Chapter 394: The Filial Son of Shandong, Zuo Maodi

On the western outskirts of Laiyang County, which belongs to Dengzhou Prefecture, there is an earthen mound called Mashan Bulei, said to have excellent feng shui — a fine place for burying people and nourishing corpses. The ancestral graves of the Laiyang Zuo family, the greatest scholarly house in the Dengzhou-Laizhou region, famed for "nine towers and eighteen Maos (twenty-seven renowned Confucians in two generations) and four jinshi in one family," lie on the southeastern slope of Mashan Bulei — so this was actually a school-district graveyard!

And Zuo Maodi, one of the Zuo family's four jinshi, now lived right there in that school-district graveyard at Mashan Bulei — not buried underground, of course; he wasn't dead yet! He had built a thatched hut beside the large shared grave mound of his father Zuo Zhilong and his mother, the old lady of the Chen family.

This is called "building a hut by the grave to keep mourning," and that is how "observing filial mourning" is done. By the most orthodox Chinese standard of filial piety, three years for a dead father, another three for a dead mother; if one was born of a concubine, then three years for the legal mother and three years for the birth mother. In theory, one could observe as much as nine years of grand mourning.

Of course, ordinary working folk could not possibly keep mourning like that, or they would starve to death. Those who kept mourning this way were generally scholar-officials; if one merely held the xiucai or juren degree, it was no great matter. Mourning did not interfere with collecting rent, lending money, or evading taxes. But if one had passed the jinshi examination and held office, it did rather get in the way. Say a man passed the jinshi in his forties, then his father died, then his legal mother, then his birth mother — after nine years of mourning all told, he would be past fifty and nearly ready to retire himself! If his health was poor, his son might well end up having to keep mourning for him. And the most laughable case was when father and son served at court together and the old mother died: in that situation, the old father who had lost his wife had to keep on serving, while the son who had lost his mother went home to mourn and live off his father.

But Zuo Maodi, that great filial son, was not letting his mourning for his mother, Lady Chen, interfere with proper business. He was keeping mourning and holding office at the same time, and no one could accuse him of violating human ethics; on the contrary, he gained a fine reputation as a "son of utmost filial piety."

To be both loyal and filial at once — that was all it amounted to.

"Gentlemen, this official has just received word that the eastern barbarians' tomb-touching Prince Dodo has led a hundred thousand troops to the walls of Qufu. Further dispatches say the eastern barbarian host has burned, killed, and plundered all along its route, dug up graves, and committed every evil."

Beside the great grave where Zuo Zhilong and Lady Chen were buried together, a hall of rammed-earth walls and a thatched roof had been put up at some point. Zuo Maodi, dressed all in hempen mourning clothes, sat upright within it, righteously spouting nonsense.

If Dodo had heard his words, he would surely have cried out at the injustice. Burning, killing, plundering — even the leeks had all fled; what was left to plunder or kill? As for digging up graves, that was even more absurd. Along the Grand Canal there were no imperial tombs; at most there were graves of rich households, and those were widely scattered, and the graves did not necessarily contain treasure. How could Dodo possibly scatter his limited forces to dig up graves? It was simply ridiculous!

But Zuo Maodi, so righteous a great Confucian and so great a filial son, had credibility in this part of Shandong!

Moreover, Zuo Maodi was organized!

He was the Donglin successor in this part of Shandong, having joined the famous literary society, the Shanzuo Grand Society, back in the Wanli years. The Shanzuo Grand Society had ninety-one members, all renowned Confucian scholars of the Dengzhou-Laizhou region. Through layer upon layer of clan ties, teacher-disciple bonds, fellow-natives, and marriage connections, they formed a network covering the three prefectures of Dengzhou, Laizhou, and Qingzhou.

The Confucian scholars now gathered in this hall all came from that network. And because of the "reform of native chieftainships into regular administration" more than a year earlier, these local bosses of the three prefectures had all grown bolder; every man had several hundred or even a thousand able-bodied men under him.

The Laiyang Zuo family was no exception. They too had raised a Zuo Family Army, and modeled on the Dengzhou Brigade's organization they had set up a "copycat brigade," and following the "997" example, drilled troops day and night. Land and silver they did not have, of course; at most they offered rent and interest exemptions — any Laiyang tenant household whose man was chosen for the Zuo Family Army enjoyed exemption from rent and interest, and if he died for the nation, his family would be supported by the Zuo family.

Besides that, grand principles of loyalty, filial piety, benevolence, and righteousness were supplied in abundance! The Zuo family had so many scholars, and they carried weight locally in Laiyang, and every day they blackened the Tartars' name.

Murder, arson, rape, grave-robbing — there was no evil they did not do. If the Tartars took Shandong, the common folk would surely have no way to live, and even the ancestors buried underground would be dug up and fed to dogs.

"Teacher!" The Gaomi talent Zhang Boren — the very talent who had "gotten the wrong examination paper" in the special Dengzhou-Laizhou examination — was now Zuo Maodi's favored disciple, and naturally he was the first to jump up and echo his teacher.

"The Tartar host has reached Yanzhou to destroy our Confucian teaching and ruin our homeland! Every man who can read and write ought to step forward — those with money giving money, those with strength giving strength! This student proposes that in the fifteen counties and districts of Laiyang, Qixia, Zhaoyuan, Ye County, Pingdu, Changyi, Gaomi, Jiaozhou, Wei County, Anqiu, Zhucheng, Yishui, Rizhao, Wendeng, and Huang County, we organize local militia, each county or district raising one brigade, with combat troops and support troops together numbering two thousand men, and fully stock them with long spears, saber-and-shield, foot bows, javelins, siege-breaker cannons, and three-eyed guns. All long-spear troops must be fitted with cloth-faced iron armor and helmets."

Zuo Maodi, as Shandong Militia Commissioner, now directly administered these fifteen "self-governing counties and districts," all of which had organized militia under local gentry leadership. But these militia units were uneven; some places had done quite well — the militia of Laiyang, Gaomi, and Jiaozhou, for instance, were excellent, each able to field a force of two thousand men meeting Zhang Boren's requirements — but other places were rather worse.

"One brigade is probably not enough!" spoke up Zuo Maodi's cousin Zuo Maoji. "This is no time to begrudge money and grain. Think of the twelfth year of Chongzhen — our Zuo family alone lost more than thirty people. And back then we had not yet signed our names to the 'Proclamation Against the Hu Barbarians'!"

In the fifteenth year of Chongzhen, that Qing incursion had reached Laiyang County, and the Laiyang Zuo family had indeed behaved with great heroism in that calamity, rising in resistance and organizing forces to hold the county seat. They held out from the eleventh month of the fifteenth year of Chongzhen until the city fell in the second month of the following year.

And the Zuo family lost thirty-seven people in that battle — a family of martyrs indeed!

Of course, the Laiyang Zuo family ought to be heroic. For they were the largest landlords in the two prefectures of Dengzhou and Laizhou, holding 120,000 mu of land, with estates throughout Dengzhou and Laizhou, and basically none of it paid taxes! In addition, the Zuo family ran many tax-exempt businesses.

Although Laiyang County was the territory of the Great Ming court, the annual benefit the Chongzhen Emperor got from Laiyang was only a fraction of what the Zuo family got — perhaps not even that!

So Laiyang, in name, belonged to the Zhu family, but in reality it belonged to the Zuo family.

If your Zuo family did not fight to the death, who else was supposed to?

However, although the Great Ming could not collect taxes, it was still quite wary of local strongmen, and generally did not permit them to organize militia on a large scale.

Fortunately, starting last year, Zhu Cilang had loosened the bonds on the people of Shandong — those with money giving money, those with strength giving strength; whether local tyrants and evil gentry or warlord lords, arm them all!

Besides, do not forget the signatures on the "Proclamation Against the Hu Barbarians." Now that Zuo Maoji had reminded them, everyone grew tense.

"Right, we all signed our names, and that scoundrel Sun Zhixie copied them down and took the list back to Beijing!"

"The eastern barbarians have even made that scoundrel Sun Governor of Shandong — he must have brought the list to kill us!"

"How hateful! They won't leave us any way to live!"

"Not just no way to live — even our dead ancestors won't rest in peace."

"We'll fight them to the death!"

"Right, to the death!"

Seeing everyone in a mood to give up wealth to protect the nation (in truth, to protect their own houses — every one of them was a petty lord), Zuo Maodi felt deeply gratified. He nodded and said, "Then let each county and district train two brigades, four thousand men in all, to be fully organized and drilled within three months."

"In addition, each county and district shall pay a sum of money and grain to the militia office, to be used for relieving refugees and recruiting new militia troops from among the refugees."

Zuo Maodi's face was full of righteousness, his gaze somber, as he slowly swept it across the hall. "Gentlemen, do not begrudge money and grain. The Tartars have come for our lives this time! If we spend a little money and grain to keep our lives and keep our land, we can also turn the fifteen counties and districts of Dengzhou, Laizhou, and Qingzhou into our own territory. Afterward, need we fear not getting it all back?"

"Moreover, this official's recruiting of refugees as soldiers is for everyone's good. Even if a county or district has four thousand militiamen, it may not be able to hold its city from falling, so we must also train an elite force that can move about to relieve the various cities. What do you gentlemen think?"

(End of Chapter)