Beiyang Dream

Chapter 71 is finished, I'm about to be knocked unconscious by the "silver paper" .

February 28, 1891, 4:30 p.m., on the banks of the Pontianak River.

The Western-style four-wheeled carriage that Chang Desheng was riding in was creaking and groaning as it rolled over the wooden bridge over the Kundian River.

The bridge is fucking broken.

Several wooden stakes leaned precariously in the murky river water. The bridge deck was made of planks, which had turned black and moldy from years of rain and sun damage. As soon as the carriage drove over it, the entire bridge swayed, making Chang Desheng's heart pound.

Clinging to the car window frame, he glanced down at the rushing river below the bridge, his mind instinctively calculating engineering matters: "The bridge is about thirty meters long and four meters wide, a single-span wooden structure. There are six load-bearing piles on the north bank, and they're probably all rotten. If we blow up the bridge… black powder won't be strong enough; we'll have to use picric acid. The detonation point must be at the north bank pile foundation. Blowing up the south bank bridge deck will only temporarily stop the collapse, but blowing up the pile foundation will cause the entire bridge to sink into the river."

Just as he was pondering that "bitric acid is not very safe," Zhang Bishi, who was sitting opposite him, suddenly spoke up.

"Zhenbang," Zhang Bishi pointed to the other side of the bridge with his folding fan, "across this bridge is 'Little Lanfang'."

Chang Desheng looked up: "Little Lanfang?"

"Hmm." Zhang Bishi nodded, his "Congratulations on your fortune" smile deepening. "Zhenbang, your future father-in-law's branch of the family is an old clan from when Lanfang was first established. It was descended from the youngest son of Uncle Luo Fang. They worked hard for a century, pioneering and cultivating this vast family business along the Pontianak River. The 30,000 mu of rubber plantations here in Lanfang is only a part of it, but it is one of the largest rubber plantations in Southeast Asia. It was planted and managed by your father-in-law and the Chinese from Guangdong and Fujian."

Chang Desheng said "Oh," and sighed inwardly: All that hard work, a century of development, and who got it in the end? Then he thought again: This time, I have to hold onto it no matter what... Xiao Lanfang's 30,000 mu of rubber plantations—that's my father-in-law's property. Shouldn't I give Jingrou at least 3,000 mu as a dowry? What's Jingrou's is mine! It belongs to this President! No one can take it away!

Thinking of this, he asked again, "Xiao Lanfang and Pontianak Port... are they connected by just one river?"

"Just one river." Zhang Bishi waved his folding fan in the air. "North of the river is the territory of the Dutch and the Sultan. South of the river..." He paused:

"Those 30,000 mu of rubber plantations and tens of thousands of mu of fertile land, as well as gold mines, tin mines, and diamond mines, are all under the jurisdiction of Little Lanfang Kapitan."

As they spoke, the carriage creaked and groaned as it rolled over the last few planks of the bridge and onto the land on the south bank.

Chang Desheng's first thought was: things are settled.

On the north bank of the river, the road was a bumpy, muddy track, and the horse-drawn carriage bounced so hard it hurt your backside. But once you crossed the river, the feeling under the wheels was immediately different. It was smooth, firm, with only occasional slight undulations, but none of those deep potholes that could make you bounce around.

He lifted the car window curtain and peeked outside.

Stone-paved road.

The road, paved entirely with bluestone slabs, was wide enough for two horse-drawn carriages to walk side by side. It was neatly constructed and wound its way forward through the gaps between the rubber trees. Not a single weed grew in the cracks between the stones, indicating that it had been maintained by someone year-round.

"This road is well-constructed," Chang Desheng began his assessment. "The stone slabs must be at least twenty centimeters thick, and there's a layer of rammed earth underneath, right? Drainage ditches have been installed too… This level of construction would be considered excellent even in Tianjin. Who supervised the work?"

Zhang Bishi laughed: "Who else could it be? Your father-in-law brought his own men to do it."

Chang Desheng felt a bit more favorably toward his future father-in-law; he even knew about civil engineering, practically a colleague!

His gaze shifted from the road surface to the rubber plantations on both sides of the road.

It was the time for rubber tapping. In the vast rubber plantations, many Chinese laborers could be seen. They wore coarse cloth jackets, with tapping knives and buckets hanging from their waists, moving swiftly and skillfully through the trees.

But what caught Chang Desheng's attention was the condition of these Chinese laborers.

He had already seen many working people of the Qing Dynasty in Tianjin shortly after he arrived. Most of them were sallow and thin, with numb eyes, and walked with hunched backs, looking as if they had been crushed by life.

But the Chinese laborers working in the rubber plantations in front of us are a completely different story.

Everyone was physically robust, with visible muscle definition in their arms and shoulders. Their complexions were a healthy rosy-black, not the pale color of someone starving. No one slacked off while working, but no one seemed bitter or resentful either. Occasionally, someone would straighten up to wipe their sweat, and when they saw the convoy passing by, they would grin and wave. They exuded a vibrant spirit of "living with purpose."

Chang Desheng lowered the curtain, turned to Zhang Bishi, and asked:

"Third Uncle, this place looks really nice. This rubber plantation... must be very profitable, right?"

He asked this question partly out of curiosity, and partly because... he needed to assess the benefits of his future wife's dowry in order to determine how many years of hard work he could save by marrying Luo Jingrou.

Zhang Bishi did not answer directly, but instead extended his right hand, spread his five fingers, and waved it in front of Chang Desheng.

"Annual net income," he said slowly, "this amount."

Chang Desheng asked, "Fifty thousand taels?"

Zhang Bishi chuckled and shook his head: "Nephew Zhenbang, your vision is too narrow."

"It's five hundred thousand taels...of silver!"

Chang Desheng's mind went blank.

Five hundred thousand taels?

Are you kidding me?

The Beiyang Fleet, such a large fleet with four thousand men, only earned an average of about 1.2 million taels of silver a year. The Luo family, with just 30,000 mu of rubber plantations, could net 500,000 taels a year? That's equivalent to almost half the annual budget of the Beiyang Fleet!

"Luo Jingrou... so she's not just a little rich girl, she's a damn rich girl! No, she's incredibly rich! No wonder her catchphrase is 'I'll knock you out with silver bills,' who wouldn't be knocked out by that? Marry her, and you'll be set for life!"

His mind was in turmoil, but he had to keep a straight face and force himself to ask calmly:

"Third Uncle, are you kidding me? Just 30,000 mu of rubber plantations, and you can make 500,000 taels a year? How did you calculate that?"

Zhang Bishi chuckled and slowly began counting on his fingers:

"Zhenbang, let me calculate it for you."

"One mu of mature rubber plantation, based on a medium yield, can produce 250 pounds of dry rubber per year. This is a conservative estimate. The Luo family's rubber plantation was planted early and managed carefully, so the actual yield may be even higher."

"Thirty thousand mu is seven and a half million pounds."

"What's the price of rubber in London now? It sells for one shilling and sixpence per pound. Even if the purchase price in Southeast Asia is lower, it's still at least one shilling. Seven and a half million pounds is seven and a half million shillings."

Zhang Bishi glanced at Chang Desheng as he finished speaking. Chang Desheng's mind was already frantically calculating exchange rates: one pound sterling equals twenty shillings, one shilling… no, the Qing Dynasty used to use taels. One customs tael was approximately equal to…

Zhang Bishi gave the answer directly: "Seven and a half million shillings, which is about one million six hundred thousand taels of silver in our currency. This is the gross amount." Chang Desheng gasped.

One million six hundred thousand taels! Gross income!

One Brandenburg-class battleship every two years!

Zhang Bishi continued calculating:

"Of this 1.6 million taels, the Dutch take 30% as tax, which is more than 400,000 taels. The Sultan has to pay tribute, which is another 100,000 to 200,000 taels. The labor costs are also several hundred thousand taels a year. Then there are tools, transportation, wear and tear, bribing all sorts of sycophants... all in all, the total cost is 1.1 million taels."

"In the end, it all ended up in your father-in-law's pocket," Zhang Bishi closed his folding fan, and gestured with his hand again, "net profit, five hundred thousand taels. No more, no less." Chang Desheng fell silent.

He leaned back in the carriage seat, watching the neatly arranged rubber plantations recede into the distance outside the window, and only one thought crossed his mind:

"No wonder the Sultan was envious. If I were him, I'd be envious too. No, I'm not envious, I would have... damn it, tried to steal it! It seems that Sultan is actually quite nice..."

"The bad thing is that Luo Jingrou's father carries a mountain of gold worth 500,000 taels a year, and there's a pack of hungry wolves crouching at his door. If he doesn't have a strong gun guarding him, isn't he just like a three-year-old child carrying gold bricks to the execution ground?"

He composed himself and asked a crucial question:

"Third Uncle, are fathers-in-law like this common in Southeast Asia these days?"

Zhang Bishi shook his head, quite certain: "Not many. Someone like your father-in-law, who steadily pockets hundreds of thousands of taels a year, is one in ten thousand." He patted Chang Desheng on the shoulder, his smile holding a different meaning:

"Zhenbang, you're so lucky."

Chang Desheng hummed in agreement, thinking to himself that it was a blessing, but also a lot of pressure. He then asked:

"One in ten thousand? Then... how many Chinese are there in Southeast Asia today?"

"There must be at least a few million," Zhang Bishi said casually.

"Damn, millions?" Chang Desheng was genuinely shocked this time.

Millions of Chinese... even if only one in ten thousand of them reaches the wealth level of the Luo family, that would still be hundreds of millionaires earning hundreds of thousands of taels a year... let's be even more conservative, say one hundred thousand. How much would that add up to? Hundreds of millions of taels?

This isn't "Southeast Asian Chinese have money"; it's "Southeast Asian Chinese are a gold mine"!

But thinking about it, it makes sense... Back then, petrochemicals were still a thing of the past. Car tires, industrial hoses, electrical wire insulation, raincoats, rubber boots... everything that would later use synthetic rubber now relied entirely on natural rubber. And the main production area for natural rubber was in Southeast Asia. It was thanks to rubber plantation owners like my father-in-law, leading tens or even hundreds of thousands of Chinese laborers, that rubber trees were planted all over these islands.

There were also tin mines. Malaya supplied more than half of the world's tin, and most of that was in the hands of Chinese merchants. Wasn't Zhang Bishi made his fortune in tin mining? And then there was sugar. That "Sugar King" surnamed Huang in Java, I heard his fortune was about the same as Zhang Bishi's, and several ranks higher than my father-in-law's… And gold mines! Lanfang attracted a large number of Chinese laborers in its early years because of its abundant gold, and eventually even became a republic! They were basically 19th-century "big shots"!