Chapter 152: The Sericulturist

After settling the matter, Zhao Yigong immediately instructed someone to return to the estate. He ordered them to go to the leaf firms around Hangzhou to buy “shaoye.” As for the fifty thousand taels of silver, he also had someone prepare a Delong bank draft. He realized that the advice he had given the prefect would inevitably cause a great stir in Hangzhou. However, the public’s anger would no longer be directed at him. He just had to wait to receive the raw silk and cocoons from the famine relief bureau.

Shen Kaibao stood at the stern of his boat, rowing listlessly. It was noon, and there was not a breath of wind. The willow branches on the causeway hung lazily over the water.

It was already past the Qingming solar term, but the leaves on the willow branches had only just begun to unfold a little. The tender green, slightly yellowish leaves seemed unable to withstand the early spring chill, curling up and refusing to unfurl.

Seeing these listless new leaves, Shen Kaibao felt a chill run down his spine. He was wearing a tattered cotton-padded jacket, made more than ten years ago in a good year. Since then, the years had never seemed to be good.

The weather grew colder year by year. Shen Kaibao still remembered that when he was young, the branches were full of green leaves by Qingming, and he had to wear a thin padded jacket to go out rowing and farming. Now, it was snowing in March, and he still couldn’t take off his cotton-padded jacket after Qingming.

“The heavens have truly changed!” Shen Kaibao thought to himself, coughed, and spat a thick wad of phlegm into the river. The river water was cold and gloomy, making one shiver just by looking at it.

The fist-sized branches were already sprouting tender green leaves no bigger than a fingernail. Both sides of the causeway were now densely covered with mulberry trees. Last year’s drought had lasted from June to October, with not a drop of rain. The farmers were anxious. Fortunately, Jiangnan had many rivers and ponds. Families with a large labor force and cattle could still manage to farm by desperately pedaling water wheels. Shen Kaibao had personally seen a man from a neighboring village, with thighs as thick as tree stumps, vomit blood from exhaustion on a water wheel and die after being carried home.

As for families with a weak labor force, without well-dug ditches, or far from rivers and ponds, they were truly helpless. They could only watch as their flowering rice paddies withered and turned into dry straw. In the autumn, when the grain tax collectors and stewards came, they were forced to pay their taxes and rent, selling their houses and land. Those who couldn’t pay the iron-clad rent and the imperial grain tax even after selling their wives and children were ruined, their families broken. Some abandoned their tenancies and fled, others jumped into the river or hanged themselves…

Shen Kaibao was no stranger to such things, but they had become more common and terrifying in recent years. Before and after the New Year, whenever he went out in his boat, he would often see floating corpses in the river, both adults and children. He knew they were people who couldn’t go on and had drowned themselves. Some families he had once thought were “well-off” had now fallen to such a state. The oil and salt shop in town where he used to buy things had suddenly closed down this year. When Shen Kaibao went there today, he saw dozens of people surrounding the boarded-up shop, wailing and cursing. They were all families who had deposited money in the shop, hoping for some interest. He heard that the shopkeeper had committed suicide because of bad business and creditors at his door.

Seeing all this, Shen Kaibao felt he was still lucky. Last year’s raw silk market was good, and his family had managed to survive on the income from raw silk, avoiding such a fate. But even so, he had to mortgage his few mu of mulberry land to Master Cao in town to get rid of the fierce grain tax collectors.

Master Cao was the “richest man” in town. Because he had passed the county-level imperial examination in his early years, he had taken on the responsibility of collecting taxes in the vicinity. He also lent money to the villagers from time to time, with an interest rate a half or a full point lower than the usual. He was also polite to the villagers. For weddings and funerals, the farmers who had dealings with him would contribute a small amount of money, and the whole family could go and “eat meat rice.” Everyone said that Master Cao was a benevolent man.

Benevolent or not, over the past twenty years, his family had grown more and more prosperous. The number of farmers who couldn’t repay his money and had to sell their land to him was increasing. Master Cao had also become a landlord with several hundred mu of land. Besides planting mulberry trees, he had also obtained a “license” and started a raw silk business in town, and his family’s business was flourishing.

The thought of having to repay the principal and interest to Master Cao before the Mid-Autumn Festival troubled him endlessly. If this year’s “silkworm harvest” was good, he might be able to repay the money. If not, he could only ask Master Cao for an “extension.” But with the monthly interest of two and a half percent compounding month after month, it would become increasingly difficult to pay it off. In the end, he would have to give his land to Master Cao to settle the debt.

Thinking of this, he could only pray to the Silkworm Goddess to open her eyes and grant him a good silkworm harvest, so that he could smoothly repay his debt to Master Cao and let the villagers breathe a sigh of relief.

However, before this thought was finished, he remembered that he had to arrange a wedding for Sanqing by the end of the year. Sanqing was already twenty-three, and to be without a wife at this age was to be laughed at in the countryside. The matchmaker had told him about a suitable girl from a neighboring village, and he and his wife also liked her. But where would the betrothal gift and the wedding expenses come from?

As he thought about it, an endless stream of burdens weighed on his mind. The life of a farmer was truly bitter, he sighed. There was never a moment of respite. He was already over fifty. Although he could still row a boat and work in the fields at this age, he was already halfway to the grave. The life of a farmer was hard, and to live past fifty was already a good long life. After a few more years of struggle, he would be gone, and nothing would matter. But Aqing and Sanqing still had long lives ahead of them.

Some of the rice paddies had already been plowed, exposing cracked clods of earth. But large swathes of paddies remained untouched. The farmers who had cultivated these lands had either fled or starved to death. Many others wanted to plant but had no seeds and no cattle. They could only look at their fields and sigh.

In contrast to the desolate rice paddies, the large mulberry groves seemed full of life. Although the tender leaves were only the size of a fingernail now, it wouldn’t be long before a large number of new leaves sprouted on these mulberry trees. When the white silkworms went up the mountain, his life would be a little easier again. The raw silk market had been good these years, and his family had their own mulberry trees. If the sericulture season went smoothly, he might be able to pay off Master Cao’s debt and have some money left over. As for Sanqing’s wedding, he would take it one step at a time. If it really came to it, he would buy a refugee girl as a wife. Although it was not respectable and she would have no family to speak of, it was cheaper than a proper marriage.

Shen Kaibao calculated as he rowed along, turning into a tributary. The village was there, a cluster of houses in the distance, the village where his family had lived for generations. The rice paddies outside the village, distributed among the crisscrossing canals, had already been plowed. Some were planted with miscellaneous grains. The village he lived in, because most of the households were sericulturists who raised silkworms and reeled silk, had not suffered heavy losses in last year’s drought and could still manage to get by.

Now, white smoke was rising from the chimneys of those houses. Shen Kaibao tied his boat to the river landing in front of his house. In the courtyard in front of the house, the women and children of his family—his wife, daughter-in-law, and grandson—were busy washing the “round trays” and “silkworm baskets.”

These sericulture tools, which had been stored in the woodshed for a year, had to be taken out, washed, and repaired before the hatching season. It was not just his family; in front of every house in the village, women and children were doing the same thing. Their chatter and laughter seemed to add a touch of joy to the cold spring.

However, their faces were all pale. Since last autumn, they had not had a full meal. Some families could barely manage two meals of thin porridge a day and had to supplement with hard-to-swallow bran cakes to fill their stomachs. Their clothes were also tattered, not much better than beggars.

Yet, everyone’s spirits were not bad. The village had not been destroyed in last year’s great disaster. The villagers were grateful and also more determined to continue their path of raising silkworms and reeling silk. As long as the silkworm harvest was good, this difficult year could be overcome. In the current world, it was a great fortune for a family to live peacefully.

As soon as Shen Kaibao returned home, the villagers all came over. Because he had a decent boat and was a relatively “respectable” figure in the village, he also ran a “ferry” on the side. That is, every few days, he would row to town to sell vegetables and local products for the villagers, and buy things that the village could not produce itself, such as oil, salt, soy sauce, vinegar, and farm tools. If someone wanted to go to town, they could also catch a ride.

Last year, because of the disaster, the villagers were very short of money and would not buy anything unless it was absolutely necessary. His “business” was also very slow. But this time he went to town to buy “pasting paper for the baskets,” which was something every household had to use. Everyone also wanted to hear the latest news, so many people came. They formed a circle in Shen Kaibao’s courtyard.

This was also Shen Kaibao’s proudest moment. He was considered the most knowledgeable and well-informed person in the village, and everyone wanted to listen to him. But this time he didn’t hear much news in town. Because he had to save money, he didn’t dare to go into a teahouse to order a bowl of the cheapest tea powder and listen to the “learned” people chat as he used to. He just wandered the streets for a few laps and talked to the shopkeepers he usually dealt with.

The news he brought back was not good: the market was bad, the price of rice had risen to three mace of silver per dou, and even miscellaneous grains were almost one mace. Several more shops in the town had closed down. The cloth in the town’s cloth shop was sold so cheaply, but still not many bolts were sold. The shopkeeper sighed and said he heard that the cloth in Songjiang couldn’t be sold either, and the cotton growers and weavers were all starving and had fled…

“If I had some money, it would be a real bargain to buy a few bolts and store them…” Shen Kaibao was very envious.

“The farmers are all starving to death, where would they get the money to buy cloth?”

“No matter how cheap it is, we can’t afford it.”

“It’s good enough to have something to eat and stay alive. Now we have to endure even if we’re naked.”

“It all depends on this year’s silkworm harvest,” his neighbor Si Duo interjected. “As long as the silkworm harvest is good, it’s no big deal to buy a few bolts of cloth after selling the silk.”