Chapter 494: Definitely Not Written by Himself

"My husband said he wanted a manor by the sea, but all I've seen traveling east are hills and fields — not even a glimpse of the ocean."

The busy second month of the farming season hurried past, and by mid-third month, as spring plowing neared its end across the region, the commandery governor's residence welcomed its mistress.

When Hei Fu first took up his post, the weather was bitterly cold. Worried for his wife and child, he had told them to wait until spring to come.

The moment she entered the governor's residence, Ye Zijin frowned. Hei Fu had left in a rush and was buried in official duties, so many parts of the house betrayed the bare simplicity and slovenliness of a man living alone. She had no choice but to set the servants and maids to tidying and arranging everything to her own liking.

After she had settled in the guests who had traveled with her and coaxed her son — now able to talk and shouting noisily all day long — to sleep, husband and wife finally had a moment alone.

Ye Zijin swatted away Hei Fu's impatient hand as it reached for her sash and said with a laugh, "On my way into Jiaodong, while resting at a waystation, I heard a cowherd boy singing as he rode his ox, and the farmers in the fields joined in chorus. When I asked a minor clerk traveling with us, he said what they were singing was that 'Twenty-Four Solar Terms Song' you had the Agriculturalists compose…"

"Spring Begins and flowers bloom, Rain Water comes to soak, Insects Awaken with spring thunder, Spring Equinox and frogs croak"… Following the style of the Qi Airs, the twenty-four solar terms and their characteristics were written into folk songs through Hei Fu's collaboration with the Agriculturalists. Hei Fu then had the public academy students copy them and teach them to the minor clerks, and sent those clerks up into the hills and down into the villages, traveling to every hamlet in Jimo.

In this age, farming had to be conducted in strict accordance with the calendar, but there were many different calendars in the world — the Xia Calendar, the Yin Calendar, the Zhou Calendar, the Chu Calendar, the Lu Calendar, the Zhuanxu Calendar. Most were lunisolar calendars that could not fully reflect the sun's cycle, so farmers could only rely on word of mouth to time the key points of agricultural work.

The Qin dynasty used the Zhuanxu Calendar, which did not suit the customs of the Jiaodong people, yet altering it without authorization was illegal. The twenty-four solar terms, however, neatly solved this problem, so the farmers welcomed the song warmly. In just over a month, it spread throughout Jiaodong, and because it was the work of the Agriculturalists, its reputation among the common people far outstripped anything from the authorities, so the populace believed in it without doubt.

Officials in every county along the route considered this excellent governance and praised Governor Hei Fu endlessly. They even presented to Madam Ye that poem "Pity the Farmer" — said to be "worth twenty thousand in gold" — which Hei Fu had composed when he invited the Agriculturalists. After Ye Zijin read it, she could not suppress a smile.

She knew her husband was full of ideas and always tinkering with new things, but she did not believe for a moment that he had written this himself…

After years of intimate closeness, Ye Zijin could be called the person who understood Hei Fu best in all the world. No matter how others praised him, she did not believe it. That man she first met in Jiangling — the one who refused to match poems and compose rhapsodies with the sons of Southern Commandery officials, who slammed the table, rose, and stormed out — had only been reading books for a few years. How could he suddenly have turned into a poet who could produce verse as easily as breathing?

"Who knows that every grain on the plate is the fruit of bitter toil? Ha. That husband of mine — don't be fooled by how he shares the same food and clothing as his soldiers and people in public. At home, he is no frugal man. He is especially fond of fine food. When has a single meal in this household not been a spread of delicacies on lacquer trays? To satisfy his appetite, he nearly drove the cooks to despair."

"This poem was surely ghostwritten by one of the retainers or scholars at my husband's side!"

Though she did not know who, she was utterly convinced of this in her heart. Wisely, however, she did not expose it, preserving Hei Fu's dignity.

Hei Fu had no idea of his wife's private mockery. After he had enjoyed his own belated spring, he began to lay out his next plans, asking his clever wife to help him think them over and see if he had overlooked anything.

"The spring plowing has come to an end for now. The Agriculturalists have stayed on, but farming matters take time. Without a year or half a year, I'm afraid they won't produce any real results."

Hei Fu had delegated all spring plowing matters to Chen Ping. Coming from a poor background, Chen Ping understood the hardships of farming and had managed fields when he was a minor clerk in Yangwu County. During those years in Beidi Commandery, he had also handled the military farms at Helan Mountain for Hei Fu and had gained considerable experience. Farming was plainly more important than education, and this was also Hei Fu's way of showing trust in Chen Ping, hinting: you are still my chief advisor!

But as Chen Ping's reports kept arriving at the commandery office, Hei Fu realized that if he wanted to win over the farmers of Jiaodong, relying solely on the Agriculturalists and the Twenty-Four Solar Terms Song was clearly not enough. The methods of composting and fermenting fertilizer would have to wait until next year before they could be widely promoted.

If he wanted quick results, he would still have to start by changing the pattern of land ownership.

Hei Fu said, "The ownership of farmland is vastly different between Qin and Qi. Guanzhong and Southern Commandery practice a system of land grants — the land belongs to the state and cannot be bought or sold. Most farmland belongs to small peasant households of five to eight people."

"In Qi, however, land is privately owned, mostly held by enfeoffed lords and the nobility, and there is no restriction on annexation. Qi surrendered without a fight, so this situation has not changed at all. That is why His Majesty, at the start of the year, heeded the Chancellor's counsel and issued a decree ordering the black-headed people to register their own lands."

"Ordering the black-headed people to register their own lands" meant requiring the common people east of the Pass to report the amount of land they occupied to the authorities. After verification by the land officials, taxes would be assessed accordingly.

In this way, the Qin dynasty had, in effect, tacitly recognized the existing land situation east of the Pass. Li Si probably intended this law to reassure the nobility there.

But Hei Fu felt this was of little use. The nobility east of the Pass would only care about what they had lost. Rather than pinning hopes on them, it was better to win over those landless hired laborers who "lacked even a pinpoint of land to stand on."

Jiaodong was vast, but the region was full of hills and tidal flats, with few places suitable for cultivation, yet it had a population of seven to eight hundred thousand. The surplus population could only turn to industry and commerce.

If Hei Fu wanted to break the land monopoly, the prerequisite was that the Jimo Tian clan, who occupied vast tracts of local farmland, had to be driven out!

But his spirit was willing while his strength was weak.

Hei Fu said, "There are only a few dozen Qin officials in Jiaodong, and the commandery troops are mostly local men. Combined, they are no match for the Jimo Tian clan's retainers and dependents, let alone the fact that they have the Yeyi Tian clan as a backer."

The Yeyi Tian clan were the descendants of Anping Lord Tian Dan. Yeyi, with its ten thousand households, had once been their family's private fief. This was precisely why "ordering the black-headed people to register their own lands" could not win over the nobility: they had once been enfeoffed lords of ten thousand households, local princes, and now they had been reduced to commoners under the law. The entire clan was surely seething with resentment — who else would they rebel against if not you?

"The reason Qi has seen no unrest in these five years is entirely thanks to General Wang Ben garrisoning Linzi. Now that he has returned to Xianyang, if I rashly move against the various Tian clans before my footing is secure, I fear they will rise in revolt. When that happens, with no reinforcements far away and no fierce troops close at hand, with every county and village in rebellion, I'll likely be trapped defending a lone city."

So Hei Fu's plan was to wait until the First Emperor made his planned eastern tour to the coast this year, then use the momentum of the accompanying grand army to uproot the Jiaodong Tian clans completely and deport them all west of the Pass!

After hearing this, Ye Zijin finally understood just how deep the waters in Jiaodong truly were. She said softly, "Your plan, my husband, I fear will come to nothing. His Majesty's eastern tour this year may be postponed!"

It turned out that during the few months Hei Fu had been in Jiaodong, quite a lot had happened in the west.

In the Ba-Shu region, Chang E, the Commandant of Shu Commandery, along with Ba Zhong, a great merchant of Ba Commandery who was on close terms with Hei Fu, had proposed building the Five-Chi Road to open communications with the Southwestern Yi during the First Emperor's inspection tour of Ba-Shu the previous year. Now, only a section of the Five-Chi Road had been built before it encountered obstruction from the region's greatest power, Qiongdu. Conflict had erupted between the authorities and Qiongdu, and the Shu Commandant was aggressively proposing to first send troops to destroy them, then continue pushing south.

That in itself was nothing — Qiongdu was only a small state, and the forces of Ba and Shu commanderies were more than sufficient. But the Yuezhi to the west would require a hundred thousand troops to subdue.

Ye Zijin told Hei Fu that although the Yuezhi, under pressure from Qin forces, had sent their eldest son to court the year before last, the Yuezhi king was highly erratic. Seeing that Qin merchants were trading closely with his western enemy, the Wusun, he grew fearful. He therefore crossed the great desert and secretly contacted Modu north of the desert, which was discovered by a Qin army outpost at Juyan.

At the same time, the Yuezhi prince serving as a hostage in Xianyang had killed a commoner in a drunken brawl and was imprisoned by the Commandant of Justice. Relations between Qin and the Yuezhi had suddenly become tense!

"When a foreigner breaks the law in Qin, no matter their status, they receive the same punishment."

Hei Fu pondered this. A similar case had occurred in history: during the reign of King Zhao of Qin, the Chu crown prince Xiong Heng, serving as a hostage in Xianyang, got into a private brawl with a Qin grandee. After Xiong Heng killed him, he knew he would likely face Qin's legal sanctions, so in terror, he fled back to Chu.

The peace treaty between Qin and Chu was thus broken, and two years later, Qin used this as a pretext to invade Chu.

Hei Fu's father-in-law, Ye Teng, was precisely the Commandant of Justice. Hei Fu knew with his eyes closed how Old Man Ye would rule — the Yuezhi prince was doomed this time. Once news of his death reached the Yuezhi, the Yuezhi king would surely break with Qin!

A great war was imminent. For all he knew, Li Xin might already have led his troops across the Yellow River by now.

"His Majesty was never content with the Yuezhi merely being a tributary vassal — he wants to sweep them away entirely, so that the road west to seek the immortals will be open and unobstructed…"

Hei Fu said helplessly, "Knowing His Majesty as I do, he will certainly wait until the dust settles on this campaign, then ride the prestige of a great victory to tour the east and perform the Feng and Shan sacrifices."

So Hei Fu now had only two choices: either maintain the status quo and wait, or come up with a solution himself!

Tomorrow's troubles could wait until tomorrow. Right now, Hei Fu had a more important matter to attend to — the long-delayed baby-making project.

"I've even thought of a name for our second child!" After they finished, he leaned close to his wife's ear and said.

"Oh?" Madam Ye was exhausted from the night's exertions and could barely keep her eyes open, but now all drowsiness vanished. She opened her eyes and looked at her husband, her heart suddenly seized with tension. Not only did she not believe Hei Fu could write poetry, she also had no words for his talent in naming children…

Hei Fu, however, was full of enthusiasm and announced smugly:

"Jiaodong borders the sea. If it's another boy, I'll call him 'Wei Fubo'!"

…

PS: Let me recommend a book by my grad-school roommate, Qin Nong. It's also a Qin dynasty story. He's basically a disciple I've personally mentored, and his writing style is very solid. If you can, I hope everyone will go bookmark and support it. Thank you!

Synopsis: Reborn as a small-time farmer in the Qin dynasty, facing the yellow earth with his back to the sky, Zhang Peng is unwilling to accept his lot. He also knows that the First Emperor is in his prime, and Liu Bang and Xiang Yu have yet to rise — the future is wide open. Just as he's about to deliver a grand, heroic speech, the hired laborer plowing beside him throws down his hoe and says to him, "If we ever get rich and noble, don't forget each other!"

(End of chapter)