Handing over the sugar workshops to the Xiang family had been precisely to free up her own time and energy. Since becoming prefect, Zhù Ying had far too many things to attend to. The sugar workshops mattered, but they were not so important as to require her personal involvement in every detail. For a prefect to remain permanently occupied with sugar workshops would itself be a spectacle — the kind that gets talked about as an oddity.
The Xiang family had a systematic approach to commerce, and their past performance had been quite good, so Zhù Ying had trusted Xiang An with the whole affair. Xiang An also had a certain attitude of “what use am I if I must trouble the Prefect with everything” — terrified of being thought useless, she was resolved to handle things well and spare Zhù Ying any worry.
And so while Zhù Ying did know about the sugar workshop expansion, she had not known it was happening this rapidly.
Huajie had thought of it as nothing but good news and had told it to Zhù Ying expecting to please her. For Meng and Wang had spoken of it with evident satisfaction when they told Huajie.
The Wang family, apart from their own residence, had another property they rented out to traveling merchants — the more sugar workshops were built and the more merchants came, the greater their income would be. The few tenant farmers on their land might also shift to growing some sugarcane for extra earnings.
Meng Shi was herself a merchant. She did not trade in sugar, but the network she had built over more than a decade meant she could benefit from the situation too.
Both of them regarded it as welcome news.
Huajie told the story, and Zhù Ying said without any change of expression: “Is that so?” She knew that this was something she had not anticipated adequately. All men flock where gain beckons; all men scramble where profit leads. Making the sugar workshops bigger was not simply a matter of “employing female workers” — that was, in fact, the most negligible of the effects. Not employing female workers would not impede any of this at all. But if it interfered with the production of food grain — that would be the truly serious matter.
Huajie nudged her arm: “Isn’t it good news? Go ahead and smile if you like.”
Zhù Ying twitched the corner of her lip slightly: “So-so.”
Huajie looked down at her shoes: “Hmm — not wearing wooden clogs, so no risk of the threshold damaging the teeth.”
This line made Zhù Ying burst out laughing, and Huajie laughed too.
Zhù Ying asked: “How are the preparations at the school coming?”
This year’s New Year had been eventful. The lantern festival was nearly upon them, and after the lantern festival the school term would begin — the students from the Tribal School would be returning in a matter of days. Huajie said: “My side is more or less in order. Meng and Wang have been helping me too. Sweeping and cleaning the servants have in hand — all is well taken care of.”
Zhù Ying gave a nod: “The household needs to be prepared as well — Little Sister and A’Fa are almost due to arrive.”
“Very well. Oh — after the first month ends, you are planning to head out to the estate, are you not?”
“Yes.” She had originally planned to have Xiang An and Xiang Le rotate duties, but with the sugar workshop currently expanding, Xiang An would likely not be able to get away. She needed to rethink her staffing arrangements. What Xiang An’s worry about female workers had amounted to was “having no loyal people of one’s own is unworkable” — and she had exactly the same problem herself.
Her problem was, if anything, somewhat more serious than Xiang An’s.
She said to Huajie: “You need to look after the Tribal School. The weather has not yet warmed through, and this time I will not take Father and Mother with me either.”
“You…”
Zhù Ying said: “Please stop treating me like a child.”
Huajie shook her head: “That is different. If you were still a child it would actually be less to worry about. Times have changed — you are now a prefect of an entire region, and there are any number of eyes watching you. In the past you could handle things on your own easily enough, but now… without someone who knows you through and through keeping watch, I cannot be at ease. And there are things we would not dare share with any other person. It is not that I fear the worst — it is that one must never be careless.”
Zhù Ying let out a soft sigh: “All right then.”
With school just opening, Huajie certainly could not leave the Tribal School, and so Zhù Ying had no choice but to keep taking her parents up into the mountains with her. Both of them were a little helpless about it, and Zhù Ying said under her breath: “I may as well retire early.”
Huajie laughed: “At your age — retire? Go and do your work.”
“This is my study.”
“All right, I am going~”
——
After Huajie left, Zhù Ying changed her clothes and slipped out from the back gate of the Prefectural Office, intending to take a look at the streets herself.
The main street was busy — it seemed busier than before. She saw a middle-aged man in a long gown standing before a notice, reading its contents aloud. She started forward, only for the people waiting ahead of her to hear the recitation to snap: “Don’t crowd!”
Zhù Ying actually stopped where she stood, and listened as the man read out the sugar workshop’s labor requirements from the notice board. They wanted men between twenty and forty years of age, strong and healthy, with a guarantor. For women, they further required an attractive appearance, a guarantor, and a signed seal from the family’s men, and so on. Beside this, another man was calling out that the construction site was also hiring — to build the sugar workshops — and that no guarantor was needed.
They were skimming the cream of the workforce! Even when she collected corvée labor she had not dared to be so selective.
She also heard the wages being read: “Men ninety coins, women sixty coins.” Zhù Ying grew even more puzzled — this was wrong.
Zhù Ying turned and strolled along the street, listening to the conversations around her. Some people in ill-fitting clothes walked past, all talking about the sugar workshops. “If only we could be chosen — the family would have a little more to eat.” That sort of talk.
Zhù Ying rounded a corner and suddenly saw a barefoot beggar sitting on a worn mat at the roadside, holding a cracked bowl and pleading with passersby for alms. Her thought was: I do not know this person. She had a rough accounting of the beggars of Wuzhou city.
She felt her money pouch at her waist and pulled out two coins, dropping them into the cracked bowl. The beggar immediately muttered: “May the kind person be rewarded.” Zhù Ying had barely crouched down to speak to him when four or five more people appeared from behind him — men and women, young and old — in ragged clothes, all reciting words of blessing.
Zhù Ying stood up, stepped back two paces, and said: “What accent is that? Eastern River?”
The old beggar said: “The official has sharp ears — we are indeed from Eastern River County.”
“Hmm? How did you come to be here?”
The old beggar spoke while the others around him tapped their bowls and murmured blessings. The old beggar said: “Is it not because of the new official~”
Zhù Ying started to say more, but the people surrounding her were already at “a small act of kindness, please.”
Zhù Ying stepped to the side, stepping out of their circle. She held a handful of coins and said: “Whoever steps forward gets nothing. Answer my questions, and each of you gets five coins. Just the few of you — bring any others to surround me and no one sees a good ending! “
After years as an official she had a natural air of authority. The beggars fell into an orderly manner and their answers became more careful.
Zhù Ying asked: “Were you struck by a disaster?”
The old beggar smiled bitterly: “Little old me has lived fifty-six years, and the last ten have been good years — heaven giving us our meals. Not like when I was young: drought two years in three, and then a flood on the fourth.”
“Then you encountered hardship? Or fell victim to a bully? Or incurred a debt? Was there no one to uphold justice for you?”
A gaunt, sallow-faced woman standing to one side said: “You truly are a great official who has never had to endure anything! Uphold justice? Who would do that?”
The old beggar said: “Ever since last year, when Eastern River was incorporated into the new Southern Prefecture, things started off all right — Magistrate Wang left, and no new official had yet come to our county, so we got along fine. Then later, the new prefectural governor arrived. Since his seat of governance was not in our county, we all said the better for us — fewer levies to worry about. But then… it all came down from above!”
The old beggar grew more and more distressed as he spoke and began to weep: “We were just on the verge of seeing good times — under Prefect Zhù, taxes and levies had fallen, and with the new wheat crop being taught to us, the harvest improved too. A little sugarcane on the side, and things were getting sweeter by the day. Who could have known that everything would change in the back half of last year! With the new prefecture established, every office and building had to be newly constructed; the officials had to be fed and served, and conscript labor had to be provided too. All of it fell on our heads. The men were hauled off for corvée, and on top of that it was said that the new Southern Prefecture was short of funds, so the winter wheat tax was increased. How could we bear that?”
Zhù Ying calculated inwardly: a complete new prefectural administrative apparatus, including institutions like the prefecture school, meant a whole cohort of new officials needing to be supported by tax revenue. In the end it all landed on ordinary people.
Zhù Ying said: “But that alone should not be enough to drive you to begging — surely you had some savings? And at the very worst, there is always the option of day labor. To uproot and leave everything in half a year seems a bit soon.”
The woman said: “They added taxes on top of the regular taxes, and then came back to collect ‘back taxes’ for the years when those extra taxes had supposedly not been paid. The remaining grain was hauled away at a below-market conversion rate. There was still the shortfall, so we had to borrow money from a wealthy household. Our family was supposed to provide one man for corvée — somehow this year it became three men, and then the winter wheat was also delayed. “
The old beggar said: “They were pushing the schedule too, rushing us to finish early. Twenty days of corvée per year, but we ended up doing two full months. The man fell ill from exhaustion. The wealthy household started pressuring us for repayment, and I said we had to wait until the spring wheat was harvested before we could repay. They would not have it — they were set on taking my field. What was the point of farming it at all? With no livelihood left, there was nothing to do but leave.”
Zhù Ying heard “three men” and immediately knew — it was the classic collusion between wealthy households and local officials, shifting the taxes and corvée of the powerful onto the backs of ordinary people. With rents and levies so heavy, it was almost impossible not to go bankrupt. And illness was a great burden — if it was an old person or a child, two doses of medicine might not cure them and one would simply let it be. But a grown man, a strong laborer, was worth treating properly. But treatment cost money, and that led to bankruptcy.
Zhù Ying pointed toward the notice boards and said: “The sugar workshops over there are hiring.”
The woman said: “We would not be chosen! You need a guarantor. The children’s father is over there carrying lumber.” The construction work required no guarantor for day laborers.
Zhù Ying asked: “Are there many families in your situation?”
The old beggar said: “Right now it is not very visible — but just wait. There will be more and more of them going forward. Why did Prefect Zhù not keep us under her jurisdiction?”
Prefect Zhù would have liked to keep them too — but the court had not agreed. Zhù Ying distributed the handful of coins among them.
A patrol attendant came strolling over, calling out: “Hey — what is going on here? Settle down! And you — stay away from the beggars, someone will pick your money pouch… Prefect?!”
She had originally intended to take a look at the hiring situation and have a sense of things, but now that she had been recognized, Zhù Ying waved her hand and slowly walked back to the Prefectural Office.
——
Back in the residence, Zhù Ying summoned Judicial Officer Li and Military Officer Zhang.
Judicial Officer Li was somewhat bewildered: the case could not have been reviewed so quickly by the capital, so why was this? What could it be about?
Once there, he learned: Zhù Ying wanted him to pay attention to the beggars in Wuzhou city — in particular, any beggars who had come from Eastern River.
Neither Judicial Officer Li nor Military Officer Zhang understood her intention, but both agreed.
Once the two had left the signing room, Military Officer Zhang asked Judicial Officer Li: “Given the Prefect’s usual habits, I do not think she would be driving the beggars away — could she actually have some use for them?”
Judicial Officer Li said: “Let us find someone to inquire first.”
Local authorities did not particularly like beggars — a rise in their numbers both worsened public order and suggested problems with governance. So attentive officials made it a point to clear beggars away before a superior passed through.
Officials with more thoughtful approaches had a different method.
Beggars had a leader among themselves. Typically the superior official would issue instructions to subordinates, and the subordinates would direct the court attendants or go themselves to find this beggar leader and assign tasks. When public works required labor, they were often brought in for the work. Some wealthy households facing large projects like building construction would also recruit them as laborers.
Because beggars came from varied backgrounds and circumstances, some people moved in and out of beggary intermittently. If the harvest was poor, they would come out to beg. When life became manageable again, they returned to it. Some people came out to beg when there was nothing interesting to do and drifted back to work when something suited them turned up. Among the beggars were also people who had fled disasters and had nowhere to go, who in fact possessed some skill or craft, temporarily sheltering among the beggar community.
When they were begging they were a disorderly lot, but when engaged in regular work they were acceptable enough. The poorest people’s clothing was not much better than a beggar’s anyway — apart from the particularly filthy among them, the very poorest were not so very different in appearance.
Zhang and Li resolved on a course: they sent a court attendant to summon the local beggar leader and instruct him to inquire about the situation of beggars from elsewhere. At the same time they wondered what all this was about.
Zhù Ying’s thoughts were not something she could explain to others. Xiang An was busy during the day. She waited until the evening when Xiang An had returned with Xiang Yu and had Elder Sister Hu summon Xiang An: “What is happening with the wages at the sugar workshops?”
Because Xiang An had received Zhù Ying’s instruction — “agree to it” — when negotiating with Yang Workshop Owner she had stopped insisting on her position. In truth, Yang Workshop Owner had never intended to push her out in the first place. In Yang Workshop Owner’s eyes, Xiang An was no more than someone temporarily standing in for her elder brother Xiang Le while Xiang Le was in the capital. There was no need to squeeze her out.
So Yang Workshop Owner had not made things deliberately difficult for Xiang An, and had raised another matter — he had discovered that some “displaced migrants” had arrived in Wuzhou city, and wages could be pushed down.
The information Xiang An had received from Yang Workshop Owner was more detailed still: “The sugar we produce here in Wuzhou has an excellent market position — everyone around us is green with envy!”
Given Wuzhou’s location, Wuzhou grew sugarcane — as did the neighboring prefectures, especially Eastern River County. Eastern River had previously been under the jurisdiction of the Southern Prefecture, and it had also obtained the new sugar-making method from Zhù Ying at the time. Of course it would expand — why would it not? And Wuzhou was holding prices down, otherwise the profit margins would be even greater and they would be making even more money.
Xiang An said: “And what’s more, now that winter wheat has been planted, they are saying: with two crops a year, half the land can be freed up to grow sugarcane!”
In regions far from the capital, how much tax the people paid was entirely dependent on the conscience of the local officials. Zhù Ying had negotiated with the court for a five-year exemption, and the exemption was genuine. In someone else’s hands, five years of not paying the court did not mean they would not quietly collect on their own behalf. No one thinks they have too much money — and this was a brand-new Southern Prefecture, with the new prefectural governor starting with absolutely nothing at hand. Unlike Zhù Ying, who had three counties as her own established base with the treasury already in place. The new Southern Prefecture had to build even its public farm land from scratch, carving out a stretch of already-cultivated fertile fields — people and all — and reassigning them. Where could you go to appeal about that?
Nowhere.
Eastern River County felt this most acutely, for it genuinely had the new sugar workshops. Workshops of this kind: the closer to the place of production, the greater the savings in cost.
The new Southern Prefectural Governor You was more restrained — he was still willing to collect one more season’s winter wheat crop to fill his granaries against any eventualities. But Grand Prefect Bian Xing had his own plans: he knew about Zhù Ying’s sugar-selling in the capital. Before the new Southern Prefectural Governor had even arrived, he had already ordered Eastern River County’s official sugar workshop to hand over the formula so he could do the same.
As above, so below.
No one thinks they have too much money.
Once a superior has a sudden ambition, those below invariably suffer.
Xiang An said: “When we heard they were building sugar workshops over there, things got moving faster over here too. When we started recruiting workers we realized that some people who could no longer manage in Eastern River County had come here. More people means wages do not go up.”
After a moment’s hesitation, Xiang An asked: “Prefect, are you… considering giving the formula to some other people right now?”
Zhù Ying said: “One by one they are each sharper than the last. They are all opening branch workshops and pulling in relatives as stakeholders — was that not intended to get ahead of me?”
Xiang An gave a slightly embarrassed smile: “We really were in a rush too. We were the ones who opened up this market. The new Southern Prefecture is truly intolerable!”
Zhù Ying was not particularly bothered that Bian Xing also wanted to make money from this. It was hard to say how much profit Bian Xing would actually realize. Considering that Bian Xing had already managed to drive people to flight through the way he ran a single county, the prospects of his sugar workshops earning serious money were questionable. If his prices were higher, he could not outcompete Wuzhou.
Zhù Ying said to Xiang An: “You are building sugar workshops — is there enough sugarcane? Do not touch my grain fields!”
Xiang An said quickly: “I would not dare. I am also looking to buy land. If more land is used for sugarcane and less for grain, grain prices will rise again.”
Zhù Ying said: “Be very careful. Stockpiling and trading grain in large quantities — one wrong move and you lose everything!” It was acceptable to stockpile grain, and a landlord family sitting on their own stores was no problem. But for a merchant to engage in large-scale grain trading was liable to attract official intervention — there would be grounds to confiscate it all.
“I will only stockpile within Wuzhou.”
Zhù Ying raised an eyebrow. Xiang An said: “I will also help to stabilize grain prices. If they fall short, they can come to Wuzhou to buy!”
Zhù Ying said: “In commerce, you cannot afford to ignore money — but if all you watch is money and you do not pay attention to the larger trends, the more richly you have earned, the harder you will fall.”
“Understood.”
Zhù Ying said: “Go and get busy.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
——
After Xiang An left, Zhù Ying had Elder Sister Hu go and summon Xiao Jiang and Jiang Zhou.
It was already late in the evening, and both were greatly surprised — what could this be about at this hour? The last time had involved sending Jiang Zhou to do surveillance. Jiang Zhou’s assignment had been completed reasonably well, but there was no news of any other murder case.
The two entered the Prefectural Office quietly through the side gate. After identities were confirmed and Elder Sister Hu had shut the door and returned to stand at Zhù Ying’s side, Zhù Ying said: “There is something I need you to take care of.”
Xiao Jiang was somewhat surprised — even she had an assignment? More body inspections?
Zhù Ying said: “You two are to go in disguise to Eastern River County for a look.”
Jiang Zhou asked: “What are we looking for?”
Zhù Ying said: “Let me test you — what changes have there been on the streets lately?”
Jiang Zhou said: “Hmm — busier. More outsiders.”
Zhù Ying said: “Good. More outsiders, and more people from Eastern River County in particular. Go to Eastern River County and see what is different there from here. Have conversations with the local people — what are their taxes like, what is the new official like, what is the sugar workshop like…”
Jiang Zhou quickly pulled out a notebook to write it down. Xiao Jiang, seeing that she was writing slowly, took paper and brush and wrote it down herself. When they had finished, Xiao Jiang asked: “Prefect, if I may be so bold — why are we doing this? It would help to know so we can judge whether we should look into other things as well.”
Zhù Ying said: “Both of you, pay attention to your own safety. Further, take a look at whether Eastern River is heading toward disorder, and what kind of governance the new Southern Prefecture is practicing.”
Xiao Jiang said: “Is it that they might be a threat to you, Prefect?”
“Hard to say.” They would need to see exactly what conditions in Eastern River County looked like before one could judge what effects it might have on her.
Both women gave their assent, and Zhù Ying asked: “Do you need anything?”
Xiao Jiang said: “Nothing else — I will use my old taoist certificate.” Since the purpose was to gather intelligence, the identity of a traveling taoist from the capital would serve better than that of a Wuzhou female official for getting the people of Eastern River to talk openly.
The two still attended the Prefectural Office’s morning meeting the next day, then turned around and left in disguise. Since Xiao Jiang had difficulty walking, they took a mule cart. Jiang Zhou sat on the cart shaft and said as they went: “This is making me think of when I came out of the capital with you, Niangzi — I could not even drive a cart back then…”
Xiao Jiang smiled, thinking back to those days — it felt like another life.
She said: “Now you can even handle casework!”
“Heh heh.”
The two arrived in Eastern River County the next day and found a small inn to stay at. The innkeeper looked at Xiao Jiang’s taoist certificate in considerable surprise: “From the capital? All the way from there?”
Xiao Jiang responded in a slightly modified regional accent: “Yes. My teacher, before she died, asked me to come and see her home county. How did the Southern Prefecture turn into a new Southern Prefecture?”
Seeing that she had a backstory, the innkeeper’s wife was happy to chat with someone who had taken religious vows. Xiao Jiang fabricated a story about herself being abandoned as an infant because of her lame foot, taken in and raised by a taoist nun. The nun had since died, buried at the temple, but she had always missed her home, so she had asked her disciple Xiao Jiang to come to Eastern River County to have a look.
“People always have a need to look into their own roots,” Xiao Jiang said.
The innkeeper’s wife said: “That is very true! Is the abbess also from Eastern River, taoist?”
“No,” said Xiao Jiang, slipping back naturally into the official dialect, “I grew up in the capital.”
One thing led to another, and Xiao Jiang learned that Eastern River County, ever since it was no longer under Zhù Ying’s jurisdiction, had gone steadily downhill day by day.
The innkeeper’s wife said: “The men doing their rounds on the streets are still the same people — the same soldiers guarding the city gates. But with a new official in charge, their manner changed completely. Yesterday they were polite and amiable, today they were rude and abrupt. Ah, but they are not to be blamed either.”
“Oh?”
“The officials take their frustrations out on them, and those frustrations have to go somewhere, don’t they? And I’ve heard their pay has been docked too.”
It was just miserable. When Zhù Ying was there, the Southern Prefecture’s court attendants had received supplements, and what was demanded of the counties was also less. In the new Southern Prefecture, the governor had less skill at managing finances than Zhù Ying did and also took more for himself, which naturally made things harder for those below. Less money, more work, more insults to swallow…
Layer by layer it filtered down, and when it reached the bottom layer of ordinary people, one could easily imagine the result.
Xiao Jiang and Jiang Zhou lingered in Eastern River for half a month, then went briefly to the new Southern Prefecture city to look around as well. They very quickly discovered that the proportion of sugarcane fields there appeared to be considerably higher than in Wuzhou. They also learned of something that was, in that world, entirely unremarkable: the “official sugar workshop” in the new Southern Prefecture, rather than hiring workers, simply conscripted people for corvée labor. Human labor cost: zero.
Jiang Zhou said with fury: “How can anyone still be doing things this way?”
Xiao Jiang grabbed her arm and pulled her away. Once they were on the cart and had put some distance between themselves and the place, she said: “Do you think this is the capital under Chancellor Wang’s governance? Or Wuzhou under our Prefect’s governance? Who else gives you a corvée year of only twenty days?”
Jiang Zhou worried: “Then would they not be able to produce at far lower cost…”
Xiao Jiang said coldly: “Are they willing to sell at a low price? The Prefect is still waiting for us to report back — let us go.”
——
Zhù Ying did not wait for them. She had her own affairs — the New Year was over, and not only were the Tribal School students about to return, but the court had also approved the appointment of Wuzhou’s Chief Secretary and Military Commandant.
At the end of the first month, the imperial edict arrived.
One was Su Mingluan’s elder brother, and the other was the brother of the Shanque chieftain’s father-in-law. The names she had given them were: Su Mingluan’s brother’s name was Su Feihu, and the Shanque chieftain’s father-in-law’s brother’s name was Lin Miao.
This trip into the mountains would serve the convenient purpose of announcing both men’s appointments and bringing them back to Wuzhou city. Su Feihu in particular — she needed to see what he and his children were capable of, whether they could do some work for her.