Winter on the Chengdu plain wasn’t especially cold, but thick clouds drifted overhead, staining everything in a hard, cold hue. The clouds hung grey and hazy, and so did the trees across the plain.
A little over a hundred li west of Chengdu lay Shannan Dam, a well-known large village in the area, home to more than two thousand eight hundred residents across some five hundred-odd households.
Nestled against the mountains with water nearby, the official road running east to west had reached here long ago, and this year the Huaxia Army had widened that road further, bringing in brick, tile, and timber. Land beside the road had been leveled to begin building a school. By late October, as rumors of land redistribution grew more intense, the Huaxia Army’s work teams arrived in force. The atmosphere around the village turned tense at once.
As one of the first hundred major villages targeted in the land-equalization campaign, eight work teams totaling one hundred and two people came to Shannan Dam, each group numbering twelve or thirteen, plus accompanying guard soldiers, one hundred and thirty-six members in all. By the second day after their arrival, the entire operation was already proceeding in orderly fashion.
After taking control of the Chengdu plain, the Huaxia Army’s first order of business had been a rough survey of land and household registration across the entire territory, and after crushing the Jurchen western army, this work had gone through a more detailed second pass — the preliminary groundwork for the new land policy.
Since June of this year, as thinking on equality had spread, individual talks with the great landlords and clans of Sichuan regarding land policy had already been underway in stages. By the time the assembly passed the resolution to carry out the new land policy in mid-to-late August, large numbers of gentry and landlords had gone to Chengdu or Zhang Village to negotiate details of the reform with the Huaxia Army.
The relatively intense negotiation period lasted about two months and produced no substantive result.
During this time, after passing the resolution, the assembly had begun methodically drawing personnel from various departments, establishing core objectives, drafting concrete plans, and breaking down the steps of execution. Members from law, propaganda, civil affairs, land, and finance departments then entered a phase of hands-on simulation, and based on progress in the negotiations, ran a certain degree of adversarial drills.
With Ning Yi directly and fully in charge, no outside disturbance was able to slow the progress of these preparations.
On October 25th, a total of nine hundred and twenty-three work groups, together with some military officers, over twelve thousand people in all, completed their final assembly and oath-taking, and were simultaneously deployed to a hundred points across the entire southwest.
The land policy began.
……
At Shannan Dam, guided by the seasoned shopkeeper from Zhu’s Bookstore and a veteran Huaxia Army soldier who had once been stationed there, Ning Xi spent two days doing on-the-ground visits and getting to know the residents.
He was now one of three propaganda officers in Work Group Seventeen, one of the hundred work groups — this being the key focus of the entire land-policy effort. Under the Huaxia Army’s official arrangements, to earn the right to a share of land, local residents first had to attend seven formal lectures, three militia drills, and one simple assessment; the propaganda officers were responsible for these lessons and the final assessment.
With the current political system drawing tens of thousands of people into what would inevitably be a long-running operation, each group tried as much as possible to follow a strategy of pairing veterans with newcomers. The head of Work Group Seventeen, who also served as overall commander for all of Shannan Dam, was Kang Zhuming, a former senior figure at Zhu’s Bookstore.
He was a veteran shopkeeper who had been with the bookstore since before the Jurchens’ first southern invasion, had accompanied the scorched-earth campaign, and had taken part in the Battle of Xia Village — one of the most capable operatives in the Huaxia Army. While shouldering the duties of overall commander and group leader, he was also one of the three propaganda officers of Work Group Seventeen, responsible for passing on the necessary lecturing skills to Ning Xi, who was just beginning this kind of hands-on mass-work.
The nearly three thousand residents of Shannan Dam had already been divided into eight portions by residence, of which the two hundred-odd adults assigned to Group Seventeen were their responsibility. So for the first two days, Kang Zhuming led Ning Xi and the others through the village, learning the lay of the land and the head count, going door to door to get a basic picture. Besides the three lead lecturers and the veteran soldier stationed in the village, there was also a young man tagging along who handled logistics while also learning the ropes. This young man was somewhat thin, but sharp-eyed with strong, resolute brows; his right hand had only four fingers. He was the posthumous son of Qin Shaohe, who had lived in the north for twelve years before being brought back to the southwest. His childhood nickname had been Stone; he now went by the formal name Qin Weijun.
“…From the stream to the north to the road to the south, this whole stretch — the area’s easy to remember… Try to keep clear records of how many people are in each household. It’s no trouble to record things at the start, what worries me is something going wrong partway through… These two hundred-odd people, split into six squads, six rounds of lecturing a day — if a few people refuse to show up every day, things get complicated later on, and there might even be people impersonating others or stirring up trouble. Since we’re new here, we won’t be able to tell, and that’ll be embarrassing. Though of course, troublemakers just won’t get any land, but for this first round we still want to do it properly, no need to make a mess of things… I’ve got some experience remembering faces from the old days…”
As they made their rounds, Kang Zhuming went over these points with Ning Xi and Qin Weijun. Ning Xi listened carefully and took notes in his notebook, while Qin Weijun, carrying a pack on his back, leaned in to look.
By late October the countryside had entered its slack farming season. Among the grey-and-black houses, snot-nosed children ran shouting down the roads, and some of the mud walls already bore slogans like “Equal Land Rights” and “Equality” and “Civil Rights.” The adults watched the Huaxia Army members walking through the village from under the eaves or from inside their homes, with expressions of wariness, confusion, or restless anticipation.
In the dim light, glances were exchanged, whispers passed.
Kang Zhuming and the others, dressed in worn but tidy clothes, went from courtyard to courtyard under the veteran soldier’s guidance. On entering each gate, Kang Zhuming would first salute, then greet the household.
“This would be Uncle Liu Sanwu’s home, isn’t it? Good day, Uncle. I’m Kang Zhuming, a lecturer sent by the Huaxia Army…”
After the second lecturer gave his name, Ning Xi also saluted and called out loudly, “Uncle, my name’s Goudan!”
Qin Weijun said, “Mine’s Maodan.”
Both had chosen names meant to sound endearing and down-to-earth.
“…We’re here about the land redistribution — not sure if you’ve heard about this already, Uncle… Forgive us for showing up unannounced, we’ve brought a small gift, every household gets one, no need to stand on ceremony…”
As they spoke, Qin Weijun presented a small packet of candy printed with equality-themed illustrations. Once the household accepted it, a little embarrassed, they began explaining the lessons to be held in two days’ time, while also confirming the household’s actual headcount and names.
Under the village’s cold, overcast sky, the propaganda members of all eight work groups were making their rounds among the residents, greeting people, handing out candy, and explaining the upcoming lessons. Seeing the Huaxia Army members’ gentle manner, quite a few residents, after a little conversation, cautiously began asking whether they really would get land, whether the assessment was hard, and so on, and Kang Zhuming and the others patiently gave explanations.
The state saying it would give people land, saying everyone would be equal — this was something that had never happened, never been achieved, in thousands of years. Its beginning unfolded quietly like this, and those who heard of it felt some yearning, but also plenty of unease and doubt.
Some residents showed enormous resistance to the whole matter, and amid the winter’s murmuring and whispering, one could sometimes hear the cursing of village elders mixed in.
That day Kang Zhuming took Ning Xi through more than fifty households in the village, and by evening the two of them parted ways. He hurriedly ate a few mouthfuls of food in the mess hall, then went to another front within the village. This was where members from the land, finance, and law departments were negotiating land buybacks with the village’s clan elders and great landlords, at the Liu clan ancestral hall. By the time he arrived, oil lamps had already been lit inside, and the atmosphere was oppressive and stifling.
The members who had come here had already spent an entire day lecturing and negotiating with the village landlords and elders, going in circles over the same arguments. But with Kang Zhuming’s arrival, the atmosphere in the hall still surged into another heated peak, with every topic raised during the day brought up again — though this too had been anticipated in earlier planning. Kang Zhuming responded to each topic once more, from the state of the world to the Huaxia Army’s ideology to the arrangements for each individual’s interests, and after that, naturally, another round of the same old topics.
“…The land here has been passed down through my ancestors, never taken by trickery or force… You in the Huaxia Army are bullying us with your power, going against the natural order — aren’t you afraid of a popular uprising—”
While responding, Kang Zhuming simply said calmly, “We hope there won’t be an uprising.”
From ancient times to now, the interests bound up in land, and people’s insistence on the righteousness of private property, had never been things a calm exchange of words could change. Just as the man said, his ancestors had accumulated their land generation after generation, and in his eyes it had never been taken by trickery or force. Now you suddenly wanted to take his land, saying it was for everyone’s equality, for a better future — no matter how fine the reasoning, even spoken for three or five years, it probably wouldn’t win over his heart.
But in any case, after more than a month of preliminary propaganda from the Huaxia Army, the first formal clash under the land-redistribution process had now landed.
According to the planned work schedule, the entire land-distribution effort proceeded along these two fronts. Once the lecturing work aimed at ordinary residents was fully complete and the assessments finished, all land buyback work would conclude on the same day.
That night, with the stars faint and scattered, the lamps in the Liu clan ancestral hall burned on past midnight, as those households with sizable landholdings raged, cursed, and plotted their countermeasures inside. Elsewhere throughout the village, tenant farmers with no land of their own also whispered in the darkness — some cherishing a faint hope, others believing this might just be some pretext for the Huaxia Army to seize the masters’ land.
The next morning, Kang Zhuming had more official business to attend to, so Ning Xi, going by the alias Goudan, and another lecturer continued assigning the villagers they’d visited the day before, doing another pass to catch anyone likely to be absent or seem troublesome. In the afternoon, with “Maodan” Qin Weijun as his audience, he ran through another rehearsal in the small wooden shed behind the school for what he would lecture on next.
“Ahem, fellow villagers, uncles and aunts, brothers and sisters, I’m Chen Goudan, a lecturer with the Huaxia Army… heh heh heh, over the next few days, I’ll be here to discuss clearly with you all what exactly the Huaxia Army is here to divide up the land for…”
Maodan clapped vigorously…
……
On the morning of October 29th, morning mist was still gathering and drifting over the winter plain when the gong for assembly rang out at Shannan Dam’s new school. Not long after, the lecturers went into the village to gather the residents, who had already finished breakfast. After about half an hour of chaotic hustle, the first batch of residents assembled on the school grounds, then filed in batches into a classroom fitted out with rows of low benches.
Ning Xi straightened his clothes outside the classroom, took a deep breath, and walked in—
……
Per the planned schedule, the Huaxia Army’s indoor curriculum ran to seven sessions.
It went from the Huaxia Army’s record of achievements, to the ideology of the four classes of people, to plain equality for all, then extended from equality for all to the fact that people without education, unable to think for themselves, could hardly truly be equal with others, expounding on the various measures the Huaxia Army planned to take to substantively achieve equality. Then, through extremely accessible language, even in a style resembling folk tales of the strange and marvelous, it laid out the tremendous power that the study of natural science had shown on the battlefield and the fresh new look it had already brought to Chengdu, covered some basic points of law, and finally taught everyone to recognize the two characters “Huaxia,” to learn as far as possible to write their own names, and to gain a basic grasp of the ten Arabic numerals.
—And the final land-distribution assessment was, in practice, simply writing one’s own name and the two characters “Huaxia.”
Throughout the lecture process, a session of “tenant farmers airing their grievances” was worked in as appropriate, along with three outdoor drill sessions, instilling in all participating residents the basic concept of forming simple ranks and “obeying orders without question.” Once someone had gone through this full round, they would begin to be assigned farmland.
The broad shape of things wasn’t complicated. Across the thousand-li expanse of the southwest, depending on distance, the historical record shows the first round of lectures took place on October 29th, 30th, and November 1st and 2nd respectively, with the curriculum unfolding step by step as planned.
But resistance followed close behind.
At Shannan Dam, on the afternoon of October 29th, five village elders began wailing and cursing throughout the village — some kowtowing toward their ancestors’ graves, crying out grievance, others blocking the main road to the school, cursing the villagers about to attend the lectures as ungrateful wretches who would face retribution. One seventy-nine-year-old man in the village smashed his own forehead bloody on the school grounds.
At Shannan Dam, the power of the Liu clan had always been fairly strong, and the villagers who witnessed all this were, for a moment, at a loss; some decided not to go to the lectures after all. At this point the first round of classes hadn’t yet covered the entire village, and with the situation on the verge of grinding to a halt, people waited to see how the Huaxia Army would respond.
Within a quarter hour, Huaxia Army soldiers used clubs to clear the elders blocking the road and the school grounds. Another quarter hour later, Huaxia Army soldiers, carrying a list of charges they had already compiled beforehand, went into the village to arrest people, placing five young men — one from each of the five elders’ households — in cangues and taking them into custody. After announcing the suspected charges, all five were locked directly into a building beside the school compound.
The five elders’ wailing and cursing that day went unanswered; they were simply pushed aside with clubs. A military doctor was sent to treat the elder whose forehead was bleeding; when he refused, that too was left alone.
The next day, two more elders joined in the outcry. That same day, seven more able-bodied villagers were jailed, including, remarkably, one woman, charged with having conspired with a servant years earlier to beat a concubine of the household to death. With the charge confirmed, it carried the death penalty.
That afternoon, Liu Tang, head of the Liu clan, came to see Kang Zhuming to try to negotiate. When it came to discussing how these twelve people might be pardoned, Kang Zhuming produced part of the list of names he had gathered.
“As for those among them not yet arrested, we can look into them privately as circumstances allow. As for the cases involving the twelve already announced, the Huaxia Army will absolutely pursue them to the full — once we have the evidence, we’ll enforce the law impartially. Those who should be released will be released, those who should be executed will be executed… There’s no room to maneuver on this matter, so I ask that Elder Liu say no more.”
Liu Tang was struck with alarm, for the woman already taken into custody was his cousin’s principal wife — his own sister-in-law.
That same day, the cultural classes at Shannan Dam moved directly into the grievance-airing session.
This was but a small ripple that had stirred at Shannan Dam over the course of the whole undertaking; elsewhere, all kinds of conflicts were unfolding.
According to records compiled afterward, of the hundred major villages, ninety-three broke out in friction and resistance of varying scale when faced with this sudden, almost inconceivable upheaval.
Among them, the greatest disturbance occurred at a place called Yu Family Village, more than three hundred li west of Chengdu. There, the old patriarch of the Yu clan had died not long before, and the new patriarch, Yu Tianze, who had practiced martial arts since childhood, commanded great prestige in the fierce, hardy Yu Family Village. Upon receiving the Huaxia Army’s order to redistribute land, Yu Tianze led nearly two thousand villagers in open rebellion, surrounding the ninety-eight-member work group the Huaxia Army had sent, intending to wipe out the entire team before retreating into the mountains to become bandits.
The Huaxia Army work group members held their ground, using firearms and fire-bombs to keep the encircling force of over a thousand from advancing. Three hours later, the Huaxia Army’s first two hundred emergency-response troops raced through the mountain paths and crushed Yu Tianze’s encircling force. Yu Tianze retreated into the mountains.
Eight hours after that, three thousand Huaxia Army troops assembled at Yu Family Village, then pushed into the mountains to hunt them down. Yu Tianze and his men tried to hold their ground and use the terrain, but the Huaxia Army, having spent years operating in the mountains of the southwest, had long grown accustomed to this kind of ground. After crushing Yu Tianze’s core forces, they captured him alive on the third day, and mopping-up operations in the mountains continued until the seventh day before troops were finally withdrawn.
All the Yu clan leaders who had incited the uprising were put on public trial three days later, and afterward, every one of them was executed by firing squad.
The whole affair was compiled, published in the newspapers, and spread far and wide.
Taken on its own, this was an almost savage episode.
For a long time, ever since taking control of Sichuan, the Huaxia Army had consistently maintained a stance of goodwill toward others, including, since the land policy order was passed in August, treating every landlord and wealthy household with courtesy throughout the two months of negotiations, even as a hundred work groups moved into the major villages — the visits and negotiations had remained, on the whole, calm and polite.
This had led many to believe that the matter of the land policy could still be negotiated, could still be refused.
No one had expected that after just this one ordinary round of maneuvering, the Huaxia Army’s overall response would be so swift, so resolute, even so savage. Ning Yi’s side had come down on the entire southwest with a ferocity almost matching — even exceeding — their stance toward the Jurchens.
The whole southwest was shaken.
Within just a few days, everyone fully understood the Huaxia Army’s resolve in pushing forward the new land policy.