Chapter 1329 - No Choice But to Accept

Song Zongmao's second purpose in coming was to inquire about Fangcao Di and consider whether to send his son to study in Lingao. He wasn't particularly blessed in terms of heirs—he had only two sons. The eldest wasn't good at studying; he couldn't pass the examinations and remained stuck as a mere student scholar. He could only stay home and help manage the family business. The second son was fourteen, had attended several years of private school, but Chengmai's prospects for advancement through the civil examinations were about the same as Lingao's—the chances of getting ahead through studying were very low. As for acquiring licentiate credentials, nowadays that brought no benefit of tax-exempt grain, and the Australians didn't value Ming credentials anyway. So he had conceived the idea of using this son as a "hostage" to curry favor with the Australians and strengthen his own position in the county—apparently the County Consultative Bureau would soon hold elections, and he might be selected.

Following the simplest logic of royal hegemony, Song Zongmao believed the Australians were currently in a phase of winning hearts and minds. If he sent his child to Fangcao Di, that would demonstrate complete commitment to the Australians' ship. They would surely view him differently—after all, even being a common soldier for the Australians meant your dependents would enjoy preferential treatment as superior people in the county.

Huang Shoutong knew little about Fangcao Di. He only knew that since Huang Ping had gone there, the boy's horizons had broadened considerably and he had learned much Australian knowledge. But as for what the school was actually like, he wasn't clear. So he immediately sent for Second Young Master Huang, who had just returned from Fangcao Di, to come and chat.

Huang Bingkun had been eavesdropping on the two men's conversation from behind a screen. Hearing that he was being sent for, he hurriedly slipped out, returned to the courtyard, and pretended to have just arrived.

Questions about Fangcao Di posed a dilemma for him. Simply criticizing it wasn't feasible—Father had questioned Huang Ping several times and knew something about the school. But praising it went completely against his inclinations, and besides, he had many criticisms of the Australian knowledge taught there and the school's general ethos.

However, judging from what Squire Song had revealed earlier, even if Fangcao Di were a pit of fire, he was prepared to have his child jump in.

Huang Bingkun could only focus his efforts on the question of school culture. That Australian knowledge was useful had already become common consensus, and Squire Song's true purpose was "sending a hostage to pledge loyalty"—from this perspective, it hardly mattered what the school taught.

Yet these local wealthy landowners were most concerned about "family tradition" and most fearful of their children learning bad habits in the outside world. Primitive accumulation in ancient society was extraordinarily difficult. Amassing wealth required desperately cutting everyday expenses. Many rural landlords' land and property had been built up bit by bit over several generations, one coin at a time, one jin of grain at a time—extremely hard-won. If a wastrel son appeared, years of hard work would be ruined in an instant.

Huang Ping was brought out as a prime example of this corruption, while the matter of female students wearing short skirts and harming public morals served as an added talking point.

Sure enough, after hearing this, Squire Song's face showed difficulty. Old Master Huang could only remain silent. These people all subscribed to the view that "virtue is greater than talent" and feared their children going astray above all else. Hearing Second Young Master Huang describe Fangcao Di as such a "morally corrupting" place, they couldn't help but hesitate.

After considerable deliberation, Squire Song asked many more questions about the school's living conditions, dormitories, and study environment. When he heard that thirty people slept in one room and several thousand ate meals together, his hesitation deepened. After that, he didn't bring up attending Fangcao Di again. Before long, he took his leave to rest in his room.

Huang Bingkun was secretly pleased: he had saved another innocent young man from falling into the Australians' clutches. These Australians seemed to possess some kind of enchanting drug—once anyone entered that school, each and every one underwent a complete personality change. Seeing that Squire Song had departed, he finally brought up the "real business" with his father, complaining about why he had disbanded the militia and contracted so much land and so many tenants to the Tiandihui.

"...Father, you're being muddle-headed! The reason our Huang family has always been the 'pillar' of Lingao is precisely because of this militia, isn't it? Now you've contracted out the land and disbanded the militia—isn't this cutting off your own claws and fangs? From now on, won't our family just be putty in the pirates' hands?"

Huang Shoutong looked at his highly agitated son. He understood this son's sense of loss very well. The eldest son of the Huang family had focused on studying since childhood and had no interest in martial arts; he had always helped the family manage its affairs. It was this second son who had accompanied him in drilling and leading the militia. Over the years, front and back, he had contributed considerable effort to the county's affairs—truly a young talent accomplished in both civil and military matters.

Since the county's conflict with the pirates had ended in failure and pirate power had gradually infiltrated Lingao, the Huang family's status had plummeted. The militia they had been so proud of—aside from being brought out for a few small-scale engagements during bandit suppression—had been reduced to organized conscript laborers. The family's influence in the county had declined continuously. Now they were no different from ordinary gentry. Though committee members of the County Consultative Bureau, they couldn't compare in influence to the Liu and Zhang families who had attached themselves early, and fell far behind even the Li Sunqian family who had attached at the same time but shown more enthusiasm.

Not to mention that the third son had died fighting the pirates. This mental knot—the Huang family members hadn't let go of it, and couldn't let go of it.

"Bingkun!" Huang Shoutong spoke in a low voice. "Do you think that with these few hundred militiamen, the Australians couldn't crush us like putty?!"

Huang Bingkun was momentarily at a loss for words.

"Tens of thousands of imperial troops were reduced to ashes in a single day. Do you really think the Huang Family Stockade has survived until now because the pirates are afraid of a few hundred militiamen?! I think you're the one who's muddle-headed!"

"Yes—" Huang Bingkun answered dejectedly. But he wasn't convinced. He pressed on: "The pirates are still shallow-rooted after all. Now that you've joined that whatever-it's-called Tiandihui, if the imperial court comes back someday, we'll be guilty of consorting with pirates."

"The court?" Huang Shoutong gave a bitter laugh. "You're still expecting the court to come back. The court lost two years ago, and it's never coming back. Right now, the court can barely hold itself together. How can it attend to a tiny frontier county ten thousand miles away? At the very least, the Australians are going to carve out an independent domain on this Hainan Island. Master Liu said recently that the Great Ming is probably terminally ill. Your father's learning is shallow—I can't tell whether the Ming is really going to collapse, but the Ming's Qiongzhou Prefecture is definitely going to collapse! Our family can't aim to become nobles of a new dynasty, but we can't go down together with the Ming either!"

He knew that the Second Young Master had been playing games of resistance against the Australians in private and had been constantly worried about this—fearing that any day the Australians might settle accounts, and then Huang Family Stockade would become a second Gou Family Manor.

The Gou family's destruction wasn't to be mourned, but the Australians' ruthless determination to "destroy this before breakfast" had secretly alarmed him. If it really came to that, there wouldn't be a single scrap left of the Huang family—just like what was now Gou Family Manor, without a trace of its former existence.

"...I know you can't let go of your third brother in your heart. But Third Brother is already dead. The Huang family must continue..." At this point, Huang Shoutong was weeping with age, which in turn set Second Young Master Huang to crying. Father and son embraced and wept together.

After the tears subsided and they wiped their eyes, Huang Shoutong announced another important decision. He had decided to send one of the eldest brother's children to study at Fangcao Di. Huang Bingkun knew this was his aged father's gesture of "pledging loyalty." No matter how ten thousand times unwilling he was, he couldn't object. After all, compared to the individual, the continuation of the family was the most important thing.

"But contracting out these several dozen tenant households is also a loss for us—they'll become the Australians' people after this. You know, Father, what's valuable here isn't the land, it's the people."

"The manor can no longer afford to support so many tenants." Huang Shoutong's face showed a trace of bitterness. "These several dozen households—when they tenanted our land, they were already half-starving. If we hadn't exempted them from rent, they would have starved long ago. That's why they were willing to fight to the death for us. Moreover, we used to do a lot for the county, so the county officials turned a blind eye to the imperial grain taxes. That's the only reason we could maintain things until now."

The Huang Family Stockade's current difficult economic situation no longer permitted them to continue the old ways. In the past, though the stockade had expended great resources to maintain a militia force quite disproportionate to its size, they had managed by having nearby villages help with "cooperative provisions," and when the government needed them, there were always benefits coming their way. That was how they had maintained things all along. Now, all these income sources had been completely cut off. To continue the militia, they would have to dip into the family's reserves.

Before, maintaining the militia not only protected the locality but even yielded a small surplus at year's end. Now, far from a surplus, they couldn't even cover maintenance costs. If they barely held on, the Huang family's ultimate fate would be bankruptcy and selling land—and the pirates were just waiting for that day. That was why Director Xiong had never rigidly required villages to abolish their militias, merely converting them directly to village militia. But in practice, each village's militia was frequently called upon for "labor duty" for the county. Though provisions needn't be self-supplied, having a large batch of able-bodied men taken away each time was still a burden. As a result, the larger the militia scale, the greater the labor duty burden. Simply due to changes in the social environment and economic pressure, villages had one after another abolished their militias and converted to the much smaller-scale village militia.

"Couldn't we reclaim wasteland like the Australians do..."

"With what seeds? What cattle?" Huang Shoutong said helplessly. "It's not as if we haven't tried reclaiming wasteland. But with just the manpower and resources of our manor, we can't build irrigation channels or improve the soil. What we reclaim is all thin land. Without the Tiandihui's seeds and fertilizers, how would it be any different from before? What use is it?"

Huang Bingkun had no choice but to accept. He knew what his father said was true. Land in their own hands was just dirt clods; in the Australians' hands, it became gold.

Yet Huang Bingkun's determination to resist the pirates hadn't changed. He wasn't resigned to watching Qiongzhou slowly transform into a new Australia. Therefore, he decided to lay low for the time being and wait for a new opportunity. There was no longer any force on Hainan Island that could oppose the pirates. He would have to seek one on the mainland.

(End of Chapter)