Chapter 198: Public Outrage Brought by the Contract

Lin'an, west of Taiping Bridge, Pan Ajiu's rice shop.

Ajiu has sold rice on this street for twenty years. From the late Shaoxing era to the Kaixi period, he witnessed three emperors, two northern expeditions, and countless peace negotiations. Rice prices rose and fell, yet he could always scoop a few he from his rice jar to feed his wife and three children. But this twelfth lunar month, rice prices went mad.

The cause was a single edict from the court. Posted on the bulletin gallery by the city gate, literate scholars read it aloud to the illiterate commoners. Halfway through, the crowd erupted.

"The annual tribute has doubled—five hundred thousand taels of silver, five hundred thousand bolts of silk!"

"And three million taels of 'Military Aid Fees'!"

"Tangzhou and Dengzhou have been ceded too—"

Pan Ajiu squeezed into the crowd and heard the entire edict. He didn't understand what "Military Aid Fees" meant, nor where Tangzhou and Dengzhou were. But he understood one thing: the court wanted money. Lots and lots of money. This money wouldn't fall from the sky, wouldn't be taken from Chancellor Shi's treasury, wouldn't be moved from the imperial palace vaults—this money would ultimately be levied on him, Pan Ajiu.

On the twentieth day of the twelfth lunar month, tax collectors from the Lin'an Prefecture Office arrived at his door. Not one person came, but three. One held an account book, one carried an abacus, and one wore a sword at his waist. The head tax collector surnamed Qian had collected taxes in Lin'an City for twenty years; he had seen every kind of unruly commoner and used every kind of tactic.

"Pan Ajiu, one rice shop, the annual tax originally set at two guan and four hundred wen." Tax Collector Qian clicked the abacus beads with a clatter, "This year, a new 'Border Aid Tax' is added, one guan extra per shop; a new 'Feudal Support Donation' is added, three hundred wen per person, your family has five people, totaling one guan and five hundred wen; additionally, due to the cession of Tang and Deng prefectures, the cost of military transport is huge, so a special 'Grain Transport Donation' is opened, one guan per household. Total—" The abacus beads stopped with a snap, "six guan and nine hundred wen. More than double last year."

Pan Ajiu's legs went weak, and he almost fell to his knees. Six guan and nine hundred wen—his annual profit from selling rice was only about ten guan, and that had to cover rent, freight, and wages for assistants. In past years, paying over two guan in taxes already required tightening his belt; this year it nearly tripled. He didn't know how to gather this sum.

On this day, the same thing happened in every town and every village across half of the Great Song's territory. Old Zhou, a farmer in Shanyin, had his three mu of paddy fields subjected to an additional "Border Aid Land Tax," collecting three dou of rice extra per mu. He took the last egg-laying hen in his house to the market and sold it, but the money he got back wasn't even enough to pay half the tax. Liu Erniang, a weaver in Jiankang, had woven silk for twenty years; in past years, after paying taxes, she could still keep a few bolts to buy oil and salt, but this year the silk tax more than doubled, and after paying, the winter clothes she wore herself were covered in patches. Ma Laosan, a tea merchant from Xiangyang, had just returned last year with a batch of fine tea from Tangzhou; before he could recover his capital, Tangzhou was ceded. The goods sat in his hands, but the taxes rose by thirty percent.

And all these taxes shared a common trait—their names were flowery and elaborate: "Border Aid," "Feudal Support," "Grain Transport." Every word sounded like sharing the nation's burden. But the commoners knew these funds weren't going to fight the Jin Kingdom. The war against the Jin had already been lost; Han Tuozhou's head had been sent to the Jin. These funds were going to "help" the Jin.

What made the commoners even more breathless was the devaluation of "Huizi."

The paper currency issued by the Great Song was called "Huizi," and the court relied on it to fill deficits. War reparations of three million taels of silver led the court to print more Huizi to plug the hole. The result was a flood of Huizi in the market; a one-guan note that could be exchanged for seven hundred wen in copper coins last year had dropped to less than four hundred wen by this twelfth lunar month. A cloth merchant in Jiankang sold a cartload of cloth in autumn, receiving only Huizi, but when he went to restock in winter, Huizi of the same denomination could buy only half a cartload of cloth. A widow selling wine in Shaoxing had saved Huizi for three years to marry off her son, but by the day of the proposal, the money saved over three years was enough to buy only one jar of wine.

Rice prices went mad along with the Huizi. The price of rice in Lin'an jumped from eighty wen per dou to one hundred fifty wen, and kept climbing. Every day, a long queue formed outside Pan Ajiu's rice shop; people pressed against each other until someone's shoes were stepped off and clothes were torn. He didn't lack rice; he dared not sell it—selling rice today meant receiving Huizi, but tomorrow when he went to buy rice, the Huizi would have depreciated further; the more he sold, the more he lost. But not selling wasn't an option either; the government's tax silver was demanded urgently, accepting no Huizi, only copper coins and silver. Pan Ajiu, having no choice, was forced to double his rice prices, sell the rice, then exchange it for silver fragments to hide, preparing to pay taxes when spring came. The neighbors who bought rice cursed him as "black-hearted," but he kept his head down, too afraid to retort. He had no choice—it wasn't that his heart was black; the court's taxes had hollowed out his heart.

And labor service and conscription destroyed the commoners' lives even more directly than taxes.

The clause "Joint Defense of the Grasslands," which was merely a line of ink written on silk in Shi Miyuan's government hall, became real bones and blood for the commoners along the Huaihe River. The Jin Kingdom demanded that the Southern Song assist in building a second defensive line from the Huaihe to the Qin Ling Mountains; Shi Miyuan agreed to this clause because he dared not refuse. The defense line required manpower, so the court ordered the conscription of laborers from the prefectures along the Huaihe, drafting one man out of every three sons per household.

Zhao Laosan, a farmer in Guangzhou, had a only son who had just married, but the conscription order arrived immediately—sent to the Huaihe River bank to build arrow towers for the Jin soldiers. Zhao Laosan knelt at the village head's door and kowtowed until his head bled. His son was taken away anyway, joining other young men from the same village, carrying wood toward the Huaihe River bank in the cold wind of the twelfth lunar month. They were building the Jin Kingdom's defense line, supervised by Jin soldiers. His son fell ill at the construction site—the cold wind from the Huaihe River blew in during the twelfth lunar month; they lived in temporary straw sheds, drank cold water, and ate moldy dry rations. The grain transported by the Song people was heavily skimmed off by officials at every level, leaving very little behind. Zhao Laosan's only son fell ill, running a high fever and coughing blood. The Jin soldier supervisors, finding him unable to work, drove him off the construction site. On the twenty-eighth day of the twelfth lunar month, two days before New Year's Eve, Zhao Laosan's daughter-in-law, dressed in mourning hemp, wept like a flood of tears at the village entrance. His son died on the way home, died in the wind and snow of the twenty-fifth day of the twelfth lunar month, died by the side of the official road less than twenty li from his own village. Until his death, he never knew for whom he was building those arrow towers. He had only heard that there was something in the north even more terrifying than the Jin soldiers, so the Jin soldiers were coming to build arrow towers. As for what that thing was, he never saw it before he died.

The commoners along the Hanshui River suffered even more. One clause in the "Joint Defense" agreement stated that if the Jin army fought along the Huaihe defense line, the Southern Song must open the Yangtze River waterway. This meant that grain transport boats on the Hanshui were heavily conscripted to transport military grain—not for the Song army's grain, but for the Jin army's grain. Zhou Laosan, a boatman from Xiangyang, had operated boats on the Hanshui for three generations, transporting rice, salt, and tea, supporting a family of over ten people. As soon as the government's conscription order arrived, his boat was no longer his. The boat was loaded with grain for the Jin army's main camp, departing from Xiangyang Wharf, sailing down the Hanshui to Ezhou, then turning into the Yangtze, and finally heading north to the Huaihe. A round trip took two months, with no wages, only food rations. Zhou Laosan had sailed the Hanshui for twenty years and never imagined that one day he would use his own boat to transport grain for the Jin people. Even more, he didn't know that if the faction called the New Ming Party from the north moved south, the grain he transported might become supplies for the Jin army's remnants retreating into Song Territory. Eighty years ago, Jin soldiers moved south, burned his ancestral home, and killed his great-grandfather. Now he was transporting grain for the people who killed his great-grandfather.

This ultimate absurdity was not limited to just one Zhou Laosan. From the Huaihe to the Hanshui, from Daxiguan to Xiangyang, thousands upon thousands of Zhou Laosans were forced to do the same thing. They didn't know why they had to do it, only that if they didn't, they would be arrested, punished, or paraded in cangues. The commoners in Lin'an heard these stories in tea houses, looked at each other in silence, and could say nothing. Someone chatty muttered quietly, "So did we lose or win?" No one answered.

On the day Han Tuozhou's head was sent to the Jin Kingdom, a winter rain fell over Lin'an City. The rain was not heavy, fine and dense, falling on the bluestone pavement and reflecting a cold light. On the street outside Yongjin Gate, the pool of blood where Han Tuozhou was assassinated had long been washed clean by the rain. But the pool of blood in the hearts of Lin'an's commoners could not be washed away.

Once upon a time, in those early days when the northern expedition began, the commoners of Lin'an City had truly boiled with enthusiasm. When the news of the victory at Sizhou reached the tea houses, the entire room of tea guests slammed their tables and cheered; storytellers composed "The Four Battles of the Kaixi Restoration," and whenever they spoke of General Guo crossing the Huaihe River on a snowy night, people on the stage below threw copper coins. Poems by Lu Fangweng of Shanyin covered the bulletin galleries at all four gates; young people competed to copy them until their hands ached. A blacksmith's apprentice named Chen Xiaoyi, upon hearing news of the northern expedition, was so excited he couldn't sleep for three days. He secretly went to the recruitment station to enlist. The recruiters thought he was too thin and advised him to return and gain some weight before coming back; he stuck his neck out and said, "Does serving the country require gaining weight?" In the end, he was still persuaded to return. Back at the blacksmith shop, he worked the iron with extra vigor, saying that forging a few more knives to send to the front lines would count as his contribution.

Now the court issued a state letter, written in black and white with four characters: "Causing National Disaster and Provoking Conflict." The content of this state letter, once it reached the common people, chilled hearts even more than the peace treaty itself. Because it was saying: the northern expedition was wrong, Han Tuozhou was wrong, and everyone who cheered for the northern expedition, donated money, or sent their sons to join the army was wrong. Your passion was "causing national disaster," and your sacrifice was "provoking conflict." This sentence was sharper than a knife.

When Chen Xiaoyi heard this news, he was in a tea house repairing a stool. He put down his hammer, stared blankly for a long time, then stood up, walked to the bulletin gallery at the tea house entrance, and read the copy of the state letter from beginning to end. The wording of the state letter was extremely humble and respectful, admitting "causing national disaster and provoking conflict" to the Jin Kingdom; it was in Shi Miyuan's own handwriting, with flowery language hiding needles in cotton, neatly transcribed onto yellow silk. Chen Xiaoyi's education was not high, and he didn't recognize many characters, but he recognized the two characters "causing national disaster." He stood before the bulletin gallery for a long time, then turned and walked back. His master asked him what was wrong; he didn't answer, only returned to the blacksmith shop and stuffed all the half-forged knife blanks into the furnace with the hottest charcoal. The iron burned red in the fierce fire, then slowly softened, finally melting into a pool of shapeless molten iron. He stared at that pool of molten iron, his eyes dry, with no tears. His master stood at the door, opened his mouth, and finally said nothing.

In the tea houses of Lin'an City, the storytellers no longer told "The Four Battles of the Kaixi Restoration." It wasn't that they didn't want to; they dared not. The northern expedition had been labeled, and the storytellers, fearing trouble for themselves, all switched back to old stories. The tea guests in the tea houses were still the same people, but the atmosphere had changed. Previously, tea houses discussed "When will Suzhou be taken?" or "Can Kaifeng be recovered this year?" Now they discussed "Did you hear? Another new tax has been added," "Old Zhang next door's son was dragged away to build works on the Huaihe," or "Rice prices have risen again; the Huizi has crashed beyond recognition." Occasionally, an ignorant young person mentioned the northern expedition, only to be immediately silenced by an elder lowering their voice: "Don't mention it. That is 'causing national disaster'." These four words, spoken by an elder, were more effective than any scolding. The young person sheepishly closed their mouth and lifted their tea bowl to hide their face.

The most silent were the wounded soldiers returning from the front lines of Jianghuai. A wounded soldier walked down the street leaning on a cane, his sleeve empty; he had lost an arm below Lingbi City, where he had charged at the breach in the south wall, and a Jin soldier's wolf-tooth mace had smashed his left arm. After returning, he received no pension—the pension fund had been diverted to pay the "Military Aid Fees." No one dared to ask what battles he had fought on the front lines, and he never mentioned it himself. He simply sat at the alley entrance every day, using his remaining hand to weave straw sandals to sell; straw sandals sold for three wen a pair, he wove ten pairs a day, and the money earned was just enough to buy two sheng of rice. The winter rain in Lin'an City fell from morning to night, soaking the bluestone pavement until it was wet; the canes of the wounded soldiers tapped on the stones, du-du-du, like a military song without drumbeats.