That afternoon, Ding Chunqiu invited Chen Caozhi to tour the Ding Clan Villa. Though the invitation was well meant, he could not help showing off a little. Chen Caozhi took no offense and responded with a smile, bringing Ran Sheng and Lai De along.
The Ding Clan Villa occupied hills and waterways, with fifteen thousand mu of fertile fields. A five-li stretch of the Xiaohang River also belonged to the Ding Clan; outsiders could travel through by boat but were forbidden to fish along that stretch. Apart from the Ding clansmen, the vast Manor housed twenty protected households and two hundred tenant households, maintained sixty Household Troops who practiced martial arts year-round, and supported a Dianji, dependents supplied with clothing and food, and others. The little land and few tenants at Chen Family Cove simply could not compare. Yet among the gentry estates of Jiangdong, the Ding Clan Villa was considered small. Great clans such as the Kuaiji Kong clan, the Yixing Zhou clan, the Wu Commandery Lu Clan, and the Gu clan of Jinling each possessed several villas and estates, every one covering tens of thousands of mu, with hundreds of tenants and servants. Historical records described the Four Clans of Kuaiji as having "power and influence surpassing the ruler of a state, stores of wealth exceeding the ducal treasury, servants enough to form armies, and markets within their closed gates; their cattle and sheep covered the plains and marshes, their fields and ponds stretched a thousand li." This showed how powerful the gentry estate economy had been at the time.
Ding Chunqiu could not distinguish rice from millet or mulberry from hemp. A Manor's Dianji accompanied them, explaining everything along the way like a guide: rice grew here, wheat and millet over there, while the slopes beside the