Chapter 523: Hair-Raising!

"In the sixth year of Your Majesty's reign, he was pleased to serve as Clerk Magistrate of Anlu County, in charge of documents. In the seventh year, he served as Clerk Magistrate of Yan County. In the twelfth year, he was reassigned as Prison Adjutant of Yan, overseeing punishments and prisons. In the thirteenth year, when the Qin army attacked Zhao, he cast aside the brush to take up arms. In the fifteenth year, he took part in the Pingyang campaign. Several years later, he returned to Anlu to serve as a prison clerk. Passing through Cloud Dream Marsh, he encountered your servant capturing a bandit, yet I was framed by others. He upheld the law impartially and cleared my wrongful accusation."

This was an impulse of the moment, but Heifu always felt that Xi's story should not only be known by millions in later ages — it should also be known by Qin Shi Huang!

He ought to know — no, he must know! That in this empire, there was such a diligent, meticulous, and devoted Qin clerk!

"After your servant became a village chief, I once visited his home. I saw that his household was plain and frugal, with hardly any valuables. Entering his study, I found it packed tight with bamboo slips! Opening one to look, they were all legal statutes and ordinances."

Hearing this, Qin Shi Huang furrowed his brow, for the court had regulations forbidding the unauthorized removal of official statutes to one's home — but then his brow smoothed out again.

He heard Heifu say: "Your servant still remembers — Xi was always a man of few words, but when introducing those bamboo slips, he showed a touch of pride. He said that this roomful of statutes had all been copied by his own hand, stroke by stroke, over many years."

In Heifu's account, Qin Shi Huang could picture the scene: in that small backwater of Anlu in Nan Commandery, a low-level local clerk, night after night by the faint lamplight, on bamboo slips as thick as chopsticks, carefully, stroke by stroke, copying out legal statutes and ordinances.

He copied for four years, yet only produced a little over forty thousand characters, for writing on bamboo slips was simply too slow. Xi was busy with official duties, had elders to support and children to raise, and his leisure days were few...

Hearing this, Qin Shi Huang was somewhat moved. Exalted high above, his daily concerns were all matters of state policy and grand affairs; he rarely heard of the toil and hardship of lowly clerks at the grassroots.

After finishing, Heifu said: "Your Majesty, in the forty commanderies of the realm, clerks like Xi who copy statutes by hand are beyond counting!"

Just think about it — Xianyang alone has countless departments that need complete sets of legal texts. Below it are forty commanderies, several hundred counties, thousands upon tens of thousands of departments and townships...

It is no exaggeration to say that if all the documents and statutes the Qin clerks have copied over these thirty-one years were linked together, they would be longer than the Great Wall!

The crushing workload is one thing, but the problem is that it is also slow. Writing and scraping on bamboo slips in this age is truly as slow as a snail.

Even though Heifu later produced paper, Meng Tian improved the brush, and the court promulgated simplified clerical script, these only made copying two or three times faster. Even the most skilled scribe, copying until his hand cramps each day, can at most write a thousand characters — slow as a tortoise.

This means that the Qin legal code, tens of thousands of characters in total, requires scores of scribes working without sleep or rest for a full day and night just to duplicate — efficiency is abysmally low. This also means that a complete set of statutes exists only at the county seat; some remote, small counties do not even have a single complete copy.

The reason books are expensive lies not in the cost of materials, nor even in the knowledge they contain, but in the human labor and devotion poured into them.

Moreover, the heavy burden of copying often leads to errors. Once an error occurs, what awaits the scribe is severe punishment! The statutes stipulate that whichever article you copy wrong, that very article shall be used to punish the scribe! Yet sometimes the petty clerks are wronged — the error was clearly made up at the commandery level, and the county merely copied it exactly as they saw it. What could they do?

But now, with the advent of woodblock printing, all these problems are no more!

The Commandant of Justice, Ye Teng, nodded: "That being the case, as long as the Censorate sets up woodblocks and has sufficient paper and ink, printing ten copies of the statutes in a single day would be no trouble at all!"

Heifu smiled: "The Commandant of Justice is correct. Compared to writing and scraping on bamboo slips or paper, printing is as swift as a darting hare, requires only a few people, and the cost is far lower!"

"In this way, within a month, every county in the realm could receive the complete text of the statutes, and the content would be perfectly identical to that of the Censorate, with absolutely no possibility of error or omission! Henceforth, each year when the Censorate amends the statutes, it need only print several hundred or a thousand copies of the revised chapters, hand them to the commandery clerks to bring back, and then distribute them to each county. Even townships and villages could be issued the statutes, enabling clerks to teach the common people to study them."

"Thus, the scribes would be spared the toil of endless paperwork, and the court's statutes could be disseminated both swiftly and accurately! I beseech Your Majesty to approve this, and have the Privy Treasury establish a woodblock and printing workshop in Xianyang!"

Qin Shi Huang swept his gaze over the assembled ministers: "What do you, my ministers, think?"

The officials looked at one another. Fifth Rank Grandee Wang Wu stole a glance at Li Si and saw that he remained silent. Summoning his courage, Wang Wu raised an objection.

"Your Majesty, this woodblock printing is indeed a sharp tool. But if it falls into the hands of those with malicious intent, and they use it to print the Odes, the Documents, or articles that delude and incite the people, what then?"

As soon as he finished, the Commandant of Justice, Ye Teng, sneered coldly: "Giving up eating for fear of choking! How utterly laughable! Does the Fifth Rank Grandee think that the Commandant of Justice, the prison clerks, and the Thief-Catchers are all mere decorations?"

"I..." Rebuffed, Wang Wu dared not argue with the Commandant of Justice and shrank his head back.

Qin Shi Huang looked to Li Si: "What does the Right Chancellor think?"

Li Si replied: "This invention brings a hundred benefits to the court and not a single harm."

"Excellent!"

Qin Shi Huang was very pleased. A man of swift and decisive action, he immediately issued an edict ordering Cheng Shang to take the craftsmen back to Xianyang and establish a printing workshop within the Privy Treasury, specifically to assist the Censorate in printing legal statutes so that they might circulate throughout the realm.

Cheng Shang received the order and departed. The assembled ministers all congratulated Qin Shi Huang. What Heifu was thinking, however, was that perhaps, a hundred years hence, when Xi was laid to rest, accompanying him into the tomb, besides the bamboo slips he had copied by his own hand, there might also be stack after stack of printed paper statutes in neat, uniform script...

Thinking of this, Heifu felt that he had, once again, done something right.

At that moment, Qin Shi Huang began to ask Heifu where that Anlu prison clerk, Xi, was now.

Heifu's expression dimmed, and he said: "Because of his outstanding service record, Xi was transferred to Jiangling ten years ago, and later reassigned to Dongting Commandery, to serve as an official in Qianling County. Qianling is a newly established county, with many Yue and barbarian tribes. The land is low-lying and sweltering, and men die young. I recently learned from a letter from home that Xi fell ill in Qianling. His illness is severe, and he can no longer manage affairs. He has now returned to his home in Anlu to recuperate, but he has still not improved..."

After hearing this, Qin Shi Huang turned his head and summoned an usher: "Xi is a model clerk of Qin. Now that the realm is settled, on my eastern inspection tour I have seen nothing but arrogance, extravagance, and debauchery among the officials. What is lacking is precisely the diligence and devotion of men like Xi! Relay my edict: have Nan Commandery dispatch renowned physicians to treat him — do not let him die young. Also, promote him one rank in nobility. Let all the clerks of the realm know that those who are incorruptible, free of greed, and loyal to public duty shall surely be rewarded for their labors!"

Heifu was stunned. Wait — had His Imperial Majesty suddenly had an epiphany, and was now going to launch a nationwide "Learn from Comrade Xi" campaign, making Qin dynasty cadres hold meetings to study Xi's spirit?

He hurriedly said: "Your servant thanks Your Majesty on Xi's behalf!"

Though he said this, Heifu did not hold out much hope. After learning of the matter, he had already asked his family to hire the best physicians in the south to treat Xi. But Xi's illness was the result of prolonged overwork — it was not something that had come on in a single day.

What Heifu did not know was that, historically, Xi was supposed to have fallen ill and passed away in the thirtieth year of Qin Shi Huang's reign. Because of the changes wrought by Heifu, he had lived one more year, yet still could not escape the grasp of illness. Whether Xi could pull through this trial, no one knew. They could only do their best and leave the rest to fate...

Heifu then offered another suggestion, arguing that printing could be used not only to duplicate statutes, but also to print many other things, allowing them to spread widely among the common people.

Historically, the people of the Tang dynasty first used this invention to print Buddhist scriptures. Dense rows of Sanskrit dharma, transliterated into Chinese, were venerated by the faithful amid the swirling incense of the temple halls, as they chanted "Amitabha" under their breath. Only later was printing applied to other books, allowing the culture of the Tang and Song to reach its zenith.

But the printing technique Heifu had devised in the Qin dynasty was, from its very inception, already printing laws, calendars, seasonal songs, and agricultural manuals, dispersing them throughout the realm. These were all useful knowledge for ordinary people, and could further promote literacy and the spread of culture. If this continued, what would the scene be like a hundred years from now? Even Heifu could not predict it.

Of course, what also needed to be printed were the history books meant to indoctrinate the scholars of the realm — the new subject Heifu called the "National History"...

After so many days, Heifu felt that the time had come to bring this debate to a conclusion!

"Your Majesty, it is just as your servant said that day: copying books by hand is like crude weapons of wood and stone; woodblock printing is like weapons of bronze and iron."

"The former copies one book, transmits it to ten people, and influences a hundred. The latter prints a hundred copies, distributes them to a hundred people, transmits them to a thousand, and influences ten thousand households! Comparing the two is like striking wood with iron — utterly devastating! Your Majesty, if every student in the public academies could have a personal copy of the newly compiled National History, and clerks were ordered to teach it, proclaiming the differences between past and present, the reality that the commandery-county system is superior to feudalism, and then it were made an examination subject for becoming a clerk, with everyone reciting and studying it — why worry that they would not abandon the former kings and model themselves on the present king? Why worry that public opinion and the hearts of the people would not be unified?"

Qin Shi Huang stroked his beard and nodded slightly. Whether to ban private academies or regulate them, whether to burn books or revise them — he had already made his choice in his heart. Yet his eyes glanced toward the assembly:

"Do any of my ministers still have objections?"

The assembled ministers remained silent. They all knew that the Emperor was not asking them — he was asking Chancellor Li Si!

Li Si still appeared calm and composed, but beneath that calm, his heart was in turmoil. This was the first time in over twenty years of following the Emperor that he had lost to someone on a matter of state policy!

In the life-or-death debate over expelling or retaining foreign advisors, he had persuaded Qin Shi Huang.

On the question of preserving or destroying Han, he had defeated Han Fei, and even used a borrowed knife to eliminate that fearsome rival.

In the debate over feudalism versus the commandery-county system, he had overwhelmed Wang Wan, successfully leaping three ranks in one bound, from Commandant of Justice to Right Chancellor — second only to one man, above all others!

But just when he was swelling with pride, ready to seize the chance to utterly crush Wang Wan, and, beginning with the burning of books, to carry out a series of bold and sweeping plans to win himself the merit of a marquisate and an eternal name — he was intercepted halfway by that swarthy young upstart...

What made Li Si grind his teeth was that Heifu had endlessly praised his philosophy of "modeling on the present king," merely making slight adjustments to the methods. He used a gentler approach to achieve the substance of book-burning. Li Si had been confident he could overpower him, but the moment Heifu brought out printing, he understood that the matter could no longer be contested.

By relying on a vision that transcended the age, and by constantly pulling new techniques out of his pocket, Heifu had won the Emperor's favor.

Li Si knew that he had lost this debate — not to Heifu, but to himself.

Although the matter of slander at the Feng and Shan sacrifices was serious, it had not yet reached the point where the Emperor was determined to completely cast aside all the Confucians and the Hundred Schools of Thought. Due to a series of changes, Li Si had proposed the burning of books three years earlier than in history, and the results were barely satisfactory.

To argue stubbornly now would only disappoint the Emperor. Li Si knew that what he could do was to defend his base with all his might.

Make his own defeat look less humiliating? No, no — what Li Si was thinking about, as always, was snatching victory from the jaws of defeat!

A lengthy, drawn-out debate and rebuttal? Unnecessary. For him, Li Si, to turn the tables, a single sentence would suffice!

And so Li Si submitted: "Your Majesty, your servant believes we should strictly guard the art of woodblock printing, while simultaneously prohibiting the private manufacture and use of paper among the common people. Let it be an official government monopoly, and on no account allow the scholars east of the Pass to obtain it easily. After all, the people may be made to follow a path, but not to understand it!"

"The Chancellor's words are sound." Qin Shi Huang nodded in approval.

Heifu furrowed his brow slightly. Li Si was determined to go all the way down this road of keeping the people ignorant. Yet there was truth in that saying — technology can make the autocratic more autocratic, and the free more free. This was a helpless reality, and universal knowledge for all the people was still a distant, distant prospect.

But Li Si's very next sentence completely overturned Heifu's understanding of him!

He then heard Li Si continue: "Furthermore, after much deliberation, this old servant believes that the Odes, the Documents, and the words of the Hundred Schools need not all be indiscriminately burned, thereby provoking an outcry from the scholars. It would be better to conceal the prohibition within a collection effort — to compile and burn simultaneously! Just as Confucius said: choose what is good in them and follow it; choose what is not good and amend it!"

Chancellor Li smiled faintly. "However, this matter of compiling the books and histories still requires someone of outstanding learning, one who can command the heartfelt respect of the realm's scholars, to take charge. This old servant, though lacking in talent, is willing to oversee it all! I beg Your Majesty to grant this!"

Heifu froze. In that instant, his hairs stood on end!

(End of chapter)