Chapter 1368 - Buying Leaves on Credit
News that the Shen Da family was offering mulberry leaves on credit spread through the village like fire. The terms, it was said, came directly from Shen Da's master, Master Zhao. Regardless of quantity, credit leaves cost a flat rate of one mace of silver per picul, with monthly interest at one percent. As with borrowed rice, the debt could be repaid with silkworm cocoons at market price after the harvest.
"This is practically charity!" Duoduo's mother's husband was beaming, as though he'd stumbled upon buried treasure. "The market price for leaves is skyrocketing. At the morning market today, the leaf guild in town opened at four mace per picul. I heard directly from the shopkeeper—it's going to hit five mace in just a few days!"
Shen Kaibao's anxiety erupted at these words. Five mace per picul! It would cost him everything. Even three mace per picul a few days earlier had felt unbearable.
The Shen Da family's terms truly did seem like charity. Even if Master Cao were willing to lend now, he'd charge two and a half or three percent interest. Factoring in the current market price to buy leaves—Shen Kaibao calculated again and again—the entire silkworm season would amount to raising silkworms for someone else's benefit, not his own.
The Shen Da family wanted only one mace per picul, with interest at just one percent per month. It really did seem like charity.
At last, Shen Kaibao set aside the grudges in his heart. He urged Daqing and Sanqing to prepare the boat immediately. They would go to the Shen Da family and buy leaves on credit.
A long queue had already formed at the Shen Da family's door. Though it was called "buying leaves on credit," the leaves themselves weren't stored there. Mulberry leaves were perishable goods with an extremely short shelf life—leaves picked in the morning were nearly impossible to preserve until the next day. Transactions at the leaf guild were same-day business only, with no stockpiling in advance.
Credit purchases worked through trade documents. Buyers signed paperwork at the Shen Da family residence and received a tally, then traveled to designated mulberry orchards to collect their leaves in person. Zhao Yingong's credit operation followed this same arrangement.
In this ancient society, poor road conditions and limited ranges of activity meant that any leaf-credit operation required careful estimation: the approximate yield of the mulberry orchard and the effective radius of surrounding villages it could serve. The former posed little difficulty; most orchard owners knew roughly how many commercial leaves their orchards could produce during the spring silkworm season. The latter demanded more precision. In the water towns of Jiangnan, farmers relied on boats to transport agricultural products, travel to town, and reach the city. Spring was the busiest farming season, and strong laborers couldn't afford to spend too much time rowing. The distance between supply source and end user had to fall within a day's round-trip journey by boat.
Zhao Yingong had no intention of operating on too large a scale this year. He was merely testing the waters. On one hand, he knew little about the specific dynamics of the credit-leaf market. On the other, he couldn't predict how much resistance he might encounter. Thus his efforts—whether establishing cooperatives through Shen Da and Wang Siniang or selling leaves on credit—remained confined to a very small area.
Including Jixian Village where Shen Da lived, he had launched the "Hezhong Cooperative" initiative in only three "center villages." These three villages could roughly cover fourteen or fifteen surrounding settlements primarily engaged in sericulture—over six hundred households in total. The numbers were modest, and the quantity of cocoons obtained through small loans would be correspondingly limited. But this was meant to be a "model." He had full confidence that once this year's implementation proved successful, surrounding sericulture households would observe the results and eagerly seek to participate in "cooperation" the following year. At that point, water would naturally flow where channels had been carved.
The sericulture households knew nothing of Master Zhao's broader schemes. Their only thought was to obtain mulberry leaves as quickly as possible. The silkworm babies that had passed the fourth molt had reached the critical moment of spinning silk and forming cocoons. Without leaves now, over a month's worth of labor and expense would come to nothing.
After signing the paperwork, Shen Kaibao took his tally and immediately set off with Daqing to collect the mulberry leaves. That night, they rowed home with forty piculs piled high in the boat.
Before they even reached the village entrance, Daqing's son was already watching from the landing. The moment he spotted his grandfather and father, he sprinted toward home, shouting "They're back!" as he ran.
The silkworms had been without leaves for more than half an hour—a life-or-death crisis. Seeing his grandson dash away, Shen Kaibao understood the urgency. Ignoring his hunger—his stomach felt as if it were pressed flat against his spine—he stood and helped Daqing row with desperate strokes. The boat rocked so violently it nearly grazed the water's surface.
It shot through the channel like an arrow, narrowly missing several docked vessels, and rushed all the way to their river pier. Family members stood at the landing, peering out anxiously. Shen Kaibao grew even more impatient. "Row faster!"
Father and son had departed that morning and rowed all day, eating only a single meal. Their legs ached, their hands trembled, their bodies felt terribly weak. But they knew the silkworm babies had already missed a meal. If they couldn't spread leaves in time, all their efforts would be wasted. Everything would be lost.
The boat reached the pier before it fully stopped. Sanqing leapt aboard, shouldered a basket of mulberry leaves, and hauled it ashore. The instant his foot touched the stone steps, several pairs of hands reached to receive it, carrying it together toward the house. Daqing saw his own son among them and rushed to help. The boy was small and the basket heavy; he immediately tumbled and rolled far across the ground. Daqing's heart clenched. He shouldered another basket of leaves and hurried ashore.
"Quick! Quick!" Shen Kaibao urged. Ignoring his age and declining strength, he too helped move the mulberry leaves.
Those white, fat silkworm babies had been hungry for some time. They all pointed their small mouths upward, swaying left and right. Shen Kaibao's heart ached watching them. As soon as the leaves were spread, the silkworm room filled with a continuous rustling sound so loud that people could barely hear each other speak. Within moments, the circular trays showed white again—the leaves consumed. Another thick layer was spread on top.
Just "placing leaves" kept everyone working without pause. But this was the final ordeal. With sufficient mulberry leaves, another two days would see the spring silkworms mount. The household squeezed out every scrap of remaining energy and worked with desperate determination.
Duoduo's mother, still at the Shen Da household, didn't know how frantic things had become back home. But a few days earlier, when her husband came to buy leaves on credit, he'd reported that their silkworm harvest looked very promising—seventy or eighty percent. This news allowed her to breathe a small sigh of relief. She had been away for more than a month doing "monthly labor" and would earn over one tael of silver. With a good silkworm harvest on top of that, the whole family would have hope this year.
The interval between the fourth and fifth molts was the hardest time in the entire silkworm-raising cycle. At the Shen Da household, the work reached its most feverish intensity. They had many silkworm trays, and the daily labor of placing leaves and cleaning droppings was immense. The silkworm-raising women worked day and night, sleeping only an hour or two—brief naps taken slumped against the wall in the nearby servants' quarters before returning to place leaves and conduct patrols.
Wang Siniang and Lizheng took turns patrolling around the clock. Wang Siniang, in particular, roused herself to a hundred and twenty percent alertness. She knew that the master had sent her to the village for an "important matter." If she handled it well, she would surely become a "manager" at the mountain villa. If she failed, she would remain only a "foreman."
As the silkworms entered the fifth instar and their food intake began declining, Wang Siniang and Lizheng recognized the signs: cocoon-spinning would soon begin.
Traditional mounting methods generally relied on increased temperature to induce mounting and cocoon formation. But because silkworms matured at different rates, forcing them all to mount together often resulted in some being over-mature while others remained unripe. Those mounted too early produced many non-cocooning silkworms, lower silk yields, and dirty cocoon colors. Those mounted too late crawled randomly across the mounting clusters, wasting silk, and spun hasty, defective cocoons.
The method employed here was batch mounting—more labor-intensive, but far more effective. Lizheng first trained the silkworm-raising women to distinguish between silkworms approaching maturity and those fully mature. Each day they patrolled the trays, transferring properly mature silkworms from large trays to small ones, then moving them into a dedicated mounting room at a density of five hundred silkworms per square meter.
Duoduo's mother had never seen this mounting method before. No mountain sheds were used, no straw clusters. Instead, square grids fashioned from thick paper hung directly above the mature silkworms. This utilized the natural tendency of mature silkworms to crawl upward; they climbed onto the mounting grids and spun their cocoons without prompting.
Inside the mounting room, earthen fire pits and water basins maintained temperature and humidity, and those strange glass tubes and glass bulbs remained indispensable. Bamboo blinds hung across the windows, softening the incoming light to a gentle dimness—strong light was strictly forbidden during cocoon-spinning.
In the early stage of mounting, mature silkworms excreted waste before spinning silk, raising the humidity considerably. Humidity was monitored constantly; if it exceeded seventy-five percent, doors and windows were opened for ventilation. The ideal room temperature was twenty-five degrees. If it dropped below twenty-two, fires were stoked. Excessive or insufficient temperature and humidity would affect both the cocoon rate and cocoon quality, requiring precise control.
Following Lizheng's instructions, Duoduo's mother and her fellow workers picked out mature silkworms each day on a rotating basis, sending them to mount. Every day's trays were marked by date. They also removed dead silkworms from the clusters and caught wandering silkworms that hadn't spun, mounting them separately.
Only five or six days after mounting did Lizheng issue the order to begin harvesting cocoons. Harvesting too early risked injuring the unpupated silkworms, polluting the cocoons. Harvesting too late allowed the pupae to transform into moths, also degrading cocoon quality. The workers collected cocoons in batches according to mounting dates. Harvested cocoons were spread thinly on silkworm trays, kept from pressing against each other. Upper-grade and lower-grade cocoons were sorted separately. Those with solid, white shells and uniform shapes were upper-grade. Dead cocoons, yellow-spotted ones, thin-skinned ones, deformed ones, and those infested with fly maggots were lower-grade. Double cocoons were set aside on their own.
This practice of mounting daily and harvesting daily made it difficult for Duoduo's mother to estimate the overall quality of the Shen Da family's silkworm crop. But every time she went to harvest cocoons, the white clusters in the square grids yielded mostly excellent specimens. Dead silkworms that hadn't spun were rare. This Guangdong breed produced larger cocoons than the local variety, with thicker silk layers and denser cocoon bodies. The silk filaments themselves were remarkably clear. Wang Siniang had raised silkworms for decades and had never seen cocoons this fine. Even the best Huzhou silk cocoons she'd encountered couldn't compare.
When taking down the snow-white, solid cocoons one by one from the square grid clusters, Duoduo's mother always felt an inexplicable joy in her heart. Though these cocoons weren't hers, the results of caring for them devotedly for more than a month still filled her with the happiness of harvest—a gladness that rose from the very depths of her being.
(End of this chapter)