Chapter 552: The Hare Grieves for the Dying Fox

In the first month of the thirty-second year of Qin Shi Huang, a spring breeze swept through, and the ice-bound Ji River regained its former vitality.

On the northern bank of the Ji River in Linzi Commandery lay Di County. Like other counties in Qi, Di County's greatest local magnate family was also one of the many Tian branches. Tian Dan, likewise descended from one of Tian Chengzi's seventy-odd sons, and his cousin Tian Rong's family had divided the household in their fathers' generation, yet they lived on the very same street — the east and west mansions both grand, their association unaffected in the slightest.

As local magnates, the Tian brothers, though living behind lofty gates and great households, dared not compare their renown to the Ye County Tian, nor their wealth to the Jimo Tian — they were merely a county-level power.

Yet even while Qi still stood, Tian Dan and Tian Rong had delighted in roaming with wandering gallants, earning the admiration of those knights-errant and the ability to draw men to them. Though Di County had submitted to the Qin dynasty, the county magistrate, commandant, and assistant still had to rely on Tian Dan to step forward; otherwise, government decrees could hardly be enforced among the common people.

These past few days, Tian Rong had made a trip to Linzi, and the moment he returned he went straight to pay a visit to his cousin Tian Dan.

A servant led him to a broad open ground, fine sand underfoot, with archery targets set up. To one side stood two weapon racks, arrayed with all manner of arms — the most numerous being swords. Heaven is high and the Emperor far away: the Qin dynasty's weapon-confiscation edict seemed to have no effect whatsoever on the Di County Tian.

Tian Dan was fond of martial arts; in dress and manner he resembled not a wealthy magnate but a wandering gallant. Every morning he would rise and practice his sword techniques, and he did not let the moment go to waste now. Seeing Tian Rong approach, he simply tossed a wooden sword to him. The two bowed to each other, then raised their wooden swords and began their bout.

As Tian Rong matched Tian Dan's movements, his mouth never stopped. After recounting all he had seen and heard, he sighed again and again: "Too wretched, elder brother — the Jiaodong Tian are simply too wretched!"

What Tian Rong spoke of was, of course, the Jiaodong Tian being uprooted entirely and relocated to the west!

After several exchanges in their bout, as they drank water and rested, he told Tian Dan: "The First Emperor has ranked the Jiaodong Tian by order of relocation, from first to eighth, branding them as base lineages. On the street I even saw the Jimo Tian's family heads, Tian Jiao and Tian Jian."

The various Tian branches had their own social circles. The Di County Tian and the Jimo Tian even had some old grudges, but after all, everyone shared the same surname; with an external foe present, those hatreds no longer ran so deep.

Tian Rong described it: "Those men had long since lost the prestige of the Jimo Grandee. Though they still had carts to ride and horses to mount along the way, they were covered in yellow dust, utterly bedraggled — to say nothing of the long column behind them. The Tian clansmen trudged on foot, and behind them came the retainers and guests unwilling to abandon Tian Jiao and Tian Jian, supporting the old and leading the young, creeping slowly forward. From Jiaodong to Linzi they have traveled barely over a hundred li, and already the suffering is unbearable. By the time they reach Beidi Commandery within the passes, who knows how many will have died…"

Listening to Tian Rong's account, Tian Dan said nothing. He silently drew an arrow, accepted the bow his son Tian Shi handed him, ruffled the boy's hair, and only then spoke: "Did you offer a cup of wine to the Tian Jiao brothers on my behalf?"

"I offered it, and gave ten thousand cash as traveling money."

Ten thousand cash was a mere drop in the ocean to Tian Rong. He drew closer and said: "Elder brother, Tian Jiao also bade me pass a message to you."

"What did he say?" Tian Dan nocked the arrow to the bow, closed one eye, as if aiming at the target.

Tian Rong said: "He said, the Tian of Qi are like a tree. Now the trunk of the great lineage has perished, and branches and leaves alike will wither and fall — it is only a question of sequence. Jiaodong falls first; Di County is bound to follow. We brothers would do well to make plans early…"

The arrow in Tian Dan's hand did not fly for a long while. After a moment he laughed: "Tian Jiao's words are amusing enough. When calamity loomed over his own house, why did we see no resistance? Instead he comes to prod our house? Besides, looking across all the Tian in the Qi lands, is there any who has planned further ahead than we? No one knows that A-Heng, said to have died of illness seven years ago, and the many retainers of our house — where they truly went!"

This was the secret of the Di County Tian. Tian Rong had a full younger brother named Tian Heng. Even more than the two of them, Tian Heng loved making friends — young, hot-blooded, and the bitterest foe of the Qin dynasty. Seven years ago, when Qi fell, Tian Heng took a band of men and sailed out to sea with the Yongmen Sima, who would rather die than surrender. Only later did they gradually make contact with his two elder brothers.

One must not put all eggs in one basket. Tian Dan and Tian Rong themselves played the part of Qin's "obedient subjects," cooperating with the authorities, while letting Tian Heng dwell among the offshore pirates. To the outside world they claimed he had died of illness, even making an empty coffin and burying it in the Tian family cemetery to deceive prying eyes. Tian Heng, too, used an assumed name beyond the sea.

Every year the Di County Tian secretly supplied the Yongmen Sima and Tian Heng with grain and weapons. Their family had a fallback — perhaps Tian Jiao of the Jimo Tian had long since ferreted that out?

Tian Rong seemed somewhat swayed. He urged: "Elder brother, the Jiaodong Tian's relocation is, to be sure, inseparable from the Jiaodong Commandery governor. All the Tian say that this man, Heifu, was even granted the courtesy name Jimo by Qin Shi Huang — black upon black indeed. But is this not also the first herald of Qin exiling all its magnates? If winter comes, it is not just one tree that will wither. Perhaps very soon, the Tian of Linzi and the other commanderies will likewise suffer forced relocation, their clansmen reduced to transported convicts, gazing at one another along the road…"

He said with agitation: "To wait now means ruin; to rebel also means ruin. Rather than cling to a wretched existence, better to rise and stake everything before the Qin men move against our house! The four commanderies of Qi, the scores of Tian houses — all are shaken by the Jiaodong affair. They grieve for their own kind. If elder brother raises the righteous banner, all the Tian will surely take our house as their leader, slaying the Qin officials in the commanderies and counties to answer the call — we could muster tens of thousands. Add to that A-Heng leading the overseas gallants back, and the cause can succeed, Qi can be restored!"

Thwip! The arrow left Tian Dan's bowstring — but flew wide. Tian Dan, who used to hit the mark a hundred times out of a hundred, had actually missed the target today? Even the web of his hand had split open, blood flowing freely.

It was as if confirming the turmoil in Tian Dan's heart. Yet his face remained utterly calm. Letting a servant bandage the wound, he spoke to his cousin Tian Rong of a certain matter.

"My brother, do you know what thought came to me that day when Qin Shi Huang passed through Linzi and I beheld his carriage procession?"

That had been three months ago, when Qin Shi Huang, having finished the Feng and Shan sacrifices at Mount Tai in Xue Commandery, arrived at Linzi. Tian Rong remembered it vividly. At the time, he recalled only grinding his teeth in hatred — how could he know what Tian Dan was thinking?

Tian Dan smiled ruefully and revealed the answer: "I saw that Qin Shi Huang, majesty awe-inspiring, and wherever he went the multitudes all prostrated themselves in worship. Even I dared not meet his edge. And so, in that moment, a sentence rang out in my heart."

"What sentence?" Tian Rong pressed.

The blood from the gash on Tian Dan's hand still had not stopped. He pulled away the white cloth pressing the wound and hurled it fiercely to the ground.

"What I thought was: While the sun has not set, the host of stars can hardly appear. Just so, while the First Emperor has not died, in this vast realm, who dares openly rebel against Qin?"

…

In the other commanderies and counties of Qi, the magnates, awed and terrified that the Jiaodong Tian had been utterly relocated under Qin Shi Huang's might without the slightest power to resist, were suddenly struck by the grief of the hare for the dying fox.

Inside the Jiaodong government offices, Governor Heifu and his advisors were rejoicing over the vast tracts of fields and residences left vacant after the Tian relocation.

The clerks of the commandery governor's mansion congratulated one another, saying: "Half a year after the Ye County Tian departed, Ye County was brought to great order, and His Majesty praised it. Now that all the Jiaodong Tian are gone, we have great things to accomplish!"

Jiaodong was part of a commandery-and-county state; even county magistrates were appointed and dismissed directly by the Emperor. Yet at the grassroots level below the county — the townships, ting precincts, and li hamlets — the parachuted Qin officials did not understand the local dialect and could only rely on local magnates and clans to recommend township elders, ting chiefs, and li chiefs. The government's ruling foundation was exceedingly weak; imperial authority was confined within county walls and could hardly reach the villages.

With Heifu's arrival, this situation gradually began to change: the old Jiang-Qi clans that cooperated with the government, and the scores of disciples graduated from the public academies, filled the gaps in Qin officials' governance of the localities. This spring, the government's power, carried by the "Song of the Twenty-Four Solar Terms" and the composting and fertilizer-soaking methods already proven effective on the public fields, was slowly spreading to the lower strata.

The sole obstacle was the various Tian branches, who occupied vast amounts of land and the means of production…

Now, with a few casual words from Heifu, these stubborn great clans had all been relocated. It was like throwing out all the old furnishings of a dilapidated house in one go — it could be renovated and planned anew.

But the first thing that vexed the officials was land distribution.

In this age, wealth mostly took the form of land and houses. The Tian magnates, exiled by imperial decree, had no choice but to sell their land and properties at fire-sale prices. But who would buy the fields?

In the Qin dynasty, land annexation was forbidden; thus, aside from the government, no one was qualified to buy land!

It was a forced transaction. Heifu had the coin-controlling clerk disburse a pittance, purchasing the Tian's hundreds of thousands of qing of prime farmland at a low price, then distributed it to the displaced, landless left-of-lane poor.

Just as had happened in Ye County half a year before, this time the landless left-of-lane poor across the county eagerly signed up, and very soon, nearly everyone had land.

In this way, the destitute commoners could live and work in peace, the population under government control surged, and the colossal wealth of the Tian magnates was forcibly "equalized" in this process of relocation and forced sale.

"For those who govern a state or a household, the worry is not scarcity but inequality, not poverty but unrest."

Heifu thought to himself: "Who would have thought that my Jiaodong would use this peculiar method of 'striking local tyrants and dividing their land' to achieve a temporary equalization of fields…"

Jiaodong's land conflict was instantly alleviated. The greatest problem now was no longer that great landlords occupied too much land, leaving the left-of-lane hired laborers with none to farm. Rather, it was that a good deal of farmland still remained, yet Jiaodong no longer had a single landless person who could come claim it — it could only be designated as public fields. But public fields also needed people to work them.

Moreover, Jiaodong now wished to switch from boiling brine for salt in the farming off-season to sun-drying salt during the busy season. Though this saved fuel and raised output and efficiency, it imperceptibly demanded even more labor. Add to that the mines at Pingdu and elsewhere awaiting development, and the labor gap was at least in the tens of thousands!

"Perhaps we could recruit from other commanderies?" Chen Ping proposed a slyly ruthless idea.

This was an old stratagem from the era when the seven states vied. Back then, King Hui of Wei had asked Mencius: In governing, I am clearly so devoted — surveying the governance of neighboring states, none matches my own dedication. Yet the people of neighboring states do not grow fewer, and my own people do not grow more. Why is that?

The situation at that time was that border checks were not strict. Whichever state's common folk lived better, people from the other states would migrate there, voting with their feet.

Although the Qin dynasty did not permit casual relocation, that restriction applied to landed peasants. For the left-of-lane hired laborers and merchants, forbidding them to move was tantamount to cutting off their livelihood. So going to neighboring commanderies to recruit left-of-lane poor folk might be a fine idea — it would surely yield results.

But Heifu knew that this matter, however effective, could not be done.

"If I were the ruler of a state, that would be one thing — at worst I'd be cursed out by the neighboring state, and we might come to blows, but they could do nothing to me. Yet now I am merely a commandery governor, with the imperial court pressing down from above. Without the Emperor's permission, openly recruiting population from neighboring commanderies or even the whole realm — what are you trying to do?"

Heifu grumbled inwardly, while at the same time rejecting Chen Ping's plan. He turned his gaze instead to a place on the map, on the opposite shore of the Lesser Sea…

He pointed to that peninsula with its jagged coastline and said: "I have heard that south of Jizi Chaoxian, there are some small Yemaek barbarian states — not Qin commanderies or counties, yet not far from Jiaodong. There are quite a few people there. If the fleet's seagoing vessels could find a way over, we might perhaps bring their able-bodied youths to Jiaodong as slaves and bondservants, to make up for the labor shortage!"

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

(End of Chapter)