Chapter 208: 206 The Mountain People

Ganzhou.

Chen Maosheng first went to see Fei Ruhe, then to see Prefect Liu Anfeng, and finally summoned the propaganda officers and the backbone members of the peasant associations.

The news he got was a real headache — Hakka is not that easy to learn!

The Hakka spoken in the southern Jiangxi region alone can be roughly divided into three varieties. Although they are mutually intelligible, they are very unfriendly to outsiders just starting to learn.

"Reporting to the Propaganda Chief," said Li Xiaoyi, who was in charge of propaganda work in Ganzhou, "we naturally ought to learn Hakka, but we must also recruit local Hakka people. Within a year or two, propaganda and land distribution in southern Jiangxi will still have to rely heavily on Hakka people to advance. Some of these Hakka people already speak the Jiangxi dialect, and they can even read and write."

Chen Maosheng asked, "Apart from the wealthy tenant farmers and the bottom-tier tenant farmers, are there also small Hakka landlords and independent landowning peasants in southern Jiangxi?"

"There are, and quite a number of them," Li Xiaoyi said. "I suggest that, for some small Hakka landlords, we do not distribute their land for the time being — even if they hold more than one hundred mu, do not divide it."

"Why is that?" Chen Maosheng frowned.

Li Xiaoyi said, "Through visiting villages, I have discovered a very surprising phenomenon. In many villages, entire villages are all Hakka people. Especially in those remote villages, they migrated from Fujian and Guangdong several decades ago and earned their family property entirely by opening up wasteland. This land is relatively barren; it was all barren mountains and wild ridges before, opened up by them with sickle and hoe, and there has been no exploitation of tenant farmers."

Well now, this was different from what Wei Jiaju had said — it seemed the situation in southern Jiangxi was more complicated than imagined.

"In these remote villages, are there any large landlords?" Chen Maosheng asked.

Li Xiaoyi shook his head and said, "There are no large landlords. They migrated from Fujian and Guangdong, enduring great hardships, in poor mountains and harsh waters, and have been opening up wasteland for no more than a hundred years. How could any large landlords emerge? The remote villages deep in the mountains are mostly independent landowning peasants and small landlords, with no need for land distribution at all. Moreover, landlords holding more than one hundred mu are very few, practically negligible."

Chen Maosheng said, "I must send someone to request instructions from the Regional Commander."

After talking with the propaganda officers for a while, Chen Maosheng went to see Zou Weilian and Liu Huan.

In the original timeline, Zou Weilian should have died of illness last year. He had rendered great service in Fujian, but was framed by Wen Tiren and dismissed from office. After Wen Tiren fell from power, the Chongzhen Emperor finally remembered him, only to inquire and discover that Zou Weilian had already passed away.

Many high officials were like this — perfectly healthy while not dismissed, but dead of illness within a year or two of being dismissed and sent home.

Wen Tiren was the same: bouncing with vigor while at court, but dead of illness the year after losing his post.

At least as things now appeared, Zou Weilian was free of illness and pain, and could live at least another eight or ten years.

Zou Liangyi made the introduction: "Father, this is Director Chen, taboo name Maosheng, of the Propaganda Department."

"Mr. Zou, a pleasure!" Chen Maosheng said, cupping his hands in salute.

Zou Weilian raised his hand to return the courtesy, his movements somewhat reluctant, his smile also somewhat forced.

Chen Maosheng cupped his hands again and said, "I pay my respects to Mr. Liu."

"A pleasure." Liu Huan, by contrast, was quite natural, and his attitude was ambiguous — he never said whether he was willing to pledge allegiance.

Liu Huan, Prefect of Ganzhou in the Great Ming, left only one trace in the historical records: an inscription on the plaque of Kongtong Temple in Ganzhou.

As they drank tea and chatted idly, Zou Weilian's spirits remained low throughout.

Finally, Chen Maosheng asked, "I would like to consult you two gentlemen: what exactly is the situation with the Hakka people of southern Jiangxi?"

Zou Weilian pointed at Liu Huan: "You should ask him about this matter."

Liu Huan smiled and said, "I am of no great talent. My ancestral home is Guangdong, and I am myself a Hakka."

Chen Maosheng hurriedly said, "Please, Mr. Liu, do not begrudge your instruction."

Liu Huan recounted, "The southward migration of the Hakka people began in the Jin dynasty. As for the Hakka people of this southern Jiangxi region, many migrated here from Fujian and Guangdong at the end of the Song. After the Great Ming was founded, the Hakka people of southern Jiangxi migrated back in large numbers to Fujian and Guangdong."

"Why have they migrated back here again in the last hundred years?" Chen Maosheng asked.

Liu Huan explained, "During the Jiajing years, with the Japanese pirates raiding and harassing the coast, large numbers of coastal people moved inland, leading to many people and little land in eastern Guangdong and western Fujian. It happened that, due to warfare, the population of southern Jiangxi had scattered in great numbers. The Hakka people of eastern Guangdong and western Fujian then moved in groups to settle in southern Jiangxi."

That Wei Jiaju — there was another circumstance he had not made clear.

After Wang Yangming and other high officials suppressed the bandits, especially after the ravages of outside provincial troops, many villages in southern Jiangxi were emptied, and landlords fled one after another to settle in the county seats.

The Hakka people moved in village by village; some became wealthy as tenant farmers and, turning from guests into masters, formed today's powerful wealthy tenants. After over a hundred years of development, many wealthy tenants had already transformed into large landlords, so among the Hakka people themselves there was also conflict between landlords and tenants.

Of the Hakka people who migrated here in the mid-to-late Jiajing period, some became tenant farmers, but more went to open up and cultivate wasteland, becoming small landlords and independent landowning peasants.

At this time, the conflict between natives and guests was actually not yet particularly intense, because right up until the Qianlong years, Hakka people from Fujian and Guangdong kept migrating back to southern Jiangxi.

As for why large numbers of Hakka people migrated to Jiangxi in the early Qing dynasty, it was of course caused by warfare.

The natives of southern Jiangxi and the Hakka people, landlords and tenant farmers, set aside their conflicts and united to resist the Qing. Take Shangyou County, for example: the resistance movement lasted into the Kangxi years, and the people of that place were nearly exterminated!

According to the Shangyou County Gazetteer: "From the thirteenth year of Kangxi to the present (Qianlong), the people are gone, the cooking smoke is cut off, only four bare walls remain, a lonely city in a stretch of desolate mountains."

Therefore, it was only after the mid-to-late Qing dynasty, when more and more Hakka people moved in, that the conflict between natives and guests reached its peak.

But in the late Ming, many of the Hakka people in southern Jiangxi were still working hard to grow prosperous, opening up wasteland ever deeper into the great mountains.

And this caused a series of environmental problems: they felled the mountain forests, quarried stone and dug mines, bringing severe soil erosion.

Liu Huan warned, "Southern Jiangxi has many mountains and little land. If you blindly clear the mountain slopes, you will not grow much grain, and instead, after rain, landslides will occur at every turn. When you govern southern Jiangxi, you should have the mountain people plant more tobacco, oil-tea camellia, tung trees, lacquer trees, and such crops."

"I am instructed," Chen Maosheng said, cupping his hands.

In late Ming Jiangxi, the Hakka people developed wildly, opening up wasteland everywhere to grow grain, which gave the authorities a constant headache.

But the Hakka people simply ignored the authorities' bans. It was only later, when disasters struck frequently, that they themselves began to take it seriously, and thus an oil-tea, tung oil, and tobacco economic zone formed in southern Jiangxi, with planted forests replacing the natural mountain forests.

Zou Weilian was unwilling to serve Zhao Han, but could no longer hold office in the Great Ming either, so he simply went to Ji'an Prefecture to teach.

And Liu Huan, Prefect of Ganzhou in the Great Ming, changed his name to Liu Yu and stayed, being specially hired by Chen Maosheng as an advisor.

As a Great Ming official, Liu Huan had been able to accomplish nothing, unable to implement any policy, and could only chant sutras and study Buddhism all day.

After being courteously hired by Chen Maosheng, he was simply rejuvenated as if in a second spring, and within the month submitted over ten policy proposals.

This gentleman could also speak Hakka, and became Chen Maosheng's personal interpreter.

Zhao Han's side also sent a reply: if the Hakka people in remote villages had truly grown wealthy solely through hard work in opening up wasteland, each person could retain one hundred mu of land. However, they absolutely could not exceed the upper limit of one hundred mu, and moreover, households of ten or more people had to divide the family and divide the property!

Because of Liu Huan's help, Chen Maosheng absorbed many local poor people into the propaganda corps, and the land distribution work around the city of Ganzhou went very smoothly.

But once they entered the mountain regions, they immediately encountered difficulty after difficulty.

Those Hakka people were simply unwilling to register as households. They had always been in a state of drifting people, banding together to resist the court's tax levies.

To them, the Great Ming was the court, and Zhao Han was also the court.

Even the work of the peasant associations could not be carried out, because they had their own land, and it was obtained by their own wasteland reclamation — they simply did not need Zhao Han's favor.

What was to be done?

To be crude about it, one could simply kill people to establish authority, forcibly setting up household registers by military means, but that seemed to conflict with the Great Unity theory.

Chen Maosheng could only continue requesting instructions from Zhao Han; any policy adjustments had to be approved.

Zhao Han's reply was very direct: since the Hakka people in the mountains refuse to register their households with the authorities and refuse to pay taxes to the authorities, then they do not count as subjects under his governance.

All trade may be cut off. Anyone purchasing salt must present their household register. Any private salt peddler caught shall be beheaded on the spot, and their entire family punished under collective liability! If any salt shop is found selling salt to the unregistered, it shall be heavily fined and permanently stripped of its salt-selling license.

Merchants are forbidden from going into the mountains to purchase any goods. Once discovered, they shall be heavily fined!

The markets at the foot of the mountains shall be patrolled regularly, with household registrations checked at random. Once someone without a household registration is discovered, they shall be seized immediately and put to labor service, and their family must pay their own money to ransom them back.

This may seem like tyranny, but compared to sending in troops directly, it already appears exceedingly merciful.

Who told those mountain folk to refuse even to register their households?

Civil administration work in the Southern Jiangxi region will likely have to continue for two or three years, and will most probably lead to riots; troops must be stationed there long-term.

"Ah!"

Zhao Han set down the letter Chen Maosheng had sent back and felt a throbbing headache.

From the uprising until now, this was the first setback in rural work. Zhao Han had even agreed not to divide up those mountain folk's fields, allowing them to keep up to one hundred mu, but they still refused to submit, wanting only to live as "wild folk" in the mountains for generations.

Zhao Han tried to analyze the principal contradiction, and then found it laughable.

The principal contradiction was this: those Hakka people who had gone into the mountains to clear wasteland had only migrated to Jiangxi a few decades ago. Although their lives were extremely hard, they were relatively stable. Moreover, they could continue reclaiming wasteland, and for the time being had no conflict over land and people, nor any class oppression. Zhao Han's rule over them was the greatest oppression, the greatest contradiction — they did not want to pay taxes to Zhao Han!

And as it happened, Southern Jiangxi was full of mountains, and everywhere there were mountain folk.

Even though the propaganda officers had learned the Hakka language, and even though some Hakka people had joined the propaganda corps, for now effective governance could only be carried out in the mountainous areas near cities and towns, and along the flatlands by the rivers.

Deep in the great mountains, for the time being, there was no way to govern.

No wonder Southern Jiangxi gave the Great Ming headaches, no wonder Southern Jiangxi left the Qing dynasty helpless — the situation in this place was simply too complicated.

Economic sanctions alone would not suffice; they must also be lured with profit and shown favor, only thus could kindness and severity be combined to achieve results.

After careful thought, Zhao Han wrote to Chen Maosheng again, the content being: select mountain folk willing to register their households, issue them special permits, and allow them to purchase fifty jin of salt per month and sell two hundred jin of mountain goods per month.

If these people grow rich, then let us see if the other mountain folk can still sit still!

Sanctions alone will only unite the mountain folk against a common foe; we must divide them from within.

Southern Jiangxi absolutely must be well governed, because Zhao Han's development route is to occupy the entirety of Jiangxi, and then attack Fujian and Guangdong, and Southern Jiangxi happens to be the necessary passage linking Fujian and Guangdong.

(End of chapter)