After Transmigration: Building a Kingdom in Turbulent Times

Chapter 1270: Chapter 1237: Meat, Oh Meat

Fu Chang lifted the curtain and came in. Seeing that there was still a pile of documents on his desk, he couldn’t help saying, "You’re still not resting at this hour?"

He felt that Fu Tinghan was not like his eldest brother’s son, but more like his own. With this level of workload, even he felt ashamed of himself in comparison.

Fu Tinghan roughly straightened the documents on the desk. "Almost done. How are the New Year’s Eve dinner preparations in the Second Battalion?"

The Second Battalion was under Fu Chang’s management, thirty li from here. Even on horseback it took half an hour. It didn’t sound far, but riding in this cold...

Fu Chang said, "It’s more or less ready. The rest is in County Magistrate Lin’s hands. I was thinking our family could have New Year’s Eve dinner together tonight."

Actually, he just thought it was too pathetic for Fu Tinghan to spend the New Year alone, so he brought his two sons along so they could have a meal with him.

Fu Chang was someone who cared a lot about family ties.

But Fu Tinghan genuinely felt that spending the New Year alone was quite comfortable, and besides, he wasn’t really alone. There were over ten thousand people in this camp; he had comrades, subordinates, and close friends like Fu An by his side.

As the one in charge, he had plenty to do. He wouldn’t get sentimental just because he wasn’t spending the New Year with his family.

At first, Fu Chang didn’t notice, but once they arrived, all Fu Tinghan could do was exchange a few words with them, then he had to start meeting the people coming from each battalion to report in.

These were all people Fu Tinghan had sent out to check on supplies in each battalion, to make sure everyone could have a full and comfortable New Year.

Then there was receiving all kinds of data. Even during the New Year, the measurements of ground temperature, water temperature, and air temperature could not stop.

Finally, he had to assign the soldiers on patrol.

The laborers and engineer troops were all on holiday, but the soldiers responsible for security were not.

They had to prevent bandits from causing trouble, foreign enemies from invading, and even more, ensure internal safety.

With over ten thousand people in a camp, who knew if fights or brawls might break out?

Also, with the weather this cold, they had to keep people from getting drunk and passing out outside and freezing to death, so there could not be too few soldiers on patrol.

Seeing him this busy, Fu Chang finally realized that Fu Tinghan did not need the warmth and comfort of their family affection.

Fu Yong also thought his father was being foolish, and said, "I told you you were overthinking it. Big Brother doesn’t look like someone who’d ever feel lonely."

Fu Hong nodded. "He’s been used to being alone since he was a child; he’s seen this sort of thing countless times, so of course he won’t feel bad. Father, you’re thinking too much. Big Brother isn’t like us."

When Fu Chang heard them criticizing their big brother and the Princess, he raised his hand to smack their heads, but the two of them ducked their heads and ran off.

Fu Chang didn’t land a hit, and he didn’t dare shout too loudly for fear of hurting Fu Tinghan’s feelings, so he could only mutter a few curses at his two children under his breath.

At 3:00 PM, everyone started lighting bonfires. The dishes that were already cooked were set beside the fires, and each squad’s bonfire had a big pot hanging over it, filled with mutton soup that was already stewed.

Everyone could take their own bowl and ladle themselves a serving of mutton soup. Besides the soup, there were two dishes with pork and one dish with mutton tonight.

The pork came from castrated hogs. After several years of step‑by‑step promotion, and with the spread of newspapers, people everywhere, apart from breeding pigs, were basically all raising castrated hogs.

Castrated pigs not only tasted better, they grew faster and yielded more meat.

So in less than three years, ordinary households had practically no breeding boars left. Aside from sows needed to produce piglets, all the pigs were castrated ones.

Right, both boars and sows needed to be castrated; only pigs kept for breeding were left intact as breeding stock.

Of the two kinds of breeding pigs, the vast majority of households preferred to keep sows. Boars... were hard to raise, had a strong smell, and bad tempers; they didn’t like them.

This led to a shortage of boars available for breeding in the countryside.

At the start of this year, in order to solve this problem, Zhao Hanzhang specially issued an order requiring each commandery and county to ensure boar breeding. Every county government had to hire at least one pig herder to raise breeding boars specifically, to guarantee the pig population within the county.

Besides this, she also wrote many pork‑based recipes in various newspapers. For that, not only did she herself eat pork continuously for three months without a single sheep, even the Imperial Palace added pork to its procurement lists.

You had to know that previously the Imperial Palace would not admit pork.

To the powerful and noble families, pork was a lowly meat, foul‑smelling and unpalatable, far inferior to beef and mutton.

When she demanded that the Imperial Palace purchase pork, some court officials launched fierce attacks on her in open court, accusing her of insulting the emperor.

This was one of the turning points that worsened people’s impression of her. Zhao Hanzhang was not as loyal and faithful as she appeared.

To make pork sell well and get the common people to raise pigs, she actually forced the emperor to eat pork—could such a person still be called a loyal minister?

If she hadn’t then taken the lead by eating pork herself for three months straight, with the General’s Mansion not admitting a single sheep or piece of beef, her reputation would have been even worse.

Even so, many old officials who had originally thought she would never replace the Little Emperor began to have doubts and no longer believed that she would always hold the emperor as supreme.

But to be fair, although the policy was criticized, the price of pork among the people went up, demand for pork kept increasing, and more and more people started raising pigs.

In a typical village, roughly half the households would raise one or two pigs. They’d start raising them in spring, and by the time the New Year approached, they’d slaughter one at home, keep some of the meat for themselves, and sell the rest.

The other pig would be sold off whole, which could actually bring in quite a bit of money.

Fu Tinghan sent people from the logistics office everywhere to purchase pigs. The Yellow River laborers and soldiers added up to more than two hundred thousand people, and all the meat for this period was pork; only tonight were they using a portion of mutton.

The laborers and soldiers had seen it two days ago: the newly driven‑in fat hogs from the logistics office, at least five hundred of them, penned in a vacant lot not far from the camp kitchen, surrounded by fences.

This morning they kept hearing the miserable squeals of pigs. When they got off work they sneaked a look and saw the soldiers in the camp kitchen killing pigs, one stroke of the knife per pig; they had slaughtered at least fifty.

Heavens, just thinking about it made them excited.

Rumors had already started circulating in the camp. "I heard that once we finish eating these five hundred pigs, our work here will be done and we can go home."

"Is that for real? Fifty pigs a day..."

"You’re dreaming. They only killed this many today because it’s New Year. On normal days, if we eat ten pigs a day, that’s already pretty good."

"Just ask the people in the camp kitchen and you’ll know how many they kill a day."

"I asked. Before, it was anywhere between fifteen to twenty pigs a day, depending on what we were doing that day. If there was heavy work, the people doing the heavy work had to eat more meat, so the Chief of Staff ordered them to kill a couple more."

As the fragrance of meat filled the air, dish after dish was carried out. Each dish came in ten basins; one basin was set in front of each squad of ten, forming a ring around the outside of the bonfires.

Among them there was one basin of meat that drew the most attention. It was a basin of pork stewed with soybeans. The meat had been cut into neat little squares, each piece as thick as a thumb—perfect cubes!

Stewed together with the soybeans, when the basin was set down on the ground, the people sitting with bowls in hand clearly saw the meat inside tremble slightly. It was obviously stewed till soft and well‑flavored, the kind that would fall apart with a single pinch of the chopsticks.

Sister Feng wiped her hands, stood in the middle, and said proudly, "I made this dish. It’s done according to the recipe the Great General published in the newspaper, and it’s called ’Four‑Square Reunion’! I measured it when I cut the meat—twenty pieces for each squad of ten, two pieces per person. No one is allowed to grab or eat more!"

Although Sister Feng worked in the camp kitchen, the kitchen’s status was no longer low, and no one dared offend her. As soon as she finished, everyone immediately responded loudly in the affirmative.