Chapter 19: A Simple Meal

After touring Qiongshan city, the Qiongshan county office hosted a “simple meal” for lunch at the county office.

The office of the Qiongshan county office was located in the “Weapons Bureau” within the Qiongzhou prefectural city. It was originally a place for storing and repairing weapons for Qiongzhou Prefecture. When they took it over, there was nothing inside except a pile of rusty and rotten scrap weapons. But the buildings here were tall, the courtyards were spacious, and there was a well, so it was chosen as the location for the Qiongshan county office.

The “simple meal” was brought over from the county guesthouse in food boxes and was still steaming hot when placed on the table.

The senator who had taken over from Liu Xiang as the director of the Qiongshan office, Fei Si, was very enthusiastic about Yun Suji’s arrival. At the welcome banquet last night, he had said, “You are from the central government, a family member from home.”

Fei Si had been transferred from his position at the Chengmai county office to the Qiongshan county office. Although Qiongshan County had now lost its status as the capital county of the Hainan Special Administrative Region, it was still the most developed and populous county besides Lin’gao, and it was also a key development county for Hainan in the second five-year plan. The Government Affairs Council felt it was not appropriate to have a deputy director with little local experience take over, so they made a swap. The original deputy director was sent to a less populated county in the south to be the county director.

Fei Si had been the director of the Chengmai county office since the capture of Chengmai after the second counter-encirclement campaign, so he was considered an old local cadre.

Food, clothing, housing, and transportation were all taken care of. Although there were restrictions from the “Regulations on Discipline,” the hospitality Yun Suji received was something he had not enjoyed in Lin’gao. He said with a laugh, “You guys who are dispatched to the localities are really not bad.”

Fei Si shook his head and said, “Yu E’shui quoted a passage from Ludwig’s The Blue and White Nile in a debate. I used to think it was wrong, but now I think it’s a golden saying. The passage goes like this: ‘The most powerful chief in Uganda receives treatment no better than that of a British worker in London.’” He muttered to himself, “I’ve had enough.”

Yun Suji shook his head in disbelief. So Fei Si poured out a lot of his grievances: the cadres were slow, the masses were ignorant, the evil gentry were cunning, and the officials were pedantic.

For the various documents issued by the Government Affairs Council, he racked his brains to come up with suitable implementation methods and then conveyed them in the most easy-to-understand language. However, even when he broke it down and taught the cadres by hand, they still had difficulty understanding, or they understood it in their own way. Things going in the opposite direction happened from time to time.

“If you grasp it, it dies; if you let it go, it becomes chaotic,” Fei Si said with a bitter smile. “Only the cadres trained by Du Wen’s Ma’niao Agricultural Cadre Institute are still usable, but these people…”

“What?”

“They are all like little revolutionary guards. To put it in four words: simple and crude. They randomly tie people up and beat people at the grassroots level, and at the slightest provocation, they want to wield the ‘iron fist of dictatorship’.”

“No complaints from the masses?”

“How could there not be? But under the rule of the Great Ming, officials have always been arrogant and domineering, so it’s nothing new to them. The problem is that it was rare for yamen runners to go down to the countryside. It was either for a murder case or for collecting taxes. Normally, the government didn’t care how you lived your life. Now, we emphasize ‘political power going down to the countryside’ and ‘full guidance.’ The tasks assigned are many and detailed, and they have to be effective quickly. What can the cadres do? They just roll up their sleeves, beat the masses with their fists, and send them to ‘labor reform’… The masses all say, ‘The rule of the Great Song is too tight, we can’t stand it.’ And there are scholars who curse us as ‘emulating the Qin dynasty, to perish in the second generation’.”

Fei Si probably rarely had the opportunity to vent his frustrations so directly. He simply stopped eating, put down his chopsticks, and talked endlessly.

The broad masses, whether local or from the north, often had conflicts over trivial matters. Their demands for life were very low. Once their basic survival needs were met, they had no motivation to improve. There was great resistance to the promotion of intercropping Chinese milk vetch. It had to be promoted through administrative coercion. As for those who were lazy and took advantage of the collective, they were everywhere.

The local tyrants and evil gentry, although they did not dare to directly confront the Senate, secretly worked against them in many civil affairs matters, constantly corrupting and luring grassroots cadres. They were rich and powerful, and had great influence among the local people, creating many obstacles to local administration.

The local officials basically adopted a non-violent, non-cooperative attitude like that of Ye Mingchen, but they had neither power nor influence, so they were not much of a harm.

“The officials of the Great Ming are not a cause for concern. In a few days, the formal placement plan will be out. Those who are willing to go back can be told to scram, and those who are willing to stay can go to the study class. It’s all easy to arrange. On the contrary, our basic masses,呵呵, it’s a long and arduous road,” Fei Si said.

What was most frustrating was that there was no one to communicate with. Even the maid he had taken in, once she had slept with him, naturally developed the consciousness of a “madam” and threw all the skills she had learned at Fangcaodi to the dogs. She even needed a maid to serve her every day. He was tired of everything except work.

“…I asked her to teach at the county primary school, but she complained that being a ‘king of the children’ was troublesome. I asked her to sort some documents, and she dragged her feet—and still made mistakes. I talked to the female clerk for a few more sentences, and she was nervous for half a day, and even told me, ‘That female clerk doesn’t look good, she will hinder your official career, Chief.’ I already sent a telegram to Xiao Zishan yesterday, requesting a replacement!” Fei Si slammed his arm down. “I also said in the telegram that the General Office’s training for life secretaries must focus on modern ideological education, not on cultivating a batch of ‘madam’ candidates—if I wanted to marry a young lady, wouldn’t I find one myself?”

For a moment, Yun Suji felt a sense of superiority. “Yes, unless it’s a female student from Fangcaodi who has been educated from a young age, a young lady from a prominent family is still better—well-read and well-mannered.”

“Young ladies from prominent families all have bound feet. I’m not interested,” Fei Si said, not understanding Yun Suji’s subtle show-off. “I often read the history books of the British East India Company. The British established a complete structure in India, relying on a few thousand company employees. These employees faced princes, monks, and peasants, and handled countless matters. Although they lived in palaces and had numerous servants, in the end, all they missed was the rainy and gloomy weather of England.”

Yun Suji, who had left Lin’gao for the first time, found it difficult to understand this sentiment. Ever since the luxurious lives of people like Chang Shide and Guo Yi in Leizhou and Guangzhou had been reported back to Lin’gao, being dispatched to an external post had been unilaterally understood by the headquarters senators as having access to all kinds of food, drink, women, and gambling.

“You will get tired of this life too,” Fei Si said. “For you to be sent here for fieldwork, could it be that they are preparing to make you a county magistrate? I wonder what they will do with the eighty-something county magistrate positions in Guangdong after we take it.”

“It’s fine to be a county magistrate. Anyway, the food factory is running normally now. I don’t need to be there,” Yun Suji said. “The purpose of our coming here is to extend the life of Lin’gao to Haikou, and even to the whole world.”

Fei Si laughed out loud. “Then you will have to dedicate your youth and your descendants.”

After lunch, Fei Si talked about some of the basic local conditions.

“…Qiongshan is a model county that Liu Xiang has managed for many years. The Senate has also invested a lot in it. In terms of ‘modernization,’ besides Lin’gao, Qiongshan is probably the second in all of China. The grassroots governance is also relatively strong. But don’t be fooled by these halos. The actual situation below is a semblance of the real thing,” Fei Si reminded him. “Don’t be fooled by Liu Xiang’s bragging at the meetings—I’m a county office director myself, how could I not know his little tricks? He’s from an IT background and knows how to do data statistics and make the accounts look good—of the various policies that come out of Lin’gao, it’s a miracle if half of them are implemented.”

Yun Suji nodded and said, “I can imagine that. The foundation of the plate we’ve accepted is much worse than the TG’s. Take your Qiongshan County, for example. Not to mention primary school students, the literacy rate is probably less than 1% of the population.”

“It’s 1%, but to us, these people are no different from illiterates. Sometimes, they are even less useful than illiterates,” Fei Si said, fanning his open chest, probably because he was hot. “Among the illiterates, those with quick minds can learn some things with a little teaching. As for the educated ones, it’s fine if their minds are sharp, but if they’ve been stupefied by their studies, they are harder to deal with than a donkey, and their sense of superiority is off the charts…” He shook his head as he spoke.

“It seems the problem is not small.”

“Who says it isn’t? But it’s still good that you’ve come to Qiongshan for fieldwork. If you were sent to the few counties in the south, you’d probably feel like crying,” Fei Si said. “But those few counties have small populations, so it’s easier to manage. Qiongshan has a lot of people and a lot of problems, and the cadres are not competent enough. Sometimes, it’s really frustrating…”

“The agricultural department wants to set up a few large state-owned farms in Qiongshan. The land use procedures…”

“That’s just a matter of a word,” Fei Si said, patting his chest. “As long as the Planning Council approves the land use procedures, I will give my full support. There’s plenty of wasteland by the Nandu River. I’m worried that no one will fill it.”

“Good, Old Wu also thinks your conditions here are the most suitable. There’s water, there’s land, and there’s some industrial foundation. In other counties, even the bricks, tiles, and wood for building houses have to be shipped from Lin’gao. It’s too much trouble.”

“It’s just this cement and steel rebar. You have to talk to Old Wu. I’m also having a hard time here. The water conservancy support can’t keep up.”

“I understand, I understand.” Yun Suji knew what he meant. “My fieldwork arrangements…”

“How do you plan to do your fieldwork? Are you going to just take a superficial look and fool around, or are you going to find a village and really observe for a few days?”

“Although I work at the food factory, I’m also half an agricultural person. Besides, this world is the world of our Senate. Am I going to fool myself? I think you should choose 2-3 different types of villages, with good, bad, and average ones. Each village should have different characteristics, like mountainous, coastal, or riverside…”

“Good heavens, you’re trying to gain the ‘Taoyuan experience’.”

“Not at all. No investigation, no right to speak. We’ve been bragging about political power going down to the countryside. How much effect has it had? How many of us can say for sure?” Yun Suji said. “The atmosphere in the Senate is very bad right now. It’s all about bickering. If we keep messing around like this, it won’t do. We still need to do more practical things.”