Whenever Fang Zichen wasn't around, Guaizai would go looking everywhere.
"Daddy, where did Father go?"
"Grandpa Tang, where's Guaizai's Father?"
"He went to the outhouse? Then Guaizai will wait for him outside."
If Zhao Ger and Uncle Tang said they didn't know, Guaizai would sit on the doorstep, staring out mournfully like a poor abandoned puppy. Even when Zhao Ger brought him a bun, he couldn't enjoy it—he'd sigh and take forever to finish just four.
Right now, playing on the "drop tower," not only did it scare the village chief half to death, even Zhao Ger himself thought the game was dangerous. But Fang Zichen had already played far riskier games with Guaizai, and his son still had all his limbs intact. Guaizai seemed thoroughly delighted, so Zhao Ger didn't stop them.
Besides, even if he tried to stop them, it wouldn't work. If they couldn't play under his nose, those two would just sneak up into the hills, find another spot, and carry on—disappearing for most of the day.
But the village chief didn't know any of that!
He could only wonder: what kind of father treats his child's life so carelessly?
To the village chief, Fang Zichen seemed like a reckless fool—completely unreliable.
How could he possibly trust a man like that?
Seeing that words wouldn't convince him, Zhao Ger led the old man straight to the vegetable patch. Pointing at the particularly lush vegetables, he said, "These were grown with fertilizer. I planted them in the middle of last month."
Planted last month—that meant these vegetables were barely a month old.
The village chief had grown vegetables before, so he knew for a fact that no leafy greens could reach such a height in just one month. He'd once tried growing some to sell, watering them with manure every day, and after nearly two months, they'd barely reached this height.
Zhao Ger pointed to the adjacent plot. "And these—these are the ones I didn't fertilize."
A single glance at these vegetables was enough—they looked perfectly ordinary, and anyone could tell at a glance exactly how long they had been growing. No explanation was needed.
"These two plots also got fertilizer, but I didn't control the amount well, so they didn't grow very well," Zhao Ger added.
The village chief was plainly skeptical. He crouched down and examined the soil carefully. As an old hand at farming, someone who'd worked the land for years, he could tell with fair accuracy which soil had been freshly turned and which had been turned a while ago—just by looking at the weeds growing on it or how firm the soil felt.
Freshly turned soil was loose and soft, but over time, as wind and rain worked on it, it gradually settled and became compact.
The half-plot with the best vegetables—Zhao Ger said it had only been planted a month. At first, the village chief hadn't believed him. But now, pressing down on it with his fingers, he could tell it wasn't very hard, nor was it very soft—it seemed like it had indeed been turned only about a month ago.
Which meant Zhao Ger was telling the truth.
Just now, Zhao Ger said he wanted to borrow three mu of his land for an experiment. At first, the village chief hadn't understood why at first, but now he got it.
This fertilizer could enrich the soil, but it must be applied in the right amount. If too much was put—like what happened to those two vegetable plots over there—the crops would be ruined; if too little was put, it would not do any good either.
Moreover, Zhao Ger said the land wouldn't be taken for nothing—he'd pay silver for it.
The village chief didn't agree at first, simply because the rice seedlings were already planted in those fields. Several plots of land, several shi of grain—he couldn't bear to see them wasted.
But now…
"Fang Fulang, give this old man a straight answer—can it really increase the yield?"
Zhao Ger paused, looking troubled. "Village Chief, I trust my husband. If my husband says it works, then I believe him. But you can see what my husband is like—he's probably never done a day of farm work in his life. I won't lie to you—my husband has been down to the fields exactly once in his entire life, and held a hoe exactly once. He knows this stuff can make crops grow better, but how to apply it, and how much per mu—that he doesn't know. That's why he wanted to borrow a few plots of your land to run a test. If it really does increase the harvest, then from now on, the people of Anping County—no, I should say the people of Hezhou—won't have to go hungry anymore."
The village chief went home that evening and brought the matter up during dinner.
Since it was a good thing for the people, he decided not to take any silver for it. His family had the most farmland in the whole village—giving up a few plots wasn't a big deal.
The village's fields were scattered and irregular—some just over one mu, others only a few fen, all different sizes. After the village chief agreed, he didn't even go home first; he took Zhao Ger straight out to look at the land.
[1 畝 (mǔ) = 10 分 (fēn) = 666.67 m²]
In the end, they picked the three smallest plots.
But now that he'd brought it up, no one in the family agreed. In theory, with two harvests a year, every household's ten or twenty-plus mu should be enough to eat. But in reality, not all of those mu were paddy fields—some were dry field.
They were right in the middle of dinner when his wife slammed down her chopsticks first, furious.
"Such a big decision—how could you not discuss it with me?"
The sons and daughters-in-law also frowned, full of disapproval.
The village chief considered himself the head of the family and felt he had the right to make this call on his own. But now, he couldn't help feeling a bit guilty. "I gave it, so I gave it. If that so-called chemical fertilizer really can increase the yield, then for us common folk, that's a tremendous blessing."
"Then why use our family's fields?" the village chief's wife said. "Don't you know our situation?"
"It's just those few small plots at the edge of the village—what are you making such a fuss about?" the village chief muttered.
"Small or not, it's still grain." The village chief's wife threw down her chopsticks. "There are over a dozen mouths to feed in this family. You don't manage the money or run the household—you just come home every day, sit down at the table, and eat. You don't know what goes on in the kitchen. Just because you get three square meals a day, you think we're well-off and have money to spare. But do you know—Huiniang and I and the other women rack our brains every day just to make sure you men get enough to eat, and still have grain left by the end of the year. We save every way we can—on days we're not working, we don't even make the porridge too thick. After the harvest, I take the grandchildren out to glean the fields—we don't waste a single grain. Every year, what we bring in from the land still isn't enough. And now you've gone and given away several plots of land. Without those fields, after we pay our taxes, what are we going to eat? Silang is nineteen and about to turn twenty—we haven't even saved up the silver to find him a wife. I was planning to sell some grain this year and ask a matchmaker to start looking around. But now—fine. You sure are generous."
The village chief fell silent.
At noon, when he'd heard Zhao Ger speak, he'd been full of righteous fervor—he hadn't thought about anything else.
He'd wanted to do a "good deed." But now that he thought about it, their circumstances didn't really allow it.
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