Chapter 583: The Southern Tour

Many years ago, Heifu, serving under Li You as a "Detached Division Commander," led three thousand men south to conquer Yuzhang.

He chronicled that half-year-long campaign in a three-volume work, *Record of the Southern Conquest*. The prose was plain and unadorned, but the content was exceptionally detailed. After his marriage, Heifu presented the book to Qin Shi Huang, aiming to demonstrate that a southern campaign was profitless and fraught with difficulty, so as to spare his own troops from being sent to their deaths in Lingnan's scorching, terrifying green hell.

Qin Shi Huang remembered the book's description of Nanchang and other places:

"West of Poyang and Yugan, for a hundred li there is no trace of human habitation, no city walls, fields, or farmland; Yue tribes are rarely seen, and there are no open, broad roads. Wherever one goes, there is only level forest and clustered thickets, requiring one to cut a path as one advances. After traveling over a hundred li, one reaches the Gan River, which cuts through Yuzhang, stretching north to south for a thousand li before emptying into the Pengli Marshes…"

"Your servant chose a site on the lower reaches of the Gan River to build a city. The place was full of ancient trees and trailing vines, dark and shaded, with the cries of birds and beasts mingling in the undergrowth. Wild oxen and wild deer gathered there in herds of hundreds and thousands. There were also bamboo slopes stretching for dozens of li, the bamboo joints alternating with thorny shoots of an intensely bitter taste. The Gan Giants roamed these parts, seizing and devouring people…"

In short, it was a scene of utter wilderness. For Heifu and his men to build a city there was truly like raising a tall tower from flat ground. Beyond the wild thickets, the region was also plagued by the terrifying "water poison" disease; once accidentally infected, there was no cure, only a slow decline into death. Hence the saying, "South of the River, low and feverish, men die young."

But now, seven or eight years after the founding of Nanchang, when Qin Shi Huang arrived here on his southern tour in early September, he discovered that Nanchang was completely different from the savage wilderness described in the *Record of the Southern Conquest*!

The first impression the emperor received was the convenient water transportation.

His enormous retinue, aboard the great ships of the naval division, crossed the Great River and drifted across the Pengli Marshes. They saw an endless stream of vessels sailing out from the "Lake Mouth Pass," some heading east to Huainan and Kuaiji, others west to Mount Heng and Nan Commandery, all laden with cargo.

What was shipped out was dark-brown brown sugar; what was shipped back were farming tools, silk cloth, and other daily necessities that Yuzhang could not produce for itself. The pass collected so much transit tax that its coffers overflowed.

It is said that this pass was proposed seven years ago by a naval officer named Zhao Tuo. The water transport network extending in all directions was also established from that time onward. Now, whether entering or leaving Yuzhang, traveling by water is extremely convenient.

After disembarking at Fuqianyuan and gazing at the scenery of Mount Lu, the Governor and Commandant of Yuzhang personally came to greet them and led the imperial carriage south, gradually approaching Nanchang City.

The road was built to the standards of an imperial expressway. It is said that many years ago, when Heifu finished his campaign and stepped down as Prefect of Poyang, he instructed his successor: "To get rich, first build roads." At the very least, the road from Nanchang to Fuqianyuan had to be built.

"A rough saying, but the logic is sound."

This saying left behind by Heifu amused the emperor. Building expressways and direct roads across the empire was also something he had persistently pursued; only by connecting all under Heaven with roads could it truly be unified.

Though this road was just a simple dirt track, it was rammed very flat, without the expected bumps and jolts.

A few li off the road, hamlets with curling chimney smoke were surrounded by paddy fields. The lower rice crop had already been harvested, leaving only bundles of straw in the fields. One or two children were still catching eels at the field's edge—it is said that in the waters of Yuzhang, all sorts of fish, turtles, shrimp, and clams are everywhere; a casual cast of a net yields a full handful. Thus, the local Yangyue people can easily fill their bellies without toiling all day.

In short, everything seen and heard was vastly different from Heifu's *Record of the Southern Conquest*.

Yet the emperor did not think Heifu had fabricated nonsense in his book to deceive him, for these farmlands and hamlets existed only near the road. Extending one's gaze ten or twenty li further, what one saw was still dense, untamed forest. Sometimes, when passing a river, one could even spot a giant crocodile basking in the sun on the bank, its bloody maw gaping wide…

In Yuzhang, human power was still very small; nature had only yielded a tiny bit of space.

But even this was no easy feat. That this land could transform from wild frontier into fertile fields was entirely the result of thousands of military colonists, combined with the bitter toil of immigrants from Nan Commandery.

However, what left the deepest impression on Qin Shi Huang along this journey was the unending expanse of sugarcane plantations.

In early September, the autumn harvest was over, and the sugarcane was at its most vigorous. Standing over ten feet tall, it resembled a forest of reeds, yet was neatly arranged. Commoners worked the fields, doing the final weeding and fertilizing. Those black-skinned sugarcane stalks were thick and sturdy, called "Heifu Cane" by the locals. In two more months, they would be ready for harvest.

The Governor of Yuzhang reported to Qin Shi Huang that although Yuzhang had the benefit of mulberry and hemp, their quantity was still small. Aside from the five grains, the main crop was the sugarcane introduced from Nan Commandery.

Because Yuzhang is humid and hot, the sugarcane fields do not even need irrigation during spring and summer; only in autumn and winter do they require a bit of care. Therefore, the locals busy themselves with the rice before the autumn harvest, and with the sugarcane fields after it.

"Since last year, when the sugar workshops were placed under government control and sugar became a monopoly, the price of sugar has risen. Nearly every household now plants some sugarcane. The authorities collect it before the twelfth month, and before the spring plowing and busy farming season, they hire people to press the juice. Through this cycle, the common people can earn some money and cloth to pay their poll taxes…"

Yin Tong, the Commandant of Yuzhang, was a man with a strong desire to show off, and he immediately supplemented the Governor's report.

The sugar monopoly was a new policy introduced by the Privy Treasury the previous year. After nearly a decade of pioneering development, the sugar industry had become a bulk trade whose profitability was second only to grain, salt, iron, and liquor.

With the imperial court facing financial difficulties, and to raise funds for this grand inspection tour and to maintain the enormous expenditures of the Great Wall, Mount Li, and the expansion into Zhangye, Qin Shi Huang approved the Privy Treasury's implementation of the sugar monopoly—bringing all sugar workshops in the south under government control, uniformly purchasing sugarcane from the people, and processing and selling the sugar to enjoy the profits of a monopoly!

However, there were distinctions in the implementation. For the sugar workshops of the Chu nobility in Kuaiji, Jiujiang, and Donghai Commanderies, the approach was simple and brutal: outright confiscation.

But for the sugar workshops in Nan Commandery, Yuzhang, and Ba-Shu, they were either purchased with local government funds, or the workshop owners were allowed to transform into minor officials and continue operating, only now working to earn money for the government instead of themselves.

Such was the burgeoning sugarcane and sugar industry in the south. At present, Li Xin had already destroyed the Yuezhi, controlled the Hexi Corridor, and established Zhangye Commandery. The Wusun and Loulan had both expressed their willingness to submit. Through the tireless efforts of the Wu clan, the routes to the various states of the Western Regions had also been opened. Although the Kingdom of the Queen Mother of the West had not yet been found, after eliminating the Yuezhi middlemen, this year the Central Plains' silk and sugar were sold directly to the Western Regions, reaping enormous profits.

Although ordinary people in the country could not afford sugar, the demand for it among wealthy and noble households was growing ever larger.

This immense profit was the driving force behind the court's implementation of the sugar monopoly…

Moreover, sugarcane fields are not difficult to manage, and the harvesting and pressing all take place in winter, not interfering with farming. Therefore, the Privy Treasury was eager for every household in the south to plant sugarcane just as they did mulberry and hemp.

One reason Qin Shi Huang came to Nanchang in Yuzhang on this southern tour was precisely to see this new "great profit for the state and army," and to consider a grand plan he had long contemplated but never implemented.

For Qin Shi Huang, plans might have an order of priority, but they were never canceled…

…

As they neared Nanchang City, the small, individual sugarcane plots bordering the field paths gradually disappeared, replaced by vast, unbroken stretches of cane fields. These cane fields belonged either to large landowners who had earned their land through military merit—such as the fields of the "Pioneer of Gan," Heifu—or were government-run public fields.

The emperor also inquired about the size of Heifu's fields. Hearing that they did not exceed the regulated standard, he smiled.

It was said that besides Heifu, his former subordinates like Gong Ao, Li Xian, and Dongmen Bao all had military-merit fields near Nanchang, mostly planted with sugarcane.

The people working in the fields were no longer commoners, but "Yue slaves," stripped to the waist and tanned dark by the sun.

"These Yue slaves are mostly Yangyue people."

The Governor and Commandant of Yuzhang pointed at the slaves toiling in the cane fields, their big toes cut off, and said: "Yuzhang has the Yangyue and the Ganyue. The Ganyue have already submitted to Your Majesty and are governed by Yugan County. But the various Yangyue tribes live scattered in the mountains and forests, defying the king's law. They often gather to plunder travelers. Therefore, every county sends troops into the mountains each year to encircle and suppress them. The captured Yangyue are made into slaves to tend the cane fields."

Using Yue slaves was very popular in Yuzhang. One reason was that Yue slaves were easier to use than Xia slaves…

It must be understood that in the Qin Dynasty, although slaves were at the bottom of society, they were still protected by law. They could be made to work, but their masters could not arbitrarily mutilate or kill them, or they would be held accountable. The various Tian clans' rebellion was precisely under the pretext of asking the authorities to help "execute" their runaway slaves.

The same applied to public slaves; if the servitude and flogging were too severe, the officials responsible would be held accountable.

This was not out of any humanitarianism, but simply because labor was valuable—just as if you beat a borrowed plow ox so severely that it was injured or lost weight, the authorities would hold you accountable…

But this only applied to "Xia slaves"—that is, slaves from Qin and the six other states. Foreign slaves with whom communication was impossible were a legal gray area; they were not even registered in the slave records and could be exploited at will, without restriction!

They became the cheapest labor force!

For these two reasons, wherever sugarcane was grown and sugar was pressed, the use of slaves became prevalent. Yuzhang and Changsha used Yue slaves; the Ba clan in Ba-Shu used Bo slaves. Because of this, the Ba clan strongly advocated for building the Five-Foot Road to open communications with the Southwestern Yi, which the emperor had already approved. It was said that the previous month, envoys from Shu Commandery had already trekked over mountains and rivers to reach the "Dian Kingdom," demanding that it come to court and submit…

It was the Ba clan's purchase of Bo slaves from the Southwestern Yi that set a good precedent, making the southern commanderies realize that slaves could even become a commodity. Nan Commandery, which also planted large amounts of sugarcane, began purchasing slaves from Yuzhang and Changsha. Yuzhang and Changsha, besides capturing local Yangyue people, also began trying to buy slaves from the more southern Nanyue and Xi'ou. A slave-trading chain was gradually taking shape in the south, but the numbers never rose significantly.

No matter how you put it, the emergence of the slave trade ultimately boiled down to a labor shortage. This was also the hardship the Governor and Commandant of Yuzhang wanted to convey to the emperor: it was not that they were unwilling to increase revenue for the Privy Treasury, but that the huge gap in labor simply could not be filled!

After hearing their complaints, Chancellor Li Si frowned and said, "Did Your Majesty not previously issue an edict to select three thousand women from the families of the rebels during the Qi uprising and send them to Yuzhang?"

In addition, several noble families of the Tian clan had been relocated in their entirety to Yuzhang.

The Governor and Commandant of Yuzhang, however, said in unison, "Even so, it is still a drop in the bucket!"

Indeed, marrying three thousand convict women to the garrison troops and immigrants could increase the population, but it would be over a decade before the newborns could be of use. Yet Yuzhang urgently needed a large labor force right now to meet the demands of the ever-expanding sugar and sugarcane industry!

"Chancellor, as the proverb says, distant water cannot quench a nearby thirst. Why should we forsake what is near and seek what is far?"

Seeing that the moment was right, Yin Tong also stepped forward and presented to Qin Shi Huang a suggestion he had long been planning.

"Your servant dares to speak before Your Majesty: south of Yuzhang lie Nanyue and Xi'ou; to the east lie Dong'ou and Minyue. None of the Hundred Yue submit to the king's civilizing influence. They are titled lords but act as kings, each gathering a force in their own region. The Yue tribes fight among themselves and often cross the border to harass Yuzhang and Changsha. Moreover, many former Chu rebels go to seek refuge with them, inciting the Hundred Yue to oppose the Son of Heaven!"

"The Hundred Yue lands stretch vast for thousands of li, with countless tribes standing like forests, their people numbering in the millions! If a great army is dispatched to subdue them, those scattered factions will surely be swept away like dead branches, submitting and begging to pay court! Annex their territory, and Great Qin's southern border will reach the Northern Door! The Yue's profits of rhinoceros horn, elephant ivory, kingfisher feathers, and pearls and gems can flow into the Central Plains. Plunder their populace, and the sugarcane fields of Yuzhang, Changsha, Nan Commandery, and Kuaiji can gain over a hundred thousand more Yue slaves, increasing their profits tenfold!"

Yin Tong prostrated himself in a deep bow: "This is a matter of a hundred gains and not a single harm, and so your servant dares to beseech Your Majesty: dispatch troops to conquer the Hundred Yue!"

(End of chapter)