Chapter 182: The Clients of the Heaven and Earth Society

The lack of funding had always plagued the county school here. In terms of educational investment, Lincheng County had over four or five hundred mu of school land, which showed considerable importance. School land was a type of official land, customarily cultivated by official tenants—Wu Nanhai’s apprentice, Lu Jia’s family, was one such case. This system had worked reasonably well in its early years, but over time, abuses inevitably arose. The burden on the official tenants was too heavy, and they gradually began to flee. Now, not even one in ten remained. Attempts to recruit new tenants were met with no response. Wang Ci was a scholar and knew nothing of economics. Besides begging for help everywhere, he was at a loss. Hundreds of mu of prime irrigated land outside the county gate lay fallow, yet the county school was penniless, unable to even afford the pigs used for the several annual sacrifices to Confucius. The scholars in the county school hadn’t received their stipends for years and rarely came to the school, which was now desolate. They couldn’t even afford to repair the dilapidated Confucian temple, and the famous Moli Xuan Academy had become a dangerous building.

In his desperation, Wang Ci saw the county school declining day by day. It was impossible to get money from the county to maintain it, and relying on donations from the gentry was not a long-term solution. He had to start by reorganizing the school land. But scholars did not engage in farming, and no one was willing to become a tenant. Hearing that the Australians were willing to help with farming, Wang Ci ran to ask for their assistance.

Ye Yuming dared not make the decision himself and quickly reported it to the Agriculture Committee. Wu Nanhai had long coveted the school land outside the west gate of the county. Hearing about this, he immediately agreed, telling Ye Yuming to accept the offer and to provide technical services with “VIP” treatment.

Thus, the Heaven and Earth Society signed a technical service contract with Wang Ci, the instructor of Lincheng County—strictly speaking, it was more like a contracting agreement than a technical service contract. Because besides a few official tenants who were barely hanging on, there were no laborers on the school land. Everything had to be handled by the Heaven and Earth Society.

This matter attracted the high attention of Wu De—it was the transmigrator group’s first step into the official land of Lincheng. It was reported to the Executive Committee, and everyone felt it was a good opportunity to further deepen their control over the Lincheng county government. Although the county school was just an educational institution, it was the administrative body for all the scholars in the county. Gaining a good reputation in this matter would be of great benefit in winning the hearts and minds of the local intellectuals.

In the end, following the usual inertia of how things were done by the Chinese, this originally simple commercial activity was elevated to a political level. Both the county government and the Executive Committee “attached great importance” to it and sent personnel for “close consultations.”

Magistrate Wu’s intention was to avoid provoking these Kun bandits, but he couldn’t stop Wang Ci from doing so. The county’s most important historical site, Moli Xuan, was on the verge of collapse, and the county school was also dilapidated. He had not allocated a single penny for repairs, and it was only through the donations of Liu Dalin and the local gentry that some patchwork repairs had been made. For the past few years, besides his own pitiful salary, Wang Ci had not received a single cent from the county. He had managed to keep the county school afloat by soliciting donations everywhere.

Master Wang strongly argued that this was a good thing and gave many reasons. Magistrate Wu, who had initially adopted a laissez-faire attitude towards the matter, was even more convinced that it was beneficial to the county after Wang Zhaomin’s analysis, so he completely acquiesced. Of course, there were also personal benefits for him involved.

A member of the Agriculture Committee personally took charge—Wu Nanhai became the main person in charge of the school land project. He brought the Lu Jia brothers, Lu Jia and Lu Yi, to inspect the school land.

Wang Ci led the remaining few tenant households of the school land, including the Lu brothers’ father, Lu Da—he was the head of the school land, a sort of semi-manager, though he looked no better than the others. These ten or so people waited at the edge of the field to respectfully welcome the arrival of this “chief.”

Wu Nanhai exchanged pleasantries with Wang Ci. Instructor Wang was a scholar, after all. Although he couldn’t speak Mandarin, he could manage a broken Cantonese. The two of them, through a combination of speaking and gesturing, managed to communicate without a translator.

This was the first time Wang Ci had seen a “Kun bandit” leader up close. Seeing that the man had a proper appearance and a kind face, not the ferocious villain he had imagined, a stone was finally lifted from his heart.

“We will have to trouble Mr. Wu this time,” Wang Ci made a bow. “Farming is no small matter, and the quality of the school land is crucial to the literary spirit of Lincheng…”

“I understand,” Wu Nanhai said with a smile. “You can rest assured, there will be a good harvest in the autumn!”

Wang Ci thought to himself that this man was boasting as soon as he arrived, without even a single polite remark. Truly an overseas barbarian.

“Then we will have to rely on you all.”

“This is the head of the school land, Lu Da,” Wang Ci called out. “Come and greet Master Wu!”

Lu Da ran over and kowtowed. This was the first time Wu Nanhai had seen his apprentice’s father. He was a small, thin, traditional peasant, his blue homespun clothes in tatters, no better than a beggar.

Wu Nanhai first inspected the condition of the school land. After seeing it, he repeatedly lamented what a pity it was. This school land was much better than the land they had seen at Meitaiyang Plain. It was close to the river, easy to irrigate, and had no waterlogging problems. It was prime land in the local area.

Lu Da respectfully presented the land register. Wu Nanhai couldn’t understand the chicken-scratch-like diagrams and only asked, “How much land is there? How much is irrigated, and how much is dry?”

“To answer your honor, there are three hundred and twenty-six mu and four fen of irrigated land, one hundred and fifteen mu and one fen of dry land, and thirteen mu of garden land.”

“Is there no other land?”

“No more.”

“What do you grow?”

Lu Da reported that the main crop was rice. The dry land was planted with a local variety of millet. Sweet potatoes and peanuts were also grown by some tenants, but not much.

There was a lot of land, but not enough people to farm it. Originally, Lu Da had planned to hire some long-term laborers to cultivate the fallow land. But after calculating, he found that if he hired laborers to plant all the fallow land, he would have to pay more in taxes and grain, and not only would he not make a profit, but he would also lose money. It was better to just let it lie fallow.

The most useful was the garden land: growing some vegetables and then using the pumpkins and other vegetables from the garden to raise pigs allowed these few tenant households to barely survive.

Wu Nanhai now had a clear idea and began to implement his school land transformation plan.

One morning, a group of laborers from the Bairen Commune, carrying tools and pushing the newly produced “Zidian-style” mass-produced wheelbarrows, appeared outside the west gate of the county. A few students studying surveying brought their homemade surveying instruments. Then, amidst the clamor, a branch line began to extend from the Bairen-Lincheng road, leading directly to the west gate of the county town.

Build the road before doing anything else—this was the consistent style of the transmigrator group when it came to practical matters. Lu Da stared dumbfounded at the bustling road construction site. Wasn’t the Heaven and Earth Society supposed to be helping with farming? Why did they build a road to the field first? He had originally thought the Heaven and Earth Society would send some seeds and a few people to give some guidance, but he never expected this.

He quickly brought out all the able-bodied men from the school land tenant households. He saw “Chief Wu” leading the team, with his two sons standing beside him, carrying green satchels. Lu Da was about to kneel and kowtow but was stopped by Wu Nanhai.

“No need for formalities. Gather all the tenant households of the school land. I need to take a census and assign work.”

“All the able-bodied men are here, awaiting the chief’s orders—”

“Bring out the women, the elderly, and the children. Lu Jia, prepare to register them!”

“Yes, sir!” Lu Jia took out a notebook from his satchel.

“I’ll go call them right away,” Lu Da thought, wondering what this was all about. But he didn’t dare to delay and hurried back to a side street near the west gate to call out the families of the tenant households. The elderly, women, and children, not a single one was left behind.

The census revealed a total of seven tenant households, with over forty people, men and women, old and young. They were registered one by one. Then, according to a pre-made plan, Lu Jia assigned work to the people based on their gender and physical condition. Strangely, all the able-bodied men were told to stay behind and wait for instructions.

The road construction team was hard at work. A new work team arrived with tools, vehicles, and livestock. They leveled the land and dug ditches. The messy, crisscrossing field ridges were all removed and replaced with neat, square fields. The simple earthen ditches were transformed into a crisscrossing system of separate irrigation and drainage channels.

Then came herds of cattle. These cattle pulled huge iron and wood agricultural machines. Before the advent of diesel engines and steam engines, large animal-powered agricultural machinery had already appeared in the Americas, with each machine requiring anywhere from four to over a dozen horses. This was the first time Lu Da had seen such large animal-powered agricultural machinery—here, they were pulled by cattle. The sight of a dozen or so cattle lined up in a row, pulling huge machines to deep-plow the land, made many passersby stop and watch, unwilling to leave for a long time.

The entire construction site was as noisy as a hornet’s nest. This large-scale concentration of manpower and resources for agricultural production shook Lu Da to his core:

“You can farm the land like this!” he muttered. He saw his eldest son standing proudly on the field ridge, holding a strange object and gesturing with it. His younger son was holding a wooden tablet, writing something on it. He leaned over to look. The tablet had a large iron clip holding a piece of paper, which was covered with characters and things that looked like chicken scratch—he had heard people say this was called “Arabic numerals,” the numbers used by the Australians. Lu Da didn’t even know the Chinese numerals, but seeing his son writing them so skillfully and occasionally shouting something to the workers, he felt a little sweet in his heart—his boys had made something of themselves! But he also felt a little sour; he, the father, hadn’t made any progress at all…

His thoughts didn’t last long. The able-bodied men of the school land tenant households were led by Lu Yi and all gathered at the Bairen Commune. There, they would undergo a fifteen-day farming training program from the Heaven and Earth Society.

The participants in the training class were not just the tenants from the school land but also other clients participating in the Heaven and Earth Society’s planting promotion plan. According to the notice, each household had to send at least one person and at most three. Most of those who came were the landlords themselves and the strong laborers from their families—many small landlords did their own farming. Fu Bu’er also came to study with his family’s long-term laborer.

Wu Nanhai’s course focused on promoting the planting techniques and field management of common crops. These farming methods were all proven to be effective through long-term practice. He had long discovered that the level of agricultural production technology in Lincheng was extremely low. Many planting techniques and farm tools that were widely used in the Ming Dynasty were nowhere to be seen here. He had once asked the instructor if there were any bookstores selling agricultural books in the local area, and the instructor had actually said there were no bookstores here at all. To buy books, one had to go to the prefectural city at the very least. As for the several important ancient agricultural books, even a well-read scholar like Wang Ci had never heard of the famous “Essential Techniques for the Common People.”

Needless to say, they hadn’t absorbed the advanced achievements of the 17th century, let alone the new agriculture of the 21st century. So, Wu Nanhai’s teaching materials were designed to be simple and easy to learn, combining the advanced agricultural technology of the time, and focusing on the planting techniques of rice, wheat, and sweet potatoes. To use a fashionable phrase, it was “in line with the level of social productivity at the time.”

Obviously, the agricultural department’s strategy of first farming themselves and then promoting after achieving results was the right one. Otherwise, with some of the strange theories Wu Nanhai taught in class, it would be a wonder if these farmers believed him.

While teaching, Wu Nanhai also formulated a planting plan. He did not plan to give these clients too many new crop varieties. In fact, he was inclined to turn them into single-crop farms.

Rice was the main focus of grain production. Wu Nanhai planned to promote a short-stalk, lodging-resistant rice variety in the clients’ fields this year. Based on the climate characteristic that Lincheng’s accumulated temperature in this time and space was lower than in the modern era, he adopted a rice-rice-wheat rotation system.

Although the yield of wheat was not high, it required much less labor for field management compared to rice. Another factor was that many people in the transmigrator group liked pasta. Everyone hoped that the cafeteria could make buns, steamed buns, noodles, and pancakes, which were popular among the masses, every now and then. Finally, the Navy hoped to use baked biscuits instead of strange rice cakes as dry rations for sea voyages in the future.

Next was the sweet potato. He planned to plant this high-yield crop in all the clients’ dry fields to achieve a demonstration and promotion effect as quickly as possible, so that more farmers would accept this crop. With the large-scale production of sweet potatoes, they would have a starch industry, and with a starch industry, they would have a modern food industry. The by-products of both the starch and food industries could be used as feed.

With feed, the scale of the livestock industry could be further expanded. The manure and stable manure produced by the livestock industry could be returned to the fields to provide sufficient nutrients for the soil.

At the same time, the promotion of contract farming was also underway. Based on the principle of voluntary application, Ye Yuming signed breeding agreements with several farming households near Bairen City, loaning them chicks.

The number of people applying to raise chickens was more enthusiastic than expected. It only took 20 eggs to get a chicken, and the Australians would buy all the future eggs. The benefits were quite attractive. Because the value was not large, even for small farmers, it was a risk they could afford to take, even for speculation.

The number of chicks was limited, so only twenty households could receive them in the first batch. The other farmers had to register and wait in line. Ye Yuming thought this was for the best: the promised supply of formulated feed could not be fully implemented yet because the earthworm farming had not yet reached a large scale. Rashly expanding the scale without being able to supply what was promised would seriously damage their reputation.

Ye Yuming completely separated the farming households, basically adopting a model of one household per village, spreading them out along the main agricultural areas on both banks of the Wenlan River. This was to achieve a better demonstration effect. At the same time, he also planned to use these farming households as agricultural technology teaching points in each village in the future.

In addition to the intensive promotion project, the Ministry of Agriculture was also working on high-yield fields here. Wu Nanhai was torn between two tasks and simply entrusted the matter of the high-yield fields entirely to Fa Shilu. Everyone was extremely busy. However, as a result, the planned pesticide factory was left unattended. After careful consideration, Wu Nanhai decided to jointly establish the pesticide factory with the Ministry of Health, creating the Agricultural Pharmaceutical Factory. In addition to producing local pesticides, it was also responsible for manufacturing veterinary drugs.

After the fifteen-day training was over, Wu Nanhai announced that everyone could return to their villages to prepare their farm tools and fields. The corresponding “agricultural technicians” would soon go to the countryside to provide specific guidance.

The crowd was already confused by the content of the class. Since most of them were illiterate and couldn’t take notes, they were worried about not remembering everything. Hearing that someone would come to their door to provide guidance, they couldn’t help but let out a sigh of praise.

“You don’t have to pay for the on-site technicians. These are all included in your service fee. You will provide them with food and lodging, but they will pay for their own meals.”

Hearing that the on-site technicians would pay for their own meals, everyone felt it was inappropriate. Someone said:

“That won’t do. Even for a long-term laborer, the master has to provide meals. There’s no need to pay for the meals.”

“A technician eats three meals a day, half a jin of rice per meal…”

“Even if they eat a whole jin, we can afford it.”

“One chicken a day, or if there’s no chicken, a fish will do, a one-jin fish. And one egg a day…”

The people who had been enthusiastically offering to provide free meals fell silent. Only Liu Youren from Jialai said:

“No problem, my family can afford that.”

“Landlord Liu, of course your family can afford it,” someone said sourly.

Wu Nanhai could now understand a little Lincheng dialect. He took a few extra glances at the person who had declared he could “afford it.” He saw that this man was only in his thirties, with a strong build, dressed no differently from the local peasants, but his clothes were not torn or patched, neat and clean. He wore a pair of blue cloth shoes on his feet, covered in mud. Wu Nanhai knew that peasants in the old days rarely wore cloth shoes—they wore out easily in the fields. They usually went barefoot or wore straw sandals. They would bring a pair of shoes when they went to the city, put them on when they entered, and take them off when they left. Someone who was so careless with his shoes must be a rich and carefree master. He also saw that he had a mottled bamboo pipe tucked into his belt, with a white jade pendant hanging from it.

He casually flipped through the personal information. Liu Youren was from Jialai Village and had reported having over three hundred mu of land. However, the Intelligence Committee told him that Liu Youren did not actually live in Jialai Village, but in a fortified village a few miles outside the village. He was a typical local tyrant who had fortified his village for self-protection. The entire Liu Family Village had at least five or six thousand mu of land. Liu Youren’s participation in the Heaven and Earth Society was probably a way of testing the waters.

[Note: Moli Xuan is the most famous historical site in Lincheng, founded in the second year of the Shaoxing era of the Southern Song Dynasty. In the eighteenth year of the Shaoxing era, Hu Quan, a member of the Hanlin Academy, was demoted to Jiyang Prefecture, which is now Sanya. On his way, he passed through Lincheng, and the county magistrate, Xie Wo, hired him to teach at the academy for over a year. A few years later, a local student, Dai Dingshi, passed the provincial examination, becoming the first “juren” in the history of Lincheng. Moli Xuan holds a very high status among the local scholars.]