Chapter 357: Generosity at Another

The target of Lintao Regional Commander Wang Cheng'en was not Xining City, nor did he intend to seize Guide Battalion.

His goal was Pingrong Horse Relay Station, forty li east of Xining — Wang Family Village lay nearby. He led his troops on a lateral thrust from Henan, driving several thousand Hezhou soldiers rapidly westward to feign an assault on the city, so he could dispatch household retainers back home to bring out his mother and clansmen.

Every dynasty has its own style of naming.

The Western Han favored prolonging years, increasing longevity, dispelling illness, and eliminating disease. Wang Mang favored single-character names. The Way of the Celestial Masters in the Southern and Northern Dynasties favored zhi, dao, xuan, and ling. The Song Dynasty had a massive generation of ji characters and old brothers named Yanmei, Jin, and Zhao.

By the Ming Dynasty, because the Hongwu Emperor concentrated power to an unprecedented degree, loyalty to the sovereign and service to the state became the absolute dominant theme.

Among these dominant-theme names, Cheng'en — "Receiving Grace" — was a representative example, deeply beloved by the great houses of the nobility.

Tenant farmer Wang Laoqi, his back bent by taxes and levies, finally married and had a child at forty-five. He would not name his child Wang Cheng'en. At most, a tenant farmer would name his child Wang Xiaoshun — "Filial Obedience" — to keep on being filial and obedient to the landlord master.

Those who could name a child Cheng'en were either military households or chieftains, or at the very least landlord-gentry families — official households with hopes of attaining hereditary honors and hereditary stipends.

At court at this time, there were twenty or thirty people of note named Cheng'en, and four named Wang Cheng'en alone — all figures of high rank and great authority who deeply enjoyed imperial favor.

The eunuch Wang Cheng'en beside the Chongzhen Emperor; a Wang Cheng'en in the Embroidered Uniform Guard; besides these, there was also Jingyuan Earl Wang Cheng'en, who campaigned in Korea as a Mobile Corps General in the twenty-third year of Wanli — he was already too old to lift a blade.

The remaining one was this Lintao Regional Commander Wang Cheng'en.

The office of Lintao Regional Commander was the highest in status and the heaviest in authority among the four incarnations of Wang Cheng'en.

His ancestor was Qingyuan Marquis Wang You, who rose to prominence during the Jingnan Campaign and later had his title abolished for offending the Yongle Emperor in his old age. When the Hongxi Emperor succeeded to the throne, he remembered Wang You's merit in the Jingnan Campaign and granted his descendants the hereditary post of Assistant Commander.

From the thirty-third year of Wanli, when he inherited the post of Xining Guard Assistant Commander at eighteen, through successive appointments as Gansu Zhuanglang Vice General, Xuanfu Nanshan Vice General, and Vice Commander of the Capital Army's Divine Machine Battalion, until his official appointment as Lintao Regional Commander — everything had gone smoothly.

He encountered no formidable foes, and naturally fought no difficult battles.

It was not until the Jisi Incident of the second year of Chongzhen that Wang Cheng'en finally welcomed his own moment of glory.

His moment of glory was marching to the capital to relieve Liaodong, leading fifteen hundred Lintao soldiers on a fifteen-hundred-li dash to reach Beijing. While everyone else was running around in confusion with constant mishaps, Wang Cheng'en performed normally in every respect.

His army suffered no mutinies, no desertions, and no broken supply lines on the march; no harassment of civilians, no looting, and no collapses at their garrison posts; no fleeing, no disobedience of orders, and no defeats when advancing on Luanzhou.

Beneath the walls of Luanzhou, when Huang Long and Zu Dashou opened fire and blasted apart the battlements, when Yang Yanchang led his men to fill the moat, when Cao Wenzhao set the gate tower ablaze with fire-lances, stood his spear against the arrows, and killed five enemies to the cheers of ten thousand — the order Wang Cheng'en received was to hold the south gate to the death and not let a single eastern barbarian leave the city. He accomplished it.

For this, Wang Cheng'en was commended and received in audience by the Chongzhen Emperor and granted the titles of Grand Guardian of the Heir Apparent and Left Chief Commissioner.

Qi Jiguang was forty-seven when he was promoted to Left Chief Commissioner and Grand Guardian of the Heir Apparent, but Wang Cheng'en was only forty-two that year.

Wang Cheng'en always believed that he had certainly rendered merit in the Liaodong relief campaign, but nowhere near the magnitude of merit that the Emperor's bestowed offices implied. Receiving that promotion was claiming credit for Heaven's work, and he wanted an opportunity to prove himself worthy of the Emperor's personal regard.

To repay the imperial favor, for three years Wang Cheng'en had led his troops on campaign across Shaanxi, suppressing bandits everywhere. His days were even harder than those of Liu the Lion's soldiers, but he achieved little merit — all he had to show for it was bitter toil.

Suppressing the peasant armies was no easy assignment. This Regional Commander's Main Battalion of Lintao Garrison had not bathed in three months; their faces were weathered, their bodies caked in filth, their appearance utterly wretched.

Wang Cheng'en reflected that he had already sent men home — he could not let his elderly mother, past sixty, see his wretched state and feel heartache. So he took advantage of the Hezhou army's westward advance and his scouts' eastward gallop to let the brothers of his Main Battalion bathe in the Huang River.

Bathing in this weather was cold, true, but comfortable. After washing, every soldier felt a hundred times more spirited.

Wang Cheng'en washed himself as well. He was sitting in the courtyard of Pingrong Relay Station, hair loose, wiping the dust of campaign from his armor, when a household retainer came carrying a large wooden plaque to report.

"Commander, the home is gone!"

Wang Cheng'en's face froze. The hand wiping the armor plates stopped. "What do you mean?"

"The family's great mansion has become this."

The retainer stood the man-high nanmu plaque upright before him. On it, in gleaming, unmistakable gilded characters, were written four words: "Loyal and Good for Generations." Wang Cheng'en said angrily, "The bandits tore down a two-hundred-year-old family mansion and left me nothing but a plaque?"

"No, Commander — the old mansion is still there. The plaque was ruined."

As he spoke, the retainer flipped the plaque around. The reverse of the nanmu had been plastered over with white lime, and inked in black were the four characters "Pingrong Township Security Office." The retainer's face was mournful. "People came from the Xining Prefectural yamen and commandeered the mansion for their Pingrong Township Security Office. The Old Madam was taken to Xining."

At this, Wang Cheng'en no longer cared about any old mansion. He stood up in fury. "And the people? They just watched with open eyes as my old mother was seized and carried off?"

For a moment, he even considered going to Xining to surrender — but the thought lingered in his mind for only an instant.

He could not surrender. Setting aside the Emperor's immense grace toward him, the families of all these soldiers were in Lintao. Even if he wanted to surrender, it would be useless.

"Commander, Wang Jinzhong's father is still in the village. He said that back then, when the bandit Liu led thirty thousand troops winding east out of the river valley, no one dared move a muscle. They just sent three men to the village and did everything they wanted to do."

"Everything they wanted to do — what did they want to do? Seize fields and houses, plunder wealth and goods?"

Wang Cheng'en gave a cold laugh. He stopped wiping his half-cleaned armor, stood up, clapped his hands, and said to the orderly soldier beside him, "Pass the word to assemble. We march east in half a shichen and complete the encirclement."

Wang Jinzhong was one of Wang Cheng'en's household retainers — not particularly capable, but honest and loyal, and also a fellow clansman.

His father was a notorious idler in the village, fond of drink. Years ago, the military pay his son sent home was all drunk away by the old man. When the money ran out, he would go do odd jobs. The village was all of the same clan, so he would not starve, but the greatest hope in his days was simply that his son might earn merit on the battlefield.

Unfortunately, Wang Jinzhong had never earned merit before. The year before last, he did earn merit in northern Shaanxi, but money was tight that year. Hong Chengchou and Lian Guoshi both had their eyes on Wu Sheng's hundred thousand taels of disaster relief silver. In the end, Hong Chengchou took over two thousand taels to relieve the starving troops; Lian Guoshi took fifty-nine hundred taels to relieve the exhausted soldiers.

Their Lintao command received only seven hundred taels, and even that did not reach their hands until the summer of the fifth year of Chongzhen.

When Wang Cheng'en got the money, his first consideration was naturally to pay the brothers the back wages owed for the three days of New Year's Eve, Spring Festival, and the Lantern Festival of the fourth year of Chongzhen — paid in the fifth year.

One qian and six fen per man, enough for just three days — barely enough for a meal of dumplings to cheer them up a bit.

That little money was only enough to cheer them up a bit. The Lintao soldiers were not poor; they always had enough to eat. Though the spoils from campaigning against bandits were not much, they were at least enough to keep the army fighting normally.

For the soldiers, however, this did not count as good days.

The retainer holding the plaque was stunned by what he heard. He loosened his grip on the plaque, then hurriedly grabbed it again. "Commander, march east? Not going to Xining to rescue the Old Madam?"

Wang Cheng'en drew a deep breath. Standing at the gate of the relay station, he gazed deeply westward. His tone was resolute. "The old mother will come to no harm."

He knew very well that his mother, taken to Xining by the rebel army, might not eat or lodge as comfortably as at home, but her life and safety were absolutely guaranteed. Even if the old lady tried to take her own life, she likely would not get the chance.

Only, if he dared attack Xining City at this moment, his old mother would very likely be in mortal danger.

So Wang Cheng'en planned to go east first and catch some Chengzu or Chengzong or whatever, so he could come back and trade for his old mother from Xining City.

The army was still assembling. Wang Cheng'en had just learned that all his clansmen had been led away by the township officials of the Marshal's headquarters. Now only six elderly people remained in the village. The able-bodied men of the village were either with him in the army or had been scattered with their families to other townships. What infuriated him most was that his home had been renamed.

It was not that the old Wang family mansion had been turned into the Pingrong Township Security Office — it was that Wang Family Village had been split into two Earth Defense Units.

The names were literally "Earth Defense" — one Upper Earth Defense, one Lower Earth Defense. Wang Cheng'en was so angry his teeth itched. "They want to take my head. I've returned — where are those little chicks now?"

"They all ran off long ago. Only a few old-timers from the former village stayed. A few days ago, some were bought off by the rebel bandits' land distribution and clung to their land, unwilling to leave. When they heard the Commander was coming back, they packed up overnight and fled."

The words sounded laughable, but Wang Cheng'en could not laugh at all.

He only felt fury. His sixty-year-old mother had been abducted. His family's old mansion of over two hundred years had been commandeered. He had just inquired and learned that the family's money and valuables were all gone, swept away without a trace. Let the Xining bandits seize his family land if they must — but no, they gave it all away, squandering the grandfather's estate like worthless whelps with not a twinge of heartache.

Listening to the retainer's report on the township security land policies, Wang Cheng'en turned it over and over in his mind, deeply unsettled.

Wasn't this just tenant farming?

They were worse off than his own tenant farmers — at least his tenants leased the land and could plant whatever they liked, as long as they paid the rent. Liu Chengzong here had gone and seized everyone else's fields for himself, making him the sole landlord in the entire Hehuang region.

They called it buying grain with money instead of collecting rent, but wasn't it still just handing over grain?

Exchange it for a bit of silver, for those useless cloth tickets — the nearest market was in Xining City, and wasn't the price of everything else whatever he decided to set it at?

The land rent was written clear as day in the lease contract — so much was so much. With Bandit Liu running things this way, could anyone even say how much the common folk would truly have to hand over in a year?

Wang Cheng'en was baffled. With things like this, how were there still common people feeling grateful and singing his praises?

"They give oxen and seed." Watching Wang Cheng'en utterly perplexed, a household soldier in the crowd named Wang Jinzhong said quietly, "With an ox, someone like my da, a day laborer, can tend his own land too. There's hope."

The household soldiers were mostly gathered inside the post station. Wang Jinzhong's remark drew astonished sidelong glances from some, and nods of agreement from others.

Wang Jinzhong could never have imagined that one simple sentence of his would strike a fear in Wang Cheng'en that went bone-deep.

The fear was irrational, yet it put Regional Commander Wang on the highest alert. His troops had never mutinied, and things had not yet reached the point of mutiny, but clearly quite a few of the clan's sons approved of Xining Prefecture's methods.

If even the poor boys among his own clansmen approved, then the impoverished common folk out in the countryside, whom he had never once laid eyes on, would approve even more.

This abruptly brought Wang Cheng'en back to his senses. He understood.

It was just like when he heard his own elderly mother had been captured — his first thought was to surrender, his second was that he could not surrender, because the soldiers' families were in Lintao.

The common folk who stayed behind here were actually the same. The endurance of the poor was not strong, not strong at all.

They simply had no way out. Liu Chengzong had come attacking — what could they do about it?

Liu Chengzong issued a policy — what could they do about it?

Even if Liu Chengzong started killing people — what could they do about it?

In his nearly fifty years of life, he had always known that tenant farmers were not actually the poor — you had to own an ox to be a tenant. No great household would lease land to someone who scratched a living from the dirt with nothing but their two hands.

It was just that those even poorer than the tenant farmers had always been ignored by his awareness.

The poorest people he could ever come into contact with were the tenant farmers, and that was it. The rest — Wang Cheng'en never saw them under normal circumstances. The moment he did see them, it meant they had already embarked on another career path: banditry.

Liu Chengzong's policies were tyrannical to him, and no great boon to common folk who could already feed their families — but what about the far greater number living on the line between life and death?

When Wang Cheng'en put himself in the shoes of those common folk who had no choice but to become bandits but had not yet done so, even he himself felt that Liu Chengzong's policies were good ones.

To the west were rebels, to the east was smallpox, and further east still was Lanzhou driving people westward. The world was perilous. Sitting still was the most advantageous choice the common folk could make — regardless of the harvest, regardless of whether they were forced to plant grain, regardless of how much grain Liu Chengzong would demand come autumn.

At least there was... there was hope.

"Jinzhong, I'm giving you a task. The old Wang clan cannot swallow this silent loss. Take a few men into the surrounding mountains and summon the common folk back."

Wang Cheng'en gave a cold chuckle. He was going to rally these clan sons once more and not let them be beguiled by Liu Chengzong.

He waved his hand and said, "Tell those people the fields they're tilling are Wang family land. Since the land has already fallen into their hands and times are hard, I won't demand it back. The land is still mine, but with permanent tenure... tell them all to come back and farm. Running into the mountains — do they not want this year's harvest?"

Having said this, before the household soldiers could show their astonishment, Wang Cheng'en's tone shifted sharply: "Before, to lease land, you had to have an ox. Now that his Old Liu family is so generous with our Old Wang family's land, then our Old Wang family will be generous with his Old Liu family's oxen!"

"This time when the government troops advance to suppress, they suppress only Bandit Liu. Tell them to go home at ease — those oxen are all their own, and they absolutely must not return them to Bandit Liu! He wants to turn Wang Family Village into an earthen fort? Daydreaming!"

The moment Wang Cheng'en spoke these words, the few household soldiers who had been downcast moments before were instantly roused. Their families had all had their land divided up, and all had been given oxen.

Just a moment ago they could not help feeling some anxiety over gains and losses, but now each one was brimming with vigor and life again.

Just then, a Hezhou native soldier hurried in from the front lines to report: two forces had emerged from Xining, with several more small bands of bandits straggling loosely behind — roughly seven or eight thousand men in all.

They had sent someone to announce their names, saying the commander was Liu Chengyun, and asking whether Wang Cheng'en wished to engage them in battle.

"Liu Chengyun... who is that?"

Wang Cheng'en had not the slightest impression of the name. He did know of a Gansu Assistant Regional Commander named Wang Chengyun, but this sounded very much like one of Liu Chengzong's clansmen. He waved his hand at once: "Send word to He Yongji — order him to withdraw slowly and not engage. Once my own standard battalion arrives, we will defeat them in one surge!"