1848 Great Qing Charcoal Burners

Chapter 1: The Rich Farmer's Start
February of the 28th year of the Daoguang Emperor's reign (1848).

In Qingfeng Village, fifty li northeast of Guixian County (now Guigang) in Xunzhou Prefecture, Guangxi, a simple lantern hangs high in front of the gate of a courtyard that is considered quite grand in the area, and a white banner flutters in the wind.

Before the spring planting season was over, two male members of the Peng family died in succession.

Two crudely made thin coffins made of cedar wood were placed on either side of the back hall.

Inside the thin coffin on the right, Peng Gang greedily inhaled the air leaking in from the seams of the wooden planks, the air carrying a strong smell of paper ash and lime.

“Ayi, your father entrusted me with taking care of you and your sister and managing the land deeds before he passed away.”

“These past few years have been bad, with disasters, epidemics, and bandits rampant. The clan has been busy and running around to make sure your father and your third brother’s funerals were handled properly.”

“Your sixth uncle has no children, but he is very fond of you. Since you do not wish to be adopted, we will not force you.”

"Listen to your uncle's words carefully. Sign here and the clan will provide you with food, clothing, and support your continued education."

The familiar and friendly Guiliu Hakka dialect, though with a slightly peculiar accent, penetrated the thin fir wood planks and reached Peng Gang's ears.

The speaker had a somewhat weathered voice and an aggressive tone, seemingly a disrespectful old man.

In a daze, the short life of this Qing Dynasty boy with the same name as him flashed through his mind like a fleeting shadow.

The joy of harvesting rice with his father and brother in the paddy field.

The reluctance of the older brother to leave home and escape, and the grief of the mother dying in childbirth.

These feelings were so real, as if I had experienced them myself.

I'm not dead? I've been possessed and transmigrated?
As his memories gradually cleared, Peng Gang realized that he was now lying in a coffin.

Peng Gang, who grew up in a rural area of ​​Guangxi, could easily understand what had happened, seeing his father and the clan chief outside the coffin relentlessly pressuring his younger brother.

It's nothing more than the main family wanting to take advantage of him, the extinct member of a collateral branch.

No signature allowed!

Peng Gang tried to struggle to get up and open the coffin lid, but the body was too weak.

He didn't even have the strength to speak or shift to a more comfortable position, let alone get up and leave the coffin.

Fortunately, his younger brother Peng Yi was smart enough that he did not give in to any threats or inducements from his relatives.

It must have been tough on him, as Peng Yi was only fourteen years old in my memory.

At such a young age, she not only had to manage her own and her father's funerals, but also had to face a group of ruthless clansmen who were trying to seize her family's property.

After an unknown amount of time, the light seeping in through the seams of the wooden planks grew dimmer and dimmer, and the noise outside the thin coffin gradually faded away, leaving only the helpless and desperate sobs of the younger siblings.

With his body recovering, he finally has the strength to lift the coffin.

Having been deprived of light for a long time, the flickering candlelight in the draft and the burning paper money in the pyre made Peng Gang unable to open his eyes.

"A zombie has risen from the dead! Third Brother? Is that you? Are you a human or a ghost?"

A childish voice, filled with surprise and fear, reached Peng Gang's ears; it was the voice of his younger brother, Peng Yi.

"Even if Third Brother is a ghost, he's still our family's ghost, and he'll protect us."

The other voice was a more childish female voice; it belonged to Peng Gang's twelve-year-old sister, Peng Min.

Thinking of this, the two siblings couldn't help but burst into laughter through their tears, and their red, swollen, and lifeless eyes gradually began to sparkle with a glimmer of light.

ghost?
Perhaps even ghosts are more compassionate than people breathing warm air during the day, especially since this is one's own ghost.

"Third Brother is breathing! And the breathing is warm! He's definitely not a ghost!"

Peng Min, though small, was bold enough to step forward and check Peng Gang's breath, then exclaimed with delight.

"Is there anything to eat?"

This was the first thing Peng Gang said after adapting to his surroundings.

He hadn't eaten much when he was critically ill, and after lying in the coffin for a day and a half, he was starving.

"Yes! Yes! Yes!"

Peng Min took out a handkerchief to wipe away her tears and snot, then got up and walked towards the kitchen.

Peng Yi helped Peng Gang out of the coffin and found a bamboo stool for Peng Gang to sit down.

"The clan chief wants you to hand over the family's land deeds?"

Peng Gang took the tea that Peng Yi handed him and asked. His family owned seventeen mu of paddy fields, sixteen mu of dry sloping land, a fishpond, a water buffalo, two pigs and a litter of piglets, five mud-brick houses with complete doors and windows, and a half-mu vegetable garden in the yard. They were one of the wealthiest households in Qingfeng Village.

They were quite wealthy, but were from a small, collateral branch of the family with no close uncles or aunts, so it's no wonder that the main family had their eyes on them.

“I hid the land deed. They couldn’t find it, so they stayed at our house and wouldn’t leave. They kept pestering me to hand it over.”

I refused to hand it over, so they coaxed me into signing it, insisting on taking our family's nine mu of high-quality paddy fields at the village entrance as clan land.

They said that as long as we handed over these nine acres of paddy fields to the clan as clan land, the clan would provide for my and my sixth sister's food and clothing from then on.

Even Wang Baozhang, who came to mediate, couldn't stand it anymore and said a few words of fairness, and only then did they give up. Before leaving, they even took our family's Five-Purple Seven-Star Cabinet along with four official-hat chairs.

Still just a child, Peng Yi cried and rubbed the banana-leaf-shaped silver lock in his palm, tears of grievance streaming down his face. This silver lock was a gift from his uncles during his first birthday celebration.

Peng Gang also had a silver lock, but he was healthy when he was a child, and the silver lock was given to him by his maternal grandmother at his one-month celebration.

As far as I can remember, my uncles were all charcoal burners in Pingzai Mountain (Peng'ai Mountain). They made a living by burning charcoal and farming the mountain, and worked as laborers for others. Their lives were not well-off, but the silver locks they gave to their nephews were always very generous, as if they were afraid of making their nephews feel wronged.

It is evident that their family and their maternal grandparents' family have a very good relationship.

"Did you ask someone to send a message to your uncle?" Peng Gang asked.

"If they don't get the nine mu of top-quality paddy fields at the entrance of the village, their family won't let it go. They'll be back tomorrow."

Peng Gang is also quite young, only seventeen years old.

The way his family behaved was so awful; he and his father hadn't even been buried yet, and they were already moving furniture.

If things continue like this, perhaps tomorrow we'll tear down their doors and windows, steal their cattle and pigs, and not stop until we've completely devoured their family.

In rural clan disputes over protecting family property, the focus has never been on who is right, but rather on who has the most male members.

The family with more men, and the one with the stronger fist, is in the right.

There are indeed some reasonable and respectable families.

Only wealthy and scholarly families were qualified to discuss these matters.

For powerful and wealthy families, who already possess vast amounts of high-quality land and substantial assets, it would be a terrible loss to disrupt clan unity and damage their reputation and prestige for the meager assets of smaller members of the same clan.

But for ordinary farming families like the Peng clan of Qingfeng, where each person has less than two mu of land, the primary concern is survival, not civility and dignity.

Furthermore, the collateral branch clearly had a small population, so how could they accumulate so much land and prosper over six generations, while the main family's life declined day by day, gradually being overtaken by the collateral branch?

The main family has long been burning with jealousy towards the collateral branches. They naturally assume that the main family should be doing better than the collateral branches.

Now that there is an opportunity to swallow up the collateral branches along with their land and property, they will naturally not let go of this once-in-a-century opportunity.

Peng Gang's branch of the family is a single line of descent, with very few members; he doesn't even have a single uncle or paternal uncle.

Even if Peng Gang were to come back to life now, two half-grown boys and a girl would be no match for a group of adults blinded by land, property, and wealth.

To protect their family property, it seems that Peng Gang and his sister can only rely on their three maternal uncles.

The relationship between uncles and nephews in this era was closer and more reliable than in later generations.

After all, your uncles and aunts will fight you for the inheritance, but your maternal uncle will help you fight for it.

Thinking about this, Peng Gang felt that not having uncles or aunts might not be a bad thing.

Between brothers, there is either the closest of kin or the deepest enmity.

If he has uncles or aunts, it's very likely that not only his own family members but also his uncles and aunts are now trying to take advantage of his family's extinction.

"Before my father passed away, I secretly asked our family's servant, Wei Changgong, to go to Pingzaishan to deliver a message to my uncle and the others."

"But it's a good 260 or 270 li from our village to where my uncles live, and much of that is mountain road. Even if my uncles are good walkers, they won't be able to get there until the day after tomorrow," Peng Yi said.

Peng Gang felt both gratified and heartbroken by his younger brother's precociousness.

"Was the injury on your hand inflicted by someone from your own family?"

Peng Gang noticed the bruise on Peng Yi's left wrist, pulled up the sleeve of his hempen coat, and a small arm covered in bruises and claw marks was clearly visible to him.

Peng Yi, with tears in his eyes, simply nodded sadly without saying a word.

　Invest with confidence in works that have been internally approved.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)