Chapter 268: Leizhou Sugar Company

Chang Shide lay half-reclined on the bed, the hangover soup doing its slow work. His head remained fuzzy, but his body felt pleasantly loose. He was drifting toward sleep when Wen Xiu slipped silently into the room.

The boy wore only a close-fitting undershirt, his hair untied and combed back. A flush like peach blossoms colored his cheeks, and his almond eyes brimmed with unmistakable invitation. Chang Shide blinked, momentarily unable to process what he was seeing.

Wen Xiu curtsied in the manner of a woman and whispered, "Wen Xiu is here to attend Your Honor to bed."

He stepped forward to help with Chang's clothes, his soft hands gliding and kneading. In a coy voice, he called out: "Your Honor—"

Chang Shide remained frozen for approximately five seconds. Then every drop of alcohol seemed to evaporate through his pores at once. A chill rushed from his heels straight to the crown of his skull, and goosebumps erupted across every inch of his body.

"No—!"

He let out a wail, shoved Wen Xiu away, and scrambled off the bed. What in the world? What kind of era was this where a servant sexually harassed the master? A maidservant would have been one thing—but this was a man. However pretty Wen Xiu might be, he was still unmistakably male.

The commotion triggered chaos. Zhou Shizhai burst through the door instantly. Taking in the scene, the escort's expression underwent a dramatic transformation. He mumbled, "Please take your time, Your Honor," and backed out with his head bowed.

"No, Old Zhou, let me explain—" Chang Shide hadn't even put on his shoes before scrambling after him. Outside, Li Biao was craning his neck to peer in, and several escort guards had materialized in the courtyard, clutching swords and staves.

"What are you looking at? Disperse!" Zhou Shizhai waved impatiently, then turned to survey the disheveled Chang Shide. "Chief Chang, your appearance is... somewhat unseemly."

"Right, right, I know." He hurried back inside to find his shoes.

By now, Wen Tong had emerged as well. He had been drafting a report on sugar production improvements by lamplight when the noise drew him out—only to witness Wen Xiu, clothes in disarray, exiting Chang Shide's room with an aggrieved expression. Wen Tong immediately drew the wrong conclusion. His face darkened.

"Old Chang, I always knew you were a bit of a flirt, but I didn't realize you played for that team!" Wen Tong had nothing against gay men, but he held a certain contempt for those who swung both ways purely for physical gratification.

"Nothing of the sort!" Chang Shide was so frantic he was practically clawing at his own face, wishing the ground would swallow him whole. It was clearly this deviant who had tried to harass him, yet the entire world seemed to think he had been plotting against the fellow's backside.

"Old Wen, you have to believe your revolutionary comrade! How can you not trust me? We were dormmates in Lingao! You know exactly what kind of person I am!"

"Hard to say. Once people leave the collective, many ugly aspects of human nature tend to reveal themselves."

"I've been wronged!" Chang Shide pointed to heaven and swore oaths until at last Wen Tong began to concede that Wen Xiu might have been the aggressor. By then, Liao Dahua had arrived. Still fuming over the injustice, Chang Shide vented on him as well—and cursed Guo Yi for good measure. What kind of judgment did it take to send a catamite to serve them?

Liao Dahua laughed. "Master Chang need not be angry. The boys simply misunderstood. These servant boys are raised specifically to attend gentlemen—serving tea and managing daily affairs by daylight, acting as bed companions by night. Quite normal. Yesterday, Shopkeeper Wen said not to purchase maidservants and mentioned that traveling with servant boys was more convenient. They must have gotten the wrong idea. Since the Master has no interest in such company, I'll give them a proper scolding."

"What? That's a thing?" Chang Shide's assumptions about ancient sexuality shattered on the spot.

"Very common. Those scholars who wander the land with books, swords, and lutes always bring a young servant boy along. First, it's convenient to have someone to order about when far from home. Second, when loneliness becomes unbearable at night, they use them to relieve tension. High officials at court keep them as well; the particularly favored ones are doted upon even more than concubines."

"Damn, what kind of society is this!" Chang Shide couldn't suppress the curse.

Liao Dahua stood by, smiling apologetically. He understood now: the young man Wen Xiu had been too eager to curry favor and had attempted to offer himself at the pillow. Unfortunately, his flattery had backfired. Neither of these two Australians seemed to have a taste for the "Southern Wind." He began mentally scheming to acquire some maidservants instead.

The evening's disturbance passed. At first, Chang Shide remained paranoid, terrified that his heroic reputation would become a laughingstock. But he soon discovered the locals had no interest in gossiping about the matter at all. Even Wen Xiu appeared the next morning with his washing water as if nothing had happened. Apparently, as Liao Dahua had suggested, this sort of thing truly wasn't considered remarkable.

The next day, the pair continued traveling by sedan chair, protected by the Qiwei Escort Agency personnel. Over the course of half a month, they inspected every sugarcane estate and sugar mill under their control, assembling a preliminary understanding of the situation. The hardships of the journey—the dust and toil—need not be detailed. They encountered several highway robbery attempts along the way, but the Qiwei escorts saw them through without serious danger.

Conditions at the various estates and mills proved largely similar: some retained a handful of long-term workers; others sat completely deserted. Wen Tong now understood Leizhou's sugar production landscape with clarity. It was a typical integration of estate and mill. No independent rustic mills existed purely as toll processors. Each was attached to a cane estate run by a landlord or a larger farmer, or else cooperatively operated by cane farmers pooling resources. Rustic mills primarily processed sugarcane from their own fields, with outside toll processing as secondary income. Equipment utilization rates remained low; without exception, operations were small-scale and primitively equipped.

Sugarcane cultivation didn't follow the tenant farming system common elsewhere in rural areas. Small plots were self-cultivated by cane farmers, with a few day laborers hired during the busy season. Larger holdings were managed entirely by landlords using wage laborers—already showing the embryonic form of agricultural capitalism.

When the land changed hands, therefore, the labor force vanished. This was fundamentally different from tenant farming, where landlords changed but tenants remained. The implication was an urgent need to replenish the workforce.

On this day, the party returned to the estate in Xuwen. Zhang Xin had also arrived as the liaison from the Guangzhou Station. As the future primary distributor of Leizhou white sugar, the Guangzhou Station attached great importance to this enterprise.

At the Guangzhou Station's proposal and with the Executive Committee's approval, Wen Tong and Chang Shide formally established the Leizhou Sugar Company in Xuwen. Capital was allocated by the Guangzhou Station. The sugarcane estate outside Xuwen town would serve as headquarters. Wen Tong intended to use Xuwen as a pilot site for sugar industry improvements.

"Can it produce white sugar?" Zhang Xin asked. This was his overriding concern, and he returned to it repeatedly.

"No problem. We can produce white sugar finer than any in Guangdong." Wen Tong radiated confidence. "But to achieve a price advantage, we'll need the Machinery Department's help with equipment."

"Some Englishmen have recently arrived in Guangzhou," Zhang Xin noted. "They're being cautious—currently just seeking to purchase goods. Sugar is a major item of interest. If we can produce before April, selling twenty or thirty tons shouldn't be difficult."

"That's achievable. But I'll need the Guangzhou Station to supply enough manpower," Wen Tong said. "Recruiting locally is proving difficult."

"How many people?"

"At least three hundred." In Wen Tong's plan, this batch would become the first workers for the sugarcane farms and the sugar factory. Each estate needed at least twenty additional laborers; those with sugar mills would require even more.

"All able-bodied laborers?"

"Women and children too. That way, the able-bodied men are tied down. Besides, farm women from Guangdong and Fujian are extremely capable—they're strong, and as far as I can tell, no worse than men. Oh, and find about ten people with cattle-raising experience."

"Fine. I can give you five hundred." Zhang Xin agreed immediately. Due to ongoing migration work, Lingao's reception capacity was strained. A single purification cycle required forty days, and Lingao's quarantine camp could accommodate only about four hundred people at a time. Many recruits had to be settled in Guangzhou to await transport. The Guangzhou Station had established an outskirts village resembling a quarantine zone for this purpose, conducting preliminary "purification" work. The camp now held over a thousand people. To avoid arousing local government suspicion, Guo Yi was already trying to ship some of them out as quickly as possible.

"I'm afraid I can't absorb five hundred," Wen Tong said. "Let's start with three hundred. There's simply too much happening here. I was also hoping to get some cadres from Lingao."

"Cadres are hard to come by," Zhang Xin admitted. "But the Qiwei people are reliable. You can select backbone members from among them to serve as military cadres." Seeing Wen Tong's surprised expression, he continued, "Leizhou is chaotic. As a major sugar mill owner, you'll inevitably attract the envy of various 'heroes.' Bandits go without saying, but if the local gentry get ideas, that's also trouble. To protect yourself and your property, you'll need armed forces. Start by setting up a militia. Weapons will be shipped from Lingao."

"Alright." Wen Tong figured he would hand this task to Chang Shide—the man knew how to swing a ghost-head blade, after all.

"I plan to establish a sugarcane cooperative here in Xuwen first, then expand to Haikang, Suixi, and other areas."

"Keep buying sugarcane land to expand the plantations?"

"I would like to run plantations," Wen Tong said. "Right now, the operating model here is still mainly small-scale farming. The planting and management standards are too backward."

During the half-month journey, Wen Tong had developed a fairly clear picture of sugarcane cultivation in the region. Under the small-scale farming economy, cash crop cultivation was highly arbitrary: some grew fruit cane, some grew sugar cane. Field management varied wildly—some farmers clearly put in great effort, while others were slapdash, entirely dependent on weather. Some people were even cultivating sugarcane in places utterly unsuitable for it.

For a cash crop like sugarcane, the optimal model was naturally large-scale plantation farming: consolidating scattered patches into a single vast estate. Whether using a wage-labor system or slavery, production efficiency would be far higher than the current smallholder approach.

But purchasing the cane farmers' land wasn't easy. Cane farmers rarely went bankrupt. Even paying terrifyingly high interest rates, cultivating cane fields remained profitable. Without natural or man-made disasters, mass land annexation was nearly impossible—unless the transmigrators manipulated sugar prices to force all these smallholders into bankruptcy and then bought them out one by one. Wen Tong disagreed with this approach—not because he was particularly compassionate, but because he didn't believe the Transmigration Enterprise yet had the capability.

"My idea is to establish a sugarcane cooperative." Wen Tong produced his proposal: organize all growers producing the same crop. Under the company's supervision, they would receive unified technical guidance and improved varieties, unified fertilizer purchasing, unified sugar processing, and unified sales. Lower costs and higher returns. Wen Tong estimated this proposal would attract a considerable number of small growers.

"This plan won't show much result in the first year, but over time, once the benefits become apparent, farmers will naturally want to join. There's no other way—we're not the government and can't mandate participation. We can only rely on word-of-mouth reputation."

"Then you'll need to put down roots in Leizhou." Zhang Xin examined the grand plan. "This won't show results for three to five years. Just persuading each household, plus handling dividend distribution after harvest... you'll need a substantial team to help."

"Putting down roots is fine. I can enjoy the life of a grand landlord." Wen Tong was quite taken with this enterprise. "As for management and technical personnel, I've applied to the Education Committee for some. I'll take whatever they allocate. If it's insufficient, I plan to conduct my own training. As for persuading small farmers to join—I'll convince as many as I can. After three to five years, if all goes well, I'll be the largest sugar supplier in Leizhou. With abundant, high-quality sugar, I can then engage in predatory pricing, driving purchase prices into the ground and bankrupting everyone who refuses to join the cooperative. Then I simply buy up both them and their land."

Zhang Xin nodded repeatedly. He hadn't expected Wen Tong, a technical man, to be capable of such ruthless tactics.

"Whatever you need, just ask. The Guangzhou Station will fully cooperate."

"We're just a sugar production base here. We don't have an intelligence staff allocation. But I'd very much like to know the specifics of Hai'an Street. The locals call it 'Sweet Port.' Sugar is exported from there, and there are quite a few sugar hongs on that street. These Chaoshan merchants—sooner or later, they'll be our competitors—"

"That's easy. We'll arrange for someone to go undercover there. If normal methods don't work when the time comes, we'll use abnormal ones. The Special Reconnaissance Team is itching for action."

"Haha, preferably not. But our time is limited. We can't afford to drag things out in some commercial war. Cutting the Gordian knot is better."

The two sides agreed on a series of communication methods. Since Leizhou wasn't an official dispatch station but merely a secondary outpost, there was currently no radio allocation. Communication with Lingao would primarily use carrier pigeons. Communication with Guangzhou could also utilize the Qiwei Escort Agency's routes for transmitting letters. Per the Executive Committee's instructions, unless absolutely necessary, they were to avoid sending people directly across the sea to Lingao—the less direct contact between the two sides, the better.

The Executive Committee also had a line on the salt merchant Liu Gang in Leizhou, who resided within Haikang County's borders. After consideration, however, the Executive Committee decided the two channels should maintain separate single-line contacts and avoid interaction. Liu Gang was an important conduit for smuggling salt to the mainland and needed careful protection.

(End of Chapter)