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public feeling. By his order he has misappropriated public land, and allowed one clan to take it by force and occupy it. A narrow place through which tens of thousands of the people must pass, and one clan has been allowed to grab it and keep hold of it! This is a case of officials and bullies in collusion. Who can trust them?
Moreover, this is an enlightened age. Fung Shui cannot be allowed to impede communications. There are innumerable precedents. Anyway, if the Fung Shui is examined, that village is a good three li away, and the bridge is low down while the village is high up. Where is the problem? Why do we hear of fields and rice being flooded? This is clearly a case of a hidden plot to preserve private income. They are merely hatching a hundred schemes to destroy this bridge. Today the Cheung clan is trying in every way to destroy the bridge-work at Kim Hau. They consider that the ferry should remain as it now is.
What they lose today in bribing the officials they can skin the ferry passengers for tomorrow.
Magistrate Yau is a scandalous official uninterested in the public. How can we expect him to investigate this properly? It is useless to accuse an official he can rely on the other officials. It is like sending a lamb into a tiger's mouth.
We the gentry and others have collected money to build a bridge. We cannot make any profit by this. Why should what we are doing offend those prominent officials and that powerful clan? Why should it cause a lawsuit?
We have merely planned the construction of this bridge, and the work on it has already been overthrown three times. If the bridge-work were to be overthrown yet again, then not only would there never be a future renaissance for the communications of the people of all the surrounding districts, but also, the people having been oppressed and ground down for ages, so, what the bad consequences
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