Chapter 27: A Matter of Stance

“Your family farms over two hundred mu of land, you’re a landowner, yet you can’t even gather the full bride price for your son’s wedding?” Yun Suji found this incredible.

“Even a landowner’s family has no surplus grain,” Bai Puting said with a bittersweet smile. “The bride prices here are just too expensive. A single woman is worth five or six oxen, tsk tsk…”

“The bride price is that high?!” Yun Suji knew that modern bride prices were exorbitant, but he hadn’t expected them to be this high. For a farmer, acquiring a large animal often required one or two years of scrimping and saving. If marrying a wife cost five or six oxen, it would be impossible for most men to ever marry.

He knew that in the past, Lingao had always had high bride prices due to the surplus of men over women. The “Engine Start” plan, in addition to importing labor, was also intended to balance the gender ratio.

According to the statistics from the Civil Affairs Department, the gender ratio in Hainan had indeed improved. Although men still outnumbered women, the disparity was no longer so great. But looking at the grassroots level, the phenomenon of high bride prices seemed to have intensified. He noted that the improved living conditions brought about by the recovery of production had not suppressed the bride price market; instead, it continued to rise. Yun Suji understood that in the past, marrying a wife was simply a matter of “having one.” Now, with stable lives and land, a wife also meant an additional laborer for the family, a great benefit to household production. For the bride’s family, the loss was twofold. It was no wonder the bride prices were so high.

“Chief, you might laugh, but everyone is saying now that it’s useless to just raise sons. You have to have a daughter,” another group leader chimed in with a deferential smile. “Otherwise, you can’t even afford a wife!”

“What’s there to laugh about? Raising boys and girls is the same,” Yun Suji said. “If you only want to raise sons, where will the wives come from? Do you expect other families to give birth to them and raise them for you? Last time, the county sentenced a man for drowning his infant daughter. He still stubbornly insisted that daughters were useless, a money-losing commodity, and it was better to drown them. I said, if daughters are money-losing commodities, where did a commodity like you come from? Your mother, your grandmother, weren’t they money-losing commodities? How come they weren’t drowned and instead gave birth to a commodity like you? Only then did he have nothing to say.”

The group leaders all chuckled dryly.

Yun Suji turned to Fan Shier and asked, “How many bachelors do you have in your village?”

This question stumped Fan Shier. The county issued so many different kinds of registers and statistical forms that it was annoying just to look at them. He always had Han Daoguo fill them out randomly to get the job done. But even so, it seemed there was no specific register for bachelors.

He thought for a long time, trying to recall all the unmarried men in the village, and said vaguely, “There are many who haven’t married, and some whose wives have died…”

Yun Suji realized his question was not precise enough. He rephrased it, “Let’s just talk about the full-time laborers in your village. How many of them don’t have wives?”

“Quite a few. Including those whose wives have died, there are nearly a hundred.”

“So more than half the men don’t have wives.” Yun Suji thought to himself that this was a significant number. Men without wives was a social problem! And the countryside was different from the city. In towns, they solved the sexual needs of male workers by issuing yellow tickets and attracting prostitutes, which could solve some problems. But in the countryside, marrying a wife was not just about solving sexual needs; it was also about organizing household labor.

Yun Suji then asked Bai Puting about his production situation, and what difficulties and opinions he had.

Seeing that the Chief was very polite and approachable, Bai Puting became much bolder. He hesitated for a moment and said, “Chief, I just have something about the Senate’s imperial grain tax that I don’t quite understand. If I say it, please don’t take offense…”

“Oh? Go on, tell me.” Yun Suji’s interest was piqued. Currently, in the new districts of Hainan, after the re-measurement of the fields, the old tax collection model had been completely abolished and replaced with a progressive tax system. This new system was very popular with the public because the burden was clear.

“Your humble servant… I… I…” Bai Puting suddenly felt he had misspoken. Since ancient times, the imperial grain tax was set by the emperor and the court. For a commoner like him to say he “didn’t understand” could get him accused of “improperly discussing government affairs”!

Yun Suji said, “Hey, if you have an opinion, just raise it. I absolutely won’t blame you.”

Bai Puting mustered his courage and said, “This… Chief… the more land you have, the higher the tax rate. Isn’t that a bit inappropriate?”

Yun Suji asked, “How is it inappropriate?”

Bai Puting swallowed hard. “Chief, actually, I was thinking of clearing more land. I could probably handle five or six hundred mu. I was also thinking of taking out a loan to buy a big machine like the ones the Heaven and Earth Society’s mechanized teams use, and hitching a few more oxen to it. It’s faster for planting, accumulates more fertilizer, and saves manpower. Chief Wan from the Heaven and Earth Society also said there would be more support policies for clearing more land. But the more land I plant, the heavier the tax. I’ve calculated it, and it’s just not worth it to plant more…”

As he said this, several group leaders found common ground:

“This progressive system impoverishes the diligent and only benefits the lazy!”

“There are some families with little land and few people. They don’t manage the fields much after planting. Anyway, they don’t have to pay much tax after the harvest, just enough for their own consumption. We work ourselves to death, digging mud, building pens, cutting grass to make fertilizer, and after all that hard work, we have to pay several times the tax!”

“If you ask them to do a few more days of labor, they act like it’s a great injustice. Even if they don’t do labor, they just sleep at home!”

Fan Shier became anxious when he heard this. The matter of labor duty was supposed to be kept under wraps, but this thoughtless group leader had just let it slip.

Fortunately, Chief Yun didn’t press the issue. He already knew there was something fishy about the labor distribution here. He asked the other group leaders about their production and living situations and found that most of them were from families with more land, strong labor, and good production. Their position was different from that of the ordinary villagers.

When these people arrived in Hainan, they were all proletarians, relying on the Senate’s relief for food and clothing. But in just over two years, a division between the rich and the poor had already emerged. The mentality of small peasants and landlords had all come out. Yun Suji sighed to himself; it seemed the State Council’s proposal to “vigorously promote collective farms” was very necessary.

He asked about a few other things and felt he had a good enough picture. He then said, “Let’s go see the struggling households in your village.”

Fan Shier quickly agreed. When Yun Suji came out, he saw the young man who had hit the old man earlier trying to hide in the back. He had already seen from the cadre roster that this was the village’s militia captain and public security officer, Liu Yuanhu. He called out, “Liu Yuanhu! What are you hiding for? I’m not a tiger, and even if I were, I wouldn’t eat a tiger like you.”

Liu Yuanhu’s face turned beet red with shame. He could only come forward and mumble, “You’re too kind, Chief.”

Yun Suji looked Liu Yuanhu up and down. He was in his early twenties, with broad shoulders and dark skin, clearly a strong farmer. He had the vigor of youth, unlike an old fox like Fan Shier. With proper cultivation, he could be a good cadre.

Even Fan Shier and Han Daoguo, he didn’t think they were completely incompetent. As a village cadre, Fan Shier was very capable, and his stance on the Senate’s major policies was firm and his execution effective. Although Han Daoguo was prone to mischief, his ability to keep the registers and data in order was quite remarkable.

“I see you’re a very capable person, but your methods are too crude. You need to use your brain more when you do things,” Yun Suji said, pointing to his own head. “You can’t just rely on brute force.”

“Yes, Chief.”

“Lead the way.”

Seeing that the Chief hadn’t reprimanded him for his “insubordination,” Liu Yuanhu felt mostly relieved. The words that followed made him a little anxious, but there was no time to ponder them now. He quickly led the way.

They first came to a house at the west end of the village. Fan Shier explained that this household consisted of an old couple and their young grandson. They had a son, but not long after settling down, he injured his foot while working in the fields and died suddenly soon after.

Yun Suji thought it must have been tetanus, but the only place in all of Qiongshan that could administer the serum was the Qiongshan County Health Clinic, and most people had no idea what tetanus was.

“…Their land has no one to farm it. The old man has asthma, and his grandson is young and needs to be looked after by his wife. They can only manage to grow some melons, vegetables, and small miscellaneous grains,” Fan Shier explained.

“Then what do they live on?”

“They have someone else cultivate the land for them. The cultivator takes a thirty percent share, and the rest goes to the family.”

“What about the public grain tax?”

Yun Suji’s sudden question disrupted Fan Shier’s prepared speech. He hadn’t expected the Chief to ask this. Without thinking, he blurted out, “The public grain tax is also paid by the cultivator…”

“And I suppose the cultivator also does their labor duty for them?” Yun Suji smiled. “What a living saint.”

Fan Shier didn’t know who “Lei Feng” was, but from the Chief’s tone and smile, he knew the Chief didn’t believe him at all, but was just not exposing him on the spot.

Yun Suji looked at the old couple, who were wearing what were clearly brand-new clothes and looking at him with terror in their eyes. He couldn’t help but feel a little sad. He looked at the child, who was only five or six. He wasn’t malnourished, but his expression was dull, without any of the liveliness of his peers. Then he looked at the cold, empty house. Apart from the basic furniture issued when they first moved in, there was almost no other furniture or daily necessities. The house, however, was excessively clean—like the clothes they were wearing, everything had just been prepared. He couldn’t even be bothered to look at the pancake container or the grain cabinet; they were no doubt full.

Yun Suji casually asked if they had enough to eat and how their life was. The old man also answered vaguely, “Life is good,” and “The village takes care of us.”

“Let’s go,” Yun Suji said.

Once outside, Yun Suji said, “Village Chief Fan, you weren’t telling the truth.”

Fan Shier’s heart skipped a beat. He wanted to deny it, but the memory of the public trial he had attended at the county last year came to mind. He quickly said, “I deserve to die! I deserve to die! I confess!”

“I’m not a great lord on a secret inspection. Just tell me, how much grain does the cultivating household actually give this family?”

Fan Shier knew he couldn’t hide it any longer. He had no choice but to say, “The agreement is, regardless of the harvest, they get 800 jin of brown rice per year. The public grain tax and labor duties are all borne by the cultivating household.”