Chapter 1748: Epidemic Prevention
That wasn't all. Mingled with the fragrance of soy milk, he caught a whiff of something foul—a stench Liu San had grown quite familiar with, the kind found only in stables where large livestock were kept. Beside the shop stood a small door; he pushed it open and discovered a cramped courtyard with a shed where a little donkey was tethered, contentedly eating hay from a trough. Not far from the trough sat a stone mill, still crusted with soy pulp and skins left over from that morning's grinding.
Clearly, the glistening tofu on the counter out front was made from soy milk ground right here, in this yard reeking of donkey dung.
Liu San reflected that, fortunately, making tofu required boiling the soy milk first. He was becoming ever more appreciative of the Administrative Office's decision to arrange "special provisions" for the Senators.
He was about to leave when, out of the corner of his eye, he glimpsed a figure tucked into the corner of the shed. Startled, he stumbled back several steps. "Who's there?"
His shout brought the auxiliaries swarming in from outside. "Who is it? Come out now!"
This commotion flushed out a trembling young girl from behind the livestock shed. Her face was smeared black with stove ash, her tangled hair flecked with straw.
One of the auxiliaries demanded loudly, "Who are you? Why are you hiding here?" These men were all former Quick Class runners whose fundamental skill was intimidating commoners. The girl immediately burst into tears, and in an instant her tears had washed the ash into crisscross streaks, leaving her with a comically splotched face.
The tofu shop owner and his wife came hurrying from the front counter to explain that this was their daughter.
"Your daughter?" The police officer handling registration frowned. "You said she had gone to her uncle's house and wasn't home."
"Well... perhaps... she just came back..." The owner was thoroughly flustered. He hastily produced a string of coins. "A small token of our appreciation—please, officers, take it for tea."
The policeman shook his head. "We don't take money. You are to cooperate honestly with the government's census. Your daughter was clearly at home, so why did you claim she wasn't? That's deceiving the government!"
The tofu shop owner bent low, cupping his hands repeatedly. "Yes, yes—a moment of foolishness on my part." Inwardly, he groaned. When the Australians had come to register households, he hadn't known the protocol. Fearing these overseas barbarians might take liberties with his daughter, he had hidden her in the livestock shed and lied that she wasn't home. To his surprise, these Australians were thorough—they had even inspected that foul-smelling shed! Now that the officers had caught his deception, they would surely demand a substantial bribe. A few hundred wen wouldn't satisfy them; clearly, he'd have to part with silver.
With a long-suffering expression, he fished a tael of silver from his money pouch and tried again to press it into the lead policeman's hand. Again it was refused. Liu San watched with cold amusement; the auxiliaries' eyes were practically blazing with frustration.
Liu San asked the owner to show him the well. The man was puzzled but, noticing that the Australian's runners had repeatedly declined money and shown no intent to cause trouble, he relaxed somewhat and led the way.
The well was in the kitchen behind the shop, fitted with a wooden curb—the first Liu San had ever seen. He had the owner draw a bucket of water and tested the temperature with his hand: quite cool, characteristic of high-quality water. Having no biochemical equipment with him, he could only resort to visual inspection, holding a glass test tube of the sample up to the sunlight: clear, transparent, with very little suspended matter. He tore a strip of litmus paper from his pouch and tested the pH—weakly alkaline. Overall, the water quality was decent. He thought: no wonder they say good tofu requires good water. In an era without running water, a fine well was indispensable.
Watching this flurry of activity, the owner had no idea what Liu San was doing, but dared not ask. Suddenly the Australian runner inquired:
"When was this well dug?"
"It's been in my family for generations..." The owner had no idea why the man was suddenly interested in the well. "This tofu shop has been in my family for five generations now." He seemed rather proud of that.
Liu San nodded. No wonder they could make tofu here.
"Your water is good," he observed. "How do the other households on this street get their drinking water?"
The owner didn't understand the question's purpose. "Some families have their own wells; those without draw water from the public wells or buy it."
Public wells were sometimes dug by the government, but more often funded by community contributions or wealthy families as charitable works. The water quality varied widely—some were good enough for brewing tea, while others were fit only for washing clothes and undrinkable otherwise.
The water for sale was hauled by water-carriers from the Pearl River's edge. Though river water was muddy, it was "living water," unlike the heavy, stagnant quality of most well water. After clarification with alum, it was ready for use. Even households with their own wells often bought river water if their well water was poor.
A tier higher were customers of spring water carted in from White Cloud Mountain or Yuexiu Hill—reserved for the city's grand teahouses, pleasure houses, and the residences of officials and gentry. This was far beyond the means of ordinary folk.
"Is the public well water around here any good?" Liu San asked. Traditional tofu-making had exacting requirements for water quality, so the shop owner possessed considerable expertise in judging it.
"The water from the public wells on Huifu Street is fine for washing and cooking. Just not for brewing tea."
Liu San nodded. If it wasn't suitable for tea, the mineral content was probably too high. Guangzhou lay on the banks of the Pearl River, with springs from the northern hills like Yuexiu feeding into the groundwater, making subsurface water plentiful. But shallow groundwater was easily contaminated—especially in ancient cities with poor drainage, where dense populations discharged wastewater that seeped into the earth. This was an important reason why some northern cities historically had to relocate each time they were rebuilt.
Guangzhou's abundant water supply made conditions somewhat better, and the Chinese custom of boiling water before drinking further reduced the risk. The water supply posed no critical hazard.
Returning from the kitchen to the shop front, Liu San noticed that the young girl from earlier had washed her face and tidied her hair. She was now filling out the household registration form. He glanced over: her features were still youthful, perhaps fourteen or fifteen years old. Growing up in a tofu shop, she had likely consumed more protein than most, for her skin was fair and delicate, her countenance plump and pleasing. For some reason, she reminded him of the son he had left behind in Lingao, and then of Xuan Chun. A wave of emotion stirred in his heart.
After several days accompanying the census teams through the city, Liu San had formed a rough picture of Guangzhou's public health situation. A fuller understanding would require compiling the data once the census teams finished their work. So he returned to his office.
The Guangzhou Special Municipality had yet to establish a Bureau of Health. He had come to Guangzhou under the title of "Special Commissioner of the Livelihood and Labor Ministry's Health Administration." His office was temporarily housed in Lin Baiguang's Comprehensive Governance Office.
Back at his desk, Liu San began organizing the information he had gathered, particularly his field observations. In his assessment, Guangzhou's public health was seriously deficient. Yet despite these dismal conditions, the materials assembled by the Grand Library contained no record of any "great pestilence." Could it really be that people in ancient times, having grown up in such wretched environments, had developed stronger resistance?
He summoned Jia Jue for consultation. Jia Jue explained that every year during the hui nan tian—the damp, muggy "returning south" season—there would be a "seasonal epidemic" in the city, claiming many lives. In summer, there would also be what was called fa sha—heatstroke. But since the dead were mostly the poor, few people took notice. Small-scale outbreaks were so commonplace throughout the city as to be unremarkable. In other words, in this timeline, an epidemic that killed a few hundred people wouldn't even register as newsworthy.
Liu San wanted to inquire more thoroughly, but Jia Jue was no physician and couldn't provide much detail. He suggested that if Liu San wished to learn more, he could consult the medical officials of the prefectural and county Medical Bureaus.
The Medical Bureau served as both the local medical administration and the government hospital. In prefectural offices, the director was called the Dianke; in counties, the Xunke, with various medical staff under them. Being a government institution, the common folk simply called them "medical officials."
Since the Tang and Song dynasties, China had maintained a tradition of government-run medical services at the local level. Every Ming-era county had a "Medical Bureau," which on one hand handled medical administration and provided publicly funded care for yamen officials and runners, and on the other treated commoners and even made house calls. When Hai Rui served as magistrate of Chun'an, he wrote a document called Articles of Reform on reorganizing government functions and improving work ethic. Under the heading "Regular Practice for Medical Officials," he recorded "four physicians."
Guangzhou Prefecture was a major crossroads and the provincial capital. The prefectural and county Medical Bureaus together employed over a dozen medical officials. Liu San had read in the Urban Works Department's reference materials that these officials did a brisk business. Aside from the directors—the Dianke and Xunke—none of the medical personnel received any salary; their income came entirely from fees charged to commoners.
Despite the lack of pay, competition for these positions was fierce, sometimes requiring bribes to secure the post. Hai Rui's Articles of Reform also noted: "Medical officials examine symptoms and pulses, identify drug properties, for the benefit of all who fall ill in the county; recently many have been paying silver to obtain the post, seeking to profit from assignments..." In fact, aside from the directors, no one had a regular salary—all income came from treating patients. Because commoners generally trusted "government hospitals" more than itinerant quacks, the medical officials enjoyed thriving practices. But truly skilled physicians disdained the position, and thus the abilities of most medical officials required no further explanation.
When Liu San first arrived in the city, he had met with the prefectural and county medical officials to assess whether they could be organized into a rudimentary Chinese-medicine hospital. He had discussed some essential texts every physician was expected to know, and several had stared at him blankly, unable to utter a single response. One hadn't even read the Mai Jing—the Classic of the Pulse—and didn't know basic pharmacology. But immediately after the meeting, some had sent him several volumes of The Yellow Emperor's Classic of the Pure Girl's Heart and similar erotic treatises. Others had presented him with aphrodisiacs... Liu San found all this quite distasteful.
Fortunately, a few among them possessed genuine knowledge. Lin Baiguang had them summoned for further discussion.
(End of this chapter)