Chapter 92: The Tofu Workshop

If it were a street where large households gathered, it would be fine, as there were only a few houses on the entire street. For ordinary middle-class families, however, there were many gates on the street, making it easy to miscount. If you knocked on the wrong door, you would inevitably get a scolding from the residents.

Zhang Yu saw that the girl from the tofu shop was not at the storefront, so he returned to his own shop. He found his parents sorting through a few sheets of paper—he recognized them as his family’s house and land deeds. These were the most valuable things they owned. Zhang Yu had only seen them a few times in his life; they were usually kept in an iron box and stored with great care. Why were they out today?

He asked and found out that when the Australians came today, they not only “checked the household registration” but also inspected the house and land deeds and even took measurements.

“Look, they even stamped it,” his father said.

Zhang Yu looked and saw that both the house and land deeds had a new red stamp on them. This stamp was different from the Ming government’s official seals. It was round, with a “four-pointed star” in the center—Zhang Yu knew this was called the “Morning Star”—and around the star was a line of flattened Song-style characters: “Guangzhou Special Municipality Real Estate Registration Office Authentication Seal.”

“With this stamp on it, this house and land are secure,” his mother said with emotion. Every change of dynasty was a redistribution of social wealth. For small urban property owners like them, what they had earned through generations of hard work was nothing more than this house and land. Naturally, they valued it more than anything else.

“How much did it cost?” Zhang Yu knew that any official business inevitably involved expenses. When he took the Tongshi examination last year, he had to pay to receive the examination paper, and once inside the examination hall, he had to spend a few coins as a “reward” for the guards.

“It didn’t cost any money…” His father, despite his happiness, still had a worried look on his face. He whispered, “I’m just afraid this change of dynasty isn’t secure.”

If the old government returned and the Australians fled, the stamp on the house and land deeds couldn’t be removed. If the yamen decided to make trouble, it could be a small matter or a big one. If they encountered someone ruthless, it wasn’t impossible for them to be ruined because of this.

At this, his mother became nervous again and stammered, “This… this… what should we do?”

His father couldn’t offer any solution either. Of course, he could have said “I don’t have them” during the re-registration and authentication, but he had heard that the Australians had already posted notices throughout the city: anyone who couldn’t produce their house and land deeds would have their property considered an “illegal structure” and be demolished within a set time. This was no empty threat—on Chengxuan Avenue, whether you were a century-old shop or a tiny stall, if it was deemed an “illegal structure,” it was completely demolished.

But Zhang Yu said, “I think… the old government… is probably not coming back…”

His voice was very low, but it still startled his parents. Although it was the Australians’ world now, it had only been a little over ten days. No one dared to say that the Ming Dynasty was finished and wouldn’t fight its way back to Guangzhou.

“Don’t talk nonsense…” his father reprimanded him in a low voice. “Don’t talk nonsense outside!”

Zhang Yu nodded. “I know that. But from what I’ve seen these past few days, the Australians have strict discipline, and everyone is united and without selfish desires. The whole world will surely flock to them, bringing their own provisions to follow.” Seeing that his parents didn’t quite understand his literary flourish, he added, “The Australian police came into our shop to do their business, and they didn’t eat a single pastry or take a single coin. Just for that, the Ming Dynasty can’t come back!”

Liu San walked out from the narrow, dark shop onto the bright street and felt a sense of relief. It was too stuffy inside. The ten-square-meter shop floor contained not only a counter but also a huge dough board and a sizable oven. Various tools of the trade and raw materials were crammed into the remaining space. After the census team went in, there was barely any room to turn around.

The air in the room was filled with a strange smell: the characteristic aroma of fat, dried fruit, and flour from baking pastries; the musty smell of damp materials and tools; the smoky smell of burning charcoal; and an indescribable body odor. He saw bedding stuffed messily under the large board—the apprentices probably slept on this board at night. And next to the oven, there was even a chamber pot.

Looking back at the “Great World Designated Supplier” sign in the shop, Liu San couldn’t help but smile wryly. What was Zhang Yikun thinking? A designated supplier, yet with these sanitary conditions, it would be a miracle if eating the food they made didn’t cause problems.

Liu San was wearing a police uniform to conceal his status as a Senate member. He had proposed to Lin Biguang that he wanted to go deep into the streets and alleys to inspect the public health situation in Guangzhou. Lin Biguang arranged for him to join a census team every day, inspecting as they went. This way, he wouldn’t attract attention and could use the pretext of household registration to enter places that were usually difficult to access.

He wanted to see the actual sanitary conditions of Guangzhou firsthand, especially how much pressure the epidemic prevention efforts would face.

The Guangdong campaign was not expected to have many combat casualties. The biggest pressure on the health department was actually from epidemic prevention. Guangzhou was a large city with a population of five to six hundred thousand. Even in modern times, the pressure of health and epidemic prevention would not be small, let alone in the 17th century with its poor sanitary conditions and rampant infectious diseases.

The sanitary conditions of ancient cities were extremely poor. Although Liu San had read many papers, monographs, and documentaries about the sanitation facilities of ancient cities in the 21st century, filled with praise like “the wisdom of the ancient working people” and “leading the world,” if it weren’t for the living specimen of the late Qing Dynasty, a pre-modern society not too distant from them, which left behind a large amount of real images and written materials, he might have believed it too, thinking that Hengdian World Studios was a replica of ancient cities.

But that was not the case. Liu San knew very well that most cities in pre-modern societies had no or very few sanitary water supply and drainage systems. Every spring and summer, explosive epidemics would rage. “Fasha” (a folk term for acute gastrointestinal illness), caused by unsanitary food and drink, even became one of the common causes of death in the summer.

This was why the Senate had kept a respectful distance from the Ming Dynasty’s cities, preferring to build new cities on barren land. As Wen Desi said, “Ancient cities are essentially garbage heaps filled with rats, bedbugs, fleas, and various pathogens. No amount of silk, marble, or historical sites can cover up the stench they emit.”

One of Liu San’s tasks was to ensure the health of this city, especially to eliminate the various potential health and epidemic hazards as much as possible. A malignant infectious disease was no joke in the 17th century.

But as he walked along with the census team, he knew this task would not be easy. 17th-century Guangzhou was not a crowded city. Like all traditional Chinese cities, there was a lot of wasteland within the city walls. Some was left after residences and temples fell into ruin, while some had never been built on. Not only were there vegetable plots, but some had even been reclaimed as fields for growing vegetables and rice, and there were even scattered graves.

However, the residents’ houses and shops were quite narrow. This strange phenomenon was difficult for him to understand. He asked Jia Jue, a retained clerk from the household department, and learned that although there was a lot of land in the city and the price was not too expensive, the cost of building a house was not low. Many citizens could afford to buy a small piece of land, but not many could afford to build a proper large house—the price of bricks and tiles was too high. Not to mention ordinary commoners, even middle-class families had to use a portion of broken and old bricks when building houses. Only large, wealthy families or places like temples and government offices could afford to build with proper bricks and tiles, with “polished bricks and tight seams.”

The traditional method of making bricks and tiles relied entirely on manual labor, and firing took a lot of time and fuel, so the output was very low, and the price was naturally not cheap.

Bricks and tiles were expensive, and timber for beams and pillars was not cheap either. Guangzhou was located in the Pearl River Delta and did not produce timber suitable for building houses. It had to be supplied by the counties in the middle and upper reaches of the Pearl River. With the long distance, even tofu could be sold at the price of meat.

He had been in Guangzhou for more than ten days and had a deeper understanding of the lives of the 17th-century residents. Not only were industrial products expensive, but the price of natural resources was also very high. Compared to the extremely cheap labor, the only explanation was that labor productivity was too low.

Even though there was land, the houses were so narrow, and the population density in the residential areas was very high. It was a common phenomenon for apprentices and clerks in shops and workshops in the city to sleep on makeshift beds in the storefront at night, just like at the Zhang family’s walnut crisp shop.

What was even more terrifying was that just outside the city walls, on the official land by the moat, there were many shantytowns for the urban poor. These were not the shantytowns of 21st-century Chinese urban renewal, nor the favelas of Brazil or India, but a more primitive version. There were basically no houses taller than a person; some were just “ground-rolling dragons” (gundilong). They were built directly on the damp, muddy banks of the river channels with bamboo poles, straw, and waste wood. Often, they were right next to mass graves and public burial grounds. Some shantytowns were even built on the “charity land,” living next to the dead.

Crowded living conditions, virtually non-existent drainage facilities, no public toilets, open manure vats everywhere, and smelly river channels running through the streets that hadn’t been dredged for years… Liu San thought to himself, this is the most perfect breeding ground for infectious diseases. He didn’t know how Guangzhou had survived in the past. He would have to ask and find out when he got back.

He originally didn’t want to go into the tofu workshop—its condition wouldn’t be any better than the walnut crisp shop. But on second thought, a tofu shop uses a lot of water. It couldn’t rely on fetching water to sustain production; it must have a well. He might as well go and check the water quality.

Walking into the tofu workshop, he saw that registration was in progress. He paid it no mind and just looked at the surroundings. This was also a small shop that combined a storefront and a workshop. The floor was mud, and because making tofu required a lot of water, it was very muddy. Probably to make it easier to work, straw bags were laid on the ground. The pot for boiling soy milk, the wooden barrels for holding the soy milk, and the boards for making tofu looked relatively clean, covered with yellowed white cloths. However, behind the stove for boiling soy milk, there was a pile of ashes that had been raked out, and a lot of firewood was also placed there. The beans, packed in straw bags, were just lying on the muddy ground, with only a broken reed mat underneath.