Chapter 1363 - The Silkworm Farmers

Having settled the matter, Zhao Yingong immediately instructed his people to return to the estate. He ordered someone to go at once to the leaf dealers around Hangzhou to buy "forward leaves." As for the fifty thousand taels, he also instructed that a bank draft from Delong be prepared. He realized that the idea he had given the Prefect would inevitably cause an uproar in Hangzhou. However, public anger would no longer be directed at him. He just had to wait to collect raw silk and cocoons from the Famine Relief Bureau.

Shen Kaibao stood at the stern of his boat, working the yuloh oar with lethargic strokes. It was noon, without a breath of wind. The willow branches along the embankment drooped lazily onto the water's surface.

The Qingming solar term had already passed, yet the leaves on the willow branches had only just unfurled a tiny bit. The tender green leaves, still slightly yellow, seemed unable to withstand the early spring chill, curling up and refusing to spread open.

Seeing these listless new leaves, Shen Kaibao felt cold rise within him even more sharply. He wore a tattered cotton padded jacket made more than a decade ago when harvest years were good. From then until now, the harvests seemed never to have been good again.

The weather grew colder year by year. Shen Kaibao still remembered that when he was young, by Qingming the trees were already full of green leaves, and one could go out to row or work the fields wearing only a thin lined jacket. Now, it snowed in the third month, and even after Qingming one couldn't take off the padded jacket.

"Truly, even the heavens have changed!" Shen Kaibao said in his heart, coughing and spitting a thick glob of phlegm into the river. The water looked cold and deep. Just looking at it made one shiver.

The tips of the fist-like branches were all clustering with tender green leaves barely larger than fingernails. Both sides of the embankment now bore dense rows of mulberry trees. Last year's drought had lasted from the sixth month to the tenth without a drop of rain. Farmers stomped their feet in anxiety. Fortunately, there were many rivers and ponds in Jiangnan. Families with plenty of labor and draft oxen could barely sustain their fields by working the waterwheels desperately. Shen Kaibao had seen with his own eyes a man from a neighboring village, with thighs as thick as tree stumps, vomit blood from exhaustion at the waterwheel and die after being helped home.

As for families with weak labor, poorly dug ditches, or fields far from water, their cries to heaven went unanswered. They could only watch helplessly as the flowering rice paddies shriveled patch by patch, turning to withered straw. When autumn came and the tax collectors and bailiffs descended, forcing them to pay grain taxes and rent, selling houses and land, selling wives and children—still they couldn't pay the Iron-Clad Rent and Imperial Grain Tax. Families were broken, fleeing their tenancies, jumping into rivers, hanging themselves...

It wasn't that Shen Kaibao hadn't seen such things before—it was just that in recent years they had become more common and terrifying. Around the New Year, every time he rowed out, he often saw corpses floating in the river, adults and children alike. He knew they were people who couldn't survive and had thrown themselves in. Some families he had originally thought had "thick foundations" had now fallen to such ends. The oil and salt shop in town where he always bought goods had suddenly collapsed this year. When Shen Kaibao went there today, dozens of people were gathered around the boarded-up storefront, wailing and cursing—all families who had deposited money at the counter hoping for a little interest. He heard the shopkeeper committed suicide because business was bad and creditors were at the door, forcing him into a corner.

Seeing all this, Shen Kaibao felt he was still lucky. Last year's raw silk market had been good, and his family had managed to dodge catastrophe relying on silk earnings, avoiding such a fate. But even so, he had mortgaged several fen of the family's mulberry land to Master Cao in town just to send away the ferocious tax collectors.

Master Cao was the "richest man" in town. Having passed the xiucai exam in his early years, he handled tax collection for the surrounding area and occasionally lent a little money to country folk, with interest half a percent or one percent lower than average. He spoke kindly to country people too. For weddings or funerals, if a farmer he dealt with contributed a few small coins as a token share, the whole family could go "eat meat rice"—everyone said Master Cao was a benevolent man.

Benevolent or not, over the past twenty-some years his family prospered more and more. Farmers who couldn't repay him and had to sell their land grew in number. Master Cao had become a landlord sitting on several hundred mu. Besides planting mulberry, he had also obtained a "Ministry License" and started a raw silk trading business in town, his family enterprise flourishing ever more.

Thinking that he had to repay Master Cao's principal and interest before Mid-Autumn Festival filled Shen Kaibao with worry. If this year's "silkworm harvest" was good, perhaps he could pay it off. If not, he could only beg Master Cao for an "extension." But with that 2.5% monthly interest compounding month by month, it would become harder and harder to clear. In the end, he would have to give the land to Master Cao to settle the debt.

Thinking of this, he could only pray for the Silkworm Goddess to open her eyes and grant a good harvest, letting him smoothly pay off the debt so the country folk could catch their breath.

However, before he could finish that thought, he remembered the matter of arranging a wedding for Sanqing at year's end. Sanqing was already twenty-three. Being without a wife at that age was something to be sneered at in the countryside. The matchmaker had mentioned a suitable girl from a neighboring village, and he and his wife both liked her—but where would the betrothal gifts and wedding expenses come from?

Thinking down this path, endless burdens weighed on his heart one by one. A farmer's life was truly bitter; he sighed, never a moment of relief. He was already over fifty—at this age, though he could still row a boat and work the fields, he was already half-buried in the earth. Farmers suffered; living past fifty was already a decent lifespan. Endure a few more years, then stiffen the legs and care about nothing. But Ah Qing and Sanqing's days were still long.

Some parts of the rice paddies had already been tilled, exposing dry, cracked clods of mud. But vast swathes remained untouched. The farmers cultivating these lands had either fled or starved to death. Many wanted to plant but had neither seeds nor oxen, and could only sigh gazing at the fields.

Compared to the desolate paddies, the vast mulberry groves seemed vibrant. Though the tender leaves were currently only fingernail-sized, soon massive amounts of new leaves would sprout from these trees. When the white silkworms "went up the mountain" to spin cocoons, his life would catch its breath again. Raw silk prices had been good these years, and his family had their own mulberry trees. If the silkworm rearing went smoothly, perhaps he could pay off Master Cao's debt and have some surplus. As for Sanqing's marriage, they'd take it one step at a time—if truly necessary, they'd buy a refugee girl as a wife. Though not respectable and lacking a maternal family, at least it was cheaper than a formal wedding.

Shen Kaibao calculated as he rowed into a branch river. The village was there, a distant cluster of houses where his family had lived for generations. The rice fields distributed among the crisscrossing waterways outside had been tilled, some planted with miscellaneous grains. Because his village consisted mostly of households raising silkworms and reeling silk, they hadn't suffered too heavily in last year's drought and could barely scrape by.

Now white smoke curled from the roofs. Shen Kaibao tied the boat to the river jetty by his house. On the threshing ground in front, the women and children of the family—his wife, daughter-in-law, and grandson—were busy scrubbing "round trays" and "silkworm mats."

These sericulture tools, hidden in the woodshed for a year, had to be taken out, scrubbed, and repaired before incubation. Not just his family—at every house in the village, women and children were doing the same. Their chatting and laughter seemed to add a touch of joy to the cold spring.

Yet their faces were all ashen—since last autumn, no one had eaten a full meal. Some families struggled to maintain even two meals of thin gruel a day, supplemented with hard-to-swallow bran cakes. Their clothes were tattered too—little better than beggars.

Yet everyone's spirits weren't bad. The village had escaped total destruction in last year's disaster. While the villagers rejoiced, they became even more determined on their path of sericulture and silk reeling. As long as the silkworms ripened, this difficult year could pass again—in today's world, for a family to survive in peace was the greatest fortune.

No sooner had Shen Kaibao returned home than people from the village came over one after another. Because he had a decent boat and was a relatively "prominent" figure in the village, he also ran a "packet boat" service. Every few days he rowed into town to sell local vegetable specialties for villagers and buy items the village couldn't produce—oil, salt, sauce, vinegar, farm tools. If anyone needed to go to town, they could hitch a ride.

Because of last year's disaster, villagers were tight on money and bought nothing unless absolutely necessary. His "business" was very slow. But this trip to town was to buy "mat-pasting paper" for sericulture, something every household absolutely had to use. Everyone also wanted to hear the latest news, so quite a few people came. A circle formed on the threshing ground of Shen Kaibao's house.

This was also Shen Kaibao's proudest moment. He counted as the person with the broadest horizons and most experience in the village; everyone wanted to hear him speak. But this time he hadn't heard much news in town because, to save money, he hadn't dared enter the teahouse to order even a bowl of the cheapest tea dust and listen to the "educated" people chat. He had only wandered the streets and talked to shopkeepers he dealt with regularly.

The news he brought back wasn't good: the market was bad. Rice prices had risen to three qian per dou, and even miscellaneous grains were nearing one qian. Several more shops in town had collapsed. Cloth in the town cloth shop was selling so cheaply yet still couldn't move a few bolts. The shopkeeper sighed continuously—rumor had it that cloth from Songjiang couldn't be sold either; cotton farmers and weavers were starving and fleeing...

"If one had a little money, buying a few bolts to keep would be truly economical..." Shen Kaibao was very envious.

"Farmers are starving to death; where would they have money to buy cloth?"

"No matter how cheap, we can't afford it."

"Just having a bite to stay alive is enough. Right now, even going bare-assed we have to endure."

"It all depends on this year's silkworm harvest," Neighbor Si-duo interjected. "As long as the harvest is good, buying a few bolts of cloth after selling won't be anything."

(End of Chapter)