Chapter 2610: Continued Digging Dikes into Ponds

"You flatter me," Chen Wuren said with practiced modesty. "My family established itself in Xiangshan three generations ago. Thanks to our ancestors' foresight, we've built a modest enterprise there. Now we hope to leave something lasting for our descendants."

The story was pure fabrication, but the emotion behind it was genuine. He had once dreamed of being the man who would "build a legacy for future generations." Then reality had shattered that dream, destroying both his family and nearly himself. Far from leaving anything to descendants, he had almost become a man without any. In the end, he had walked an entirely different path.

Though he now served the Senate and the people, a part of him still longed for what might have been. His words carried the weight of that longing.

Guan Youde knew nothing of this history. Hearing what sounded like a kindred spirit, he felt an immediate warmth toward the man.

"With you presiding over family affairs, Master Chen, the Xiangshan Chen clan will surely flourish for generations to come."

This newfound affinity loosened his tongue, and he grew eager to share everything he knew.

Counties like Nanhai, Shunde, and Xiangshan had long relied on dike enclosures to protect the low-lying areas near the Pearl River from flooding. These enclosures were typically built around higher hills, with early agriculture concentrated on the elevated ground within. Large stretches of water remained inside the barriers. Since the Ming and Qing dynasties, the trend had been to gradually drain these flooded areas and convert them to farmland. But the low terrain and persistent waterlogging made ordinary rice cultivation unprofitable. The solution was to dig out sections of the waterlogged fields to create fish ponds, piling the excavated mud into raised dikes for planting crops. This approach made productive use of the water while creating elevated land suitable for farming—an elegant solution to the reclamation problem that landlords found quite attractive.

What Guan Youde called "digging dikes"—also known as "chiseling and building"—was the essential step in creating mulberry dike fish ponds. Workers dug deep into the low-lying paddies to form ponds, then heaped the excavated mud into dikes rising well above the surrounding ground. The dike surface typically stood about three chi above water level. Each mu of land required eighty to one hundred labor days to develop, at a cost of eleven or twelve taels of silver.

This business model bore a striking resemblance to modern organic agriculture. Though highly profitable once established, the labor costs were enormous. Only families with substantial resources could undertake such projects, and they required hands-on management from the head of the household to succeed. From its inception, this was agricultural capitalism in all but name—demanding not just significant capital investment but also careful oversight and a willingness to learn the intricacies of aquaculture and farming. Tenants, smallholders, and absentee landlords could not hope to participate.

The Senate's interest in mulberry dike fish ponds extended well beyond the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries. The Administration Council had taken a keen interest as well, treating the matter almost as a political priority. By dispatching Senators to promote these techniques, they hoped to cultivate a new class of farm owners. After all, Guangdong in this timeline remained sparsely developed—even the Pearl River Delta had vast tracts awaiting cultivation. The region was ideally suited for this kind of intensive small-scale farming.

Zhang Xiao understood none of these broader considerations. All he knew was that promoting these technologies would boost agricultural output, "produce more grain," and "improve people's living standards."

Due to fertilizer limitations in traditional agriculture, the ratio of dikes to ponds in the Jiujiang area held steady at forty-sixty. A typical ten-mu unit would have six mu of mulberry dikes and four mu of pond surface—a configuration known as "Four Waters, Six Dikes." Ten mu was the standard because it was exactly what one laborer could manage. Some units ran as large as seventeen or eighteen mu; others as small as four or five.

Chen Wuren had mentioned reforming several dozen mu of low-yield fields. The cost would run to hundreds of taels at minimum—far beyond what an ordinary family could afford. No wonder Guan Youde had called it a "big undertaking."

Yet Master Chen had spoken of the project so casually, as if money were no object. Guan Youde felt a flicker of the old contempt stirring in his chest. A Chen clan that could spend hundreds of taels on dike construction must rank among Xiangshan's wealthiest families. And yet here they were, claiming kinship with Mo Yu, a former Dan household. "Poor in the city, nobody asks; rich in the mountains, distant relatives appear." Since the Australians had arrived, every nobody was reinventing themselves. Even prominent families rushed to forge connections with them, and such people were common locally. The Dan families, once so "sensible" and "humble," now seemed to carry themselves with considerably more pride.

Guan Youde had never looked down on Dan families in the past, nor had he permitted his clansmen to mistreat them. But there was a difference between his showing kindness and their growing "presumptuous." The shift left a sour taste.

"Are you a Zhuangjia, Brother Guan?" Chen Wuren asked.

"Used to be. Gave it up long ago," Guan Youde replied. "But I still know all the tricks of the fish-farming trade."

"What are the finer points of dike construction?"

"There's quite a lot to it." Guan Youde settled into his subject. "Fish ponds should run east-west. The 'Sun' (日) character shape is ideal."

"Why is that?"

"Summer and autumn bring sudden storms. When the rain stops, fish rise to the surface gasping for air. You need to pour in fresh water quickly to cool them down. Miss that window, and they'll all be dead before long. The 'Sun' shape makes it easier to inject water, but the current erodes the pond dikes. Combined with the constant draining and filling, water levels fluctuate constantly. The dikes cycle between wet and dry, which makes them prone to collapse. That's why you need wooden stakes and pilings at the waterline to reinforce them."

"How exactly do you inject water?" Chen Wuren was puzzled.

Guan Youde smiled. "Ah, you wouldn't know. Site selection has its own subtleties. Every pond needs two sluices connecting it to the river channels. The one at the pond's midsection is the Upper Sluice; the one at the bottom is the Bottom Sluice. Ponds close to rivers with easy drainage are called Head Tube Ponds. Those that receive water through neighboring ponds are Second Tube Ponds. Ponds with water sources but no outlets are Sky-Gazing Ponds. Those with outlets but no sluice gates are Wild Ponds. Wild ponds can only grow gorgon fruit, water chestnuts, lotus root, and mushrooms—their mud is the poorest. Head Tube Ponds fetch higher rents because they're most convenient. Second Tube Ponds must wait for the Head Tube Ponds to drain and harvest their fish before they can borrow the channel to release their own water, so they rent for less."

Chen Wuren suddenly understood why the fish ponds he'd seen along the way weren't arranged like compartments in an ice tray. Small creeks wove between them, connecting to larger channels. So that was their purpose.

"But what powers the drainage and irrigation? Waterwheels?"

He still couldn't quite picture it. Manual water-pumping would make fish farming prohibitively expensive. He'd seen the Senate's large windmills for pumping water, of course. And if the Chiefs felt extravagant, they might even install steam engines—though that would be like paying meat prices for tofu. Hardly worthwhile.

"Yes and no," Guan Youde said.

The investigation team looked puzzled.

"I won't keep you guessing. Yes, because every winter or early spring, the pond must be drained completely. You open the Bottom Sluice at the right tidal phase and release the water until only a chi or a few cun remain. Normally the Bottom Sluice stays plugged with mulberry branches and old grass. Then you dig a pit near the sluice and work the waterwheel—wheel head up, wheel tail dragging across the surface, three or four men treading the frame. But no, because draining the pond this way is time-consuming, exhausting, and disrupts fish growth. For daily management, you rely on the tides. They rise on the first of the lunar month and fall by the fourth; rise on the fifteenth and fall by the eighteenth. That's the Water Head. The slack periods—fourth to fourteenth, eighteenth to twenty-ninth—that's the Water Tail. In spring and summer the Water Head runs strong during daylight; in autumn and winter it's weaker and runs at night. The Upper Sluice has a gate. If pond water grows too rich and salty, green scum forms on the surface. Then you open the Upper Sluice to release a few cun of brackish water and let fresh water flow in. If the pond runs low, you add water the same way until it's sufficient. If it's too full, you drain off the excess. The key is keeping it at medium depth."

The Tiandihui cadres listened in quiet amazement. They hadn't expected Jiujiang villagers to have developed such sophisticated methods for maintaining water quality using natural conditions. The locals had truly mastered timing and terrain.

When they thought about it, this practical knowledge aligned closely with what they'd learned about pond water quality during Tiandihui training. The difference was that these techniques, refined through generations of hands-on experience, were far more grounded and actionable than anything in a textbook.

Now the team understood how Jiujiang's intricate network of waterways had come to be. Locals classified rivers by width. The main channel of the West River and its tributaries were called "Seas." The stretch from Jiujiang Village center to Moyunjixun was Li Hai—the Inner Sea. Below Tiejiao was Dong Hai—the East Sea. Secondary channels were called Yong or Jiao. All of these were tidal ports.

Within the Sangyuan Enclosure lay many smaller enclosures, such as Yudai Enclosure, which protected forty-six qing of mulberry land and fish ponds and over four thousand three hundred households. Outside each small enclosure's dikes ran river channels; inside lay orderly patches of dike-ponds. Sluices were typically set into the smaller enclosure dikes to serve the drainage and irrigation needs of a cluster of ponds. Their primary function was flood control during spring and summer. Jiujiang had few fields and many ponds. Outside the ponds, moats (Qian) were dug; beyond the moats, creeks (Yong) were excavated. Sluices stood at every channel mouth, opened and closed according to schedule. Normally, if pond water ran low, river water was channeled in; if it rose too high, the excess was released to the creek. When spring and summer floods threatened, the sluice boards were lowered and reinforced with bamboo stalks packed tight against the outside, keeping floodwaters from inundating the fish ponds.

The Qian—moats—were small waterways threading through the dike-pond areas. These narrow channels had been dug over time to meet daily drainage and irrigation needs as ponds were continuously added and expanded. The dense network of artificial channels formed the terminal water system of Jiujiang's river network, connecting individual ponds to the larger flow of rivers and creeks. Through small sluices, river water could be diverted for automatic drainage and irrigation.

As mulberry dike fish ponds proliferated in the Jiujiang area, they gradually carved up the original broad waters within the enclosures. The main river channels themselves shrank as dike-ponds encroached on their margins. The Jiujiang Creek called "Li Hai," which had measured twenty-eight zhang across during the Ming Dynasty, was slowly "transformed from sea into ponds." By the late Qing, no one could say exactly where its original course had run.

The Fish Fry Market was small. Most of the crowd were dealers who had come to reserve stock—some familiar faces, some strangers. Chen Wuren's group was naturally taken for new buyers entering the trade.

(End of Chapter)