Chapter 36: Pearl Folk, Tanka Folk, Base Folk

Night fell.

The galleon slowly lowered its sails and came to a stop.

They were already in open waters, where the anchor chain could not reach the bottom, so no anchor was dropped.

The blackout was still in effect tonight, the ship blending into the pitch-black sea.

Lin Qian had just packed up his sextant and charts and was leaving the captain's cabin when he ran into Bailangzai.

"Perfect timing. Come with me up to the poop deck."

Lin Qian climbed to the poop deck first, solemnly opened the box, and introduced it: "This is a sextant, used to measure latitude. From now on, you'll take a measurement every day at noon and at night, and record it in the log."

"I've got it." Bailangzai nodded.

"By the way, do you know how to write?"

Bailangzai shook his head.

Lin Qian suddenly realized that teaching Bailangzai navigation wasn't so simple — he'd have to start with Arabic numerals, then move on to the laws of celestial motion, the theory of a spherical earth, the concepts of longitude and latitude, the meaning of the sun's declination angle, and so on.

After thinking it over for a long while, Lin Qian decided to start with the simplest thing: measuring the altitude angle of the North Star.

First let Bailangzai know the "how," then teach him the "why."

Lin Qian handed him the sextant and said, "This thing is called a sextant. It's used to measure the angle between two objects..."

Though Bailangzai hadn't had much schooling, he was fairly clever — within an hour, he had already mastered the use of the sextant.

Then Lin Qian began teaching him the Arabic numerals 1 through 9, and then the decimal system.

By the time Bailangzai had more or less grasped it, it was already past midnight.

Lin Qian said, "Let's stop here for today. Come find me again tomorrow at noon, and I'll teach you how to measure the sun's altitude angle."

"Alright!" Bailangzai acknowledged.

Lin Qian lowered his head to pack up the teaching tools when he suddenly heard a dull "thud" in front of him.

Lin Qian looked up and saw Bailangzai kneeling before him, saying, "Thank you, Sixth Brother." Then he kowtowed respectfully.

Lin Qian hurriedly helped him up: "What are you doing?"

Bailangzai's expression was sincere: "I may not have had much schooling, but I know the principle of respecting one's teacher. Since Sixth Brother is teaching me to read and to navigate, you deserve this bow from me."

Hearing this, Lin Qian was briefly taken aback.

To be honest, he had been teaching Bailangzai with the casual attitude of an old master taking on an apprentice, and he hadn't expected to underestimate how seriously the ancients took the bond between teacher and student.

Lin Qian smiled: "Between brothers, there's no need for such empty formalities. Just keep it in your heart."

Bailangzai was not good with words and didn't know how to respond, only saying, "It's owed..."

Lin Qian packed up the sextant, handed it to Bailangzai, then patted his shoulder: "From now on, this is in your keeping. This instrument is extremely important — don't show it to just anyone."

"Mm, understood." Bailangzai nodded heavily.

"Alright, go back to sleep. And send José to me on your way."

Bailangzai didn't move, hesitating before speaking: "Sixth Brother, I want to ask a favor of you."

Lin Qian's tone was relaxed: "No need for all this 'favor' talk — if you have something to say, just say it."

"Could I take my share of the profits not in silver, but entirely in pearls from the cargo hold?"

"Of course you can. But you're not a woman — what do you need so many pearls for?" Lin Qian said half-jokingly, though in his heart he already had a vague inkling of the reason.

Bailangzai pondered for a moment, walked to the ship's rail, gazed out at the pitch-black sea, and spoke in a drifting voice: "Sixth Brother, have you heard of pearl divers?"

Every dynasty of the Central Plains had an enormous demand for pearls. As a result, in the pearl-producing regions along the South Sea, there were people who made their living diving for pearls.

It was an extremely dangerous trade — low temperatures, suffocation, water pressure, and underwater creatures could all take a pearl diver's life at any moment. So unless the common folk were utterly desperate, they generally wouldn't risk it. Relying on civilian pearl gathering alone, the supply was insufficient.

So the Great Ming established a special household registry — the pearl folk, commonly called pearl divers — whose status was hereditary from generation to generation, with no permission to change trades.

The pearl folk paid their taxes in pearls, with a fixed quota due each year; those who failed to meet it were punished.

Lin Qian didn't know many of the details, only vaguely remembering a few lines of poetry lamenting the hardship of their lives.

Lines like: "One mermaid's tear, ten thousand pearl slaves' blood," and "In the palace, mermaid's tears; in the sea, drowned slaves."

Lin Qian leaned against the ship's rail, signaling Bailangzai to tell him more.

Bailangzai spoke slowly. Though his tone was flat, every word seemed to weep blood, making Lin Qian's scalp crawl.

The Great Ming court treated pearl divers with extreme cruelty — one could say they never treated pearl divers as human beings at all.

First, the pearl folk bore crushing taxes: each household had to pay forty liang of low-grade pearls and twenty liang of mid-grade pearls every year.

Second, the court strictly restricted the areas where pearls could be gathered, calling them "pearl ponds" — pearl divers were only permitted to gather pearls within these ponds.

But after several hundred years, these pearl ponds had been nearly fished out — not just pearls, even the coral was almost dead. Pearl divers were forced to risk the crime of "illegal gathering" to dive in more distant open waters, going deeper and deeper.

Most pearl divers had to go into the water every single day, all year round, until their hands and feet were rotted raw, just barely managing to gather enough to meet their quota.

Mind you, even the waters off Guangdong are bone-cold in winter. To make up the tax quota, they could only fill the sea with their lives.

Finally, the court also periodically issued "pearl-gathering corvée," usually scheduled in the depths of winter.

In one major campaign, nine out of ten would drown or freeze to death, and the floating corpses could cover the entire surface of the sea, drawing schools of fish to fight over the flesh.

This kind of human tragedy wasn't a rare occurrence — it happened from time to time, sometimes two or three times in a single year.

As for the pearl folk's lowly social status — being looked down upon, barred from education and the civil examinations — compared to the loss of life, that seemed less important.

For pearl folk, merely surviving was already difficult, let alone accumulating any property. Naturally they couldn't afford houses, so they lived on the sea just like the Tanka boat people.

Over time, the authorities lumped the Tanka and the pearl folk together.

After all, to the scholar-officials, the two were the same — both were base people.

In the Great Ming, if an ox or a horse died suddenly, there would be an investigation and accountability.

But when base people died in mountains of corpses and seas of bones, the scholar-officials wouldn't spare them a single glance.

And as it happened, Bailangzai's family was exactly such a household of pearl folk. His family had once had seven members; now only three were left.

His mother was too frail to dive anymore, so his elder sister did most of the pearl gathering, while Bailangzai only went into the water during the summer.

It wasn't that Bailangzai feared the cold—in truth, it was because men had less body fat, and once winter came, diving into the water would freeze them to death within moments, while women, who could withstand the cold, were the ones who harvested pearls in winter. Most men spent the season away on trading voyages, and the other pearl-fishing households divided their labor the same way.

This was also the reason Lin Qian had been able to meet Bailangzai aboard the Qingping. When he had crossed over, it had been winter—and if not for the matter of seizing the ship, Bailangzai would have already gone home by the third month.

Listening to Bailangzai's calm, matter-of-fact account, Lin Qian felt only a surge of rage churning in his chest—no matter how evil human nature could be, there ought to be a limit.

How could anyone in this world watch the horrifying sight of corpses filling the sea, and still stretch out their hand for pearls with an easy conscience?

Lin Qian took a deep breath, doing his best to keep his tone level, and asked, "So you want to exchange your share for pearls—is it to pay taxes for your family?"

"Mm." Bailangzai nodded.

Lin Qian now understood why Bailangzai, at such a young age, had such a taciturn, withdrawn air about him.

"Fine—exchange as many as you want." Lin Qian paused. "But the suffering of the pearl folk isn't caused by too few pearls. Feeding those corrupt officials pearls is like carrying firewood to put out a blaze."

Bailangzai looked puzzled. He had never studied letters and didn't quite understand what Lin Qian meant.

Lin Qian suppressed his emotions and said flatly, "One day, I will lift the pearl folk out of their sea of suffering… Go on back—help me summon José."

Yahei

Fenyuan

Pen