Chapter 347: Opening the Port (14)

The story of the burst dike tells us: when pressure builds to a certain point, there will always be some weak link that springs a leak first.

Although the area around Gaoqiao was relatively lucky last year and did not suffer the terror of a tide disaster that drowned tens of thousands at once across the Qiantang River basin, the low temperatures of the Little Ice Age were universal — no one could escape them.

Global low temperatures are not as simple as just wearing an extra layer of clothing. For agricultural production, the most significant expression of climate anomaly is the uneven distribution of drought and flood: warm, moist air currents are stalled by the low temperatures and lack fluidity, so everywhere, without exception, saw alternating outbreaks of drought and flood. Rain either simply refused to come for months, or came smashing down in the form of torrential storms or even hail.

This alternation of drought and flood was devastating to medieval agriculture. And in the just-passed year of 1628, the entire Jiangnan region experienced the above scenarios to varying degrees.

Therefore, the Left Family's days were actually not easy. The Chongzhen Liaoxiang surtax imposed on South Zhili starting last year amounted to 380,000 taels. Exorbitant taxes and levies, coupled with unseasonable weather, made life even more arduous for farmers already bearing heavy burdens. Not to mention tenant farmers, even many rich peasants and landlords were already treading on thin ice.

Under such circumstances, it is very difficult to restrain ordinary people who see enormous benefits laid out before them with things like morality or clan law. Faced with the dimensionality reduction strike of bankruptcy and land loss, all obstacles began to seem powerless.

So after the Land Requisition Office announced the latest purchase price, insiders within the Left Family immediately began to stir restlessly.

At first, certain people were merely "watching closely" and had not put the act of selling land into action. However, after the Land Requisition Office issued yet another latest Weibo post, that very night, someone came stealthily with their title deeds to sign the contract.

The content of this Weibo post was: The special promotional offer will only last for seven days; latecomers will not be accommodated.

Pitifully, these people of the 17th century had no rich experience in dealing with demolition and relocation companies, so they were easily tricked — their emotions stirred up by shocks and alarms, led by the nose.

The three independent operators who came from the Left Family to sell land were all rich peasants. Like Zuo Shiqi before them, they all belonged to the category of people who had no real discourse power within the clan.

They too had to toil in the fields on ordinary days and were likewise crushed under the weight of various taxes and levies. In fact, these few were only slightly better off than tenant farmers and owner-farmers, merely having a bit more land rented out to tenants — tenant rich peasants.

The land these three had on hand was actually not much, totaling less than 100 mu. Yet the Land Requisition Office still hurried to process their paperwork at the first moment, because the significance they represented was immense: if Zuo Shiqi could be considered a special case as a gambler, these three households had pried a large crack open in the iron plate of the Left Family clan.

Zuo Hongtang and his Council of Elders were indeed left holding the bag.

This time, they could not put on the airs of a Three-Judge Tribunal. After all, these three land-sellers were all upright, proper heads of households within the clan, with no record of gambling misdeeds on ordinary days. So even as clan head, he could not, as he had with Zuo Shiqi, rely on stirring up public anger to strip them of their property... Thus, they could only try reasoning with them.

Yet reasoning was not so easy either. These three had committed no murder, broken no law — the Great Ming Code certainly had no provision stating that land could only be sold to fellow clan members.

As for clan law... the men had already hardened their hearts and sold the title deeds; the customary clan law was largely useless at this point. Could they possibly drown all three in the pond? That was impossible: not only would there be no just cause, but these were heads of families with elders above, children below, and a whole host of sons and nephews. They were all relatives tied by blood and marriage; the Council of Elders could not possibly rally the clansmen to use violence against so many people.

And what made Zuo Hongtang even more unable to move was that he could feel, at any moment now, the icy gaze of a certain old official from behind the scenes. He had a premonition: if the clan gave that gentleman any handle to grab at this critical juncture, he feared the Second Constable would be at his door.

So now he was truly left holding the bag: these three could neither be beaten nor scolded. He could only watch helplessly as they sold the land and took their families off to live the good life. And this time, he could not even expel them from the clan: three households, over twenty people — if expulsions continued like this, the Left clan would have no one left. So in the end, Zuo Hongtang could only hold his nose and let these three families leave, treating it as the clan branching out and spreading its leaves.

The anticlimactic result of the council thoroughly exposed the weaknesses of the traditional clan.

For a traditional clan that lived together and was constantly prepared to resist natural and man-made disasters, the greater the pressure, the more united they became internally and the tighter their communication.

This model worked against ancient ruling classes that only knew how to take by force and trickery: if anyone tried to seize the clan's fields and land, it would provoke the united resistance of the entire clan, sharing a common hatred.

But when this traditional survival model encountered concepts from later generations, it failed for the first time. Because everyone in Zuo Family Village, including Zuo Hongtang himself, had to admit that the people from the Land Requisition Office were not here to take by force and trickery.

Adhering to the standard startup philosophy of later generations — "to harvest the chives, one must first burn money" — the Transmigrators felt absolutely no psychological pressure about throwing money at land purchases, a behavior that seemed rather foolish in the eyes of the ancients.

One must know that in later generations, for any new industry like food delivery fighting to carve out a market, if the initial annual cash burn was less than ten billion, one would be too embarrassed to greet people when going out.

Of course, once the market was carved out, one could merrily harvest the chives. Just look at how much Meituan's delivery fees have risen now.

So, faced with a purchase price far exceeding the surrounding land value, the Left Family clansmen simply could not muster any fighting spirit. One must know, there were already people from neighboring villages coming with title deeds to make inquiries, precisely because someone here was buying land at a high price. Others came to ask whether a gold mine was buried beneath Zuo Family Village...

This was the fundamental reason Zuo Hongtang had been forced into a passive response all along: he could not portray a bunch of seemingly foolish rich men as utterly heinous villains, and thereby rally the clansmen to unite and resolutely resist everything related to the Land Requisition Office. People were not blind; those in the clan who sold their land had voted for the Transmigrators with their feet.

Within seven days after those three Left Family members sold their land, another group of people came one after another, before the deadline arrived, to sell their own land to the Land Requisition Office.

By this point, the situation was quite clear: nearly all the owner-farmers and rich peasants had been swept up in one net by the Land Requisition Office and all relocated out of Zuo Family Village.

And among those who remained, the class composition was now sharply divided: a large number of tenant farmers and a small number of big landlords.

Tenant farmers were the most numerous group in the village. Although they also bore the surname Zuo, they were complete proletarians, at the bottom of society, and professional onlookers — just like workers in later generations. Whether the factory boss changed or not had little impact on them; they still had to do the same work every day anyway.

In ancient times, the ownership and management rights of farmland were separate. The landlord held the ownership, while in most cases, the tenant farmer held the management rights. That is to say, the landlord actually had no right to dictate the types of crops grown. This is what was meant by "field bone" and "field skin."

Under these circumstances, when the tenant farmers of Zuo Family Village discovered that the new boss was keeping everything as before, no one bothered to meddle in the land requisition affairs anymore... It was precisely the busy spring planting season; the poor had no time to pay attention to the squabbling among the masters.

Of course, all this was merely the surface: it was not that they were ignoring the tenant farmers, but mainly that the new boss had not yet freed up the hands to deal with them.

Now, everything was clear. After the Land Requisition Office spent over half a month gradually clearing out the village's miscellaneous personnel, owner-farmers, rich peasants, and the like, the big landlords were exposed, shining brightly like light bulbs.

The days ahead would not be as easy as before. The stubborn big landlords would never sell their family land under any circumstances, so it was time to serve the hard dishes.

First, a group of manpower moved into Zuo Family Village. Among them were Action Team members under Xiong Dao, as well as grain runners under Yu Bende, totaling around 100 people.

Grain runners were civil servants responsible for going down to the villages to collect taxes during the annual summer and autumn tax seasons. However, though called civil servants, most of these people were actually unregistered white servants without establishment, local ruffians, and scoundrels... the legendary temporary workers.

As the head of the County Yamen's clerical staff, Yu Bende was naturally the grand chief of these grain runners. So after this group took their positions, early the next morning, a paddy field three li southeast of Zuo Family Village was surrounded by the grain runners.

This paddy field was about twenty mu, perfectly situated at a river bend, and was an excellently located irrigated plot. And several Left Family clansmen working in the field were also seized at the same time.

Upon hearing the news, Zuo Hongtang immediately brought his men and rushed to the scene of the incident.

"Master Yu, what is the meaning of this?"

"The meaning? These unruly commoners are outrageously audacious, daring to resist paying taxes. Naturally, they are to be taken back to the County Yamen to be dealt with according to the law!"

A red-faced man standing beside Zuo Hongtang heard this and loudly replied: "Nonsense! Our Left Family's grain tax is paid in a lump sum every year. Where does this accusation of tax resistance come from?"

... Generally speaking, in village and rural areas, when taxes were paid each year, certain "grain households" were responsible for first collecting the tax grain from the common people, and then handing the grain tax over to the grain runners.

These grain households were either local magnates, or bullies and thugs. In short, they were all figures who "had the ability" to collect the taxes and skim some benefits off the process.

And the person responsible for undertaking the grain tax in Zuo Family Village over the years was this red-faced man named Zuo Hongwu. He was from the Left Family's Second Branch, of the same generation as Zuo Hongtang, and also wore the hat of the local Village Head.

Hearing Zuo Hongwu's words, Yu Bende smiled and shook his head: "Heh heh, what you say is not false. But the tax you undertake covers 2,400 mu of registered land. Does that include the tax grain for this field here?"

As Yu Bende spoke, he extended one finger and slowly pointed at the ground beneath his feet.

"This..." The red-faced man suddenly gaped, tongue-tied and unable to speak.

Yes, this land at the river bend was precisely a piece of so-called hidden field.