Chapter 34: Induction

Liu Yuanhu came in with his head down, first calling out, “Chief,” then standing respectfully without another word.

Yun Suji said, “What, lost your tongue? I thought you were quite the big shot in the village.”

Liu Yuanhu’s face turned beet red. “Chief, I…”

“You don’t need to say it. You have indeed been a bit too overbearing in the village. However, to do your job well, you do need a certain amount of authority,” Yun Suji said, lighting a cigarette for himself. “But, most of your authority has been used for your work, so I won’t blame you. We are all for the great cause of the Senate…”

Hearing this, Liu Yuanhu’s eyes immediately reddened. He looked up and said, “Chief, I dare not say I have no selfish motives, but I am truly loyal to the Senate. If you want me to, I’ll even cut my heart out to show you!”

Yun Suji waved his hand. “Don’t get excited. Why is a grown man’s eyes turning red? The first rule of being a cadre is not to be afraid of what others say. You hear a few rumors and you’re so scared. How can you accomplish great things?”

“Yes! I’ll remember that!”

“This matter with Old Mrs. Cao, how do you think it should be handled?”

“Give her the pension!”

Yun Suji shook his head. “Giving her back the pension is what should be done. I’m talking about her hanging herself in the village office.”

Liu Yuanhu scratched his head. “This… since she’s alright, let’s just let it go…”

Yun Suji said, “You are the militia captain, so you must also be the village public security officer, right?”

“Yes.”

“How have you been reading your Public Security Officer’s Handbook?” Yun Suji shook his head. “Do you have one here? Get me a copy.”

Liu Yuanhu quickly found one on the bookshelf. Yun Suji took it and saw that, apart from the red official seal of the “Borang Village Office” on the cover, it was as good as new. This practice of issuing handbooks was a “foolproof” guide to adapt to the low level of grassroots public servants—it seemed the effect was not very good.

He opened the book and turned to a page. He pointed to the text and said, “You can read, right?”

“I’ve been to the literacy class. I can read, but I can’t write very well…”

“What does this line say?”

“Any act that obstructs the work and environment of a government agency or public unit shall be dealt with as ‘the crime of disrupting government and public institutions,’ with corresponding punishment according to the severity of the circumstances…”

“Do you understand?”

Liu Yuanhu read it several times, his eyes lit up, and he nodded vigorously. “Yes! Chief. I understand.”

“Where is the resident police officer responsible for your village?”

“Our village has a small population, so we share a station with the nearby Boli Village,” Liu Yuanhu said. “But it’s not far.”

“Since a suicide has occurred, it should be reported and handled according to regulations. Have him come over tomorrow morning to take a statement.”

“Yes, Chief.” Just as Liu Yuanhu was about to leave, Yun Suji stopped him. “I heard from everyone that there is a labor reform team here. Who runs it?”

“It’s run by the county,” Liu Yuanhu said. “Each village sends people they’ve arrested to work for a few days. Each township has a squadron.”

Yun Suji nodded. “Alright, I understand.”

Yun Suji spoke with the village cadres one by one and gained a deeper understanding of the village’s situation. Since they were now speaking more openly, the three village cadres explained things more clearly than the day before.

He also got a general understanding of the village’s finances. Han Daoguo said that in recent years, in order to “strive for model status” and “create an advanced unit,” they had carried out a lot of road and water conservancy construction. Because the village had no real economy, there was no income to speak of. They could only “raise funds” from the villagers, but this was not smooth, and they had to resort to coercive measures to collect the full amount. Even so, the village was still in debt.

“…We still owe the Heaven and Earth Society for the construction costs. We’ve already collected funds once this year. If we do it again, the villagers will have opinions. We’re just trying to make do with this little bit of money,” Han Daoguo said, trying to justify the withholding of the pension.

Yun Suji knew there was some exaggeration in his words, but he was not an auditor and couldn’t sort out the details in a short time. So he just listened, silently memorizing the key points to be noted down later for CHEKA’s annual audit.

Han Daoguo then complained that the village office had no operating funds. The county had given the village office thirty mu of “office land.” This land was tax-free and was cultivated by the village cadres themselves. The agricultural products were used for the village office’s expenses and as a subsidy for the cadres’ “public service.”

“The income from these thirty mu is not even enough for the village’s expenses, let alone a subsidy for us,” Han Daoguo said, rambling on about how although they could levy labor for village work, they had to provide meals, and every meal had to be dry grain. There were many projects in the village, and just feeding the laborers was a big expense. “When the work is done, we have to have a celebratory meal, with white flour and pork. Where does this money come from? It’s all scraped from the soil. You might laugh, Chief, but we still haven’t paid off last year’s deficit…”

Yun Suji smiled. “So you’re saying you’re all serving the public on empty stomachs.”

Han Daoguo’s face turned red. He stammered, “It’s not that bad…”

He stood up and walked a few steps. “Let’s not even talk about this office land. Just look at your own family’s land. Who among you farms it yourself? Didn’t you all just levy the village’s labor to farm it for you for free? You think I don’t know? Otherwise, how could you be playing chess in the village office in broad daylight!”

Han Daoguo’s face went from red to white. He couldn’t say a word.

“I can figure out your little tricks with my eyes closed. Stop trying to fool me,” Yun Suji said. “I’m not going to deal with these things right now. First, tell me the real financial situation of the village!”

Only then did Han Daoguo become more honest. He said it was true that the village’s accounts were in deficit, and the amount was not small. The reason was the same as he had said before: it was due to infrastructure construction. However, the village had actually collected funds three times this year, and the villagers had strong objections. Fan Shier was afraid of angering the villagers and having someone go to the county to complain, so he didn’t dare to do it a fourth time.

“How did you run up such a large deficit? Doesn’t the county provide subsidies for these constructions?” Yun Suji asked in surprise.

“Chief, the subsidies are indeed given, but there’s also a self-funded portion. We are a model village, and all year round there is a constant stream of visitors for inspections and to learn from us. The county, the township, the Heaven and Earth Society… and all kinds of inspections. Just entertaining the visitors for meals is a huge expense…” Han Daoguo complained.

“Don’t those who come to the village on business eat assigned meals and pay the farmers directly? Doesn’t your county issue meal subsidies for official travel?”

“Chief, that’s for a saint like you! When cadres from the county and township come, can you just send them off with a bowl of sweet potato porridge and a few pancakes? You have to at least make a flatbread, a bowl of noodles, or at the very least, dry rice with some pickles,” Han Daoguo said. “If we assign it to the villagers, they find it troublesome, and the visiting comrades don’t eat well. That’s why the village designated a special household to do it…”

“So the comrades who come to the countryside pay for sweet potato porridge and pancakes but eat flatbreads with eggs?”

Han Daoguo quickly said, “Chief, you see clearly! Our village office is the smallest of the small. If we don’t entertain them well, we won’t be able to get many things, and we might not be able to keep our ‘model’ title. We have no choice…”

“Alright, say no more!” The more Yun Suji listened, the angrier he got. He never thought that in less than two or three years, the grassroots would be in this state!

County Magistrate Liu, and you call this a model county! Yun Suji understood immediately. This phenomenon was by no means isolated. It was likely that some people were eating flatbreads with eggs without even paying for the sweet potato porridge.

After finishing the questioning, Yun Suji rested at the village office. There was a kerosene lamp in the office, and he wrote down his observations under its light. He had been to the countryside many times, but never before had he been so completely immersed, eating, living, and working with the peasants like today. He had never felt the pulse of rural life so vividly. This day had been truly rewarding.

This was a model village. If he went to an ordinary or backward village, who knew what the situation would be like. Yun Suji thought, There are many problems with the grassroots work, and the peasants’ morale is also a big problem. A sense of complacency and just getting by could be clearly felt among most villagers. The few landowners were unable to develop due to various restrictions, and their enthusiasm was dampened.

From today’s observations, the peasants, without proper management and education, were very opportunistic: speculative, scattered, with no sense of time (work was measured in days, only accurate to morning or afternoon), and no organizational discipline. Such peasants were useless to the cause of the Senate.

The excessive labor duty was a problem, but it was obvious that it did not affect normal production. What it really affected were the landowners with large planting areas and those engaged in side businesses. How to balance the relationship between the two was a problem that needed to be discussed.

Yun Suji was very much against the proposal by some to replace the current “labor levy” with a “labor substitute payment” system. The current Ming Dynasty was a typical negative example. The “Single Whip” reform had a good starting point and had some temporary effects, but in the end, it became another rope in the noose that strangled the peasants of the late Ming Dynasty, perfectly illustrating the “Huang Zongxi Law.”

“The levying of labor must be scientific, quantitative, and standardized,” he wrote in his notebook. “We need to come up with a scientific standard to see where the limit of the burden is. To provide as much labor as possible without affecting production…”

He thought of the women making shoes and doing needlework in groups of three and five by the roadside at the village entrance, the men who beat their wives every few days, the old people and children with nothing to do at home… All this fully demonstrated that they still had too much free time. This most important resource, people, must be fully utilized and put to use.

He then thought that there were too few side businesses in the village. Apart from raising draft animals and a small number of chickens and ducks, he saw almost no one raising pigs. Many people complained that their homesteads were too small, and the area reserved for animal husbandry in the original design was not enough. If they built a pigsty next to the main house in the traditional way, the county’s health police would not agree, saying it was “against the law.”

In addition, there was almost no commerce in the village. Logically, a village of nearly five hundred people should at least have a small shop selling oil and salt…