Chapter 344: Opening the Port (11)

In a feudal dynasty, land prices and the nation's fortunes were intimately linked. Broadly speaking, land prices moved in direct proportion to the dynasty's rise and fall, generally tracing a wave-trough pattern.

In a dynasty's early years, the chaos of war had just subsided; nine out of ten houses stood empty, and the population was nowhere near sufficient. Land at this time, therefore, could not fetch a good price and could be bought very cheaply.

During this period, the authorities would encourage the people to open up wasteland — essentially restoring those previously abandoned, ownerless fields to cultivation. The main force of owner-farmers emerged in this period, because the authorities would issue land deeds for the reclaimed land.

The reason a dynasty's early years were a harmonious society was precisely this sufficient supply of land. When resources are abundant, conflicts naturally diminish.

By the dynasty's middle period, as the population rose sharply, the supply of reclaimable arable land gradually began to tighten. This phase marked the peak of the wave: the relationship between population and land just reached its critical point, social productivity was at its highest, internal conflicts were manageable, and everything presented a picture of thriving prosperity. At the same time, land prices began to soar dramatically.

After this came a slow descent and a step-by-step, methodical collapse: the population grew ever larger, farmland began to be insufficiently distributed, total social wealth was diluted, social conflicts increased, the government began raising taxes to maintain stability, the gentry began hoarding hidden households and hidden fields to resist the tax hikes, large numbers of owner-farmers were bankrupted by the tax burdens shifted onto them, the cash-strapped government intensified its extortion even more viciously, a vicious cycle ensued, the revolution began, the Li Zichengs took the stage, mutual slaughter followed, nine out of ten houses were left empty, a new dynasty was established, and another cycle began.

And throughout this process of dynastic rise and fall, land prices clearly fluctuated in tandem.

In the late Ming, good farmland in Wuxi, Jiangsu, was priced at only one or two taels. By the Shunzhi period of the Qing, the same plot was worth two or three taels; under Kangxi, four or five taels; in the thirtieth year of Qianlong, seven or eight taels, peaking at over ten taels; and by the Jiaqing period, land prices had skyrocketed to fifty taels.

Note that the "late Ming" above refers to the final years of Chongzhen's reign. By then, the Li Zichengs had already thoroughly smashed the north to pieces. To raise the enormous funds for the Bandit Suppression Campaign and the Liaoxiang levy, the court could only continuously increase the land tax in the south.

While the landlords were worn down dealing with the authorities, the disasters were still mercilessly destroying all the crops on land. All of this caused land prices in Jiangnan to collapse rapidly after 1640, falling to the point of merely one or two taels of silver.

During that period, many places in Jiangnan even saw land abandonment — something unthinkable in peacetime.

Yet that is precisely how the historical reality unfolded: land income could no longer cover the exorbitant taxes and levies, and with the disasters on top of that, large numbers of landlords were bankrupted, and land deeds became death warrants. To evade the authorities' collection efforts, some people even left their land deeds on the roads for anyone to pick up.

Time returns to the present.

In this period of 1629, when Master Xiong was purchasing land, it was actually not the optimal moment for demolition and relocation.

The droughts, floods, windstorms, and other disasters that began last year had already dealt a heavy blow to the people of Jiangnan, but this was, after all, only the beginning of the Chongzhen-era series of great calamities. It was impossible for the populace to realize that the years ahead would only grow more and more terrifying.

In short, from the poorest peasants up to the landlords, everyone still held onto a dream: if they could just endure this year, next year would probably be better.

Under these circumstances, pursuing demolition and relocation would undoubtedly cost extra resources. A few years later, land prices in Jiangnan would plummet like a free-falling object; that would be the optimal time to acquire land.

However, some people could not wait.

Inserting as many straws as possible into the Great Ming's body to suck its blood was the established national policy. A critical node like the Shanghai Bund, which connected the north and opened the way south, had to be seized. The Transmigrators, racing against time, were burning with impatience, wishing they could set up strongholds all across the Great Ming overnight. At this point, silver and such no longer mattered.

Thus, Zuo Family Village, a historically obscure Jiangnan village, became the earliest Residential Area to enjoy the demolition and relocation policy, simply because it was relatively close to the planned port.

Of course, a hundred people come in a hundred different stripes. For these people who had farmed for generations, whether this demolition and relocation policy was something to be enjoyed or something to be resisted still depended on the individual.

After Yu Bende, Clerical Staff Yu, led the Land Requisition Working Group — abbreviated as the "Land Requisition Office" — and his party into Zuo Family Village, they immediately commandeered a house and settled in. Early the next morning, they released the news: buying land, cash silver.

The villagers who got the news flocked over one after another, rolling up their sleeves around the Land Requisition Office's courtyard and gathering to watch the excitement.

The purchase prices offered by the Land Requisition Office were as follows: five taels of silver per mu for inferior fields, eight taels for medium fields, and twelve taels for top-grade paddy fields.

One could see from these prices that, as the first unit to be demolished and relocated, Zuo Family Village still enjoyed a policy benefit. It must be understood that current land prices, even for top-grade paddy fields, did not exceed ten taels of silver per mu.

Sellers of land quickly appeared.

As the saying goes: a hundred people come in a hundred different stripes. In a village of over a thousand people, there were always a few sharp-witted individuals. Some of these people were aware of the surrounding land prices and dared to flip land back and forth for a profit; others, for various reasons, had originally intended to sell their land anyway. In short, after seeing the purchase price, one group of people quickly sold off their own land.

In roughly three days, over 200 mu of land around Zuo Family Village changed owners. Most of this land was medium and inferior fields, along with one fish pond.

Compared to all the land parcels Zuo Family Village possessed, 200 mu of scattered farmland was naturally not much. But this step was a beginning, after all; it could be considered as having weeded out one part of the population and gotten the land requisition off to a good start.

Next, the Land Requisition Office offered new terms: in areas like Xiaoshan, Fengxian, Jinshan, and Haiyan, which had suffered tide disasters and flood disasters this year, there were now large tracts of land available for exchange with Zuo Family Village. The exchange ratio between the two sides was 1:1.5.

That is to say, if someone from Zuo Family Village could produce a land deed for 10 mu, they could exchange it for 15 mu of land in the aforementioned areas. Not only could they exchange it, but the land would be in contiguous plots.

This immediately caused a sensation in the village. By now, it was already the late Ming; centuries of population growth, buying, selling, and transfers had resulted in farmland being extremely fragmented. For an ordinary person to piece together a large, unbroken tract of land was nearly impossible.

Now, an opportunity was laid before them, and what was more, at a 1:1.5 exchange ratio. Naturally, some people were tempted.

The tenant farmers, who made up the largest proportion of the population, were in no position to consider selling or exchanging land. Those who stepped forward to exchange land were a few owner-farmer and landlord households. These households were all of miscellaneous surnames in the village; they had little manpower and were not burdened by large clans, so they could pack up and leave at a moment's notice.

Next came the handover. To band together, these few households first uniformly chose their plots near Fengxian, then rushed overnight to inspect the land there.

The results of the inspection were mixed. The land in Fengxian had all been opportunistically purchased by Hangzhou Station after the August tide disaster. Although the area was large, it had all been flooded with saltwater, so the land condition was very poor, basically all counting as inferior fields.

However, considering the 1.5-times exchange area and the enormous benefit of truly contiguous land, these few bourgeois households ultimately brought out their own land deeds. If the new fields were carefully worked for a few years, they would become medium or even top-grade fields. But as for contiguous land, given the resources of these few households, if they missed this village, they would never have the means to piece such a thing together in their next life.

A few days later, witnessed by a well-known local land broker, the County Yamen representative Clerical Staff Yu, and a certain Shopkeeper from the Land Requisition Office, both sides signed and sealed the documents, exchanging the land deeds.

In this process, for the sake of the so-called "buying the horse bones" gesture, the Land Requisition Office also paid extra silver to have Clerical Staff Yu affix the official seal to the transacted land deeds — turning White Deeds into Red Deeds.

In ancient land transactions, there was the concept of "Red and White Deeds." A White Deed was one that had not been certified by the authorities, meaning it was a land deed on which no tax had been paid. A Red Deed, on the other hand, was a formal, official deed.

Generally speaking, a White Deed held the same daily legal force as a Red Deed. However, should a land dispute arise requiring both sides to go to court, a White Deed would leave an opening for exploitation: after all, it involved tax evasion and lacked official certification. If the opponent had collusion with the yamen, they could make an issue out of this aspect.

The few bourgeois households, profoundly grateful, took their Red Deeds and their families to live in their new homeland. And the mulberry garden they left behind, along with over three hundred mu of scattered land, was once again pocketed by the Land Requisition Office.

Lu Xun said that the power of role models is boundless.

After witnessing with their own eyes a few households gain a huge advantage without being cheated, the villagers could no longer restrain themselves. Nearly all the owner-farmers and rich peasants in Zuo Family Village began to stir restlessly. The Land Requisition Office's courtyard was suddenly packed to the brim, the bustle not dying down until late at night.

And at this point, Zuo Hongtang, the head of the Zuo Clan, who had been sitting calmly on the fishing platform, coldly observing the situation's development, could finally sit still no longer. Upon discovering that there were actually scoundrels within the clan who wanted to go exchange land, he finally made his move.

Like most named villages and towns of this era, Zuo Family Village was naturally dominated by people surnamed Zuo. The Zuo Clan, having lived on this land for generations, not only had numerous family branches but also owned several thousand mu of surrounding land, making them the largest local tyrant in the vicinity.

Originally, for the Zuo people, the Land Requisition Office's activities were just that — something everyone watched as entertainment. The Zuo Family, deeply rooted here, naturally could not sell their farmland, nor could they be tempted by the so-called 1.5-times exchange method.

The reasoning was simple: for those households unable to evade the authorities' taxes, going anywhere was the same. But a large clan like the Zuo Family not only had countless hidden fields and hidden households locally, but the connections they had cultivated for generations were all within this county.

Once they moved to another county, what would become of the hidden fields? Leaving behind the deep-rooted, intricate connections of their home county, a clan migrating en masse like this, when encountered by a foreign yamen, would be pure sheep entering the tiger's den. Even just paying taxes in full would be enough to skin them alive several times over.

Therefore, in this matter of land requisition, rich peasants and landlords could afford to move, but a large clan like the Zuo Family absolutely could not.

However, as matters developed to this stage, some things were no longer so simple. No sooner had Zuo Hongtang dealt with the clan's degenerate than Clerical Staff Yu came knocking, requesting an audience... This was Clerical Staff Yu's first visit to the Zuo Family's door since the Land Requisition Office had arrived in Zuo Family Village.