Chapter 1370 - Compulsory Purchase
The silk merchants had arrived, but the reeled silk couldn't be sold. No one was willing to part with their hard-won silk at such a pitiful price—least of all when most families had incurred debts to produce it.
Faces throughout the village grew tight. Except for the children, too young to understand what was at stake, smiles vanished entirely.
The silk merchants collected nothing, but they didn't leave either. They appeared supremely confident. Each found a familiar household to lodge with and spent their days drinking tea and chatting at the open-air teahouse by the village entrance. No matter how old acquaintances pleaded or begged, they refused to relent. They had their own rhetoric prepared—nothing but sighs about their own hardships, claims of being "unable to help themselves," professions of unwillingness to treat "fellow villagers" so harshly. This was all the yamen's doing, they insisted. In short, they clenched their teeth and wouldn't budge. Their faces proclaimed unmistakably: "You have to sell even if you don't want to."
They were veterans of this trade. They knew with absolute certainty that silk was the villagers' only hope now. Without converting it to cash, where would money for the next steps come from? Besides, silk and cocoons couldn't be stored. No household could afford to stockpile them.
Finally, someone proposed a scheme. If local silk guilds had set a public price, neighboring prefectures surely hadn't adopted the same rule. Prices there should be comparable to last year's. Why not travel to Huzhou, Jiaxing, or Suzhou to sell?
The journey was admittedly long—a round trip to the nearest destination would take five or six days. Travel expenses cost money, and passing through checkpoints along the way cost more. In previous years, the trip wouldn't have been worth the trouble. But looking at how low the local price had fallen, staying home meant even greater losses.
Shen Kaibao calculated carefully and decided to try his luck in Huzhou. He'd visited Wuzhen when he was young and knew a little about the area. Silk guilds were numerous there—it was a major trading center. Surely he could fetch a decent price for raw silk. He instructed Daqing to prepare several reed mats, then had his wife and daughter-in-law cook rice and wrap it in bamboo leaves as provisions for the journey. He also packed some fried wheat flour to mix with boiling water en route.
Daqing's mother finished cooking the rice, packed it in a basket, and admonished him: "Come back as soon as you've sold it! The rice at home won't last many days."
Shen Kaibao snapped back as if spoiling for a quarrel: "No matter how fast, the boat has to be rowed one stroke at a time! I've sold silk my entire life, and now in my old age I'm being forced into exile!"
Daqing spoke to his mother. "If you run out of food, go to the Shen Da family to borrow rice. Duoduo's mother says Master Zhao is willing to keep lending."
Shen Kaibao cut him off. "He may be willing to lend, but I'm not willing to borrow! Where does this one-percent interest come from? Repaying with cocoons at such a market price is open robbery. Endure as long as possible. Wait for me to sell the silk and bring back silver to buy rice."
Taking advantage of a break in the weather, Shen Kaibao and Daqing set out by boat. Seeing the Shen family depart, other households followed suit, rowing out behind them. Those without boats borrowed them or asked to ride along.
The tiny flame of hope burned high again. Faces among those left behind showed cautious smiles—heaven never bars one's way. As long as the men reached the outer prefecture safely and found a buyer willing to pay a fair price, life could still go on.
Meanwhile, the silk merchants remained at the teahouse by the village entrance, sipping tea with self-assured expressions, their smiles inscrutable. Clearly, they had anticipated everything.
Sure enough, within two or three days, the boats returned one after another. Many were empty, but the men aboard all wore faces of mourning. Not only had they suffered and toiled in vain, but some had been beaten with bamboo boards and now returned limping. It turned out that all water and land checkpoints leaving Hangzhou had received warrants from the yamen. This year, cocoons and silk leaving the border required a license from the Famine Relief Bureau. Those without licenses were stopped at the checkpoints, and their goods were "harmoniously purchased"—confiscated at a twenty percent discount off the already ruinous public price.
Resistance earned bamboo beatings at minimum. Those who were cangued suffered even worse—they couldn't even return home. Their families had to rush over with money to pay their release, or else they'd remain in the cangue for a full month before being freed.
Shen Kaibao's family avoided the worst. He was somewhat cunning. Though first to set out, he held back when approaching the checkpoint and hid behind the others. The moment he heard the bad news from the front, he spun the boat around and raced home.
His silk hadn't been confiscated, but it still couldn't be sold. Plenty of cocoons remained stored at home, too—the harvest had been excellent, and his wife and Daqing's wife, reeling silk by themselves, simply couldn't keep pace.
The unlucky families wept to the heavens. Several households saw their men arrested and cangued, with no ready cash anywhere in the village to pay their release. But if no one went to redeem them—if no one delivered food—then exposed day and night to the elements without a single bite or drop of water, they risked starving or dying of thirst. And what about the farmwork waiting during this month? Any more delays and the entire family, young and old, would face starvation anyway.
Women's and children's cries drifted through the air from near and far. An atmosphere of despair settled over the village. How could common people fight the yamen? Every scheme they devised, the officials had already anticipated. They had no choice but to sell.
In the end, it was Wang Siniang who stepped forward, lending redemption silver to those desperate families.
The silk and cocoons still couldn't be sold, but creditors arrived to collect debts, and bailiffs came demanding grain taxes. The creditors refused to accept silk and cocoons—their information networks were excellent, and they knew perfectly well that prices had collapsed this year. They maintained stony expressions and kept pressing for repayment. Those who couldn't pay were told to produce their land deeds for mortgage.
Shen Kaibao's family, at least, had some breathing room. His agreement with Master Cao specified payment of principal and interest at the Mid-Autumn Festival. The debt problem hadn't yet reached crisis level. What required immediate attention was only the debt owed to Shen Da's master, Master Zhao.
Since returning home, Duoduo's mother had been helping Wang Siniang remind every household not to forget their debts to Master Zhao after harvesting cocoons: the borrowed rice, the credit-purchased leaves. The amounts hadn't seemed substantial at the time, but added together now, they constituted a considerable sum. Fortunately, the interest was lower than alternatives.
Repaying Master Zhao was straightforward. His household wanted neither silver nor raw silk—only silkworm cocoons to offset the debt. This was simplest for the farmers, saving considerable trouble. The only problem was that the cocoon price Master Zhao's household set was identical to what the silk merchants offered. The farmers felt equally pained, but at this point they couldn't afford to hesitate. The merchants refused to raise prices. If the cocoons were kept too long, they'd transform into pupae. If the moths chewed through, the cocoons could only be sold as silk floss.
Large black scales appeared at the Shen Da family's door, gleaming with oil. Every household carried baskets full of silkworm cocoons to pay debts and interest. Wang Siniang had already spread the word: those who borrowed and repaid promptly would find borrowing easy in the future. Master Zhao was benevolent. As long as debts were paid off with cocoons on time, he would help with future difficulties.
These words greatly accelerated the repayment process. Some families gave up reeling silk altogether and simply sold all their remaining cocoons directly to the Shen Da household. After careful calculation, families who reeled their own silk had lost heavily. The labor and firewood invested in spinning, compared against the current raw silk price, made the returns too miserable to contemplate. By contrast, the few families with too little manpower to reel—those who had sold cocoons outright—spent less and lost less.
Shen Kaibao's family had hesitated, but now they too brought their unreeled cocoons to offset debts. At the river pier by the Shen Da family's door, boats had appeared at some point. The cocoons used to repay debts were packed in lidded rattan baskets, filling the boat holds, covered tightly with reed mats and rowed out one vessel after another—headed, it was said, to Master Zhao's filature.
The raw silk already reeled had to be sold at the public price. Some went to the silk merchants, some to Master Zhao. Though a few young hotheads proclaimed defiantly that they'd rather keep their silk until next year, this was merely angry talk. Silk would yellow over time, and even if it didn't, money was needed urgently in countless places—even if silk fetched one hundred taels next year, they couldn't wait.
In the end, the silk and cocoons that families had earned through untold hardship slipped through their fingers, exchanged for piles of broken silver and copper coins, more or less. This remuneration for over a month of backbreaking labor would not remain long before becoming someone else's. Debts owed. Government taxes. The family's rations. Renting draft cattle for the next planting. Buying bean cakes. Repairing farm tools. Everything demanded money—and even filling all these holes fell far short of what was needed.
In their destitution, the villagers had no choice but to return to their old path: borrowing to survive. Fortunately, Shen Da's master, Master Zhao, was willing to lend even without collateral, and the interest rate remained at one percent. Thus the villagers who had just paid off Master Zhao's debts soon shouldered new ones.
Wang Siniang and Lizheng were elated. The tasks the master had assigned were all completed: they had purchased enough silkworm cocoons, while simultaneously ensuring the villagers carried even more debt. As long as they owed money, there was no fear they wouldn't submit.
Through the combined efforts of the government, the gentry, and Zhao Yingong, the sericulture households of Hangzhou Prefecture had been bled white. The handling officials, the committee members of the Famine Relief Bureau, the bosses of the silk guilds—everyone from top to bottom made fortunes of varying sizes. Zhao Yingong himself reaped abundantly. Not only had he obtained one thousand piculs of raw silk at a suppressed price, but he had also succeeded in binding over a dozen villages participating in cooperative activities firmly with debt.
And the sericulture households throughout Hangzhou Prefecture had been driven to the brink of bankruptcy. Shanhai Wulu's network sent him extensive intelligence on this.
This gang of black-hearted people really devour men without spitting out the bones, Zhao Yingong thought.
He had known they were corrupt, but he hadn't known the depth of their corruption. The guiding purchase price Zhao Yingong had provided to the Famine Relief Bureau was fifty taels of silver per picul—roughly the silk guilds' purchase price the previous year. He had originally estimated that with the Bureau taking its cut, the handling guilds taking theirs, and officials up and down claiming their shares, the actual price paid to farmers would settle around thirty taels.
He hadn't expected them to truly "cut the price in half." Their strikes were that ruthless. This made Zhao Yingong wary of his "collaborators." It seemed he would need to organize some formidable security forces to safeguard himself and his enterprises.
(End of this chapter)