Chapter 316: To Take a Wife, One Should Take

In the twelfth month of the twenty-sixth year of King Zheng of Qin, even Anlu County in the south had turned bitterly cold, yet a workshop several li outside the county seat still billowed with rolling smoke.

Wrapped in a thick fur coat, Heifu ducked inside and was immediately hit by a wave of heat: everyone within was laboring in summer clothes, still drenched in sweat from the heat, while the air was filled with the sweet fragrance of sugarcane.

"The Left Commoner Chief has arrived!"

A voice even sweeter than cane sugar rang out — it was Heifu's distant cousin, Yan.

He had once been a small peddler making malt sugar for a living in Yunmeng Township, but now, with Heifu's investment, he had transformed overnight into the owner of this brown sugar workshop.

At that moment, the several dozen men under him also spotted Heifu and threw down their work one after another, hastily prostrating themselves and kowtowing to him.

"Quick, rise — watching the heat is what matters!"

Heifu was quite helpless; he had arrived in Jiangling in the eleventh month, saw Li You off south to Changsha mid-month, and at month's end saw Ye Teng's family off north to Xianyang — though Heifu, long a bachelor, had long coveted the Ye family's daughter, it was not convenient for him to go along. The King of Qin's oral decree he had received ordered him to arrive before the second month of mid-spring, so he still had time to make a trip home.

On this return to his hometown, he could be said to have experienced the treatment that, in later ages, provincial- or national-level leaders hailing from small counties would receive upon returning to their old homes. The Anlu County Magistrate Yong He, who had worked alongside Heifu, had already been transferred away; the newly arrived Magistrate, Assistant Magistrate, and Commandant, disregarding their own dignity as state officials, all came out of the city gates to welcome him. The various section heads with whom he had a nodding acquaintance also lined up to cozy up to Heifu...

Heifu had a hard time shaking them off and returned with his elder brother Zhong to the home they had moved into two years before. What followed was a stream of village officials and prominent local elders nearly trampling the threshold. Heifu grew so annoyed that in the end he simply shut his door and refused all visitors.

The only ones he took the initiative to invite into his home were the families of Dongmen Bao, Li Xian, Xiao Tao, and Ji Ying. Heifu begged their forgiveness, saying it was his fault that the men could not return home, but that he would do his utmost to find a way to give his subordinates a chance to visit their families, or to have their dependents travel to Nanchang and the like as soon as possible.

Heifu also went in person to every township and asked the village Thrice Venerables to help him assemble the dependents of the southern expedition soldiers. He feasted them and informed them of one matter.

"The King's command is hard to defy; I must go to Xianyang to await summons. But the fifteen hundred sons of Anlu — Heifu will never abandon them! I have bought two large ships in Jiangling, each capable of carrying over a hundred people, which will make a round trip once a month between Xiakou, Xunyang, and Pengze. Any soldier or dependent wishing to visit family need only present their travel permit and passport, and may travel back and forth free of charge!"

At these words, the people of Anlu, who had still harbored a slight grudge against Heifu, were first stunned, then moved to the point of hot tears brimming in their eyes. Some elderly fathers who, at home, had not ceased cursing Heifu for luring away their sons, never to return, now tightly grasped his hands, overcome with emotion.

"Though the Commandant has risen to Left Commoner Chief, he still has not forgotten the sons of his own county, and regards us as his hometown fellows..."

Having won the understanding of his soldiers' dependents, Heifu felt that all that money of his had been well spent!

With the King of Qin's rewards, the plundering of the Chu state treasury and the treasuries of Lord E and Lord Poyang, plus the "smelting loss" from the gold mine, Heifu now possessed a fortune of a hundred yi of gold, worth over a million in banliang coins!

But those two large ships alone had cost Heifu a third of his wealth, handed over to two Jiangling boat families introduced to him by Zhao Tuo to serve as skippers...

Of course, these two ships did not carry only people; they also conveniently transported seeds, farming tools, cloth, grain, and the like between Nan Commandery and Yuzhang. To say nothing of these all being legitimate goods, even if Heifu wanted to smuggle some contraband, Zhao Tuo — who was in charge of the defenses and checkpoints at Pengli Marsh and was Heifu's sworn brother — would wave a hand and let him pass.

Apart from the two large ships, Heifu took out another third of his gold and opened this brown sugar workshop near the Anlu county seat.

It happened to be the start of winter, and the ten-odd qing of sugarcane he had planted were ready for harvest. Besides the wild sugarcane found earlier by Yunmeng Marsh, which had been planted for three or four years and slightly improved, there were also varieties Heifu had found in the old Chu royal palace in Jiangling during his tenure there. After all, it was sugarcane grown for the King of Chu to press for juice, far sweeter than the wild variety.

With this, the brown sugar workshop became viable.

Outside the workshop, over ten oxen or inferior horses pulled wooden rollers in endless circles to press and squeeze the juice from the sugarcane. The juice was then carried into the workshop by able-bodied young men — all sons of the southern expedition soldiers whom Heifu had hired for the agricultural off-season. They were provided two meals a day and paid wages, which also counted as Heifu sharing the profits with the soldiers' families.

Inside the workshop, a dozen or so stoves and cauldrons were arrayed in a line. Throughout the sugar-boiling period, the fires under these cauldrons were never extinguished, burning and boiling without cease. The fire-tenders fed fuel into the stoves without interruption to ensure the heat remained steady during the boiling process.

The several sugar-boiling masters trained by Heifu's cousin Yan first steamed and boiled the freshly pressed cane juice to filter and sterilize it, removing impurities and dregs, then poured it into the cauldrons, stirring it up and down continuously.

Under the simmering stove-fires, the water in the cane juice evaporated, and the sugar juice slowly condensed, turning an amber color, floating and bobbing in the great cauldrons and giving off a sweet fragrance. Finally, the masters extinguished the great fires beneath the cauldrons, then ladled the steaming brown sugar syrup into wooden troughs that flowed into "sugar molds" to settle and cool, forming blocks of brown sugar...

Tasting the freshly produced brown sugar, Heifu nodded with satisfaction, then asked about the extraction rate. Yan told him, "Just now, a thousand jin of sugarcane yielded fifty jin of brown sugar."

Three years ago, when they first made sugar, the extraction rate had been about two percent — over a thousand jin of sugarcane had yielded only twenty jin of brown sugar.

Now, after using the new variety from Jiangling, the extraction rate had reached five percent. Though still far from the common rate of ten-something or twenty percent in later ages, it was already tremendous progress.

At present, they had harvested over two million jin of sugarcane in total, which could be boiled down into ten thousand jin of brown sugar...

Yan nervously asked Heifu about the expected price. Heifu gave him three different prices.

"In Anlu, a hundred cash per jin is enough — for our fellow townsfolk, we don't seek profit. In Jiangling, it must sell for a hundred and fifty cash, to recover cost and shipping. If sold in Xianyang, or east of the Passes..."

Heifu hardened his heart and named a price: "Depending on the distance, two hundred to four hundred cash! Not a coin less! If sold in Qi or Yan, then five hundred cash!"

Yan nearly bit his tongue. He secretly calculated the accounts: counting the cost of planting sugarcane and boiling the sugar, each jin came to no more than fifty cash. Heifu was being far too ruthless.

But in Heifu's view, even as late as the eighteenth or nineteenth century, sugar was still a luxury, not a necessity — that was why the American plantations had been so profitable. What was wrong with setting his price a bit high? If he could produce white sugar in the future, the price would have to double again!

Besides, the malt sugar commonly available in this age was not cheap either, mainly because it was made from grain, its output was low, and the authorities did not encourage it. A household of middling means might not taste it more than a few times a year.

Brown sugar was different. Sugarcane was easy to grow, and the sugar was boiled in the agricultural off-season, so there was no shortage of hands. This was only the first year; every year thereafter, Heifu planned to expand production, so that whenever anyone under heaven mentioned Anlu, they would think of brown sugar, and their mouths would be full of sweetness!

And not the birthplace of public latrines, and the faint, lingering stench...

His mind was made up: "I will set out for Xianyang in the middle of the twelfth month. Before then, you must boil at least two thousand jin, and accompany me north. We will find a way to start selling brown sugar in Xianyang!"

In Qin, every workshop, market stall, and vendor's stand — whether rented or purchased — had to have a clearly designated owner. This made tax collection convenient and could also prevent inheritance disputes.

For example, Heifu's subordinate Man had once told him of a matter: in the Jiangling official market there was an empty plot of land. Some people had once roped him into joining them to lease it for a coffin shop, but Man refused. Later, because someone had secretly bribed and maneuvered and was reported, it even blew up into the "Rui Illegally Sold Public Land Case"...

At the same time, government officials were not permitted to openly engage in commerce, so Heifu had registered this enterprise under his mother's name.

Although in the Confucian view, a son's wife was to have no private goods, no private livestock, no private vessels, and dared not lend or give privately, in Qin, women unquestionably possessed property rights.

For example, according to Qin's "inheritance law," if Heifu were to unfortunately die, his property would first pass to his sons, that is, his male children. Of course, he was still a bachelor — he did not even have a wife, so where would sons come from? Then it would go next to "his father or mother." Only if both parents were deceased would it go to his widowed wife, daughters, grandsons — brothers, on the contrary, came later in the order.

Furthermore... did Great Qin permit only the Widow Qing of Ba to mine, and forbid an old woman of Anlu from boiling sugar?

Heifu's mother cared only about the radishes, winter mallow, scallions, and leeks in the fields. At mealtime, upon hearing that Heifu had registered an enterprise worth several hundred thousand cash under her name, she was badly frightened. She felt she could no longer sleep soundly at night, and even said Heifu would do better to take the money with him to Xianyang.

"Or leave more for Jing. He is in the Jiangnan lands — just thinking of it makes my heart ache." His mother's heart went out to her younger son, and she was about to wipe away tears again.

Heifu hurriedly consoled her, saying, "Going to Xianyang, my expenses will indeed be considerable. Relying on salary and the harvest from the fields alone will be far from enough, so I must set up some enterprises in Nan Commandery and Yuzhang. Jing is serving there, and can conveniently help me keep an eye on things."

"You plan to plant sugarcane and press sugar in Yuzhang as well?" Zhong caught on.

"Exactly."

Heifu said to his elder brother Zhong, "The climate in Yuzhang is even hotter than Nan Commandery, also suitable for growing sugarcane. I have forty-nine qing of land in Nanchang. I'll keep a few qing to grow grain for paying taxes, and plant the rest entirely with sugarcane. By next autumn and winter, I'll open another brown sugar workshop in Nanchang, selling exclusively to Huainan and Kuaiji. After deducting costs, shipping, and wages, the two workshops together should net a million cash a year — no problem!"

"Over a million cash!"

Zhong and their mother were both somewhat frightened. Their mother rambled on about how a person can take nothing with them when they die, what was the point of earning so much, while at the same time reminding Heifu, "You are now a Left Commoner Chief — no one in the entire county has ever held such a high rank, and no one dares seek a marriage alliance with you anymore. But you are no longer young; Jing has already married a virtuous lady of the Yan clan. Is it not time for you to take a wife as well?"

The more their mother spoke, the angrier she grew, until finally she pointed at eleven-year-old Yang and said, "Do you mean to drag it out until you're even later than Yang?"

The overage youth Heifu laughed. "As for my marriage, Mother may set your mind at ease. Heifu has already set his sights on a virtuous lady..."

"Is that true?"

At these words, the entire family was shocked. His mother was so happy she nearly wept; she had always thought her son's standards were too high, that he looked down on this one and disliked that one. Zhong and his wife exchanged a glance, deeply gratified. Their niece Yue widened her eyes, eager to know who the fortunate girl was that her uncle had taken a fancy to.

Only Yang looked up and said in astonishment, "I always thought you would stay single, and not marry until you became a general or were enfeoffed as a marquis!" Jing had also spoken to the family of Heifu's ambitions.

"You're the one who'll stay single!"

Heifu stuffed a piece of meat into his mouth, and under his family's pressing questions, added with feigned regret, "It's just that she has just gone to Xianyang with her family. So I can only wait until I reach Xianyang before I consider proposing marriage and the like..."

This whole spiel finally managed to suppress the family's latest round of marriage pressure.

His military career had come to a temporary close, and it was indeed time to put the matter of marriage on the agenda. Although Heifu had rationally kept his lower half in check these past few years, continuing to stay single like this and relying only on his own two hands wasn't really a solution.

Rather than marrying a woman he'd never met, whose appearance and temperament were completely unknown, like so many in this era did, he might as well make a move on a good cabbage he already had some fondness for and who had already grown up!

In this day and age, a noblewoman who could treat a dark-skinned lad of commoner birth with courtesy, and even say something like "you should take pride in the merits you've earned, and need not be ashamed of lacking a clan name," was truly a rare sight...

Furthermore, if this matter could succeed, it would also be profitable for Heifu. Although Ye Teng's reputation in Han was utterly ruined, he had operated in Jiangling for seven years, and it would be no exaggeration to say his "disciples and former subordinates fill Southern Commandery." And now, those subordinates Ye Teng had personally promoted were scattered across Jiujiang, Changsha, Dongting, and other commanderies.

Thinking of this, Heifu set a small goal for his journey to Xianyang, which he would embark on tomorrow.

"A man should be a Two Thousand Bushels official; a wife should be Ye Zijin!"

PS: The third chapter will be in the evening, quite late.

(End of chapter)