Volume 1 Tigers in Southeast Asia Chapter 40: Heavy Industry Strengthens the Country, Light Industry Enriches the People
The Chinese man sighed when he heard this, then pointed eastward and said, "It's on the other side of the town."
Lin Fei said: "Then could you please take us there?"
The Chinese agreed and led Lin Fei and his men to the east of the town. After a while, they arrived in front of a row of dilapidated thatched houses. There were two Filipinos with machetes guarding outside the houses. They didn't know that Lin Fei had defeated the chief of the Karakatu tribe, so they came over and said to Lin Fei, "Chinese people can't go in."
Lin Fei sneered, stretched out his hand and pulled out the knife, and said: "Can't I go in even with this?"
The two Filipinos looked cold and asked, "What do you mean?"
Lin Fei sneered: "What do you mean? This is what I mean!" After Lin Fei said that, he raised his hand and chopped a Filipino to the ground with a knife. Another Filipino was about to swing his knife at Lin Fei, but was also chopped to the ground by Lin Fei. Lin Fei waved to everyone, said "Go, save people", and was the first to step into the yard.
The yard was empty, so Lin Fei went straight into the house, only to see dozens of small rooms separated by curtains. From time to time, he could hear women's cries and men's gasps. Lin Fei became angry, and reached out to lift a piece of rag. He saw a dark-skinned Filipino man lying on top of the woman, and from time to time, low pleas for mercy came from the woman's mouth.
Lin Fei chopped the Filipino with a knife, and the Filipino fell to the side, revealing a naked Chinese woman underneath. When the woman saw the Filipino dead and Lin Fei covered in blood, she screamed in fear.
Lin Fei said softly: "Don't be afraid, girl. I'm here to save you. Put on your clothes and go outside."
The girl covered her body with her hands and sobbed, "I... I don't have any clothes..."
Lin Fei frowned and asked, "No clothes? How come there are no clothes?"
The girl blushed and said, "They were afraid that we would run away, so they didn't let us... put on clothes..." Then she started to cry. Lin Fei felt sad, so he reached out and took off the Filipino man's clothes, put them next to the girl, and said, "Put them on."
Lin Fei came out of the house and asked Li Mingbai: "Have all the people been rescued?"
Li Mingbai nodded and said, "They are all rescued."
Lin Fei said: "Gather them in the yard. I have something to ask."
Li Mingbai frowned and said, "But they don't have any clothes. We can't leave them naked, right?"
Lin Fei thought that these girls were pitiful enough and they really couldn't be allowed to go out naked again, so he pointed to the curtains in the room and said, "Let them wrap this thing around themselves first."
Li Mingbai nodded, turned and went into the house, and asked the women to wrap the curtains around themselves as clothes. These women soon gathered in the yard, and there were nearly a hundred of them.
Lin Fei said loudly: "Girls, my name is Lin Fei, I am the lord of Yanhuang City, and I am here to save you. Now no one dares to bully you anymore, you can go home."
As soon as these words came out, all the girls started crying. Lin Fei could tell at a glance that they were not crying out of excitement, but out of sadness, as if they were unwilling to be rescued. Lin Fei hurriedly asked, "Girls, stop crying. What's the problem?"
A girl with big eyes and curved eyebrows came out and said to Lin Fei: "Our family members were killed by the Filipinos. We have no home anymore."
Lin Fei was in a dilemma, thinking how to accommodate these girls since they were homeless. While he was thinking, Li understood and said , "Captain Lin, these women are already withered anyway, why don't we open a brothel here, what do you think?"
Lin Fei frowned and cursed: "Ridiculous! These girls are already pitiful enough..." Lin Fei was about to curse again, but his mind changed. He thought that Li Mingbai was a man of this era after all. In the eyes of people of this era, women who lost their virginity were worthless and could be treated in any way. As the old saying goes, it is easy to change a country, but it is difficult to change one's nature. He could teach these people how to use modern weapons in a few days, but the change of their thinking would take time.
When the girls heard what Li Mingbai said, they looked at Lin Fei timidly with pleading eyes. Lin Fei coughed lightly and said, "Don't worry, I won't let you become prostitutes. You can live here first, and I will find a way to properly accommodate you."
The women's worries turned into joy. Lin Fei wanted to find Master Guan's wife and daughter, so he asked loudly, "Is there anyone among you with the surname Guan?"
Everyone shook their heads, and Lin Fei asked, "Have you ever seen a girl named Guan?"
The girl just now came over again and said to Lin Fei: "My benefactor, is the person you are talking about Miss Xiaoting? I have seen her."
"Xiao Ting" was the nickname of Master Guan's daughter. Lin Fei pointed to a distant place and said, "Come with me." Lin Fei led the girl away from the crowd and asked, "Where is Miss Xiao Ting?"
The girl trembled all over, her eyes full of fear, and said: "She and her mother were tortured by many of them all night, and they both died the next morning."
Lin Fei felt a pain in his heart and asked, "Where is the body?"
The girl cried and said, "They fed me to the dogs."
Lin Fei gritted his teeth and turned to Li Mingbai and said, "Take that clan leader to the center of town and kill him!" Li Mingbai agreed loudly. Lin Fei turned to the girl and said, "Girl, don't mention this to anyone else."
The girl nodded. Lin Fei left two soldiers to protect the women and turned to come out. He met Ling Xue and Master Guan. It turned out that they heard that Lin Fei had won a great victory, so they rushed over from Yanhuang City. When Master Guan saw Lin Fei, he asked anxiously, "Captain Lin, how are my wife and daughter?"
Lin Fei sighed and said, "They are both dead. Please accept my condolences."
Master Guan shook his head helplessly, his face full of dejection. Lin Fei continued, "In order to avoid being humiliated by the Filipinos, the mother and daughter committed suicide after being captured. The Filipinos threw their bodies in the wilderness and could not be found."
When Master Guan heard that his wife and daughter were not insulted, he showed a trace of relief on his face, turned around and left sadly. Lin Fei looked at his back and thought to himself: "It will make him feel better if he says this. As for the truth of the matter, let it be forgotten forever."
Lin Fei was thinking when he saw Ling Xue standing outside the threshold, holding onto the door frame with her hands, looking into the yard. Seeing her funny look, Lin Fei couldn't help laughing and said, "Look at your appearance. If you want to see, just go in and take a look."
Ling Xue pulled her body back, her face slightly flushed, and she shook her head gently. Lin Fei understood that she was shy, just like she didn't want to enter a printing factory full of erotic books.
Lin Fei pointed his hand into the room and said, "Xue'er, I'll leave these girls to you."
Ling Xue was stunned and asked, "What do you want me to do?"
Lin Fei smiled and took out the purse Ling Xue gave him from his pocket, saying, "You are so skillful, you can definitely teach them how to weave cloth and make clothes. This will be a textile factory specializing in textiles. My army doesn't even have a decent uniform right now, how can this work?"
Ling Xue first nodded and said "OK" twice. Suddenly, her eyes lit up and she said "OK" excitedly again. Then she covered her mouth and smiled, turned around and ran away, leaving Lin Fei confused.
It turned out that when Lin Fei took out the purse, Ling Xue thought: "It turns out that he has been carrying the things I gave him with him. He actually wants me to accompany him so much. Oh, how embarrassing!" So she turned around and ran away. However, Lin Fei could never guess what he was thinking.
Lin Fei's purpose of establishing a textile factory is not just to find work for these women. The textile industry is part of light industry. Light industry and heavy industry together constitute a country's industry. Lin Fei has always held such a view on industry - heavy industry makes the country strong, and light industry enriches the people.
Heavy industry provides the country with weapons, transportation vehicles, large machinery and everything else that enhances the country's hard power, while light industry provides the people with jobs, clothes, shoes, hats, food and other daily necessities, improving the people's living standards.
A country can be called an industrial power only if both its light and heavy industries are strong. If one of its two industries is "lame", then the country cannot be considered an industrial power at all. The most typical example is the Soviet Union in Lin Fei's era, which had strong heavy industry but weak light industry, and the people's living standards were low, and ultimately could not escape the fate of national destruction.
Lin Fei asked someone to investigate the Chinese merchants in the town and found that there were many craftsmen in the town. These craftsmen's expertise happened to be in the field of light industry, such as papermaking, leather making, tea making, dyeing, etc. If these craftsmen were united, the town of Karakutu could become its own light industrial base, and Yanhuang City could be built into a heavy industrial base.
Lin Fei first changed the name of the town from Karakatu Town to "Chiyou City". When Lin Fei announced this decision, Chen Fu hurried over and said, "Chiyou is an ancient evil god. How can we name our place after him?"
Lin Fei smiled and said, "Although we call ourselves descendants of Yan and Huang, Chi You is also our ancestor. After the Yan and Huang tribe defeated the Chi You tribe, the two merged together. We call it Chi You City, so why not?"
Although Chen Fu knew some history, he was far from Lin Fei and could not win the debate with Lin Fei, so he stopped talking. In this way, Lin Fei changed the name of the small town of Karakatu to "Chiyou City", and everyone's name for Lin Fei became "City Lord". Lin Fei gathered the craftsmen in the city and established a light industrial base.
As soon as the light industrial base was established, Lin Fei organized craftsmen to produce military uniforms. In this era, due to the short range of weapons, there was no need for long-distance camouflage, and the military uniforms of various countries were still single-color uniforms. The camouflage uniforms commonly used in Lin Fei's era did not appear until the end of World War II.
Taking into account the forest-rich characteristics of the Philippines, Lin Fei designed jungle camouflage uniforms with green stripes for the troops. As for the dyeing and other processes, they were left to the skillful craftsmen in Chiyou City.
