Chapter 102: Master Zhao Has Come, Gladly Paying the Grain Tax

The Huang family ancestral home — no one knew exactly when it was first built, but most of its expansions were done during the Zhengde reign.

The Huang clan ancestral hall was also built during the Zhengde reign.

The reason was simple: during the Hongzhi and Zhengde years, the Huang clan produced a high-ranking official!

The buildings were constructed on a grand scale, but in the details they fell far short of those in prosperous regions. For one, the Huang family's financial resources were limited; for another, the designers and craftsmen lacked sufficient skill.

Now, the garden has been leveled on Zhao Han's orders, and a section of the perimeter wall torn down to connect with the open ground outside, turning it into a drill field for training soldiers. This has thoroughly wrecked the compound's layout, making it look more incongruous than ever, and inevitably cost our Master Zhao some face.

The five hundred-odd soldiers have all gone home to prepare for the busy farming season.

Zhao Han sat on the steps beneath the veranda, gazing out at the empty drill field. His heart at this moment was even more unsettled than Fei Ruhe's.

To others, Zhao Han seemed to have smooth sailing, but in truth he met setbacks at every turn.

It was the compromise between ideals and reality, the gap between theory and practice. To put it nicely: adapting to the times and to local conditions. To put it bluntly: Zhao Han retreated at every step, and on many matters he simply could not follow through.

Letting Xiaohong serve as head of the Women and Children Section — it was only to manage the women and children of the whole town.

This post merely curbed the most extreme domestic violence; ordinary domestic abuse was simply impossible to address. There was also propagating the policy of "prohibiting infant drowning," ordering that no widow in the town was to follow her husband in death, and providing some limited assistance to the town's widows and orphans.

It hardly touched the men at all, yet still it drew gossip and criticism, sustained solely by the force of Zhao Han's authority.

Zhao Han wanted to unite the independent landholders, and that too left him damned either way.

First, the independent landholders detested Zhao Han.

Their blood ties to Huang Zundao were relatively close; they had hardly suffered oppression or exploitation at Master Huang's hands, and sometimes even received his relief. Moreover, they owned land, and facing the countless tenant farmers, they were brimming with a sense of superiority.

Now, Master Huang's relief was gone, their sense of superiority was gone, and the tenants they had looked down upon had actually been given land!

It never occurred to them that in just another generation or two, once the blood ties grew distant and their descendants met with natural disaster, their fields would inevitably be seized by the great landlords, and they too would sink to being tenants.

All they knew was that Master Zhao was a great villain!

Second, in the treatment of independent landholders and small landlords, the tenants were also full of unspoken resentment toward Zhao Han.

The tenants felt that anyone who owned land ought to be killed off entirely and their fields divided. Master Zhao was far too soft-hearted, leaving those whelps alive — who knew when they might collude with outsiders to take revenge.

The conflict between the two sides was very hard to ease.

The independent landholders were somewhat better off, but the tenants had already begun moving against the small landlords. Not daring to defy Zhao Han's orders, they did not dare to outright kill the small landlords and seize their land, yet they went looking for trouble every few days, and the small landlords became terrified to step outside.

It was the same in the private school — the tenant children banded together to bully the children of small landlords and independent landholders.

This was only a small, out-of-the-way place. When operating in larger locales in the future, the conflicts would likely grow even greater.

The army's problems were not yet obvious for the time being.

But if they went to fight elsewhere — never mind how far from home, just going to a neighboring village or town — would they kill and loot, would they extort and blackmail?

Their thinking must be unified!

Li Zicheng's "When the Dashing King comes, no grain tax is paid" — whether or not it could actually be done, it was still a kind of thought, and at the same time a propaganda slogan.

The peasant uprisings at the end of the Yuan dynasty also had an ideological foundation — the Maitreya sect's doctrines.

Whether a slogan or so-called ideology, it is nothing more than forming a consensus. Even if it cannot be achieved, even if no one takes it seriously, it must exist!

The red set of ideas could not be copied wholesale, so Zhao Han could only search through the Book of Rites and bring over the "Great Unity under Heaven" concept.

But did Zhao Han himself believe in it?

If even he did not believe, did he still expect his followers to believe?

Furthermore, the future shift in policy was another headache.

In the early stages of development, violence was necessary; the landlords had to be purged in order to consolidate the base area. But once developed, it would be impossible to push the landlords entirely into opposition — otherwise Zhao Han would find every step a struggle!

Yet even if Zhao Han made compromises, he would still have to carve flesh from the landlords. How could the landlords ever be willing?

Toppling every great landlord was impossible, mainly a matter of enforcement capacity.

If he occupied the whole of Jiangxi province, where would he find so many loyal grassroots officials capable of carrying out his ideas to the letter? They would surely deceive their superiors and conceal the truth from those below, running wild under Zhao Han's banner — killing off the old landlords and turning themselves into the new landlords.

The urgent tasks: team building, ideological construction.

"Young master, it's time to eat." Xiaocui had approached at some point.

Zhao Han smiled as he stood. "All right, let's eat."

Xiaocui had been renamed Huang Fei, which sounded very similar to Xiaohong's Huang Fei. But their temperaments were utterly different: Xiaohong dared to go to the town office and serve as head of the Women and Children Section, while Xiaocui dared not show her face in public and only wanted to stay by Zhao Han's side as a maidservant.

Zhao Han said as he walked, "I've written a play. Maosheng says the actors — that is, the performers — aren't enough. You go play a female role."

"Young master, I don't know how to sing opera," Xiaocui gently declined. Though born a maidservant, she considered performers lowly.

Zhao Han explained, "This kind of play doesn't involve much singing; it's mostly spoken. Also, there are no household slaves now — everyone is reclassified as hired labor. In the future, performers won't be lowly either. Don't you look down on them."

Xiaocui, afraid of angering Zhao Han, hurriedly explained, "Young master, I wasn't looking down on performers."

"Then you go act," Zhao Han said with a smile.

Xiaocui was full of reluctance, but she still agreed — merely obeying an order.

That was, until Chen Maosheng read her the script, and Xiaocui several times wept in grief as she listened…

…

In the sixth month, the Sichuan army, acting under imperial decree to suppress the rebels, shot dead the rebel leader Purple Gold Beam. But after an initial victory came defeat: the Assistant Regional Commander fell into an ambush and died, and the rebels used his banners to lure and kill other government troops. The Sichuan army suffered a string of heavy defeats.

Throughout Sichuan, there was now hardly any main-force government army left. As soon as the peasant army recovered its strength, it could invade Sichuan in force and sweep up the populace.

In the seventh month, the Tartars captured Lüshun.

The Regional Commander Huang Long, garrisoned at Lüshun, had dispatched his naval forces to aid the Yalu River, allowing Kong Youde and other Han traitors to strike while his defenses were weak. With insufficient troops, Huang Long lost battle after battle until his arrows and ammunition were exhausted; he then took his own life for his country. The Mobile Corps Commander Li Weilian first burned his entire family to death, then led his remaining soldiers out to fight, dying in fierce combat.

Here in Jiangxi, the Ruijin peasant army still persisted. So long as they did not attack the county seat, no government troops would leave the city to suppress them.

The Governor of Jiangxi, Xie Xuelong, was still busy rebuilding the Pavilion of Prince Teng.

The Pavilion of Prince Teng was already nearing completion. Not only that, he was also building pavilions and galleries beside it to serve as gathering places for scholars and notables.

The literati busied themselves with flattery, extolling Governor Xie for revitalizing the region's literary heritage and lavishly praising his selfless, righteous act of donating his own salary — the Governor, in order to rebuild the Pavilion of Prince Teng, had donated his entire annual salary.

The corvée laborers conscripted to rebuild the Pavilion of Prince Teng, receiving no wages, having to bring their own grain and tools, and having their rations embezzled by the clerks, nearly erupted in revolt!

The Jiangxi Director of Education, Cai Maode, cited the "theory of ge-wu" to explicate the "Essay on Uprooting the Source and Stopping Up the Flow," and was hailed by many scholars as a great Confucian master of the School of Mind, his renown even spreading to the prefectures of Jiangzuo.

The "theory of equal status" thus won the approval of the gentry, who deliberately ignored its leveling of those below and emphasized only equality with those above; the merchants even spent their own money to propagate it.

The Prefect of Ji'an and the County Magistrate of Luling were busy sending xiucai candidates to the provincial examination and completely forgot about the unrest in Wuxing Town...

Wuxing Town presented a different scene entirely. Although a drought struck in the fifth month, it was not severe.

Moreover, Zhao Han opened the irrigation channels for the peasants to use freely. For fields farther from the channels, he had peasants help each other carry water, so the drought caused no great damage.

Looking out across the land, it was a scene of bumper harvest!

Once the new rice was dried, Zhao Han sent no one to press for taxes. He simply had the four village heads take the lead and carry their own grain to the town office of their own accord.

The peasants watched secretly and discovered that indeed no meltage fee was collected, nor were miscellaneous levies or the Liaodong levy imposed. Furthermore, the grain was collected according to the standards of the Wanli era, and no specially made oversized measures were used to cheat the common people.

Gradually, peasants began bringing their land tax grain of their own accord, and their treatment was exactly the same as that of the four village heads.

The whole town was astounded!

Chen Maosheng and Fei Chun were so exhausted their backs ached. They sent someone to complain: "Town chief, there are too many people delivering grain. Can you assign us more hands?"

There was no choice but to recruit.

The two schoolmasters from the private academy, along with the scholars from yeoman and small-landlord families, were all temporarily conscripted to work, with the promise of daily wages.

Huang Shunde's family were yeomen. By blood, he was a paternal cousin of Master Huang.

This fellow had never managed to pass the xiucai exam, and without money to continue his studies in the county seat, he could only hole up at home and study diligently.

Huang Shunde hated Zhao Han to the marrow of his bones, but he dared not flee the town, afraid his family's land would be confiscated.

Yet even as he hated Zhao Han, he also took the initiative to register his household, tacitly acknowledging Zhao Han's rule — all for the aged grain that Master Zhao handed out.

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Summoned to the town office as a temporary worker, Huang Shunde was equally torn.

He was unwilling to work for rebels, yet his mind kept returning to the wages the rebels offered. Awkward and hesitant, he could only steel himself and go.

From a long way off, Huang Shunde stood dumbstruck.

Outside the main gate of the town office, a long line of common folk waited to deliver their tax grain. They came bearing poles of newly harvested rice, their faces showing none of the misery of paying taxes. Instead, every one of them was in high spirits, chatting and laughing as they waited, and some were even singing bawdy ditties.

Huang Shunde walked over to the grain-collection point in a daze. Immediately someone called out: "Brother Zhaoyi, come quickly and help!"

Huang Shunde recognized the man — a mere schoolboy who had not even passed the child student exam. Simply because he submitted to the rebels, he had become the chief of the Punishment Section of Wuxing Town.

"Coming," Huang Shunde replied, striding over with an air of haughty pride.

Wuxing Town had only two xiucai. One was Master Huang's youngest son, now hiding in the county seat and daring not return. The other was Second Master Huang's grandson, who had already been killed by the mob.

Huang Shunde was thus automatically promoted to the highest academic credential holder. He was a child student, and he looked down upon the entire town!

The fellow did not start working immediately. Instead, he flipped through the grain-tax register and soon cried out in alarm: "Why is my family's assessed grain quota so much higher!"

The section chief, the former schoolboy, laughed and said: "The town chief said that if a family provides no able-bodied man for the militia training, they are taxed according to the old rules."

Huang Shunde's heart bled. He asked: "If we provide an able-bodied man now, is it still in time?"

"I wouldn't know. You'll have to ask the town chief," the schoolboy-turned-section-chief said with a laugh, his words tinged with schadenfreude.

Huang Shunde immediately ran into the town office and was promptly granted an audience. Not daring to be remiss, he bowed properly and said: "Zhao... Town Chief, if my family now provides an able-bodied man for militia training, can this summer's grain tax be treated the same as everyone else's?"

"It can. As long as you provide a man for militia training, then we are all on the same side," Zhao Han said with a smile.

After taking his leave, Huang Shunde ran home like mad and told his elder brother to go enlist at once.

The matter of following rebels — he could no longer care about that.

After all, he was only a child student; the court offered him no privileges, and he could see not a shred of hope in passing the exams. He might as well pay less grain now and get some real benefit.

In years past, the officials pressed for collection relentlessly, and the summer grain, which took months to gather, was now completely settled in just two days.

And what was more, the peasants delivered the grain of their own accord, carrying it to the town office themselves!

With his elder brother enlisted and himself working as a temporary hand at the town office, his family paid far less land tax than before. Huang Shunde swiftly reversed his outlook.

Since he had already thrown in with the rebels, he might as well do it thoroughly.

"You want to be an official?" Zhao Han asked with a smile.

Huang Shunde declared with righteous solemnity: "This junior does not covet high office or a fat salary. I merely admire the town chief's virtue and authority. Now, with corrupt officials running rampant and venal clerks everywhere, only the town chief is upright and loves the people. The matter of grain collection has left this junior utterly amazed. I wish to exert myself in the town chief's service!"

"Ha, then I appoint you Registrar of the Wuxing Town Militia Battalion," Zhao Han accepted on the spot.

Huang Shunde's expression changed. He hastily bowed to hide it: "Having won the town chief's esteem, this junior will surely spare no effort unto death to repay this great kindness!"

Huang Shunde had wanted a civil post, which would make it easier to surrender to government troops later.

But Zhao Han gave him a military civil post, and a very important one at that. He would probably be listed by the authorities as one of the principal rebels.

Moreover, this fellow came from a yeoman background and was not accepted by the tenant farmers. If he engaged in corruption, he would be easily exposed, which actually made him more useful than someone of tenant-farmer origin.

Zhao Han said: "Since you are now in the army, we shall address each other by military rank. I am the General Captain of the Militia Battalion. You may call me General Captain, or simply Chief. Do not call me Town Chief or Master anymore."

"Thank you, Chief!" Huang Shunde hastily corrected himself.

(End of Chapter)