Chapter 369: Village Consolidation and Settlement (Part 2)

It didn’t take much effort to promote the “village consolidation and settlement” or, as the propaganda department called it, the “New Life” campaign. Compared to the Ming Dynasty, there was no middle class on Jeju Island under the Joseon Dynasty: only masters and slaves. The few so-called commoners were mostly highly dependent tenant farmers, whose lives were only marginally better than those of the slaves.

For them, there was no concept of being reluctant to leave their homeland. The land, houses, and villages were not their own. They only had a place to shelter from the wind and rain and to sleep. Now, someone was telling them: “Work, and as long as you work, you will have a new house to live in.” This house would be even better than the ones the masters lived in—this alone was enough to move them.

In front of the impressive architectural rendering display boards, crowds of native Koreans gathered, greedily looking at the villages, houses, and surrounding fields and pastures on the panels, letting out disbelieving gasps from time to time. Just a house with a tiled roof was unbelievable to them. Many of these people had not lived in a house with a tiled roof for generations. They had lived with random stone walls and thatched roofs, generation after generation. A picture of a new life was slowly unfolding before their eyes.

Because the blueprint was drawn too beautifully, many found it hard to believe. But for them, there was nothing to lose. It couldn’t get any worse. In the past, they worked for their masters and landlords. At worst, the Ao-Song would be just another master and landlord. If they were to work for them, they would still be given a broken thatched hut and coarse grain rice.

Under the command of the Fubo Army soldiers sent by the Australians, the former tenant farmers and private slaves of Master Kim in the Suwon-dong area were organized into the Suwon-dong Labor Service Corps according to gender and age. To overcome the shortage of cadres, Feng Zongze, after discussing with Xue Ziliang, decided to dispatch a portion of the Fubo Army soldiers to serve as temporary cadres.

Suwon-dong, as the central base for “security strengthening” and the future main garrison for the cavalry and transport corps training teams, had a large number of troops stationed there at all times. Most of the soldiers of the northern detachment who came to Jeju Island had enlisted before the second anti-encirclement campaign and had served for at least a year and a half. They could roughly read and write, do some simple calculations, and had strong discipline, execution, and communication skills, far superior to the local collaborator cadres. They were capable of handling basic civil administration work when they were not on combat missions.

The Labor Service Corps began to demolish the deserted villages and then, under the guidance of the Ao-Song construction workers, used the salvaged building materials to build their own temporary camps. This type of dwelling was the “horse shed” of the northeast, a simple shack. Although it was not very sturdy and was drafty, it was sufficient as a transitional building for a few months. Moreover, it was now spring, and the temperature would be getting higher, so there was no need to consider warmth. As for the old, weak, women, and children, they were placed in the purification camp in Jeju City to do some odd jobs.

The Labor Service Corps, composed of able-bodied young men and women, worked hard on the construction site in Suwon-dong. The collaborator cadres selected from the labor service corps of the three cities of Jeju, Daejeong, and Jeongui, holding large clubs, patrolled the construction site. As the first batch of local people to “follow the dragon,” they were considered relatively “reliable.” So, a batch was selected to serve as “overseers” here.

Feng Zongze was in charge at the temporary engineering command post in Master Kim’s estate. Except for a few better master’s rooms and warehouses that were reserved for offices and dormitories, most of the estate had been demolished. Feng Zongze had originally hoped to find some hidden treasures and supplies from the demolition of the houses. The Planning Commission’s pamphlet, Notes on Special Search Work, had mentioned that the residences of large households often had secret rooms and underground cellars containing a large amount of wealth and supplies, and it even listed many different secret storage methods for reference.

But there was nothing in Master Kim’s estate. Feng Zongze’s dream of making a fortune was completely shattered.

“I didn’t expect this place to be so poor! If it weren’t for the horses and cattle, it would have been a huge loss,” Feng Zongze muttered.

The temporary engineering command post was set up in a pavilion in the estate. It was called a pavilion, but it actually had long windows on all four sides, and when closed, it was a small room. Now Feng Zongze had someone open three sides, and the spring breeze, carrying the fragrance of grass and wildflowers, blew in, making him feel refreshed.

Looking down from here, the original few small villages had been razed to the ground. Below the hillside was the neatly built “transitional camp.” Although it was very simple, its uniform shape and neat roads gave it a sense of orderly beauty.

On the construction site, the members of the Labor Service Corps were working like ants. Vehicles flowed in an endless stream, and red flags fluttered on all four sides. Several main facilities were under construction at the same time. Many people were also working in the newly opened quarry not far away, and the clanging sound of quarrying could be heard from time to to time with the wind.

What was different from other places was that there were a large number of cattle and horses participating in the work here, which greatly improved the work efficiency, especially in road construction and land leveling. The outline of the first standard village on Jeju Island had already begun to emerge.

According to the plan of the “New Administrative Demonstration Zone,” a network of standard villages was to be established on Jeju Island. Ji Runzhi completed the planning and detailed design of the standard villages according to Wen Zong’s ideas. In general, the concept of a standard village was based on a high degree of division of labor, divided into farming villages, sideline villages, and pastoral villages. However, in a general environment, such a high degree of division of labor was difficult to achieve. Jeju Island could be considered a special case. Its own highly animal husbandry-based economic structure and sparse population made this plan feasible.

In an ideal state, the size of a standard agricultural village’s buildings and cultivated land would be 1350m x 1350m, divided into 9x9, a total of 81 grids of 150m x 150m (including roads and other facilities).

The cultivated land was divided into two parts, each with 38 grids. Each grid had about 2.2 hectares of land, which was rotated by the 38 households in the village. For the sake of fairness, each family should have one piece of land that was farther away and one that was closer. One piece would be used for planting grain, and the other for planting fodder crops or green manure. The village itself was in the center, occupying one grid.

The village itself was a square surrounded by four rows of buildings. Each side wall, like a Hakka walled village, was also the residence of the villagers. The windows of all the houses opened inwards. The houses were all two-story buildings, and if building materials were easy to obtain or necessary, they could also be built as three-story buildings. Ten households were arranged on each side. The middle part of one side was arranged with a gate and a village office, occupying about two households’ space. Each corner of the walled village had a protruding corner tower, which mainly served for public storage, observation, and defense. The ground floor of one of the corner towers was arranged with toilets, and below the toilets was a biogas digester. The main purpose of the biogas digester was not to obtain biogas—the biogas produced by the feces and domestic sewage of more than a hundred people was not enough for daily fuel and could only be used for public lighting.

The role of the biogas digester was to treat wastewater and excrement harmlessly. The treated wastewater was discharged into the irrigation channels through culverts. As for the biogas slurry, it was a good fertilizer after regular cleaning.

The open space in the middle of the village was where the well and the threshing ground were located. This took up a total of 77 grids. The remaining 4 grids were used to arrange the road connecting the village to the main road, and on both sides were arranged blacksmith shops and other public buildings that were not suitable to be placed in the village. If the environment permitted, the hills around the village should be protected to provide fuel and for planting cash crops.

The threshing ground in the middle of the village, besides being used for threshing and as a gathering place for the villagers, also served as a resting place for passing Fubo Army and Public Security Army soldiers. The village was mainly for production, not defense.

With grain reserves and matchlocks, this type of village could effectively resist all cold-weapon-wielding bandits. After being garrisoned by at most one battalion of regular troops, this village would be a fortress that no native force could take.

This system could also be used in areas with animal husbandry or cash crop cultivation, but with adjustments in land allocation and public buildings. For example, this under-construction Suwon-dong No. 1 Pastoral Village, affiliated with the State-owned Jeju First Livestock Farm, did not have a per-household cultivated land arrangement. There were only a few public cultivated lands for planting a small amount of coarse grains and vegetables. In the several standard village pilot projects carried out in Hainan, due to land ownership restrictions, the land allocation of the standard villages was not ideally configured according to this plan.

The population of a standard village, under ideal conditions, should have 1-1.5 males and females for each age group under 60, totaling about 150 people. According to the arrangements of modern Canadian Puritans, a village should be divided once it exceeds 200 people, as internal affairs become difficult to coordinate.

In a stable environment, the population gradually increases. Under the Lingao system, these surplus personnel would be transported to new areas arranged by the Senate, or absorbed into factories, the army, and schools.

Each standard village would not exceed two hundred people, which strictly limited the scale of the village. Each agricultural standard village could provide several tons of grain and one or two exported personnel each year, while also accepting retired personnel. It could serve as a post station along the way. As for its role in destroying the clan system—even without any administrative intervention, the largest clan that could be formed under this system would not exceed one village. Moreover, the knowledge of the outgoing personnel and the support they received from the system meant that after a period of time, the people with the right to speak in the village would definitely be retired soldiers or retired old workers.

Enlarged to a larger system, the standard villages in each region would form a network connected by roads. The distance between standard villages would depend on the specific local conditions, generally at least 2 kilometers. In the absence of telephones or wired telegraphs, emergency contact could be made through beacon signals. With multiple standard villages reasonably spaced, the local area would be completely under control. Any slightly larger non-system native group would not be able to pass through or survive.