Chapter 940 – Relief
Lei En offered no opinions—he had only arrived in Qiongshan the previous evening, and without investigation, he had no right to speak. He planned to assess the situation firsthand before commenting. Several days earlier, he had already wired the Health Section to collect a number of stool samples, which awaited his arrival with the Health Department's mobile testing vehicle for examination.
After an hour, the meeting concluded. Liu Xiang had assigned work to the naturalized citizen cadres. In the view of Lei En and the others, the tasks on the cards had all been simplified to the extreme—this too was a hallmark of the "Qiongshan Experience": provide naturalized citizen cadres with the most easily understood quantitative standards and avoid vague wording. This accommodated cadres with minimal education and no administrative experience.
After the meeting, Liu Xiang convened another session with the transmigrators on the disaster relief work team. The team leader was Yang Yun, director of the Labor Division under the Civil Affairs People's Commission. In the old timeline, he had been a Level 3 Human Resources Manager who had served as HR department head and union chairman at a small-to-medium southern sweatshop factory.
Having such a person lead the team fully revealed the Administrative Council's intentions—clearly the leadership was interested in these refugees as labor. Liu Xiang felt certain of his guess, especially since the arrivals also included transmigrators from the Propaganda Department.
Liu Xiang and the other transmigrators ascended the East Gate tower together.
"This typhoon! This rain!" Liu Xiang muttered, standing on the East Gate tower in his raincoat. Behind him were his orderly and guards. Several retained yamen runners and clerks from the county wore bamboo hats and straw capes, standing respectfully in the rain awaiting his orders.
The other transmigrators, under the care of their secretaries and guards, were also on the tower overlooking the multitudes below.
To provide refugees shelter from wind and rain as quickly as possible, Liu Xiang had ordered the use of eaves on both sides of the street, laying wooden slats and covering them with reed mats to construct temporary rain shelters directly over the thoroughfare. Looking down from the city gate, these long shelters stretched the entire length of the street, resembling the covered stalls set up for New Year's goods sales in some county towns in the old timeline. The city gate was guarded by soldiers from the Qiongshan County Security Company—a unit organized by selecting and reorganizing military household soldiers from several local guards. To maintain maximum deterrent effect, all soldiers had bayonets fixed to their rifles.
According to Qiongshan County Liaison Office statistics, approximately ten thousand refugees had gathered below the city. Though these people temporarily had shelter from wind and rain, the population was extremely crowded and conditions were damp—hardly a sustainable arrangement.
When Lei En pointed out that such conditions might trigger serious epidemics, Liu Xiang indicated this was a temporary measure.
"I've consulted with the liaisons—typhoon damage is something that happens several times a year locally. It's just that this time the rainstorm lasted unusually long, which is why things ended up this way. But at most, the water will recede within half a month..."
"They're certain of that?"
"No reason not to trust local experience, is there? Also, I've had people clearing buildings at the parade ground—there are one or two hundred guard barracks there, but they've been unused for years and have all collapsed." Liu Xiang paused. "Disinfection is ongoing. Health Section people distribute ginger soup and epidemic-prevention powder daily."
Yang Yun suddenly interjected: "How much in rations are you giving each person per day?"
Liu Xiang replied: "According to Chen Sigen, each person needs roughly 1,400 kilocalories per day. I can't calculate kilocalories precisely. Right now, refugees receive two bowls of vegetable congee per day regardless of age or sex—two hundred grams of brown rice per person, plus some vegetables, taro, and sweet potatoes."
Yang Yun of course understood: in his sweatshop days, the employee cafeteria had been his jurisdiction too. One hundred grams of rice provided only 350 kilocalories; the Qiongshan County Liaison Office was distributing just 700 kilocalories of food—barely enough to keep the refugees from immediate starvation.
Liu Xiang had set the supply standard this low for his own reasons. Even at this level, 2.2 tons of grain were consumed daily. And all he could draw upon was the limited reserves in Qiongshan County's granary.
Qiongshan's grain reserves had once been quite substantial. A large portion of Qiongzhou Prefecture's official stored grain under the Ming Dynasty had been stockpiled in Qiongshan's warehouses. Aside from a portion transferred to Lingao for processing, the rest remained in the city's storehouses. But Liu Xiang had no authority to touch this grain—it was "national reserve grain" under the Planning Commission's jurisdiction and allocation. He could only use county granary reserves.
Now was the interval before the summer harvest; both public and private reserves were extremely scarce. He had tried to borrow grain from local gentry, but they all pleaded poverty, one by one. Some even begged Liu Xiang for reductions in summer grain levies—claiming their land had all been flooded and the harvest was a total loss. Liu Xiang had to employ both threats and inducements to barely scrape together two hundred shi of grain.
These past days, he had been organizing refugees to salvage grain from areas where floodwaters had receded—collecting flooded rice, taro, and sweet potatoes and baking them dry for use as relief provisions.
"...This situation can't last long. The county granary's reserves are very limited. Three or four more days at most. Beyond that, I'll need Wu De to approve grain allocation." Liu Xiang didn't know what relief supplies Yang Yun had brought, so he painted the situation in dire terms.
Yang Yun nodded noncommittally. Liu Xiang sensed he had little interest in allocating relief grain. He couldn't help feeling slightly disappointed—he understood the thinking among certain people in the Executive Committee. Quite a few of them were unabashed Machiavellians, and in this environment with unprecedentedly few constraints on "political correctness," what they might do was hard to predict. He recalled the grain and labor work meetings he'd been summoned to before the typhoon struck. The direction there had been very clear.
Thinking of this, he felt a chill down his spine. Surely the Executive Committee won't do something outrageous. Disaster relief and famine prevention—these are matters affecting public morale on a grand scale. Playing games with them could easily spin out of control and wreck a good situation. The peace and stability of Qiongshan County is something I've worked very hard to achieve. Please don't let certain people's hot-headedness ruin it.
Yang Yun suddenly asked: "Where's the congee distribution point?"
"At the end of the street, on that open ground." Liu Xiang glanced at his watch. "Distribution starts in about two hours."
Yang Yun conferred briefly with the other transmigrators, then instructed his secretary: "Tell them to set up at the distribution site."
"What? Set up what?" Liu Xiang asked.
"Good stuff, of course." Yang Yun smiled. "Let me explain. This time, the Executive Committee's plan for Qiongzhou disaster relief is as follows..."
The congee distribution point occupied a large muddy lot at the end of the street. Liu Xiang had ordered a layer of soil spread on the ground, then covered with crushed gravel to keep it as dry as possible. Ten sheds had been erected on the open ground, each containing several large cauldrons. These had generally been borrowed from government offices, temples, and Taoist monasteries, with the remainder from local wealthy households. Thick congee already bubbled inside them.
Liu Xiang accompanied Yang Yun and the others on a tour of the congee sheds. Yang Yun picked up a ladle and stirred one of the big cauldrons. Besides grains of rice, the bubbling soup contained chunks of taro, sweet potato, pumpkin, and various unidentifiable vegetable leaves—varied in appearance, but quite thin.
At the far end of the distribution site, a dozen naturalized citizen workers who had accompanied the work team were busy pulling measuring tapes and driving stakes. Prefab building materials were already piled on the ground. Liu Xiang had also organized a group of refugees to assist.
Most eye-catching were three large cauldrons just unloaded from an ox-cart. Several craftsmen were busy constructing stoves.
"Will this work?" Liu Xiang was somewhat worried.
"It'll be fine." Yang Yun beamed. "Contrast creates stimulus. Once the masses are fired up, things will be easy."
At nine in the morning, a horn blast shattered the quiet. The weak and exhausted refugees, who could only sit or lie about, heard the signal and helped each other up, heading toward the distribution site. Naturalized citizen cadres and Security Company soldiers maintained order, sharp whistles rising and falling:
"Don't push!" "Don't crowd!" "Everyone gets a share!" "Watch the children and elderly—don't let them fall!"
Under the Security Company's supervision, refugees were guided in batches toward the distribution site according to their distance from it.
The moment they entered the distribution site today, they smelled something distinctly different—not the bland vegetable congee of recent days, but a long-missed, rich fragrance of cooked rice, with other aromas mingled in.
The mellow, fragrant scent of rice wafted through the air, making heads turn this way and that. Suddenly someone noticed the enticing smell was coming from a newly erected shed at the far end of the site.
The crowd immediately surged toward this shed. Sure enough, under a reed-mat awning stood a waist-high earthen platform. On a stove atop the platform, a large pot of fragrant rice was cooking. Beside it, another big pot bubbled with thick brown broth, releasing an enticing aroma.
On a large table, clean wooden boards held rice balls of two sizes, all wrapped in perilla leaves, giving off the fresh scent of rice and vegetables. Several cooks were still shaping new ones.
The refugees immediately grew agitated. Even before the typhoon came, they had been enduring the spring famine since the start of the year, eating thin gruel with more water than grain every day. Now a huge pot of rice stood before their eyes. Many stomachs rumbled reflexively. If not for the Australian soldiers guarding the platform—each holding bayonet-tipped bird-guns and glaring fiercely—the refugees would have rushed forward in a frenzy.
Yet the people cooking above didn't seem to be distributing food. Just as the refugees stood at a loss, cheerful music suddenly rang out. To the accompaniment of "In the Field of Hope," Ji Denggao of the Propaganda Department's Mass Propaganda Division strode energetically onto the platform.
"Fellow villagers!" he shouted. "You've been through so much!"