Chapter 198: The Resentment Brought by the Treaty

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

Ajiu had sold rice on this street for twenty years. From the end of Shaoxing to Kaixi, he had lived through three emperors, two northern expeditions, and countless peace negotiations. Rice prices rose and fell, yet he always managed to scoop out a few ge of rice from his vat to feed his wife and three children. But this past December, rice prices went mad.

The cause was an imperial edict. The edict was posted on the notice board beside the city gate, where literate scholars read it aloud to the illiterate crowd. 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 assistance funds’!”

“Tangzhou and Dengzhou have been ceded too—”

Pan Ajiu squeezed into the crowd and heard the entire edict. He didn’t understand what “military assistance funds” meant, nor where Tangzhou or Dengzhou were. But he understood one thing: the court needed money. A lot of money. It wouldn’t fall from the sky, wouldn’t be taken from Chancellor Shi’s treasury, wouldn’t be pulled from the imperial storehouse—this money would ultimately be laid upon his shoulders, Pan Ajiu’s.

On the twentieth of December, tax officials from Lin’an’s prefectural office came to his door. Not one, but three. One carried ledgers, one held an abacus, one wore a sword at his waist. The lead official was surnamed Qian; he had collected taxes in Lin’an for twenty years, seen every kind of stubborn commoner, and used every kind of tactic.

“Pan Ajiu, one rice shop, annual tax originally set at two and four hundred wen,” Qian the tax official clacked his abacus beads, “this year, a new ‘border assistance tax’ adds one guan per shop; a new ‘vassal contribution’ adds three hundred wen per person—you have five family members, totaling one and five hundred wen; additionally, due to the cession of Tang and Deng prefectures, military transport costs are enormous, so a new ‘supply transport contribution’ of one guan per household is imposed. Total—” the abacus beads clicked to a stop, “six and nine hundred wen. More than double last year’s.”

Pan Ajiu’s legs went weak; he nearly collapsed to the ground. Six and nine hundred wen—he earned barely ten guan in profit from selling rice each year, after rent, transport, and wages. Paying two and something guan in taxes before had already meant tightening his belt; this year, it tripled nearly. He didn’t know how to raise this money.

That day, the same thing happened in every town and village across half of the Song realm. Old Zhou from Shanyin, whose three mu of paddy fields were hit with a new “border assistance land tax” of three dou extra rice per mu, sold his last laying hen at market—the money still didn’t cover half the tax. Liu Erniang, a weaver in Jiankang who had woven silk for twenty years, used to have a few bolts left after taxes to trade for oil and salt; this year, silk taxes more than doubled, and after paying, her winter robe was patched all over. Ma Laosan, a tea merchant in Xiangyang, had just returned last year with a good batch of tea from Tangzhou, still waiting to recoup his capital when Tangzhou was ceded. His stock sat idle while his taxes rose thirty percent.

And every one of these taxes shared a common trait—their names glittered with virtue: “border assistance,” “vassal contribution,” “supply transport.” Each term sounded like patriotism. But the people knew: this money wasn’t going to fight the Jin. The war against the Jin had already been lost; Grand Tutor Han’s head had already been sent to the Jin. This money was going to help the Jin.

What crushed the people further was the devaluation of the huizi.

The Song dynasty’s paper currency was called huizi; the court used it to plug fiscal holes. To pay the war indemnity of three million taels of silver, the court printed more huizi. The result? Huizi flooded the market. Last year, a one-guan huizi could still buy seven hundred copper coins; by this past December, it was worth less than four hundred. A cloth merchant in Jiankang sold a cartload of cloth in autumn, receiving only huizi; come winter, when he went to buy more, the same amount of huizi bought only half a cart. A widow in Shaoxing had saved huizi for three years to buy her son a bride; on the day of the matchmaking, her savings bought only one jar of wine.

Rice prices surged with the huizi. In Lin’an, rice jumped from eighty wen per dou to one hundred fifty wen—and kept climbing. Every day, long lines formed outside Pan Ajiu’s shop, people packed shoulder to shoulder, some losing shoes, tearing clothes. He wasn’t out of rice—he dared not sell. Today’s rice sold for huizi; tomorrow, when he bought more, the huizi had depreciated further. Sell more, lose more. But he couldn’t refuse: the government demanded tax silver, not huizi, only copper and silver. With no choice, Pan Ajiu doubled his rice prices, sold it all, and converted the proceeds into silver fragments to hide away for spring tax payments. Neighbors cursed him as “heartless”; he kept his head down, silent. He had no choice—not because his heart was black, but because the court’s taxes had hollowed it out.

Labor conscription and requisitions destroyed people’s lives even more directly than taxes.

The clause “joint defense of the steppe” was merely ink on silk in Shi Miyuan’s political council chamber; for the people along the Huai River, it became bone and blood. The Jin demanded that the Southern Song assist in building a second defensive line from the Huai to the Qinling Mountains. Shi Miyuan agreed—he dared not refuse. The line needed laborers, so the court ordered conscription from every prefecture along the Huai: one man from every three male household members.

Zhao Lasi, a farmer from Guangzhou, had just married off his only son when the conscription order came—off to the Huai River to build arrow towers for the Jin troops. Zhao Lasi knelt outside the village head’s gate, banging his head until it bled. His son was still taken, along with other young men from the village, carrying timber through the December cold toward the Huai. They built the Jin’s defenses, under Jin guards. His son fell ill on the site—the Huai River in December was icy, wind howling off the water, they slept in flimsy straw huts, drank cold water, ate moldy rations. The grain the Song sent was siphoned off at every bureaucratic level; little remained. Zhao Lasi’s only son grew feverish, coughed blood. The Jin overseers, tired of his weakness, expelled him from the site. On the twenty-eighth of December, two days before New Year’s Eve, Zhao Lasi’s daughter-in-law, dressed in mourning, wept uncontrollably at the village entrance. Her husband died on the road home, in the snowstorm of the twenty-fifth, barely twenty li from their village. He never knew who he built those towers for. He’d only heard that something worse than the Jin troops lurked to the north, so the Jin were building towers. He never saw what that thing was—until he died.

The people along the Han River fared worse. One clause in the “joint defense” agreement required the Southern Song to open the Yangtze waterways if the Jin fought along the Huai. This meant massive requisitioning of Han River cargo boats—not to carry Song troops’ grain, but Jin troops’ grain. Zhou Laosan, a boatman from Xiangyang whose family had navigated the Han for three generations, transporting rice, salt, tea, feeding over a dozen relatives, lost his boat the moment the conscription order arrived. His vessel now carried grain for the Jin camp, departing from Xiangyang’s docks, sailing down the Han to Ezhou, then into the Yangtze, finally north to the Huai. A round trip took two months, no wages, only rations. Zhou Laosan had sailed the Han for twenty years; he never imagined he’d one day ferry grain for the Jin. Worse, he didn’t know that if the Xinming Party marched south, the grain he carried might become supplies for Jin remnants retreating into Song territory. Eighty years ago, the Jin burned his ancestral home and killed his great-grandfather. Now he ferried grain for the men who killed him.

This grotesque absurdity wasn’t just Zhou Laosan’s. From the Huai to the Han, from Dasanguan to Xiangyang, countless Zhou Laosans were forced to do the same. They didn’t know why, only that refusal meant arrest, punishment, public shaming. In Lin’an’s teahouses, people heard these stories, exchanged glances, speechless. A gossipy man muttered low: “Did we lose—or win?” No one answered.

The day Han Tuozhou’s head was sent to the Jin, Lin’an was drenched in winter rain. Light, fine, and cold, it soaked the blue stone pavement, glinting. The bloodstain from Han Tuozhou’s assassination outside Yongjin Gate had long been washed clean by rain. But the bloodstain in the hearts of Lin’an’s people? It wouldn’t wash away.

Once, at the start of the northern expedition, the people of Lin’an were truly electrified. When news of the victory at Sizhou reached the teahouses, patrons slammed their tables and cheered; storytellers composed “The Four Victories of the Kaixi Revival”; every time the tale reached the moment of General Guo crossing the Huai River in the snow, audiences tossed copper coins onto the stage. Lu Fangweng’s poems from Shanyin were plastered on every notice board; young people copied them eagerly until their hands ached. A blacksmith’s apprentice named Chen Xiaoyi, thrilled by the news of the expedition, couldn’t sleep for three days. He secretly quit his job to enlist. The recruiters dismissed him as too thin and told him to gain weight first. He thrust out his neck and said, “Should I grow fat to serve my country?” Still, they sent him home. Back at the forge, he hammered harder than ever, saying, “If I make more blades for the front, it’s still my contribution.”

Now the court issued an imperial decree, white paper, black characters: “Misguided Nation, Provoked Conflict.” The decree’s content spread among the people, chilling them more than the peace treaty itself. It declared: the northern expedition was wrong, Han Tuozhou was wrong, everyone who cheered, donated, or sent sons to fight—all were wrong. Your passion was “misguiding the nation”; your sacrifice was “provoking conflict.” These words cut sharper than knives.

Chen Xiaoyi heard the news while repairing a bench in a teahouse. He set down his hammer, stared blankly, then rose, walked to the notice board, and read the decree’s copy from start to finish. The decree’s wording was abjectly humble, confessing “misguided nation, provoked conflict” in Shi Miyuan’s own hand—elegant, ornate, venomous beneath silk, meticulously copied onto yellow silk. Chen Xiaoyi wasn’t well-educated; many characters eluded him, but he knew “misguided nation.” He stood before the board for a long time, then turned back. His master asked what was wrong; he said nothing, returned to the forge, and shoved every half-finished blade into the hottest part of the furnace. The iron glowed red, softened, then melted into a shapeless pool. He stared at the molten iron, eyes dry, no tears. His master stood at the door, mouth open, then said nothing.

In Lin’an’s teahouses, storytellers no longer told “The Four Victories of Kaixi Revival.” Not because they didn’t want to—but because they dared not. The northern expedition had been branded a crime; storytellers feared trouble and switched back to old tales. The patrons remained the same, but the air had changed. Once, they spoke of “when will Suzhou fall?” “can we retake Kaifeng this year?” Now they spoke of “heard the new tax?” “Old Zhang’s son was dragged off to build Huai River fortifications?” “Rice prices rising again, huizi collapsing?” Occasionally, a foolish youth mentioned the northern expedition; elders immediately hushed him: “Don’t speak of it. That’s ‘misguided nation.’” Those four words, spoken by elders, silenced better than any scolding. The youth would sheepishly close his mouth, lift his teacup to hide his face.

The quietest were the wounded soldiers returning from the Huai front. Some limped down the street, sleeves empty—one arm lost at Lingbi, when he charged through the southern wall breach and a Jin wolf club shattered his left arm. He received no pension—the pension funds had been diverted to pay “military assistance.” No one dared ask what battles he’d fought; he never spoke of them. Every day, he sat at the alley’s mouth, weaving straw sandals with his one hand, selling them for three wen a pair. Ten pairs a day, barely enough for two sheng of rice. Lin’an’s winter rain fell from dawn to dusk, soaking the blue stone paths. The wounded men’s canes tapped the stones—dub, dub, dub—like a drumless military march.