Chapter 57: Working with the Masses

Zhang Xingjiao returned after only three or four days, a great relief to Xi Yazhou. Xiong Buyou, the otaku from the animation company, was now a hot commodity. As the only Lingao dialect translator, he was needed everywhere, and some even wanted him to start a Lingao dialect training class. Xiong Buyou had never dreamed that a minor dialect from another time and space would bring him such great success. It would have been unreasonable to transfer him at this time. Zhang Xingjiao, the translator trained by the transmigrators themselves, had returned at just the right moment.

When he came back, he also brought a mother and daughter. When Wu Nanhai saw them, he was startled, for a moment thinking he was seeing two living corpses. The mother didn’t look old, but she was sallow and emaciated, hunched over, leaning on a wooden stick with one hand and holding her daughter with the other. The little girl’s hair was completely yellow, and because she was so thin, her eyes looked very large, making her resemble a hungry stray cat. The two of them had something resembling clothes on their bodies, but they were so dirty and torn that they were just tattered rags hanging off them.

Thinking that these two would be of no use to Master Wu, Zhang Xingjiao said apologetically that the mother and daughter had been starving for a long time, so their appearance was a bit frightening. He didn’t know if the master would still take them in.

Wu Nanhai sucked in a cold breath. Damn, this is too scary. He had originally thought they would just be a bit malnourished and a few full meals would do the trick. He had even had some romantic notions of raising a loli. How was he to know he’d end up with two Ethiopian famine victims?

The two were so hungry they didn’t even have the strength to beg, just standing there silently with their heads down. Wu Nanhai’s heart was moved by compassion. “I’ll take them.”

Zhang Xingjiao was very happy. After all, he had brought them here. If they were turned away, given their condition, they would most likely die on the road, which would be a stain on his conscience. It was for the best that Wu Nanhai was willing to take them in. The mother and daughter, however, seemed to have been numbed by their hard life and showed no reaction at all. It was only when Zhang Xingjiao went over and prompted them that they managed to kowtow on the ground to express their thanks. Wu Nanhai noticed tears streaming from the woman’s eyes, a mixture of gratitude and, it seemed, deep humiliation.

Just then, He Ma came to Wu Nanhai to ask for personnel, wanting to transfer Zhang Xingjiao to the saltworks work team. Wu Nanhai took the opportunity to have him take the two to the clinic for “purification”—the standard procedure for accepting local natives, which included a haircut, bath, delousing, and treatment for skin diseases.

“But you have to assign a nurse to do this,” Wu Nanhai instructed. “The women of this era are very feudal. If you men strip them naked to treat their skin diseases, the woman will definitely commit suicide.”

“Got it.” He Ma smiled helplessly. “You think we like doing ‘purification’? It’s hard being a doctor—” He blinked. “Nanhai, you’re amazing! You got a head start on raising a loli!”

“This loli is in a pretty miserable state,” he thought, recalling the girl’s appearance. She seemed to be good-looking underneath it all, but right now he didn’t even know how old she was. He remembered something. “Shave all their hair off?”

“Of course, otherwise we can’t get them clean. Besides, scalp sores are very common among the people here. It’s hard to treat without shaving their heads.”

“You guys really have it tough.”

“Yeah. By the way, can you leave the mother with our health group? We can train her to be a nurse. We’re short-staffed, and none of the girls who came with us are willing to be nurses; they say it’s dirty.”

“Not for now. They’re new to this place and must be frightened and uneasy. It’s not good to separate them. Besides, they look like a gust of wind could blow them over. Let them recuperate at the farmstead and get stronger first.”

“Nanhai, you really have the heart of a Bodhisattva, a good man!” He Ma said with a laugh. “However, our group has already called dibs on this woman. You’re not allowed to keep her for yourself. The loli is all yours—that girl has very fine features.”

The next day at dawn, the work team set out. With the experience from the last trip, they were familiar with the route, and the agricultural vehicles reached the saltworks in less than an hour. Because they had a lot of luggage, the vehicles drove directly in along the stone slab road. The village was still deserted. There were a few figures on the street, but when they saw three or four vehicles roaring into the village entrance, they ran home in terror and slammed their doors shut. Not a single person came out to watch the excitement.

They looked for Village Chief Tan, but he was nowhere to be found. They went around calling and knocking on doors, but a terrifying gasping sound came from inside the houses. Pushing the doors open, they found only some elderly people and women. Amidst their fearful expressions, they could also see their worried faces, their skin ashen like the color of their walls. The faces of the slightly younger women were smeared with black soot. The few able-bodied men they saw were even more frightened and uneasy, some with hostile expressions. Xi Yazhou knew that although it seemed quiet, the atmosphere in the village was actually very tense. He told everyone to stick together and go from house to house to make inquiries, not to go alone.

After a long time of asking around, they finally came to a house where an elderly couple, a young man, and a strong man of about forty were squatting on the floor of the main room. Xi Yazhou led Zhang Xingjiao in. The old woman was calmer. When asked about the village chief’s whereabouts, no one said a word. Xi Yazhou then asked the young man, but the filthy-faced youth just turned his head away and said nothing, looking shy. Xi Yazhou was a little puzzled at first, then he suddenly realized: this was a girl. She was dressed as a man, probably for fear of being abducted.

To avoid misunderstanding, after saying a few words, Xi Yazhou led his men out, preparing to find someone else to ask. As he passed the wall outside the courtyard, he heard the old man, probably the father, squeeze out a panicked, trembling voice from his throat: “Son, take Xiao Qin and go hide for a while. If they start grabbing people, I won’t be able to face the village chief…”

So the village chief’s daughter was here! Xi Yazhou knew this might be the breakthrough he needed, but after hearing similar reports from everyone, a doubt arose in his heart. He had heard from Wang Luobin and others who had been here a few days ago that although the people here were indifferent to them, they were not hostile. How had they come to view them as enemies in just a few days? This cold attitude was a major obstacle to his plan.

He gathered everyone together. “Everyone has seen it. The masses not only don’t trust us, but they also have obvious hostile emotions. The key now is to let the masses get to know us. We must use practical actions to move the masses and raise their consciousness! From now on, we must demand of ourselves to follow the excellent tradition of the People’s Liberation Army’s Three Main Rules of Discipline and the Eight Points for Attention. While building the camp, we must also carry out propaganda among the masses. The central theme of the propaganda is: We are—” He suddenly got stuck. In the other time and space, it would naturally be “We are the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, the people’s own soldiers,” and so on. But here?

So far, the transmigrators had not come up with a political slogan to mobilize the masses. Even Li Zicheng had a slogan like “When the Dashing King arrives, you won’t have to pay taxes.” This touched on the subtle political ideological issues among the transmigrators, a divergence that had already been revealed in many meetings before the transmigration.

“Serve the people—” Du Wen had just started.

“No, that’s not why we came here. That’s no good!” Someone immediately objected.

Indeed, most people here had come with the goal of becoming elites. To say things like “serve the people” would be too hypocritical.

“Carry out the Way on behalf of Heaven!”

“Please, this isn’t Mount Liang. The heroes of Mount Liang didn’t have a good end.”

Xi Yazhou thought for a moment, then discussed it with Wang Luobin. “I think we should go with ‘Eradicate the powerful and evil, protect the territory and pacify the people’.”

“I would like to point out that the political direction of this sentence is problematic, and it lacks revolutionary fighting spirit,” Du Wen pointed out. This slogan fully exposed the essence of opposing local tyrants but not the emperor, and not opposing feudalism.

“Alright, alright,” Xi Yazhou interrupted her. “What our political slogan should be is for the Executive Committee to decide in a meeting. For now, we’ll use this one. It has more leeway and is more targeted. It will be easier for the salt workers to resonate with. The common people don’t understand grand principles. Only tangible, visible, and understandable benefits can attract them.”

Although some felt this slogan was too bland and lacked fighting spirit, they couldn’t come up with a more suitable one at the moment, so they decided to use it for the time being. Zhang Xingjiao, however, quite liked this slogan.

Xi Yazhou ordered the work team to be divided into two groups. One group would establish a camp at the Ge Hong Temple at the village entrance, doing everything themselves. The other group would immediately start propaganda among the masses and investigate the situation in the village.

“How do we do propaganda?” someone muttered.

“How to do propaganda? Have you ever encountered insurance salesmen? Just do it like that,” Xi Yazhou instructed. “Anyone here sold insurance before? Sales experience is also fine. You guys demonstrate at the front, and everyone else learns from you. In the future, when you are in charge of your own area, getting people to work hard and risk their lives for you will depend on this.”

Following his orders, the transmigrators began their first work with the masses.

Needless to say, this kind of work was arduous, especially with the language barrier. Zhang Xingjiao was exhausted, his lips dry and parched. The result was still a reaction of indifference and fear.

However, they generally learned that because Landlord Gou couldn’t collect enough silver and there was little salt, he had taken away several of the village elders, threatening to release them only when the regulation silver and salt were paid in full.

From the visits and propaganda, they discovered that the entire village was extremely poor. There had been a food shortage here for a long time. The village chief said that the able-bodied men were reclaiming land in Ma’niao, but in reality, they were only planting the taro of the Arisaema plant. Although this filled their stomachs, eating it for a long time made people’s faces turn ashen. As for clothing, it was even more miserable. Their clothes were long worn out. Many salt workers worked naked, but they usually had clothes to wear. Now, all that was left were tattered rags that had been patched and pieced together again and again, not even enough to cover their buttocks. Some families of four or five had only one set of clothes, which was worn by whoever went out, while the rest stayed at home naked, huddled in straw piles. Every household could be described as “having nothing but four bare walls.”

The work team learned all this, and sympathy made them feel a strong anxiety about the suffering of the masses in this time and space. Some even shed tears. Humans, after all, still have some compassion for the suffering of their own kind.

That night, the village was as quiet as death. Under a single lamp, the main figures of the work team sat in a large tent. Everyone was lost in thought.