Chapter 2811 Daya Village (V)

The fish fillet was richly fragrant, golden in color and tender in texture, without even a hint of char—a far cry from the blackish dried fish of his memory.

"Delicious!" Tan Shuangxi praised. "I've had fish fillet before, but it's usually so dry. Never anything this... tender..."

"Australian method, oven-roasted by machine," the village head explained. "The Chen family built their own factory and bought several machines specifically for roasting fish fillets."

"Machinery? The Chen family is that wealthy?!" Tan Shuangxi was genuinely surprised. Outfitting a single new fishing boat already required a considerable sum, let alone industrial machinery.

"A loan. One percent annual interest." The village head's face was flushed from drinking. "The Heaven and Earth Society guaranteed it. Otherwise, they haven't even paid off the loan for the fishing boats yet!"

"This Heaven and Earth Society treats them better than their own father would."

"What nonsense! Does his father have that kind of money?!" the village head scoffed. "These fish fillets sell wonderfully—many times better than selling the raw fish. Every day, dozens of crates of roasted fish fillet are shipped to Lingao, then repackaged and sold onward to the mainland and to Nanyang... They say the Red Hairs and the Dwarf Pirates' emperors can't even take a meal without their roasted fish fillet..."

Everyone laughed with expressions that said "now you're laying it on thick." The village accountant chuckled and added, "That's an exaggeration. The Chen family does contract processing for the Heaven and Earth Society. Who knows where the packaged goods end up after that? But the contract processing business alone is big enough. More than half the women in the village do odd jobs at their factory now. Just the daily wage payout—how much cash flows through their hands! Tsk tsk..."

The stationed police officer, speaking in a Shandong-accented New Speech, chimed in: "When I first came to Qiongzhou, I tried the village fish fillet too—completely different thing from what they make now. This flavor actually reminds me more of home. We call our place Jiaoao; it's a small town. We have roasted fish there too, and it tastes more like this. Maybe the Chief who designed these machines had ancestors from Shandong as well."

Tan Shuangxi recalled seeing a report in the Lingao Times—something called "The Amazing Roasted Fish Fillet"—that had mentioned Lingao's roasted fish fillet breaking into a major market. So it had been referring to Daya Village all along. To think that the once-unremarkable Chen family of fishermen was now running such a sizable enterprise. He had thought Sergeant Ma's family business was impressive enough, but there was always a higher mountain—the Chen family's reluctance to send their own sons off to be soldiers made perfect sense now.

Watching the young men at the head table being surrounded with toasts, drinking and feasting, he felt increasingly uneasy. Using the excuse of offering a toast, he sat down beside the young man substituting for Chen Kecai and struck up a conversation. He learned that the youth had only arrived from the mainland about a year ago, assigned to settle in Daya Village and working as a fishing hand on the Chen family's boat.

"You weren't born a fisherman?" Tan Shuangxi was somewhat surprised. "Can you handle the work?"

"Got seasick constantly at first, but I adapted," the young man said carelessly. "Working on a fishing boat is hard, but the money is several times what you'd earn as a farmhand. Tough it out a few years and you can save enough to buy land and build a house."

"Where's your hometown?"

"Renqiu County, Hejian Prefecture, Beizhili."

Tan Shuangxi had no clue where Hejian Prefecture or Renqiu County were, but thanks to army education, he knew Beizhili was where the Ming capital was located.

"Beizhili—isn't that near the capital?"

"We're still quite a distance from the capital." The young man poured Tan Shuangxi a full cup. "Squad Leader, please drink..."

Tan Shuangxi noticed the young man was quite articulate—nothing like the slow, honest country type he had imagined. He asked, "Looking at you, your family back home wasn't in farming either, right? How did you end up in Lingao?"

"Still because of the war!" the young man said with weary resignation. "Our old home, truth be told, was better than here. Flat terrain, not as many hills, more cultivable land, and plenty of rivers too. In drought years, as long as it wasn't a completely dry year, carrying water to irrigate was manageable. Our cucumbers and radishes were especially good there. Especially the cucumbers—bite into one with the flower still on and thorns still prickly, sweet and crisp like nothing else. My family were tenants, but my father had a talent for pickling vegetables. In the slack season, he'd travel to Baoding Prefecture to help people pickle their stores, earning money for the rent. The landlord was fond of my father's pickled vegetables too; we'd send him several hundred jin every year. Though we never saw a single coin for it, whenever trouble arose, the landlord would lend a hand. Life was passable.

"Then it all fell apart. In the seventh year of Chongzhen, the Tartars invaded, and the whole province was thrown into chaos. Before the Tartars even reached us, we suffered the soldiers' disasters. The county magistrate led the yamen runners to 'collect grain donations,' claiming they were going to invite government troops for protection. After the government troops arrived, 'collection' turned straight into plunder—they said they couldn't leave anything for the Tartars. My father heard the news while on his way to deliver vegetables to the landlord. He couldn't make it back in time to fetch us. Luckily, he knew about an empty tomb outside the village—one that had already been robbed. He had secretly hidden grain there, which kept us from starving. Those who hadn't hidden their grain well enough later starved. Nobody dared help them—if you helped, it meant your family still had surplus grain. The whole village was starving; they'd strip you clean.

"Then the Tartars came. Our whole family hid in that tomb for days and didn't dare come out. When we finally emerged, the village was gone. All the houses burned, corpses everywhere—mostly women. All raped to death. Old Wang's daughter from next door, only ten years old, lay dead in the courtyard. Stripped naked—raped to death. A blood trail led from the main room to the courtyard. No telling how long she crawled before she died. There were too many dead. We didn't dare collect the bodies—afraid the Tartars would come back and find people still alive. So we tossed the nearby corpses into the well and pushed down a wall over them as a sort of burial.

"Later we learned that those killed on the spot had at least died clean. Those who were captured fared worse. Couldn't walk and it was a single knife across the throat. On the road, no food, no water, disease killed off batch after batch. Worked as beasts of burden, hauling supplies, worked to death. When a siege came, the Tartars drove them onto the battlefield. The defending soldiers' cannons and arrows came over, and they died in heaps. You don't go forward, Tartars behind kill you one by one. Go forward, killed by government troops. Go back, killed by Tartars. The captured women... even more pitiful! You know what the Tartars called them? Shengkou—'living mouths,' the same sound as 'livestock.' Actually, they weren't even treated as livestock.

"My father said this place was no good to stay. He led the whole family south, thinking once we crossed the Yellow River, it would be peaceful—Tartars wouldn't chase past the Yellow River. But we didn't even reach the Yellow River before our travel money ran out. Mother died too. Grain was long gone; we survived by begging until we reached Kaifeng. Too many refugees there; the garrison wouldn't let people in. Shot arrows and killed quite a few. My father was hit too. Everything descended into chaos. I got separated from my family. In a daze, I followed the crowd and kept walking south. They said once you reached Jiangnan, there'd be a way to survive. I made it to Jiangnan, then somehow ended up in Lingao."

To Tan Shuangxi, such stories were nothing remarkable—they were all too common. Nine out of ten men in the platoon had similar pasts.

"If you've finally settled down, why do you want to go be a soldier again?" Tan Shuangxi couldn't help asking. "Is life as a fishing hand too hard?"

"This hardship is nothing," the fishing hand replied. "When it comes to suffering, nobody beats us dirt farmers. Life is good here; I'd be happy to stay forever. But I can't let go of my siblings..." His voice dropped. "I know nine out of ten chances say they're already gone. But I'm clinging to that one hope: what if they're still alive? Even if they're slaves, or servants, or concubines—at least they'd still be living... I keep thinking, can I find them and bring them back? At worst, find even one, bring them home so we can live together and have a family again...

"But I'm just one person, weak and alone. Escaping to Lingao alive was already heaven's great mercy. How would I dare go back to the mainland on my own? I've heard from people who arrived later—Henan and Beizhili are even more chaotic now. So when the Chen family asked if I'd be willing to go serve as a soldier, I agreed immediately. Enlist in the army, and I can follow the troops to find my family!"

Tan Shuangxi looked at the young man, whose voice had grown agitated, and found himself momentarily at a loss for words. He could only reach out and pat him on the shoulder.

Over at the main table, the village head, drunk and reeking of liquor, had his arm slung around Zhang Laicai's neck, mumbling: "Brother, this trip of yours—our village lost a man... In a few days, another team comes, a few more notifications, a few more men gone."

Before Zhang Laicai could respond, the stationed police officer sharing drinks nearby slammed his cup on the table. "Fu Lao'er, you goddamn ingrate! Life got better and you forgot your roots! You know damn well how you got this big house and your duck farm—you earned it yourself, sure, but we earned it too, taking bullets at Chengmai. Can't beat some sense into you, you dog." With that, he grabbed the village head by the collar.

The village head showed no anger at all. He simply wrapped his arm around the stationed police officer's neck in return and kept rambling: "Old Xie! Old Xie! What do you know... Li Haoze was the finest young man in the village. Every time he saw me—so polite, so cultured, and handsome too. I even wanted to marry my daughter to him—but my girl has no education; I didn't think she was good enough for him. I figured a young man like that, going off to military academy, had a great future ahead. Might even become a high-ranking cadre someday! Look at you—served one year and got a police posting. If he'd become an officer, imagine how high he would have risen! And then today, two people come and tell me he's gone..." His eyes reddened. "Just like that, gone. How many souls in this village now? Never mind the ones with no family, the bachelors. But anyone with kin in the village—I can't look them in the eye! It was me who led everyone, banging drums and gongs, to send them off..."

(End of Chapter)