Chapter 1673: Huangyangping

As the main settlement of the Yeli tribe, even after the government's reorganization and division, it still retained over seven hundred households, making it the largest Tangut settlement within a hundred li except for Anqing Marsh to the south.

The government's reorganization of the Tangut people was in fact merely a division of the population; what mattered more was the subsequent regrouping and registration of households, gathering them into settlements and towns, concentrating the population, restricting their grazing range, and suppressing their nomadic nature for easier management.

Moreover, numerous market towns were established with clerical officials stationed to manage them. Of course, the policies were not implemented thoroughly; with the changing situation, vast stretches of the sandy desert regions remained in a state of Tangut self-governance.

This was hardly surprising—even in traditional Han society, government authority found it difficult to reach the people directly, let alone in this remote northwest among these Tangut people.

The officials dispatched by the government had their main administrative functions limited to taxation and corvée labor; as for moral education, propaganda, pacification, public security, disaster relief, and such matters, not many people cared.

The place called Huangyangping had nonetheless been subjected to the government's forceful influence, and compared to the past, it had undergone tremendous changes. A ring of low earthen walls enclosed it; within the town were streets, earthen houses and thatched cottages, shops, and inns.

Market trade had also developed enormously. Hu and Han merchants came regularly, bringing goods scarce in the region—ironware, cloth, tea, liquor, and the like—while farmers and herders from dozens of li around also came to market periodically, selling livestock, hides, and local produce.

Outside the town, along the various large and small ponds, tracts of farmland had been opened up, planted with drought-resistant grain crops. Inside the town, there was even a town head's residence built at great expenditure of manpower, constantly flaunting the government's authority before the Tangut people.

One of the more important points of the reform policies implemented by the court back then was the redistribution of Tangut wealth and resources—suppressing and plundering their upper-class leaders and chieftains in order to appease the lower-ranking Tangut tribesmen.

In fact, the so-called ethnic contradictions and Hu-Han conflicts were merely surface phenomena; the core lay in interests. Had Emperor Liu's will been carried through—liberating the lower-ranking Tangut tribesmen and letting them enjoy tangible benefits—then changing customs and registering households as common citizens would not have generated such great contradictions.

But the reality was that after all these years, ordinary Tangut farmers and herders discovered that they had merely changed who they paid taxes to; they remained the exploited, with most of the wealth they labored to produce collected by the government, and their lives remained as tight as ever—no fundamental change from being under the rule of chieftains and leaders. And to them, the chieftains and leaders were at least of the same clan and blood, sharing a common faith.

Here in Huangyangping, besides the repeatedly mentioned ethnic contradictions and class contradictions, there were also some peculiar phenomena—more men than women, an excess of yang over yin. Of course, this was already quite common among the Tangut tribesmen.

There were naturally internal reasons for this situation. Where had the Tangut women, especially the young women, all gone? They went mainly in two directions: first, marrying Han men who had been relocated to the frontier or officers and soldiers stationed at the border; second, becoming servants or maids in government offices and powerful households—either way, both fared far better than remaining in the Tangut tribes.

Behind this, of course, was the government's guidance and promotion—first satisfying the marriage needs of the Han, and only then the Tangut. The massive outflow of fertile women naturally caused a decline in the Tangut birth rate, declining year after year. This phenomenon of nearly "cutting off the roots" undoubtedly also aroused public indignation among the Tangut people.

Solitary yin does not give birth; solitary yang does not grow. As the trend of excess yang over yin became ever more pronounced, the Tangut social structure grew unhealthy. Those Tangut men, unable to find release—what could they do but stir up trouble? And how could public security remain good?

Survival and continuation are human instincts, powerful instincts. When these two needs go unsatisfied, the energy that can erupt is enormous.

It should have been the impact of Li Jiqian's rebellion—from last winter all the way to early summer, the atmosphere around Huangyangping had been very strange, tense yet tinged with excitement. Quite a few Tangut people were itching for action.

Last winter, the Yulin officers and soldiers had pursued and suppressed Li Jiqian's remnant bandits, but with meager results—to the point that later on, after harassing and plundering some Tangut tribes, the bandit-suppressing troops withdrew back to the city.

After a winter of rest and reorganization, Li Jiqian regrouped and re-emerged. Once spring began, he led a large force southward, invading Xiazhou and raiding the local Han people. Chief Commander Wang Shen dispatched troops to suppress and annihilate them.

Li Jiqian's bandit force was not large—fewer than five hundred riders—and was naturally no match, being defeated once again and fleeing north a second time. In the process, he gathered more Tangut tribesmen along the way, while more Tangut men dissatisfied with imperial rule brought their own weapons and horses, moving their entire families to follow Li Jiqian.

Li Jiqian had proven his tenacity; he did not seem to be a flash in the pan. Though repeatedly defeated, he still stubbornly held high the banner of resistance against the Han. This banner held great allure for the Tangut people and served as a guiding beacon, giving them a channel to vent their anger and hatred. When life was already so hard, what fear was there in death?

Even here in Huangyangping, a place firmly controlled by the Xiazhou government, some people had escaped to join Li Jiqian. Thus, after being defeated by the government army, Li Jiqian's strength did not decline but instead grew, recovering to over two thousand able-bodied fighters.

Huangyangping's town head was named Zhang Yan, originally from Jiazhou in Jiannan Circuit, one of the relocated Han strongmen. He had been in Xiazhou for twenty-three years, and being somewhat literate and skilled at socializing, he quickly made his way up.

Of course, Zhang Yan's rise owed much to a benefactor—Wang Shen, Duke of Yanguo. During one of Wang Shen's hunting excursions, Zhang Yan happened by chance to save Wang Shen, who had fallen from his horse. A life-saving grace naturally received tenfold recompense.

Later, after Wang Shen took over as Chief Commander of the Yulin Circuit, following the celebrations, Zhang Yan used ten taels of gold and five beautiful women to purchase the position of town head of Huangyangping.

With a powerful backer above and attendants at his side, after taking office in Huangyangping, Zhang Yan gradually became the local tyrant of the town. In fact, those who oppressed and exploited the Tangut people most harshly were precisely these grassroots petty officials.

Zhang Yan, coming from a powerful family background, was even more adept at this game. In Jiannan, he had been one who devoured people without spitting out bones; here at this frontier, he remained a lord, and with an alien people like the Tangut, there was even less need to mind his table manners.

That town head's residence built of rammed loess was constructed by Zhang Yan mobilizing half of Huangyangping's able-bodied men. However, on ordinary days Zhang Yan was not in Huangyangping; he was accustomed to traveling about, going to Xiazhou city to network and socialize. With his connection to Wang Shen, the Xiazhou government from top to bottom gave him face—of course, this was also related to his generous spending.

But since Li Jiqian's rebellion, Zhang Yan had been forced to return to Huangyangping to hold the fort. He too felt the threat—he knew what he had done, and he knew the Tangut people's dissatisfaction with him and with the court, so naturally he had to prepare to suppress any unrest.

Fortunately, Huangyangping was not far from Xiazhou, and with two hundred garrison soldiers and fifty militia stationed there, the earthen walls—though low and fragile—could still be relied upon. Adding the patrol guards and attendants, Zhang Yan could mobilize nearly four hundred men. And since he was Wang Shen's benefactor, the junior officer in charge of the garrison was very cooperative. Call it collusion or call it working hand in glove—at least the Huangyangping government maintained a certain degree of control over the locality, sufficient for defense at minimum.

However, none of this was enough to truly set Zhang Yan's mind at ease, because the armed force of a few hundred men, compared with the several thousand Tangut people inside and outside Huangyangping, plus the more than twenty thousand Tangut tribesmen in the surrounding area, the disparity in strength was simply too great.

Therefore, over the past few months, Zhang Yan had remained extremely cautious, keeping the Tangut people under tight surveillance, strictly guarding against any trouble. At the same time, he continuously lobbied Xiazhou for reinforcements. Finally, Xiazhou gave a concrete response—Chief Commander Wang Shen decided to send an additional thousand troops to Huangyangping, five hundred cavalry and five hundred infantry, to suppress the locality.

And with the arrival of this fully equipped and provisioned Han army, Zhang Yan felt at ease, and the restless stirring of Huangyangping's Tangut people was temporarily suppressed.