Chapter 273: Surveying the Land

“If there are errors in the accounts, they can be temporarily suspended for investigation. As long as it’s not intentional, it can be forgiven,” Wu De instructed Zhou Botao. “If anyone continues to defy the new regulations and play these tricks, send them directly to the labor reform camp.”

With a series of measures in place, not only were the common people satisfied, but the speed of grain collection was also greatly accelerated. Although the reforms in the grain tax were not large in scope, they were all practical and benefited the people. The prestige of the Transmigration Group increased significantly. The Executive Committee was also very satisfied with Wu De’s work.

But the most difficult part was yet to come.

“The work of surveying the land will begin immediately,” Wu De announced at the meeting. “This task is more difficult and complicated than all the previous ones.”

First, they had to deal with the resistance of the landowners, especially the large ones. Second, they had to be mentally prepared for the chaotic land ownership system of the ancient era.

“…We have the fish-scale registers, Chen Minggang’s private accounts, and the confessions of the grain collectors and clerks, but all this is still not enough. These account books only give us a number. Where are these lands located? What is their area? It’s very unclear, and there are a large number of errors—this requires us to investigate and verify them one by one.”

From the social surveys and the reports from the Heaven and Earth Society’s rural guidance work, they knew that a landowner’s land was not a single, contiguous piece. It was mostly divided into small, scattered plots—especially in the areas around the county town and along the Wenlan River, where agriculture had developed earlier. It was by no means easy to clarify this.

Students were drawn from the National School and given unified training on how to conduct surveys and draw maps. Umbrella Shop Xiao Hu was brought out from the study class. The lame grain collector was so dejected he could barely stand. Wu De asked him a simple question:

“Do you want to get out?” Wu De said. “You won’t be treated unfairly! Look at Zhou Qi. There are benefits to following us!”

So Xiao Hu immediately started working for the Transmigration Group. His first task was to participate in the land survey.

“Work hard.”

According to the plan, the land survey was divided into three stages. The period before the end of 1629 was the declaration stage. Re-registration would be carried out in the name of exchanging for new deeds. An order was also issued: for those who failed to register by the deadline, their old deeds would be declared void, and their land ownership would immediately become invalid.

The second step was the verification stage. The land survey teams would go to the countryside to verify the declarations of each household, correct the data, and at the same time, draw maps and register the land.

The final stage was to re-issue land deeds based on the verified situation. This would then serve as the basis for implementing the new tax system. The entire survey was expected to be completed before May 1630.

Through this unprecedented large-scale land survey, Wu De also planned to conduct a simultaneous population and property registration, and to identify all the residential points in the county—the long-range reconnaissance team was constantly discovering small villages not recorded in the yamen’s records during their explorations. They wanted to get a clear picture of Lin’gao’s human and material resources as much as possible.

In addition to using manual census methods, Wu De also planned to make extensive use of technology—especially aerial remote sensing. No matter where the fields and residential points were hidden, they would all be clearly visible from the air.

Wang Ruixiang had brought a large model airplane and a remote-controlled helicopter from the United States. These two extremely precious items had been carefully stored in the Planning Committee’s top-level controlled equipment warehouse. The entire “air force” of the Transmigration Group consisted of just these two items.

The helicopter was not very useful, and because its consumables were super expensive, Wang Ruixiang hadn’t bought many spare parts. The large model airplane had many more spare parts. This airplane was very large and could carry a considerable weight of equipment, making it perfectly usable as a reconnaissance drone.

“If I had known, I would have gotten a CJ-6,” Jiang Hongjun said with regret, watching Wang Ruixiang assemble the plane. “It’s easy to fly and very durable.”

“Buying a real plane is too much trouble,” Wang Ruixiang shook his head repeatedly. “The paperwork alone would kill you! I think it’s a loss that the guys from the North American branch didn’t buy an ultralight aircraft. The assembly difficulty of that kind of plane is not much greater than a model airplane.”

“But this is already very powerful,” Wang Ruixiang said. “It’s just that the wind in Lin’gao is quite strong, and this thing is too sensitive to the wind. If the main structure gets broken, it’s all over.”

“Actually, we can build airplanes,” Jiang Hongjun proposed. “Simple airplanes don’t require much advanced technology. Weren’t the early airplanes also made of bamboo and wood with an engine? We have small motorcycle engines, and we can make a propeller or something to get it started!”

“Zhong Lishi and Wang Luobin are both very interested in aircraft. We should talk to them sometime…”

Before he could finish, someone came to urge him: “The survey team is about to set off, hurry up!”

“I’ll be right there!”

Wang Ruixiang’s airplane was carefully mounted on a fixed frame, which also served as a launcher. It used a rubber band to launch it into the air. After the frame and the airplane were combined, they were lifted onto an ox-cart. Then, the “aviation ox-cart” set off to the countryside to conduct land remote sensing, guarded by a team of native soldiers.

The land survey was carried out in an orderly manner under Wu De’s command. To save time, he adopted the method of registering and surveying at the same time. While waiting for the natives to “self-declare,” he began to conduct a preliminary survey of the land situation in one district after another, first getting a rough idea of how much cultivated land, wasteland, and population settlements there were in each area. This work relied on two things: the work teams going to the countryside for on-site surveys, and the clearing of archives. The archive cleaning team dispatched by the Great Library first cleaned up and registered the land registration archives of the entire county.

In the Ming Dynasty, there were numerous types of cultivated land, mainly related to land use and origin. The system was complex, and even an experienced old clerk might not be able to fully understand it. Wu De decided to ignore it all for now and first clarify the land ownership situation. The cleaning team quickly clarified the situation of the “official land” in the county. The result was not unexpected. The data calculated from the original materials did not match the accounts of the Household Office at all.

“Just the number of official lands is far from the accounts of the Household Office. It’s less than half.”

“This bunch of clerks is really corrupt.”

“It’s not entirely the clerks’ problem. It’s common for official land to be lost over time. Sometimes it’s occupied by tenant farmers, sometimes by local tyrants. And sometimes it’s sold off… There are all sorts of problems, very difficult to solve,” the person in charge of the cleanup reported.

“With these original documents, we can recover the official land and allocate it all to the Agriculture Committee!”

“Recovering official land is legitimate, but it’s very difficult,” Yu E’shui objected. “After so many years, the people who have been cultivating it have long regarded it as their own land. Now someone comes along with an old deed from hundreds of years ago and says this land is mine. Would you be happy if it were you?”

“Hmm, that’s true.”

“Also, this land may have changed hands many times over the past hundred years, and we have no evidence to prove that the current landowners are illegal occupants. So we can only adopt the policy of recognizing the established facts and not waste any more effort on clearing it up—it’s not worth it and we’ll lose the people’s support.”

“That makes sense. We’ll just manage the existing official land well for now,” Wu De thought for a moment. “Let’s just issue new land deeds for these lands to make it official.”

Dingding was also called to the leadership group office. Besides running the newspaper, he was now focusing his main energy on cultural propaganda. The local mass cultural and recreational activities were very poor, which was a good opportunity to use cultural propaganda to occupy the ideological front. The circulation of the “Lin’gao Times” had already exceeded the Green Zone, and more and more local natives were realizing the importance of this newspaper. In addition to local retail and complimentary copies, long-term subscribers had also appeared—mainly the local large households, who were eager to grasp the direction of the Australians’ policies.

The Propaganda Department also recruited all the people in the county who could be called “artists,” including monks who could chant scriptures, Taoist priests who could sing Taoist songs, and the musicians who were hired for weddings and funerals in the villages. They were all registered and trained. These people were ready to go to the countryside to conduct propaganda activities at any time according to instructions.

However, the biggest gain was the discovery of several Lin’gao puppet show artists during the social survey. This was a treasure for Dingding—the Lin’gao puppet show was a famous local drama with Hainan characteristics. He had always wondered why he couldn’t find a puppet troupe in Lin’gao. Now he knew that this performance form was still in its early stages.

Dingding keenly seized this opportunity. Under his “care,” the Lin’gao Puppet Troupe was established—this was the first professional performance group with a salary established by the Transmigration Group. In the past, the artists were all farmers who only performed in the market during their spare time to earn a little extra money. Although they were very popular with the common people, they only performed a few shows a year. Now they could devote themselves to performing.

He invested a lot in the Lin’gao Puppet Troupe—building a small theater for both performances and rehearsals, and building dedicated dormitories for the actors. These puppeteers were just poor farmers with many children who relied on their ancestral skills to earn a little extra money. They were not respected in society and were often on the verge of starvation. Now the Australians valued them so much, directly recruiting them as employees, giving them monthly salaries and housing, and even providing them with new puppets and costumes for their performances, including all sorts of novelties from Australia. They were all extremely grateful to Dingding.

In Dingding’s view, this was just the most basic infrastructure investment. His ambitions were much greater. He was not satisfied with just one “Lin’gao Times.” His goal was to become the media mogul of the future empire. Of course, not a decadent capitalist mogul like Murdoch, but a media mogul with political power.

Dingding not only provided the troupe with new performance equipment but also showed them videos of the Minnan glove puppetry. The actors were amazed that puppet shows could be performed like this.

Sometimes, opening a window for people can trigger infinite creativity. The level of this performance group soon improved by leaps and bounds. Dingding also found a scholar for them to be in charge of playwriting.