1848 Great Qing Charcoal Burners

Chapter 11 Rural Areas of Guixian County
In the evening, Peng Xianzhong, the clan head from the same branch, finally managed to gather the nine strings of cash compensation and delivered it to Peng Gang's home.

The four brothers from the main branch of the family looked as if they had eaten shit. Reluctantly, they followed behind Peng Xianzhong, returning the furniture and six piglets that had been forcibly taken away to their rightful owners.

The unit of currency in the Qing Dynasty was "wen," with one thousand wen equaling one string or one guan, the same as in the previous dynasty.

In the early Qing Dynasty, it was stipulated that one string of coins (1,000 coins) was equivalent to one tael of silver, and one coin was worth one li of silver.

During the early and mid-Qing period, there was no large-scale outflow of silver, and the Qing Dynasty remained the country with the largest trade surplus in international trade.

Therefore, the exchange rate between silver and copper coins remained relatively stable for a long period of time. Before the Yongzheng Emperor, one tael of silver was equivalent to about 800 copper coins, and in the mid-Qianlong period, one tael of silver was equivalent to about 900 copper coins.

The collapse of the exchange rate between silver and copper coins occurred during the Daoguang era. In the early years of Daoguang's reign (1820), the exchange rate between silver and copper coins could still be maintained at a level where one tael of silver could be exchanged for about one thousand copper coins.

By the time of the Opium War in 1840, one tael of silver could be exchanged for 1,600 to 1,700 copper coins.

During the Xianfeng era, the price of silver soared, with one tael of silver being exchanged for two thousand two or three hundred copper coins.

The actual exchange rate will vary depending on the copper, lead, zinc, and tin content of the coins. Generally speaking, coins with a copper content of around 60% are more valuable than those with a copper content of around 50%.

In 1848, in the Guangxi region, copper coins (containing about 50% copper) and tin coins (containing tin) had reached a point where it took around 2,000 coins to exchange for one tael of silver.

In Guangxi, especially in rural areas, people mainly use copper coins for transactions in their daily lives, and rarely have the opportunity to use silver.

Of course, there is one situation where silver must be used: when paying taxes.

Therefore, the high price of silver and low price of copper coins increased the burden on ordinary people, since they had to exchange copper coins for silver when paying taxes.

The family's circumstances in Qingfeng Village were neither good nor bad; they were not wealthy, and nine strings of cash were almost all the cash they could scrape together.

Meeting Peng Xianzhong's pleading gaze, he grabbed a string of heavy hanging coins from his grieving family members and threw them into his own bamboo basket.

Peng Gang showed no sympathy or pity whatsoever. They had brought this upon themselves; they were simply too heartless and too greedy.

Having received the money, Peng Gang kept his promise and had his ears and eyes completely covered. He was then chained up like two dogs in the back room to the eldest and fourth branches of his family.

The arrival of his three uncles brought Peng Gang peace of mind, and he was finally able to get a good night's sleep since arriving in this time and space.

The next morning, Peng Gang stretched and, for the first time, seriously appreciated the scenery of Qingfeng Village.

Qingfeng Village was still asleep in the veil of winter frost, and a line of dawn gradually broke through the distant sky, with the crowing of roosters piercing through the thin mist.

As the sun rises, the surrounding scenery becomes clear, and the white frost that formed at night gradually melts away in the warm spring sunshine.

To be honest, the scenery in Qingfeng Village is not beautiful. Apart from the five century-old yellow cedar trees standing at the entrance of the village and the feng shui trees planted on the nearby graves, it is difficult to see any decent trees.

The village was surrounded by barren land, but the lush greenery of Lotus Mountain to the west and north, bathed in the morning sun, was quite pleasing to the eye.

As for the buildings in Qingfeng Village, they are scattered, and it is rare to see even a few mud-brick houses with tiled roofs, let alone brick houses.

The houses in Qingfeng Village are mostly ugly, low-lying thatched huts, so fragile that they seem like they could be blown down by a strong wind.

These simple farmhouses, which are not much different from livestock sheds, are certainly not comfortable to live in.

These houses reminded Peng Gang of the temporary sheds his father built for his mother and younger brother in the back mountains in his previous life to avoid inspections for having more children than allowed.

As a child, he was ignorant and, out of curiosity, cried and insisted on living in the shed with his mother and his newborn brother.

He only stayed for two days before getting bitten by mosquitoes and dared not stay any longer.

The owners of these thatched huts that he sees now are destined to live in such appalling conditions for the rest of their lives.

Given the fragility of the small-scale peasant economy and the heavy burden of land rents and exorbitant taxes during the Qing Dynasty, for many people, the prospect of living a peaceful and stable life in such shacks was a luxury.

Most of them ended up as penniless, bankrupt vagrants who died of cold and hunger.

The only two small courtyards with blue bricks and black tiles in Qingfeng Village belonged to Zhou Fengzhang, a local Tujia landlord, and are the most respectable buildings in Qingfeng Village. One was for living, and the other was the Zhou family's ancestral hall.

It's hard to imagine that this is the wealthy village in Guixian County that Shi Da mentioned.

Peng Gang picked up a piece of dried sweet potato from the bamboo drying basket and put it in his mouth to eat.

"Brother, are we really going to Pingzai Mountain to make charcoal?"

The uncles were exhausted from traveling for days and were still sleeping. Peng Yi, who got up early, tiptoed over to Peng Gang and asked.

"Brother, don't you want to go?" Peng Gang asked.

Joining the God Worshipping Society and going to Pingzai Mountain to burn charcoal were his ideas, without consulting Peng Yi and Peng Min.

As the eldest brother, Peng Gang was like a father to his young son, and Peng Yi tacitly accepted Peng Gang as the head of the family, never objecting to any decision Peng Gang made.

“Wherever Third Brother goes, I will go; whatever Third Brother does, I will do. There must be a reason why Third Brother does these things,” Peng Yi said.

“Going to burn charcoal is better than being a son to the sixth branch of the family. They treat their own family members like that. If my fifth sister and I really go to their side, we definitely won’t have a good life.”

Peng Yi was quite satisfied with the result. At least now he had a reliable older brother and didn't have to live at the mercy of outsiders.

As a close relative who grew up under the same roof, Peng Yi had long noticed that Peng Gang's resurrection had changed him drastically, making him a completely different person from before.

In the past, Peng Gang didn't care much about anything other than studying, and he didn't have much of his own opinion.

Peng Gang is now not only decisive and capable of making decisions, but he also cooks for him and his fifth sister, giving him a sense of reliability and peace of mind.

This feeling was something only his parents could give him before.

Peng Yi, who was still young and naive, did not understand why Peng Gang had changed so much. Could it be that his third brother was really pulled back from the brink of death by the God that Mr. Feng mentioned?
"It's getting late. Let's gather some firewood and go to the kitchen to cook. Your uncles will be awake soon." Peng Gang patted Peng Yi's head, turned around, went to the woodshed, picked up a bundle of firewood, and headed to the kitchen.

After the funeral was completed and my father was buried, it was already the end of February.

The dead are buried, but the living must continue their lives as before.

Peng Gang prepared dry food and entrusted his third uncle Xiao Guowei and sixth uncle Xiao Guoda to stay and help take care of the house and his two younger brothers and sisters.

He himself, along with his maternal uncle Xiao Guoying, went to Honglianping in Pingzaishan to conduct an on-site inspection and assess whether the Honglianping mountain area was worth acquiring.

During the journey, Peng Gang asked Xiao Guoying curiously if she knew Xiao Chaogui.

Xiao Guoying said he knew Xiao Chaogui. Xiao Chaogui was a charcoal burner near Mengchong. He had joined the God Worshipping Society a long time ago. He was righteous, hot-tempered, daring, and liked to fight for justice. He was highly respected among the charcoal burners in the Mengchong area.

Peng Gang then asked if Xiao Guoying and Xiao Chaogui had any relationship, since they both shared the surname Xiao.

Xiao Guoying stated that there were many people with the surname Xiao from Xunzhou Prefecture, and that he and Xiao Chaogui were just coincidentally surnamed Xiao and had no relation to each other.

He worked in Tongguchong, a charcoal-burning mountain in Pingzaishan, which was a distance of seventy or eighty li from Mengchong. The two were busy with their own lives and it was difficult for them to have any contact.

The original owner had excellent physical fitness, but his leg strength was only average.

Most people in this era rarely had the opportunity to travel far. The original owner's activities during his lifetime were limited to the route from Qingfeng Village to Qishixu and from Qingfeng Village to Guixian County. It was a true three-point line life.

The straight-line distance between Pingzaishan Honglianping, where Peng Gang is now going, and the straight-line distance between Qingfeng Village and Guixian County is about the same.

However, the road from Qingfeng Village to Guixian County is mostly flat, and many sections are still official roads, so the journey is relatively peaceful.

The road from Qingfeng Village to Honglianping is mostly a mountain road, and bandits roam along the way.

The difficulty and danger of the two routes are self-evident.

When Peng Gang arrived at the village where Shi Jia lived, he was already panting heavily, his legs were trembling, and he felt as if his legs had lost all feeling and did not belong to him.

Peng Gang had to make a brief stop in that village to regain his strength.

The villagers were very wary of strangers from outside the village. They only allowed Peng Gang to enter the village after a villager recognized him.

This is quite normal, and it's not unique to those villages. The villages Peng Gang passed through along the way were all quite wary of strangers from outside.

This applies to villages controlled by the God Worshipping Society, local militias, or the Heaven and Earth Society, as well as ordinary villages. After all, we live in a society where people know each other.

In his previous life, when Peng Gang was a child, the villagers in his village would be wary of any unfamiliar faces entering the village.

In times of poor public security, being wary of strangers is a necessary survival strategy, and there is nothing wrong with that.

Shi Dakai had probably already joined the local militia in Guixian County, and it was common to see groups of two or three villagers carrying spears or even homemade guns swaggering by in the village.

Those villagers didn't have the thuggish habits of ordinary militia members; instead, they had the air of proper militiamen and were quite kind in their speech.

These villagers would later become either generals under Shi Dakai or his swordsmen.

The village has few paddy fields and most of its land is dry sloping land. The largest household in the village is the Shi family.

In terms of both heritage and wealth, the Shi family was inferior to the Zhou Fengzhang family, the wealthiest family in Qingfeng Village. The Shi family's residence consisted of both adobe houses and brick and tile houses, while the Zhou Fengzhang family, the wealthiest family in Qingfeng Village, had a courtyard and ancestral hall made entirely of brick and tile.

That village was indeed much poorer than Qingfeng Village.

However, the villagers in those villages were in a much better spirits than the villagers in Qingfeng Village.

The villagers in that village were noticeably more energetic and vibrant.

This may be related to the fact that the villagers in those villages have all joined the God Worshipping Society, and their spiritual lives have become richer.

To use a somewhat inappropriate analogy, the rural people of the Land of Light and the lower castes of the rural areas of Barat are both materially impoverished.

The reason why the rural people of the Land of Light, who have been instilled with the ideology of Judaism, have a significantly better mental outlook than the lower castes in the rural areas of Bharat is also because of this.

When we arrived at the Shi family courtyard, a large group of villagers were either praying in the courtyard or practicing martial arts with knives and guns and fiddling with stone locks to strengthen their bodies, creating quite a lively scene.

(End of this chapter)