Chapter 531: Taking from the Formless

Along the way, the party finally arrived at the salt-drying fields. Heifu had the craftsmen make slight modifications, digging out rectangular plots with stone-brick bottoms — shallow and broad. Qualified brine from the filtration pools was carried here by artisan-convicts using small wooden buckets and poured over the salt fields.

It was just past noon, the blazing sun scorching overhead, and with the fierce sea wind, the brine was steadily evaporating. Crystalline salt grains had already formed at the bottom of the fields. Once the water had completely dried, convict women went down into the fields and piled the salt with shovels. In each salt field, a salt mound half a person's height could be amassed...

These salt mounds were a delight to behold. Qin Shi Huang had a ladleful scooped out for inspection and saw that this salt was snow-white, fine and soft, of pure quality, its color no less than that of Anyi salt.

It turned out that the earlier steps of salt-mud filtration and bamboo-mat straining, besides increasing the brine concentration, also served another purpose: filtering impurities from the seawater. Thus the brine in the salt fields looked very clean, and the salt dried from it had relatively few impurities.

With quality no longer a concern, what Qin Shi Huang cared about next was efficiency and yield.

He asked Heifu, "With this new method of leaching brine and sun-drying salt, how many days does it take?"

The reason the Qi people boiled salt was precisely because sun-drying alone was too slow and depended entirely on the weather. If the process dragged on too long and a sudden downpour struck, all previous efforts would be wasted. Therefore, not every place was suitable for sun-drying salt.

Heifu reported, "Scraping the soil and piling it, then leaching the brine through the filter — three days and the task is done! As for the sun-drying stage, it requires favorable timing and geography. If you catch the sun at its strongest and let the brine bake under the sunlight until evening, you get salt!"

So in summary, this method actually required only four days and five steps! Its speed was no less than boiling the sea! Yet the cost was far lower than boiling the sea.

But Heifu also noted that this method depended extremely heavily on the weather. First, making the salt mud required waiting for the tide to recede before drying. Generally, there were two high-tide periods each month, each lasting about five or six days, so the time available for sun-drying salt each month was only about half a month to twenty days.

If the sunlight was not strong enough, the salt yield from the brine would be very low. Therefore, the best time of year for sun-drying salt was only from the fourth month to the tenth month — exactly the opposite of boiling salt. This meant that a considerable labor force would need to be tied up in this industry.

This was a difficult choice. To judge the merits of the two methods, one criterion remained: "Old method or new method — which produces more salt?"

Under the Jiang clan's rule, Qi used the boiling method, busying themselves from the tenth month to the twelfth month for three months, and obtained 36,000 zhong of salt, roughly equivalent to over 200,000 Qin dan.

Under the Tian clan's rule, new salt works were opened, and output increased to 300,000 dan, of which Jiaodong alone produced 100,000 dan. But now, for various reasons, Jiaodong's salt production had shrunk to 50,000 dan.

In Qin Shi Huang's mind, if Jiaodong could just catch up to its previous output, that would already be quite good.

But Heifu gave him a huge surprise: "In the ninth month of the thirty-first year, in just one month's time, this salt field alone already yielded 20,000 dan of salt! Even if we only sun-dry for half the year, we can still obtain at least 120,000 dan of salt annually. Add in the other smaller salt fields, and producing 150,000 dan a year is no problem at all!"

Not only was the yield half again as much as boiling salt, the cost was also much lower.

Zhang Cang carried a small abacus with him and immediately did a calculation for Qin Shi Huang: "Regarding the amount of salt consumed: in one month, an adult man eats five and a third sheng, an adult woman three and a third sheng, and an infant two and a third sheng. Thus, a household of five consumes fifteen sheng of salt per month."

150,000 dan could supply one million households, roughly five million people. This meant that Jiaodong, after meeting its own needs, could additionally solve the salt problem for over four million people!

Moreover, the salt produced was high-quality white salt, not black salt mixed with large amounts of mud and sand. In this era, salt contained many impurities; in many places, local salt had to be "cleared of mud," dried, and then consumed. It was perfectly normal for one dou of salt to contain two sheng of mud.

This was also why people in the Warring States, Qin, and Han periods consumed salt very heavily, with the per capita amount reaching 45 grams, far exceeding later standards. First, because physical labor was heavy; second, because the actual salt content ingested was not that high.

Zhang Cang was overjoyed: "This being the case, if we can extend Jiaodong's method across the empire, especially to the three commanderies of Langya, Donghai, and Kuaiji, we could produce an extra two to three hundred thousand dan of salt each year! In this way, the Privy Treasury could gain enormous profits by levying a salt tax!"

Zhang Cang was specifically in charge of budgeting and balancing income with expenditure — equivalent to the National Development and Reform Commission. He naturally understood that salt was the lowest-cost, most effective means of taxation!

He immediately offered his counsel: "Your Majesty, your minister has read the Guanzi. Although this book is a work by the academicians of Jixia attributing their ideas to ancient times, it contains much genuine insight!"

"In the 'State Accumulation' chapter, Duke Huan of Qi asked Guan Zhong for strategies to enrich the state. The Duke intended to tax population, houses and towers, trees, and the six domestic animals, but Guan Zhong rejected each one. In his view, people are pleased when given and angered when taken from — such is human nature. Direct taxes and levies are visible; collecting wealth and grain directly from the common people will naturally incur resentment. A better method is to 'take from them without form, so that they are not angered'!"

Zhang Cang's words were pointed. In recent years, the court's expenditures had been enormous, but the Qin dynasty had many people versed in law and few versed in economics. The only solutions they could devise were incessantly increasing the poll tax, leading to widespread complaints across the empire's commanderies.

In theory, the poll tax only needed to be paid once a year, a mere 100 cash per household — not too heavy a burden. But every time the court treasury ran tight, they would set their sights on the poll tax. Thus, 200 cash per household per year was the norm, and at its worst, it reached as high as three or four hundred!

In the Central Plains, many commoner households, in order to pay less of this endless poll tax, had reached the point of not raising their newborn children! Zhang Cang believed that if this continued, the empire would sooner or later lose the hearts of the people entirely. A new approach had to be found.

But while he was skilled at calculation, he understood little of practical governance. Fortunately, Heifu always seemed able to open up new sources of revenue with novel ideas...

Qin Shi Huang was very interested in how to increase the Privy Treasury's income. He sat down at a seaside post station and had Zhang Cang elaborate: "How does one 'take from them without form'?"

Zhang Cang said, "It's very simple — embed the tax in the price!"

He gave an analogy: "The empire has roughly over six million registered households and over thirty million people. According to the statutes, every person over one year of age pays 20 cash annually, totaling 100 cash per household..."

100 cash — that was also the amount of each additional levy.

But if you simply added 10 cash to the price of one sheng of salt, then one and a half dou of salt would yield an extra 150 cash, exceeding the poll tax paid by one household. On the surface, the government indeed had not levied a tax and would not provoke the people's "clamorous" opposition. In reality, "there would be none who did not pay the tax."

Salt is an absolute necessity; not a single person can do without it for a moment. Even if the common people found it expensive, they would still have to find a way to buy it. Moreover, besides direct purchases, the salt tax was hidden behind many commodities. The vast majority of people would not realize that in the salted fish they bought, the government had already taxed them through the salt...

Heifu was also nodding. Zhang Cang's suggestion was a common practice in later ages: hiding the tax within commodities, implementing indirect collection so that the taxpayer could not see or feel it, paying taxes unknowingly without psychological resistance.

Zhang Cang grew excited and bowed again: "This was precisely the economic policy of the former state of Qi — boiling the sea to levy a tax upon all under heaven! The reason Qi was so wealthy was precisely that the King of Qi had already collected an invisible salt tax from everyone under heaven!"

"Those Qi people — they did devise a clever scheme."

Qin Shi Huang mused, "You say this strategy comes from the Guanzi, written by the academicians of Jixia? It seems the learning of Jixia is not entirely useless learning, nor are its books entirely worthless..."

He looked out at the vast sea and laughed: "As for me, I sit upon boundless advantages, yet the Privy Treasury and the Superintendent of Agriculture only know how to squeeze poll taxes from the black-headed commoners. They never imagined that within this Eastern Sea lies a treasure trove inexhaustible in its bounty. Truly, they have failed as financial ministers!"

Heifu felt somewhat awkward hearing this. The Privy Treasury and Superintendent of Agriculture levied taxes and levies — was it not all for Your Majesty's grand enterprises? Every levy was also tacitly approved by the Emperor. But the Emperor also understood that this was drinking poison to quench thirst. Since there was a better way to amass wealth than increasing levies, he would naturally abandon the old for the new.

Zhang Cang's words moved the Emperor. Official monopoly of salt had been practiced in Qin since the era of Shang Yang. But Guanzhong was not a salt-producing region; it had to rely on supplies from beyond the frontier, Ba-Shu, and Hedong. Its understanding of this policy was shallow, and it could not make much money from it; the monopoly was merely to control this strategic resource and avoid being held hostage by salt-producing states.

Now, Qin had unified all within the seas and possessed the great ocean. Heifu had presented the brine-leaching sun-drying method that doubled salt production. It was time to wield Guan Zhong's salt-and-brine cudgel, to use it to rap all under heaven, gather wealth into the Privy Treasury, and make it serve the state!

Just as Qin Shi Huang was about to gladly adopt Zhang Cang's proposal, Heifu stepped forward and said, "Your Majesty, although Zhang Cang's words are reasonable, your minister believes that the prerequisite for 'taking without form' is that salt flows from a single channel. But as things stand now, Jiaodong is awash with private salt."

"Private salt?" Qin Shi Huang frowned. In Qin, anything prefixed with "private" was never a good thing.

Heifu said, "Indeed. This commandery's coastline stretches a thousand li. The commandery troops and thief-catchers lack the manpower, so that despite repeated bans, the practice cannot be stopped. Therefore, even if the court taxes official salt, the effect will be minimal. The black-headed commoners would rather risk buying cheaper private salt for consumption..."

"What sort of people are boiling and selling this private salt?" Though Qin Shi Huang asked casually, it already sent a chill down one's spine. Those selling private salt were about to meet misfortune.

Heifu shook his head and sighed: "Mostly powerful and noble coastal clans, that is to say..."

He raised his head and uttered those two words.

"The Tian clans!"

PS: Second chapter at 12:30.

(End of chapter)