Chapter 1754 - Measures
"I am neither the local magistrate nor a judge," Liu San said. "If you have grievances, go to the city and find the municipal government. There will be someone there to receive you..."
The girl who called herself He Xiaoyue shook her head. "It is true this servant has grievances. But unless your lordship rescues me now, I shall never escape this sea of bitterness."
Liu San studied He Xiaoyue closely. She was very young—no more than sixteen or seventeen. From scrambling through thornbushes, her hair and clothes were disheveled, her dress torn in several places, her face scratched with bloody lines. He guessed she must have escaped from the Chastity Hall—otherwise, how would she know he was "Court Physician Liu"?
"Did you run away from the Chastity Hall?"
"Yes!" He Xiaoyue replied. "I beg your lordship's great mercy—take me back to the city! Please save me."
The Investigative Squad runner guiding them whispered, "My lord, this won't do. She's a chaste widow from the Chastity Hall—it's absolutely unthinkable for her to have sneaked out. If word gets around that your lordship carried her into the city, people will say you abducted a woman. It will stain your official reputation..."
Liu San considered this reasonable. He had just inspected Puji Hall on official business; if he now appeared in the city with a young widow in tow, what would people say? Certain rumors had to be avoided. He was about to decline when—
He Xiaoyue, seeing him hesitate, shuffled forward on her knees. "My lord, you are a living bodhisattva who saves the suffering. Please save me! If I stay any longer, I have no way out but death." She threw herself down and wept loudly.
Liu San's heart softened at her piteous crying. For this girl to have run away and hidden herself in these terrifying burial grounds, she must be nursing an enormous grievance. He asked, "Is your family in the city?"
"Yes, but I cannot go home." He Xiaoyue's face was bleak. "I beg your lordship to take me back to the city. Once I'm inside the walls, I can find somewhere to go—your lordship need not concern himself further."
Though the city was not far off, this region was like a lawless frontier; bandits robbed travelers even in broad daylight. A lone woman traveling here would be a lamb walking into a tiger's den.
Liu San ordered the guards to bring her along. The party returned to the city, and he directed that He Xiaoyue be taken to temporary detention at the holding cells—the former "Ban Fang" jail—until a suitable place could be found to send her.
After a full day's exertion, he was thoroughly exhausted. Wang Sangou had supper delivered. Liu San ate hurriedly, then walked over to Lin Baiguang's office. The lights were blazing inside; just as he arrived, the door opened and a stream of assimilated cadres filed down the steps, with Lin Baiguang seeing them off at the doorway—apparently a meeting had just concluded. Spotting Liu San, Lin Baiguang waved him inside.
Liu San noticed the puffiness around Lin's eyes—he clearly hadn't been getting much sleep. "Even with all this work, you need rest. Sleep deprivation and fatigue can cause sudden death."
Lin Baiguang nodded but said little more. It was Liu San's first visit to his office. A three-bay eastern wing: the bright middle room served as a conference room; the south bay, behind a bamboo curtain, was apparently the bedroom; the north bay was his office. Lin Baiguang ushered him into the office. Kerosene lamps burned brilliantly; piles of documents, marked with labels of various colors, covered both large and small desks, the bookshelves, and even the brick floor.
Noting Liu San's gaze, he smiled wryly. "Right now, I'm more or less acting mayor. All the miscellaneous business lands on my desk. So—tell me. After traipsing around these past few days, what are your impressions?"
"The burden is heavy. There's far too much to be done." Liu San opened his notebook and summarized his observations and conclusions.
First: dredge and de-silt the waterways, and clear the city's garbage. This was already part of the municipal government's established policy, but Liu San nonetheless listed it first because the problems he'd witnessed were simply too severe.
"...Based on my investigations, every major virulent infectious disease is already present here. The weather is gradually warming; we're about to enter the peak transmission season. Once an outbreak erupts, we have no countermeasures except quarantine camps. So the only thing we can do is focus on prevention: clear out the ditches and garbage, improve sanitation, eliminate intermediate hosts. Garbage heaps and drains are natural breeding grounds for mosquitoes, flies, and rats. They also contaminate groundwater—and most of the city's drinking water still comes from wells." Liu San continued, "I've made a preliminary survey. Overall, the groundwater quality is still acceptable, and even those who drink river water know to purify it with alum and boil it. But the destitute have none of those means—especially the several tens of thousands of Tanka boat-people living on the Pearl River just outside the walls. Even though they're not inside the city, they're very close; an epidemic among them will easily spread inward. If conditions permit, I recommend establishing public wells with assured water quality to supply the urban population."
Lin Baiguang nodded but offered no comment.
"Second: clear out the cemeteries and coffins both inside the city and in the nearby suburbs. Right now there are cemeteries and mortuary lodges everywhere, inside and outside the walls—many temples store coffins awaiting burial, some just a wall or a street away from shops and residences. I've seen coffins so old and rotted that corpse-fluid is seeping out. The situation in the charity graveyards is even worse—tombs are literally piled atop one another, and in places the ground level of the cemetery has risen noticeably above the surrounding terrain. Residents nearby report that whenever it rains, not only does foul water flow everywhere, but bones are washed into the streets and waterways. The environmental contamination is severe. Moreover, many shanty areas sit right next to these cemeteries—already high-density settlements with terrible sanitation. Once an epidemic takes hold there, it will be catastrophic."
Third: promulgate sanitation laws in Guangzhou as soon as possible—garbage removal, waste disposal, and food safety—laws that had been in effect on Hainan for years with excellent results. Liu San recommended that the same regulations be vigorously enforced in Guangzhou, with even greater stringency than on the island.
"Finally, we must establish an infectious-disease hospital as soon as possible and quarantine patients with virulent contagions. At present, almost no isolation measures exist. Except for lepers, who are expelled outside the walls—the only exception—every other type of infectious patient is left entirely to his own devices." Liu San added, "The infectious-disease hospital needs to be built quickly, and it needs to be large. One more thing," he said. "I visited Puji Hall today. There are serious problems there. Though charity work isn't my department, I feel we ought to take it over as soon as possible."
He recounted what he had seen and heard at Puji Hall, especially the over two thousand bolts of cloth in storage, urging that people be sent quickly to retrieve them.
"Puji Hall is rife with tangled relationships—a black nest of corruption. A thorough investigation should yield a significant quantity of recovered assets. That could fund the expenses of a new charitable institution."
Lin Baiguang heard him out and lit a cigar.
"Everything you've said is right. We are, as they say, 'waiting for a hundred things to be renewed.'" Lin Baiguang's expression was both excited and grave. "But what we're short of right now is people—people who can effectively implement our policies. So the meal of renovating Guangzhou can only be eaten one bite at a time."
Earlier that day, Lin Baiguang had held a coordination meeting with Liu Xiang and Mu Min. The household survey was progressing smoothly; it would take another two to three weeks to complete. At the moment, every cadre who had entered the city—and most of the military and police manpower, whether assimilated personnel from Hainan or newly incorporated clerks and runners—was committed to this task. The Guangzhou municipal government was barely managing to maintain public order, and that only with the assistance of the Fubo Army.
The shortage of cadres had become their foremost problem. In fact, the Guangzhou municipal government had not only utilized its own cadre corps but had also commandeered every cadre from the Qiongya Detachment not yet dispatched—after all, some counties in Guangdong still had not been occupied and absorbed, so cadres were temporarily stranded in Guangzhou.
Although some former personnel had been retained, neither in quality nor quantity did they come close to meeting the needs of the new municipal administration. Lin Baiguang therefore proposed holding a "Civil Service Recruitment Examination" in Guangzhou.
His reasoning was simple: if they waited for headquarters to transfer sufficient cadres from the existing administrative system, they'd be waiting forever. To satisfy the cadre requirements of the Guangzhou city government—and indeed of the entire province to come—they had to cultivate talent locally.
Ming-era Guangzhou might not have matched Jiangsu or Zhejiang in literary or examination culture, but it was still one of the most prosperous cities in China, and the proportion of literate inhabitants was probably higher than in most other regions. Lin Baiguang believed this segment of the population could be put to use: through open examinations, they could obtain a basic administrative staff.
"Using assimilated cadres from the Qiongya Detachment as backbone and mentors—guiding and training this new cohort—will be far easier than trying to reform the former clerks and runners, who are steeped in the corrupt habits of the old yamen. After all, new people start as blank slates. As long as we give them a good environment, they can grow in accordance with our needs."
Lin Baiguang believed that the quality of civil servants was primarily a matter of the overall environment. The old officialdom and the corps of clerks had been a vast dye-vat of corruption: honest people either eventually swam with the current or drowned in it. Even incorruptible ministers like Hai Rui or peerless generals like Qi Jiguang had been forced to adopt the maxim "A loyal minister must be more cunning than a traitor" just to preserve their positions, lives, and principles—wasting enormous energy and time.
The Senatorial Council's cadre corps was no spotless jade, but compared to the Ming bureaucracy, it was far cleaner and more efficient. Cadres cultivated in such an environment might not all become brilliant administrators, but at the very least they would be competent functionaries who could follow regulations and get the job done.
The sole problem was that the landing had taken place only recently; the majority of the populace was still "watching to see how long the red flag can fly." It would take some solid accomplishments before people truly understood what "a change of heaven and earth" meant—and were thus attracted to work for this new regime. Whether motivated by genuine desire to serve the people or simply by personal advancement, once they embarked on this path, they would inevitably become part of the Senatorial Council's cadre corps.
"Dr. Liu, this is the consensus reached at our meeting today. Going forward..."
(End of Chapter)