Chapter 311: Nanchang

The August Heaven's charge is fickle and impure — why are the common people so shaken and stricken?

The folk are scattered, sundered from one another; in mid-spring we are driven eastward.

We leave our native home and journey far away, following the Jiang and Xia rivers into exile...

This is Qu Yuan's "Lament for Ying" rhapsody. Sixty years ago, when Chu was forced to move east, the Chu people of the Ying capital set out on the road of exile with precisely these feelings in their hearts.

In the eighth month of autumn, the twenty-fifth year of King Zheng of Qin, in the same region — Jiangling in Nan Commandery — several hundred households of common folk harbored the same thoughts.

Two or three thousand men and women stood at the dock, their faces full of sorrow. They kept turning their heads to look back at Jiangling, back at Nan Commandery, but in the end they had no choice — forced onward by the soldiers, they boarded the long, narrow boats and huddled silently in the holds.

"Where exactly are we being relocated to?"

A middle-aged live-in son-in-law, holding his wife and child, asked the young man beside him.

The young man was lean, seventeen or eighteen years old. He lifted his eyes. "They say it's to the Jiangnan region, to a new county called Nanchang."

In their idle chat, the middle-aged live-in son-in-law learned that the young man was named Xing. He was originally a Chu native; a few years ago, he was deceived by people from his hometown and followed them into a Qin-organized grave-robbing gang. They dug open tombs in Anlu County, but were caught red-handed by a village head named Heifu...

His accomplices were heavily punished, but Xing was only fourteen at the time and too short to be sentenced to corporal punishment. Thus, according to Qin law, the magistrate Xi judged that he had "been incited by others and had not yet reached six chi in height; he shall be punished lightly and sentenced to labor in the Hidden Officials."

And so Xing began a life shuttling between the various Hidden Official work camps of Nan Commandery. The Hidden Officials were a lighter punishment than penal convict status, but the work inside was no easy matter. On top of that, Xing was a Chu native and suffered constant bullying.

As for his prospects, he could see no hope. Once he came of age, obtaining granted land would be difficult; at best he could be a hired farmhand, or even become a live-in son-in-law for someone.

So when the Governor of Nan Commandery, Teng, acting on the King of Qin's orders, conscripted Hidden Officials, penal convicts, male and female slaves, live-in sons-in-law, merchants, and the like to relocate to Nanchang, Xing took the initiative and expressed his willingness to join this settler contingent.

Resettlement was an old Qin tradition. As early as the reign of King Hui of Qin, they had sent the prince Chuliji, bearing the rank of Right Geng, to serve as a general and attack Quwo in Wei. After occupying the area, they expelled all its inhabitants, took the city, and annexed the land into Qin.

At that time, Qin had only just emerged eastward and did not trust those people of the Three Jin who "had no desire to be Qin subjects." To thoroughly occupy new regions, they often expelled the original inhabitants and moved in their own population. As for the settlers, they were mainly composed of commoners and criminals. When Wei ceded Anyi, Qin expelled its inhabitants, recruited people to move to Hedong and granted them ranks, and pardoned convicts to resettle there.

This resettlement also came with similar benefits.

"The officials say that hired farmhands who go to Nanchang can obtain land, and male slaves who go can obtain freedom. I am originally a Chu native who lived in Jiangnan, so by answering this recruitment, I'm also returning home."

Xing consoled the worried live-in son-in-law uncle, saying, "Live-in sons-in-law can also become ordinary commoners and re-register their own household!"

But the live-in son-in-law's family and the others showed not the slightest hint of joy. They would rather scrape by in Nan Commandery than go clear wasteland on an utterly unknown piece of land.

The people on the same boat began to pepper Xing with all sorts of questions — how far was the journey to Nanchang, what was the climate like there, were there many wild beasts, were there ready-made houses?

Xing opened his mouth but could not answer. He was from Shaxian in E, and had never been to Jiangxi.

The settlers grew even more disheartened. Just then, the wind and waves on the Yangtze gradually picked up. The boats pitched and rolled; the sound of waves slamming against the hulls, the crying of children, and hoarse coughing all mingled into a din. When night fell, some people grew seasick and vomited, and the smell inside the boat holds became unbearably foul...

Their bumpy journey did not ease slightly until the boats entered Lake Pengli. Gazing at the vast expanse of the lake before them, the people from Nan Commandery felt as if they had returned to the shores of Yunmeng Marsh, and their spirits slowly began to lift.

But while anchored at Jiujiang, a person on the same boat was washing clothes soiled by filth in the water when a giant alligator over ten chi long dragged her into the depths. As her fading, agonized cries drifted away, a patch of the lake was dyed red...

The settlers' mood sank once more. The exhaustion of the journey diluted what little novelty and anticipation they had left. They continued on in silence until they disembarked at Fuqianyuan, no longer caring about the majesty of Lake Pengli, and ignoring the strange beauty of Mount Lu. They cared only about whether, once they arrived, they would receive the land the officials had promised, whether they would have to clear wilderness amid grassy marshes, and whether they would shiver in their shacks at night listening to the roars of wild beasts outside.

The further south they went, the more disappointed they grew. Compared to Nan Commandery, the lower reaches of the Gan River were far too remote and barbaric. They could walk ten li without seeing a single soul, and when they occasionally did meet someone, it was a Yangyue native who did not speak Xia tongue, tattooed and with cropped hair, standing by the water's edge and watching the settlers with dark, unreadable eyes.

"From now on, I fear we will have to dwell with snakes and scorpions and coexist with the Man and Yue barbarians," said the live-in son-in-law walking beside Xing, somewhat despairing. He would rather his children be live-in sons-in-law for generations than willingly come to such a place.

Yet when they passed through a camphor forest and arrived at the banks of the Gan River, their eyes all widened in shock!

Where they had expected nothing but tangled thickets and jungle on the eastern bank of the Gan, a brand-new walled town had appeared as if from thin air!

It was not large in scale — only four li square — with thick, solidly tamped walls on all four sides, perfectly square. The situation inside the town was unknown to the crowd, but outside the walls, besides well-laid roads, there were rows upon rows of barracks and huts. These had been used by the soldiers and slave laborers who had built the town earlier, and were now vacated, awaiting the entry of their new masters.

And the Qin soldiers, armored and bearing halberds, patrolling the waterfront in squads of ten, gave the settlers a long-absent sense of security.

Heifu's subordinates were originally from Nan Commandery themselves. Having been stuck here in boredom for several months, the sight of so many fellow townsfolk, regardless of their former status, prompted them to call out warm greetings from across the Gan River. After the people had crossed over, centurions and squad leaders arranged for soldiers to prepare their first hot meal.

With long-missed hot broth and rice in their bellies, and seeing that every household had a small shack that could shelter them from wind and rain, many of the settlers' eyes brimmed with hot tears.

This situation was far better than they had imagined.

"Nanchang — what a fine name. Like Nan Commandery, it also has the word 'Nan,'" someone remarked. It seemed this simple reason was enough to give them a little more fondness for this new home.

But Xing stopped eating halfway through, suddenly frozen. He stared blankly at a Qin official who, surrounded by soldiers and officers, had come to inspect the settlers' conditions.

The live-in son-in-law, who had already regained hope, nudged him. Only then did Xing snap out of it and excitedly point at the Qin official's retreating back. "The village head who arrested me back then — that was him!"

The live-in son-in-law hurriedly covered his mouth. "Young man, don't speak recklessly! I heard others say that he is the highest-ranking official in this area — the county magistrate, the commander, the man who built this Nanchang town! How could he be the little village head who arrested you years ago? You must be remembering wrong."

"It really is him!"

Xing was somewhat agitated. He still remembered that cold night after the snow in the twelfth month. Young as he was, he had been forced by his accomplices to climb down into the tomb chamber to search for grave goods, when the people above were suddenly attacked. The wind howled outside, scaring him half to death. Just as he was clutching his head and weeping, it was this very man who had pulled him up...

"Though his attire has changed and he's grown a beard, that dark face, those eyes — I will never forget them in this lifetime!"

Heifu did not greet the settlers one by one. After a cursory glance around, he and Zhang Han ascended the walls of Nanchang to gaze upon the fruits of their joint labor over these past months.

Nanchang town had been planned according to the construction standards of the "Artificer's Record" — perfectly square, with straight streets. Though small inside, it was complete in every detail. Whether it was the offices for official business, the barracks for soldiers, or even the spaces reserved for markets and shops, everything that should be there was there.

And of course, public latrines were not omitted.

Nanchang's four walls each had a city gate. The southern gate was called Luling Gate, the western gate Tonggan Gate, the eastern gate Poyang Gate, and the northern gate Jiujiang Gate — each named after the place it led toward in its respective direction.

The two of them were standing atop Tonggan Gate, gazing westward.

Looking at the new town that had suddenly grown bustling with the settlers' arrival, Heifu revealed a satisfied smile. "The first batch of settlers has arrived. The grain for winter and the seeds for next year have also been transported from Nan Commandery. We'll take advantage of the autumn and winter farming slack to build houses outside the walls, open up fields, and erect palisades in each sector to guard against wild beasts. When the population exceeds two thousand households in the future, we'll build an outer wall of ten li."

The fifteenth day of the ninth month, the twenty-fifth year of the King of Qin — today was the day Nanchang was founded, and these settlers would be the first citizens of Nanchang.

Zhang Han said, "Aren't you afraid, Heifu, that once the settlers arrive here, they'll find the weather unbearably hot and humid and all flee? I heard from Zhao Tuo that no small number of such incidents happened on the road."

If it were Zhang Han, even if he were given a hundred qing of land, he would not want to spend the rest of his life in this sweltering, damp, godforsaken place. What's more, there was that water-gu disease that northerners had never seen before — just thinking about it made his skin crawl. After Heifu had taken him to see the wretched state of several infected soldiers, he no longer dared to drink unboiled water and kept away from all wild water sources; he even insisted on heating water specially for bathing.

"For the common folk, where can one escape sickness and suffering? Besides, when the authorities relocate people, who dares resist?"

Heifu sighed. Coming from a lowly background himself, he understood very well the lives of the little people in this era. Unless they truly had no other choice, who would willingly abandon their home and leave their native land?

He knew that similar small-scale resettlements had already begun over a decade ago, at the start of King Zheng of Qin's personal rule. In the cases of Lao Ai and Lü Buwei, their retainers and partisans who were relocated to Shu numbered in the thousands of households. Even now, the remnants of the six states across the Central Plains were continuously streaming toward Ba-Shu and Jiangnan under the King of Qin's compulsory orders.

For example, the Zhuo clan of Handan was relocated to Ba-Shu, and the Kong clan of Wan in Nanyang also entered Shu. And this batch of several hundred households of hired farmhands, live-in sons-in-law, and male slaves from Nan Commandery would now become Nanchang's first agricultural population.

In this era, Ba-Shu and Jiangnan were to Qin what the Thirteen Colonies and Australia were to Britain in later ages.

"Even if some are unwilling in their hearts, after ten or twenty years here, after several generations multiply, they too will become native-born Nanchang people. Ask them then: where is home?"

Heifu clapped Zhang Han on the shoulder and smiled. "Where the heart finds peace, there is home. What matters is not the present, but how life here will be in the future! What we must do is build town walls and houses to protect them from the harm of wild beasts, and find a way to treat the water-gu disease."

He was not omnipotent; he could only pin his hopes on the physicians sent from Xianyang and Nan Commandery. Perhaps, once they understood the principle behind it, they might find a method of treatment.

Just a few days later, the physician from Xianyang arrived — none other than an old acquaintance of Heifu's, Chen Wujiu, who was already addicted to smoking cannabis.

Heifu's report had drawn the attention of King Zheng of Qin and the Chief Physician Xia Wuqie, but since this illness had never been seen in the north before, they remained skeptical, so they dispatched Chen Wujiu, who had been promoted to Official Grandee, to investigate and verify.

Accompanying Chen Wujiu, aside from several physicians, was a special envoy of the King of Qin.

He brought Heifu one piece of good news, and one piece of bad news…