Chapter 347: At Last It's the Donglin Faction's Turn

"Huang Taichong is quite good. Places that pay more taxes should indeed get more examination quotas. An excellent approach! Treating agriculture and commerce alike as the foundation is also correct — only when industry and commerce develop can tax revenue truly increase.

Moreover, his suggestions on official governance are also excellent. Holding office should mean easy entry and strict weeding-out, with the lowest-ranked being cut. If a man can't do the job, he should get lost!

Luo Dagong's approach is also very good — officials, gentry, imperial favorites, and the powerful should all pay taxes alike! That's exactly how it should be. This is an upright subject! Master Qian, the name 'Dagong' you gave him is indeed fitting! This examination's top jinshi should be decided between Huang Taichong and Luo Dagong!"

You've finally been fooled! Qian Qianyi watched Zhu Cilang, who believed he had discovered upright and capable subjects, and thought to himself: This Luo Dagong is a sycophant — he deliberately pandered to you in order to become top jinshi and win high office! As for that Huang Zongxi — heh — he simply has too many ideas, and what's more, he dares to speak them and write them out. Otherwise he would have passed the jinshi examination long ago! A man like that should be given a tong jinshi, then tossed into some remote little county and forgotten.

Letting him become top jinshi would be making trouble for yourself. Better to use that sycophant Luo Dagong as top jinshi instead!

Of course, Qian Qianyi would never say this openly to Zhu Cilang.

"Zhang Huangyan is not bad either," Zhu Cilang said, picking up Zhang Huangyan's paper and speaking to Qian Qianyi with a smile. "Though not as insightful as Huang Taichong, Zheng Sen, or Luo Dagong, he is still a rare talent. He advocates implementing a monopoly prohibition system, placing salt, tea, wine, and the like under monopoly prohibition, with no private sale permitted. Though difficult to implement, the idea is still a good one, and the essay is well written — of first- or second-rank standard."

The "monopoly prohibition" Zhang Huangyan proposed was in fact a form of state monopoly. But rather than delegating monopoly rights to private merchants, the state would control the monopoly rights itself and reap great profits through them. Such an approach could not work in the Southern Ming, because the situation the Southern Ming faced was one of a weak court and strong merchants.

But the fact that Zhang Huangyan could write such an essay, rather than simply handing in a blank paper, already made his position clear.

In today's examination, apart from the open walkout, many candidates also chose passive resistance — handing in blank papers! Not knowing how to answer surely can't violate the king's law, can it?

So of the papers now received at Mingyuan Tower, more than half are blank! This counts as one of the great spectacles in the history of China's civil examinations.

And behind this "spectacle of blank papers" lay the passive resistance of the southeastern literati — if one considers that among the juren taking part in this examination, many were "inside agents" arranged by Zhu Cilang, and many more were propertyless juren exiled from the north, who would not hand in blank papers, then the proportion of southeastern literati engaging in passive resistance was still quite high.

Therefore, if the policy of comprehensively and strictly levying commercial taxes were truly implemented in the southeast, it would certainly encounter many difficulties. And to deal with the coming difficulties, Zhu Cilang had no choice but to usurp the Donglin Faction!

Usurping the throne could wait a while longer, but usurping the faction was now imperative!

"Master Qian, Master Wu, Master Gong," Zhu Cilang said with a smile, "although quite a few candidates handed in blank papers at this special examination, we can still select many talents from it. Among these talents, quite a number are Donglin successors. So We thought to take advantage of everyone being gathered in Jinling to convene a Donglin Assembly and elect a new set of Donglin Three Worthies and Donglin Seven Masters. What do the three masters think?"

The idea of convening a Donglin Assembly was something Zhu Cilang had already discussed with Qian Qianyi, Wu Meicun, and Gong Dingzi. But then it had been an idea; now it was an edict. Asking their opinion was asking for their support, not genuinely soliciting advice.

This Donglin Faction — Zhu Cilang was determined to usurp it!

Outside Sanshan Gate, on the Qinhuai River, boats of every kind came and went, bustling beyond measure.

A passenger boat moved slowly along the river. The boat was beautifully decorated — luxurious yet still refined — and at its bow stood a bare flagpole.

The Suzhou talent Fan Yiji, old Master Fan, sat pale-faced in the cabin, staring fixedly through the open cabin door at that flagpole.

When he had traveled by boat to Nanjing for the special examination, that flagpole had flown a "juren banner" he had enjoyed for over thirty years — a white banner bearing five large characters: "Wu County Juren Fan."

That was no mere identity banner, but the long-term, stable, and generous source of income for Fan Yiji's household of over thirty people!

Fan Yiji had originally come from a poor family in Wu County. Well into his thirties he was still a destitute private tutor. Although he had long since passed the county and prefectural examinations, he was stuck at the academy examination, so he was not even a xiucai. In the Ming dynasty, the privileges of city-dwellers began with the xiucai degree; without xiucai status one was a commoner. So Fan Yiji in those days was utterly down and out — had it not been for a butcher father-in-law who helped him out from time to time, he would likely have starved to death on the streets of Suzhou.

Just as he approached forty, his fortunes suddenly turned. First he passed the academy examination and became a xiucai; the following year he passed the provincial examination and became a juren!

It was truly a carp leaping through the Dragon Gate — extraordinary!

Before passing the provincial examination, Fan Yiji had been a xiucai who had only just escaped poverty — in Suzhou city, men like him were a dime a dozen.

But after passing, it was a different story entirely! Former students came one after another to pay their respects: some gave farmland; some gave shops and houses; and ruined households came to offer themselves as servants, seeking his protection. Within two or three months, Fan Yiji had servants, maids, silver, land, and property — everything!

Beyond all this, Fan Yiji could also "rent out" his juren credentials to merchants for tax avoidance. A juren's credentials were quite valuable — they could "protect" a fair number of merchants and had a fairly broad effective range, so every year they brought the Fan household generous returns. This matter also had its unwritten rules — one could not overuse it, or the credentials would lose their value.

But all of this came to a complete end after yesterday's disturbance at the Jiangnan Examination Hall.

When Qian Qianyi personally announced to him that his juren degree was stripped, his family's twenty-odd years of wealth and glory came to an end, and the sky above his head came crashing down!

Once word reached Suzhou, the farmland, shops, houses, and servants he had so easily acquired would leave him one by one before long. He no longer had any credentials to rent out to merchants for tax avoidance, and his former students would in the blink of an eye no longer recognize this penniless master.

"Teacher, teacher — it is your student who has dragged you down! Your student has failed you!"

A slightly trembling voice sounded beside old Master Fan's ear, interrupting his thoughts. The speaker was Su Jin — that Wu County juren Su Jin who had played the bird that sticks its neck out in the examination hall.

Fan Yiji glanced at his "good student" and smiled bitterly. "What talk of dragging down or not dragging down? Even if this old man had not stuck his neck out, how much longer do you think the tax-avoidance privileges of juren and xiucai could have lasted?"

"Teacher," Su Jin said, looking at old Master Fan, "the court still has Grand Secretary Qian and Grand Secretary Hou. And your student has also heard that a Donglin Assembly is about to be convened — perhaps men of integrity will soon gain the upper hand at court."

"Hmph!" Fan Yiji sneered. "Have you forgotten who stripped the two of us of our juren degrees? Was it not Grand Secretary Qian himself? What Donglin Assembly — in this old man's view, it is nothing but a eunuch-faction assembly flying the Donglin banner!"

(End of Chapter)