Chapter Eighty-Nine: Riches and Rank Are but Dust

In the autumn of 1925, Mao, now past the age of thirty, wrote this widely quoted line: “The marquises of old were no more than manure.”

It revealed the swagger of a farm boy who looked down on the powerful and the conviction that sustained him throughout his life: rebellion was justified. Yet from the perspective of economic history, to compare those marquises to manure was still to flatter them.

During the Ming dynasty, Jiangnan accounted for only a little more than 6 percent of the nation’s farmland, yet contributed more than one-fifth of the tax grain. It was precisely the advanced techniques of manure processing that made the agricultural development of Jiangnan unrivaled under heaven. Without the manure of Jiangnan, there would have been no steady stream of grain transported to Beijing and the rest of the empire, and no glutted officials and nobles. Those wine-skins and rice-bags, those walking corpses, could never compare with the manure that upheld the foundations of the imperial house.

In ancient times there was no such thing as chemical fertilizer. After three or five years of cultivation, the soil would lose fertility and yields would fall; this was understood by many. Thus laboring people often had no choice but to let the land recover slowly through fallowing, rotation, or other simple means: three years of crops followed by two seasons of rest, or one season of wheat and millet followed by a season of beans.

Over long years of cultivation, peasants discovered that yields could be raised by using human waste, river and pond silt, rotting stems and leaves, wood ash, decomposable refuse, sewage from village ditches, peanut cake, and bean cake as fertilizer. Only in the late Ming and early Qing did composting technology make real advances.

A farming treatise of the late Song says: “Land, when long cultivated, is depleted.”

Chen Fu’s Agricultural Book says: “When the soil is exhausted, grasses and trees do not grow; when the vital force declines, living things do not thrive. Any field, after three to five years of planting, has already lost its strength.”

Letting the land recover through fallowing was too crude and backward, and it greatly reduced harvests. The common people long ago also discovered the use of fertilization to preserve soil fertility. Someone once summed it up neatly: human and animal dung, stove ash, and mud from the hearth are worthless, yet once they enter the fields, they are transformed into cloth and grain.

The Tang people’s use of human and animal waste was still too simple, usually limited to the most basic kind of composting. Such compost could indeed provide nourishment, but the conversion rate was still too low.

For example, with the same heap of pig manure, if it was handled properly its power would be great; if not, its effect would be small, or even none at all.

Manure could not be applied directly, or it might even damage the crops, scorching seedlings and the like. Tang-era composting was precisely meant to let the manure fully decompose and prevent the burning of seedlings and roots.

As time changed, manure also went through different stages of development: steaming, simmering, pit-fermenting, and finally boiling.

The processing of manure was not complicated, and was mainly divided into northern and southern methods.

The northern method was as follows: in autumn, cut corn stalks into short sections, stack them in alternating layers like warp and weft into a mound, and pour manure water and urine over them so that they are thoroughly soaked and begin to rot. Then let them ferment; wood ash or charcoal rich in potash from the burned residue can also be added. By the following spring, the pile will have decomposed into small gray-black clumps of fertilizer, or a gray-black liquid fertilizer with a watery consistency. This is manure fertilizer. Wheat straw piles can also be used to make it. During the process, other plant stems, vines, leaves, and dead branches swept up from courtyards are constantly added to the stalk pile.

The southern method was as follows: in towns and market townships, peasants from the four suburbs used to enter the city at night carrying buckets, collecting excrement from each household, a practice commonly called “urine pouring.” Eventually, bicycles with hanging buckets were used to transport the waste, gradually replacing the shoulder-borne method, mainly because of improved transport.

There was also another practice: collecting pig droppings.

Compared with modern chemical fertilizers, manure has very little harmful effect on crops, so from ancient times fields were always fertilized with manure. It includes human manure, chicken manure, pig manure, cow manure, and so on.

Zhen Gan also knew of another method: digging a large pit, throwing all kinds of animal waste together with stalks, vegetable roots, and the like into a huge manure pit, adding urine, water, and so forth, then sealing it to ferment. This was similar to biogas-pond fermentation. Though slow, it consumed less organic matter, and both the solid residue and the liquid effluent had high fertilizing power; the effluent, in particular, could even be used as an insecticide.

These are all excellent manure-processing methods, able to raise conversion efficiency and double yields once more.

People in later ages may look disgusted at the mere mention of excrement, but in earlier times it was a priceless treasure in the eyes of peasants.

Sir George Staunton, a member of the famous Macartney Mission, wrote in his account of China: “The Chinese pay great attention to the collection of manure. A large number of old people, women, and children who are unable to do other labor carry a basket on their backs and a wooden rake in their hands, and search everywhere in the streets, on the roads, and along the riverbanks for garbage and waste that can be used as fertilizer... In Chinese peasant households, every weak, old, or disabled person is useful; though they cannot do other labor, they can gather manure and make fertilizer.” “Apart from poultry droppings, the Chinese value human urine and feces most highly... The Chinese rake this waste together, mix in hard earth, shape it into blocks, and dry them in the sun. These blocks of manure can then be sold as merchandise to peasants.” At the same time, peasants “place large jars in fields or along roads, burying them in the ground for passersby to use. Near villages or beside roads, they sometimes build a privy and place manure jars inside. Straw is laid on top in the jars whenever possible, to prevent evaporation and loss” (see A Record of the British Audience with the Qianlong Emperor).

Records show that the organized collection of excrement began in the Southern Song. Before that, there were also people specifically assigned to gather waste in the cities, but that was done by the authorities for the sake of urban cleanliness and had nothing to do with manure use.

Hence Xu Guangqi said: “The fields near the city walls are especially fertile because there is so much manure. The same is true in densely populated villages” (see Complete Agricultural Administration).

In the Southern Song, Hangzhou already had people specifically employed to collect and transport human waste from the city. Wu Zimu said that Hangzhou was “so populous, and the streets and alleys so full of common households, that many homes had no pit latrines at all and used only chamber pots. Every day, people came to pour out the filth. This was called ‘tilting the foot-pots.’ Each had its own customers, and none dared encroach upon another’s. If anyone did, the owner of the manure would surely fight over it; in serious cases the matter would go to the magistrate’s office, and only after winning the suit would the matter rest.”

Zhen Gan did not go to the county town to collect manure. Instead, he raised a great many livestock in Xiantai Village. The manure from pigs, sheep, chickens, and ducks was gathered as raw material for fertilizer; the grown pigs, sheep, chickens, and ducks were taken to the county town and sold, and the money earned was then used to buy grain, creating a virtuous cycle.

Because of the heavy use of manure fertilizer, the yield in Xiantai Village reached more than four dan per mu. Not only did Zhen Gan benefit from this, but the surrounding farm households also profited, which gave Zhen Gan greater authority in Xiantai Village.

Everything one does comes with risk and cost. For ordinary peasants, yields of more than four dan per mu simply meant that the land produced several times more grain; but for officials, the meaning was entirely different. In a feudal society, agriculture was the foundation of the state, and the amount of grain per mu was directly tied to an official’s black gauze cap. It is not hard to imagine the frenzy that would seize Tang officials if they learned of this news.

A tall tree catches the wind. Zhen Gan did not yet want to draw the court’s attention; secretly strengthening his own power was the very basis of survival.

Zhen Gan had no intention of reporting it to the court, and officials would not come down into the countryside to inspect agricultural conditions, so naturally they would not discover this golden chance for promotion and wealth.

Just because the officials did not know did not mean no one knew. When the peasants of Xiantai Village saw the heavy wheat heads in the autumn fields, their mouths watered. But Zhen Gan was not one to keep a good thing to himself. He supplied the surrounding farmers with manure free of charge, and even spent money to buy pigs, sheep, chickens, and ducks for them to raise, binding the interests of the neighboring households tightly to his own.

Peasants of this era were simple and sincere. Whoever treated them well would win their wholehearted support, and they would naturally never reveal the secret to the authorities.