Chapter 15: Learned Something New

Behind Heifu, two merchants were discussing the King of Qin's campaign against Yan.

He heard one of them ask, "What did the King's war proclamation against Yan say?"

The other answered, "The King declared: 'The King of Yan is muddled and chaotic; his Crown Prince Dan secretly ordered Jing Ke to act as an assassin. I shall command officers and soldiers to punish him and will surely destroy his state!' By now, I fear the army has already reached Zhao territory, perhaps even crossed the Yi River."

The first merchant said worriedly, "Every time they raise troops, they first conscript the debased — live-in sons-in-law, those on the market registers, and the like. Will we be conscripted to haul grain too? I've heard Yan is bitterly cold, with rain and snow as early as the eighth or ninth month. Traveling a thousand li north in the dead of winter — I fear many will freeze to death..."

The other comforted him, saying, "I heard from someone in Jiangling City that the Grand Administrator of Nan Commandery is only calling up seasoned veterans from each county to stand guard on the Qin–Chu border. The Yan campaign shouldn't involve Nan Commandery — we're simply too far away..."

These were likely merchants who ran errands and hauled goods for the Qin authorities, traveling far and wide, well-informed and experienced — far better connected than common folk like Ji Ying, who relied on hearsay.

After that, however, most of what they discussed were commodity prices from various regions and gossip about the rural households of Yan, punctuated by coarse laughter as they talked... Heifu, listening nearby, was dumbstruck. The people of the imperial capital were far too hospitable!

Before long, the two merchants finished eating and hurried off, leaving Heifu deep in thought.

As he had expected, in the aftermath of Jing Ke's assassination attempt, Ying Zheng, the King of Qin — a man of extreme vindictiveness — had indeed dispatched a great army to attack Yan!

At the same time, Heifu realized he had miscalculated one thing: since Qin took the tenth month as the start of the year, and today was New Year's Day, didn't that mean it was already the twenty-first year of King Zheng of Qin?

If he remembered correctly, historically, the twenty-first year of King Zheng of Qin saw the defeat of Yan, the twenty-second year the destruction of Wei, and after that... came the campaign against Chu.

"Two years left — my time has inexplicably shrunk by several more months!"

Heifu cursed inwardly. This was no mere matter of a second or two. A sense of urgency gripped him. He gulped down his meat congee in three mouthfuls, wiped his mouth, and called to Ji Ying, "Let's go. We'll report to the South Gate training ground right now — no point letting things drag on and breed trouble."

"Huh? Right now? I was still hoping to visit the women's quarters..."

Ji Ying looked reluctant to leave. The "women's quarters" were what they called brothels in this era. It was a classic case of the small-peasant mentality: once fed and warm, thoughts turn to lust. With a thousand coins in his pocket, he was itching for a bit of corruption.

Grinning, he even invited Heifu to come along, figuring that, judging by Heifu's age, he was probably still a virgin.

Heifu, however, had absolutely no interest in the women of such places. During his internship in his previous life, he had taken part in anti-prostitution raids, and the sordid scenes had left a deep impression on him. He found the whole business repulsive. His face hardened. "I've heard that a single night in the women's quarters can easily cost several hundred coins. Two or three visits and you'll have spent every last coin! Better to save the money, go home, and take a wife."

Ji Ying did the math — marrying a wife really was the better bargain — and reluctantly rose to his feet. Without quite realizing it, he had already begun to follow Heifu's lead in everything, even though, in terms of age, he was clearly the elder.

Perhaps out of a sense of shame, when it came time to settle the bill, Ji Ying insisted on pulling coins from his own pocket, handing twenty banliang coins to the shopkeeper to treat Heifu to the meal. On an ordinary day, one person's food cost three or four coins at most; today, they had really splurged.

The shopkeeper took the coins, but instead of tucking them into his robes, he dropped the twenty coins one by one, right in front of Heifu and Ji Ying, into a pottery jar visible to all the patrons. A cascade of clinks and clatters rang out — the jar already held quite a few coins.

This thing, it turned out, was called a xiang — a money jar, or, to put it plainly, a piggy bank. Because this eatery was a "state-run restaurant," all income had to go to the public coffers. The shopkeeper dared not line his own pockets, for doing so would mean a fine of one suit of armor. The correct procedure was to drop the payment into the money jar in full view of the customer; at day's end, officials would come to tally the day's take.

Heifu silently noted that he had learned something new again. The two of them left the eatery and ambled toward the south gate. It was afternoon, the sun about to set. A wind rose, and Heifu, thinly dressed, couldn't help but shiver.

"Brother Heifu, you're cold, aren't you?" Ji Ying had already thrown on a thick winter coat and laughed. "Winter's here — why are you still wearing summer clothes?"

True, it was now considered winter, but Heifu had left home in such a rush. The winter clothes his mother was sewing for him weren't finished yet; his elder brother had said he'd personally bring them in a few days. This thin garment he wore, battered by wind, rain, and sun, was practically "a cloth quilt grown cold as iron after many years."

Besides, though anything his mother sewed was always warm to wear, Heifu, who had been very fastidious in his previous life, couldn't get used to wearing the same clothes for months on end. As luck would have it, on the way to the South Gate training ground, they passed the market. Heifu asked Ji Ying to stop in and browse, planning to buy himself some clothing.

A Qin marketplace was not what later generations might imagine — a street lined on both sides with stalls selling whatever they pleased. It was an enclosed space, more like a modern-day food market, surrounded by market walls.

"See that tall flagpole?"

Ji Ying had been to the county seat before and explained, "That's the market flag, standing inside the market pavilion. Every morning, merchants coming to trade from all over wait outside the market gate. Only when the market flag is raised can they enter in order."

The officials who managed the market were stationed at the market pavilion. Every merchant coming to trade in the market had to have their documents and goods inspected and stamped before they could do business.

Once inside the market gate, the cries of hawkers filled the air without cease. The first thing that met the eye was all manner of grain. It was just after the autumn harvest, a season of plenty, and many farming households from near the county seat were selling surplus beans and wheat, trading them for cloth and coins.

Beyond that, there were vendors selling farming tools — plowshares, spades, hoes, sickles, and the like; others hawked lacquerware and pottery, though most were everyday vessels, with finely crafted luxury goods a rare sight.

The people moving through the market were mostly commoners: women carrying bamboo baskets, their hair pinned with thorn-wood clasps and dressed in simple skirts; common soldiers in coarse, short brown tunics patched in several places; and children laughing, roughhousing, and dashing past, every face smudged with grime... They crisscrossed and mingled in a lively, bustling throng.

Heifu quickly found what he was looking for. They stopped before several stalls selling raw silk, as well as ready-made winter clothes and shoes.

Faced with the eager greetings of the several shopkeepers, Heifu hesitated, unsure how to choose. In his previous life, what he hated most was haggling. Even after hemming and hawing his way to a lower price, he'd always end up discovering that the shopkeeper still wore a meaningful smirk after he'd walked away. Yep — he'd been fleeced again...

Fortunately, when buying things in Qin, there was no need to haggle at all!

Because Qin's "Statutes on Gold and Cloth" stipulated: in market transactions, wooden tags must be attached to indicate the price of each item; only for small goods worth less than one coin each could tags be omitted... If a merchant deliberately inflated prices to cheat buyers, once proven, the market officials would impose a heavy fine. So here, you would never see a merchant holding up some item of dubious value and shouting, "Only 998 each!"

It was practically a consumer protection law for this era — an absolute godsend for a blunt, straight-talking man like Heifu.

In the end, after comparing three shops, Heifu bought a decent-quality thick winter coat of kudzu cloth for 150 coins, to survive a winter with no air conditioning, no heating, and no heated brick bed — ah, after all, he was a southerner; surviving winter relied on sheer righteous spirit. He added a close-fitting inner garment for 75 coins, a lower skirt for 50 coins, and two pairs of coarse cloth shoes for another 50 coins, which he put on his feet right then and there — his straw sandals had been worn to tatters on the journey, the soles of his feet nearly touching the ground!

Among the coins Heifu gave the peddler, a few were somewhat chipped. The peddler merely frowned but still grudgingly accepted them. It turned out that the "Statutes on Gold and Cloth" also stipulated: coins used in trade, whether good or damaged, must all be accepted together — no picking and choosing allowed!

It seemed that, just like in later times, sellers were not allowed to refuse legal tender. Only a government strong enough to a certain degree could issue such an order.

Taking the clothes, Heifu was just about to turn and leave when the clothing peddler hurriedly chased after him, calling out, "Sir Gongshi, you forgot your tally!"

"Tally?"

Heifu was baffled. What tally? A coupon? A discount voucher?

"Sir Gongshi jests — your contract tally, of course."

When the peddler pressed a small wooden block with a serrated edge into his hand, Heifu looked at the characters written on it and suddenly understood.

"What I took it for — it's actually a receipt!"

So it turned out that in Qin, any transaction exceeding one hundred coins required a contract tally, in keeping with the saying, "The purpose of dividing a contract tally is to serve as proof." Once a deal was struck, the seller would write the traded goods and the price on a wooden board, then saw it in two, with buyer and seller each keeping one half.

If the coin count was off or there was a problem with the goods, this could be used as proof to exchange the goods or file a lawsuit — valid only for that day, of course; it expired after. If the goods, money, and tallies in a merchant's possession didn't match up, the market officials would also mete out punishment. And, of course, if anyone with ulterior motives thought to use this to commit fraud, they'd do well not to forget Qin's unique law of "false accusation met with the same penalty."

"I've learned something new again!"

After tucking the receipt into his pocket, Heifu exclaimed — he'd lost count of how many times he'd said that now.

In Qin, no matter what you did, you had to write a contract tally as proof: paying taxes and levies required it; grain entering a granary required it; a judge answering a commoner's questions required it; market transactions required it... And it was enforced by law, with each party holding one copy. It had become an unspoken habit. Looking around, for any transaction over a hundred coins, even illiterate commoners would proactively ask the shopkeeper for a contract tally. Couldn't read the characters on it? No matter — those notches of varying lengths on the tally represented different denominations: ten-thousands, thousands, hundreds, tens. One look and you knew.

Wasn't this very much like that "uniquely Western spirit of contract" that certain scholars in later ages touted for so many years? To have reached such a level before paper even existed was truly chilling to contemplate. Those who keep shouting, "The Chinese people have never had a spirit of contract since ancient times!" really ought to travel back here and see for themselves.

With this thought in mind, Heifu turned back to gaze at the bustling market, his expression grave and pensive. After a moment, he suddenly declared, "I get it now!"

Ji Ying was crouched at a stall selling sword scabbards, looking left and right. At Heifu's outburst, he quickly turned his head. "Get what?"

Heifu laughed. "Lord Shang, in his day, must have been badly fleeced by some unscrupulous merchant!"

PS:

"When conducting official business or trading in government markets, upon receiving money, one must immediately deposit it into the money jar, letting the market-goers see the deposit. Those who disobey this order shall be fined one suit of armor." — Statutes on Passes and Markets

The "Statutes on Gold and Cloth" record that the labor-reform uniform for adult convicts in Qin, called "chu clothing," cost 110 coins for winter wear; summer wear, using less fabric, cost 55 coins. Ordinary people's clothing would naturally be more expensive, so I've taken some liberty and added to the price. Additionally, a single meal for a convict laborer sentenced to "wall-building" was worth 2 coins.

The matter of issuing tallies for purchases is referenced from "A Study of the Notched Tallies in the Liye Qin Slips."

(End of chapter)