Three Kingdoms: The Kingdom Cannot Be Partial

Chapter 321 Westward Journey to Guanzhong
In June, the Guanzhong Plain is sweltering with heat.

However, for the people of Guanzhong, compared to the past summers when they feared drought and scrambled for water, compared to the bitter cold of last winter and the fear of locust plagues this spring, this sweltering summer was exceptionally pleasant.

With a dozen or even dozens of bushels of wheat at home, and dozens of acres of newly planted beans and millet in the fields, they finally felt a sense of security.

Linjin, near the Yellow River, was the first place where the locust plague appeared. When the locusts swarmed in May, the county was still affected. However, the people were very skilled at luring and catching locusts day and night, and the locust swarms did not become a big problem. The vast majority of wheat fields were saved.

The sentiment of "I'm so glad I survived" spread by word of mouth among the dozens of farms in Fengyi. People would ask each other "Have you eaten?" whenever they met, which almost became a new trend.

In the fields, under the trees in the villages, one often hears words like "the Prime Minister's kindness" and "the kindness of the Han Dynasty," all spoken from the bottom of one's heart.

After all, generation after generation, when had they ever heard of a locust plague being forcibly contained? Even the oldest elders in the countryside, after searching through their memories, only knew of the devastation left by the locusts, with the land barren and people resorting to cannibalism.

Now, the Han dynasty has arrived, the prime minister has arrived, they have survived, and even the locust plague has been stopped.

In this way, the people were so grateful that some even proposed to build a shrine to worship the Emperor and Prime Minister of the Han Dynasty.

For these people who have endured war, suffered harsh winters, and struggled on the verge of starvation, the harvest from the land is everything. Whoever saves their lives is the one they will follow.

However, erecting a shrine for living people was still too much of a breach of etiquette. Guo Youzhi and Chen Zhi pleaded with the people and finally managed to suppress the matter.

As the wheat harvest ended for the people of Guanzhong, the millet in the fields of the wealthy and powerful was in its most crucial grain-filling stage. In the fortified villages and manors throughout Guanzhong, countless clan elders and patriarchs, after confirming that the locust plague had been brought under control by the imperial court and would not affect their own land, were filled with mixed emotions in private.

Faced with such a natural disaster, in the past, the imperial court and government would merely reduce the emperor's meals, dismiss the three highest officials, or make futile prayers and shirk responsibility. The fact that the Han Dynasty mobilized the entire territory with thunderous measures to effectively eradicate locusts and achieve such remarkable results is truly unique in history.

This sense of responsibility, courage, and down-to-earth pragmatic approach ultimately earned the Han Dynasty the sincere admiration of many wealthy people, especially young scholars.

The only exceptions were the grain merchants who had stockpiled large quantities of millet, intending to make a fortune when the locust plague struck and grain prices soared.
Looking at the mountains of old grain piled up in the warehouse and the relatively stable grain prices on the market, which had even slightly declined after the wheat harvest, he beat his chest and stomped his feet, swallowing his resentment and cursing the officials for being nosy.

The official settlements comprised over 100,000 prisoners of war from Northeast China, the Qiang and Han people who migrated south to pacify the area, several thousand soldiers from the prefecture, and the farmland cultivated by the farmers were mostly newly reclaimed land, interspersed with already barren and inferior fields.

The average yield per mu was slightly over 1.2 shi, with some yields reaching only 7 or 8 dou, while others reached around 1.8 shi.

This figure is naturally not high compared to the well-cultivated fertile land in Guanzhong and Shuzhong that yields three shi per mu.

However, the Guanzhong region was in chaos at the time. Most of the self-cultivating farmers, who were the main tax base of the Han Dynasty, cultivated the land in a manner close to slash-and-burn agriculture. In addition, most of the fertile land was occupied by powerful clans, leaving only barren fields. There was no scientific management to speak of, and the yield per mu was not high. Even the so-called cultivated land only yielded about two shi per mu.

Therefore, an average grain yield of one shi and two dou was not too bad for the people of Guanzhong.

By mid-June, most people had already planted soybeans and millet.

If the weather cooperates and another harvest is done in the fall, the combined yield of the two seasons could even exceed their original yield of around two shi per mu.

Only then did no one question the benefits of growing wheat.

Logically speaking, given inertia and fear of the unknown, it would often take decades or even centuries to popularize the substitution of wheat for millet.

The fragility of the small-scale peasant economy makes people extremely reliant on the experience passed down from their ancestors. Any slight change can be seen as a catastrophe. For example, the government knows that the "alternate field system" is good, but it is difficult to popularize it among the general populace.

Fortunately, Guanzhong was in ruins, and the people lacked even grain seeds. The threat of starvation was imminent. The imperial court used forceful means to promote the planting of wheat seeds through loans, which forced farms and prisoner-of-war settlements to grow wheat.

Furthermore, under the system of official settlements and farms, the imperial court also provided the people with farm tools and rented official oxen. The officials in charge of agriculture, the clerks in charge of agriculture, and the elders in the settlements and farms were also responsible for teaching the people how to accumulate fertilizer, select seeds, deep plow, and rotate crops.

The efforts have been quite effective since the beginning of the year, and the people are pleased.

It is conceivable that if this continues, and the land matures into arable land in two or three years, and iron farm tools and farming techniques become more widespread, then it will be inevitable that the people of Guanzhong will have surplus wealth and grain in their households.

For this reason, after the wheat harvest, self-employed farmers who were originally hesitant to join farms, as well as many tenant farmers and hereditary households who were originally voluntarily attached to the manors of powerful clans, all went to the nearest farms and begged to join.

The imperial court accepted all who came and quickly incorporated these more than a thousand newly attached households into the existing farms.

With the experience of Zuo Fengyi, and the fact that many agricultural officials had emerged from the Imperial Academy students over the past year, the court established more than ten farms in Jingzhao Yin and You Fufeng.

The scattered self-cultivating farmers in the two prefectures, as well as those who voluntarily attached themselves to powerful clans and their families, watched as the imperial court distributed land and provided various beneficial policies. How could they not know what was good for them?
There are more than a dozen farms, with more than 4,000 households and more than 18,000 people, of which nearly 3,000 are unregistered households.

The problem of privatized households has always been a major headache, as the people don't report it and the officials don't investigate it. In order to win over the hearts of the people, the court couldn't possibly take drastic measures as soon as it entered Guanzhong. Now that the privatized households have taken the initiative to break away from the powerful clans, the powerful clans naturally dare not say anything.

This is what the so-called gray area is like. I won't interfere with your concealment of household registration for the time being, but you won't allow those concealed households to leave your fortress. This is a law that "Hanco" explicitly prohibits. You are aware of and "agree" to it. If you dare to stop them, you will be the target.

When Guanzhong was first captured, the entire Guanzhong region had only 24,000 registered households, totaling just over 124,800 people.

After the implementation of various policies on relocation, military service, and farms, the number of registered households doubled in mid-June of this year.

More than 52,000 households and more than 280,000 people.

Among them, there were more than 2,000 households and more than 10,000 people who originally depended on powerful clans for their patronage and tenants. This was not a small number, but it is clear that these 2,000 households were probably only one or two tenths of the total number of patronage households.

If all the shady households were cleared out, the tax base would be almost equivalent to that of Guanzhong. Unfortunately, Guanzhong was newly established, so it was not possible to clear them out.

At least until the Central Plains are pacified.

After the joy of the wheat harvest in Guanzhong, a real problem has been put before the people: how to turn the hard wheat into rice soup?

Unlike millet, which is easy to husk and cook, wheat is much more complicated to process.

Fortunately, the imperial court had anticipated this.

As early as last summer, when Guanzhong was first pacified, the Prime Minister had already recruited more than one hundred stonemasons from Longyou and other places with high salaries to make stone mills.

By May of this year, the government-run stone workshop located at the foot of Chang'an on the banks of the Wei River had produced more than 4,000 stone mills day and night.

Under the supervision of Ma Jun, the head of the workshops, dozens of watermills were built in places with abundant water flow, such as the Zheng Guo Canal, Cheng Guo Canal, and Cao Canal, for use by soldiers and farmers in the surrounding area.

In those days, a mill was equivalent to an assembly line factory, a major asset of large families, and a symbol of wealth. Nowadays, these water mills, along with those animal-powered mills driven by government oxen and donkeys, were mostly located in various collective farms and wheat-growing areas, and were known as the official mills of the Han Dynasty.

People could bring their harvested wheat to the mill and pay the mill official a small processing fee in the form of wheat or wheat bran, and the wheat would be ground into flour.

In order to promote wheat-based foods among influential officials and wealthy households, and thereby drive a change in the dietary structure of the entire Guanzhong region.

After the imperial court returned to Chang'an last year, it opened several noodle restaurants in the east and west markets of Chang'an in a government-run manner.

The food sold in these restaurants was quite novel for Guanzhong at that time.

Soft and sweet white steamed buns, meat buns with thick skin and generous fillings, chewy soup noodles, and wheat pancakes baked until golden brown on both sides... all kinds of wheat flour products with perfect color, aroma and taste quickly won over wealthy merchants and aristocratic families traveling to and from Chang'an.

Who would have thought that these wheat grains, planted in Lianglong and traditionally difficult to swallow, could be transformed into such delicacies? In just half a year, it became a new trend among the wealthy and merchants of the capital to visit the imperial merchants' restaurants and enjoy a bowl of hot soup noodles or a few plump white buns and steamed breads.

Even many military generals and soldiers of the Eagle Banner Army, after receiving rewards or on their days off, were willing to make a trip to Chang'an, squeeze into a restaurant, just to eat a hearty bowl of soup noodles and a few oily meat buns, and exclaim how satisfying it was.

Among them, the "flower-shaped steamed bun" is the most complicated to make, with a snow-white color and beautiful shape. Only a few dozen servings are available each day, making it more valuable than gold and silk, and a symbol of status and wealth.

This trend of eating wheat flour naturally also affected the powerful families who already owned estates and fortified villages.

Last October, seeing that the imperial court was vigorously promoting wheat cultivation, they followed suit and planted a lot of wheat next to their own irrigated land.

After this year's wheat harvest, some astute wealthy families began to emulate the government by building small watermills or purchasing large animal-powered stone mills near streams on their estates.

These mills not only processed their own wheat, but also milled flour for others and even sold refined flour directly.

The art of grinding flour also began to develop under the drive of demand.

Experienced millers began to control the feed speed of the mill teeth, allowing the wheat grains to be more thoroughly ground and sheared between the mill teeth, so that the tougher bran could be formed into large flakes, while the wheat kernels were ground into fine powder.

The craftsmen then created silk with different finer textures.

The bottom of the sieve may be made of fine yarn, horsehair, or even silk. The ground wheat is poured into the sieve and shaken repeatedly.

The finest and whitest powder, falling through the sieve, is the finest powder that wealthy families vie to purchase, commanding exorbitant prices.

The remaining bran fragments are ground again and sifted through a sieve to obtain second-grade and third-grade flour, which are progressively darker in color and have a higher bran content, while the price decreases accordingly.

The remaining pure bran was mostly used as livestock feed or entered the market to become food for the poor.

Meat patties, soup dumplings, and steamed buns made from refined flour have a taste and texture that far surpasses that of coarse millet or wheat rice.

The enjoyment of taste is the most direct driving force. The huge demand has created a market, and powerful families have begun to set up restaurants in Chang'an. The imperial court is happy to let go and not compete with the people for profit.

As long as a fixed rent is paid to the market official and a permit is obtained, one can legally operate a noodle shop in Chang'an.

As a result, within just one year, dozens of noodle shops and pancake stalls of all sizes sprang up like mushrooms after rain in Chang'an, making the city increasingly bustling and prosperous.

After this year's wheat harvest, wealthy households and merchants who had not planted wheat on their own farms, or who felt that planting wheat was not enough, sent people with millet to various farms in hopes of exchanging it for new wheat.

Initially, the exchange rate was quite chaotic. Some people exchanged one shi of millet for one shi of wheat, while others exchanged one shi and two dou of millet for one shi of wheat. Some unscrupulous merchants even exchanged wheat with a few people who were not used to eating it at a low price.

The chaos lasted less than half a month before Guo Youzhi, the Prefect of Zuofengyi, and Chen Zhi, the Magistrate of Linjin, met and agreed on regulations, issuing a decree to all farms:
All those who exchange millet for wheat must do so at the official rate of one shi and six dou of millet to one shi of wheat; otherwise, the exchange will not be permitted.

This order naturally drew complaints from merchants who intended to buy at low prices.

But after weighing the options, most people accepted the price.

The reason is simple: if wheat were to be transported from the relatively stable Longyou region, where wheat cultivation is more widespread, to Guanzhong, the cost, including manpower, material resources, and losses, would far exceed one shi and six dou of millet.

Although the official exchange rate was high, it saved the trouble and risk of transportation and allowed people to immediately obtain new wheat produced locally in Guanzhong. It was still worthwhile, and the people received more food as a result, so they were happy to exchange their wheat and looked forward to continuing to plant wheat in October.

Just as the Guanzhong Plain was immersed in the busyness and joy of summer harvest and planting, migrants from the southeast arrived in Guanzhong, initially in twos and threes, and eventually in large groups.

There is no doubt that these starving people came from the area surrounding Wuguan, which was ravaged by locusts.

At first, they struggled northward along the Junshui River Valley, entering the towering peaks of the Funiu Mountains, hoping to find a glimmer of hope in the mountains.

Seeing that he was powerless to stop the starving people from flowing into Guanzhong, Wang Ling, the garrison commander of Wuguan, did not stop them.

It is said that when they first left their hometown, there were seven or eight thousand people. However, due to hunger, disease, exhaustion, and the dangers of the mountains and forests, only three thousand or so remained when they walked out of the Shangshan Ancient Road and arrived in Shangluo.

When the generals Wei Yan, Wang Ping, and Ju Fu, who were stationed in Shangluo, encountered this group of starving people, they immediately set up stoves and distributed porridge to temporarily stabilize the lives of these refugees. Afterwards, they arranged for soldiers to guide them to continue westward toward Chang'an.

After enduring further hardships and losses, these people numbered less than three thousand when they finally reached the walls of Chang'an.

When the news reached the Prime Minister's residence, the Prime Minister immediately ordered the granaries to be opened and the grain distributed to ensure proper resettlement.

Finally, these nearly three thousand refugees from Nanyang were led to Bailuyuan, east of Chang'an and on the banks of the Ba River.

The imperial court allocated a large number of tents for the army as temporary shelters, and also distributed iron tools such as axes, sickles, and hoes, ordering them to settle there.

Finally, based on the successful experience of Zuo Fengyi Farm, four farms with a scale of 1,000 people each were established on the Bailu Plain, using these nearly 3,000 refugees as the foundation.

On Bailuyuan, there were originally a hundred or so households of residents cultivating the flat land on the plateau, but most of the area was still lush with trees and overgrown with grass, and there were also animals such as deer and roe deer that could be eaten by the starving people. The stream of Jingyugou flows through the plateau, which will provide a sufficient water source for the starving people to cultivate in the future.

After receiving tools from the imperial court, the starving people began to cut down trees and clear land within designated areas, using the felled timber to build houses.

On a day in the latter part of the month, the Prime Minister, accompanied by Minister of the Imperial Secretariat Chen Zhen, Chief Secretary of the Prime Minister's Office Yang Yi, Granary Clerk Jiang Wei, and Du Ji, the Imperial Academy student who became famous in Chang'an for his "Discourse on the Wei Canal," personally visited Bailu Plain to inspect the resettlement of the new farm.

Du Ji, the most outstanding member of the Du clan of Jingzhao, ranked second in the examination for advancement to the Imperial Academy. Last year, when Guanzhong was first established, he was recommended as a filial and incorruptible official. According to custom, it was common for him to be sent to a county as a magistrate to gain experience.

However, the Prime Minister assigned him to Bailu Plain to be responsible for grassroots affairs such as resettling thousands of refugees and building new farms.

Many people felt that this move was a waste of talent and an injustice to this promising young talent. However, unlike the young Jiang Wan, Du's son did not see this as an evil act and instead understood the Prime Minister's true intentions.

If he can handle the resettlement of these thousands of famine refugees in an orderly manner and demonstrate his extraordinary governance skills, then how could he not be more than capable of handling a county magistrate or even a prefect in the future?
Standing before the newly established camp, gazing at the refugees orderly felling trees and clearing the land in the distance, the Prime Minister asked the young man beside him in a low voice:

"Settling these thousands of people is a complex and multifaceted task. How will Your Majesty begin?"

Upon hearing this, Du Ji straightened his clothes and began to explain his strategies to the Prime Minister.

The discussion began with stabilizing public morale and ensuring food, lodging, and medical care. It then moved on to how to allocate land to households and organize production, how to utilize the Jingyugou water source for irrigation planning, how to learn from the reward and punishment system of farms in Linjin and other places to incentivize land reclamation, and even mentioned long-term plans such as a primary school and elders' council within the farm.

His speech was well-organized, adhering to the basic framework for the establishment of farms by the imperial court, while also proposing several detailed rules tailored to the specific conditions of Bailuyuan.

For example, the forests and flatlands on the plains were used to raise cattle and horses for the imperial court, and to plant fruit trees as a sideline business within the estate.

The Prime Minister listened quietly, nodding slightly from time to time.

After Du Ji left, the Prime Minister stroked his beard for a long time before finally smiling and praising Chen Zhen, Yang Yi, and the others who had accompanied him: "This young man is not just a talent for a hundred miles, but has the capacity to govern an entire province."

(End of this chapter)