The Qing Dynasty is about to end

Chapter 434: It's the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, why are there still people without food? (Please subscribe, please vote)
In the autumn of the fourth year of Jiayin in the Tianli calendar of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, the autumn harvest was almost approaching, but in the Yongzhou Prefecture of Hunan, which was the first to distribute land and should have been a place of joy, there was a sense of decline and depression everywhere, just like eggplants hit by frost.

Outside Shuangpai Town, a group of farmers, like wooden sculptures and clay statues, stared at the land that was so cracked that one could stick one's fingers into it, and the half-dead rice in the fields that drooped its head. They huddled together, their eyes red as they wanted to cry, but their tears were almost dried up in this severe drought. All they muttered was despair and suspicion towards God the Father, Emperor Hao Tian.

"It's all over, it's all over. We haven't seen a drop of rain since July. The rice in our fields is almost turning into weeds. What should we do?"

"What else can we do? We can pray to God for rain. Can we even pull the sky down to water the crops?"

"But I've been praying for almost a month. I heard that after His Royal Highness the Southern Prince came back from Tianjing, he set up a position in the Hengyang Palace to pray for rain. He first prayed to the Heavenly Father, but there was no response. Then he turned to Brother Tian and begged bitterly, but there was still no hope. In the end, he even prayed to the Virgin Mary, but it was a pity that it was useless!"

"What should we do? There is no rain, and the autumn harvest is approaching. The rice in the fields has been dry for two months. If we irrigate the land, we may be able to harvest some, but what we have is all dry land, dry as hell, just like our lives!"

"How much grain can we harvest from irrigated fields? After paying the Southern Prince his share, how much will we have left? We won't even be able to fill our teeth!"

As soon as the matter of paying taxes to the king was mentioned, a layer of misery, resentment and unconcealable fear immediately emerged on the faces of the people who were dark, thin and drained of energy, as if they had seen a ghost.

"Yang Laobai, the village chief of our Huangyang Village and vice president of the Shuangpai Town Farmers' Association, is no pushover! When he was a tenant of Huang Shiba in his early years, he was the most troublesome one. He often delayed paying the rent. As a result, he was arrested by Mr. Huang from Etang Town and dragged to the ancestral hall to be beaten with a stick. His butt was beaten to a pulp, but he didn't say a word, as tough as a Liangshan hero! Later, when the Taiping Army came to Shuangpai Town, he and a group of like-minded second-rate people picked up weapons and smashed Mr. Huang's mansion in Shuangpai Town. The scene was more frightening than the Nian beast entering the village. Later, I don't know what kind of shit luck he had, but he participated in the lecturer class. When he returned to Shuangpai Town, he started to divide the land. The means were so dark that you couldn't see your hand in front of you!"

"He was just like us before, extremely poor, unable to even afford a hot meal. The two of us went to Lingling and Daozhou to beg for food, just like the Beggars' Gang. Now, he has turned his life around, but he has turned his back on us. When it comes to collecting food from the emperor, he is even more cruel than the King of Hell. Compared to him, Huang Shiba is considered a good man."

"Nowadays, the leaders of every town and village are all the same. They are more ferocious than the others when it comes to collecting the royal grain. They don't give any room for negotiation. If anyone dares to default on payment, they will be beaten up and forced to do hard labor to pay off the debt. This is much more cruel than the old Master Huang. At most, Master Huang would just scold and beat them, and they would just let it go. But they are so good that they beat them to death!"

Speaking of Yang Laobai, the head of Huangyang Village, everyone shook their heads and sighed, like quails hit by frost. Yang Laobai was originally a poor man in Huangyang Village near Shuangpai Town. He had brute strength, but he didn't want to farm? The grass on the land he farmed grew more vigorously than the rice, and he didn't know what it meant to be thrifty. The few acres of thin land passed down to him by his ancestors were squandered in a few years. In the end, he had no choice but to rent the land of Huang Shiren, the Eighteenth Master of Huang in Shuangpai Town. After farming for a few years, he successfully upgraded from a poor tenant farmer to a candidate for starving ghost who owed a lot of debts and couldn't even be a tenant farmer. Just when he smoothly entered the death process of "from begging to gradually starving to death" and ran to Etang Town to beg for food, hey, the Taiping Army came and really saved him.

Then, Yang Laobai, who returned to Huangyang Village from Etang Town, suddenly woke up as if his Ren and Du meridians were opened. He took a few brothers to Shuangpai Town to rebel, and rushed towards the mansion of Mr. Huang Shijie. When he returned to Huangyang Village from Shuangpai Town, he was already a Taiping Army soldier dressed in a red robe and red scarf, looking like a decent human being.

Later, Yang Laobai did not leave Yongzhou with the main force, but became the village chief in his hometown. By collecting grain from the king and leading the laborers to help the Southern King fight, he was rewarded with a part-time job as the vice president of the Shuangpai Town Farmers' Association. Now he walks with the wind.

When everyone was talking at the same time, two figures were walking slowly on the path in the field. They were dressed in red robes and scarves, which made them very conspicuous. The one walking in front of them glared and saw a group of farmers chatting together. They had put down their work and shouted at the top of their voices: "The higher-ups have ordered you to dig wells to get water to fight the drought. Why are you still being lazy and slacking off here? If you keep dawdling like this, the rice will be dried up by the drought. How can you pay the emperor's taxes? Will you starve?"

The visitor was Yang Laobai, the head of Huangyang Village and vice president of the Shuangpai Town Farmers' Association. Following behind him was his cousin Yang San. In Huangyang Village, they were the only two active Taiping troops in the village, and they were both in charge of things. Yang San was also the captain of the village militia.

The two brothers were in charge of more than a dozen militiamen with the surname Yang. They were equipped with swords, spears and muskets. They had the final say in Huangyang Village. They controlled almost everything in the village. The farmers who were chatting in the fields suddenly saw them and subconsciously shrank their necks back, like frightened quails. No one dared to look them in the eye.

But Yang Laobai was not willing to let these "unemployed" farmers go easily, and strode up to a farmer squatting on the ground. The farmer's face was sallow, his eyes were dull, and he looked like an eggplant hit by frost. Without saying a word, Yang Laobai raised his foot and kicked him, muttering: "Huang Shiba, you are a bastard. You don't work honestly. What are you talking about here? You are spreading rumors and deliberately causing trouble, right? Look, you didn't pay the royal grain last year, and it was the villagers who helped you out. This year, no one can save you, a lazy bone. If you can't pay the grain again, believe it or not, I will pack up your whole family and send you to Yongzhou Prefecture to do hard labor to repair the city wall. Your family will suffer!"

Huang Shiba, whose family name was Shiren, was Huang Shijie's cousin and used to be a landlord in Huangyang Village. However, he was not a bully and behaved decently and had good relationships with people. Therefore, after Huangyang Village changed its ways, they did not make things difficult for him. They just divided up his family's land and wealth, and made him fall from the clouds and become an ordinary farmer.

But he was not born to be a farmer. He had lived a miserable life in the past two years. The harvest was good in the past two years, and everyone had just divided the land, so they were full of energy. Most of the farmers in the village had surplus food. Seeing that he was a "good man" after all, they couldn't bear to see his family starving, so they lent a hand to help him.

But who could have expected this unlucky year, where everyone is like a clay Buddha crossing the river - unable to save themselves...

"Wow!" Huang Shiba thought about how his whole family was starving to death. His heart felt like it was being scratched by a cat. It hurt so much. He felt so wronged that tears and snot started to flow. He cried so loudly.

Next to Huang Shiba, there was a young man squatting who was about the same age as him. He looked like an unruly guy and had no manners. He was also a drifter, but he was not as strong as Yang Laobai. He was dark and thin, like a stick of firewood. His surname was Ding, and his full name was Ding Fei. He was a distant relative of Huang Shiba. He used to help manage the farmhands and keep accounts in the Huang family, and his life was not bad. Who would have thought that when Huangyang Village changed overnight, he would also be unlucky and become a farmer. But this Ding Fei was a good person, very righteous! Seeing Huang Shiba being bullied, he stood up in a flash, put Huang Shiba behind him, and shouted to Yang Laobai: "Village Chief Yang, please don't go too far! Huang Shiba didn't kill you back then, did he? Besides, this is the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, how can we let people starve? The Southern King has said that we should all work together and eat together!"

When Yang Laobai heard this, he twitched his lips and sneered, his voice so cold that ice could fall off: "Humph, we still have to work together and eat together? That was a long time ago! Mr. Ding, you should look at yourself first! Didn't you shamelessly borrow the royal grain from others last year? What are you going to do this year? What are you going to hand in?"

"What? We still have to pay grain to the king this year?" Ding Fei's eyes widened like bells, his face full of disbelief, "It's so dry this year that sparks are coming out, and the King of the South still has the heart to ask us to pay grain?"

When Yang Laobai heard this, his face turned as black as the bottom of a pot. He gritted his teeth and said, "The Southern King has issued an order to reduce the king's grain by half, not a cent less! This is military rations for the brothers who are marching to Guangdong. Who dares not to hand it over!"

Hengyang, Nanwang Palace, Heavenly Father and Heavenly Brother Hall.

At this time, Southern King Feng Yunshan was kneeling in front of the tablets of Heavenly Father, Heavenly Brother, and Holy Mother with a gloomy face, sighing!

Although he issued an order to "reduce grain collection by half", he definitely did not care about the people. On the contrary, he still cared about the farmers under his rule. Since returning from Tianjing, he has been leading the prefectures under the jurisdiction of the Southern Palace to "pray for rain to fight drought". He has prayed to the Heavenly Father, Heavenly Brother, and the Holy Mother countless times. But there was no rain that day!
By the way, the drought is not only in the jurisdiction of the Southern Prince’s Palace, but the entire Huguang area. It hasn’t rained much since July. It’s definitely a severe drought!
Huguang was the main grain-producing area in the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom's territory. The drought in Huguang meant that the entire Taiping Heavenly Kingdom's rice bowl was a little unstable.

(End of this chapter)