Chapter 329 - The Students
"I suspect they're planning to press oil. Coconut-poached fish, perhaps."
"The thought alone makes me nauseous," Shi Niaoren said. "More likely they're gearing up for soap production."
"Actually, large-scale soap-making is being discontinued." Jiang Qiuyan shook his head. "The expedition discovered abundant Gleditsia—honey locust—resources. I expect everyone will be washing with Gleditsia pods for quite a while."
"Does Gleditsia have any antibacterial properties for hand-washing?"
"No idea. Probably."
With that, he produced several thick, salt-crusted notebooks from his portable case, their pages crumpled and stained. They contained medical records, health diaries, and disease observations compiled throughout the voyage.
"When you have time, organize these materials together. I'm a psychiatrist, after all—this sort of work isn't really my specialty."
Fu Wuben was escorted to Boys' Dormitory No. 1. The quarantine camp now segregated by both gender and age. Orphans and single men were no longer housed together—a policy change prompted by incidents at the Bopu camp, where adults had been caught stealing food from children, and worse, cases of sodomy had been discovered. Though the perpetrators paid dearly—sentenced to lifetime hard labor in the reform brigade—the transmigrators had decided to separate the populations entirely to prevent further scandals.
Dormitory No. 1 housed children admitted during the same period. Fewer than ten occupied the thirty bunk beds, leaving the room feeling cavernous. Several boys sat on their mattress edges, reading aloud; others wrestled and roughhoused. Like Fu Wuben, they were all bald and dressed in close-fitting blue jackets with mandarin collars.
The beds held woven straw mats, clean and orderly, with folded single quilts of the same blue cloth as their uniforms. Simple sedge pillows completed the bedding. Beside each bunk stood a small cabinet of unpainted white wood.
Fu Wuben understood newcomer protocol. He took a position just inside the door, standing properly, waiting to see if a "boss" would emerge to assign him a bed. But no one spoke. After a long silence, he cautiously selected an apparently unoccupied bunk and set down his belongings.
"Hey!" someone shouted. Fu Wuben flinched, snatched up his things, and stood frozen by the bedside.
A boy trotted over. "New arrival! You can't put your stuff directly on the bed! If Teacher Bai catches you, there'll be a beating."
"Then where should I put it?" Fu Wuben asked, then added ingratiatingly, "Senior Brother."
"Senior Brother?" The boy blinked, then laughed. "I'm not your senior brother! I'm Lu Jia, from Xuankuodu!" At the mention of his hometown, he puffed his chest with evident pride.
Xuankuodu meant the county seat proper—"city folk." The age-old superiority of urbanites over rustics, it seemed, transcended the centuries.
"Your family are just tenant farmers working school fields," several boys nearby jeered. "Barbarians camped by the city walls. What's there to brag about?"
"We're official tenants—"
"So what? Still poor enough to show your ass."
"I'm from XX Village," Fu Wuben offered carefully, declining to join the dispute.
"I've heard of it! Lots of people from your area lately." Lu Jia nodded. "The rules here are strict. Everything has to be arranged just so—nothing placed at random."
"I'm from the Thirteen Villages too!" A second boy ran up. "My name is Yuan... Yuan..." He struggled to recall his recently assigned official name. "Yuan Fei!"
"You Thirteen Villages types are all bandit spawn!" Before the two could bond over their shared origins, a discordant voice cut across the room. This came from an older-looking boy with a jagged scar crossing his forehead, giving him a ferocious aspect.
"That's a lie!" Yuan Fei shrieked, face reddening. "My father's no bandit!"
"Your grandfather was a bandit! Your whole family, your whole village—bandits, all of you!" The scarred boy matched his volume. The two glared at each other, looking ready to tear into each other with teeth and nails. Fu Wuben edged backward.
"That's Wu Xiang," Lu Jia murmured. "Word is his family was destroyed by Dang Namen's gang. Now he's half-mad. Anyone mentions Thirteen Villages, he goes off like a sworn enemy."
"Will he hit me—" Fu Wuben thought uneasily. I'm from the Thirteen Villages area too. Being beaten for nothing isn't worth it.
"Don't worry. He doesn't dare anymore. Last time he and Yuan Fei came to blows, they dragged him out and caned him bloody. Now he only dares to shout." Lu Jia shrugged. "If he causes trouble again, he'll be shipped to the labor reform brigade."
Sure enough, the standoff ended after several minutes of mutual death-glares. No one threw a punch. Yuan Fei turned to Fu Wuben with satisfaction. "Good—now that you're here, we Thirteen Villages people don't have to take that lunatic's abuse anymore."
"I'd save that sentiment," Lu Jia warned. "The Australian Chiefs strictly forbid cliques based on hometown or clan. Mind the rattan cane."
"I'm not a bandit's son!" Yuan Fei's expression turned wounded. "The real bandit children are locked in a separate camp by the church! I heard they're going to make them into foreign monks."
"Why would they do that?" Fu Wuben asked, puzzled.
"Who knows." Lu Jia waved the question away. "Get your things organized first."
Fu Wuben opened the satchel he had been issued. It was stuffed with more than he had ever owned: a second set of clothes identical to what he wore, a cap with a brim, two sets of underclothes, socks. The underwear and socks were soft, with no stitching seams—a mystery that astonished him. These were products from the Bairen Textile Mill, made on primitive knitting machines.
Then came two long towels, one white and one blue, thick and plush, covered in tiny loops. Lu Jia explained: "This is called a maojin—a towel. White for washing your face, blue for bathing." Fu Wuben had never used a face towel in his life; now he was expected to use two? He wondered if he had stumbled into the wrong world. Even landlords weren't this particular.
The wooden toothbrush, he recognized—wealthy households in his village used similar implements. Of course, he himself never had.
A bamboo cup for drinking and rinsing, plus a large bowl, chopsticks, and a spoon for meals.
"My master thought of everything."
"Everyone gets the same. Nothing special." Lu Jia assumed the air of a seasoned insider. He proceeded to demonstrate how to categorize and store belongings in their designated places: clothes folded precisely in the cabinet, towels hung unfolded, chopsticks oriented just so.
"The Australians hate disorder. Everything has rules—even taking a shit!" Lu Jia's voice dropped conspiratorially. "And they're terrified of dirt. They bathe every day! Anyone who breaks the rules gets dragged out for a caning." He shuddered, perhaps recalling his own experience. "Rattan canes." His hand unconsciously drifted to his backside.
As he spoke, Fu Wuben felt a sudden cramping pain in his gut.
"Can't hold it! Where's the latrine?"
"Turn left out the door. There's a building with two entrances. But wait—" Before Lu Jia could finish, Fu Wuben was already bolting for the exit.
"Don't forget the toilet paper!" Lu Jia thrust a wad at him. Fu Wuben grabbed it without breaking stride.
When he staggered back to the dormitory, his legs were barely functioning and his stomach still churned violently. An older boy on duty outside made him wash his hands, rubbing a slippery substance against his palms until foam appeared before he was allowed to rinse.
Fu Wuben's diarrhea would persist for two days, until the deworming medication ran its course.
Eventually the boys resumed their chatter, sharing their varied backgrounds. Lu Jia, it emerged, was an apprentice recruited by Wu Nanhai.
"Master Wu was walking around the fields with the County Director of Education, and he picked me right on the spot." Lu Jia's chest swelled. "He even said I was 'teachable,' or something like that."
Yuan Fei had been collected when Du Wen's Work Team gathered orphans in the Thirteen Villages area. He wasn't technically an orphan, but when word spread that children sent to Bairen received free food, clothing, and education, many overburdened families had volunteered their offspring. The Work Team accepted them all.
As for Wu Xiang, he had fled to East Gate Market on his own initiative, begging to join the transmigrators. Origins, clearly, varied widely.
Two categories of children existed here: "Sponsored Students," adopted or sent by individual transmigrators, whose upbringing costs were deducted from their sponsors' income, to be reclaimed after completing basic literacy and military training; and "State Students," gathered through various channels, raised and educated uniformly by the Ministry of Education, then assigned according to aptitude and performance.
A shout rang from outside: "Attention! Officer inspection!" The children in the room immediately dropped whatever they held and scrambled to their beds, standing ramrod straight.
"Stand properly! Quick!" Lu Jia hissed. Fu Wuben mimicked the posture, rigid and uncertain.
The arriving officer wore an Army uniform. During the quarantine period, basic military training for all inductees—to instill organization, discipline, and obedience—was an Executive Committee mandate. Army and Navy officers rotated through as instructors. Today's visitor was Zhang Berlin.
Lu Jia, standing nearest the door, spotted him first. "Attention!"
Zhang Berlin surveyed the room and returned a crisp salute.
"Sir! Dormitory Number One reports twelve persons authorized, twelve present! Awaiting instructions!"
Zhang Berlin signaled acknowledgment and proceeded down the aisle between bunks, inspecting each bed and cabinet. Occasionally he ran a white-gloved hand along a surface, checking for dust. One boy began to sweat visibly.
Finally, Zhang Berlin pronounced himself satisfied with the sanitary conditions and departed. Moments later, the shout echoed from the adjacent dormitory.
Fu Wuben let out a shaky breath. Lu Jia smirked. "See how strict the rules are here? There are dormitory regulations on the wall. You'd better memorize them."
"I can't read," Fu Wuben admitted, embarrassed.