Chapter 97: Management of the Gentry (I)
Huo Chong completed the industrial adjustment in Muping County in less than 20 days. He quickly changed from a large business owner to an agricultural landlord. Before leading the team to leave Muping County, Huo Chong organized the employees who stayed in Muping County to learn about the arrangements of the new farm.
At the end of the meeting, Huo Chong summarized loudly, "... People will always encounter various discomforts in life. I still say the same thing, whether it is better to be blessed after death or to enjoy some blessings while alive. It depends on yourself. There is an idea in my arrangement, which is to let everyone eat more meat and more oil. I will try my best to let everyone enjoy more blessings while they are alive. This not only depends on me, but also on everyone! Let's work hard together."
No one would object to a happy life, and Huo Chong's words sparked joy among the crowd. Seeing that the time was almost up, Huo Chong stood up and told everyone that he had to hurry and leave immediately.
The remaining employees all stood up, but they had no intention of saying goodbye. Everyone looked at each other, and finally a few elderly men in their forties stepped forward and said, "Mr. Huo, you said that the government doesn't allow you to do good deeds for us. We are all family here, so how about Mr. Huo do good deeds for us before you leave?"
"Yes, Mr. Huo. If you don't give us another blessing, we will feel uneasy."
Looking at the simple farmer friends, Huo Chong smiled bitterly. Of course, you can say whether these people are superstitious or not. But they are not really superstitious. Like most Chinese people, these farmers worship Buddha, believe in the Dragon King, respect the land, and believe in Feng Shui and Yin Yang. But they do not think that these mysterious forces are the only forces that control their destiny.
To achieve a goal, the known and controllable parts are only part of the many decisive factors. Those unknown and uncontrollable forces become temptations to the "unknown controller" through various modes of respect.
So from the perspective of monotheism, these Chinese farmers are simply unreasonable. Monotheism absolutely prohibits "testing your God." And the so-called worship of gods by Chinese farmers is, without exception, a form of testing and evaluation.
Now the "blessings of planting" represented by Huo Chong has also become one of them. It's not that Huo Chong himself has performed any miracles, but Huo Chong's arrangements are beyond the understanding of this group of people, and the farmers unconsciously use temptation to test the "unknown power" represented by Huo Chong.
Seeing that everyone here was his own people, Huo Chong did not care about the government's reprimand and performed a simple blessing ceremony.
The farmers sat in rows. Huo Chong changed into a clean and gorgeous silk Taoist robe and held a willow branch in his hand. The boy next to him held a vessel filled with clean water. Huo Chong muttered something in his mouth, and at the same time, he dipped the willow branch in the clean water and sprinkled it on the farmers who were receiving the blessing.
After the ceremony, everyone seemed to be relieved. Huo Chong was also relieved. This kind of ceremony was more tiring than giving a lecture. Maybe those charlatans really enjoyed the process of pretending to be gods. Huo Chong really didn't believe it!
Regardless, Huo Chong finally finished the blessing planting ceremony. He then led the non-agricultural employees to the Zibo County headquarters. There were over a hundred people on the trip, and everyone in Mouping County knew that Huo Chong had been forced by the local gentry to pack up and leave. Many people were watching on both sides of the road, and some of the local people in Mouping County who followed Huo Chong away had their families see him off, which made it quite a scene.
Magistrate Dong soon found out that Huo Chong was really gone. He sent people to call Huo Chong several times and asked him to come to the county government office for a talk. However, Magistrate Dong never said it.
Jinshi scholars have more dignity than ordinary people. County Magistrate Dong could not accept that he had to bow to a prospective official who was originally a craftsman. Since he had already dealt with Huo Chong together with the gentry, the next thing to do was to continue to the end. County Magistrate Dong even felt that he might have overestimated Huo Chong. Even though Huo Chong's tax payment ranked first in Mouping County, it was not to the point where one person could pay the tax for the entire county. Even if Huo Chong left, as long as he could collect other taxes, the situation would only be better.
Without Huo Chong, Mouping County returned to its previous state, with quiet villages and peaceful streets. After half a month of such a peaceful situation, County Magistrate Dong once again asked the group of gentry led by Li Juren to come to the county government.
When asked again about the gentry taking over Huo Chong's business, the gentry looked completely restored to the way scholars should be when they were not facing Huo Chong. Li Changshou Li Juren said solemnly: "I think a gentleman does not talk about profit. County forced us to do business. Isn't it an insult to the dignity of scholars?"
County Magistrate Dong was stunned. Before summoning the gentry, he had indeed considered many things. Among them were the various means by which the gentry could resist the government. However, County Magistrate Dong still did not expect that the gentry's reasons could be so shameless. Facing a guy like Huo Chong who had no fame, the gentry talked about profit. As soon as Huo Chong, the guy who represented "pursuit of profit", left, the gentry immediately started talking about "a gentleman does not talk about profit."
Although he was angry, Magistrate Dong was not fooled by these people. He shouted, "You are going back on your word. You really don't respect me."
When the gentry saw that Magistrate Dong was so firm, they immediately smiled. Mr. Chen said with a smile: "Governor Dong, we are all family members. Wouldn't it hurt the harmony if you say this?"
"Yes. We pay taxes on time. County Magistrate Dong's words hurt everyone's feelings." The other scholars also followed suit.
Li Changshou also said: "County Magistrate Dong, you said before that you would hand over Huo Chong's business to us. We all thought that Huo Chong's business was withheld. Unexpectedly, the county magistrate actually let Huo Chong go. Now if we want to take over Huo Chong's business, we have to do it all over again. This will not be done overnight. If the county magistrate blames us for this, we are innocent."
Magistrate Dong had just calmed down , but he was angry again when he heard this. This was not what they had said during the previous discussion. At that time, the gentry said that as long as Huo Chong gave up the businesses he was running, the gentry could easily take over. They could make as much as Huo Chong made.
Now it became that County Magistrate Dong did not completely seize Huo Chong's business, so the gentry could not take over calmly. If County Magistrate Dong did this, what would be the difference between him and a bandit?
As he looked at the faces of the gentry one by one, he saw that they all looked confident and self-righteous, without any sense of shame or uneasiness. Everything they said seemed to be natural and right. County Magistrate Dong felt that he had seen another side of the gentry. An extremely shameless side.
According to Gao Xuezheng, the reason why these gentry and scholars showed this side was because they had contact with Huo Chong and were inspired by Huo Chong to show their dark side. As long as Huo Chong was driven away, the gentry would be able to return to normal.
Now Huo Chong is gone, but the shamelessness of the gentry has not changed at all. Who should be attributed to the reason that inspired the gentry to be so shameless? If we follow what Gao Xuezheng said, it can only be attributed to County Magistrate Dong.
Thinking of this, County Magistrate Dong didn't want to save face for these people anymore. He frowned and shouted, "You guys haven't paid the taxes you owed. From tomorrow on, the yamen runners will come to your house every day to collect taxes. You guys will be very busy next time, so hurry back and prepare."
At this time, Huo Chong had already left Muping County and was in charge of work at the headquarters in Zichuan County. The export situation in the autumn and winter of this year was quite good. After Huo Chong had a meeting with the heads of various export departments, the intelligence department sent a report to Huo Chong.
Huo Chong looked through his schedule and confirmed that he had indeed asked the intelligence department to make an analysis of the situation in Mouping County.
After reading it for a while, Huo Chong turned to the end of the report to see who wrote it. Seeing a few new names, Huo Chong was very happy. It seems that even under the purposeful policy of the Qing court to fool the people, as long as they have received training, the intelligence and ability of the Chinese people themselves are still not a problem.
In the past two years in Mouping County, the intelligence analysis department has collected a lot of intelligence by recruiting employees to contact the locals. A lot of information has been collected about the network behind the gentry who are hostile to Huo Chong.
The analysts used the analysis model trained by the intelligence department to directly deduce that the gentry could not fight the county magistrate alone. In addition to uniting with each other, they also had to ask for help from outside. Only by using several means together could they effectively fight against the current county magistrate of Mouping County.
Although the author of the report was obviously lazy and copied part of the training materials, the plagiarism was used in an interesting way.
"The gentry knew they couldn't dominate Mouping County completely. As long as they could prevent the Mouping County government from crossing that line, which was the established tradition, they could guarantee their own interests."
Huo Chong knew that his training content was also a copy of what he had learned during training. Huo Chong was very curious about what form these models would take in this era.
