Chapter 1270: Seems Like Capitalism Is Still Worse!

"Come on, come on — you go easy, I'll go deep. Brother Yang, the two of us won't stop till we're drunk!"

In a small tavern in Huya Town below Huya Mountain, Wang Sihu — twenty-five or twenty-six years old and still without a wife — poured a bowl of wine for his good brother Yang Sanbao, then filled his own.

Yang Sanbao was a year older than Wang Sihu and also a bachelor. The two had studied together at a private school in Huya Town, then gone together to Jingzhou Prefecture to take the elementary exam and the academy exam. Later, both their families had gone bankrupt in the same disaster of cheap grain hurting farmers, losing all their land and falling from comfortable owner-farmer households to hired-laborer households. Because they had known each other since childhood and shared the same experiences, the two had become close friends and often gathered to drink and chat.

Yang Sanbao was more honest. After his family went bankrupt, he worked as a long-term laborer for Ding Bapi, Ding Shixiang, the richest man in Huya Town, to pay off debts — the Yang family had lost money farming that year, and rather than sell the land the Roving King had distributed to them to repay the money-house debt, they had borrowed a high-interest loan from the richest man Ding, wanting to gamble one more time.

As it turned out, the next year brought a mountain flood that inundated their land. Although the three Yang men replanted in time after the flood, they still suffered no small loss. Not only did they fail to keep the land, they also owed the Ding Bapi family a high-interest debt that could never be paid off.

And although Yang Sanbao had studied at a private school for a few years, he had no trade to make a living — all he knew was farming. And being an honest man, he did not dare go out into the world, so he had no choice but to work ten years as a long-term laborer for the Ding Bapi family to repay the debt.

Wang Sihu was a bit more quick-witted. His family's situation was also a little better — merely fallen on hard times, without high-interest debts — so he went to Jingzhou city to make a living, found work on river boats, and traveled with the river boats to quite a few places, making him fairly worldly. Every year he returned to his hometown of Huya Town only just before the New Year, and left after the Lantern Festival on the fifteenth of the first month. This year was no exception.

The day after returning home, Wang Sihu mysteriously went to the Ding family mansion and dragged out Yang Sanbao, who was sprawled atop a wall staring dazedly at the Ding family's eldest daughter, home on holiday from the Jingzhou girls' school. The two found a small tavern, got a dish of salted beans, a plate of tofu, plus two pots of cloudy wine, and began drinking.

The small tavern they found was located near the Yangtze River dock of Huya Town. Business was usually good, with passing boatmen and travelers stopping in for a few cups, but it slackened as the New Year approached. Apart from the two brothers Yang Sanbao and Wang Sihu, there was only a xiucai named Zhang in his forties drinking away his sorrows.

This xiucai Zhang was also a man down on his luck. His family had originally been the richest in Huya Town; that Ding Bapi, the richest man Ding, had originally been his family's steward, managing an estate of several thousand mu of land for them. And xiucai Zhang and his father, old xiucai Zhang, were both scholars, wholly devoted to the examination career. If Li Zicheng had not come around equalizing land, the Zhang family would never have declined.

If the Zhu Emperor had not changed the rules of the imperial examinations, no longer emphasizing the eight-legged essay, and had not abolished the degrees of xiucai and juren, then with xiucai Zhang's writing he probably could still have rebuilt the family fortune.

Unfortunately, xiucai Zhang's fate was truly bad. A man of considerable talent had thus fallen for half his life, becoming the drunkard Zhang whom everyone in Huya Town despised on sight.

By now it was past mealtime. Apart from Yang Sanbao, Wang Sihu, and the drunkard Zhang, there was no one else in the little tavern hall — even the tavern owner and the waiter had gone to the back kitchen to busy themselves. The little tavern had no business during the New Year season, but the richest man Ding in town was in excellent spirits and was going to hold an open feast on New Year's Eve to celebrate his daughter — who looked like a little sprite — obtaining the qualification to apply to Jinling Women's University. So all the taverns in town, big and small, had received business, and some were going to be very busy!

After a few cups of cloudy wine, Wang Sihu looked around, saw there was no one else besides a drunkard, and pulled out a handbill, passing it to Yang Sanbao.

"Brother Yang, take a look at this!"

Yang Sanbao took the handbill and glanced at it. His face instantly changed color, and he exclaimed: "What? The Roving, the Roving King is coming back?"

His voice was a little loud. Wang Sihu quickly covered his mouth, then nervously glanced at the drunkard Zhang. The drunkard Zhang seemed to have already passed out drunk, and was even snoring.

Only then did Wang Sihu relax. Lowering his voice, he said to Yang Sanbao: "Brother, the Shun dynasty has just gotten a new Roving King, changed the reign title to Dongping Daxing, and moved out to Yong'an Palace. It looks like they're going to campaign east against the tyrannical Ming, sweep the realm, and stand up for us poor folk!"

"Stand up for us how?" Yang Sanbao asked.

"Redistribute the land, of course!" Wang Sihu said. "We suffering folk here in Jingzhou Prefecture have long been waiting for this day!"

"And what if it is redistributed?" Yang Sanbao sighed. "What can't be held onto still can't be held onto. In these twenty years, at least half the households below Huya Mountain have fallen into ruin. Only the crafty ones, the scheming ones, the ones who collude with the profiteers of Wuhan have prospered!"

What he said was also the truth!

These are times when no merchant is not a profiteer!

After the Zhu Emperor turned farming into a business through land surveys, land clearance, and the abolition of the tax-exempt privileges of the scholar-officials, new problems followed one after another — no business is ever guaranteed profit, every business inevitably involves deceit and fraud, every business inevitably contains all sorts of traps and temptations that ruin people. Thus Jingzhou Prefecture, which had achieved equal land distribution under the Roving King's rule, in just twenty short years once again became unequal in wealth and poverty, and once again saw massive concentration of land.

Taking Huya Town as an example, half of the farming households that had received land back then had already fallen into ruin, either selling all their land or selling part of it.

And among the remaining farming households, a few had prospered and flourished. The richest among them was Ding Bapi, Ding Shixiang, formerly the steward of the xiucai Zhang family. Although twenty years ago everyone had started from roughly the same line, Ding Bapi had connections and a nimble mind. Not only could he farm, he had also become the agent of a large rice merchant in Wuhan Prefecture, and he traded in cloth, ironware, and salt between Hankou and Huya Town. Because of his close cooperative relationship with the Wuhan rice merchants, Ding Bapi could grasp rice price fluctuations more accurately than the other farming households in Huya Town, and profited enormously from it.

And the trading firm he ran, dealing in cloth, ironware, and salt, not only helped him spread the risks of farming but also gave him stronger financing capacity.

Therefore, over the past twenty years, his family fortune had grown larger and larger, and he had already swallowed up a quarter of the land in Huya Town, becoming a true great landlord.

And this great landlord Ding Bapi was even more hateful than his former master's family, the xiucai Zhang family. The xiucai Zhang family were scholar-officials of a house passed down through poetry and propriety. They did not manage the land themselves; they could possess land because their family had tax-exempt privileges. Moreover, they did not much evict tenants, and when harvests were poor, they would remit rents and reduce interest for the villagers. So everyone called the master of the Zhang family the Great Benefactor Zhang.

Ding Bapi, by contrast, was a profiteer through and through. To him, farming was a business, and land was a tool for making money. He did not even rent land to small farmers, but instead managed it with hired laborers. Because in his view, small farmers who rented land were usually poor managers and lacked the ability to withstand risk. Once they suffered operating losses, they would fall behind on rent, and he — a profiteer — would find it hard to evict tenants, while still having to pay the full land tax. Better to manage the land himself; that was safer.

So now Yang Sanbao wanted to be a tenant farmer but could not!

Being a tenant farmer, after all, meant running one's own operation, with at least some chance of turning things around. But being a hired laborer meant just those few fixed wages, with no way to get ahead at all.

As for going to Jingzhou city to make a living, he had no special skill, and even if he went he would not earn much more, while also having to bear relatively high living costs.

And to go to the South Seas or to the New Continent, he had no money for a ship ticket. To go, he would have to become an indentured laborer and work three years for nothing!

In short, he could see no opportunity to turn his life around at all. Even if the Roving King came again, he was not sure he could hold onto whatever property was distributed to him.

"Brother Yang!" Wang Sihu had drunk a few more cups and was perhaps half drunk, speaking without restraint. "Why do you care about holding on or not? If the Roving King can come again, won't we have a chance to win merit and establish ourselves? If we can earn merit and become military household soldiers of the Shun dynasty, why worry about not having good days ahead?"

"Wh-what did you say?" Yang Sanbao had not drunk that much and immediately grew nervous. "You want to rebel? If you're caught, it's off with your head!"

"What's there to fear?" Wang Sihu laughed. "Brother, you've been cooped up below Huya Mountain and have no idea what's going on outside. Along both banks of the Jing River, who knows how many poor folk are longing for the Roving King!"

(End of Chapter)