Wu Xiaozhan Camping and Field Bureau
In the winter of the 21st year of Guangxu (1896), Wang Wenshao was injured and sent Tianjin Dao Gao Linlin as the general office, and alternate Dao Zhang Zhenfan and others as the general office. He also selected a supplementary county magistrate who was familiar with agricultural affairs. , set up a camp and field bureau at the small station. Recheck the surveying station and farmland. And raise funds to build bridges, sluices and river channels. At the same time, the work of recruiting people and planting crops by recruiting tenants and renting crops was restarted. According to the fertility of the land, different levels of rent are determined, and the rent is paid in spring and autumn. The rest of the rice fields that no one is renting will be assigned to the Yingping Field Bureau to recruit tenants to plant the rice. The harvest will be divided into 30% and 70%, with the tenant farmers receiving 70%. He also advised the farmers near the Xiaozhan rice area to cultivate all the uncultivated fields around them, and allowed them to add culverts to divert water for irrigation and charge a small water conservancy fee. This year, more than 50,000 acres of arable land were leased. Among them, more than 30,000 acres are planted with rice, and the rest are divided into reeds and miscellaneous grains. There are also more than 8,000 acres of private farmland reclaimed nearby. Dongda Station has more than 10,000 acres of land purchased and stored by the Mining Bureau. After negotiation, it was also purchased by the Xiaozhan Farming Bureau and either rented or tenanted, turning it into productive acres.
This year, the Yingpin field had a bumper harvest. Local farmers rushed to petition the Yingtian Bureau for rent, tenant farming and reclamation, and the cultivated land area increased significantly. The rental fees collected by the Yingtian Bureau are used to improve and add water conservancy facilities in the Yingtian. Because the water in the Nan Canal contains a lot of sediment, the river channel must be dredged every year and the locks, culverts and bridges must be repaired. When farmers go to work, they can receive wages from the camp and field bureau. After these expenses were spent, there was still a balance left, which was kept as a deposit by Tianjin Daotai Yamen and earmarked for special purposes. It was also used to expand camp fields. In the second year, the camp field increased by more than 6,000 acres compared with the previous year. There are also more than 200 hectares of private farmland nearby that have been replanted with paddy fields, doubling the amount from the previous year. However, the good times of the Yingtian Bureau did not last long. Xiaozhan rice fields were gradually invaded by bureaucrats and warlords in disguise and turned into private property. Official fields were gradually transformed into private fields.
