Chapter 123: Grain Shortage

In Yongyang Town, at the Regional Commander's residence.

Fei Chun hurried in, tossed his broad-brimmed hat onto the table, and said, "Another batch of refugees has come back, clamoring for land."

"That's good news," Zhao Han said cheerfully. "The fighting before was so fierce that the common folk were all scared off by the government troops. We may hold half a county's land, but our registered population is still under fifty thousand. We need to call more of them back."

"Grain — we don't have enough grain!"

Fei Chun's post was Superintendent of Funds and Grain. Dejected, he said, "After the Xiao clan surrendered their land, many landlords followed suit. Their land was distributed, all right, but their money and grain weren't confiscated. The drifters who came from the prefectural seat, the refugees returning from Anfu and Taihe — none of them have any grain. They even have to borrow seed from the authorities. The local tenant farmers don't have much stored either, and we're right at the hungry gap!"

Fei Chun grew more and more agitated as he spoke. "And you still want to open so many schools, and provide lunch for the pupils. Except for Wuxing Town, the town chiefs and revenue-section heads from every town have come running to me demanding grain. Where am I supposed to conjure it from?"

"Ha," Zhao Han rose and poured tea for Fei Chun, soothing him with a smile. "Calm yourself. Rushing won't help."

Fei Chun took a sip of hot tea to wet his throat and said, "The schools have to stop. Even if we absolutely must run them, it has to wait until after the summer grain is collected."

"Anything can stop, but the schools cannot stop," Zhao Han said.

Running the schools really didn't require much money or grain. The pupils were all children aged seven to twelve — barely qualifying as four years of compulsory education.

Right now, Zhao Han's domain held just over forty thousand people (aged twelve and above). The school-age children between seven and twelve numbered only a little over three thousand. How much could one lunch a day consume? Only two hundred shi a month.

Moreover, the teaching focused mainly on basic literacy, so the demands on the teachers were very low — it was nothing more than spreading elementary schooling on a large scale.

Four or five teachers could handle an entire town.

Books, brushes, and ink didn't amount to much either. They used chalky clay as chalk and wrote on black wooden boards for instruction. Students with money brought their own brush and ink, or even studied at home, looking down on the public schools entirely. In families with no money, parents made brushes from hair, and the students practiced writing with water on wooden boards.

As long as you have spirit, there are always more solutions than difficulties!

The real drain on grain was the masses of refugees, drifters, and tenant farmers, who could only survive by borrowing grain from Zhao Han.

Fei Chun cupped the teacup to warm his hands, his mood gradually settling. He said, "There is another way — levy grain from the landlords!"

Zhao Han asked, "How much longer can our grain reserves hold out?"

"I was optimistic before, thinking we could last until the summer harvest," Fei Chun said. "But with more and more refugees returning home, at this rate, we'll face famine by the third month. At most, we can hold on until the fourth month."

Zhao Han thought carefully for a moment, then said, "Then we'll borrow grain from the landlords."

"Borrow grain? Just levy it outright!" Fei Chun was in charge of funds and grain, and he had no desire to pay the landlords back once they had grain later.

"Listen to me," Zhao Han said, his expression grave. "Since these landlords complied and honestly handed over their land, we cannot go back on our word. A man's spit is a driven nail — we must mean what we say. Only then will these landlords stay settled and not live in constant fear."

Fei Chun asked, "Do we really have to borrow it?"

Zhao Han nodded. "Another day, call Pang Chunlai and the others over. We'll establish a grain bank."

"What's a grain bank?" Fei Chun asked, puzzled.

Zhao Han explained, "We'll build warehouses and stockpile grain. Anyone can deposit grain there, and we'll pay them monthly interest. Farmers who borrow grain will also have to pay interest. But it must be low interest — no usury!"

Fei Chun tried to grasp it. "So, say I'm a landlord. I deposit my grain in the grain bank, and a few months later I can withdraw it and also get interest from the grain bank?"

"Yes, exactly," Zhao Han said.

"Ai-yo, my brother," Fei Chun's head immediately ached. "Storing grain comes with losses — rats come to gnaw, weevils come to gnaw, and it can get damp and moldy. Deposit grain and still earn interest? Not charging a storage fee is already doing them a favor! This is a money-losing business!"

Zhao Han smiled. "Right now it's depositing and borrowing grain. In the future, we can deposit and lend money."

"A money shop?" Fei Chun's eyes lit up.

Zhao Han nodded. "You could also call it a bank."

Money shops in the Ming dynasty originated in the Zhengtong era, primarily handling the exchange of silver, official coin, and private coin.

During the Jiajing era, private coin flooded the market, and the court banned copper-coin exchange, causing money shops nationwide to collapse on a large scale.

In the early Wanli years, money shops were permitted to exist once more. In fact, money shops spread across the entire country, essentially becoming the distribution terminals for official coin — the court minted copper coins, and the money shops bought them with silver, helping the court issue the new coins into the market.

By the Chongzhen era, money shops had already become very similar to later banks.

Large money shops had already developed interregional remittance services, and their bills of exchange even functioned as credit instruments (similar to checks).

In the vast countryside, countless coin-exchange stalls or coin-and-grain stalls had appeared, where silver, copper coins, and grain could be efficiently exchanged.

Zhao Han said, "The coin-and-grain stalls cannot remain in the landlords' hands. We must seize the chance to take them over."

"We don't have enough hands!" Fei Chun groaned.

This was a technical business. Silver and copper coins all varied in fineness and quality; it absolutely required seasoned old masters to oversee it.

Zhao Han smiled. "That's why we'll start with a grain bank, and only run a money shop once it's grown. Take some men and go door to door to borrow grain. Write down clearly how much grain is borrowed from each, and issue promissory notes to these landlords, pledging that after the summer harvest, it will be repaid with principal and interest. From now on, when farmers borrow grain, they'll all come to the grain bank. There are two urgent tasks: first, get through the grain shortage; second, establish trust."

Fei Chun's head suddenly felt enormous. All he wanted was to return to Yanshan at once and go back to being an honest servant of the Fei clan.

He had barely any literate men under him, a desperate shortage of warehouses to store grain, and now, damn it all, he had to go borrow grain from the landlords?

"Regional Commander, Mr. Li seeks an audience!"

"Quickly, invite him in!"

Zhao Han was suddenly overjoyed. He had spoken with Pang Chunlai and knew just how formidable a talent Li Banghua was.

He went out personally to welcome Li Banghua in, then poured tea for the old gentleman and asked, "Sir Meng'an, are you homesick?"

Li Banghua could not be bothered to beat around the bush and asked directly, "When do you plan to move against the prefectural seats?"

"Within two or three years," Zhao Han said.

Li Banghua asked again, "After seizing Jiangxi, which province do you intend to attack?"

Zhao Han answered, "Fujian and Guangdong."

"You're not going to attack Nanjing?" Li Banghua's expression was somewhat intriguing.

Zhao Han laughed. "What would I attack Nanjing for? Even if I could take it, I'd become the number one rebel under heaven."

Li Banghua said, "If you can hold Jiangxi alone, you'll already be the number one rebel under heaven."

"It's not the same," Zhao Han argued. "As long as I don't attack Nanjing, don't touch the Jiangsu-Zhejiang region, and don't even touch Huguang, the court's primary target for suppression will certainly be those roving bandits in the northwest. If the Chongzhen Emperor dares to muster a great army to suppress Jiangxi and can't finish it within half a year, the roving bandits and the Tartars will be able to break through to the capital!"

Li Banghua agreed with this assessment completely.

Jiangxi was too far from Beijing, while the roving bandits and the Tartars were far too close. As long as Chongzhen still had his wits about him, he would have to set Jiangxi aside for the time being.

Li Banghua asked further, "And after you seize Fujian and Guangdong?"

Zhao Han replied, "Consolidate the three provinces, open maritime trade, and drill with firearms. If there's time, take Guangxi as well."

Li Banghua suddenly rose and paced back and forth in the room, as if pondering something, and as if wrestling with something.

After pacing for a long while, Li Banghua asked, "Do you think the court can exterminate the roving bandits?"

Zhao Han answered, "Roving bandits are like chives — cut one crop and another grows. Shaanxi and Shanxi have suffered great disasters year after year, yet the court still levies taxes. How can the peasants survive? Unless you slaughter every peasant in both provinces, the roving bandits can never be wiped out completely."

In truth, conditions in the north were even more dire than Zhao Han imagined!

Before Chongzhen even ascended the throne, the north was already rotten through and through.

In the seventh year of Tianqi, Wu Yingji recorded what he saw and heard, the gist of which follows —

Leaving the county seat of Zhenyang in Henan, he traveled forty li without a break. The fields along the entire road lay abandoned, overgrown with weeds.

Wu Yingji asked the carter, "In this county, how much of the land lies abandoned like this?"

The carter answered, "Eight or nine parts in ten. Xixian is much better — only four or five parts in ten lie abandoned there."

Arriving at a post station, Wu Yingji asked a post runner, "Why do the common people of this county not farm the land?"

The post runner answered, "This county has many horse-raising households, and the horse-administration corvée is harsh. Those subject to service cannot bear it and can only flee to other regions. The people are gone, but the taxes and corvée remain, and the authorities enforce collective punishment. One household implicates ten; when the neighbors are all implicated, the relatives are next. Rich households pay cash to commute the service; the poor can only flee. The whole county has nearly emptied out."

Wu Yingji found this very strange: "Before fleeing, why not sell the land?"

The post runner answered, "The horse-administration corvée transfers to the landowner. In this county, no one dares buy land, so they can only abandon it."

Then he spoke of other oppressive policies, and of the local officials. From the County Magistrate to the Prefect, many were not of jinshi origin but had purchased their posts through tribute or sale. Once in office, they immediately fleeced the people, for otherwise they could hardly recover the cost of buying the post.

A rich, large county had been driven to the point where over eighty percent of its land lay abandoned!

Not only could tenant farmers not survive — even freeholding peasants and small landlords had to flee. And the great landlords dared not seize the land either, for the grain harvest was not enough to cover the horse-administration corvée.

Thus, when the northwestern roving bandits entered Henan, many Henan commoners rose up of their own accord.

Not coerced — they rose up of their own accord!

Shanxi was the same.

After the Shaanxi roving bandits entered Shanxi, in a mere half year, the number of local rebel armies in Shanxi far surpassed those in Shaanxi.

How could Li Banghua not know of such conditions?

Many officials at court knew full well!

Li Banghua took out a letter and handed it to Zhao Han, saying, "Send a man to Gushui Valley Village in Jishui. Deliver this letter to my father."

Zhao Han said happily, "It shall be done without fail!"

"Speak, then. What would you have me do?" Li Banghua came straight to the point.

"There is indeed a thorny matter," Zhao Han said, explaining the grain shortage. Cupping his hands in a bow, he said, "The matter of borrowing grain from the wealthy households — I entrust it to you, sir. They do not quite trust me yet, but I imagine that with you taking the lead, there should be no problem."

Li Banghua laughed. "Any intelligent person would trust you. If you had no intention of returning the grain, why borrow at all? You could simply seize it outright."

Besides borrowing grain from landlords, Zhao Han also wanted to borrow grain from the authorities.

In both Taihe and Anfu counties, roving bandits and refugees were present, and the officials and gentry all walked on thin ice.

Then let them raise funds and grain, and Zhao Han would take responsibility for leading the refugees away — Zhao Han would gain grain and people, the refugees could live and work in peace, and the officials and gentry would no longer live in fear.

Not a win-win, but a win-win-win. What a bargain!

(End of chapter)