Chapter 348: Surveying the Land, Taxing the Fields: Waves Rise from the Duckweed's Edge

The so-called "Ancient Studies" of the Masters branch referred to the prose of the pre-Qin, Han, and Tang-Song periods.

In the present age, the Cheng-Zhu School of Principle grows daily more ossified, while the Lu-Wang School of Mind drifts into empty abstraction; in the eyes of the young, neither is a learning that can save the times. Thus many students have turned their gaze, one after another, to the era before Cheng and Zhu.

Guan and Han, Ouyang and Zeng — even the collected official documents and policy essays of ministers from successive dynasties — were printed again and again, edition after edition. From the end of the Wanli era, this had quietly become the new fashionable current among the literati.

The Yongchang Emperor's reform of statecraft prose was no rootless duckweed.

Even the New Policies themselves, in truth, were a response to the cry of this decaying age.

Before the autumn wind stirs, the cicada is first to sense it — how could the people of the realm not perceive the realm's collapse?

It is only that each of them tends to believe that he alone is the one who can turn back the tide and save the times.

And the hardest barrier to saving the times is not the saving itself, but rather how to topple one's political enemies first.

Zhang Dai's excitement lasted a moment before his mood slowly settled.

He paced for a while, listening to the cicadas and birdsong beyond the room, and in the end could not suppress a long sigh.

"Ah… if only things in Zhejiang could be guided by circumstances like this as well… I would not have been driven to such a wretched state!"

The background to Zhang Dai's words was the enormous storm kicked up by the Zhejiang strategy.

The Governor of Zhejiang, Geng Ruqi, had bundled together a team of over thirty men and, because the journey was shorter, had arrived at his post by mid-March.

This man was a jinshi of the forty-fourth year of Wanli, and had successively held the posts of Bureau Secretary in the Ministry of Revenue, Bureau Director of the Operations Bureau in the Ministry of War, and Assistant Administration Commissioner of Shaanxi.

During the period when Wei Zhongxian held power, he was already renowned for his unbending and stubborn integrity.

And the mission assigned to the entire Zhejiang Governor's team had, in fact, only one main thread.

That was to take the land-equalization and tax-equalization reforms that had been carried out piecemeal in Jiangnan since the Jiajing period and thoroughly extend them to the whole of Zhejiang province.

The "land equalization" spoken of here was by no means some rebel scheme of beating the local tyrants and dividing up the land.

Rather, it was an innovation upon the Hongwu ancestral system of the lijia — nominally preserved, but in substance abolished.

In the old lijia system, each household was classified as large, medium, or small, and then grain chiefs were assigned, with taxes and corvée rotated every ten years.

In essence, "taxes and corvée were tied to the household" — whether poll tax, land tax, or conscripted labor, all were fundamentally collected by household. And as the traditional lijia and Yellow Register systems collapsed, all manner of abuses naturally proliferated.

Such as "fraudulent entrustment": entrusting one's own land to an official or gentry household that possessed examination rank, thereby stealing tax-exempt privileges. Some families, not content with the exemption quota, would even borrow the prestige of the powerful to steal exemptions beyond the quota.

Such as "dispersal by division": splitting one's household landholdings among the names of various family members, tenants, or servants, so that a large household became a medium one, and a medium household a small one, thereby evading the rotation of tax and corvée duties.

Such as "flying sprinkling," which was even more vicious: directly sprinkling one's own land taxes out of thin air onto the acreage of commoners, or even onto the heads of absconded or extinct households. In this way, the household's own land tax was paid in full, but what was paid was entirely the grain of other families.

As a result, the so-called "wealthy households" that took their turn in the rotation often could not bear the burden and were ruined, fleeing for their lives.

Over months and years of accumulation, the court's taxes could not be fully collected, and the common people continually slipped away from the household registers.

Evolving step by step, the heavy burden of a hundred households would in the end press down upon ten households, upon five households, or even upon a single household.

In the final stage, fraudulent entrustment even became a kind of benevolent governance on the part of the gentry…

For the simple reason that if they did not help shelter their village kin, the taxes piled layer upon layer would truly drive people to their deaths.

And this land-equalization and tax-equalization reform, which had begun in the Jiajing period and continued for decades, was precisely aimed at transforming the lijia system into one where "taxes and corvée were tied to the land."

All lijia were no longer divided by household but reorganized by land, with each jia comprising either two hundred mu or three hundred mu.

This reform occurred almost simultaneously with the Single Whip law, yet unlike the Single Whip law, it was not promoted and extended; it consistently lacked strong and sustained leadership from the central government.

Thus it advanced and retreated by turns, with conditions varying from province to province, prefecture to prefecture, and county to county.

In some places, a strong-willed magistrate arrived, employed forceful measures, or the gentry's power was relatively weak, and the east wind prevailed over the west wind — the reform was successfully implemented. Once the good county magistrate left, the gentry mobilized their connections and bribed the petty clerks, and the fruits of reform were slowly eroded and rolled back, the west wind once again prevailing over the east. But from beginning to end, as long as the central government wished to reform, or even if only a local county magistrate was iron-willed in wanting reform, these powerful gentry were basically very hard-pressed to resist openly.

To name but one example: in the thirty-eighth year of Wanli, in that darkest hour when the Wanli Emperor hid in the rear palace and the hundred offices stood vacant,

the Southern Metropolitan Region had, by sheer force, completed one considerably large-scale land-equalization and tax-equalization rectification.

The Governor of Yingtian, Xu Minshi, relying solely on the support of Ye Xianggao, who was then the sole Grand Secretary in the Grand Secretariat, forced the gentry of Suzhou, Songjiang, Changzhou, and Zhenjiang to bow their heads and completed a cadastral survey.

In the end, Songjiang Prefecture alone uncovered over a million mu of concealed land! Of course, that was already twenty years ago.

Twenty years is enough for a babe to grow into an adult, and naturally enough for the west wind to once again prevail over the east.

But this mission of land and tax equalization, on the surface, was a matter for Zhejiang.

Now, however, it no longer affected Zhejiang alone.

In mid-May, after two months of on-the-ground investigation, the Zhejiang Governor's team readjusted its strategy.

This was precisely the authority the Emperor had granted to the provincial governor teams.

Although each province's strategy had already been planned from many angles in the capital, it could still be fine-tuned according to local realities.

And the adjustment made by the Zhejiang Governor's team, on the surface, was actually very small.

Geng Ruqi submitted a memorial requesting that the New Policies' restriction of pilot counties in Zhejiang be separately lifted.

(Note: As previously mentioned, the provincial governors across the realm each had a quota of pilot counties for the New Policies.)

He wished to change from the standard quota of one large county and three small counties directly to four large counties advancing together in parallel.

First, Huzhou! Jiaxing! Hangzhou! Shaoxing!

And it was precisely because of this one memorial that the Jiangnan region was instantly swept by surging storms, and the masses seethed with unrest.

Why?

One need only open a map and glance at it to understand.

These four counties were distributed around Hangzhou, gazing north toward Lake Tai, and immediately adjacent to Songjiang Prefecture and Suzhou Prefecture in the Southern Metropolitan Region!

Geng Ruqi's intent could not have been clearer.

Xiang Zhuang performed the sword dance, but his aim was the Duke of Pei!

The four counties of Hu and Jia today are the model for central Zhejiang, but even more so, they are the model for tomorrow's Southern Metropolitan Region!

Thus, the Zhejiang gentry, originally isolated and weak, suddenly gained the distant echoing support of the Southern Metropolitan gentry, and the two sides began frequent correspondence and mutual collusion.

Fortunately, the Yongchang Emperor vetoed this revision in early June, with a red endorsement instructing that Zhejiang should still follow the original strategy and proceed step by step. And yet, with the great tides of the realm surging, who is not a hero, and who does not wish to become a hero?

Every member of the governor teams had been selected through examinations from various departments over a period of nearly four months, starting in the eleventh month. And this particular batch of imperial commissioners had, as it happened, been assigned to a place of such fiscal importance as Zhejiang.

How could they possibly be content to be mere supporting players in this great drama of the New Policies?

If it were you, would you be willing?

Geng Rusi's memorial represented not only his personal will, but the collective will of all thirty-seven members, from top to bottom, of the entire Zhejiang imperial inspection team. And so, a second memorial was freshly drafted.

The Zhejiang team affixed all their signatures, guaranteeing that they would exceed the tax quota the following year, and once more petitioned the Emperor to relax the quota of pilot counties!

As this memorial was submitted, all the Jiangnan gentry understood completely.

This batch of imperial inspection teams intended to take Zhejiang and the Southern Metropolitan Region directly in hand, grinding the lands of countless great households into dust and mud, to use as their own stepping stones to advancement!

To commit such an act — offering up the empire to the sovereign while treating one's own native place with such cruelty — shall they not be left without descendants!

The greatest storm since the New Policies began swiftly gathered over the river-laced lands of Jiangnan in the wake of these two memorials.

Qi Biaojia was silent for a moment, then spoke up to break the oppressive stillness in the garden.

"I received a letter from home about this matter a month ago, and I had the same doubts then."

Zhang Dai raised an eyebrow and asked:

"What does Youwen think is the reason? As I see it, Geng Rusi's conduct is far too hasty, and far too lacking in human warmth..."

"If we could follow the example of Fujian and Liangguang, enticing them with profit, using the opening of maritime trade to carry out land equalization, how would it have stirred up such great waves?" "Observing the Son of Heaven's past conduct, he does not seem like one so miserly in sharing profit."

"Could it simply be Geng Rusi's temperament?"

Qi Biaojia sighed and answered:

"It is not merely a matter of the Governor's temperament." "Huang Daozhou is my tongnian, and we were assigned together to the official evaluation team, so we are quite close."

(Note: Huang is from Zhangzhou, Fujian. Due to his native-place origins, he was also packed into the Fujian inspection team this time, but in truth it was also because the Emperor had grown a bit impatient with him — after all, constantly remonstrating that virtue must come first gets tiresome to hear.)

"He told me the reason behind it..."

"That Zhejiang does not speak of opening maritime trade, and the Southern Metropolitan Region does not speak of opening maritime trade, are in fact the same principle."

"Jiangnan is a vital region for wealth and taxes. The common people suffer bitterly under the transport of tribute grain, crying out and longing for reform of the corvée and tax levies."

"This matter means that land equalization is the common hope of the people, but it also means that once Jiangnan opens maritime trade, it will inevitably lead to renewed discussion of grain transport by sea, to relieve the heavy burdens of the people."

"Yet once sea transport flourishes, canal transport will surely be abandoned!"

"Before the initial cadastral surveys and land consolidation along the Grand Canal line are completed, if canal transport were to be abandoned and the canal laborers cast adrift, it would be nothing less than a reenactment of the early days of our dynasty!"

"Therefore, for the Jiangnan region, it is not that maritime trade will not be opened, but that it must be opened late, and opened slowly... We must wait until the New Policies have spread through Shandong and Henan, freeing up enough farmland for the canal laborers on both banks, and all the materials for land reclamation have been prepared — only then can it begin."

Zhang Dai furrowed his brow, utterly unconvinced by this reasoning.

"Even if it must be opened late, why not mention a single word of it?"

"To mention a few lines, paint a vague promise, and slightly ease the public discussion in the county — would that not be better?"

Qi Biaojia smiled bitterly and shook his head, waving his hands repeatedly.

"It must not be mentioned... absolutely must not be mentioned."

"Zhejiang and the Southern Metropolitan Region are not like the southeast. Ever since the former Vice Circuit Intendant Wang Xiangjin used stratagems to sow discord among the sea bandits and captured and killed Wang Huzi in a single battle, the sea bandits along this stretch have never again amounted to anything."

"Therefore, if maritime trade were opened here, unlike in the southeast, objectively there would be no obstacles whatsoever."

"The moment officialdom dares to breathe a word of liberalization, the scale below would instantly magnify a thousandfold, a hundredfold. This is because the profit is immense and the risk is nil — when the time comes, the court would be unable to rein it in even if it wanted to!"

Wang Huzi was originally a salt worker who turned bandit during a drought and famine, rallying a following upon the seas.

His ilk raided and plundered cities, killed men in broad daylight, tied up their captives and threw them beneath bridges, calling it 'shrimp-groping' — the government troops could barely control them.

Yet this man had only emerged in the early Tianqi years, and after finally gathering over ten thousand men, he was crushed by Wang Xiangjin in the sixth year of Tianqi.

Indeed, this Wang Xiangjin is none other than one of the mere three Seekers of the Dao in the Academy of Sciences today — Doctor Wang Xiangjin...

When he slew the bandits two years ago, he was still quite young.

Only... sixty-five years old.

Zhang Dai opened his mouth, then found himself momentarily speechless...

When he had received the victory report back then, he had even composed a poem at a banquet to celebrate it.

Who would have thought that the bandit suppression back then had been so thorough, it had now become the very obstacle preventing Jiangnan from taking the lead in opening maritime trade.

He rubbed his brow and gave a bitter laugh:

"Fine... the reasoning is sound. It's just that it's worn me out completely."

"My father sent a letter from Shandong, and my maternal uncle sent one from the capital as well — both with a thousand admonitions and ten thousand reminders, all telling me to actively cooperate and not to stick my neck out and cause trouble."

"My friends in the capital have been even more prolific with their letters, all analyzing the general trend of the New Policies."

"Naturally, there is no reason for me not to follow their advice."

Zhang Dai waved his hand irritably.

"It's just that the matters of household servants taking money for fraudulent registrations, or the various branches of the family dividing up property, are still manageable — it's merely a matter of steeling one's resolve and vigorously setting things in order."

"The bulk of my family's income still lies in cotton cloth specie silver, so we are not yet short of these few sums of money and silver."

"But the greater part of the fraudulently registered lands were entrusted to us as a favor by village and clan kinsmen, to shelter them on their behalf."

"This has truly left me dizzy and addled. Every day, aunts and female cousins by the dozen come knocking, weeping and pleading their cases, forcing me to flee here to my Longshan villa just to find some peace and quiet."

Qi Biaojia listened, then sighed as well, deeply empathizing.

"On my side, the clan relatives have my father and elder brothers shielding them up front, so they haven't found their way to me." "But some of the local gentry, hearing that I had returned home, sent letters to me instead. The meaning between the lines was that they wanted me, once I entered the capital, to help submit memorials before His Majesty and plead their case a little."

Zhang Dai, hearing this, could not help but widen his eyes.

"What wondrous marvel of heaven and earth's creation, what singular prodigy of parental birth is this?"

"Amidst such storms, they actually sought out you — a man entering the capital for examination selection, with a brilliant future ahead — to be their raft?"

Qi Biaojia coughed twice dryly, his tone subdued.

"Others aside, even Lord Yitong and Lord Ruiting both sent visiting cards to my residence..."

At the sound of these two names, Zhang Dai promptly shut his mouth.

In Shanyin, he was a famously dissolute scion.

Fond of fine clothes, fond of fine food, fond of fine horses, fond of ornate lanterns, fond of fireworks, fond of the theater, fond of music, fond of antiques, fond of flowers and birds...

Only one thing they were decidedly not famous for: pursuing office through statecraft and scholarship.

And the two men Qi Biaojia had named were both advanced in years, local gentry who had retired from office and now lived at home.

Within Shanyin, once you set aside those currently holding office elsewhere, they were absolutely the foremost opinion leaders.

They had probably sent letters to Zhang Dai's father and maternal uncles as well — they simply never let a wastrel like him know about it.

Men of that stamp were certainly no fools incapable of reading the situation.

More likely, with interests at stake, they simply hoped to salvage what they could, if any room for compromise remained.

That is the nature of where one sits.

The thinking and the interests of gentry out of office and officials in office are utterly distinct.

Look even deeper, at a finer grain.

The demands of a country landlord whose main income is land rents differ from those of a town landlord whose main income is urban workshops and cotton cloth. The plains counties, with their advanced agriculture, likely diverge considerably from the mountainous counties of western and southern Zhejiang as well.

To say nothing of the friction between a hundred-mu landowner who has been saddled with excessive tax and corvée obligations and a thousand-mu magnate who contrives to escape them.

(Attached: topographic map of Zhejiang; the ancient and modern administrative divisions are roughly the same)

This is also the fundamental reason why, since the Jiajing era, as Jiangnan's tax and corvée system steadily deteriorated, local land-equalization reforms — advancing or retreating by turns — have nonetheless continued to inch forward.

Most reforms are, at bottom, a redistribution and transfer of interests.

And where interests are transferred, there will naturally be not only opponents but also supporters.

A landlord of a hundred mu and a colossus like Grand Secretary Xu Jie, who held hundreds of thousands of mu of prime land, can hardly sit on the same side of the fence. The Liaodong levy, of course, is an exception.

Only a blunt, indiscriminate surcharge like that — a pure tax hike imposed by the mu with no distinctions drawn — can make everyone set aside class divisions and hate it in unison. The subject is simply too heavy.

When these local gentry form connections, they invariably invoke neighborhood ties and moral censure.

To refuse is very hard to bring oneself to say.

To acquiesce is to be utterly muddle-headed.

Neither Zhang nor Qi was of such unbending character, and they were indeed tormented to the point of misery.

Zhang Dai was silent for a long while, then took the initiative and asked:

"Ahem… when do you intend to leave?"

Qi Biaojia chuckled.

"This official has public business to attend to — the sooner the better, naturally…"

Zhang Dai stroked his chin and did a quick reckoning.

"Setting out tomorrow would be a bit tight. The day after, how about that? I'll put my household odds and ends in order, hand them over to my second brother to manage, and then set off with you. Once we reach Wujiang, the various societies happen to be gathering at Yin Mountain — we can go see Tianru and the others first, then head straight north."

Qi Biaojia let out a breath and made the decision:

"Good! I can certainly wait one day."

"Then the day after tomorrow, at the fifth watch, bring your household servants and lads. We'll meet outside the Gate of Receiving Grace north of the city!"