Chapter 396: Utopia

"Does Lord Fan hate Wang Mang that much?"

After the "Wang Mang head" was taken away to be paraded before the three armies, the real Wang Mang finally caught his breath and, still unwilling to let it go, asked Fan Chong a question.

"Of course I hate him!"

Fan Chong's answer was a matter of course. Now a Grand Duke, he observed no particular ceremony, still sitting cross-legged on the couch. He spoke of the days when he was a tenant farmer in the Ju region: the local Xin officials had invented pretexts, using the Five Equilibrations and Six Monopolies Wang Mang had decreed, to seize the mountains, forests, and marshes for the state, so that even going up the hill to cut firewood required paying a tax. Woodcutters were thrown out of work on the spot.

"It was clearly the land of sea and cinnabar, yet the government salt was sold at an outrageously high price. We suffered bitterly and could bear it no longer, so we simply became bandits — we cut firewood when we needed to, and smuggled salt when we needed to."

Wang Mang felt some shame, but this had never been his original intent! The Five Equilibrations and Six Monopolies were meant to curb the powerful magnates' control of the forests, and incidentally let the government provide loans to the poor, so they would not fall into the magnates' debt traps and end up as slaves or tenant farmers.

So when all was said and done, it was still the fault of the Liu clan and the powerful families!

Wang Mang had also learned his lesson: complicated matters like the Five Equilibrations and Six Monopolies and the currency reforms need not be attempted again for the time being.

He then presented his second policy to Fan Chong — concerning land.

"In ancient times, every eight households were assigned one well-field plot. One husband and one wife tilled a hundred mu, paying a tithe in tax. In this way, the state was well supplied, the people prospered, and songs of praise arose together. This was the Way of Tang and Yu, the governance of the Three Dynasties."

Wang Mang, as usual, shifted the blame onto the Qin dynasty: "But the tyrannical Qin was without the Way, destroying the sage institutions and abolishing the well-field system. This led to land annexation, giving rise to the greedy and the base. Powerful magnates possessed a thousand qing of fine land, while the poor and weak had not even a pinpoint of ground to stand on. The Han inherited these ills: the mighty encroached and oppressed, dividing up the land and seizing the tenancies. The common people — fathers and sons, husbands and wives — toiled at the plow all year long, yet what they reaped was not enough to keep themselves alive. The rich fed their dogs and horses on human food, grew arrogant, and turned to evil. This is everything you, Lord Fan, and the Red Eyebrows have lived through. Wang Mang bears some blame, but the root lies in the land!"

Wang Mang had already recognized this problem when he was Emperor and issued the Royal Land Decree, reclaiming all the land under heaven as state property and cutting off the path of buying, selling, and annexation. That single stroke struck directly at the powerful clans who had supported his rise to the throne, declaring a clean break with the class affections of the preceding decades.

The result was predictable. The law had been enforced for barely three years before it ended in utter disarray. Even someone as stubborn as Wang Mang had to yield. He stopped forcing the magnates to surrender their land and restore the well-fields, clinging only desperately to the land prohibition that forbade buying and selling, which at least put some brake on the annexation trend — in the Guanzhong region, at any rate.

Now that the Xin Dynasty had fallen, annexation was flourishing once more. Especially in Nanyang, the powerful families and the Greenwood men had merged, securing official posts and commanding troops, with the Gengshi regime utterly unrestrained.

Before the Greenwood Army had press-ganged him, Wang Mang had already heard from refugees that even men who had joined the Greenwood Army could not necessarily hold onto their fields when they returned home.

That being the case, the Red Eyebrows must show how they differed from the Greenwood. This stroke had to be struck!

He stepped forward and brought out his old prescription.

"To treat a degenerate age, one must use drastic medicine!"

"Exterminate the powerful families, and divide the land!"

…

"Exterminating the powerful families — that I am good at."

Hearing Wang Mang utter those six words, Fan Chong was instantly energized.

From Mount Tai all the way to Nanyang, that was exactly what the Red Eyebrows had been doing. They were fated to fight the nobles, relatives, and powerful magnates to the death, with no truce. Fan Chong had never even considered compromise or coexistence. It was just that in the past, they had fought as roving raiders — they ate and left, and the land they simply abandoned for whoever wanted it.

"Now that we intend to put down roots, we can no longer do that."

Wang Mang said, "The Red Eyebrows have already seized Wancheng, and the other counties of Nanyang can be taken sooner or later. Dispatch one battalion of ten thousand men to garrison each county. However great the local magnates may be, can every family really muster several thousand retainers? They will either flee or surrender."

"Once all the counties are taken, let none be pardoned, great or small! Especially the Chongling Liu clan, the Wancheng Li clan, the Xinye Yin, Deng, and Lai clans, the Huyang Fan clan, and the rest — all great lineages and major clans of the Nanyang magnates, with land holdings from several hundred to over a thousand qing, their wealth rivaling princes and marquises. They should be wiped out to the last family, utterly rooted out!"

This was also a settling of private scores under the cover of public duty. The Nanyang magnates had backed the Greenwood rebellion against the Xin, and Wang Mang had long burned with the desire to exterminate their entire clans. He had never imagined it would be accomplished by the hands of the Red Eyebrows.

Wang Mang said, "After the powerful clans are annihilated, their vast lands shall be divided among the Red Eyebrow soldiers to farm. The surplus shall be used to settle the local people, each household receiving one hundred mu."

Wang Mang was loath to admit that the idea of forcibly equalizing land by military force had originated from Diwu Lun's practices in Wei. The last time he had seen A Lun, Wang Mang had still hoped to sweep away the Greenwood and then try it out in Nanyang as a pilot. Unfortunately, he had been stabbed in the back by Diwu Lun right after, and that beautiful dream had come to nothing.

Fan Chong was in favor of this policy but had a concern: "Does the Old Man of the Fields mean that everyone, regardless of status, gets one hundred mu?"

Wang Mang said, "Exactly. Lord Fan and all the other lords must do the same, to set an example. As the poem says, 'Diminish the high, augment the low; the people's joy knows no bounds. From the highest down to the lowest, the Way shines greatly…'"

"Old Man of the Fields, stop reciting poems. I don't understand them."

Fan Chong's head ached. He had no interest in the evidence Wang Mang had painstakingly dug out of the classics to justify taking from the rich to benefit the poor. He went on, "As for me, I am naturally willing to be equal with my brothers and sisters, and I imagine the other lords feel the same…"

Though he said this, Fan Chong was still a little worried: "But according to the Old Man's method of division, there would be no distinction between Red Eyebrow soldiers and the native people of Nanyang either — each person also gets one hundred mu?"

"It must be so!"

Wang Mang insisted, "All the land shall be public land, not to be bought or sold, and above all, there must be no tenant farmers. The worry is not scarcity but inequality. Only in this way can every tiller have his own land!"

During his year in exile, Wang Mang had occasionally heard news from the State of Wei. In his opinion, Diwu Lun's land equalization was not equal at all!

First, there was inequality within the army itself: depending on military merit, land grants ranged from a few dozen mu to several hundred mu. Second, outsiders got no land at all. The people of Guanzhong could only be tenant farmers, working the land for Diwu Lun's soldiers. This was the utterly evil "ranked land and residence system" of the tyrannical Qin and early Han! How could Wang Mang ever imitate that?

He would take the opposite path: the absolutely egalitarian well-field system!

For instance, every eight households would share one well, with a hundred mu of public land in the center. The eight households would ordinarily also have to work the public land, while simultaneously handing over one-tenth of their harvest.

Wang Mang had already thought out the implementation: "After the autumn harvest ends, first concentrate the powerful families' land in each county and transfer it to the Chihe Grand Duke's headquarters. Then carry out a land survey. Once the measurements are complete, divide it all into well-fields, so that planting can begin in the spring."

Fan Chong thought this might win the poor of Nanyang over to the Red Eyebrows' side, and for now agreed to try it out in the vicinity of Wancheng. But he then ran into another difficulty.

"Old Man of the Fields, among the Red Eyebrows, I fear we cannot muster enough people who know their numbers to measure the land. And there are not enough men to write the deeds you speak of…"

The Red Eyebrows' reputation among the literate class was too foul. The scholars of Wancheng had all fled. Where could they find so many petty clerks and scribes?

Wang Mang, however, had an ingenious plan: "In Lord Fan's army, there happens to be a group of people who can do the measuring and record-keeping."

He was referring to the Liu clan members in the prisoner-of-war camp, who had been stripped of the name "slave" but were in fact still enslaved — people like the Liu Penzi brothers and their kind, over a hundred in all, most of them well educated. After their thousand-li trek with the Red Eyebrows, these sons of wealth had learned to use their limbs and recognize the five grains. Using them only to herd cattle was a waste; it would be better to put them to use.

"Send a few to each county — why worry about a shortage of accounting clerks?"

Fan Chong started, then burst out laughing. "Good! An excellent plan!"

"Using the sons of the Liu clan, yesterday's greatest magnates, to survey the land and equalize the fields! Old Man of the Fields, oh Old Man of the Fields, you truly are a great talent!"

…

Fan Chong, who shared the same dream of equalizing rich and poor, had largely agreed to Wang Mang's proposals. As they left the commandery headquarters, Wang Mang saw the "Wang Mang head" being passed around and displayed among the Red Eyebrow troops. A group of young Red Eyebrow soldiers were humiliating the old man's head as if kicking a cuju ball, sending it rolling back and forth across the ground.

But when Wang Mang lowered his head and passed by them, the men respectfully saluted this "Old Libationer."

Wang Mang's gaze met the empty eye sockets of the "Wang Mang head" on the ground. His stomach churned, and he could not help but run to the drainage ditch and vomit.

Ju Wuba's huge palm gently patted the old madman's back. After Wang Mang caught his breath, he only muttered to himself:

"Heaven has begotten virtue in me, and so I have endured betrayal and tribulation without dying."

"King Wen was detained and composed the Zhouyi; Confucius was in straits and made the Spring and Autumn Annals. That I have not died must mean Heaven is about to place a great charge upon me!"

Wang Mang's heart had once died, but now it revived. Yet he had to find a reason for Heaven to let him live on — something like completing a supremely noble and great enterprise, so that self-exaltation could overcome self-doubt.

After all these years of relentless striving, even going so far as to kill his own degenerate sons and grandsons four or five times over — what had it all been for?

Wang Mang recalled his youth, when he had been the odd one out in the Wang family, neglected by the Five Marquises, living through a period of lonely poverty. And so he had humbled himself, practiced frugality, and in his poverty and resentment had seen through the darkness of the late Han. He had wanted to change this world!

He had studied under great Confucian masters, diligently and broadly learned, mastering all Five Classics, but his main focus had been the Book of Rites. The "Li Yun" chapter within it had influenced him profoundly.

Confucius said: Yu the Great of Xia, Tang of Shang, King Wen, King Wu, King Cheng of Zhou, and the Duke of Zhou — these six sages — every one of them took ritual as their precious instrument. They used ritual to proclaim righteousness, examine good faith, point out error, emulate benevolence, stress courtesy and deference, and show the common people that all things follow a discernible rule.

Yet even that age could only be called "Minor Prosperity." The thrones of the Son of Heaven and the feudal lords passed from father to son, from elder brother to younger brother — the realm was held as family property and kept for private gain. Each man cherished only his own parents, each loved only his own children. Everyone feared that goods and wealth might not end up in his own hands. From this arose scheming, strife, and clashes of arms. Even with sages appearing one after another, sooner or later it was bound to collapse into the breakdown of rites and the ruin of music.

But the Sage Confucius also said that before this "Minor Prosperity," there was another stretch of time — an age when the Great Way still endured.

The Great Way is not merely the way of the former kings; it is the very pattern by which Heaven and Earth and the ten thousand things move. Its virtue blends with Heaven and Earth, its brightness joins with sun and moon, its order aligns with the four seasons.

In the era of Tang and Yu, the sovereign abdicated and passed the throne to the worthy, the hundred officials were chosen for their virtue and ability, and all under Heaven was the realm of all under Heaven!

Men and women walked separate paths, each content in their proper place; the common people harbored no selfish desires and took joy in helping others. In that time there was no mutual deceit, and dark schemes and crafty plots found no purchase. Since no one had selfish motives, naturally no one stooped to theft — and so lost articles were left untouched on the road, and at night no one barred their gates. An age like that is called "Great Unity"!

By Confucius's own time, rites had already crumbled and music was ruined; it was all but impossible to return to the Great Unity of Tang and Yu. So he could only settle for the next best thing, devoting his whole heart to restoring the rites of Zhou and first returning to Minor Prosperity.

For a time, Wang Mang had intended to do the same. But the Great Way he wished to put into practice was destroyed, before it could even be carried out, by the selfish ambitions of men like Diwu Lun, the Liu clan, and all the rest under Heaven.

In the past, Wang Mang had thought his own demands were simply too high. Looking at it now…

His demands were far too low!

"Aim for the highest, and you may attain the middle; aim for the middle, and you may attain the low; aim for the low, and you will attain nothing at all."

That being so, he might as well take one more stride in a single breath and go straight back to "Great Unity"!

In Wang Mang's eyes, the Red Eyebrows not only possessed astonishing fighting strength — as the "people of the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors," they had the latent quality for it.

The Red Eyebrows were fortunate to have met a leader like Fan Chong, who cherished the dream of equalizing rich and poor. That was why, in all the years since they rose in arms, no obvious divisions had yet appeared within their ranks. They used no official titles, addressed one another only as Elder or Attendant, and the fighters called each other Giant — and now, besides Fan Chong, there was one more who believed that within the Red Eyebrow Army all men were equal: Wang Mang.

Because they had been in a constant state of exile, it was naturally hard for any divide between rich and poor to emerge. Among the Red Eyebrows, one could truly feel that "within the four seas, all men are brothers."

Take, for instance, the scene Wang Mang witnessed while vomiting beside the ditch:

A Red Eyebrow fighter was laboriously hoisting a sack of grain and carrying it into the home of an old man too frail to flee Wancheng. The Red Eyebrow, his face wreathed in smiles, bowed to the old man, and on his way out even tousled the hair of the family's child. Only after Wang Mang sent someone to inquire did he learn that they were neither father nor son to the fighter.

When asked further whether there was some hidden story, the household hastily shook their heads, all saying that the Red Eyebrow fighter had given the grain of his own accord.

This moved Wang Mang deeply: "Not only dutiful to his own parents, not only tender to his own children — but he cares for the aged as he would his own aged, and nurtures the young as he would his own young. So that even the widower, the widow, the orphan, the childless, the crippled, and the sick may all receive care and support. Goods are loathed only when left to waste upon the ground — there is no need to hoard them for oneself. Labor is loathed only when it fails to come from one's own body — there is no need to toil for oneself alone. The world of Great Unity is exactly this!"

This single example redoubled Wang Mang's confidence. He believed he could certainly help Fan Chong find the Great Way and lead the Red Eyebrows to reach Great Unity. And then he would utterly destroy every ambitious schemer in this world who stood at odds with the Way of Great Unity — whether of Han or Wei!

"This time, I shall cast aside selfish desire entirely! For all under Heaven alone!"

Yet in a place Wang Mang could neither hear nor see, the Red Eyebrow fighter who had so "selflessly cared for another's widow and orphan" waited until Wang Mang and his party had left before he let out a breath of relief, secretly cursing his luck, damning that old Tian for meddling, and congratulating himself that the victim had known her place.

His eyes flicked toward that household. Through the window lattice, another figure was still visible — a woman, silently putting on her clothes, weeping and sobbing over the fate that awaited her, yet also secretly a little relieved. After all, the King's army paid in kind, Greenwood simply robbed outright, but the Red Eyebrows at least left a little grain.

His comrades gathered round and teased him: "Giant, what does that brothel whore look like, that she charges a full dou of grain for a single tumble?"

Another, knowing the ropes, laughed: "Not as good as the wild women outside the city — a dou of grain gets you ten goes with them."

The Red Eyebrow fighter spat: "One dou of grain bought her outright! If any of them dare go back on it or file a complaint, I'll toss her old father out of the city to feed the dogs, then kill her son!"

"Aren't we forbidden to keep slaves?"

"Nonsense — who says this is buying a slave?"

The Red Eyebrow fighter burst out laughing: "She's a 'household wife,' as dear to me as my own sister!"

…

Elsewhere, upon learning that Fan Chong had already agreed to the "equal-field" proposal, Xie Lu flew into a towering rage.

"Lord Fan grows more muddled by the day!"

Their original intent had been to honor Fan Chong as Emperor. But since Fan Chong was unwilling, none of the rest of them were qualified.

So they would take a step back and prop up a Liu-surnamed Emperor. Then all of them could, like Greenwood, be enfeoffed as kings and appointed as generals, each with his own fief, leading their followers to enslave the people of Nanyang and live the good life.

But Fan Chong had listened to that old Tian's words and come up with some damned republic. Abolishing slavery they could still fob off with a change of name, but equal-field distribution left Xu Xuan and the others deeply disappointed.

This old Tian — not only had he cost them the title of feudal lord, he would not even grant them the substance of grandees seizing land!

The lords, Elders, and Attendants had followed Fan Chong in rebellion, fought across a thousand li, endured a thousand hardships — all so they could come to Nanyang and be allotted a hundred mu of land? Who was he trying to fool?

Never mind that they themselves were unwilling — the Red Eyebrow fighters would absolutely never accept such an outcome! Share wealth and poverty equally with the people of Nanyang? On what grounds? Once the blade was laid across a throat, land and people alike — wouldn't all of it be theirs?

Xie Lu's killing intent was already roused: "The old codger blocks our path. He cannot be left alive — we must find a way to eliminate him!"

Xu Xuan, however, sank into thought.

"Abolish slavery, equalize the fields… these measures — why do they feel so familiar? Wait!"

Xu Xuan touched the weimao cap on his head. That was it. Many years ago, Donghai Commandery had indeed received an edict from Chang'an. That old bastard Wang Mang really had tried to carry out both of these things. It was just that no one below took them seriously, and they were forgotten before they could even be implemented, left to molder among the countless court decrees that had piled up without ever being enforced.

At once, a great suspicion arose in Xu Xuan's mind.

"Could this old Tian be some high minister who set policy for the Mang court? He wrecked the Xin and brought it to ruin — now he means to come and bring calamity upon our Red Eyebrow Army as well!?"