Chapter 253: Public Latrine

In the first ten days of the seventh month of the twenty-third year of King Zheng of Qin, two major events occurred in Anlu.

The first was that over a thousand conscripted soldiers gathered on the outskirts of the city. The second was that, at the initiative of County Commandant Heifu, a vigorous "Public Latrine Campaign" was launched throughout the county town!

"My lord, when I was in Jiangling, I once heard the Commandery Governor say that agriculture is the fundamental occupation of the common people, and that the means by which sage kings guide their people is to first devote themselves to farming. Thus, surveying the land, clearing weeds to sow grain, and applying ample manure to enrich the fields—though these are the tasks of the multitude of farmers—are matters the government cannot ignore. That is why the 'Statutes on Agriculture' and 'Statutes on Granaries' even stipulate how many seeds of millet and wheat are to be sown per mu of land."

To Yong He, the Magistrate of Anlu County, Heifu spoke in a tone of sharing inside information, relaying some words spoken by Commandery Governor Ye, the meaning of which was very clear:

"The Commandery Governor places great importance on agriculture and highly values the methods of composting and fermenting manure. He has ordered the eighteen counties of South Commandery to implement these methods. Whichever county achieves the greatest results will take first place in this year's annual performance evaluation!"

Yong He was a perceptive man. This method had originally been presented by Zhong, the county's Assistant for Agriculture, so he naturally gave special attention to the proposals of Zhong and Heifu. He quickly approved Heifu's request: besides the military camp outside the city, public latrines of varying sizes would be successively built in every street, lane, and neighborhood ward within the county town.

Public latrines were not, in fact, Heifu's original invention. During Li Xin's campaign against Chu, the Qin Mohists who accompanied the army, besides assisting in the construction of offensive and defensive equipment, would, every time they reached a new camp, organize the craftsmen and soldiers to dig communal latrines...

Heifu had once asked that Qin Mohist, Cheng Shang, about this, and he said it was something Mozi had invented during numerous city defense battles.

"The siege of a city can last half a year or more. If soldiers are allowed to relieve themselves wherever they please, filth will certainly flow everywhere, and before long, pestilence will break out, causing the city to fall without even being attacked. Therefore, Master Mozi established latrines within the city, one every fifty paces, with pits beneath like wells, surrounded by walls eight chi high..."

Mozi invented the public latrine for sanitation during sieges and city defense, but those were merely individual squatting pits. Heifu, however, directly copied the large public latrines commonly seen in later ages.

And so, by order of the County Magistrate, the County Director of Works, who was in charge of civil engineering, supervised a host of craftsmen and convict laborers. They dug manure pits at designated locations, built the squatting platforms, and enclosed them with adobe walls, and a simple public latrine was complete. The public latrines beside the government offices and the county market were roofed with tiles, while those in the residential wards, to save costs, were thatched with straw.

To show the importance they attached to this matter, the three senior officials of the county each inscribed calligraphy for the various public latrines: County Commandant Heifu inscribed the one beside the military camp, the County Assistant inscribed the one beside the market, and the County Magistrate inscribed the one beside the government offices. Then, before countless curious onlookers, the three men jointly entered the large brick public latrine beside the government offices, to set an example...

The clerks of the government offices, the county soldiers in the military camp, and the garrison troops were ordered that henceforth, they must relieve themselves in the public latrines!

The common people throughout the county town were also informed, door to door, that henceforth, anyone defecating or urinating anywhere within the county town would be considered guilty of discarding ashes in the street. Although it would not warrant the severing of a hand, a heavy fine would be imposed!

Under Heifu's orders, the night watchmen and ward gatekeepers under the jurisdiction of the commandant's office even donned red armbands and strictly cracked down on public defecation and urination in the streets and residential wards!

The harshness of Qin law was no joke. It was said that in the early days of Shang Yang's reforms, to keep the new capital of Xianyang clean, a statute was issued stating that "those who discard ashes in the street shall be punished," with the most severe penalty being the amputation of a hand. For a time, no one in Xianyang dared to throw any trash in the streets.

That had been a temporary ordinance, effective only in Xianyang, but just like that time, the people of Anlu County, having been steeped in Qin law for years, knew that the government's words were not to be taken lightly. So, from the day the public latrines were built and the prohibition was issued, whenever the people felt the call of nature, they would take their toilet sticks and go to the public latrines to relieve themselves.

At first, the poor people of the Left-side Wards, long accustomed to the wild, were not used to it. But later they discovered that the public latrines not only had walls to block the view and provide privacy, but also spared them the sudden disturbances of rabbits, dogs, pigs, or bees that might spring out in the wild. Since it was free, why not gladly take advantage of it?

The reason the government did this was, naturally, to facilitate the collection of night soil.

In truth, this was an inevitable development. By the Song dynasty, many privately built latrines would spring up like bamboo shoots after a rain in Chinese cities, open to the public and free of charge. Of course, this was not for public welfare, but for the precious fertilizer that was human waste. The people who ran these latrines would hire specialists to collect the excrement and then sell it to farmers in the countryside, making a profit.

This method of specialized management, specialized collection of night soil, and dumping it all in one designated place, appeared a thousand years early in Anlu County town. For this purpose, the County Magistrate even created a new minor clerk post in the Agriculture Section. This clerk, leading some convicted criminals, was specifically responsible for emptying the public latrines. Using the ringing of a bell as a signal, they also encouraged the merchant households and artisan families along the streets to bring out and empty their chamber pots...

The supply of night soil that had troubled Zhong was immediately available.

This "Public Latrine Campaign" advocated by Heifu, besides causing a steady flow of night soil from the densely populated city to the farmlands, had another benefit: it greatly improved the sanitary conditions of Anlu.

Heifu knew that a hallmark of modern civilization was the construction of urban underground pipelines and the subsequent establishment of public health. It was on this foundation that the West ultimately triumphed over infectious diseases like the plague.

Yet, over several millennia, China's population was larger than that of Western Europe. Why, except during certain special periods of war and famine, was the scourge of large-scale infectious disease outbreaks less severe? Some foreign scholars believe that the Chinese tea culture and the handling of human waste played a major role.

The former, through the consistent use of boiled water, ensured that drinking water was hygienic and harmless. The latter allowed urban night soil to enter the land's recycling system.

While the streets of medieval Western European cities like London and Paris were piled with filth and rife with disease, the urban sanitation of Song dynasty cities was renowned throughout the world for the excellent construction and management of public latrines, earning them a reputation for "flower-filled, fragrant streets."

However, perhaps due to explosive population growth, this good habit regressed significantly by the Ming and Qing dynasties.

Especially during the Qing dynasty, Heifu remembered reading in a collection of anecdotes that: in Beijing's public latrines, users had to pay. Therefore, people would urinate and defecate right in the middle of the road, and women would also empty their chamber pots in the street. Add to that the ever-increasing amount of cow and horse urine, and the filth piled upon filth, the stench was everywhere... Pedestrians mostly relieved themselves on the roads. Although there were strict officials who punished this, the degenerate custom was irreversible, and some officials even relieved themselves on the roads...

When the first British diplomatic mission came to China, this was the scene they witnessed in cities large and small. They, whose own cities had once been equally filthy, now prided themselves on being civilized and looked down upon China.

But those events of later ages might all be changed, now that Heifu had established the first public latrine in Anlu.

In a short time, the filth that once pervaded the city's edges and residential wards vanished. Every morning at the break of dawn, the first thing the merchants, artisans, and poor people of the Left-side Wards in Anlu did upon waking, bleary-eyed, was no longer to walk directly behind a wall, into a corner, or to the edge of a field to relieve themselves, but to make a trip to the public latrine.

And the hardworking convict latrine-cleaners, who roamed the streets and alleys, supervised by the minor clerk, wore hemp face masks and pushed night soil carts, collecting the waste from the public latrines and households and transporting it to the composting and fermenting sites outside the city, where this night soil would then enter the public fields and croplands of the suburbs.

Watching this scene, Heifu was filled with deep emotion.

"Without the formidable executive power of the Qin state's government, and without the people's absolute awe and obedience towards the authorities, these things would have been impossible to accomplish within a single ten-day period in any other dynasty."

He turned around and said to his younger brother Jing, "Only now do I understand how truly extraordinary Lord Shang's feat of 'moving the pole to establish trust' was! With fifty yi of gold, he bought the government's credibility, and also bought a century of hegemony!"

Nourished by the dividends of war for a hundred years, the Qin state's governmental credibility had reached its zenith!

So Heifu also began to wonder: why, just over a decade later, did this dynasty rapidly collapse and disintegrate?

"Perhaps, only by going to Xianyang can I unravel this puzzle."

That was a matter for the future. For now, seeing the changes in Anlu County town brought about by himself, and changes in a positive direction, Heifu felt a great sense of accomplishment.

What he wanted was certainly not something as trivial as "two thousand years ahead of India," but rather to make things of positive value to this country and its people appear earlier and endure.

The foundation of civilization is built brick by brick.

By mid-seventh month, in the main hall of the Anlu government office, the County Magistrate, County Assistant, and County Commandant Heifu gathered together to deliberate. The County Magistrate, who had the best calligraphy, personally wrote a letter on bamboo slips.

This was a memorial informing the Governor of South Commandery, Ye Teng, of the affairs in Anlu County, and proposing that it be promoted throughout South Commandery to solve the problem of insufficient night soil, while also reforming the vulgar custom of public defecation and urination.

County Magistrate Yong He was very hopeful that his achievements would be recognized by the Commandery Governor, and he began to feel fortunate that Heifu had returned to take up his post in Anlu. In just half a month, he had led them to accomplish a significant administrative achievement!

Yong He was certain that this memorial, upon reaching the commandery, would surely receive the Governor's attention!

He did not know what Heifu, who was solemnly scrutinizing the words on the bamboo slips, was thinking at that moment.

"What a pity it lacks a resounding slogan."

Looking at this rigidly formal official document, a mischievous smile flickered across Heifu's face.

He had already thought of the slogan.

"Promote civility, establish new customs! Strive to build the first national-level sanitary county town in Qin!"

"Commandant, is there still something amiss?" Yong He asked.

"No, no, nothing at all." Heifu hurriedly stopped his mental fanfare and signed his name on the bamboo slip...

By the end of the seventh month, Commandery Governor Ye also received the memorial jointly written by the Magistrate, Assistant, and Commandant of Anlu County.

After reading it, his expression shifted from peculiar to appreciative, and then from appreciative back to one of amused bemusement.

"Father, why does your expression look so strange?"

Inside the study, Zijin, who had brought Ye Teng his congee, asked curiously.

Ye Teng was, in truth, marveling at the peculiarity of the title, praising the substance of the content, and laughing at the eccentric ingenuity of Heifu's mind, for actually setting his sights on latrines, a topic the upper classes avoided discussing.

Ye Teng looked at the congee, and suddenly his appetite surged. He casually pushed the bamboo slip towards his daughter: "See for yourself... Look at that Heifu, no sooner had he returned to Anlu County town than he went and did something so significant."

Zijing grew curious too. She looked — and saw several large characters written on the bamboo slip.

"A Proposal for the Widespread Establishment of Public Latrines in Yannan Commandery?"

PS: This chapter is a bonus for a new Alliance Master. Thank you, Tearful Rain Fills the Sky, for becoming an Alliance Master of this book. I currently still owe 8 chapters, and will make up one every other day.

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