Chapter 2578 - Investigation (Part 5)
After passing the sanitation management examination and completing his training period, Yuan Shuzhi joined the Municipal Comprehensive Governance Bureau.
This bureau was essentially a merger of departments that in the old timeline had operated separately—sanitation, landscaping, municipal works, transportation, and more. During the Republic era, such an entity would have been called the Municipal Works Bureau, but the Guangzhou government had chosen this different name to avoid confusion with the Ming dynasty's "Ministry of Works."
Lin Baiguang served as the bureau's direct supervisor. Three months into Yuan Shuzhi's internship, impressed by his excellent performance, Lin assigned him his first real task.
That task was the urban public toilet renovation project.
Grand Prefect Liu Xiang had designated this initiative as the year's top priority for improving citizens' lives. In mid-17th century cities, public toilets either didn't exist at all or existed only in the crudest forms. Guangzhou's version of such facilities came in two varieties. The first was simple urinals placed at street corners for men. The second, slightly more refined, consisted of half-buried excrement vats in back alleys with stepping boards across their tops.
Neither type had any enclosure. Urinals typically had conical covers, while the excrement vats sported reed-mat canopies—not for privacy, but to keep rainwater out. Diluted waste meant lower-quality night soil, which harmed the profits of the excrement section owners who collected and sold it.
Such crude facilities were obviously usable only by men. Grand Prefect Liu understood that if women were to join the workforce, proper separate facilities for both sexes were essential.
Hygiene was equally pressing. Even these primitive toilets were scarce, which meant that any secluded spot became fair game—especially the back alleys, where excrement and urine accumulated freely.
Beyond the obvious filth, this contaminated water sources and bred infectious diseases. Thus, after completing his two major municipal projects—demolishing illegal structures and dredging the Six Vein Channels—Liu Xiang turned his attention to constructing proper public toilets throughout the city.
The initiative served purposes beyond sanitation. It was also meant to dismantle the city's entrenched criminal networks. Guangzhou's excrement sections had long functioned like warlord territories—boundaries interlocking yet fiercely defended, each section's rights documented in formal agreements. The section owners regularly clashed over collection rights, disputes that drew in Temple of Guan Di gangs and often ended in bloodshed.
Originally, these owners had cleared excrement for free, profiting solely from its sale as fertilizer. Over time, however, they'd weaponized their services against residents. Workers began demanding "leg power fees," "tea fees," and "cleaning fees"—extorting payment under threat of leaving household waste to pile up. Residents had no recourse but to endure the exploitation, and resentment ran deep.
So while building public toilets was expensive and complicated, the benefits to urban governance made it a cornerstone of Liu Xiang's "New Life Movement."
Though Guangzhou's Six Vein Channels provided underground drainage, dumping raw sewage directly into them was clearly unacceptable on both hygienic and agricultural grounds. The construction company therefore designed a septic tank system.
Each public toilet was a large shared facility divided by gender, with an attached dumping station for household waste. Sanitation workers cleaned and flushed the facilities daily at scheduled times. Wastewater flowed into three-stage septic tanks, where it settled and fermented. The clarified upper layer drained into the sewer channels, while the accumulated sludge was periodically emptied by hand into carts and transported to fertilizer stations in the four suburbs. There, the city's collected excrement and household garbage was sold to nearby farmers.
The construction standards roughly matched those of public toilets in the old timeline's pre-1980s China—crude overall, with barely passable sanitation. But for this timeline, the concept was revolutionary. The designers' only regret was that without a municipal water supply, flushing remained problematic. Sanitation workers had to haul water carts to each facility.
Even so, these toilets—strategically placed according to population density—markedly improved the urban environment.
Yuan Shuzhi was responsible for overseeing construction of three such facilities.
He had already completed the first. Now working on the second, he was leading a site survey to determine the optimal location within the neighborhood. Drawing on the location theory he'd studied for the civil service exam, he discussed the options with several newly hired young staff: "What do you all think of these spots? We can't build at wind openings—the smell would carry for miles. But we can't place it too far from residents either, or they won't bother using it. I think these locations strike a good balance—close enough for convenience, far enough to avoid affecting daily life."
"Old Yuan, that spot won't work," spoke up a young man fresh from Lingao's Fangcaodi school, newly certified through administrative training. "By location analysis, the current site is optimal."
Yuan Shuzhi gave him a measured look. Still a kid, he thought. Australian-educated, sure, but rigid in his thinking. Couldn't he see how close that location was to Grand Prefect Liu's official residence? Building there would be courting disaster.
"You're still too young," Yuan Shuzhi said. "Let me give you some advice from someone who's been around longer: don't stumble into trouble with your eyes open. Look at where that location sits, consider Guangzhou's prevailing winds. You may lack eyes for these things, but surely you have a nose? All the Elders live nearby—do you think Elders need shared toilets? We build based on ordinary people's needs."
The young man fell silent, though his expression said he remained unconvinced.
Yuan Shuzhi added: "There's nothing wrong with wanting to do good work. But if you just bury your head without looking around, you'll still make mistakes. Understand?"
Across the street, tea guests at a teahouse watched the surveyors at work. One guest laughed.
"These Australians control heaven, control earth, and now they want to control where people shit and fart—they're too nosy for their own good. How trivial is this? I'll tell you, when old Wang Fengtou was running things, we had it much better. Why'd they have to arrest a perfectly good Excrement Head and execute him as some 'criminal gang element'? Now our household waste piles up for days before anyone comes to collect it."
"Old Wang, that mouth of yours will be the death of you someday," another guest replied. "Everyone knows Wang Fengtou was your distant nephew, paying you tribute every year. And speaking of character—the man was a bad seed! He collected excrement and sold it for profit, yet still made us pay him for the privilege. Demanded gifts every holiday too. Last time my brother-in-law slighted one of his underlings, the bastard refused to empty their waste for a whole month!"
Someone else fretted on the teahouse boss's behalf: "Boss, your business is doomed! Once that shared toilet goes up, the fragrance will bless everyone for miles around."
The boss's face turned green. No matter how the Australians claimed their water-flushed facilities were "clean and hygienic," no one would enjoy drinking tea across from a toilet. Once it was built, he'd have no choice but to close up shop. He began calculating how to salvage the situation.
...
Yuan Shuzhi was still surveying when a courier arrived from the municipal government with an urgent notice. He opened it to find orders to report the next day to a room at the Great World, where he would meet with an Elder Zheng. He was being temporarily seconded to her service.
Though uncertain why he'd been pulled from his duties, Yuan Shuzhi suspected the Senate wanted him for something important. The thought pleased him.
Back at the bureau, he handed off his urban projects to colleagues. The next morning, he reported to the Great World as instructed.
Zheng Mingjiang was meeting Yuan Shuzhi for the first time, and she couldn't help feeling disappointed. He was not only well past middle age and clearly worn down by life, but exuded the sour air of a failed scholar. Every sentence dripped with classical rhetorical flourishes—this old examination candidate must have crawled out from some forgotten corner of the literati world. How had such a person ended up in their civil service ranks?
She was accustomed to the young naturalized cadres who'd come through the school system. Their appearances varied, but most projected clean, capable images and spoke with crisp efficiency. By comparison, Yuan Shuzhi didn't look "capable" at all.
Yet his personnel file told a different story—first place in the civil service sanitation examination, top scores across all training assessments, with first-place finishes in both hygiene studies and epidemiology. Zheng Mingjiang knew how remarkable that was for someone in his fifties with an old literati background.
Studying him more carefully, she realized that with a wig and a scholar's robe, he'd pass perfectly for a "Ming dynasty remnant." Not a trace of Australian air about him—ideal for undercover work and intelligence gathering.
After chatting briefly, she found him thoroughly worldly-wise, his words and manner orderly and measured. He should prove capable of investigation work.
She outlined the assignment's scope and priorities, then said: "This matter is highly confidential. Nothing can be leaked before, during, or after. Can you manage that?"
"The Chief commands," Yuan Shuzhi declared. "How dare I refuse?"
"You'll be working undercover and may encounter criminals. There will be risks. Consider carefully whether you can bear them."
"Before the Chiefs entered the city, I was alive only in the technical sense—no different from a dead man except for the breath in my lungs. Passing the civil service examination was my rebirth. This new life was given to me by the Chiefs. If the Chief requires it, I won't hesitate for an instant!"
Yuan Shuzhi's fervor left Zheng Mingjiang slightly embarrassed. She smiled. "No need to be so dramatic. Huizhou is our territory. I'll have people protecting you discreetly. I won't ask you to do anything truly dangerous—just gather intelligence in secret. With that settled, go home and pack. Tomorrow you'll depart with the investigation team..."
In those few minutes, Yuan Shuzhi had already been thinking ahead. "I believe it would be better if I departed separately," he said.
"Oh? Why?"
"If the Chief wants me to investigate secretly, how can I travel openly with the investigation team?" Going to Huizhou together might get him spotted by someone along the route. Once discovered, his covert mission would be finished before it began.
(End of Chapter)