Chapter 1269: The Grass Is Always Greener on the Other Side of the Imperial Fence

Another year's end was approaching. Although the southern capital of the Shun Empire, Kunming, was still in official mourning and had encountered imported inflation, the imminent second campaign into India still filled the people in and around Kunming with anticipation. But around the Shun's northern capital of Chongqing, the scene was altogether different — desolation was visible everywhere.

Outside Shizhu City, situated in the Sanjiangxi river valley, a group of bachelor men living in mountain villages had finished haphazardly plowing the winter-fallow terraced fields. With nothing to do, they gathered together to swap bawdy jokes.

The Shizhu area had originally been the domain of the Shizhu tusi, the Ma family — that is, the family of Qin Liangyu's husband. Although this region had produced many famous figures during the decades from Wanli to Chongzhen, and had even given rise to a formidable White Pole Army, the decades of loyalty and warfare that Shizhu's brave men had devoted to the Great Ming dynasty had done nothing to change the barren mountains and harsh waters of the Shizhu region. As the saying goes, barren mountains and harsh waters produce crack troops! Perhaps it was precisely the terrain of Shizhu — where there was not even three chi of level ground — that forced the people here to be especially hardy and willing to endure hardship, and especially willing to join the army and go to war, staking their lives in a gamble for wealth and rank.

However, in the final years of Chongzhen, under the repeated fierce assaults of the Shun army, the Shizhu tusi Ma Wanchun had no choice but to abandon the homeland his family had inhabited for generations. He led most of the Shizhu commoners and the two great clans, the Ma and the Qin, westward to Zunyi Prefecture — Zunyi Prefecture was the last territory the Great Ming held in Sichuan Province, and was also the seat of the present Western Sichuan Military Governor's office.

After the Ma family tusi withdrew, the Shizhu area was firmly occupied by the Shun army. Because there was little flat land here, only terraced fields that were very difficult to cultivate, before the tenth year of Shun Joint Rule the fubing lords of the Shun court had little interest in the land of Shizhu. They merely relocated farmers from the crowded Chongqing and Chengdu areas to cultivate terraced fields on the slopes along both banks of the Sanjiangxi.

Most of the bachelor men now gathered together swapping bawdy jokes had moved here with their parents when they were young.

When they first arrived, because there were few people and much land, and the Shun court had also given some concessions, everyone's lives were fairly comfortable. But ever since the great war in Shaanxi broke out, life for these new Shizhu people had grown harder and harder.

The prolonged war against the Ming dynasty had not won much land for the Shun court, but it had produced more than three hundred thousand new fubing households!

These new fubing households had no way to seize the lands of Ming dynasty plantation owners, so they could only seize the lands of the farmers of Sichuan and Yunnan. The flatlands of the Sichuan Basin had already been carved up among them, and mountainous areas like Shizhu had also caught their eye. In the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth years of Joint Rule, for three consecutive years, land-inspection officials from the Shun court's Household Administration came to Shizhu — first to register households and inspect land, then to equalize fields and enclose land. They enclosed all the slightly more fertile terraced fields along both banks of the Sanjiangxi and distributed them to new fubing households relocated to Shizhu City from elsewhere!

The farmers who had originally been independent landholders were all reduced to becoming tenants of the new fubing.

Heavy land rents, corvée labor, and household cloth levies followed, plunging these men — who had been carefree in their youth — into hardship and difficulty all at once.

What made them even more miserable was not their growing poverty, but the lack of wives!

The Shun's fubing system was, in some respects, even worse than the caste system over in India, because under the caste system, intermarriage between different castes was relatively difficult. Although a man of a higher caste could marry a woman of a lower caste, the latter had to provide a large dowry, and lower-caste families often could not afford it — this ensured that the higher castes would not excessively plunder the young women of the lower castes.

But the rulers of the Shun Empire had not considered this problem. Although they had established a society where people were unequal from birth, they were, after all, beneficiaries of the idea that "are kings and lords born of noble stock?" — so they did not consider the "stock" of the fubing under their command to be particularly noble. In the eyes of the Shun Empire's people of Li Guo's generation, the state they had built was still a peasant regime that helped the suffering.

And this cognitive deviation, combined with the over-expanded fubing system, brought the "suffering of wifelessness" to the suffering people they had "helped."

Within the territory of the present Shun Empire, there were at least six hundred thousand martial-arts-proficient "Huang Shiren"s! How many "Yang Xi'er"s would they seize? And how many utterly destitute bachelor men would they create?

So when the bachelor men of the Shizhu countryside gathered together, what they talked about most was usually women — though there were exceptions. Someone suddenly brought up the matter of "Welcoming the Ming King"!

"Have you heard? The Ming King is coming — coming to stand up for us suffering folk!"

"Nonsense. How would the Zhu family emperor ever stand up for us poor people? When his family ruled Sichuan, the poor had no way to survive either."

"It's different. The Zhu family emperor at least still allowed poor people to rise. Over in Zhu Ming territory, taking the imperial examinations doesn't require fubing status. Haven't you heard the saying — 'a farm boy in the morning, a minister in the Son of Heaven's hall by evening'?"

"How easy is it to rise through study? I've heard the old folks say the Zhu family emperor's jinshi examination is terribly hard. In all of Sichuan Province, only twenty-some jinshi come out every three years."

"Well, there are still the juren and xiucai! My grandfather was a juren, and my father was a xiucai. If I could take the exams on my own merit, I'd surely pass the xiucai exam too! And if I couldn't become a xiucai, I could still join the army — win rank and honor on the battlefield with my own skill, one blade and one spear at a time!"

"You've all got it wrong. The Ming King coming this time is no Ming dynasty king!"

"Not? How is he not?"

"Haven't you heard how the 'Welcoming the Ming King' ballad goes? When the Ming King comes, no grain levies; when the Ming King comes, no corvée; when the Ming King comes, no cloth tribute; when the Ming King comes, the exams are opened; when the Ming King comes, land is divided — would a Ming dynasty king divide land among the poor?"

"Then which family does this Ming King belong to?"

"Seems to be the White Lotus Sect."

"Seems?"

"Who cares! Better that someone comes to stir things up than no one at all!"

"Right! Even a bit of stirring up would be good. We've got nothing anyway!"

At the words "nothing at all," everyone sighed in despair. Just then, they saw several old men and sturdy women in blue cloth coming up from the foot of the mountain. All had swords at their waists, held throwing spears in their hands, and carried bows and arrows on their backs — murderous and menacing!

These were Shizhu's local fubing making their routine mountain patrol!

Shizhu was close to the Ming's Shizhou Guard, making it a frontier area. The Shun court's control over this region was relatively strict. Even fubing stationed in their home villages had to maintain combat readiness, strictly guard the fortresses where they lived, and send armed personnel to patrol the surrounding mountains and forests.

Recently, White Lotus Sect heretics had been spreading rumors in the Shizhu area, and some had already been executed. The fubing of the Shizhu countryside had grown even more vigilant. Not only were the veteran soldiers in the villages taking part in patrols, but even women of the second-generation fubing households (all principal wives) had come out bearing swords.

The farmers who had just been saying that a bit of stirring up would be good fell completely silent at the sight of these patrolling fubing and their family members. Not daring to remain gathered, they dispersed quietly and without a sound.

The Shun regime's rule over Shizhu remained as solid as a rock!

In Sichuan, some people were hoping for the Ming King, and in Huguang, likewise, some people were hoping for the Roving King!

Yang Sanbao, who lived at the foot of Huya Mountain in Jingzhou Prefecture, and his sworn brother Wang Sihu were hoping for the Roving King!

Both of their fathers had been beneficiaries of Li Zicheng's land equalization in Jingzhou, each receiving ten mu of richly fertile paddy fields, which had changed their respective lives — originally they had been utterly destitute hired laborers, but Li Zicheng's land equalization had turned them into independent farmers. Later, when the Zhu emperor counterattacked and took Jingzhou Prefecture, he did not make them return the distributed land to its original owners, but merely had them pay some "redemption funds." Yang's father and Wang's father, each owning ten mu of paddy fields, later married, had children, and lived quite comfortably.

Yang Sanbao and Wang Sihu were the second sons of Yang's father and Wang's father. When they were born and in their early years, the family circumstances were good, so they both attended village private schools and had even gone to Jingzhou Prefecture to take the examinations for elementary school and academy, but neither had passed, so they returned home to farm.

At this time, because the family's landholdings were modest and could hardly support two sons marrying and establishing households, the fathers and elder brothers of the Yang and Wang families both hit upon the idea of borrowing money to lease more land and expand operations. They mortgaged their own ten mu of paddy fields to a money shop, borrowed capital to expand production, and then ran into continuously falling grain prices. This fall in grain prices was caused by the increased grain supply after the recovery of the north and the development of the Southern Seas — originally a good thing, but for the Yang and Wang families, who had blindly expanded their operations, it was a bankruptcy disaster!

(End of Chapter)