Chapter 348: Port Opening (15)

As early as the Hongwu era when Zhu Yuanzhang founded the nation, because the entire country's land needed to be surveyed, the court formally implemented the Land Fish-Scale Register system that had already existed in the Song Dynasty.

The Fish-Scale Register was the land registration ledger.

Houses, mountain forests, ponds, and fields were arranged in sequence and connected by lines, then marked with corresponding area, soil quality, fertility, and other properties, after which the land was fixed and became the comprehensive register of all private fields. Because the plots of land drawn one by one resembled fish scales, it was thus named.

In Hongwu 26th Year, the total number of lower-field mu after verification was over 8.5 million qing. In this process, the emergence of the Fish-Scale Register allowed the court to clarify land rights and clean up concealment to a considerable degree. Given the administrative level of the time, the Fish-Scale Register was a tremendous advance in the history of land administration.

However, feudal society was just like that — it peaked at its inception, and thereafter each successor was worse than the last.

As time passed, by the mid-Ming Dynasty, due to heavy taxes, people fled in droves, and compounded by land changing hands over the years, concealment, and other reasons, the Fish-Scale Register had in fact become disordered and inaccurate.

Thus by Hongzhi 15th Year, the land registered nationwide had shockingly dwindled to just over 4.2 million qing; in a mere span of 109 years, the land the state used for taxation had actually decreased by half... This was utterly absurd — as if the fields had grown feet, probably all fitted with thrusters and flown off to Jupiter.

From this one can clearly see how the landlord class used hidden fields to hollow out the state: in theory, farmland that should have increased with population growth could shrink by half within a century.

So by this point, the Fish-Scale Register system had already completely collapsed, instead degenerating into a tool for the gentry and petty officials to collude in embezzling state assets.

Several decades later, by the Wanli era, the Senior Grand Secretary Zhang Juzheng saw that they simply could not muddle through any longer, so in order to reverse the court's economic crisis, he resolved to reform taxes and corvée, ultimately implementing the "Single Whip Law" nationwide.

To clean up taxation, one had to first survey the basic unit of taxation: the field-mu. So after Zhang Juzheng petitioned and obtained the Shenzong Emperor's approval, the Ming Court launched the second national land survey since the Hongwu era.

On the whole, the results of this survey were fairly good. While strictly investigating hidden fields and tax evasion, the court also pursued back taxes, completed land surveying and registration, and compiled a new Fish-Scale Register.

Of course, the farcical side still existed: the nation's taxable land recovered to 7 million qing in this survey... Although an increase of nearly 3 million qing from the Hongzhi era, it still fell short of the total land at the nation's founding, let alone the new fields reclaimed by the people over the centuries.

So after a bout of struggling, once Zhang Juzheng died and his policies ended, life simply continued muddling along as before.

By the Chongzhen era when the Transmigrators appeared, unsurprisingly, the Fish-Scale Register had once again degenerated into a tool for the petty officials to fool the court, its contents once more filled with all kinds of false information: nominal taxpayers who had lived past a hundred abounded, and all sorts of land data from decades ago were casually copied year after year by the petty officials onto the latest version, completely losing any reference value.

And the records containing the true information on Lian Di's fields and mu had already become the private family heirlooms of Household Office clerks like Yu Bende. That is to say, the official copies of the Fish-Scale Register, compiled annually and submitted to the prefecture and county for archiving, were all fakes; only the duplicate copies secretly kept by the likes of Yu Bende were the real basis for tax collection.

All the land circumstances of an entire county, including all manner of fraudulent registrations, donations, hidden fields, and so on, even the real data on tax payments, were recorded in the duplicate copies. These duplicate copies, privately controlled, were the core competitive advantage that allowed the Household Office clerk in charge of money, grain, and taxes to run rampant in the County Yamen.

So the reason Yu Bende could obtain the workshop business from Xiong Dao was not because of his good looks, nor because he was a wily old fox, but purely because he controlled the land and tax records of Jiading County and was someone who could not be bypassed in the port-opening land requisition.

This investment in Yu Bende now bore fruit. Which plot in Zuo Family Village was hidden land, which people were perpetually in tax arrears — Yu Bende knew all of it very clearly.

So when he pointed at the field beneath his feet, the Zuo family members were left speechless: you claim this plot has had its taxes paid, then please produce the title deed and tax payment proof? But how could hidden land have any of these things?

"In Wanli 40th Year, this place was flooded. After the waters receded, you people cut down the woods, raised ridges, and opened this up into a paddy field... Is what I, Yu, say correct?"

Yu Bende not only knew this plot was hidden land, he even knew who had reclaimed it and when. In fact, in the densely populated Jiangnan region, so-called hidden land and hidden households could not be concealed at all; this was not some deep mountain ravine in Guangxi where a landlord could hide a thing or two.

These hidden things were originally used openly and brazenly by the landlord class, relying on their privileges, to evade taxes. So hidden land was actually not hard to find — what was hard was the courage to challenge the interest group.

As it happened, this time someone had given the crafty old official Yu Bende that courage — using power and profit.

And the Zuo family members, having had their window paper poked through, now found themselves in a very difficult position. No matter how much tacit understanding the two sides had previously, with this turning hostile today, the Zuo family suddenly could not handle it well: all legal reasoning was against them.

So Zuo Hongwu, caught red-handed, could not think of any clever plan in his haste and could only steel himself and try to muddle through with a set of untenable excuses: "Master Yu, you must have remembered wrong. This plot was passed down from the ancestors in the early years and has always paid grain tax. It's just that the title deed was lost a few days ago due to some mishap and hasn't been reissued yet."

"Mm, as long as the grain tax has been paid, that's fine." Yu Bende nodded, then stretched out his hand: "Bring out the Grain String for me to see."

The Grain String was the tax payment certificate — how could the Zuo family possibly have one?

Seeing Zuo Hongwu shut his mouth and not answer, Yu Bende gave a sinister laugh: "Perhaps the Grain String was also lost?"

"Master Yu, don't push people too far!" Seeing that he could not muddle through, Zuo Hongwu also turned hostile.

"Ridiculous. I, Yu, am levying taxes on behalf of the court — where is the pushing people too far?" Old official Yu now radiated a holy aura all over, as if he truly were serving the people.

"Forget it, we're leaving." Stretching out an arm to block Zuo Hongwu, who still wanted to argue, Clan Leader Zuo Hongtang shot Yu Bende a look brimming with murderous intent and said: "Give him the land, give him the people too. We're going back."

As Clan Leader, Zuo Hongtang naturally viewed the problem from a more macro perspective. Today's matter was clearly a premeditated trap: the opponent had everything prepared and was just waiting for them to jump in.

So he cut losses in time and went back to hold a mobilization meeting — Zuo Hongtang had already clearly realized the opponent's determination to put the Zuo family to death. Now was the time to abandon illusions, mobilize the entire clan, bring their traditional advantages to bear, and fight the enemy to the death.

And what were the traditional advantages of a rural clan? Being at a disadvantage on the legal front, they could only pick up the final, and most powerful, means to resist the vicious authorities: armed mass rioting.

This craft, passed down for a thousand years, was not discarded even in later generations: mobbing and looting passing trucks, mobbing roads to set up checkpoints and collect fees, mobbing roads to petition, and so on and so forth.

And for the villagers of the 17th century, once they rioted en masse, the prefectural and county yamens were bound to get massive headaches. One had to realize that the entire strength of a county yamen was no more than two to three hundred men, and among them were large numbers of slackers whose combat effectiveness was worrisome — they simply lacked the military force to go into the countryside and suppress the rioters.

As for deploying troops... disturbing the governor and Fuzhou Governor over such a trifle would certainly cost the local official his black gauze cap, for "inciting civil unrest" was itself a grave crime.

So, as long as these country folk did not rise up in armed rebellion and kept the temperature under control, even if they beat a few tax clerks or such villains to death, once the matter blew up, the authorities would definitely "heed the people's wishes" and smooth things over. It was not only officials of later generations who knew how to maintain stability — the seventeenth century was exactly the same.

Of course, this double-edged sword would inevitably invite long-term covert revenge from the local authorities in the aftermath... But the Zuo family was about to be finished right now — who still cared about what came later?

So later that day, the Zuo family landlords, having recognized the situation, quickly unified their thinking and began intense mobilization work: for instance, telling the tenant farmers that the authorities were going to confiscate all hidden land, and that the back taxes the Zuo family had accumulated over the years would also be collected in one go, and when apportioned, no one could escape.

To some extent, these rumors fabricated for mobilization were actually quite accurate: confiscating land and collecting back taxes were both backup measures in the Land Requisition Office's plan.

But now these measures were no longer needed. The way things had developed, the Land Requisition Office's plan had already smoothly progressed to the final step: dealing with the big landlords.

Before this, the Land Requisition Office had already, by throwing money around, sent away the more troublesome rich peasants and owner-farmers. These people were the backbone of traditional struggles, willing to pay any price for their family property, with very strong will to fight, and easily incited by the big landlords to mount resistance.

And dealing with the remaining big landlords and tenant farmers in Zuo Family Village was much easier.

Not to mention that the big landlords and their accomplices were few in number, the tenant farmers, who were the most numerous, also faced a philosophical question: who were they fighting for? It wasn't like beating the local tyrants and dividing the land — were they supposed to desperately defend the master's family property? So this proletarian class's will to fight was not strong and they were easy to handle.

Thus in the following two days, the atmosphere in Zuo Family Village grew abruptly tense. The clan first concentrated its capable and combat-ready manpower, while the over a thousand tenant farmers on the periphery at least put on the posture of an armed feud, which could be considered doing justice to their surname.

As for the Land Requisition Office's side... the hundred or so people in total first shrank back into a few courtyards. That night, out of a darkness where one could not see their own hand, ten reinforcement personnel quietly arrived at the Land Requisition Office.

Do not underestimate these ten people. They were a new type of riot-suppression personnel specially transferred from Dayuan. They carried highly sophisticated secret weapons and were professional talents newly trained by the troops.

When everything was fully prepared, the Land Requisition Office launched a preemptive strike: the next day, they mobilized in full force, dug up another plot of hidden land at the village entrance, and conveniently arrested a few tenant farmers as well.

Then the Zuo family members, who had long been prepared, immediately gathered. A force of over a thousand men soon stood in confrontation with the hundred or so men.