Relief and Monopoly Rights
The newly appointed Provincial Administration Commissioner of Yunnan Province was named Beom-in—a name that made anyone flinch the moment they heard it.
Despite that, he was renowned as a thoroughly upright official of the cleanest reputation.
Facing Hwi-yeom, he poured the tea with his own hands and spoke.
"I had to rush to my post so urgently that I never even managed to pay my respects to my teacher. Is the Master keeping well?"
It was only a brief remark, but Hwi-yeom immediately grasped Beom-in's background.
If a newly appointed Commissioner and Hwi-yeom shared knowledge of the same person without any prior conversation, then that person was almost certainly connected to the present affair—and therefore someone tied to the bureaucracy.
The first name that rose to his lips among the former officials in the legal affairs division was, inevitably, the right one.
"So you have a connection with Lord Bang."
"I do."
"His Lordship is quite well."
Beom-in smiled faintly at Hwi-yeom, then moved straight to the point.
"I heard a great deal of grain was laid out in advance. Have you put the accounts in order?"
"Yes. Here they are."
"Hmm."
Beom-in took the ledger Hwi-yeom offered, scanned it in a single pass, and said,
"I'll take this for now. It isn't that I doubt you—but it won't hurt to confirm that the quantities written here were actually delivered to the people of Yunnan before we settle the payment, will it?"
"Of course. Relief work isn't finished with this shipment anyway, so you're welcome to settle the accounts all at once later."
"I'd be grateful if you would. The Commissioner's office is flat broke, you see."
"I beg your pardon? That can't be right."
"I'm afraid it is."
Beom-in sighed with weary eyes.
"To be precise, the Commissioner's official budget is scraping bottom—while the previous Commissioner's private fortune is overflowing. One might call it a textbook illustration of just how much a corrupt local official can amass. A lamentable state of affairs."
"Ah… a side purse, then…."
Well, that was entirely plausible. Hwi-yeom nodded.
"Once the previous Commissioner's private assets are reclaimed for the state treasury, sent up to Beijing, and returned as a new budget appropriation, only then can we spend them. The ordinary budget cycle falls in spring, which has already passed—but we'll apply for a disaster-relief appropriation on the pretext of the locust plague."
"Not on the Commissioner's case itself, but on the locusts as the pretext… So there was some kind of deal struck in Beijing."
The whole arrangement assembled itself clearly in Hwi-yeom's mind.
A spark of interest lit Beom-in's eyes.
"You seem rather at home with politics."
"Not to that degree—but I can guess the atmosphere. When a major corruption case linked to the Dongchang erupts, His Majesty's temper turns foul. The matter can swell into nationwide inspections of local officials, and so the Censorate, the Embroidered Uniform Guard, the Dongchang, and in some cases even the Bureau of Military Affairs all huddle together in back rooms and quietly bury it. Isn't that about the size of it?"
"Impressive… Exactly so. Officially, this affair will be reported as simple personal corruption by a Provincial Commissioner, discovered and punished by the Dongchang, with no involvement from Chiliarch Jang-hyeong. Beijing's political world neither condoned the graft nor took bribes to cover it up—so the story will go."
Watching the bitter rot in Beom-in's expression, Hwi-yeom said,
"You despise Beijing's conduct."
"Wouldn't you? All I can do is regret that I have no power."
Beom-in shook his head and changed the subject.
"In any case, we benefited from it this time. Anyone can see it's a transparent farce, but the monsters in Beijing seem to have agreed to keep the matter quiet, so the budget will be redrawn without further trouble."
"That is welcome news indeed."
"Isn't it? So let's leave the gloomy talk there and turn to something constructive. How much grain does the Sacheondang Family have in reserve? How much can you sell to Yunnan?"
"The quantity is about this much; the price is set at this level. If you'd look at the chart here…."
"…Hmm? At this price? Aren't you taking a severe loss?"
Seeing the Commissioner's puzzlement, Hwi-yeom went straight to the heart of the matter.
"In exchange, give me the monopoly rights to Yunnan's tea."
At Hwi-yeom's words, the Commissioner's face hardened.
"You are not a salt merchant. For the government to step in and grant a particular trading house a monopoly over a luxury good like tea is improper. That is something that ought to arise under free competition among the merchant houses."
"Of course you are right, Your Excellency. But government control of trading houses by Provincial Commissioners in other provinces is already practiced so widely it has become custom. And more than that—what I am proposing is by no means a pursuit of private profit alone. I am speaking for the people of Yunnan, looking as far as thirty years into this province's future."
"Those are lofty words. Still—if it is truly for the benefit of Yunnan's people, I will hear you out."
With the Commissioner's leave granted, Hwi-yeom cleared his throat, composed his voice, and began to speak slowly.
"What struck me as I came to know Yunnan Province is that this place is utterly incapable of self-sufficiency."
Yunnan was a famed tea-producing region—home to the celebrated Pu'er, along with Iron Goddess of Mercy, Biluochun, and other renowned varieties—and a place whose profits came from cross-trade with the Islamic merchants who arrived along the Silk Road.
"Yunnan sells tea to the Central Plains and the Western Regions. From the West it buys luxury goods—pepper, cloves, glass—and resells them to the Central Plains. From the Central Plains it sells porcelain and silk back to the West. And its grain—it buys from the Central Plains."
"Yes. And what is the problem with that?"
"In the present situation, it becomes a problem. Grain is not a luxury good. When the supply fails, people's lives hang in the balance."
"…."
"From what I have observed, Yunnan has far more tea plantations than paddy fields or crop farmland. From the farmers' standpoint and the government's alike, that is the natural choice. Tea fetches far more than ordinary crops, so growing tea to sell and buying food with the proceeds seems the profitable course."
"This preamble is running long."
"How high do you estimate grain prices will climb?"
The humor had left Hwi-yeom's voice; the words struck the Commissioner's heart like a dagger.
"Yunnan's tragedy is a truly sorrowful thing—but that is no reason for the grain merchants of the Central Plains to lower their prices. On the contrary, they will collude to drive the price as high as they can. That is the nature of merchants."
"You mean they would dare bargain with the lives of the people? The law of the realm will not permit it."
"Your Excellency, please set aside that misunderstanding. I am by no means speaking of pressing Yunnan with grain prices. Quite the opposite, in fact."
"What do you mean?"
"As I understand it, Yunnan has until now purchased rice from Anhui. And as Your Excellency fears, the locust plague will send rice prices soaring, and Anhui's grain merchants will not miss the chance. Yet Yunnan, dependent as it is on Anhui rice, will have no alternative."
Once Hwi-yeom had set the stage, the Commissioner understood at once.
"So, for instance, Sichuan will supply rice without raising the price? Even so, demanding a tea monopoly for that alone is excessive."
"I am not offering a single cheap shipment of rice. First, would you look at this material?"
Hwi-yeom laid out for Beom-in the story of the Sichuan Provincial Agricultural Cooperative. The Commissioner's face, which had begun in displeasure, gradually lost its anger; before long his eyes were bright with keen interest.
"I see what you mean. The Cooperative concludes guaranteed-purchase contracts to secure stable income and a social safety net for Sichuan's farmers—so you can supply Yunnan, at low cost, with the large volume of produce that is constantly secured that way."
"In both scale and geography, it is optimal. Sichuan is one of the greatest grain-producing regions in the Central Plains. Even accounting for transport costs, no other province can sell grain to Yunnan more cheaply than Sichuan. Right next door, Guizhou? What do you expect from that wasteland?"
"Even so—why has Sichuan never sold grain to Yunnan until now?"
"Sichuan is indeed one of the greatest breadbaskets, but its population was equally vast. The rice it produced was barely enough for Sichuan itself. In truth, Sichuan used to sell Sichuan gold to Anhui and buy Anhui rice in return."
The Namgung Clan of Anhui Province—famous for the Imperial Sword Form and the Unfettered Sky Palace Sword Art—was, if one looked at its actual revenue structure, a landed farming dynasty that ought by rights to have made the Autumn Harvest Sword Form or the Peasant Threshing Sword Art its hereditary martial arts.
"But circumstances have changed. As the materials I showed you indicate, Sichuan's expected yields have increased dramatically through water-control projects, fertilizer programs, and the introduction of pesticides. Mass agricultural production has gone beyond self-sufficiency and produced an explosive surplus of crops. Selling that surplus cheaply to Yunnan means Yunnan can obtain grain at low cost—good for Yunnan. And Sichuan gets exclusive claim to Yunnan's precious tea—good for Sichuan. And for Yunnan, the further benefit is this: it can devote itself entirely to tea cultivation, can it not?"
"Well, yes. Until now, as a hedge against the Central Plains grain merchants' excessive games and against emergencies, roughly four-tenths of all arable land still produced food. But if Sichuan guarantees a stable, ongoing supply of grain at the agreed price, that ratio could be brought down to two-tenths or even lower."
"Exactly. That is the power of a stable supply contract!"
"Mmm… But then, what of the trading houses that have been dealing tea into the Central Plains? Won't their business be cut off entirely?"
"They can trade through the Sacheondang Family. Of course, they won't be able to play multiple houses against each other to drive up the price as before, so the unit price will fall a little—but we have already given up a great deal to save Yunnan Province. They can endure that much, can they not?"
The Sacheondang Family, even while under the previous Commissioner's obstruction, had taken on the disaster-recovery work the government offices had been unable to perform, and was pouring out grain to save Yunnan. Had the Dang Family not stepped in, Yunnan would still be groaning under the grip of corrupt officials, and the grain merchants who had come sniffing after the scent of money would have driven the price of a single sack of grain up to that of a sack of pepper. Compared to that, a slightly thinner profit for the tea merchants was a bargain, was it not?
How is your conscience doing these days?
That was the substance of Hwi-yeom's argument.
In the end, Beom-in threw up his hands.
"Very well, I concede. It is reasonable—more than reasonable. It benefits both Yunnan and Sichuan, so I cannot refuse it. On the condition, of course, that you do not use the tea monopoly to oppress our Yunnan tea merchants…."
"Good heavens—after watching a corrupt official die screaming like that, do you really think I'd have the nerve to pull any tricks? Don't worry. I will not do a single illegal thing."
"Just now, the stress on the word 'illegal' seemed a little heavy. Meaning you'll work every loophole the law allows?"
Beom-in's eyes narrowed, but Hwi-yeom only grinned with shameless ease.
"Ah, just trust me once. I'm not that shortsighted a manager."
Brother here may not look like much, but he was the kind of CEO who could run the combined local-government budgets of Sichuan and Yunnan Provinces in his sleep. Just trust me, kid.
In the end, Beom-in stamped the Provincial Commissioner's official seal upon the contract.
"I'll trust you this once."
"Don't worry. We'll treat you like family."
Hwi-yeom wore his best salesman's smile as he rolled the contract up and slipped it into his robes.
It was the sealing of a deal that caught two rabbits at once: a thirty-year monopoly on Yunnan's tea, and a supply contract for Sichuan Province's agricultural produce.
"So—heading back now, are you?"
"No. I'll send only the contract back so they can bring the grain, and I'll stay here. I still have work to do."
"Is that so? Goals beyond the tea monopoly, then?"
"Yes. Word I picked up coming and going—the Western merchants seem to be in a difficult spot?"
At Hwi-yeom's words, Beom-in's brow furrowed.
"I will not permit you to touch the pepper trade. That is Yunnan's lifeline."
"Ah~ that's a pity. Not even just for this year?"
"No. As soon as Beijing's authorization comes down to liquidate the previous Commissioner's private assets, we will sell them off and buy pepper with the proceeds. Don't even dream of it."
"Well, it can't be helped. Truthfully, I never expected the pepper. What I'm after is something else."
"And what is that?"
"Black beans."
Hwi-yeom made a show of draining his teacup and grinned.
"I mean to deal a little in the Western beans called Caffa—qahwah."