Chapter 122: Turning Bandit

The four townships Zhao Han had occupied were soon abolished — "township" was only a geographical concept anyway.

All territory was reorganized into eight towns.

Each town comprised one central village and four natural villages, so Zhao Han now ruled forty villages in total.

These villages were also redrawn, each enlarged in area. A single large surname group was mixed in among many smaller surnames, preventing any one surname from holding absolute dominance in a given village.

Break the power of the clans as much as possible!

Although the big landlords had either been killed or forced to divide their estates, when the same surname dominated a village for a long time, given enough years it was bound to form a new clan power. Zhao Han could not prevent this from happening, but he could work to delay its emergence!

With an acute shortage of grassroots officials, they had to rush through surveying and dividing the land while simultaneously carrying out administrative restructuring — the entire winter was chaos beyond belief.

The juren supplied by the Xiao clan had been unwilling to turn bandit from the start, and suffering under the high-intensity work, he simply threw down his duties and quit. He felt his talents were being wasted — a dignified juren, spending all day dealing with mud-legged peasants, even having to deal with women, was nothing short of an insult to him.

Li Banghua and Ouyang Zheng spent each day wandering through the villages and towns, a few soldiers trailing behind them.

"Stop, stop at once — let's talk this over!"

Several propaganda corps members sprinted past, brushing by Li Banghua and Ouyang Zheng, because a brawl was underway in the field ahead.

During the land division, fights broke out every few days.

Sometimes villagers suspected problems with the land division and beat up the public officials.

Sometimes disputes over field boundaries led villagers to lay hands on each other.

Ouyang Zheng gloated and sneered, "The rebel Zhao is just making a mess of things. So many fine villages and towns, all thrown into utter chaos these days."

Li Banghua had been only watching without speaking, but now he could not hold back: "Xianwen, you were a child prodigy — do you truly believe the rebel Zhao is carrying out misrule?"

Ouyang Zheng's face fell. He bowed his head and remained silent for a long while, then sighed. "Ah, this junior can only think that way. Am I supposed to clap and cheer?"

The two men continued onward and soon reached the place where the trouble had broken out.

It turned out that villagers had suspected problems with the land division. The propaganda corps members had brought the villagers to re-survey the fields, and indeed they discovered that the surveying personnel had been messing around.

The two men responsible for surveying, one from the Xiao clan and one from the Liu clan, had colluded to cheat — giving more land to their own clansmen and less to the other villagers, taking advantage of the villagers' inability to reckon numbers.

"Take them away!"

The propaganda corps members directly seized the men and brought them back to be handed over to the penal officials for handling.

"Well caught!"

"Drag them back and chop their heads off!"

The villagers clapped and cheered. No longer content to merely watch the land division, they all escorted the prisoners back for interrogation.

The propaganda corps members could not stop them at all. They had gone only a few dozen paces before villagers began striking the prisoners. By the time they returned to the town office, the two land-division cheats had been beaten black and blue, their noses bruised and faces swollen.

Li Banghua, tired from walking, sat cross-legged on a paddy ridge. "Xianwen, will you turn bandit?"

"I would rather die than do so," Ouyang Zheng said.

Li Banghua gave a bitter smile. "After observing the governance these many days, even I am tempted to turn bandit."

Ouyang Zheng said in alarm, "Sir, you must not entertain such a thought. How could you aid a tyrant in his oppression?"

Li Banghua gazed out over the boundless fields, his tone tinged with melancholy. "The affairs here are just and impartial, carried out with surging vigor — one cannot help but wish to throw oneself into them. If you had ever held office at court, if you had ever tried to govern while being obstructed at every turn, you would know how exquisite this feeling of getting things done truly is."

Ouyang Zheng's eyes suddenly brimmed with hot tears. "What in the world has become of this Great Ming, that all its eminent lords cannot even match a rebel?"

"Ah!"

Li Banghua sighed. "The accumulated ills are too deep to remedy; the great edifice is about to collapse. When an old house is about to fall, not a single person living in it is innocent. Myself included — I, too, have been tearing the house down all along."

"Sir, you served the state with integrity, and were even dismissed from office for it. How can you be so full of self-reproach?" Ouyang Zheng was truly afraid that Li Banghua would turn bandit.

Li Banghua pulled a withered stalk of grass from the paddy ridge and toyed with it in his hand. "Before I passed the jinshi examination, my family sold off land year after year until only six mu remained. When my grandmother passed away, we had no coffin — we wrapped her in straw and buried her in secret. Now, my family owns a thousand mu of fine fields. How did we come by all this? When I was dismissed and returned home, I took the initiative to deliver my land tax. The County Magistrate was so frightened that he personally brought the grain back to my house."

Ouyang Zheng could not help but smile, then suppressed it. "Even dismissed, sir, you are still a first-rank grand official. How would a County Magistrate dare accept grain tax from your household?"

"These past few days, I have made inquiries," Li Banghua said. "That rebel Zhao donated over ten thousand mu of land to the Wuxing town office, yet deliberately kept back one hundred mu. Was he loath to part with that hundred mu? Not at all. He kept that hundred mu so that he could pay land tax to the town office on schedule, so that none of the other rebel officials would dare evade their taxes."

Ouyang Zheng lamented, "This junior has always cursed the rebel Zhao, yet in my heart I still admire him."

Li Banghua said, "The imperial fields around the capital, in the time of the Chengzu Emperor, also paid land tax every year. Chengzu set the example himself — if even the Emperor delivered grain, then all officials under Heaven naturally had to deliver grain as well. But after Chengzu passed away, the imperial fields never paid grain again. Those above act, those below imitate — which of the ennobled and the civil and military officials is still willing to pay grain?"

"That is why reform is necessary. The Great Ming needs a Zhang Taiyue," Ouyang Zheng said.

"You do not understand. When Zhang Taiyue carried out his reforms back then, they were mainly aimed at Jiangnan, and the policies died with the man," Li Banghua shook his head. "The common people of the northwest, the small folk of Jiangnan, are now being tormented to ruin by the Single Whip Law. Without the Single Whip Law, the roving bandits of the northwest might never have stirred up such chaos. As for Jiangxi, there are too many gentry. My household does not pay grain — do you think other households pay grain? When none of the gentry pay grain, how can the state treasury not be empty?"

Ouyang Zheng said, "So reform is still the answer — a thorough and complete reform."

"From the top down, it can no longer be done," Li Banghua said, pointing at the fields that had been surveyed. "It must come from the bottom up — only then can the decline be reversed. If the rebel Zhao can hold out for two or three years, half of Jiangxi will be his. By then, it will surely become a force too large to be cut off!"

Ouyang Zheng said, "The rebel Zhao indiscriminately slaughters landlords — he cannot possibly succeed."

Li Banghua smiled. "He has not indiscriminately slaughtered those landlords willing to surrender their land. If he truly were slaughtering indiscriminately, I would have nothing to worry about."

The reason Li Zicheng had never been able to recruit any educated men was that, as a roving bandit, he had never had a base to speak of. Wherever he went, he inevitably tortured for silver, killed landlords to seize grain, and coerced the common people before slipping away.

How could any educated man throw in his lot with that?

Abandon his family's property and run off with Li Zicheng?

Zhao Han was different — he had a base, and he was dug in and refusing to leave.

The landlords' family properties were all inside Zhao Han's territory. Any who did not wish to die could only steel themselves and turn bandit.

Ouyang Zheng glanced back at the soldiers behind them and asked in a low voice, "Why does the court not send a great army to suppress the rebel Zhao?"

Li Banghua said, "No money, no troops. The court's soldiers' pay and provisions are either spent dealing with the roving bandits or spent dealing with the Tartars. The bandits of Jiangxi can only be put down by the local officials. Which local official do you imagine could put down the rebel Zhao?"

A flash of inspiration struck Ouyang Zheng. "The gentry could be ordered to raise local militia!"

"That is also a method," Li Banghua said, then shook his head. "First, the court will not permit the gentry to raise militia. Second, if local militia were permitted, the Great Ming would exist in name only."

Ouyang Zheng fell silent.

Li Banghua did not know what to say either. The more he observed the rebel's policies, the stronger his impulse to join the rebellion. But he could not turn rebel — he was the former Minister of the Ministry of War; his father and his brothers still lived under the rule of the Great Ming.

The two men made a circuit through the countryside and returned together to Yongyang Town.

Zhao Han's center of rule had already moved from Wuxing Town; Yongyang Town was now the core base.

Above the eight town offices stood Zhao Han's Regional Commander headquarters, which handled all military and civil affairs in one grip — somewhat resembling Zhu Yuanzhang in his Yingtian period.

Pang Chunlai is the chief civil official, Fei Ruhe is the chief military commander, Xiao Huan is in charge of military logistics, Zuo Xiaoliang oversees civil affairs, Fei Chun supervises funds and grain, Chen Maosheng is responsible for propaganda, and Huang Shunfu has been transferred to serve as town chief of Yongyang Town.

These seven people form the core team.

The talents contributed by the great clans like the Xiao family are all still in a probationary period. The sole juren among them already could not bear the heavy workload and was unwilling to deal with mud-legged bumpkins, so he resigned and went home to study.

Only those sons of great clans who endure this difficult stage and perform outstandingly can truly earn Zhao Han's recognition.

Do juren and xiucai who surrender to the rebels immediately gain important positions?

Dream on!

Passing by the town public school and hearing the sound of students reading aloud from within, Li Banghua could not help stopping to listen for a while.

Ouyang Zheng said, "That rebel Zhao is truly a mixed bag — who would have thought he'd know to establish schools on a large scale."

It was far more than just establishing schools on a large scale; Li Banghua did not even know how to describe it.

Although Zhao Han had seized plenty of money and grain, he still had to resettle the drifting rebels returning to their villages in batches, resettle the vagrants who had joined the army in the prefectural seat, and also purchase large quantities of corn and sweet potato seeds.

That money and grain was already gradually running short, at most enough to last until the summer grain harvest season next year.

Even so, Zhao Han still scraped together funds and grain to establish official schools in every town, equivalent to two public schools per township in the Great Ming.

Not only was tuition waived, but all school-age children were also provided a free lunch.

Parents who did not send their children to school, once discovered, would be fined!

Zhao Han even recruited a batch of old-style child students — that is, scholars who could not even pass the government student exam — and personally taught them "Western arithmetic." In a few more months, these old-style child students would be able to master the four basic operations and be assigned to the public schools in each town as mathematics teachers.

By the time they returned to their lodgings, it was already noon, and a soldier brought over their meal.

It was all coarse fare and simple food, which Li Banghua could still accept, since in his youth he had not even had enough to eat.

Ouyang Zheng, however, was thoroughly sick of it. He was a son of a great clan, raised in luxury since childhood, and these days he suffered acid reflux every night.

Sometimes, Ouyang Zheng even thought that if only the rebel Zhao treated him with a little more respect, he would probably be willing to surrender to the rebels.

"Can't stomach it?" Li Banghua said with a laugh.

"I'm almost used to it," was all Ouyang Zheng could say, and then he steeled himself and ate.

Chewing a coarse-grain bran cake and forcing it down with vegetable broth, Li Banghua said with emotion, "I've heard that even the rebel Zhao himself eats this kind of thing every day. In the morning he doesn't even eat cakes, only thin gruel with pickled vegetables. With money and grain so tight right now, before the summer grain harvest, all officials have to tighten their belts and scrape by."

Ouyang Zheng laughed. "Just a trick to fool the common folk."

"I'm inclined to believe it," Li Banghua said. "This rebel has considerable ambition and is no seeker of pleasure. In his residence there is only one maidservant attending him — well, he calls her a female servant, and a rather plain-looking one at that. Apart from her, there's just an old woman doing the washing and cooking. He's been in revolt for nearly a year now and has yet to indulge in women. What's so strange about simple daily fare?"

Ouyang Zheng put away his smile and fiercely bit into his bran cake. "With this rebel's ambition and strategy, were he able to serve as an official at court, he would surely be a pillar of the state."

Li Banghua shook his head. "That current Chief Grand Secretary Wen is equally incorruptible. He does not live in a grand mansion, has no taste for women, keeps very few household slaves, and is frugal in food and dress. Judged by personal virtue alone, Wen Tiren can be called a great worthy."

"That is a blessing for the court," Ouyang Zheng said.

Li Banghua, however, said, "Wen Tiren not only possesses lofty personal virtue, he also has a photographic memory. No matter how tedious the official business, he handles it with ease. Even a minor official he has met only once, he can remember his name and native place. In personal virtue, I am not Wen Tiren's equal; in ability, I am not Wen Tiren's equal either. Had Wen Tiren been born in the early years of the dynasty, he would surely have been a worthy chancellor of his age! But since the new sovereign ascended the throne, Wen Tiren has not done a single substantive thing."

Ouyang Zheng was dumbstruck and said in disbelief, "How can that be?"

"If you do substantive work, you are bound to make mistakes," Li Banghua said. "I was dismissed from office and sent home precisely because I did things."

Ouyang Zheng had previously only looked down on local officials, but hearing Li Banghua say this, he now felt utterly that the Great Ming was beyond saving.

After conscientiously gnawing his cake to the last bite, he went out to stroll the villages and towns again in the afternoon. That night, Ouyang Zheng could not fall asleep no matter what.

Early the next morning, Ouyang Zheng ran to find Li Banghua. "Sir, I wish to join the rebels."

Li Banghua said, "As you please."

Afraid that Li Banghua was angry, Ouyang Zheng explained, "A true man living in this world must accomplish something. After hearing you speak of the court situation, this student truly sees no future. Even if this student were to pass the highest examinations, he would merely be a wooden figure at court. Better to follow that rebel Zhao."

"Go, go," Li Banghua did not stop him.

Ouyang Zheng cupped his hands and said, "Sir, I take my leave!"

Rebels all had to take a false name for themselves. Zhao Han changed his name to Zhao Yan, and Ouyang Zheng directly changed his name to Ou Zhen.

After this fellow joined the rebels, he did not receive any important post either, merely being tossed to Yongfu Town to assist with land distribution.

Ouyang Zheng did not feel disappointed, because he had observed the administration for many days and knew that as long as one performed well, one would certainly be promoted quickly.

With the new year fast approaching, Li Banghua was also beginning to find it hard to bear.

He was simply too idle. He could find no good books to read here and had nothing to do all day. Meanwhile, the surrounding villages and townships were bustling with intense activity, and Li Banghua very much wanted to throw himself into it.

Because Zhao Han was doing substantive work — all of it substantive work that Li Banghua had always wanted to do but could never possibly do.

On the twenty-eighth day of the twelfth month, Li Banghua went to pay a visit to Zhao Han, wanting to have a thorough, heart-to-heart debate.

(End of chapter)