In Xujia Village, Zhang Jun sat casually on a stool with a furrowed brow. In front of him was a square table with paper, pen, and ink on it.
Beside him, the clerk in the medical shed sat listlessly with his hands in his sleeves, looking unhappy.
Anyone would be unhappy to have to work overtime during the Chinese New Year.
It's chilly out here. It would be much better to go to the stove to warm myself by the fire and maybe even find some food.
Before them were two groups of people huddled together, seeking shelter from the wind.
A group of people were Xu Changshou, Xu Genyou, Xu Genbao, and several other families from Xujia Village who had returned.
A large group of them were refugees.
They can no longer be called refugees; those who cannot be driven away and willingly stay will be subject to local household registration management.
However, they do not own any land and have to wait until the indigenous people have claimed their land before renting the remaining unclaimed land from the government.
The two groups of people stood clearly separated, each looking at the other with displeasure.
Xu Yaozu now had the energy to curse: "This is my Xu family's territory. You bandits, go back to where you came from. You want to take our land? No way!"
Although there were many outsiders who wanted to stay, they lacked confidence and remained silent.
Their willingness to stay stems from their own compelling reasons for doing so.
Being driven away here means having nowhere to stand even when you go home.
Now we just want to wait for the government officials to issue a written household registration so that we can lease land, or even reclaim wasteland.
Zhang Juntou looked around at everyone, tapped the table, and said in a deep voice, "Those with land deeds, come and claim your land first. I am a rough man, so let me make this clear from the start: if you want to take more or occupy more land illegally, or if you want to pass off inferior goods as superior ones, you'd better do it cleanly and neatly, and don't leave any traces that I will discover."
As he spoke, he clenched his fist, his knuckles cracking: "Anyone who tries to lie and I find out, I'll crush their bones!"
Both groups of people lowered their heads, not daring to look at each other.
They've been living here for a while and know a bit about Zhang Juntou.
Although the migrants working at the medical shed were often cheated out of their wages, Zhang Juntou was straightforward and a man of his word, so he was considered better than the others.
Because of his straightforward nature, he would be beaten with military sticks for the slightest mistake, which terrified everyone.
Only Xu Yaozu, with his neck straight and grinning, said, "Squad Leader Zhang is right. We have nothing to say about taking back our own land, but it's those who want to occupy land for nothing..."
"Shut up! If you're going to buy land, then show me the land title. If you say another word, get out!"
Zhang Juntou had no good feelings towards the Xu family father and son, and when he saw that Xu still wanted to stand up for himself, he threw a sentence at him.
Xu Yaozu originally wanted to assert his status as the head of the household, but instead, he was exposed.
Fortunately, he had thick skin; there was always another layer to peel back. He chuckled sheepishly and shrank back into the crowd.
Xu Genyou took out his family's household registration book and land deeds. Zhang Juntou showed them to the clerk next to him and made a copy before speaking: "Your family has ten people and four mu and three fen and two li of land, one mu of which is paddy field and the rest is dry land. The names are: Wanjiaotian, Zhuanshandi, Xintiankou, Maobiliang, Xiao Erwan..."
The more than four acres of land were divided into more than a dozen plots of varying sizes, and Zhang Juntou almost couldn't read them all in one breath.
Xujia Village is located in the mountains, and the fields are also on both sides of the village houses. They are distributed according to the terrain, with different sizes and heights, and they spread out along the ditches.
Whether shaped like a crescent moon or a plow bend, if there is a square field that is half an acre in size, it must be the most coveted land in the whole village.
Fortunately, although the fields here are small, thanks to the good water source, the small village has fertile land and is guaranteed to have a good harvest regardless of drought or flood.
As long as people are diligent and the fields are never idle throughout the year, growing vegetables and raising pigs can barely provide enough for a family to eat and wear.
This disaster was caused by war and chaos; otherwise, even if it were just a winter drought and reduced grain production, there would have been no need to flee the famine.
Xu Genyou produced the land deed, and naturally returned the land under his name.
However, there is controversy regarding the population.
“My father died of illness on the road in the summer!” Xu Genyou explained.
At that time, they were outside the city of Yuzhou, where a large number of refugees were stranded and living in simple shacks.
Several summer downpours soaked his clothes, and he caught a chill, fell seriously ill, and died in his shack after half a month.
During that period, many people with weak constitutions who were seeking refuge outside the disaster area died of illness.
Zhang Juntou nodded calmly, then with a flourish of his pen, marked an "X" on the household registration booklet: "Later, you'll need to find the village chief and then go to the county government to change your household registration booklet! Okay, next one!"
Xu Genyou looked at the big X in his father's name and felt a pang of sorrow in his heart, his eyes welling up with tears.
His father wasn't very old, not even sixty, and still in good health.
Just because he let his grandsons and daughters-in-law take shelter from the rain in the shack during a rainstorm, he got soaked all night, caught a cold and developed a fever, and lacked medical care and medicine, he passed away within half a month.
Many people died during that period. To prevent the spread of the plague, the dead could only be cremated and not buried. The fires set out by the Yuzhou garrison for burning corpses outside never went out.
After burning, the ashes were dumped into a large pit, and none of the families were able to retrieve them.
Now, the house in my hometown has been burned down, the name on the household registration will be removed, and this person's trace will be erased from this world, as if he had never existed.
All that remains are those lands, where the shadows of my father's decades of hard work still linger.
Xu Genbao was restless in the crowd. His father's name was gone, which meant he would have to pay one less person's tax in the future.
But his wife had already told him before he came that he should take this opportunity to ask for a few more plots of land so that they could be registered under his own name when the family property was divided later.
Now, seeing that Zhang Juntou would only release the land if he demanded the land deed, Xu Genbao was hesitant to speak and could only watch as the next family's turn came.
Those who returned from Xujia Village took out their land deeds and household registration certificates to claim back the land that belonged to them.
Some of the land had already been planted with vegetables by the refugees, so when the land was harvested, the vegetables were harvested along with it. Being able to eat a whole field of vegetables for free made them beam with joy.
Xu Changshou kept a straight face and wrapped his tattered clothes tighter around himself, but his eyes were darting around.
His family owns a little over two acres of land, all located on the mountainside in a bend, neither particularly good nor bad.
The land deed was lost along the way, so now if they want to claim the land, they need someone else to help them with the documentation.
Since it's about obtaining a certificate for land... does that mean we can just accept any certificate?
Thinking of this, he looked towards the shack. The people who could testify had already been found and were just waiting for him to speak.
"Xu Changshou, are you giving up your land?" Zhang Juntou asked, seeing that all the Xu family members who had returned had registered, but Xu Changshou hadn't moved yet.
Xu Changshou came out coughing violently, and said listlessly, "Squad Leader Zhang, my family's household registration book is lost and hasn't been replaced yet!"
Zhang Juntou banged on the table, very impatiently: "We can process it now! First, register the population, then the land area, and later we can go to the county government to exchange the deeds!"
These statistics should have been compiled and reported by the village head of Xujia Village, but since the village head didn't return, he had to collect them on his behalf.
It's just that he's a soldier carrying a sword, and now he's being assigned all these odd jobs by the county government. It's really annoying for a rough guy like him.
"Oh! My family..." Xu Changshou squinted and said with great sorrow, "My wife also died of illness outside Yuzhou Prefecture!"
"Hmm!" Zhang Jun replied without changing his expression.
Living outdoors in the elements, enduring fear and hardship, those with poor health simply cannot withstand such torment.
He'd heard so many stories of death in the families he'd returned to that he was numb to it all, especially since he'd just erased a name from his own records.
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