With the gradual rollout of infrastructure projects, the shortcomings of human resources, especially the number of labor, have also begun to become prominent. Except for the old and young members, who make up a very small proportion of the crossing crowd, almost all of them have become cheap laborers, regardless of whether they were big bosses or engaged in scientific research before the crossing, and now they all have to move bricks on the construction site. And this is only the infrastructure project in the area of Shengli Port and Base 1, and the development and construction of the inland Tiandu Industrial Zone will require a lot of labor.

The villagers in the fishing village where the Yu family and his son are located have gradually returned to their homes after being assured of safety, and most of them have chosen to work on the construction site of the No. 1 base, and the white rice and refined salt brought home by the Yu family and father have made everyone's eyes red in the village. The father and son of the Yu family can sell their bodies for food, but can't others sell them?

Yu Dashan, because of his earlier "Conglong" and his appearance Xiàn was more honest and obedient, was directly appointed by the executive committee as a foreman, specifically responsible for commanding dozens of laborers in the fishing village. Ning Qi, who is in charge of cultural and educational work, has said that in the first local school to be opened in the future, Xiaobao will be included in Xiaobao and several other fishing village children, and a special class for indigenous children will be organized, so as to gradually instill in them various ideas that are hundreds of years ahead of this era.

To be so valued by the short-haired old man, Yu Dashan is still a little frightened, you must know that there is no place for children to study within a radius of dozens of miles, and if you want to read and write, you have to send your children to Phoenix Town, which is dozens of miles away, but the high cost is not something that fishermen like them can afford. Now the short-haired old man said that he wanted to run a school, and he did not charge tuition, which is simply good news. Yu Dashan was grateful, so he found someone from the executive committee to take the initiative to offer advice, saying that there was a way to alleviate the current shortage of labor.

Yu Dashan's method is actually not complicated, that is, to go out to recruit workers. The sparsely populated area of Port Victory is due to the fact that in recent years, a small group of pirates have come to riot here during the monsoon season, and many people who have been disturbed have gradually moved out of the area. However, in the coastal plain of more than 100 miles between Yacheng and here, there are several villages and towns with thousands of residents. Especially in the urban area of Sanya in later generations, because there are two major rivers and several tributaries of Sanya River and Linchun River, which have abundant fresh water resources, there are many villages on both sides of the river, as long as they can afford the salary, it is not a problem to recruit some labor from these places.

Yu Dashan's proposal was immediately valued by the Executive Committee, and after a short discussion, the Executive Committee entrusted the fishing village to send several village elders to form a recruitment team and set off to recruit workers a little farther away. According to optimistic estimates, two or three hundred laborers can be recruited within half a month, which can alleviate the current employment pressure in a considerable way. However, in order to employ so many people for a long time, the food problem, which was not in a hurry to be solved, had to be put on the agenda immediately. Fortunately, the development of the two agricultural lands on the east bank of Tiandu is relatively smooth, and it is still possible to sow the first crops before the valley rains. Yuan Qiuye, who is in charge of livestock breeding, has also inspected the area on the east coast and is preparing to transfer the livestock breeding base from the current simple temporary resettlement site.

On the morning of April 9, 1627, the Pioneer Group, which had gone deep into the Tiandu area to open a temporary camp, contacted the headquarters of Base No. 1, saying that there were Li people near the camp, but they could not communicate due to language problems, and hoped that the headquarters would send professional support as much as possible.

When it comes to dealing with the Li people, the current leading expert in the crowd is Zhou Hengxing. Zhou Hengxing himself is a member of the Li nationality, and his work in the Danzhou Cultural Center before crossing is to collect and study relevant information about the Li nationality in Hainan in ancient times, and he has the best understanding of the folk customs of the Li nationality. Now the executive committee wants to set up a special working group in the Li District, and Zhou Hengxing has become the leader of the group.

Li people originated from the ancient Baiyue, and the exclusive name of "Li" began at the end of the Tang Dynasty, as early as the Han Dynasty before the ancestors of the Li people crossed the sea to come, as the first batch of residents to develop Hainan Island, after Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty pacified Nanyue, several times sent the military and civilians into Hainan, set up two counties of Zhuya and Dan'er. In the subsequent dynasties, the Li people have also been included in the rule of the central dynasty, the pearls, tortoiseshell, spices and other items produced by the Li people have always been the "tribute" of Qiongzhou, and the central government even directly granted the hereditary "thousand households" and "ten thousand households" official positions to the heads of the Li people in Hainan during the Yuan Dynasty. Of course, the consequences of this also led to the intensification of class contradictions within the Li people, and the relationship between the Li and the Han people began to become tense from then on.

For the traversers, these semi-civilized Li mountain people are undoubtedly very dangerous partners, but if they are used properly, the manpower of the Li people's cottage can also be used for their own purposes. Ning Qi, who is more familiar with history, pointed out that there is a record in Ming Zhengde's "Qiongtai Chronicles" that during the Yongle period, there were nearly 100 Li Tong in Yazhou area, and the number of Li Tong in the entire Hainan Island area reached an astonishing more than 1,200. Therefore, the Executive Committee attaches great importance to the work of the Lebanese region, and for the sake of this working group, it has mobilized almost all the elite troops and strong personnel of various departments together in an effort to open up a new source of manpower in the inland areas of Hainan.

In addition to Zhou Hengxing, an expert of the Li nationality, the special working group included people from the mining, agriculture, construction, communications, commerce, military and police, cultural and educational, and medical departments, and the executive committee appointed Ning Qi, who was relatively leisurely, as the decision-making gatekeeper. The materials for the trade had been prepared long before the crossing, mainly salt and a large number of iron farming tools, which were also the things that the Li people living in the inland mountainous areas needed most.

In order to ensure that there is enough medical force ahead, Morgan, another doctor specializing in cardiovascular disease of the North American Gang, was also recruited into the team. In addition, there is Qiao Zhiya, who is engaged in chemical engineering, this guy is also like Tom Wang, an American born ABC (Ameri-bornese), and even the authentic banana man who does not speak Chinese very well. The reason for Qiao Zhiya's joining is that the production base of three acids and two alkalis of the Ministry of Chemical Industry is also planned near the Tiandu mining area, and the main purpose of his trip is to inspect the operability of the project planning and implementation site on behalf of the Ministry of Chemical Industry.

Johnson, Morgan, and Jochia all had served in the U.S. Army before the crossing, especially Jochia, who served at the U.S. Army Base at Fort Buchanan in Puerto Rico and was very familiar with the rainforest environment. The transfer of these three people with military experience to the task force has also relieved the pressure on the military police department to protect them to a large extent.

Half of the North American Gang Six were included in the task force, and the Military Police Department and the Maritime Department had to recoordinate their staff, temporarily reducing the original patrol system of two catamarans to one on duty and one on standby. This is also something that cannot be helped, after all, there are too few people in the shipping department now, and there are only a few people who can sail independently to the sea. Fortunately, the captured Haicang ships have now been put into normal patrols, and with the assistance of ten Ming sailors, they can barely maintain the scale of two ships taking turns to patrol every day.

In order to save time on the road, the Executive Committee specially lowered several lifeboats on the "New World" to load the personnel of the task force. All four lifeboats have small-displacement diesel propulsion and have some self-propelled capabilities. In addition, four small wooden boats were mobilized from the fishing village, which were hung behind the four lifeboats to carry the building materials to be used in the No. 2 base. Then the crowd boarded the boats, and the fleet sailed up the Tiandu River at a speed of about five knots, and slowly headed for the camp far inland.

About two or three miles after leaving Shengli Port, the river began to gradually narrow, shrinking from a few hundred meters wide at the mouth of the sea to only a dozen meters. The river banks are flat, wide expanses of land, but they are still covered in lush trees, and while the logging team has recruited dozens of local fishermen to cut down trees every day to clear the way, it may take time to open up the land access. was idle on the boat, so Ning Qi asked Zhou Hengxing to tell everyone about the situation of the Li people and do science popularization in advance.

Zhou Hengxing smiled: "Then what do you want to know?"

"Let's teach us a few words of Li dialect first. "That's right, so as not to see the little girl of the Li tribe and not talk to it, what a pity!" everyone responded.

"The Li dialect is not so easy to learn. Zhou Hengxing patiently explained: "The Li language is divided into five major species according to different regions: Qi, Meifu, Run, and Sai, and there are different small language dialects in each major species, such as the Li people in Sanya, who speak dialects, but the dialects are also divided into Luohuo, Hayan, Baoxian, etc., and the pronunciation is different. ”

"It's so complicated, it seems that there is little hope for the girls of the Paoli tribe!" someone lamented.

In fact, Li women have been writing traditional habits since ancient times, this is to prevent being taken away by outsiders, and the second is to represent the loyalty to feelings, which slowly disappeared after liberation. In addition, Li people like to eat betel nuts, so their lips and teeth are black, which is probably far from the standard of beauty in your impression. Zhou Hengxing poured a basin of cold water mercilessly.

The members who originally had a hint of the fantasy of an erotic encounter made up for the girl with black patterns on her face, with a mouth and two rows of black teeth, and her mind was suddenly extinguished. Someone immediately questioned Ning Qi: "Before the crossing, the executive committee kept propagating that it would arrange ethnic customs tours, and there were countless ethnic minority girls waiting for us to marry home, what about the beautiful girls who said they were good?"

Ning Qi responded sternly: "Don't change the words without authorization, we have always only said girls when we advertised, but we never added the word 'beautiful'." Don't worry, it's your freedom to marry or not, and the Executive Committee will never arrange a marriage to force you to marry. ”