Chapter 466: The Sugar Clan

Heifu sent Zhang Ping back to prepare for the arrival of the court appointment letter, then went straight into the inner quarters of his home. A man dressed as a merchant was warming himself by the charcoal brazier, his clothes still flecked with unmelted frost and snow. Seeing Heifu enter, he hastily knelt and bowed to him:

"Your younger brother greets the Junior Chief Architect!"

It was Yan, Heifu's cousin who had been managing the brown sugar business for him in Nan Commandery and whom he had not seen in a long time…

Well, he should probably be called "Sugar Yan" now.

Ever since Heifu acquired a clan name, relatives no matter how distant all wanted to latch on. Take Yan's mother, for instance — she was the sister of Heifu's nominal father. By rights, Yan could never qualify to share his clan name, but these Jing-Chu country folk didn't care about such niceties and insisted that Yan ride Heifu's coattails.

It was Heifu's mother who had the good sense to tactfully refuse the matter, but she did accept Yan as an adopted son and told him:

"Since people call me Old Dame Sugar, from now on you can be called Sugar Yan. It's just a name; no need to enter it in the household registry."

Only then did this clan-name freeloading incident come to an end, and Heifu's family brown sugar workshop naturally took on the name "Sugar Clan."

Heifu had even helped them come up with the workshop's slogan: "No Sweet, No Joy!"

Heifu looked over Yan's attire. He saw him draped in a great fur-lined coat, thick with the air of a nouveau riche, then glanced at what he wore underneath — at least he had not gotten so carried away as to don silk robes or embroidered patterned slippers. That would be illegal in Qin; no matter how rich a merchant was, when out in public he had to wear coarse hemp clothing to display his lowly status.

As long as he did not overstep the laws and ordinances, Heifu had little to say. On the surface, Yan was a merchant worth a million, and if he dressed too shabbily, he would lose face instead.

Heifu dispensed with pleasantries, told Yan to sit, and began laying out the matters that could not be put in letters, one by one.

"Let's begin. Explain everything clearly, piece by piece."

Yan started rambling on in his report about the expansion of the sugarcane plantations in the south over the past year.

Nine years had passed since Heifu transplanted the first wild sugarcane stalk into his own field. Thanks to improvements using the sweet sugarcane from the old Chu royal palace, although the sweetness still fell far short of later ages, one could now chew some flavor out of it, unlike in the beginning when it was as bland as water.

Besides the gradual improvement of the variety, the acreage under sugarcane cultivation was also expanding rapidly. The Qin Dynasty did not permit land annexation, and Heifu, with his current rank of Junior Chief Architect, held only eighty-four qing of land, scattered across Anlu and Nanchang counties. Relying on this land alone was of course impossible to produce enough sugarcane for sugar-making.

So Heifu had Yan, several years ago, give away large quantities of sweet sugarcane seed free of charge to fellow villagers and neighbors. Hearing that sugarcane could be sold to the brown sugar workshop for money, the local communities of Anlu and the migrants of Nanchang began following suit one after another. After several years of development, the sugarcane fields had now spread throughout the entirety of Nan Commandery and Yuzhang Commandery.

Yan reported with glee: "Nowadays, throughout the entire Yunmeng Marsh and along the Great River in Nan Commandery, you can see sugarcane fields. Nearly every county has a hundred qing of cane fields, and the sugar mills set up everywhere can get a steady, unending supply of raw material."

"The local authorities haven't obstructed it, have they?"

This was Heifu's greatest concern. The land in each commandery and county was limited, after all. If large swaths of good farmland were used to grow cash crops like sugarcane, it was bound to affect grain production. This bore on the local authorities' annual performance evaluations. Even if the sugar mills paid large amounts of tax to the local government, and even if Heifu's local backing was rock-solid, they would not sit idly by.

Yan said, as if it were a matter of course: "Who would dare make trouble for the Junior Chief Architect?"

Heifu frowned. "Did I not tell you all not to bully others on the strength of my influence?"

Yan hurriedly said: "How would your younger brother dare do such a thing? Everything was done according to the Junior Chief Architect's instructions. We sent people to tell the sugarcane farmers in every county of Nan Commandery that sugarcane must be planted in low-lying land unsuitable for grain, or along the edges of grain field ditches, and to avoid crowding out millet and rice paddies as much as possible…"

As long as grain output was not affected and tax revenue could be increased, why not gladly do it? Thus, the authorities in each county all taxed sugarcane just as they did the orange trees common in Han River and Jiangling. Planting fruit trees was also an industry greatly encouraged by the court.

As for Yuzhang, that went without saying — the terrain was low-lying and the climate damp. The local main economic sources had originally been bamboo, timber, and gold, but bamboo and timber were too common and could not fetch a good price, while mineral reserves were limited, transportation was inconvenient, and the proceeds from mining were not enough to cover the expenses.

Therefore, planting sugarcane and boiling it into brown sugar to sell in Jiujiang and other places became Yuzhang Commandery's greatest source of wealth. Far from being suppressed, it had to be vigorously supported.

Not to mention, the newly appointed Commandant of Yuzhang, Yin Tong, had served together with Heifu in Beidi Commandery.

Yan, who traveled constantly between Nan Commandery and Yuzhang year-round, then said:

"Commandant Yin thinks very highly of Jing and recommended him to be the Warden of Nanchang, specifically in charge of managing the mountain, marsh, and forest industries. He also vigorously urged the Governor of Yuzhang, saying things like: 'Do not sell firewood a hundred li away; do not sell grain a thousand li away. Live in a place one year, plant it with grain; live there ten years, plant it with trees.' If Yuzhang does not want to remain impoverished, with its annual evaluations ranking lowest in the empire, it must vigorously plant sugarcane trees!"

This was how Yin Tong stirred up the Governor of Yuzhang: "Anyi has a thousand date trees; Yan has a thousand chestnut trees; Shu, Han, and Jiangling have a thousand orange trees; between the He and Ji rivers there are a thousand qiu trees; Chen and Xia have a thousand mu of lacquer trees; Qi and Lu have a thousand mu of mulberry and hemp; Weichuan has a thousand mu of bamboo… Every place grows rich from these. Why can't the Jiangnan region of Yuzhang establish a thousand qing of sugarcane?"

Persuaded by Yin Tong, the Governor of Yuzhang decided to make sugarcane and brown sugar the primary industry of Yuzhang Commandery for the next ten years!

For one, this stuff did not require the enormous effort of intensive cultivation that grain did. For another, Yuzhang had plenty of empty land and no fear at all of it crowding out grain fields!

The only problem was that, because the local population was severely insufficient, they could only use Chu captives from the past wars as foremen, and Yangyue people captured from the mountains and forests as convict laborers, their big toes chopped off, to specifically tend the cane fields.

So the main annual task of Heifu's old subordinates in Yuzhang was to lead men into the mountains to suppress the Yangyue, plunder their population, and bring them back to the walled towns. A unique plantation economy had already sprouted in Yuzhang. And Heifu's sworn brother, Wu Rui — nominally the Great Chieftain of the Gan-Yue — also used the geographical advantage of Yugan to funnel Yue slaves from Ouyue and Minyue in the east into Yuzhang…

Thus, the cane fields and brown sugar industry of Yuzhang Commandery were different from those in the counties of Nan Commandery, where commoners planted spontaneously and then handed the raw material over to the Heifu family workshop for production. In Yuzhang, most were planted on government land, and the workshops were also government-run, operated as official monopolies.

At this point, Yan stole a glance at Heifu's expression and raised a question that had long troubled him.

"Junior Chief Architect, your younger brother has been doing business for over ten years and has only ever seen that when merchants in this world get hold of some rare commodity, they keep it tightly hidden. Only the Junior Chief Architect is different."

"In the second year after arriving in Xianyang, the Junior Chief Architect presented the formula for making brown sugar to the Privy Treasury. It was just that the north is too cold to grow sugarcane, so the Privy Treasury paid it no mind."

"After that, the Junior Chief Architect again gave the formula, along with quite a few sugarcane seeds, to Ba Zhong of the Ba clan, enabling him to start growing cane and boiling sugar along the rivers in Ba-Shu. Last year, when Yuzhang Commandery was first established and wanted to convert our family workshop into a government operation, the Junior Chief Architect could clearly have refused, yet readily agreed to sell it all to the authorities. Why is that?"

In Yan's eyes, Heifu was far too "selflessly public-spirited"!

If not for Heifu being so generous, their family's brown sugar business would have long since spanned the entire upper and middle reaches of the Great River. From Ba-Shu to Yuzhang, all the merchant ships and workshops would fly the "Sugar Clan" banner! The annual profit would not be merely the few million cash earned from sales in Nan Commandery and Xianyang — it would reach ten million!

Although Yan had only been a peddler of malt sugar in the past, after following Heifu on several trips to Xianyang, he had gradually developed some ambition.

He hoped that the "Sugar Clan" could stand as an equal rival to the Ba and Wu clans, becoming one of the three most successful merchant houses under heaven!

Unexpectedly, the moment Yan revealed even a sliver of this ambition, Heifu doused it with a bucket of cold water!

Heifu said: "You are right. Wu Shiluo is treated like a feudal lord and attends court alongside the various ministers, while the Widow Qing of Ba is honored as a guest by His Majesty. One is a rustic herd-master, the other a poor village widow from a desolate backwater, yet they stand as equals before the Son of Heaven and their fame is renowned across the world. It does indeed look very prestigious… But, did they obtain all this merely because of their wealth?"

Yan was somewhat at a loss for how to answer. Is that… not the case?

Heifu glared at Yan. "Qin has always despised merchants, regarding them as one of the five parasites of the state. You were a small-time merchant; you should know that ordinarily you cannot even wear fine clothes, and when campaigns are launched, you are among the first to be conscripted."

"Even houses like Ba and Wu, for all their apparent honor and glory, are in truth as precarious as piled eggs. With one word from His Majesty, the Widow Qing of Ba was relocated to Xianyang under house arrest. The thousands of servants under her were mostly disbanded, and the well-salt business she previously ran was meekly handed over to the authorities. Because with the empire unified, the Ba clan, apart from supplying His Majesty with cinnabar to make mercury, was of no other use! His Majesty had even less need for them to dominate Ba region, their word carrying more weight than the Governor and Commandant of Ba Commandery!"

"And as for Wu Shiluo, I have met him many times. This richest merchant under heaven wears a bitter face every waking moment, because he knows how much longer his family's business can last, and how large it can grow, all depends on whether His Majesty still has use for him…"

"When His Majesty was about to attack the Xiongnu and the Yuezhi, Wu Shiluo was terrified to death. If both states were destroyed, would there still be a need for a middleman merchant like him? It was not until he ascertained that there were countless city-states west of the Yuezhi kingdom, and not until the first woolen garment belonging to the Wu clan was woven, giving the Wu clan a new reason to be used by the court, that he finally burst out in joyful laughter and said to me: 'Before I die, the Wu clan has nothing to worry about!'"

After so many years in the Guanzhong region, Heifu had thoroughly grasped the First Emperor's attitude toward merchants and commerce: If you are useful to me, I will hold you high and favor you; once you are useless, I will discard you like a worn-out shoe!

The Qin Dynasty and the Legalists practiced big-government doctrine. Salt, copper, iron, wine, grain — they wished the authorities could manage every economic activity. They would absolutely never permit any market freedom. Once a great merchant with a train of a thousand quadrigas appeared, they would either be absorbed under the state's banner or struck down to death.

The Tao Zhu clan of Dingtao east of the Pass, the Kong clan of Wei, the Guo clan of Handan — all were great merchants worth a thousand in gold, able to stand as equals with feudal lords. After Qin rule took over those places, didn't they all wither? Their businesses either shrank or they were forcibly relocated.

Under such circumstances, you still want to pursue some industry monopoly, to spread your commerce across the realm? I fear you've eaten too much brown sugar and think the black marks on your body aren't dark enough!

Heifu was absolutely certain that even if he had not made his cousin present the formula, and had not voluntarily given up the Yuzhang workshops, sooner or later the First Emperor would have summoned him and asked: "I hear that your family's enterprises now spread across the entire Great River, and your wealth rivals that of the state?"

He did not want to one day receive such a death-sentence question, with Zhao Gao gloating gleefully at the side.

"The business under heaven is so vast — can one family monopolize it all?"

Heifu said to his trembling cousin: "Don't even think about outward expansion. Draw a circle around yourself and stake your claim on Nan Commandery; enough profit is sufficient. Although the cane fields and brown sugar of Yuzhang are government-run, my younger brother, Commandant Jing, as well as our local friends and old subordinates — who among them does not profit from this industry?"

"As for the Ba clan, I have an agreement with Ba Zhong. He only sells sugar in Ba, Shu, and Qianzhong, and does not cross Wu Mountain by half a step! And his selling price will absolutely not be lower than our family's."

"Your younger brother understands." Yan was drenched in sweat and no longer dared to bring up the matter.

"You understand? How could you possibly understand."

Heifu laughed. His notion of spreading sweetness across the realm… no, his intent to shape the whole chessboard — how could Yan ever grasp it? Compared to mere money, watching the age shift under his influence, the changes growing greater and greater, was far more interesting.

Yan also had a worry: "Boiling brown sugar is not difficult. Since this year, not only have some county magnates and village magnates in Nan Commandery been secretly making sugar, but even as far away as Huainan and Kuaiji, old Chu nobles have begun to follow suit, planting cane fields and boiling brown sugar. If this goes on, our family's brown sugar will likely sell worse and worse."

"Oh?"

Heifu, however, found this a very interesting development. He laughed and said, "Let them be! The day brown sugar stops making money, you can start selling the refined brown powdered sugar we've already produced!"

After years of tinkering, Yan had only just advanced the craft from large blocks of brown sugar to producing brown powdered sugar. How far off the more mature white sugar and rock sugar still were, no one knew — but Heifu was not worried. When white sugar swept the realm in the future, the "Sugar Clan" slogan could add one more line: "Sugar plus three spoonfuls."

Yan assented obediently. Heifu added, "There is one thing I want you to do. At present, the 'Sugar Clan' shops are only in Jiangling, Wan City, and Xianyang. Send someone to Pei County in Sishui Commandery and open one there as well. The travel permit, tally, and official approval — I will have someone handle those for you."

"Pei County in Sishui Commandery?"

Yan was dumbfounded. Setting aside that Sishui Commandery was a thousand li from Nan Commandery, in a small place like Pei County, how many people could even afford brown sugar? The profit would probably not even cover the costs and transport fees, would it?

"No need to worry about the cost."

Heifu struck the pose of a man who scatters a thousand gold pieces, confident they will come back again. Since the Qin dynasty's system and environment made it impossible for him to reinvest the money earned from brown sugar into expanding production, he might as well use it for something useful.

"Just send a few clever men there, have them put down roots in the marketplace, and find out everything — from the county magistrate and county deputy to every bureau clerk and underling, and even the village sheriffs everywhere… yes, especially the village sheriffs! Get their full names, native places, and personal preferences, all of it clearly!"

(End of chapter)