Chapter 1618: Today's Kaibao

The Jiaqing Festival celebration of the eighteenth year of Kaibao was held in Wansui Hall, naturally for the sake of that hall's name. Among the many palace complexes in the Bian Palace, Chongyuan Hall was the most majestic and magnificent, with Wansui Hall ranking only second; for a time, it had even served as Emperor Liu's bedchamber, and it was in this very hall that Gaozu Liu Zhiyuan had passed away.

On the day of the celebration, the wind was gentle and the sun was warm, the spring light radiant, as if heaven itself wished to congratulate Emperor Liu's birthday with a balmy day. The entire Eastern Capital was noticeably more boisterous than usual, with the sounds of human voices and firecrackers intermingling, the whole city immersed in an ocean of joy.

Within Wansui Hall, guests had already gathered like clouds, friends of high standing filling every seat. The Great Han's imperial clansmen, nobles, and meritorious ministers all assembled together, each dressed immaculately, faces full of smiles.

There were many guests in attendance, and Wansui Hall certainly could not hold them all. Five hundred banquet tables were set up, stretching from inside the hall all the way outside, occupying the hall's terraces and the plaza.

To meet the staffing demands of this celebratory banquet, the Palace Domestic Service transferred a large number of palace maids and eunuchs from within the palace; the serving maids and servants at the banquet alone numbered over a thousand. As for the honor guards, attendants, ceremonial music, and song-and-dance troupes, they likewise formed troupes of several hundred people, all to highlight the grandeur.

Across a palace wall, a row of new stoves had been erected, cooking smoke curling upward, heat rising in plumes. More than two hundred cooks had been drawn from both inside and outside the palace—some chopping vegetables, some fanning the flames, some cooking—all busily at work.

Even for an imperial palace banquet, this kind of mass cooking was bound to lose some refinement, but at least it could ensure the honored guests got to eat hot dishes.

The atmosphere within Wansui Hall was equally festive, though with a bit more solemnity and gravity. Emperor Liu sat together with Empress Fu, wearing a broad ceremonial cap and resplendent robes; he was probably the most festively dressed person in the entire hall. His robe was a bright crimson ceremonial garment, with dragon patterns embroidered upon it so lifelike they seemed almost real. This robe had clearly been specially made, and one could only imagine how much thought and skill the weavers of the Palace Wardrobe Bureau had expended on it.

This year's Jiaqing Festival imperial banquet was perhaps the most ritualized ever. Zhao Pu and others had devised a whole series of procedures, the most indispensable of which was the eulogizing of Emperor Liu—a summary and praise of his achievements over more than thirty years.

Duke of Ji, Xue Juzheng, personally composed a congratulatory address of over ten thousand characters, written in a flowing, effortless manner, and he himself read it aloud in the hall.

Though Wansui Hall was packed with people, Xue Juzheng's voice echoed throughout, reaching the ears of everyone in the hall. The reading could have been assigned to a younger man, but Xue Juzheng felt it was an honor, and moreover it was the duty of his office as master of ceremonies, so he refused to yield it to anyone else.

However, after this recitation, Duke Xue was thoroughly worn out. Emperor Liu seemed to have recovered his former patience and listened with particular attentiveness. Of course, Xue Juzheng's prose was florid and ornate, his phrasing steeped in profundity; much of it the Emperor could not understand, but the general gist was praise of himself—of that, he was certain.

Still, there were certain key points that Emperor Liu understood with exceptional clarity. In one middle section, Xue Juzheng listed a string of figures that were especially gratifying.

By the eighteenth year of Kaibao, the Great Han's registered population had reached 907,839 households, exceeding sixty million persons. And this was only the registered population; due to the limitations of statistical methods, undercounting was inevitable. Adding the large floating population and special categories of people, the Great Han's actual population was even greater—surpassing ten million households was a certainty.

One should recall that in the early days of the Great Han's founding, the population under direct imperial administration was only a little over ten million persons. Even counting the households of all the various separatist regimes, the entire realm had only about thirty million.

After more than thirty years of development, the population had finally doubled—and this despite prolonged and frequent warfare. Had it not been for that, given the Han people's capacity for reproduction, the ten-million-household threshold would have been broken long ago.

With such a large population, how to feed them all was no small challenge. Of course, this was also a problem the court had always taken seriously over the years. Though the Great Han's commerce was growing increasingly prosperous, agriculture remained forever the foundation.

The achievements in land reclamation were naturally remarkable. By the eighteenth year of Kaibao, the realm had nearly eight million qing of cultivated land, far surpassing the height of the High Tang. According to estimates, on average about ten mu of land could support one person, and in places with fertile soil and developed agriculture, even two mu could support one person.

Agricultural technology had always been advancing, and after more than twenty years of promotion, the high-yield Champa rice had been widely rolled out, no longer confined to the Huai East region.

Beyond food crops, the development of cash crops had also been rapid, the most prominent being the large-scale promotion and application of cotton. This was a systematic development, encompassing not just cotton cultivation but also the advancement of cotton-spinning technology.

The development of the Great Han's cotton industry could be said to have been pushed forward under Emperor Liu's strong advocacy, and there had been an accelerating process along the way. He knew all too well the significance of this thing and its vital role in the people's livelihood.

Therefore, for a long period in the past, he actively did everything beneficial to the development of cotton affairs, and those with merit in this area were rewarded with generous benefits.

The Anxi cotton farmers who had returned east with Lu Duoxun back then were regarded as heroes in the promotion of cotton cultivation, and now held fifth-rank official titles. This was also one of Lu Duoxun's achievements sufficient to secure his name in the annals of history.

Five years ago, Zhou Renjun, the Prefect of Qiongzhou, reported to the court and presented a cotton-spinning technique that incorporated the brocade-weaving of the local Li people, along with specially improved cotton-spinning tools. This drew the court's attention, and after trials, those tools proved capable of vastly improving cotton-spinning efficiency.

Emperor Liu gave this highly favorable evaluation, and in a moment of delight, directly promoted Zhou Renjun to Prefect of Guangzhou. With the spread of the new cotton-spinning techniques and tools, the Great Han's cotton industry entered a fast track. The progress of just a few short years rivaled the development of the previous two decades—though of course, without the accumulation and groundwork of those first twenty years, today's leap would not have been possible.

By now, all kinds of cotton products—from raw cotton to cotton quilts, from cotton cloth to cotton clothing—had begun to appear in large quantities on the market, becoming daily necessities for the Great Han's common people, no longer requiring the government to purchase them to stimulate development.

In these same few years, cotton cultivation and cotton-spinning technology had also spread from the Central Plains to the Yangtze River basin, developing rapidly. For the court, the time had also come to reap the rewards—not just the positive significance of the Great Han's people being fed and clothed, but also the more tangible economic benefits. The court had begun to collect tax revenue from the cotton industry.

Speaking of taxation, Xue Juzheng also cited a string of figures that could stimulate one's eardrums. By the eighteenth year of Kaibao, the court's annual regular taxes had reached over 63.49 million strings of cash, nearly double what they had been twenty years earlier.

Of this, the two annual land taxes in spring and autumn remained the largest portion, but the share of commercial taxes and profits from various government-monopolized industries had also risen significantly. In particular, market taxes had grown explosively. Of course, the foundation of all this lay in the Great Han's common people, who with their hard-earned sweat had created a vast quantity of social resources and wealth.

Setting aside the flattery of Emperor Liu piled up with ornate rhetoric, the remainder of Xue Juzheng's congratulatory address could entirely be viewed as a summary report on the Great Han's development over several decades. It made Emperor Liu's heart bloom with joy, his delight impossible to contain, and he frequently discussed points with Empress Fu beside him, as if recounting his pride.

Back when he had changed the era name to Kaibao, Emperor Liu had made a pact with his ministers, setting a goal of surpassing the glorious Kaiyuan and Tianbao eras. Now, eighteen years after the unification of the realm, that goal had been initially achieved.

Whether in population, cultivated land, or taxation, all had already surpassed those eras; economically, it was an all-around coverage. Culturally, it was equally resplendent—the various great encyclopedias compiled under court auspices were one hallmark, and as for Han ci and the long-and-short-line verse, they had gradually become a cultural symbol of the age.

Also worth mentioning were the military achievements. Li Longji had endlessly expanded the frontiers, and in the end not only were the formidable enemies hard to subdue, but the national treasury was drained, casualties were severe, soldiers and civilians were exhausted, and he earned a reputation for vainglorious militarism.

The Great Han was different—it could only be described as having fought across the four seas without a single rival. Of course, the Great Han's current surrounding environment and situation were indeed far better than those of the High Tang.