Chapter 223: 221 United Will

In the late Ming, Shangyou County and Ningdu County were the areas where native–guest conflict was most severe, mainly because the two sides were evenly matched in strength.

Chen Maosheng personally took charge in Shangyou County, and also dispatched Liu Huan to take charge in Ningdu County.

The Shangyou River is not long, and Shangyou County lies along its middle reaches. Coupled with half a year of drought, the water level was low and shallow, so even after days of torrential rain, although many riverside farmlands were flooded, on the whole it did not cause an excessively great flood disaster.

While having the Prefect of Ganzhou issue a disaster relief mobilization order, Chen Maosheng led men in disaster relief in Shangyou County; he believed this was a fine opportunity to ease the native–guest conflict.

"Director, the mountain has collapsed — half of Shixi Village has been buried!"

"Quickly, come with me!"

A collapsed mountain meant a landslide.

Chen Maosheng led men and set out through the night, arriving by the next morning. This place lay even further upstream than Jilong Village, and its inhabitants were entirely Hakka people. Due to massive tree-felling and the clearing of hillsides for farmland, the destruction of vegetation was extremely severe.

A mountain torrent had struck the day before, followed immediately by a landslide; an entire mountainside collapsed, directly burying half the village.

Such situations were very common in the late Ming and early Qing. It was not until the Qianlong reign that the local people thoroughly changed their thinking and replaced large tracts of grain-planted mountain land with cash-crop trees. Before that, whether under Ming officials or Qing officials, no matter how they exhorted them, they would not listen; they had to suffer frequent disasters and take losses before they corrected themselves.

Everywhere his eyes could reach, Chen Maosheng saw only wailing and lamentation; countless Hakka common folk were digging through mounds of earth and piles of rock, trying to dig out their neighbors and kin.

A local official said, "Director, this place must be cleared, or else if heavy rain falls again, a barrier lake may form. Once the barrier lake's waters burst the dam, the entire downstream area will be flooded!"

Chen Maosheng immediately went back, summoned the common folk who had fought over water some time before, and had them go see the situation upstream.

He then gave orders to mobilize all the native and guest peasants from both upstream and downstream, and from all the surrounding areas.

The forcibly established peasant association organizations now played an enormous role. The peasant associations organized the villagers; several village heads took charge of gathering supplies; over four thousand people swiftly set to work, completely casting aside their former conflicts and enmities.

Once the reasoning was made clear, no one dared be slack, for it concerned everyone's lives and property.

Of course, without official leadership, the neighboring villages would probably have merely stood by and watched. Someone had to step forward, and be trusted by the forces on both sides, before they could be blended together.

A light rain began falling from the sky again, and the rain gradually grew heavier.

"Director, an umbrella has come," a clerk said, holding an umbrella over Chen Maosheng.

Chen Maosheng threw the umbrella aside. "All these common folk here are laboring in the rain — what would it look like if I alone held an umbrella? Hurry and go urge on the food; don't let people work half the day and end up without even a mouthful of hot food!"

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Immediately after, Chen Maosheng directed, "Dig over there first — don't let the mountain torrents build up!"

The peasant association banner stood silently planted atop the mound of earth; it did not flutter in the wind, but was merely beaten ceaselessly by the rain, surrounded by common folk digging earth and chiseling rock in the downpour.

"Boom!"

Suddenly, another stretch of mountainside collapsed.

The villagers working nearby fled in all directions, but several were still buried alive.

"Dig them out, quickly dig them out!"

Chen Maosheng shouted.

Several dozen common folk rushed over, with no distinction between native and guest, swiftly digging earth and moving rock. Three people were dug out in succession, but all had already stopped breathing.

"Still breathing — this one's still breathing!"

The fourth person was extremely fortunate; a large boulder had rolled to a stop beside him, leaving a gap with enough space. Even his entire body had suffered only light injuries; he had merely passed out briefly from lack of oxygen.

To have rescued even one was enough; the crowd all cheered.

The village heads of the upstream and downstream villages led the women and children, bringing the freshly cooked food over.

"Young man, eat first," a middle-aged woman said, handing a clay bowl to a youth.

"Thank you, auntie."

The youth took the rice bowl; only after the words slipped out did he realize the woman had spoken in Hakka.

Both were somewhat embarrassed; they smiled at each other and went their separate ways.

They had come in such haste earlier that no one had brought rain gear. Two village heads remembered this, and so they also delivered a large quantity of straw rain capes and bamboo hats; at this moment, no heed was paid to the separation of men and women. They had the women who brought the food take advantage of the mealtime to help put the capes and hats on the able-bodied men who were working.

Seeing those women each seeking out someone they knew, carrying rain capes and bamboo hats and wandering all over the place, Chen Maosheng immediately bellowed, "What time is it, and you still distinguish between close and distant? Which one of them is not risking his life for everyone?"

After saying it in the Jiangxi dialect, Chen Maosheng shouted it again in Hakka.

His Hakka was truly clumsy, with many tones wrong, but everyone could still roughly understand.

The women at last set aside their prejudices, draping rain capes over the men beside them and putting bamboo hats on their heads, regardless of whether there was a generations-old feud between their families.

Chen Maosheng also put on a bamboo hat and squatted by the riverbank to eat.

Suddenly, a county yamen runner came sprinting through the rain and shouted excitedly, "Director Chen, Director Chen, your wife has given birth — it's a daughter!"

Chen Maosheng stood up holding his bowl, looked at the situation behind him, and said to the runner, "Go back and tell my wife I will return to see her in a few days. If you haven't eaten yet, go get yourself some food and fill your belly."

The runner paused, nodded, and said, "I'll go eat then."

The common folk all around were watching Chen Maosheng at that moment; they said not a word, and after filling their bellies, each went back to work.

Only at this moment did they truly acknowledge this official, feeling that he was different from all those officials before. This one was one of their own, not some lofty official grandee.

…

Around the prefectural seat of Ganzhou, they were likewise fighting floods and rushing to deal with emergencies. Because of the half-year drought, and because this area was very far upstream, it was not greatly affected.

The first to be tested was Wan'an County. After the Suichuan River's waters merged into the Gan River, the Gan River's water level surged dramatically.

Although County Magistrate Ouyang Shu came from a great clan, the fact that he could stand out and govern a county showed he had his exceptional qualities. Two days before the flood crest arrived, he had already sensed something was wrong, and in advance he gathered officials and clerks to rush the building of dikes, and notified the town chiefs and peasant associations across the county to make preparations.

Danger was averted without mishap; only some riverside farmlands in Wan'an County were flooded.

Further downstream in Taihe County, the flood-fighting pressure redoubled. Not only did several more rivers merge in, but the county seat was built at a sharp bend of the Gan River, a place highly prone to dike breaches.

Not only did the peasant associations mobilize the peasants to turn out, but the residents of the entire county seat came to help — those with money gave money, those with strength gave strength.

Because the rebels had caused a sharp drop in Taihe County's population, many of this county's common folk had relocated from various other counties, and even a third of the residents within the county seat were outsiders. Relocating common folk was a complex undertaking, and there was no lack of various chaotic phenomena, but the officials at every level, from the county chief and town chiefs down to the village heads, had been tempered by it.

It could be said that even without mobilizing the peasant associations, Taihe County could still respond swiftly relying on these officials alone.

Taihe County likewise averted danger without mishap, but more riverside farmland was flooded.

Here, besides protecting the county seat, they also had to organize officials and commoners to go into the countryside to aid the peasants — helping the riverside peasants relocate, and rescuing those common folk trapped in the water.

The prefectural seat of Ji'an, where Zhao Han was, was the one truly in danger; from Taihe County to here, three more great rivers had merged in.

Officials, civilians, and soldiers all turned out. Zhao Han, wearing a bamboo hat, sat himself directly on the dock.

The meaning was clear: if the flood could not be stopped, then let it wash him, Zhao Han, away.

Two-thirds of the entire Ji'an prefectural city lay outside the walls, and since the inner city was mostly government offices, sixty to seventy percent of the residents lived outside. This area could not be allowed to flood, or the losses would be incalculable.

The shopkeepers were the most zealous. When the prefectural office sent men to recruit laborers, the proprietors eagerly urged their staff to sign up, promising full wages plus extra rewards. If the floodwaters swept in, their shops would be finished. Their anxiety matched Zhao Han's own.

The students of White Egret Isle Academy had already been moved into the city ahead of time. That spot was far too prone to flooding; the academy had been destroyed several times before, always by floodwaters.

Many scholars from great clans would neither serve Zhao Han nor flee their homeland. So, with an ostrich's mentality, they hid away all day studying at White Egret Isle Academy, calling it "pursuing scholarship" in fine-sounding words, when in truth they simply refused to face reality.

They were lodged temporarily in several inns, watching the scene outside through the windows.

They saw countless common folk hauling earth in from the outskirts. Some carried it on shoulder poles, some lifted it together, some bore it on their backs, and some pushed it on small carts. The sedan-chair bearers who normally scraped out a hard living in the prefectural city, the dock laborers, and many other toiling people of the lower classes became the main force transporting the earth.

Grain merchants donated great quantities of hemp sacks — the kind used to hold grain — now being filled with sand and taken to build the dikes.

Where hemp sacks ran short for the earth, they wove bamboo strips into cages.

These were very simple bamboo cages, loosely latticed, and even a novice could quickly learn to make them. The bamboo weavers near the prefectural city produced large bundles of strips, the government office sent men to deliver them outside the walls, and many women and old folk learned on the spot and began weaving.

All the soldiers in the prefectural city were mobilized, including Zhao Han's personal guard.

At that moment, any villain could have slipped easily into Zhao Han's inner residence, or approached Zhao Han himself with ease.

Yet even the secret agents sent by the government had now joined the flood-fighting ranks, doing whatever they could to help.

Fei Rulan came forward to rally all the city's women, sending food and dishes to the flood-fighting heroes on the front line. At this moment, wearing a bamboo hat and a straw rain-cape, she was moving along the embankment, asking after people's hardships and comforts, boosting the morale of the officers, soldiers, and common folk fighting the flood.

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Wang Tiaoding observed all this in silence, then suddenly said to the scholars beside him, "Is this not a sage lord? If this man is not fit to rule, who under heaven ever could be?"

The crowd fell silent, with no words to answer.

Every time Ji'an Prefecture had faced a flood before, the usual response was simply to abandon the area outside the walls. Once the waters receded, the Prefect would step forward, urge the wealthy households to donate money and grain, and then repair the stone embankment along the river.

Never had any official been able to mobilize the people like this, uniting their wills into a fortress to fight the flood.

Wang Tiaoding pointed again at Fei Rulan, who was hurrying along the embankment: "This is a woman fit to be mother to all under heaven!"

A xiucai named He Qiliang suddenly spoke: "Gentlemen, only today do I truly know there is a lord of sage brilliance. I am willing to serve him. White Egret Isle Academy, fine as it is, cannot compare to leaving the mountain to bring deliverance to the common people. Farewell!"

He Qiliang left the inn and walked through the rain toward the embankment. He had not gone far before over twenty more scholars followed after him.

These men came before Zhao Han and, in perfect unison, cupped their hands and bowed.

He Qiliang said, "Sir, we all wish to offer our service. Please assign us our duties."

Zhao Han rose, cupped his hands in return, and said, "You may go to the prefectural office and follow their arrangements."

The scholars bowed once more in unison and set off together toward the prefectural office.

(End of chapter)