Chapter 473: The Personal-Field Method

Liu Chengzong had no intention of staying long in Suzhou City.

By his original thinking, an army returning from a distant campaign needed a few days to rest, and Suzhou was a fine place for that — meanwhile, he could also familiarize himself with this land by reviewing the Suzhou Guard's official documents from past years.

The latter mattered most to Liu Chengzong, because war is fought with troops, money, and grain. The Marshal's headquarters' expeditionary army had troops, but money, grain, weapons, and equipment were all consumables — every mouthful eaten was one less, every item used or broken was one gone.

The Jiuquan Oasis, where Suzhou lay, possessed both military production capacity and extensive irrigated agriculture — a rare and vital strongpoint.

But after just two days burrowing into the city, hauling out those old documents from the Guard bureau to air in the sun, and giving them a cursory glance, Liu Chengzong abandoned the idea of reading the official papers.

They were unreliable.

Population, farmland — every figure, not a single one was reliable.

This was within Liu Chengzong's expectations. As the saying goes, policies from above are met with countermeasures from below — the authorities and the common people were locked in a constant dynamic game. In the early Ming, when the court emphasized population, the people worked hard to hide people; in the mid-to-late Ming, when the tax burden shifted to farmland, the people worked hard to hide acreage.

This shift meant that Liu Chengzong wanted accurate population figures, but for nearly a century neither the court nor the local authorities had wanted accurate population figures; he wanted accurate acreage figures, but for nearly a century the common people had not wanted the court or local authorities to know accurate acreage figures.

So Liu Chengzong simply summoned the current Suzhou Guard Assistant Commander, Song Xian, and came straight to the point: "How many people and how many households does Suzhou Guard have?"

Song Xian lowered his head. "Replying to the Grand Marshal, these past few days your subordinate has also been sorting out the population and military farmstead matters."

Liu Chengzong nodded. "How is it — any difficulties in handling it? Your money's nearly all bled dry."

Suzhou Guard had no prefecture or county offices; military and civil administration were merged. So the same official post carried some differences from the interior, mainly in having a bit more authority, including oversight of civil affairs.

So managing government affairs was his proper duty. But Song Xian came from a merchant background, not a seasoned petty functionary, and Liu Chengzong worried he might find the work rather taxing.

Liu Chengzong's worry was not groundless. He had sent several officers from the Tiger Guard Camp skilled in logistics to check Song Xian's accounts.

The man indeed had a knack for making money — in two years his assets had grown from a little over a thousand taels of silver to over ten thousand — but as reflected in the accounts, Liu Chengzong felt his money-making had less to do with ability and more to do with luck.

Over the past year he had dabbled in every trade. Liquor and hemp rope broke even at best; moneylending, land and housing, and pawnbroking all ran at a loss — especially the pawnshop, where the accounts were falsified and the Three Calamities Society manager had cleaned out much of the inventory. The ledger was a gaping pit, utterly impossible to balance.

And after burning the debt contracts and rising in revolt, his assets had shrunk drastically. Even counting shops, fields, carts, boats, and mills, it came to no more than three thousand taels of silver... and then it coincided with the Marshal's headquarters' state policy of land equalization, and Song Xian, as Suzhou's chief official, had set an example by surrendering all his fields to the public.

His assets were about to be slashed by another half.

Liu Chengzong thought well of him and was willing to give him high office and generous rank because Song Xian, as a merchant, had abided by the law and shown genuine human warmth. But then again, business is business — too much human warmth makes for a poor merchant.

Measuring a person's ability depends on what trade they are in. Different trades have different values, and for a trading house, the measure is how much money they can make.

So in Liu the Lion's eyes, this Great Benefactor of Suzhou's money looked more like it had been scraped together by luck and desperate effort, and was now being steadily lost through his own skill.

When Liu Chengzong voiced this concern, Song Xian gave an embarrassed smile, clasped his fists, and offered his own different view of wealth. He said, "Replying to the Grand Marshal, your subordinate has no real talent. Relying on a few years of schooling, I dabbled in goods from the Western Regions and sold them to the Southeast — journeys of ten thousand li, brushes with death time and again. My homeland was all yellow sand; the Southeast was all gold."

"On the way back I happened upon the drought in Shaanxi. Thirty copper cash was a human life." Song Xian shook his head. "The world is in chaos; wealth is but a thing outside the body."

"But here in Suzhou Guard, I do have some standing among the people. I won't hold up the Grand Marshal's affairs."

Liu Chengzong nodded, and only then did Song Xian get to the main subject. "Suzhou Guard's household registration, by regulation, is recorded once every ten years, but going back, the last record dates to the Jiajing era — Suzhou Guard had 8,762 households and 10,830 individuals. It hasn't been updated since."

"Your subordinate estimates that Suzhou's population should be larger than that. Although the Guard has been short of troops and under-strength for years, deserters and unregistered soldiers never left the oasis; they still live and multiply here."

"Now that the Marshal's headquarters has taken Suzhou, there has been some turmoil from the fighting, and some commoners have indeed fled the oasis. Moreover, the Grand Marshal also wants to merge military registration into civilian registration. With so many household registrations being changed, the old documents are useless as a reference."

"The farmland must be resurveyed, the household registrations must be re-registered — none of this can be done in a short time." Song Xian finished and cupped his hands. "I hope the Grand Marshal can grant your subordinate two months' time to handle this properly."

Two months.

Liu Chengzong turned this timeframe over in his mind, neither agreeing nor disagreeing, and said, "Two months to survey the fields, register the households, and distribute the land — how much land would each person in Suzhou get?"

Ming local officials mostly paid little attention to accurate population figures and focused on acreage. Liu Chengzong was the same — after all, he wasn't collecting a head tax.

Statistics were merely a means for Liu Chengzong to grasp the local situation. Every means pointed to a single goal: the summer grain of the Jiuquan Oasis.

Land system reform runs through nearly every dynastic change and internal reform in ancient China, and granting land by headcount was never a new concept. As the Suzhou official in charge of civil affairs, Song Xian had understood from the very start that the equal-field system was the Marshal's headquarters' fundamental policy.

He had this question well thought out. "Replying to the Grand Marshal, for Suzhou Guard's land equalization, it should be between twenty and forty mu per person."

The huge figure startled Liu Chengzong, and he blurted out, "That much?"

The number itself was not actually large — it was just that the place Liu Chengzong knew best was He-Huang, where the land was narrow and the people dense. Under equalization there, each person got six or seven mu, and a household only about twenty mu in total.

Jiuquan, by contrast — a single person could be granted twenty mu.

He asked, "Does that mean Jiuquan has two or three hundred thousand mu of land?"

"More than that."

Song Xian explained, "The Hei River basin has always been the dynasty's..."

Halfway through, he stopped, eyes wide with terror, looking at Liu Chengzong. But Liu Chengzong just smiled indifferently and waved his hand. "Go on."

"Since the early Ming, farming has been irrigated by the Hei River. The Jiuquan Oasis originally had nearly three hundred thousand mu of recorded farmland, and that's not counting the pastureland at Jinta Temple beyond the pass."

On this subject, Song Xian spoke with clarity and confidence. "But the changes in farmland mainly come from two aspects. The first is easy to handle — Guard officers and palace eunuchs seizing fertile land. Your subordinate has already arrested over a dozen households of former dynasty officials who encroached on farmland, just awaiting the Grand Marshal's judgment."

Liu Chengzong nodded slightly, signaling him to continue.

"The second is the changing climate across the entire Hexi Corridor. Jiuquan has been continuously reclaiming land — the area usable for cultivation should be no less than five hundred thousand mu. But decades ago, water shortages and windblown sand began, fertile land was seized, irrigation fell into disrepair, and disasters grew frequent. The military farming households, helpless in the face of each famine, could only sow widely and reap thinly."

Song Xian spread his hands. "Decades of the same extensive farming, and the fields of the Jiuquan Oasis grew more barren the more they were planted. Even where land was reclaimed, it has now turned to sand. So the land actually usable for farming today is only about two hundred thousand mu."

Having laid out the difficulties of farming in Hexi, Song Xian glanced cautiously at Liu Chengzong and said, "Your subordinate knows that in He-Huang, the yield is over a hundred jin of grain per mu. Though Jiuquan grants more mu per person under the headcount system, the common people's harvests will surely fall far short of He-Huang's."

Liu Chengzong shook his head, looking somewhat disappointed.

Different places faced different conditions. The soil of He-Huang was fertile — as long as he had people, and as long as the people had land, land equalization could solve all the Marshal's headquarters' problems.

But Hexi was not He-Huang. Here, the landless poor having no place even to stand was not the biggest problem. The problem was an environment ruined by decades of the same extensive farming — fertility loss driving down yields, even the desertification of the soil.

This was a problem the Marshal's headquarters' policy of equalizing land and purchasing taxes could not solve. That policy was built on the foundation that commoners could be self-sufficient on half their grain output. With Jiuquan's extensive farming, twenty mu might not match five mu in He-Huang. And for commoners with nothing to their name, improving the land was a pipe dream.

After all, in a place of vast land and sparse people, meticulously cultivating every single mu was far beyond ordinary human capacity.

The problem before Song Xian was that the Marshal's headquarters' six battalions entering Hexi were waiting for Jiuquan's summer grain to resupply them — and those six battalions brought horses and mules with them. In fact, the Tiger Guard Camp's logistics officers had already told him the figure they needed.

To maintain combat effectiveness, this army of just over twenty thousand men, not counting horse fodder, required 19,583 shi of wheat and beans per month.

The entire Jiuquan Oasis's summer grain harvest, without starving the locals to death, would only feed the Marshal's headquarters' six battalions for three months.

Liu Chengzong's disappointment did not stem from the Jiuquan Oasis's low yields, but mainly because this was the situation in Hexi. If Jiuquan was like this, he did not know about Liangzhou, but Ganzhou was surely in the same state.

He had two months of grain left. That meant Jiuquan's summer grain had to be collected by May, and the battle line had to advance to between Ganzhou and Liangzhou before June.

Because by a conservative estimate, the larger Ganzhou-Zhangye Oasis would also need two months for land equalization — otherwise he would not survive the winter.

That meant he had only three months left.

Liu Chengzong's fingers tapped lightly on the tea table as he stared blankly at the ceiling, lost in thought.

And during this time, Song Xian stood before him with a pounding heart — the saying "serving the sovereign is like serving a tiger" applies precisely when you have no idea what that tiger will say the very next moment.

Only when the sound of Liu Chengzong's fingers tapping the tea table ceased did he raise his eyes to Song Xian and say gravely, "You need only handle three matters well. Everything else is none of your concern, so no need for anxiety. First."

Liu Chengzong raised a hand toward Song Xian. "Those officials arrested for encroaching on military farmland — do not imprison them, nor is there any need for selection. After confiscating their property, send them all to the quarry at Haixi County. They will be tested on their genuine talent and learning there."

"Second, the land equalization and summer grain levy. Suzhou Guard has confiscated no small amount of coin and provisions. Levying wheat and beans can cover one-third; use the confiscated silver and coin to buy the rest. In short, sixty thousand dan of military grain before the fifth month is set in stone."

Song Xian acknowledged the order with solemnity. He knew perfectly well what fate awaited him if he failed to handle this matter.

Fortunately, however, he was himself involved in the Jiuquan liquor trade, so mobilizing confiscated funds to buy grain was essentially his own line of work — except that after this affair, his liquor business would likely have to close for good… a further shrinkage of his assets was now a foregone conclusion.

"As for the third — I can't let you do nothing but offend people. This one is a good thing."

At this, Liu Chengzong finally smiled. "When I was in Shaanxi, Prefect Zhou of Ningzhou gave me a book called 'Illustrated Guide to Enriching the People's Land,' written by Geng Yinlou, a Presented Scholar of the Tianqi reign — over three thousand characters. He served as a county magistrate in Shandong."

The Prefect of Ningzhou was Zhou Riqiang, who had served as magistrate in Lijin, Shandong, while Geng Yinlou, who wrote 'Illustrated Guide to Enriching the People's Land,' was the magistrate of Linzi.

"Magistrate Geng's jurisdiction was somewhat similar to Jiuquan — plenty of land but few people, with the common folk practicing extensive cultivation and reaping thin harvests. Under such conditions, universally implementing intensive and meticulous farming is simply impossible, yet extensive cultivation with thin harvests will also degrade the land. So he invented the 'Favoring Fields Method' and recorded it in the book."

"The book says the reason this method is called 'favoring fields' is that you favor and prioritize certain plots, tilting everything toward them — just as a person plays favorites, treating some with double the affection and generosity."

Liu Chengzong spread his hands. "To be specific: take a household of five with one hundred mu of land. Divide the hundred mu into five zones. Eighty mu are still farmed extensively with thin harvests, but one selected zone of twenty mu receives several times the plowing, planting, harrowing, and manuring. In drought, water it by irrigation; even without water, tend it with far greater care than the other fields."

"In this way, in a bumper year, the yield from those twenty mu will be several times that of the other eighty. Even in drought or flood, you'll still have the harvest of the other eighty mu if they yield well. And if locusts strike, the whole household guards these twenty mu — you can catch and save them, and also avoid the locusts."

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"The second year, pick another zone and apply the Favoring Fields Method as before. In five years, you will have rotated through all one hundred mu, and all of it will become fertile land. This is not limited by acreage — if you have twenty mu, each zone is five mu; if you have two hundred mu, each zone is forty mu."

Having finished, Liu Chengzong asked Song Xian, "Have I explained this Favoring Fields Method clearly?"

Song Xian nodded repeatedly. He had a few years of schooling himself, and this simple, straightforward method required only one hearing to fully grasp. He immediately clasped his fists in delight. "This humble subordinate thanks the Grand Commander for imparting the Favoring Fields Method. At this rate, in five years, Suzhou Guard will be covered in fertile land!"

The Favoring Fields Method was simple in itself, but with agricultural methods of this kind, the hardest part was never the innovation — it was the dissemination. Without promotion by those in power, large-scale implementation was impossible. If only adopted by individual households, it held little significance.

Liu Chengzong was not as optimistic as Song Xian. He merely said, "Given the conditions of the Jiuquan oasis, decades of extensive cultivation and thin harvests may not be reversed in just five years. But by following the Favoring Fields Method, each rotation will certainly improve the soil's fertility beyond the last. If one rotation isn't enough, then two; if two aren't enough, then three. Eventually, Jiuquan will be covered in fertile land."

As Liu Chengzong's words fell, a guard entered the hall from outside bearing a letter.

Liu Chengzong opened the letter and saw it was in Gao Yingdeng's handwriting. The letter reported that a Ming army force of over two thousand men had halted at the edge of Gaotai, and that he had laid an ambush in the desert but failed to lure the enemy into the trap.

By now, this force had already set up a stockade, dug trenches, and established a defensive line at Gaotai. Two subsequent Ming army forces of over two thousand men each had also joined the line. Gao Yingdeng surmised that the Ming army's strategy was to dig in and hold to the death.

He had therefore dispatched mounted scouts to skirmish, with victories and defeats on both sides. From prisoners' mouths they had learned that the commander was Li Hongsi, Vice Regional Commander of Suzhou, and the two relief forces were led respectively by Lin Chengdong, a military Provincial Graduate from Xianning in Xi'an Prefecture serving as Army Commander of the Ganzhou Route, and Tang Mingshi, a hereditary Company Commander of Liangzhou Guard serving as Mobile Corps Commander of Zhenyi.

After reading the letter, Liu Chengzong appeared exceptionally pleased. He rose, patted Song Xian on the shoulder, and smiled. "Alright, go attend to your affairs. They're always like this — the moment they see me, they assume the posture of someone about to take a beating."

"I give you one year to implement the Favoring Fields Method in the Jiuquan oasis. If the war goes smoothly and you handle these three matters well, then next year or the year after, it may be the entire Hexi Corridor that needs you to promote the Favoring Fields Method."