Chapter 535: Zong Ben

On the day the White Goose Pond Investment Fair concluded, most of the guests dispersed amidst chatter and returned to their own homes. Yet among them were some of particularly eager mind, who stayed on afterward at their own expense. These people had a very simple goal: to engage more with the event organizers and gather as much information as possible.

Zong Ben was one of them.

Zong Ben was a genuine native of Guangzhou City, born of a great clan. He was around thirty-five or thirty-six years of age, neither tall nor stout, with wholly unremarkable features. He kept a short beard along his jaw and cheeks, wore an ordinary southern silk robe, spoke with warmth and courtesy, and his face was often piled with a professional smile — at a glance, a very inconspicuous man.

Although he was the Seventh Young Master of a great clan from Guangzhou's South City, among the various wealthy merchants and great traders attending this conference, Zong Ben could only be counted as a little-brother-level figure. For while Zong Ben did have some background, he himself was merely a Grand Steward in charge of the family's shop businesses, and therefore he could not actually represent the clan.

In fact, even his attendance at White Goose Pond this time was a private initiative of Zong Ben's. He had paid multiple visits to the conference organizers beforehand and had also called in favors to secure an invitation — the Transmigrators' target invitees for this event were the "powerful" figures of the Guangdong region. Zong Ben's net assets fell short, and the social resources he could mobilize were also insufficient, so he had not originally been on the conference list.

After the conference, Zong Ben lingered at the White Goose Pond Hotel for one more day. During this time, apart from exchanging views with his peers, he participated in every small-scale activity held by the organizers as much as possible, gathering information with all his might.

He stayed until the second morning after the conference's end. Only after "pestering" the organizers' clerks one last time did Shopkeeper Zong Ben finally walk out of the hotel, his mind full of grand schemes.

Standing on the transparent, reflective marble steps that could mirror a person's figure, Zong Ben first gazed out at the misty, rain-drizzled Pearl River and Guangzhou City in the distance, then turned his head back to look at the bizarrely styled building that had brought him boundless ambition and opportunity. Heaving a long sigh at last, he said to his attendant, "Let us go."

After descending the hotel steps, Zong Ben paid no heed to the taxis parked by the roadside. The drivers of these four-wheeled carriages all wore bright red, front-buttoned vests, the carriages were fitted with paired horses, and the compartments even came with glass windows... in fact, they were exactly the kind people of later generations often see in British films and television.

Deliberately not taking a carriage, Zong Ben, accompanied by his two attendants, soon strolled casually onto Binjiang Road, which was still under construction.

Binjiang Road, the construction of which had begun quite early, was now extending slowly yet steadily toward Guangzhou. On this scenic road paved with machine-made green bricks, one side was lined with exquisite stone-carved railings, and the other with long flowerbeds of greenery. Apart from the differences in building materials, everything was built in a style familiar to people of later generations.

Zong Ben just kept walking along Binjiang Road in the morning like this. After roughly an hour, Binjiang Road came to an end. Ahead was a construction site, the ground piled with green bricks and stone materials, and many workers clad in orange vests were busy at work.

Halting his steps, Zong Ben casually sat down on one of the wooden benches that were placed at regular intervals along Binjiang Road. Facing the great river, he folded his hands over his stomach and sank into silence.

On the surface of the Pearl River, an endless stream of civilian boats traveled with and against the current. Occasionally, a fast ship belching black smoke and flying white sails would swiftly cut through the middle of the river. Spotting it from afar, the civilian boats along the way would all make way and clear the channel.

As if sightseeing, as if deep in thought, Zong Ben sat wordlessly like this in the warm breeze of the southern lands in March. The shopkeeper's face, usually piled with smiles, was now full of solemnity, until he was jolted from his trance by a burst of loud laughter.

Snapping to alertness, Zong Ben turned his head to look and found that the loud laughter was coming from the mouths of the road workers not far away.

The New District, constructed according to the urban specifications of later generations, though in many places still unable to escape the fundamental appearance of the seventeenth century, had been altered in every way the Transmigrators were capable of changing.

This naturally included the road workers.

Dyed with plant pigments, the not-so-bright orange-yellow vests; work gloves, cloth shoes, and trousers made from locally produced cheap homespun cloth — in their attire and dress, these workers first and foremost strove in every possible way to approximate the era within the Transmigrators' memories.

Smiles brimmed on the faces of the dozen or so workers. Each held a large coarse porcelain bowl. Beside them, a man who looked like a cook was using a large iron ladle to scoop heaping portions of food from a bucket and pour them into the bowls one by one. At that moment, someone said something else, and the crowd erupted into another round of loud laughter.

Zong Ben's gaze fell upon the food in the workers' bowls.

As a successful merchant who constantly kept an eye on the market, Zong Ben was naturally no stranger to the potato, a new staple food that bore upon the national economy and the people's livelihood.

It was said to be a new grain seed brought back from overseas by the Cao Clan, and it had soon been promoted on a large scale throughout the Fujian and Guangdong region, at an astonishingly rapid pace... High in yield and pleasant in taste, not only did the rich sample it as a novelty, but more importantly, the poor could fill their bellies with it (it was high in calories). The potato, a name so vivid, had long since become well known among the vast lower classes in the current age.

And the porcelain bowls Zong Ben had just seen were first lined with half a bowl of golden potato chunks, over which the cook then ladled a large spoonful of mixed vegetables and minced fish and shrimp.

Here in the New District, anyone who worked and labored for the Cao Clan received three full meals a day — Zong Ben was very clear on this matter. In fact, like the potato and much other news about the New District, no one believed it at first, but very quickly the natives came to know it was true.

"Truly a fine bowl of food."

Zong Ben nodded to himself. Today, he had not only seen with his own eyes the dietary conditions of the New District's lower classes, but from these people's joyful faces and vigorous, powerful movements, he had also sensed a vitality that the Great Ming had never possessed before.

"That saying of Lord Cao's is a good one: to be strong, a nation must first be prosperous!"

Thinking this, Zong Ben stood up, hesitated no more, put his hands behind his back, and said, "Return to the family home."

"Ah, Master, are we not returning to the trading firm first?"

"No. First accompany me back to the family home. I wish to see my eldest brother."

"Yes!"

And so, Zong Ben set out on the road to Guangzhou City with his followers. Having made his resolve, he would not drag his feet this time. He quickly hailed a high-end taxi by the roadside, rode it all the way to the dock, then took a scheduled ferry across the river. Not yet noon, the party of three, master and servants, had already returned to stand before the main gate of the Zong Family home in Guangzhou's South City.

After alighting from the slow-moving sedan chair, Zong Ben felt ever more keenly the sluggish rhythm of Guangzhou Old City, so utterly out of tune with the New District.

But he now had no time to ponder these profound social questions any further — right before his eyes stood the imposing and majestic main gate of the Zong Family home, lacquered in glossy black and fitted with gleaming brass door studs.

After drawing a deep, long breath, Zong Ben, the son of a concubine of the Zong Family, said not another word, and without hesitation stepped into this great residence that had both raised him and brought him endless tribulation.