Chapter 3986
Chapter 3986
Chapter 3986
As dawn broke, the Fubo Port area was already bustling with activity. Many men dressed in robes and wearing headscarves walked in twos and threes toward the empty dock, preparing to begin their day's work.
Besides the fishermen who went out to sea early to fish, there were also hundreds of laborers who were driven to work on the dock by their foremen while still half asleep.
Most of the laborers in Fubo Port were young and strong Arab men from the nearby region, with a small number being Persians from across the strait. However, these Persians, who had left their homes to make a living, were generally low-key and did not flaunt their status, because they were never well-regarded by the Arabs.
There is an old proverb in the Arab world: if you encounter both a poisonous snake and a Persian in the desert, you must kill the Persian first.
This involves not only ethnic hatred but also religious conflicts, making the reasons extremely complex. Even though Haihan is skilled at integrating different ethnic groups, he is helpless in this matter and cannot turn hostility into friendship.
Normally, as outsiders, special operations divisions should respect the wishes of the local natives and exclude the Persians from Fubo Port. However, due to manpower shortages and the need for Fubo Port to maintain trade relations with the Persian Empire, the special operations divisions still had to recruit some Persian laborers.
To avoid conflict with the locals, the special operations division specifically arranged for these Persian laborers to work in a designated port area. The ships entering and leaving this port area mainly came from the port of Abbas across the strait, so their work only required them to interact with their compatriots and the Haihan people, and they would not have much interaction with the local Arabs.
However, whether Persian or Arab, everyone here had to obey orders. Even a foreman in charge of hundreds of men had to follow the commands of the port management officials. And these officials who held real power and operated Fubo Port were all Han Chinese without exception.
Although Fubo Port is still under military control, and all matters, including immigration and trade, are decided by the Special Operations Division, these port officials with considerable authority are not actually military personnel.
Port management involves professional knowledge and skills in shipping, which the officers of the special operations division were not experts in. Therefore, Qian Tiandun and Li Yuande used their connections and high salaries to recruit several professionals from other places to manage the cargo throughput and shipping affairs of Fubo Port for the special operations division.
Qin Xiangqian was one of them. He was originally in charge of port and warehouse management at the Da Nang Port Authority in Annam. He was recruited by Li Yuande to Fubo Port a year ago and is now specifically responsible for handling shipping business with the Persian port of Abbas. The Persians working at Fubo Port are all under his command.
More than 20 years ago, Hai Han seized control of Da Nang from Annam through a long-term lease. Qin Xiangqian's father was among the first group of people Hai Han sent to the area. His uncle, Qin Biao, was appointed by Hai Han as Da Nang's first magistrate, a position of great power and influence among the naturalized population at the time.
So, after growing up in Da Nang, Qin Xiangqian naturally chose to stay and work there. However, his family had hoped that he would join the army, but he ended up working for the port authority by a twist of fate.
A year after the special operations division finalized the location of Fubo Port, it immediately began recruiting people from all over the country to prepare for the port's operation. Li Yuande spent several months visiting almost all the ports in the South China Sea, publicly recruiting managers willing to work at Fubo Port.
This job is much more difficult than recruiting immigrants. Even if the employer is a respected special forces division, very few people are willing to go to serve in a foreign land thousands of miles away.
Qin Xiangqian was initially reluctant to leave his hometown for a job, but his elders persuaded him to accept it, as it fulfilled a long-held wish of theirs from their youth. Qin Xiangqian's father and uncle were both veterans of the Annamite Civil War over thirty years ago. His uncle, Qin Biao, had even served under Qian Tiandun, and was discharged after the war due to injuries, being settled in Da Nang. Had he continued to follow Qian Tiandun in his campaigns, he might have become a division-level general by now.
Therefore, Qin Xiangqian's elders believed that it was a kind of family tradition for the Qin family members to be able to work under Commander Qian, and they should make the most of this rare opportunity.
So Qin Xiangqian was eventually persuaded by his elders to accept Li Yuande's recruitment and move from Da Nang, Annam to Fubo Port in the Middle East to work for the special operations division.
"Hurry up, hurry up! You lazybones!" Qin Xiangqian shouted, urging the Persians, who looked completely bewildered, to get to their workstations as soon as possible.
In Qin Xiangqian's view, the Han people are undoubtedly the most hardworking ethnic group, willing to endure any hardship in order to live a better life. While the Annamese can also endure hardship, once they have a few wages in their pockets, they are more willing to spend money and enjoy themselves rather than continue working according to the established schedule.
Compared to Annamese, Arabs are noticeably more lazy. If the foreman doesn't assign tasks to each person in detail, they'll just sit and chat to pass the time.
However, the newly established Shihu State was established with the support of the Special Forces Division. Almost all the Arabs working in Fubo Port were citizens of the Shihu State, so intimidated by the prestige of the Special Forces Division, these Arabs were relatively obedient.
As for these Persians, their enthusiasm for work was even less than that of the Arabs. If their work hours didn't coincide with the reveille at the military camp, they would probably sleep until noon. They would constantly complain about doing even the slightest bit of heavy work, believing their wages were disproportionate to the amount of labor they performed.
If it weren't for the fact that there was really no one available at Fubo Port, Qin Xiangqian would have wanted to replace these lazy Persians long ago.
But compared to the Persians, who have many flaws, there are actually other bizarre ethnic groups that leave Qin Xiangqian speechless.
When he first arrived at Fubo Port, there were still some laborers recruited from the Mughal Empire on the Indian Peninsula. However, these people not only slacked off at work, but also liked to lie in groups, making up all sorts of excuses to shirk their labor tasks. At the same time, they also demanded that the steward of Haihan respect their living habits and religious beliefs. In short, they were a rather troublesome group.
Qin Xiangqian couldn't command the Mughals either, and he had several heated arguments with them over this.
These people eat and excrete a lot, and are unwilling to do any work, so naturally they are extremely unpopular.
In the end, this group only stayed in Fubo Port for a little over a month before being loaded onto a ship and sent back. It's said that Li Yuande even lost a large sum of money in shipping costs. But there was really nothing he could do; it was his own fault for being so careless as to hire such a money-losing bunch.
Li Yuande later swore that he would rather spend money to buy African slaves from Portuguese traffickers than ever hire laborers from the Indian subcontinent again.