcome is coming.

"The patient was very red and swollen under the earlobes on both sides, and there was also a high fever. Unfortunately, the test results were not suppurative mumps, that is, viral, and our antibiotics were completely ineffective. Especially in adults, once the disease occurs, it will be stricter than children. The European dean shrugged his shoulders, and had basically sentenced the Wapinger to death.

"All I care about now is who the disease is passed on. How many people in that patient's village could be infected?! Huo Qian slammed the medical report on the table and stood up angrily, "There are more than 400 people there, and if it is widespread and popular, it will have a great impact on our labor employment." If someone among the public is also infected, can we deal with it? ”

"Only God knows...... Maybe there will be a little bit of a vaccine in clinical trials in the capital hospital, but this is not within the time frame we can handle. Herbal remedies can have a certain preventive effect, and Fukugawa Town Hospital should have a stock there. "The European dean is too honest, and basically can't even comfort Huo Qian.

"As soon as an outbreak is detected, isolate!" Huo Qian sat back in his chair weakly and pinched his brow with one hand, "In addition, please send a medical team from Fuhe Town and Dongfu Town Hospital to support us." ”

……

In the middle of the rain, a small group of soldiers of the Heping City National Guard and more than a dozen policemen opened a cordon in the Indian trade zone in the northeast of the city, terminating the operation of the trade zone, and strictly prohibiting any citizens from entering or leaving.

A day later, medical teams from the southern towns of Fuhe and Dongfu arrived in a hurry, and by this time more than a dozen cases of mumps had been found in Heping City, including only one adult. However, the recovery rate of children is much higher than that of adults, and they naturally have resistance after recovery. Under the guaranteed isolation, Huo Qian's heart was a little more settled, but in the Wapinger village in the northeast, he really couldn't do anything.

A week later, the only adult infected person in Heping City died, dying of complications of meningitis. Another week later, under the treatment of penicillin to control the bacterial infection, most of the affected children gradually recovered, and only one baby boy died.

As for the village of the Wapinger people, half a month after the outbreak of the epidemic, Huo Qian sent a medical investigation team, and it was found that hundreds of the more than 400 men, women and children in the village had died, and dozens of people were seriously ill.

A single inconspicuous infection caused the local Indian village to lose 30% of its population. Unbeknownst to them, the people of Wapinger were the result of this nightmare, and instead were grateful for the help of the Huamei medical team.

Perhaps, as Li Xiang said, assimilating the Indians may really be a difficult dream to realize, and the moment the door of the Indians' survival world was opened in the new world, it was actually gradually ruined. (To be continued......)