Winning Over the Shaolin Abbot
"As Your Eminence is already aware, Shaolin Temple has currently lost the momentum for expanding its influence."
It was the sort of remark that could easily have sounded arrogant and disrespectful, depending on the listener. Abbot Hyewon merely smiled.
A deep lake is not stirred by a passing breeze.
"Well, compared to the secular martial clans that can reach out and seize any venture they please without worrying about appearances, we mountain monks do have our inevitable constraints."
Shaolin Temple's principal sources of income fell into three broad categories: donations, tribute from affiliated secular clans, and finally the tenant rents and operating profits that flowed from the lands and businesses it held.
Of these, the largest share by far came from tenant rents and operating profits. In Shaolin's case especially, the proportion of tenant rents drawn from rice paddies and fields utterly dwarfed any business profits—a thoroughly feudal landlord's structure.
"It's a matter of face," Dang Hui-yeom diagnosed flatly. "In truth this applies not only to Shaolin but to every Daoist and Buddhist sect among the Nine Sects and One Gang."
Abbot Hyewon sipped his tea and nodded at the assessment.
"It does not look seemly for Daoist adepts and Buddhist monks who have withdrawn from the world to cultivate the Way to go about calculating worldly wealth and striking bargains."
In twenty-first-century terms, then, roughly eighty percent of Shaolin's asset portfolio consisted of farmland real estate, and the temple lived off the rental income those holdings produced. It was a wealthy landowner with a deeply conservative and stable asset structure—yet the flaw in that structure was its poor scalability.
"If you wish to increase the number of disciples, the clan's operating costs must rise. Yet the annual tenant rents Shaolin collects have been stagnant for decades already. Even if the temple wished to expand, I dare say it finds itself in no position to do so."
"Now how did you come by knowledge of this temple's purse strings as well?"
"Please do not take offense. I have by no means gone digging into Shaolin's affairs. I merely estimated the figures from information obtained through the Sama Clan, using the scale of taxes levied by the Henan Provincial Administration Commission. If tax receipts have not increased, it means the harvest itself has not increased."
"Heh. What remarkable resourcefulness for so young a man. They call you the Hidden Dragon of Sichuan, and the reputation is clearly well earned."
"You flatter me."
"So what connection is there between the fact that this temple's revenues have remained much the same year after year and your conclusion that we have lost the drive for expansion?"
"Tenant rents are proportional to the quantity of grain produced. Looking at Henan's gazettes over the past decade, there has been no major crop failure. That the rents have still not grown significantly means there is nothing more to extract from the productivity of the land you currently hold—and it also means you have not been bringing new land into the portfolio."
"…"
"Why have you been unable to acquire new land? It can hardly be that Shaolin lacks the money. The more reasonable inference is that there is simply no more land left to buy in the surrounding area. Productive paddies and fields are finite. Besides Shaolin, Henan has the Sama Clan, local magnates and high officials who hold land of their own, official fields cultivated by the Provincial Administration Commission, and the remaining freeholding farmers as well."
Real estate is a finite asset; farmland even more so. Even if one wished to buy land, the owner first had to be willing to sell.
And if that owner was a freeholding farmer who lived off a few plots of paddy and a few patches of field, being told to sell his land was no different from being told to sell his livelihood. Such land was never easy to come by.
There was a reason local magnates lent grain to freeholders in every lean year and then used the debt to seize their paddies and reduce them to tenants. But could a guardian of the orthodox path like Shaolin engage in such practices? This was no Blood Demon Temple of Tibet that worshipped the Blood Buddha.
When Hui-yeom pressed on the sore spot, Abbot Hyewon gave a hollow laugh.
"Hahaha… The reasoning is so sound I have nothing to say. Yes, it is true. Shaolin already holds most of the paddies around Mount Song. To expand those holdings any further would make conflict with the other local powers and magnates of Henan nearly unavoidable. There are still a few donors who come asking us to buy their land when famine strikes… but even that has grown rare of late."
The only reason Shaolin had been able to grow its lands this far was that freeholders forced to surrender their paddies in famine years preferred, thinking, At least the Shaolin monks who serve the Buddha will treat us more humanely than those magnate bastards, to hand their fields over to Shaolin first. Hui-yeom knew this fact with precision.
"Have you heard of the State-run Ironworks?"
"I may look like this, but I am still the head of a sect. One must know how the world is turning if one is to conduct oneself properly."
"An imperial decree has been issued. Before long our Sichuan Dang Family intends to construct several State-run Ironworks throughout the Central Plains—along the Yangtze and the Yellow River and their tributaries. Henan Province is also among the leading candidate sites."
"Oho…"
"Large-scale construction and large-scale employment draw people. Where people gather, money gathers."
"I know that much, yet what has it to do with this temple? You are not suggesting we simply wait for the laborers who come for the works and the workers who settle after the Ironworks are finished to come pouring donations into our coffers?"
"Hardly."
Hui-yeom smiled faintly.
"I intend to transfer to Shaolin Temple several parcels of land currently held by our family and the Sama Clan. On those sites we will build the State-run Ironworks. All Shaolin need do is collect the rent, month after month without fail, from the Provincial Administration Commission that will manage the Ironworks."
The request Hui-yeom had made of Sama Yun as she returned to her natal home had been to locate riverside parcels among the Sama Clan's holdings that would suit a State-run Ironworks—or, if none existed, to purchase suitably located landlocked land, parcels of no value because they touched no road.
No value? Then the price would be cheap—practically free.
Any land still usable as farmland even after river flooding was already being farmed. What remained would be ground that flooded constantly or ground little better than marsh. Yet even such ground, once sand, gravel, cement, concrete, and rebar were applied, could become a proper factory site.
Buy worthless muck for next to nothing, sell it to Shaolin at a handsome profit, and in exchange for the future rental income the land would produce, conclude a friendship pact with Shaolin.
It was no wonder Abbot Hyewon's eyes went round with an expression that said, What sort of creature is this?
"So you are telling me to buy swamp land currently owned by the Sama Clan—at this price? Have I understood correctly?"
That he had not flung his cup of Caffa in Hui-yeom's face and ordered him out could already be counted as having done his duty as a monk. Hui-yeom silently thanked the abbot for his patience and explained the situation step by step.
Abbot Hyewon began with a look of utter incredulity, but as Hui-yeom's explanation proved orderly and, decisively, as the letter of authorization Hui-yeom drew from his breast came into view, the abbot's expression slowly turned to one of belief.
"Is that the construction commission?"
"Yes. It is the genuine article, sealed by the Minister of Works. It grants full authority—from selecting the project sites for the State-run Ironworks to purchasing the land and setting the lease terms. You are welcome to read it."
"Hmm… Forgive the presumption."
Abbot Hyewon accepted the document, read it with care, and presently nodded.
"Let me summarize. His Majesty the Emperor has commanded the Sichuan Dang Family to construct State-run Ironworks at several locations in the Central Plains. The greater part of the authority to advance that project has already been delegated to the Dang Family by the Ministry of Works. Therefore the land the Dang Family designates becomes the land where a State-run Ironworks will stand. This temple purchases that land and leases it to the Henan Provincial Administration Commission, and in return reaps enormous annual rental income. Is that correct?"
"Precisely."
"Yet there are points I still fail to understand. The Sama Clan already holds the land; if they simply kept quiet and collected the rent themselves they would make money, so why sell it to this temple? And above all—how does one turn a swamp into a forge?"
The abbot's doubts were only natural. Hui-yeom smiled as he answered.
"Profit is profit, but improving relations with Shaolin is also an important task. If the Sama Clan kept the land and took the rental income themselves, improving relations with Shaolin would of course become difficult."
"Hmm…"
"As for how to turn swamp into factory ground…"
Hui-yeom explained the process of ground improvement in terms the abbot could grasp—how marshland could be transformed into a factory site.
"The State-run Ironworks site in Sichuan was secured by precisely this method."
"Hard to believe. Yet I cannot think you would invent lies merely to deceive this old monk."
"Of course not."
This was not a one-time deal, nor was he planning to leave the Central Plains forever. Would he really try to swindle Shaolin for a small profit and make an enemy of them?
Understanding Hui-yeom's intent at last, Abbot Hyewon nodded.
"I understand. It will truly be a grand construction."
"And while it may be difficult to capture the full economic effect of the people who will flock there, incidental benefits may still be obtainable."
"Incidental benefits?"
"What do you suppose will happen once word spreads that work at a State-run Ironworks is a decent living?"
"Why, people will pour in from every region seeking employment."
Hui-yeom smiled gently at the abbot's naïve reply. The old ginger might be hot, but when it came to the flow of the economy the man was still only an ordinary old monk. Hui-yeom kindly laid out what was about to happen in Henan.
"Abbot, would it not be faster for the farmers already living in Henan to change their minds than for people from other regions to abandon everything and come here?"
"…! You cannot mean—"
Only then did Abbot Hyewon feel a chill. Hui-yeom nodded and continued.
"Leaving the freeholders aside, the tenant farmers who live by working other men's paddies will, once rumor spreads that the State-run Ironworks is worth trying, abandon their landlords' fields and come knocking at the Ironworks' gates. What happens when the number of people willing to farm shrinks?"
"…The land will lie idle. The landlords will stamp their feet in frustration, unable to find hands to work the fields…"
Something terrible might be about to befall Henan. More precisely, something terrible for the landlords alone.
"They say a landlord who takes only half the harvest as rent is praised as a bodhisattva. The traditional magnate landlords leave the tenants barely enough to keep from starving and take the rest—seven or eight tenths, I am told. Even if they gave more, the tenants would only scrape the money together and come back saying, 'Sell me back the paddies I once owned,' so the intent is to keep them from ever accumulating money and to bind them forever like slaves. Shaolin, by contrast, as a merciful Buddhist sanctuary, is said never to take more than four tenths even in a bumper year, is it not?"
"…We are still a temple, after all."
Once the State-run Ironworks revealed itself as a good job, the tenants who had been treated humanely and paid reasonable rents on Shaolin land would likely stay put—but the magnates' tenants would fling aside plow and hoe and head for the Ironworks.
Farmhands would become as rare as stars in the sky, and the magnates would have to choose: cling to paddies that were growing weeds for lack of timely care while still paying the tax on them, or sell to another power that still had capacity—Shaolin, the Provincial Administration Commission, the Sama Clan…
The reason such a thing had not occurred in Sichuan was simple: the province's two greatest economic actors, the Sichuan Dang Family and the Provincial Administration Commission, had coordinated well and regulated the market between them. Later the agricultural cooperatives had even appeared to guarantee the farmers' incomes outright.
Without that cushioning, Henan's agriculture would undergo a great upheaval. The number of great landlords would shrink, and those who remained would own still more land. Those who had treated their farmers with more human decency would grow richer.
Ordinarily such latifundia ran on the exploitation of slaves, but the great landlords of Henan would be Shaolin—and for the sake of public opinion and face they could not treat their tenants harshly.
Strip the local magnates of their property and place it in Shaolin's hands. With the magnates weakened, Emperor Sungui would be pleased. The Provincial Administration Commission, which would rake in a fortune from the State-run Ironworks, would be pleased. The Regional Military Commissioner, who could arm his troops with the high-quality, inexpensive iron produced by the Ironworks, would be pleased. And Shaolin and the Sama Clan, who would not only become the great landlords of Henan but also collect the Ironworks' rent on schedule—well, they could laugh themselves into enlightenment and no one would blame them.
How many moves ahead does this youth look when he advances a single venture? Can this truly be the vision of a young man who has only just come of age?
For the first time in a long while since attaining the lofty realm of martial mastery, Abbot Hyewon felt a chill.
Hui-yeom spoke.
"I will make you the owner of the greatest grain market in the Central Plains, one that need not envy even the Namgung Clan, Abbot. Take the hand of our family."
Ah—so there was one more aim. Only upon hearing the invitation did Hyewon realize the further consequence.
If this proceeded, Shaolin would become the Namgung Clan's greatest rival. The Henan grain market would grow so rapidly it would threaten the Anhui grain market. Naturally, relations between the Namgung Clan and Shaolin would deteriorate at speed. Even under the common shade of the orthodox path and the name of the Martial Alliance they had never been especially close, representing as they did the Nine Sects and One Gang and the Nine Great Noble Families respectively; this affair would make them outright enemies.
Killing with a borrowed knife…
Hyewon had known of the friction between the Dang Family and the Namgung Clan. He had not expected to be used in this fashion. If he disliked being used, he need only refuse the proposal…
He gazed for a long moment at the cup of Caffa before him, which still released its sweet fragrance, and said,
"…It is rather like this Caffa. Bitter, yet it pours out a sweetness one cannot help but drink…"
Hui-yeom smiled and answered.
"Caffa is certainly bitter…"
He opened the sugar jar, spooned a measure into the abbot's cup, and stirred it lightly.
"…but when a little sugar is added like this, even the bitterness becomes an element that heightens the sweetness."
"…"
After a brief silence Hyewon gave a short laugh and drained the coffee in one go.
"Delicious. A tea like this cannot be refused."
Hui-yeom smiled.
"Welcome as an ally of the Dang Family."