Chapter 2130 - Priority
Qiuchan roughly explained the situation of her maiden family and her husband's family to him again, in case he let the cat out of the bag when the bandit runts came to question them.
"It's just that while this student is lodging here, although we have the nominal status of uncle and niece, there is still a distinction between men and women..." Yi Haoran began to worry again.
"Sir... don't worry. When the streets are a bit safer tomorrow, this servant still has to ask someone to bring a message to report the death..."
Only then did Yi Haoran remember that Qiuchan's late husband was still lying in the coffin in the main hall. He hurriedly stood up, took three incense sticks from the table, prayed silently in front of the coffin, and inserted the incense.
Since a funeral was to be held, Qiuchan's relatives would naturally come to help—for a middle-class family like this, even in times of war, even if they couldn't keep the vigil for the full forty-nine days, they had to at least wait until after the twenty-first day to send the funeral off. During this period, there would always be people accompanying the spirit and keeping vigil in the house. His staying here as an "elder" to help with the funeral would not arouse suspicion, nor would it attract gossip about a "lone man and lone woman" staying in the same room.
Thinking of this, he couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief.
Once he relaxed, drowsiness set in. Qiuchan said, "Uncle, please go to the study in the back to rest..."
"No need, no need," Yi Haoran waved his hand. "Niece, please suit yourself. I will just rest here for a while." He resolutely refused to go to the back room.
Qiuchan knew he was avoiding the taboo of "lone man and lone woman," and said, "The spirit is still resting here, Uncle..."
"It doesn't matter." Yi Haoran looked at the black lacquer coffin under the faint lamplight and said, "I have been on the battlefield and crawled out of piles of dead bodies. Lying here is my niece-in-law's Dharma body. There is nothing to be afraid of, and I have no taboos about this. Consider it as me keeping vigil and accompanying the spirit for my niece-in-law."
Qiuchan secretly praised him as an upright gentleman. Concerned about her child sleeping soundly in the back room, she went to the back.
Yi Haoran called her back again: "If that thief left any items behind, be sure to keep them well. Bury any incriminating items or burn them when making a fire for cooking tomorrow."
"This servant understands."
After giving his instructions, Yi Haoran leaned his head against the wooden partition and immediately fell into a deep sleep.
With Zhu Quanxing taking the main force away, Xie Erren felt a bit empty inside. After all, the pen was not as substantial as the gun. And in his view, this mere company of garrison troops was a bit too few.
"One doesn't appreciate how hard-won a stable life is when staying in the rear; only at the front line does one realize it," Xie Erren lamented as he looked at this Wuzhou city after the calamity.
However, in front of the Senators or naturalized citizens, Xie Erren appeared "calm and confident." He set up a temporary Military Control Commission in the Wuzhou Prefectural Yamen and immediately began his work.
Before setting off, Xie Erren had received the seal of the "Wuzhou Municipal Government" and had specially carved a large personal seal, which he was itching to stamp. He immediately instructed people to prepare notices to reassure the public.
This notice to reassure the public was compiled by the Civil Affairs Department. It was divided into upper and lower parts. The upper part was a fixed-format fill-in-the-blank text, using semi-classical sentences, stating that the Senate was "consoling the people and punishing the guilty," "restoring the Great Song," and asking the people to "peacefully attend to their professions and not panic or flee," and so on. When using it, one just filled in the specific city name.
The lower part was blank, intended for various administrative orders filled in by the local Military Control Commission according to the local situation. In fact, these administrative orders were largely the same, with content nothing more than implementing curfews, checking household registration, calling for the surrender of scattered and routed soldiers, and setting deadlines for officials and yamen runners and other "former public servants" to report, etc.
Xie Erren had practiced calligraphy in the old timeline, and his large regular script with a brush was passable enough to be seen by others, so he didn't bother the naturalized citizens or retained personnel to copy it. He wrote it out right then and there, admired it for a while, and then squarely stamped the two large seals of "Wuzhou District Office" and his "Wuzhou District Director Xie."
"Immediately find someone to copy fifty copies exactly like this, stamp them, and hand them to the Rehabilitation Bureau. Tell them to send people to post them all over the city!"
After issuing the proclamation, the next step became actual work. His secretary had already converted the Wuzhou Prefect's trial desk into his office desk, placing official document paper and stationery on top, just waiting for him, the "Great Song Wuzhou Prefect," to issue orders.
Speaking of work, the most urgent task right now was naturally rehabilitation. However, rehabilitation work was incredibly complex. The County-Level Administrative Leadership Manual compiled by the Civil Affairs Department alone listed a huge pile of affairs such as providing relief to disaster victims, repairing the city, reorganizing municipal administration, checking household registration, rectifying public security, stabilizing the market... and so on.
Various requests for instructions and reports poured continuously into the main hall of the Wuzhou Prefectural Yamen, which he used as an office. Wuzhou was not like Guangzhou, which had a large team of Senators. At this peripheral node of the Two wide strategy, the myriad of tasks could only be dumped on Xie Erren alone to decide. From a good perspective, he was a "dictator"; from a bad perspective, for anyone to face this myriad of rehabilitation administrative tasks alone, maintaining composure was quite difficult.
Moreover, the naturalized citizens under Xie Erren, counting a company of the Fubo Army plus his lifestyle secretary and orderlies, totaled only one hundred and thirty people. There were only twenty-something cadres who had truly received administrative training. It was quite a situation of stretching one's coat to cover the patches.
He remembered hearing in the government affairs study class before departure that administrative work must distinguish between priorities. What is "urgent" and what is "deferred" has no fixed standard; it depends entirely on the specific situation faced by the administrative head at the time.
What was the priority for Wuzhou? Xie Erren thought about it. There were many things to do, but the most important was maintaining social order stability.
Unlike the bloodless opening of Guangzhou, although Wuzhou successfully prevented the city-burning fire, many places in the city still suffered from looting and arson by rogue soldiers. A large number of houses were destroyed, and there were extremely many displaced people. Dragging sons and daughters, supporting the old and carrying the young, they crowded the streets and temples. Not only were they hungry and tired, but they were also prone to causing epidemics and various public security problems. Especially hiding among them were many routed soldiers who had taken off their uniforms—this was a major hidden danger to social stability and had to be resolved as soon as possible.
Changes: "Two wide" -> "Two Guangs" (referring to Guangdong and Guangxi)
Xie Erren pondered again and again and listed three "priorities."
First was cleaning up and providing relief to refugees, maintaining public security, and ensuring social stability; this was the priority for stabilizing the people's hearts and needed no further explanation.
Second was repairing city defense facilities to ensure the city's safety. After Wuzhou was besieged, the city walls were dilapidated, and the garrison left to him was not large. Even if the Ming army was unable to counterattack for the time being, strict precautions had to be taken against surrounding bandits taking the opportunity to loot. In particular, there was a potential danger in the West River basin: the Eight-Row Yao Uprising. Zhu Mingxia rushing back to Zhaoqing with the main force of the 1st Brigade was precisely for this reason. During the Yao people's uprising at Dateng Gorge in the seventh year of Tianshun, the leader Hou Dagou once led seven hundred people in a night raid on Wuzhou, rushing into Wuzhou city, killing Provincial Administration Commissioner Song Qin and capturing Commander-in-Chief Chen Jing. Their combat power could not be underestimated.
Third was restoring Wuzhou's internal and external transportation, allowing Wuzhou, this commercial logistics center of the Two Guangs, to operate again. Wuzhou was located at the junction of the Two Guangs, at the confluence of the West River, Xun River, and Gui River. Since ancient times, it had been the throat of Guangdong and Guangxi, the transportation hub of Lingnan, and the "water gateway" of Guangxi, extending in all directions. It was said to "hold the key to Western Gui and connect to the blessed land of Eastern Yue." It controlled the floodgates of the West River, this golden waterway. Although the war was currently raging, as long as the fighting subsided slightly, this golden waterway would circulate.
However, these three things all involved the issue of grain and money. It was just that Wuzhou's grain reserves had suffered great losses, especially the private grain reserves of rice merchants, which suffered heavy losses after several "requisitions" and looting. Most of the public treasury's grain reserves had been snatched away. The Planning Agency's special search team was cleaning up and taking inventory of exactly how much money and grain remained; the specific figures would not be known for a few days.
Asking Joint Logistics for grain was unrealistic. Joint Logistics itself was limited by transport capacity in transporting grain from Sanshui to Wuzhou, and grain reserves were tight. Not "procuring grain locally" from Wuzhou now was considered support for his work.
I inevitably have to operate on the local old money again and ask them to be "charitable" once more, Xie Erren thought.
Having made up his mind, he immediately called for Zhao Fengtian.
"Go notify the people from the Rehabilitation Bureau. Tell them to meet here at 1 PM."
"Yes!" Zhao Fengtian turned to leave, but Xie Erren called him back and asked:
"Is Xu Ke still in the city?"
"Chief Xu is interrogating prisoners in the prisoner-of-war camp outside the city; he is not in the city."
"Send someone to invite him to have dinner with me tonight and discuss some matters!"
Actually, he didn't have any special matters to discuss with Xu Ke. It was just that this was the first time Xie Erren was presiding over work and administration alone. With no other Senators around, he felt somewhat unsure.
Although Xu Ke was from a navy background, he was a soldier after all. He could be asked to offer his views on Wuzhou's defense and security.
Three cobblers equal a Zhuge Liang. There's no mistake in brainstorming, Xie Erren thought.
At this moment, in a ruined temple outside the city, Xu Ke was secretly meeting with Luo Yangming.
Luo Yangming had been called out of his shop by someone sent by Xu Ke under the pretext of "handling rehabilitation affairs." Everyone in his family broke a sweat for him: working for the "Deputy Masters" had never ended well since ancient times. It was hard to say if he might lose his life.
At this moment, the abbot's room in the ruined temple was harmonious. After seeing "Lone Wolf," Xu Ke praised him severely. This made Luo Yangming very embarrassed—he had been away from the "Green Zone" for a long time and was somewhat unaccustomed to Lingao's rhetoric.
"...I won't say any more superfluous words. your commendation will come down from the Center very soon. Actually, compared to this commendation order, your contribution to Wuzhou will be remembered and praised by people even decades or centuries later," Xu Ke said. "What do you plan to do for the next step of work?" He looked into the eyes of this middle-aged merchant. "The Center has given me the authority to handle things on the spot. If you want to go back, I can arrange it for you: whether returning to Lingao or going anywhere under the Senate's rule—such as your hometown Sanshui—it's all fine. You don't need to worry about moving, housing, and work. If you want to continue doing business, we can help you open a shop; if you want to stay and work locally, I can also arrange it."
Luo Yangming shook his head: "I don't want to go back. Going to a place like Sanshui will only increase sadness. Besides, A-Tao is not willing to go back either."