Chapter 282: The Census and the Rounding Up of Vagrants

The Fu Yousan family was severely punished. Not only was the entire estate—including the land, grain, livestock, and population—confiscated, but an equal area of the Fu family’s land was also confiscated. The richest man in the village was reduced to less than fifty mu of land, just enough for a middle peasant.

Fu Yousan went mad not long after—his property was gone, and with it, his patriarchal authority collapsed. The resentment that his three sons had accumulated over the years all erupted. Now that there was no longer any possibility of inheriting property, no one paid any attention to Fu Yousan’s patriarchal style. Fu Er Zhuang and San Zhuang simply took their wives and children and left Meiyang Village to become workers in Bairen City. Fu Yizhuang left him alone in the backyard, providing only food and drink and ignoring him otherwise.

The biggest beneficiary of this survey was Fu Bu’er. The fall of the Fu Yousan family made him the richest man in the village. Not only that, but Wang Ruixiang, according to Wu De’s instructions, wanted to appropriately support a new vested interest group in the village as the cornerstone of the new regime. A small rural landlord like Fu Bu’er, who was willing to accept new things and had a strong enterprising spirit, was a suitable target to win over. Therefore, he expressed great appreciation for Fu Bu’er. Not only did he accept his banquet, but he also announced at the banquet that the county yamen would send him a plaque for “observing the law and serving the public,” which made Fu Bu’er’s face flush with excitement—not to mention that no one in the village had ever received such an honor, even in the entire county, few had enjoyed it.

In addition to the honor, a more practical thing was that Wang Ruixiang gave him a special permit, exempting him from the Heaven and Earth Society’s service fee for one year.

Fu Bu’er’s status in the village immediately rose greatly. The villagers saw him as the Australian’s agent in the village, and he soon became a person whose word was law. Of course, he also became one of the most loyal running dogs of the Transmigration Group.

The subsequent survey work in the nearby villages was much easier: the news of what happened in Meiyang Village spread quickly. Now everyone knew that the Australians had flying “iron birds” and “thousand-mile eyes” that could see everything. Many people who had concealed their land during the declaration were restless.

Wang Ruixiang did not miss the opportunity to send people everywhere to publicize the “surrender” policy. Any household that had concealed land during the self-declaration stage, as long as they came to the work team to “surrender” in time, could receive “leniency for confession.” If they were found out during the investigation, not only would the concealed land be confiscated, but they would also be confiscated double.

As soon as this news spread, the households who came to the work team’s station to “surrender” were endless. Wang Ruixiang was very satisfied with this effect. Now he no longer had to go out and roar at those poor worms—it was very mentally exhausting, and he had another thing to do—the census.

How many people were there in Lin’gao County? This was a question that no one in the county could answer clearly. According to the county’s Yellow Registers found in the Household Office, there were 6,231 registered households, of which 4,795 were civilian households, and the rest were military households, miscellaneous service households, horse station households, and so on. They bore different taxes and labor services. The total population was 33,282, of which men accounted for more than two-thirds, and women only numbered over four thousand.

This figure was hard for the members of the Executive Committee to believe. It was a fact that the local population was not dense, but from what everyone usually saw, it was definitely not so sparse. Obviously, there were a large number of “hidden households.”

Wu De specially called Zhou Qi for consultation. Zhou Qi told them that their guess was not wrong. There were indeed many “hidden households,” and the purpose was nothing more than to evade taxes and labor services. As for the population figures, the county yamen was a complete mess. The figures published in the Yellow Registers were still from the statistics of the seventh year of the Zhengde reign.

“Since the implementation of the Single Whip Law in the Wanli reign, when the grain tax was collected and delivered by the government and no longer handled by the lijia,” Zhou Qi explained, “the Yellow Registers have long been useless. It was said that they were revised every ten years, and later every year, but this thing could not be used to collect taxes or to levy corvee labor, so every year the Household Office just copied the previous numbers and made an estimate. You see—” he casually flipped through the later volumes for Wu De. There was even a Yellow Register for the tenth year of the Tianqi reign. It was obviously “pre-fabricated.” This style of doing things and the concept of work made Wu De laugh. It seemed that many malpractices were indeed passed down from one generation to another.

“So that’s how it is,” Wu De nodded. “It’s better to restore the Yellow Registers now.”

“Yes, yes,” Zhou Qi agreed, wondering in his heart, what’s the use of restoring the Yellow Registers? This thing has long been a mere formality.

With his knowledge, Zhou Qi could not yet grasp the importance of a census. And another important system of the Transmigration Group, the household registration system, also had to be built on the basis of a census. The household registration system of the Ming Dynasty was once very strict, but by this time it had collapsed into a mess. The Transmigration Group planned to transplant the effective system from another time and place here.

To implement the new household registration system, it was necessary to establish a grassroots administrative system. This was a long-term project that would consume a lot of manpower and resources. In order to grasp the county’s population situation as soon as possible and promote the next step of the population development plan, the Executive Committee decided not to promote the household registration system throughout the county for the time being, but to conduct a census first. For this purpose, they created a population card system, registering individuals. The card only registered name, date of birth, gender, education level, ethnicity, occupation, and place of residence. Each card had a unique 12-digit number, which also provided a basis for the future implementation of an ID card system. There was originally a plan to paste photos on the cards, but it was not yet possible to print photos for so many people, so fingerprint collection was used instead. Based on the collected cards, a population register would be compiled by village for reference.

The census of Meiyang Village and the nearby villages was about to be completed. With the prestige of the “iron bird” and the “thousand-mile eye,” this census went very smoothly, and no one dared to evade registration. Everyone was saying that if you didn’t register and were seen by the thousand-mile eye, you would be taken to “labor reform.”

The thousand-mile eye actually saw other things—in the aerial reconnaissance to investigate the hidden fields of Meiyang Village, Wang Ruixiang also found other things on the images: scattered temporary shacks and small plots of land in the depths of the hills. He even saw a man in rags, with disheveled hair, looking up with his mouth wide open in astonishment in one photo.

“There are vagrants. It’s really not easy, living in such a hidden place,” Wang Ruixiang said to himself, drawing a distribution map of the shacks on the map. He would give it to Huang Ande to lead a team to “catch the vagrants.”

The so-called “catching the vagrants” was another matter in the census. Vagrants referred to two types of people in the county. One was the immigrant vagrants who lived scattered in the mountains and wilds, reclaiming a small piece of wasteland to live on. These vagrants mostly came from the coastal areas of Fujian and Guangdong, and some from Vietnam. To escape the government’s taxes and labor services, they lived scattered in the remote hilly and mountainous areas, cultivating a small piece of land to grow a small amount of crops for a living. They lived in rags and were barely fed, just managing to get by. When there was an opportunity, they would also go to nearby villages to steal or form gangs to rob.

The other type was the so-called “hooligans” commonly found in various villages. This kind of person existed in slightly larger villages. They were mostly idle, living by petty theft. Some also colluded with bandits to carry out “big business” such as robbery and kidnapping.

The Transmigration Group believed that letting them continue like this was first a waste of labor, and second, a factor of social instability. Therefore, during the census, a unified action was taken to accommodate and arrest both types of people. The former were sent to the commune after being “purified” according to the procedures for immigrants, while the latter were sent to the labor reform camp for forced labor.

“There are really a lot of ‘black people’,” Wang Ruixiang thought, looking at the scattered marks on the map. How many more such settlements were there? Some settlements had been discovered during the reconnaissance operations of the long-range reconnaissance team and the special reconnaissance team, but the undiscovered ones were definitely the majority. And the number of population cards registered in Meiyang Village was already nearly eighty more than the number in the county yamen’s Household Office—there were hundreds of villages in the county, who knows how many more such black households there would be? It seemed that the population potential of Lin’gao was far from being tapped.

“We must ensure that not a single one is missed,” Wang Ruixiang stared at Huang Ande’s face. “You only have ten people. You must not alarm others during the arrest, otherwise it will be troublesome to catch them if they run away. Understand?”

“Yes!” Huang Ande replied loudly. He already had a draft on how to arrest people—the raid tactic. When he was a soldier in the Ming army, he had heard from soldiers who had been to Liaodong: the first thing they feared was field battles, and the second was being on night watch. Staying on a watchtower in the dark, the Tartars would sneak up and raid, and they would either be beheaded or captured alive.

In the NCO training class, he had mastered new weapons and tactics that neither the Ming army nor the Tartars had. Huang Ande was now ready to try his hand and see how the Australian raid tactics really were.

After receiving the order, Huang Ande gathered his soldiers. He was now just a squad leader, and his deputy squad leader was his old partner, Qian Duo. Qian Duo’s ability was mediocre, and he was at the passing level in all aspects. Thanks to the continuous expansion of the army, he had also become a corporal deputy squad leader by seniority.

Holding a pre-battle meeting before the action, deploying tasks, discussing details, and boosting morale—this was the rule in the Australian army. Huang Ande originally thought it was superfluous—soldiers only needed to hold their swords and guns and charge forward in formation.

He found that the Australian army particularly encouraged the “subjective initiative” of soldiers and junior officers. While emphasizing obedience to orders and discipline, it also required them to have their own views on how to fight better and the ability to deal with various unexpected situations.

Over time, he began to appreciate the benefits of this—in any situation, the soldiers would know what they should do, instead of being dumbfounded or scattering in all directions.