Chapter 1750: Puji Hall
Liu San was startled. Judging by the symptoms, this was classic schistosomiasis. He had assumed the disease was chiefly prevalent in the Hunan-Hubei region and Jiangxi; he hadn't expected to find it right here in Guangzhou.
Because schistosomiasis was caused by parasitic infection, immunization was useless—only manual prevention could work, and prevention was enormously difficult.
We in the Ministry of Health carry a heavy burden indeed, Liu San thought. In the original timeline, all these infectious diseases could be treated with specific drugs. But in this timeline, they had almost nothing at their disposal. Their domestically produced antibiotics were few in variety and low in purity; disinfectants and epidemic-prevention medicines were likewise scarce.
Yet he dared not show a worried expression. He continued his conversation with the medical officials until late into the night before the gathering dispersed. Liu San instructed the General Affairs Section to put them up in the yamen overnight; they could leave in the morning.
Once the officials had departed, Liu San leafed through his notebook. It was already crammed with terms that would alarm any public-health and epidemic-prevention worker.
He sighed, careworn. How was he to proceed with sanitation work? At present, he had neither staff nor supplies. Before departure, he had received a handbook densely printed with serial numbers corresponding to crates of health-ministry supplies destined for Guangzhou. By cross-referencing this handbook with the daily cargo manifests from Da Shijie Harbor, he could track how much materiel had arrived and how much was still en route—a great help in planning. But even without checking, he knew the current supplies were hopelessly inadequate for the situation he faced. Moreover, the other physician assigned to join him still hadn't set out; word was that he was busy preparing for the "Provincial-Port General Hospital."
After much deliberation, Liu San concluded that the only immediate and necessary step was a citywide sanitation campaign—an effort to minimize breeding sites and sources of contagion, to annihilate as many intermediate hosts as possible. The rate at which infectious diseases spread was intimately linked to environmental hygiene. Since they had no capacity to "cure," they could only start from the most fundamental "prevention."
Early the next morning, after breakfast, Liu San meant to discuss this with Lin Baiguang—but Lin Baiguang was out. His secretary explained that the Senator had already gone to confer with Finance and Currency personnel about issuing the new currency and collecting taxes. A government's first order of business was money. Liu Xiang's entire package of urban renewal and construction projects could not proceed without funds.
Anxious though he was, Liu San didn't want to interrupt. So he asked a retained yamen clerk to escort him on a visit to Puji Hall.
Since the Tang and Song dynasties, prefectures and counties had generally maintained government-run charitable institutions covering "birth, old age, sickness, and death": the Ciyou Ju for foundlings; the Yangji Yuan for destitute elderly; the Anji Fang for the ill and disabled; and the Louze Yuan for collecting and burying abandoned corpses. Guangzhou's one prefecture and two counties were no exception.
Liu San had studied the materials on institutions slated for takeover supplied by the Comprehensive Governance Office. Guangzhou Prefecture's official charity was called Puji Hall. It was quite large, with multiple attached units: men's and women's hospices for the elderly without means of support; a Qingjie Yuan for impoverished widows who had taken the vow of chastity, along with their minor children; and a Gumu Yuan to house the blind.
Strictly speaking, charitable institutions had little to do with Liu San's work—this was Civil Affairs territory—but no one from that department had yet arrived. Lin Baiguang had temporarily delegated Liu San to inspect Puji Hall and the Louze Yuan, and to assess their sanitary conditions.
"To be honest, I have no faith in the integrity of the people running these government charities," Lin Baiguang had said when handing over the materials. "The directors are usually either the local official's cronies or local gentry—riddled with abuses. Have a look at the situation; I'll get around to sorting them out eventually."
The director of such an institution was a minor functionary. But compared to the medical officials, who were "appointed without salary," he was a step lower still—neither appointed nor salaried. Yet there was no small profit to be had, which drew the covetous eyes of both local officials and gentry. Whenever a vacancy arose, a power struggle was sure to ensue.
Puji Hall lay not inside the city but outside the Great North Gate, on the northern slope of Yuexiu Hill, in a temple called Huanghua Temple. This area was dense with tombs, charity graves, and mass burial grounds—mound upon mound of weathered graves, scarcely any inhabitants. Even in the Republic era, it was still bandit territory. For Liu San's visit, Wang Sangou dispatched a squad of soldiers as escort and added five or six yamen runners familiar with the local terrain.
Liu San passed through the North Gate suburb and followed the main road for a short distance before the gloom descended. The landscape was nothing but hillside tombs, graveyards, and potter's fields; dwellings and farmland were scarce. The few hovels that did exist were dilapidated and dirt-poor. Near Liuhua Bridge, more structures appeared, but they turned out to be coffin shops or so-called "mortuary lodges" bearing signs like "So-and-So Charitable Lodge"—housing the caskets of outsiders who had died in Guangzhou. Some coffins had been stored for as short as half a year, others for decades.
Liu San knew that such temporary coffin-deposits existed not only here but within the city as well. Many temples and native-place guilds maintained rear courtyards specifically for storing coffins. Some awaited filial sons to "escort the coffin home" so the deceased could "return to their roots"; others belonged to local gentry families waiting for an auspicious date or propitious gravesite, temporarily held in a temple. Such cases were common.
As they walked, Liu San caught an intermittent whiff of foul stench. Parting the sedan curtain, he saw his escorts—both runners and soldiers—pinching their noses and grimacing. It wasn't his imagination.
"The crematorium of the Louze Yuan is just ahead, at Liuhua Bridge..." a runner murmured. "The wind's blowing the wrong way."
Liu San nodded. He took out a packet of "epidemic-repelling powder" from his bag, dabbed some inside his nostrils, and felt better. He distributed the powder to the others.
Suddenly, he heard the barking and snarling of dogs nearby. Following the sound about a hundred meters from the road, he glimpsed a pack of feral dogs fighting before an abandoned grave. A runner beside the sedan scowled. "An abomination!"
Liu San immediately understood what the dogs were fighting over. A wave of nausea washed over him. "Move on, quickly!"
The bearers picked up the pace. Before long, they arrived at Huanghua Temple.
This Huanghua Temple had once been a grand and imposing Buddhist sanctuary; now it had long fallen into disrepair. Liu San alighted where the original main gate had stood. That gate was now a heap of rubble, amid which the severed limbs of guardian deities' clay statues were still visible. Though the paint had flaked away, traces of fine original craftsmanship could still be discerned.
Liu San sighed inwardly. Skirting the collapsed gate, he entered the temple grounds. Most of the halls and pavilions had crumbled; those still standing were in woeful condition—walls askew, roofs leaking. The Buddha statues in each hall had vanished; wall paintings and decorations had largely disappeared, with fewer than one in ten remaining. In the surviving halls and corridors, ragged elderly folk and women huddled in twos and threes—disheveled, filthy, indistinguishable from beggars. They showed neither interest in nor fear of the visitors.
One hall was somewhat tidier—it had been the residence and office of the director. A runner explained that the former director had been a relative brought along by Prefect Dong.
"Bring him here."
The runner fetched the man: a portly fellow in his forties with a sallow complexion but neatly dressed.
"This humble one, Mao Xiuyu, kowtows to the Chief." The man promptly knelt and kowtowed.
"You may rise," said Liu San. "Were you the manager of this place?"
"The manager was Master Dong. After the heavenly soldiers entered the city, he fled." Mao Xiuyu rose and answered with a bow. "This humble one used to work under him. Please come inside, Chief." He ushered Liu San's party indoors.
The hall had once been a Buddhist sanctuary, so the ceiling was high and the interior spacious. In the bright central bay stood a judge's desk and chair, flanked by rods for punishment, cangues, shackles, and chains—the full trappings of a yamen. In the darker side chamber, presumably the director's living quarters and office, the furnishings, though not lavish, were no worse than a middling household's.
"Please sit, Chief." Mao Xiuyu deferentially offered a seat and brought out a bowl of tea. "You've traveled far to our desolate wilderness; we have little to offer..."
"I'm just here to have a look. No need for ceremony." Liu San glanced around. The contrast with the dereliction outside was stark. "The manager certainly knows how to find pleasure amid hardship."
"Master Dong used to work here; after the heavenly soldiers entered the city, he fled the next day." Mao Xiuyu continued, "Actually, he rarely stayed here—only coming on the days when money and grain were distributed. Otherwise he lived in the city."
"So you're really the one running things here?"
Mao Xiuyu quickly stooped into a little bow, smiling obsequiously. "I dare not claim to 'run' anything! I merely perform my duties here. I don't dare to act on my own—I follow the manager's instructions in all matters."
"Since you're the one on the ground, first tell me about this place's situation," Liu San said.
"Yes, yes." Mao Xiuyu nodded repeatedly. "The registry shows 2,165 destitute elderly, disabled, blind, and impoverished chaste widows in this Puji Hall. By regulation, each person receives three dou of rice and forty-five wen of copper cash per month. Every three years, each receives one bolt of coarse cloth."
Liu San opened his notebook and jotted down the figures. "Where do the funds come from?"
"Partly from the prefectural and county treasuries, partly from charitable donations by philanthropic families in the city."
"Three dou of rice?" Liu San found this hard to believe. By Ming measurements, a dou of unhusked rice weighed roughly twelve jin, so three dou came to about thirty-six jin—far more than the twenty-eight jin monthly ration most people received in the rationing era of the original timeline, even exceeding the thirty-plus jin allotted only to heavy-labor workers.
"Yes, three dou of rice." Seeing Liu San's skepticism, Mao Xiuyu smiled ingratiatingly. "That's the amount on the roster. Naturally, no one can eat that much. The surplus covers the institution's expenses. Take this Puji Hall directorship—whoever gets it arrives in rags and leaves in silk robes riding a fine horse..."
(End of this chapter)