Chapter 99: Measures

Liu San said, “I am not a local official, nor a judge. If you have a grievance, go to the Municipal Government in the city. Someone there will receive you…”

The young girl who called herself He Xiaoyue shook her head. “It is true that this servant has a grievance, but if the Master does not save me now, this servant will never escape this sea of suffering.”

Liu San looked closely at He Xiaoyue. She was very young, only sixteen or seventeen. Probably because she had run through thorny bushes, her hair and clothes were a mess, her clothes were torn in several places, and her face had several scratches. He thought this young girl must have escaped from the Qingjie Courtyard; otherwise, how would she know he was “Chief Medical Officer Liu”?

He asked, “Did you escape from the Qingjie Courtyard?”

“Yes!” He Xiaoyue said. “I beg the Master to be merciful and take this servant back to the city! Please save me.”

The detective squad yamen runner leading the way whispered, “Master, this is not advisable. She is a chaste woman from the Qingjie Courtyard. There is no reason for her to sneak out. If word gets out, it will be said that you, Master, have abducted a woman, which will harm your official reputation…”

Liu San thought there was some truth to that. He had just come to the Puji Hall for an inspection, and now he was taking a young widow back to the city. What would people say about him? It was better to avoid suspicion. Thinking of this, he said:

Seeing the hesitation on his face, He Xiaoyue knelt forward a few steps. “Master, you are a living Bodhisattva who saves people from suffering. Please save this servant. If I stay there any longer, I will only have a dead end.” With that, she fell to the ground and wept loudly.

The mournful cry shook Liu San, and his heart softened. He thought, this young girl ran out and hid in the eerie and terrifying public burial ground. She wouldn’t have done this if she didn’t have a great grievance. He said, “Is your family in the city?”

“Yes, but this servant cannot go home,” He Xiaoyue said with a desolate expression. “I beg the Master to take me back to the city. As long as I am back in the city, I will have a place to go, no matter where. I won’t trouble the Master.”

Although this place was not far from the city, it was like a lawless world. Bandits even robbed people in broad daylight. A lone woman traveling was like a sheep entering a tiger’s den.

Liu San instructed the guards to take her with them. The group returned to the city. He ordered He Xiaoyue to be taken to the temporary detention center—the former yamen lockup—for temporary custody. He would send someone to take her to a suitable place once one was found.

After a long day of running around, he was very tired. Wang Sangou brought him dinner. He ate it quickly and then went to Lin Baiguang’s office. The lights were bright inside. The door had just opened, and a group of Naturalized Citizen cadres were coming down the steps in a line. Lin Baiguang was seeing them off at the door—the meeting had probably just ended. Seeing Liu San, he greeted him and invited him in.

Liu San saw that his eyelids were swollen, probably from lack of sleep. He advised, “You must also pay attention to rest, no matter how much work there is. Lack of sleep and overwork can easily lead to sudden death.”

Lin Baiguang nodded but didn’t say much. This was the first time Liu San had been to his office. It was an east-facing wing with one main room and two side rooms. The middle was a meeting room, the south was probably a bedroom, with a bamboo curtain hanging. The north was his office. Lin Baiguang invited him into the office and offered him a seat. The kerosene lamp was brightly lit. On the two desks, large and small, on the bookshelves, and on the brick floor, there were piles of documents with labels of various colors.

Seeing Liu San’s gaze, he smiled. “I’m half a mayor now. All the miscellaneous affairs fall to me. So, what are your thoughts after wandering around for the past few days?”

Liu San said, “The burden is not light. There are too many things to do.” He opened his notebook and briefly shared his observations and opinions.

The first was to clear the canals and dredge the silt, and to clean up the city’s garbage. This was the established policy of the Municipal Government, but Liu San still put it first because he felt the problems here were too great.

“…According to my investigation, there have been outbreaks of various virulent infectious diseases in the city. The weather is gradually getting warmer now, and we will soon enter a peak period for outbreaks. Once they break out, we have no means of response other than setting up isolation camps. Therefore, we can only focus on ‘prevention.’ Clearing the canals and garbage, improving environmental sanitation, and eliminating intermediate hosts. Garbage dumps and sewers are natural habitats and breeding grounds for mosquitoes, flies, and rats. They will also pollute the groundwater—most of the drinking water in the city is still groundwater,” Liu San continued. “I’ve taken a rough look, and the quality of the groundwater is generally not bad. Even those who drink river water know to use alum for purification and to boil it. But a large number of the extremely poor don’t have these conditions—especially the tens of thousands of Tanka people on the Pearl River just outside Guangzhou. Although they are not in the city, they are very close. If a plague breaks out, it will spread to the city. If conditions permit, I suggest setting up public wells with guaranteed water quality in the city for water supply.”

Lin Baiguang just nodded and didn’t speak.

“The second thing is to clear the tombs and coffins in the city and its immediate suburbs. There are now cemeteries and public burial grounds both inside and outside the city. Many temples also have coffins stored in them, many of which are only separated from shops and residences by a wall or a street. I’ve seen that some coffins have been stored for too long and have already decayed, with corpse fluid seeping out. The situation in the public burial grounds is even worse. The tombs are almost stacked on top of each other, and the ground in some public burial grounds is already much higher than the surrounding area. Nearby residents report that when it rains, not only does foul water flow everywhere, but corpses are also washed all over the place, many directly into the streets and river channels. This causes great environmental pollution. Moreover, many shantytowns are right next to the public burial grounds. They are already high-density residential areas with poor sanitation. Once an epidemic breaks out, it will be devastating.”

The third was to quickly implement laws on garbage collection, excrement disposal, and food safety in Guangzhou. These laws had been implemented in Hainan for a long time with good results. Liu San suggested that they should also be vigorously promoted in Guangzhou, with even greater intensity than in Hainan.

“The last thing is to quickly establish an infectious disease hospital to isolate patients with virulent infectious diseases. Currently, there are almost no isolation measures for infectious diseases. Except for leprosy patients who have been expelled from the city, which can be considered an isolation measure, other infectious disease patients are left to their own devices,” Liu San said. “The establishment of an infectious disease hospital must not only be fast but also large-scale. And one more thing,” Liu San said, “I inspected the Puji Hall today. The problems there are very serious. Although charity work is not related to my business, I think we should take it over as soon as possible.”

He recounted what he had seen and heard at the Puji Hall, especially mentioning that there were still over two thousand bolts of cloth in the Puji Hall, which should be transported back as soon as possible.

“The relationships in the Puji Hall are complex; it’s a den of corruption. If we can investigate it thoroughly, we should be able to confiscate a lot of property. This can also pay for the expenses of the new charitable institution.”

After listening to his suggestions, Lin Baiguang lit a cigar:

“You’re right about everything. We are now in a situation where ‘a hundred things need to be done.’” A look of both excitement and seriousness appeared on Lin Baiguang’s face. “But we are short of people—people who can effectively implement our policies. So, we can only tackle the task of cleaning up Guangzhou’s environment one bite at a time.”

Lin Baiguang had just had a meeting with Liu Xiang and Mu Min today. The household survey was progressing smoothly, but it would take another half a month to twenty days to complete. Currently, all the cadres who had entered the city and most of the military and police forces—whether they were Naturalized Citizens from Hainan or newly recruited yamen runners—were almost entirely devoted to this task. The current Guangzhou Municipal Government was only barely maintaining public order, and this was only possible with the assistance of the Fubo Army.

The lack of cadres had become their primary problem. In fact, the Guangzhou Municipal Government had not only used its own team of cadres but had also taken over all the cadres from the Qiongya Detachment who had not yet been dispatched. After all, there were still some counties in Guangdong Province that had not been occupied and taken over, so the cadres were temporarily stranded in Guangzhou.

Although they had already utilized some of the old personnel, they were far from meeting the administrative and management needs of the new Guangzhou Municipal Government, both in terms of quality and quantity. Therefore, Lin Baiguang proposed holding a “civil service recruitment examination” in Guangzhou.

His reasoning was simple: it was a fantasy to expect the Senate’s existing administrative cadre system to allocate enough cadres. To meet the needs of the Guangzhou Municipal Government and the entire Guangdong Province for cadres, they could only rely on local resources.

Although Guangzhou’s culture and imperial examination success in the Ming Dynasty were not as prominent as in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, it was still one of the most prosperous cities in China, and the literacy rate should be higher than in other regions. Lin Baiguang believed that this part of the population could be fully utilized. They could obtain basic administrative personnel through open recruitment.

“With the Naturalized Citizen cadres from the Qiongya Detachment as the backbone and guides, leading and training this new batch of people will be much easier than using the old, deeply ingrained yamen runners. After all, new people are a blank slate. As long as we provide them with a good environment, they can grow according to our needs.”

Lin Baiguang believed that the quality of cadres was first and foremost a matter of the overall environment. The old officialdom and the ranks of the yamen runners were a big dyeing vat. Honest people who went in either ended up conforming or drowned. Even upright and incorruptible ministers like Hai Rui and peerless generals like Qi Jiguang could only adhere to the principle of “a loyal minister must be more cunning than a treacherous one” to protect their positions, lives, and ideals, wasting a great deal of energy and time.

Although the Senate’s cadre team was not flawless, it was still much cleaner and more efficient than the Ming officialdom. The cadres trained in such an environment, even if they were not capable officials, would at least be mediocre ones who could follow the rules and regulations.

The only problem was that they had not been on shore for long, and most of the people were still in a “wait-and-see” mode, wondering “how long the red flag can fly.” They needed to achieve a few concrete things to make them deeply understand what a change of era meant and to attract people to work for this new regime. Whether they were genuinely working for the welfare of the people or just for their own personal development, as long as they embarked on this path, they would naturally become members of the Senate’s cadre team.

Lin Baiguang said, “Dr. Liu, this is the result of our discussion at today’s meeting. Next…”