The storm that had raged all night gradually subsided, and more than thirty ships of various sizes took advantage of the clearing weather to sail south along the coast of Somalia.
The deck of the transport fleet was crowded with Chinese people who came out for air. A gust of sea breeze blew by, and most of the rancid smell that permeated the deck was blown away. Only in the center of the crowd, a strange smell could still be smelled.
After drifting at sea for nearly three months, being able to step out of the deck and breathe fresh air is a cherished thing. Normally, ordinary Chinese can only stay at the bottom of the cabin and suffer from the bumps, but the deck and upper cabin are reserved for Foshan Shipping
The general dormitory was with the Han sailors who were supervising the ship. Only in the early, middle and late days of each month, ordinary Chinese had the opportunity to come to the deck to take a breather and rest three times.
The owner of the transport fleet is not the Hanguo Ocean Shipping Company, but the Foshan Shipping Association, which is composed of more than a dozen small and powerful companies in Guangdong and Guangxi. After the Opium War, taking advantage of the opening up of the southern coast, Guangdong, Guangxi, and Fujian
There has been a wave of people going abroad to make a living in places like Southeast Asia, the United States, Australia, Brazil, Peru and other places. There are traces of Chinese all over the place.
The increasingly large overseas immigrant population has driven the development of related industries. A number of industries have emerged in Guangzhou, Foshan, Shantou in the Guangdong and Guangxi regions, and Fuzhou and Xiamen in the Fujian region, engaged in maritime shipping, working abroad agencies, and even human trafficking and human trafficking.
In rural areas of Guangdong and Fujian, human traffickers will buy their daughters from poor farmers for less than US$5, or about 7.5 Chinese yuan, and then resell the little girls they bought.
After arriving at Guangzhou, Fuzhou and other coastal ports, the little girls who changed hands several times were sold to comprador groups that colluded with foreigners and the government. The comprador groups then bribed Manchu customs officials with a sum of money, and those poor Chinese girls were treated like
The goods are also transported to Southeast Asia and America, where they are used as tools for people to vent their anger in brothels or as personal slaves in wealthy people's homes.
Smuggling and selling Chinese girls is a very profitable business. After arriving in the Americas, on average each Chinese girl can be sold for US dollars in San Francisco, and girls with outstanding beauty can even be sold for as high as 1,000 US dollars.
Chinese women who became prostitutes not only suffered physical harm, but the severe racial discrimination in American society also caused Chinese women to lose their final dignity. In 1862, a smallpox epidemic occurred in San Francisco, USA. Although the proportion of Chinese sick was less than 5%,
However, the investigative committee led by the U.S. government still blamed smallpox on the brothels in Chinatown. American public opinion nakedly declared that "the laboratory of infectious diseases is in the heart of our city, emitting deadly toxins day and night, polluting our rich and smart streets, and must be uprooted."
Get rid of this Chinese cancer”.
Even the American medical community, which claims to be scientific, rigorous, and benevolent, shamelessly slandered the arrival of Chinese prostitutes for triggering the syphilis epidemic because "Chinese women's vaginas grow sideways."
The dignity of overseas Chinese was trampled into the dirt. At this time, the Manchu Qing government did not care at all about the situation of its nominal subjects. Instead, it accepted the conditions of the U.S. government and recognized a series of bills enacted by the U.S. government to humiliate China. As for the Han Dynasty, Li Mingyuan
On the one hand, we formulated a response plan to evacuate Chinese Americans in the event of a falling out with the United States. On the other hand, we started from the source and used inducements, bribes and other means to support interest groups attached to the Han Dynasty. With the help of their relationship network in the south, we intercepted and trafficked people to
Chinese women in America.
The Foshan Shipping Association is still essentially a member of the comprador class, but because their employer is South American Han, the treatment of Chinese people on transport ships is slightly better. Of course, compared with the comprador class that generally serves foreign companies,
Compared with the Chinese people, the treatment is a little higher, but compared with the Han Ocean Shipping Company, which is under the command of the government, the treatment of the Chinese immigrants is still much worse.
The Han government allocates a certain amount of funds to ocean shipping companies every year. Within the limited expenditure range, company executives must not only allocate the wages of crew members and sailors on time, but also complete the immigration task targets set by the government. Therefore, in order to
In order to save money, the executives of the ocean shipping company divided the remaining immigration funds into two parts after deducting the company's operating expenses. One part was used for the expenses incurred by the shipping company itself in transporting immigrants, and the other part was outsourced to intermediaries in the south of the mainland, who were responsible for it.
The immigrants will be transported to transfer stations such as Nanyang and Kismayo, and finally the ocean shipping companies will take over and transport them back to the mainland.
Outsourced transportation tasks retain the most basic level of support requirements. Ocean shipping companies only station five to ten supervisors and one to two doctors on each transportation fleet. As for other aspects, the outsourced transportation company is responsible
.
The Foshan Chamber of Commerce was responsible for transporting the last batch of immigrants from Argentina before the war. However, due to a sea storm, the transport fleet was delayed for a month in the Southeast Asia and the Bay of Bengal. As a result, the fleet did not arrive in Somalia until early July.
nearby sea areas.
More than 30 ocean-going transport ships carried a total of more than 13,000 Chinese immigrants. Due to the gender imbalance problem in South America, transporting young Chinese women was more profitable. Therefore, in addition to the 4,000 young Chinese immigrants in the transport fleet,
Among the male Chinese, the remaining nearly 9,000 people are mostly Chinese women aged 12 to 35 years old.
The space of the transport ships was limited. In order to carry more immigrants, the fleet did not strictly implement the regulations of men and women. More than 1,400 younger Chinese men and women were mixedly assigned to three medium-sized transport ships. In order to prepare
In response to the possible chaos on board, five supervisors and more than 20 sailors followed the owner of the Foshan Shipping Chamber of Commerce to board the ship to inspect the three transport ships.
About to arrive at the transfer station in Kismayo, more than 10,000 immigrants in the transport fleet will be handed over to the person in charge of the transfer station in Kismayo. The owner of the ship, Liu He, will have completed the transportation task.
With more than 20 sailors behind him to inspect the conditions of the transport ships, Liu He's eyes swept from the deck of one ship after another.
Most of the Chinese immigrants on the deck came from the coastal areas of Guangdong and Guangxi, and a small number fled from other places.
Unkempt hair and sallow complexion are common characteristics of all Chinese immigrants, and among the dense crowds, little ones about half a person's height can be seen walking back and forth on the deck from time to time.
Liu He could easily identify the identities of those little ones. Most of them were orphans whose parents died, and a large part were poor girls who were abandoned by their parents because their families were poor.
In the late Qing Dynasty, there were constant natural and man-made disasters. Many times, even if children aged seven, eight, eight or nine were sold, no one would want them. In order to keep the family's main labor force alive, those girls who could not be sold were first abandoned by their parents and left to fend for themselves outside.
self-destruct.
The merchants had no profit and could not afford to go early. The reason why those younger girls were allowed to take the ship was because the Hanguo Shipping Company paid the Foshan Shipping Association a price of 5 Han yuan per person as a price. Otherwise, they would have seen their families destroyed.
Liu He would never have the conscience to find out that he took them on board the ship for free.
"Sir, another girl on the boat failed to hold on and died."
In the medical cabin in the middle corner of the cabin, the doctor said to the supervisor of the Han Dynasty who came to inspect.
"This is the ninety-seventh one."
The other party sighed and said, "Medical Officer Sun, the fleet will arrive in Kismayo in one day. You and Medical Officer Li of the fleet will think of ways to save as many sick girls as possible."
"The babies are young and cannot withstand the rough seas for several months. Dr. Li and I can only do our best. Whether we can save the lives of the remaining fifty sick girls depends on God's will."
"Every one of them can be saved. If we don't bring these girls back to the mainland, they will only starve to death and freeze to death in the wilderness. The Central Plains homeland is so dilapidated. All we and other overseas survivors can do is to save as many as possible.
Human life, leave some fire for the country and the nation."
