Wind Rises in North America 1625

Chapter 451 The New Official (Part Two)

Hewan Village is located at a bend in the Wuming River (now the Milcreek River). The river meanders for several miles before flowing into the Qiongjiang River, forming several consecutive bends. Therefore, the settlement was named Hewan.

Around 6 p.m., on a piece of wasteland at the eastern end of the village, more than 40 migrants were still wielding hoes and picks, digging out tree roots buried deep in the ground. The thud of farm tools falling was mixed with the shouts of workers.

For some particularly large tree roots, they were enclosed with a foot-high earthen mound and filled with water.

When the water in the earthen mound evaporates or the water level drops, water is added again to soak it for several months, then it is covered with weeds until the tree roots are killed.

Sometimes, they would add some manure to speed up the decomposition of the tree roots, so that only the main trunk of the tree roots remained. Without those fibrous hairs, the tree roots would become much easier to pull out.

Zhang Dahe walked up and shouted at the top of his lungs, "Stop! Liu Wenshu is here to check the work hours!"

The immigrants straightened up, some rubbing their backs, some wiping their faces with towels, and others taking the opportunity to sit on the roots of trees and gulp down water from their jugs.

Everyone's palms were covered in black mud, grass clippings were stuck between their fingers, and they all looked exhausted.

Liu Wencheng opened the registration form and was about to ask "name, place of origin, age" when Zhang Dahe handed him a bamboo tube containing dozens of marked wooden plaques: "Count the plaques. Those who go to work receive their plaques and return them near the end of the workday. Count how many plaques you collected today and check them against the number of households on the register. If there are any discrepancies, verify them."

Liu Wencheng held the wooden plaque, the cold surface making his fingertips numb.

He tried to check the numbers one by one, just like Zhang Dahe, but the immigrants spoke various dialects, and there were even Koreans and Japanese mixed in. He spent a long time making notes, but the numbers in the ledger still didn't match the roster.

"What...what's going on?" He was so anxious that sweat beaded on his forehead, and the wooden sign rattled in his hand.

Zhang Dahe leaned over and glanced at it, pointing to one of the lines: "You remembered Li Laoshuan's family as two people. Actually, his wife went to help cut hay and feed the livestock today, so it doesn't count as land reclamation work hours."

He picked up a charcoal pencil and drew a diagonal line on the booklet, then said with a smile, “Our work hours are divided into fine work, rough work, and miscellaneous tasks. Different jobs are recorded in different ways. You have to ask clearly what kind of work it is, and then check the person’s identity afterward. It’s not just about counting heads.”

"Oh, oh..." Liu Wencheng nodded slightly, looking a little embarrassed.

In the notebook, the numbers he wrote were somewhat crooked, and he repeatedly made corrections because he couldn't distinguish between "fine work" and "rough work," leaving ink blots all over the edges of the pages.

After checking the working hours, I heard arguing coming from the riverbank.

Several men grabbed each other's collars, spitting on each other's faces.

"It's clearly our turn to use the oxen, why are you trying to use them first?" a thin man roared.

The tall man, neck stiff, kept shoving the other man, his face full of resentment: "Our land reclamation project is the most urgent, so we should use it first!"

Liu Wencheng instinctively wanted to step forward and offer some advice on "harmony is precious," but he saw Zhang Dahe rush over in a few steps, take the knife from his waist, and slash at him with the scabbard still attached.

"What's all the noise about! What's all the noise about!..." He dispersed the people, glaring at them: "Private fights are prohibited in the colony area, violators will be severely punished! Do you all want to be locked up in a dark room?...Are you all just bored and have nothing better to do!"

"The use of cattle, horses, and large farm implements must be done according to the time that has been applied for and reported in advance. No one is allowed to cut in line ahead of others. Those who don't plan their work and don't know how to report in advance deserve to delay the work!"

"You, you, and you, return the ox to its owner. Go to the supplies department and apply for registration yourselves. You can use it whenever it's designated. If you dare to cut in line again, I'll not only beat you, but I'll also deduct a few meals from your meals!"

Liu Wencheng was stunned as he watched Zhang Dahe quell the dispute with just a few words.

The principles he spoke of, such as "harmony is the most valuable aspect of propriety," seemed so pale and weak at this moment, far less effective than his crude and simplistic approach.

The tall man swung his arm and walked away sullenly, giving him a deep look as he passed by.

Perhaps it was his own sensitivity, or perhaps it was the other person's gloomy expression, but he felt that their gaze seemed to contain disdain and contempt for him.

This made him feel as if he had been pricked by a needle, and a tremor ran through his heart.

Liu Wencheng looked down at the crooked numbers in the record book and suddenly felt that the neat ink of the "Twelve Policies on Colonization" was far less substantial than the mud-splattered charcoal writing.

A scholar is utterly useless!

In the days that followed, Liu Wencheng was thrown into real-world colonization work.

Before dawn, we had to follow Zhou Zuomin to inspect the irrigation canals, measuring the field ridges in the dew, checking work hours and distributing meal tickets with uneven steps. Zhou Zuomin always carried a wooden measuring rope, and every ten steps he would bend down and stick a wooden stick into the ground, muttering, "The slope is too steep, the water flow will wash away the canal bank," and then he would write down, "Several meters of the canal bank need to be reinforced, and key parts should be filled with stones or cement."

At first, he was not used to using the measuring rope. When measuring, he either could not pull it straight or miscounted. After Zhou Zuomin yelled at him a few times, he had to personally guide him to remeasure until the data was accurate.

At noon, while eating in the fields, he held a rough porcelain bowl and looked at the corn buns and corn porridge inside. Suddenly, he remembered the exquisite tea and snacks in the county government office of Daming, as well as the elegant poetry gatherings held by a group of literati.

Some of the young children were swallowing their food in big gulps, and the woman would whisper to them, "Eat quickly, so you'll have the strength to help gather firewood, otherwise you'll get cold at night."

He noticed that the woman's hands were wrapped in strips of cloth, and thick calluses were visible on her fingertips.

"Liu Wenshu, come with me to check the inventory this afternoon." Old Zheng, who was in charge of supplies, finished his meal, wiped his mouth, and handed him a pair of coarse cloth gloves. "We need to check all the nails, timber, and farm tools in the warehouse. A few days ago, three or five pounds of nails were missing during the inventory check, and Village Chief Zhou got furious. Sigh, my brain isn't quite up to par!"

The warehouse was located behind the garrison office and was one of the few brick and stone buildings in the entire fortress. Inside, various supplies were piled up: neatly stacked grain seeds, bundles of shovels, hoes and farm tools, as well as barrels of whale oil, jars of salt and other seasonings.

Old Zheng held the ledger, and for each item he checked, he had Liu Wencheng write it down: "Four boxes of new iron nails arrived, 107 kilograms in total. Today, 26 kilograms are missing. We need to come down and check where they were used..."

"Thirty-five shovels, forty-two hoes, twenty-six pickaxes, and quite a few sickles, um, seventy-five..."

"There are three cans of whale oil left, so we need to use them sparingly..."

Liu Wencheng squatted on the ground to count the farm tools. The cold iron filings stuck to his gloves, making his palms itch.

He counted on the third try before he could count the number correctly. When he looked up, he saw Old Zheng calculating with an abacus. The ledger was filled with numbers, and next to it were drawn special numbers indicating the location and inventory of each type of material.

"Do I have to remember all of these?" he couldn't help but ask.

"Of course!" Old Zheng tapped the ledger. "If you're missing a nail, you might not be able to install a plank when building a house. If you over-report a pound of cooking oil, it might delay the canteen's cooking for a few days. All supplies have to be accounted for, otherwise if something is missing and you can't explain it, you'll be accused of embezzlement and sent to hard labor in the north."

Liu Wencheng silently lowered his head and continued to count the warehouse supplies.

He suddenly remembered that when he was in the Ming Dynasty, he always heard the clerks of the prefectures and counties talking about how they racked their brains to deceive their superiors and empty the local treasury. Whenever there was a disaster or famine, they would be faced with an empty treasury.

Those treasury clerks were extremely careless and perfunctory in their accounting, and never seriously managed the treasury under their charge.

Here, every nail, every pound of cooking oil, and every farm tool is connected to the livelihood of the villagers.

Reclamation in the still-wild Qiongjiang River Valley was not just about land reclamation, but also about defying the elements.

Spring floods, summer droughts, and autumn cold spells mean that even the slightest slackening could result in a complete crop failure.

The constant influx of immigrants, the eagerly awaiting industrial development, and the numerous goals and tasks assigned by superiors kept all settlers and settlers in a state of constant toil.

This pressure to survive became the heavy blow that shattered Liu Wencheng's hierarchical concept of "scholars, farmers, artisans, and merchants".

Standing in the bustling reclamation fields, the thought that "it is an insult to scholars to bend down and dig the soil" gradually faded from my mind.

Because he discovered that not only had the village head, Zhou Zuomin, studied for more than ten years and was a "scholar" who had graduated from Xinhua's "Imperial Academy"—Xinzhou Management Training Institute, but even the militia captain, Zhang Dahe, whom he regarded as a crude person, was actually literate, could read documents, and could write reports.

They spent their days traversing fields and mud, handling numerous "detailed" and "rough" tasks with ease and skill, yet they never displayed any arrogance typical of scholars.

"The real skill here is to make the crops grow and to feed more immigrants!" Zhou Zuomin once said.

One evening, Liu Wencheng crossed out "Scholars labor with their minds, farmers labor with their bodies" in his work notes and changed it to "When the granaries are full, people know etiquette; first there are granaries, then there is etiquette."

In the barren and unproductive colonization areas, "propriety and righteousness" could not be sustained on the wild land. The pragmatic calculation of survival was the most effective form of "virtuous governance".

In Hewantun, those seemingly trivial numbers actually represent the livelihoods and hopes of individual immigrants.

The “minor and menial tasks” that he once despised were the very foundation of Xinhua’s governance.

Serving as an official in Xinhua seems quite different from the situation in the Ming Dynasty.

"The way to reclaim wasteland lies not in literature, but in physical labor; the key to managing villages lies not in education, but in food and clothing."
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(End of this chapter)