Chapter 40 Development
Antalaha, Madagascar.

It was still daybreak. Wang Tianfeng was lying naked on the wooden bed with a piece of clothing underneath him and another piece of clothing covering his stomach. There was saliva at the corners of his mouth.

Their accommodation conditions are like this now. There is really nothing in the room except the bed. Fortunately, this is Africa, and Madagascar has a unique terrain, with large differences in climate. The eastern part has a tropical rainforest climate, which is hot and humid all year round, with an annual precipitation of 2000 to 3800 mm and an average annual temperature of about 24°C.

Antalaha is located in the eastern part, so people won’t be frozen to death, and their living conditions will not change much in the short term.

At this moment, a sharp and piercing whistle sounded not far away, breaking the silence of the morning and announcing the upcoming busyness.

Wang Tianfeng was startled. Before he could make any move, he heard the dormitory head's shout: "Get up, everyone, get up, put on your clothes and line up."

Wang Tianfeng hurriedly got up from the bed, put on his clothes, and made himself neat, then went out with everyone.

Led by team leader Chen Dawei, they lined up to finish their breakfast and each received a hoe. Their task today was to reclaim wasteland.

Madagascar is located near the equator, with a hot and humid climate and frequent rainy seasons, making it suitable for growing rice. The coastal areas can plant again soon after the harvest, and can plant two to three seasons a year.

Affected by the monsoon, the island has a dry season from April to October and a rainy season from November to March of the following year. The land is fertile and the climate is suitable for the growth of various tropical and temperate food and cash crops. More than two-thirds of the arable land is planted with rice.

Other food crops include cassava, sweet potato, corn, etc. The main cash crops include sugarcane, vanilla, cloves, pepper, coffee, cocoa, cotton, peanuts, palm, etc.

Therefore, the Meihua Company must hurry up and plant more rice every few years to achieve food self-sufficiency as soon as possible to avoid wasting precious transportation capacity.

After walking for more than half an hour, Wang Tianfeng came to an open space. Today, the 20 people in their dormitory needed to reclaim 10 acres of land here. If they failed to complete the task, their work points would be deducted.

Wang Tianfeng didn’t know what the work points were for yet, but he heard that if he had too few work points, he could not become a formal employee and could only become a slave.

Work points were the system Zhang Feng set up for the Meihua Company in the early stages. After all, they all needed to be supported by the company in the beginning. Although it would not really put them in debt at the beginning of their lives, and then have to work for him for the rest of their lives to pay off the debt.

But it is impossible to provide them with food and accommodation, and also pay them a salary. That is really too much to think about. The cost is too high. It would be good enough to be able to give them a meal.

Zhang Feng’s plan is that after a certain number of work points have been accumulated, they will be given priority to be arranged with separate houses. After they have separated into separate households, they will become formal employees and begin to implement the system of getting paid for their work.

If someone is lazy or violates the company's laws (yes, laws), points will be deducted. When the negative points reach a certain level, these people will be treated as slaves and will not be allowed to marry and have children. Even if they get married and have children, they will be demoted to slaves and work separately. In this way, they and their descendants will slowly die out. It can be regarded as an alternative form of survival of the fittest.

Well, Zhang Feng felt that his plan was very good. When he had his own country in the future, he would use it to punish corrupt officials and morally corrupt social scum.

Wang Tianfeng dug for more than ten minutes and was exhausted and out of breath. After all, he was only 15 years old and his body had not yet fully developed.

When he could no longer work, he took a rest with the help of his hoe. He looked up and saw many people not far away doing the same work as them.

"Wang boy, if you can't work anymore, go and take a rest on the side. You are still young and in the period of growing up. You can't be too tired. Don't worry, it won't affect you for a while." His captain Chen Dawei said.

"No need, Uncle Chen, I'll just take a break and I can continue working." Wang Tianfeng rejected the captain's kindness so as not to cause displeasure to others. Besides, he himself is just like that, very stubborn and persevering.

As it was getting dark, their team finally completed their mission for the day.

After returning to the camp and having dinner, Wang Tianfeng hadn't seen his sister for a day and was a little worried, so he went to the woman's house to look for Wang Tianmei.

"What are you doing? Take out your ID card." As soon as Wang Tianfeng approached the girls' dormitory, he was stopped by an armed guard who was guarding there.

"Sir, I'm here to look for my sister. I haven't seen her since I came here." He didn't know what was going on. After he finished speaking, he quickly took off his work badge and handed it to the guard.

These immigrants called anyone with a gun "chief" because the company had just been established and many of the titles were very general.

"This is a women's dormitory. Men are not allowed to enter, understand? Wait here. What's your sister's name? I'll have someone call her over for you." The gun-wielding guard looked at the ID card in his hand and returned it to him, then said.

"Thank you, sir. I understand." Wang Tianfeng thanked him. The guard whispered something to a middle-aged woman in the guardhouse next to him. Then the woman took out a thick book and began to read it. After a while, she stood up and left and walked towards the dormitory.

After a while, she came over with a little girl behind her. It was her younger sister Wang Tianmei. At this time, she also saw Wang Tianfeng in front of her.

"Brother." Wang Tianmei ran over quickly, hugged Wang Tianfeng and cried. She had been here for one day and it was the first time she was separated from her brother. She missed her brother very much now.

"Okay, stop crying. You won't be beautiful if you keep crying. What kind of work did you do today?" Wang Tianfeng scratched her little nose and comforted her.

"I worked in the kitchen today and also took other children to play." Wang Tianmei stopped crying and said.

Seeing that his sister was doing very easy work, he felt relieved. Then the two siblings talked and laughed as they shared what happened today. It was getting dark, so Zhang Feng memorized his sister's ID card number and separated from her.

In the following days, Wang Tianfeng and his team were either reclaiming wasteland, digging canals, and planting rice. More than a month passed.

The king Tianfeng was working in the fields when Li Dabiao came to him.

"Tianfeng, the company is going to open a school soon. I remember that you were the best student on the ship, so I recommended you. You should prepare well and try to stay in school to study, so you don't have to work on the fields anymore." Li Dabiao said seriously.

"Really? Thank you, Uncle Li. I will work hard and live up to your expectations." Wang Tianfeng dropped the farm tools in his hands and said happily.

Afterwards, Wang Tianfeng stayed in the Chinese American School due to his diligence, love of learning and intelligence. The school adopted bilingual teaching, Chinese and English. In Chinese, only literacy and history and culture were taught. For other Chinese learning, students had to borrow books from the library and study on their own.

The library collects books from China, America, and Europe. In addition to the copy at Zhang Feng's place, several copies will be made and kept in a simple library in Madagascar.

Because American Chinese schools implement elite education, assessments are conducted every once in a while. Those who fail the assessment will be expelled directly. Those with better grades will be arranged to be apprentices in factories, serving as assistants or helpers to white engineers. Those with poor grades will return to their original positions to work.

The assessment is divided into two categories, one is a written test and the other is a hands-on ability test.

Only after passing the written test can you take the hands-on test, and you will be considered to have passed the assessment only if you pass both.

This was what Zhang Feng requested. He couldn't waste precious resources on ordinary people, nor did he want these trained talents to be like the college students of later generations, who couldn't even change a light bulb after graduation. Such nerds were of no use to him.

However, if you can get close to full marks in the written test, you can still stay and focus on the theoretical part in the future.

We are still in the initial stage and there is still a lot that needs to be improved.

After several months of immigration, the camp had nearly 20 people, forming a small city. Today, the city is named Zhangjiacheng, which means the city of the Zhang family.

This was a name that Lei Wanting came up with after careful consideration. Although Zhang Feng had never been here before, it still bore Zhang Feng's stamp. After all, this city had cost Zhang Feng nearly a year's worth of profit.

The first batch of crops that were planted have been harvested, but with the arrival of more and more new immigrants, food still cannot be self-sufficient. This is the result of his efforts to control the speed of immigration. Otherwise, the number of immigrants would have reached hundreds of thousands in just a few months.

Therefore, Lei Wanting has been constantly reclaiming wasteland and expanding the planting area. In addition to rice, he also plants some other high-yield crops, such as corn, sweet potatoes, potatoes, etc.

In addition to agriculture, some industries have also developed, such as red brick factories, cement factories, and lime factories for building houses; others include paper mills, small hardware factories (mainly producing farm tools), a small steel mill, lumberyards, food processing plants, and an arsenal producing guns and ammunition, etc.

At present, the scale of these factories is still small. Some raw materials can be obtained locally, while some raw materials need to be purchased and shipped from other countries.

In addition, Lei Wanting also followed Zhang Feng's instructions and required everyone to be a soldier. Everyone over the age of 15, regardless of gender, needed to receive half a day of military training every Sunday.

In the past, this half day was for them to rest, but now it is gone. However, this is also normal. Even after a hundred years, most people will still be treated like this.
Only more than a thousand regular soldiers were recruited. Although they were only equipped with rifles and a small number of machine guns, they could only maintain so many people. There was no other way. We really couldn't afford to support them. We would expand the recruitment when we could be self-sufficient.

The current schools and some factories were established with the support of white people and machines from America last month.

(End of this chapter)