Chapter 23
After leaving the Yin family, Fang Yu did not rush back to the city. He inquired about buying and selling land in his own village and the surrounding villages, and also had Xuezhu leave some of the Fang family's contact cards behind.
The cards were printed with the Fang family's address and contact details. This meant that people could not only locate the Fang residence but also make inquiries at the family's shops. Families that wanted to sell their land could then take the initiative to get in touch with the Fang family.
This year, the Yuncheng area had not experienced any major famines, and the farmers' harvests were passable. Apart from a few families who needed to sell land due to sudden misfortunes, there weren't many families selling land this year. However, with the New Year approaching, some impoverished families were still selling land to manage their expenses for the festival. Fang Yu located several households that were willing to sell, and he accepted their name cards.
Before they had even visited two villages, the sky began to darken. Fang Yu felt that traveling by carriage was still too slow. While comfortable enough for short trips or outings, efficiency for business matters required horseback riding. Unfortunately, his equestrian skills were poor and would require immediate practice.
He decided this matter required prompt attention. A cultivated gentleman was expected to master the Six Arts, and if he couldn't ride a horse, he would suffer many disadvantages in the future. After returning, he would find time to buy two good horses to keep at home, planning to practice his riding regularly during his leisure hours.
[The Six Arts (六艺, liù yì): rites, music, archery, charioteering, calligraphy, and mathematics]
His main purpose for this trip was still to acquire land. He hadn't done much homework on the specifics of buying land beforehand. After returning, he assigned two servants to go to the villages near Fangju Village to spread the news about his intention to buy land.
He temporarily had no plans to buy land in villages that were too far away, unless the land was exceptionally fertile. On one hand, his funds were limited; on the other, land too far away would be harder to manage later.
After delegating these tasks, he began studying the process of buying land himself.
Under the current social hierarchy of scholars, farmers, artisans, merchants, and slaves—people registered as merchants or slaves were prohibited from purchasing, selling, or accumulating land. Those with merchant status could not own private farmland, they were only permitted to rent land from others at rates several times higher than those paid by people of other social classes. Consequently, merchant families generally avoided land transactions unless it was absolutely necessary. Those registered as slaves were entirely ineligible to buy land.
Land sales were divided into two main types: 'Live Sale' and 'Absolute Sale'.
A Live Sale meant a farmer sold the rights to their land for a fixed number of years, such as five, ten, or twenty years. The price depended on the term. A longer term meant a higher price, and a shorter term meant a lower price.
When the sale period ended, the original farmer had the right to redeem the land by paying back the original sale price. If they could not afford to buy it back or chose not to, the land remained with the buyer, who could continue using it without making any further payments.
There was an additional condition: if the original seller died during the lease period without any surviving wives, concubines, or children, the buyer could register this with the local county government. After doing so, the land would become their private property permanently.
An Absolute Sale, in contrast, was a permanent and final transaction. Once the sale was complete, the original seller lost all rights to the land forever and could never redeem it. Because this was a complete transfer of ownership, Absolute Sales commanded the highest possible price.
During famine years—such as those marked by droughts, floods, or locust plagues—harvests were poor. This forced many farmers to sell their land because without doing so, they had no food and could not pay their taxes and corvee levies. After losing their land, many of these farmers became tenant farmers. These were people who owned no private property or tools of their own and could only survive by renting land from landowners, living in a state of dependency.
The lives of these tenant farmers were very difficult. After renting a landowner's fields, they were not only required to farm the land, but also had to act as unpaid servants during the landowner's family weddings and funerals. On holidays, they were expected to give gifts, such as melons, vegetables, or poultry, from their own plots. If a tenant farmer had a harsh landowner, their life could become utterly miserable.
[瓜 (guā): lit. melon; fig. a general term for edible, vine-grown fruits like cucumber, winter melon, squash, and watermelon]
Fang Yu also researched the income of tenant farmers. He found it varied from place to place. In some areas, the harvest was split 40/60 with the landowner, while in others it was 30/70. In more affluent and prosperous areas, where tenant farmers had a slightly higher status, there were even rare cases of a 50/50 split.
In all these arrangements, the tenant farmer always received the smaller share. For example, in a 40/60 split, the landowner took 60% of the harvest, leaving the tenant with only 40%. From that 40%, the tenant still had to pay various government taxes. Therefore, after a full year of hard work, a tenant farmer was typically left with barely anything, often just managing to avoid starvation for that year.
This was the situation in a good year. If the year was bad and the harvest failed, they faced extreme poverty. They were forced to borrow grain from the landowner to survive and to borrow seeds for planting the following year. In these situations, the landowner often demanded a larger share of the next harvest as a condition for the loan.
Fang Yu sighed with emotion. Thankfully, he was a Scholar and a literate man; otherwise, just working the land might have been the end of him.
After some days, Fang Yu managed to acquire thirty-two mu of land: twelve mu of good farmland and twenty mu of poor farmland, all in villages near Fangzui Village.
[1 mu: 1/15 of a hectare, or approximately 666.67 square meters.
The good land was bought at twelve taels per mu, the poor land at eight taels per mu, totaling three hundred and four taels spent. Because he exclusively bought land through Absolute Sale, even though he didn't buy a huge amount, the prices were high.
This purchase completely exhausted his private savings. To settle the full payment, he had to combine funds from several sources: the two hundred taels that Qiao Hezhi had given him during his visit to the Qiao family, the five taels from his monthly stipend from the county government, and an additional one hundred taels he withdrew from the family's shared accounts.
As a newcomer to land transactions, Fang Yu conducted his business with integrity. He was unlike some seasoned and shrewd landowners, who were known to delay paying farmers long after a sale was finalized. Fang Yu found such practices unacceptable. He believed that farmers were the backbone of the country, and he understood that they needed the money promptly, especially with the New Year approaching, so they could afford to celebrate properly.
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