Chapter 638: The Tang-Song Transformation Unprecedented in All History

When Gao Conghui said he needed to consider it, he did not mean he would merely consider it. The King of Nanping in Jing, who doted so heavily on his tenth son, suddenly realized that he was losing control of his son.

From the present situation, Gao Baoxu had certainly gained the support of Nanping army officers who were unwilling to relinquish the power in their hands.

This was only natural. The Nanping state was only so large a cake. Once the territory was surrendered, the Gao family could still enjoy wealth and honor, but the Nanping officers who currently held military power could not be so sure.

Jiangling in Nanping could rightly be called the foremost fortress on the Yangtze, for Jiangling sat at the golden juncture of the river.

Upstream, the Yangtze narrowed and the current ran swift, and beneath the water lurked all manner of hidden reefs—Tiger Rock, Ghost Whirl, King Yama's Trap, names that told at once how treacherous they were.

In years past, Emperor Zhaolie, Liu Bei, raised a great host to attack Wu, yet because the upper Yangtze stretch before Jiangling was so perilous, he never dared send his fleet straight at Jiangling.

But once the Yangtze reached Jiangling, it suddenly widened enormously, the current slowed, and the hidden reefs in the river vanished.

Jiangling was built precisely at this critical point where the Yangtze was about to broaden, able both to block the river surface and to control the waterways upstream and downstream.

To use a somewhat distasteful analogy, Jiangling was like the sphincter of the Yangtze. Only by controlling Jiangling could one claim to control the Yangtze.

A place so vital—one could imagine that once the Zhou state occupied Jiangling, it would at the very least purge all the senior officers of the Nanping fleet and replace them with its own men.

So those who most feared the Gao family yielding were not the Gao family themselves, but the senior Nanping generals who enjoyed the enormous benefits of Jiangling.

Others thought Gao Conghui had not yet made his decision, but Gao Conghui had already dragged his ailing body to secretly open his private treasury and reward his five hundred most trusted armored guards, and he had ordered those guards to stay by his side at every moment.

At the same time, Gao Conghui secretly summoned his third son, Gao Baorong. Only now did he feel that this somewhat timid eldest son was the most reliable—at least he would not mix himself up with those ambitious army officers.

When the two met, Gao Conghui wasted no words. He looked at Gao Baorong and asked in a low voice, "Can the Shaoming Son of Heaven truly tolerate men? The Former Tang's Li Yazi also claimed to be a sage Son of Heaven, yet when your grandfather went to Luoyang, he nearly did not return alive."

Gao Conghui was speaking of how Gao Jixing, Prince Wuxin of Nanping, had gone to Luoyang to pay court to Li Cunxu, and at the time had nearly been unable to return to Nanping.

Gao Baorong slowly nodded. "The Shaoming Son of Heaven has considerable presence. The brothers Li Congyan and Li Congzhao contended with the Son of Heaven during the pacification of Guanzhong, yet after surrendering most of their property, they still live as wealthy men.

Shi Chonggui lost virtue to such a degree, yet he still kept his life.

Your son has been thinking: if our Gao family truly offers up the three prefectures and sets an example for all under heaven, our treatment surely cannot be worse than that of Liu Chengyou, son of Liu Zhiyuan of Hedong."

Gao Conghui nodded. Had Gao Baorong given full-throated assurances, then given Gao Baorong's intelligence, he might well have been deceived by appearances.

But now that he showed some hesitation, it seemed this third son of his was not so foolish after all—he had certainly made a judgment.

Hearing Gao Baorong speak thus, Gao Conghui formed a basic judgment in his mind. He immediately said to Gao Baorong, "Summon your maternal uncle Song Sanlang and your father-in-law Liang He to a certain place, and have Chong'er sent along as well."

Gao Baorong's maternal Song family and his wife's Liang family were both great local clans, which was also why Gao Baorong had always been able to remain heir apparent. Chong'er was Gao Baorong's three-year-old only son, Gao Jichong—historically the last ruler of Nanping.

Hearing his father's words, Gao Baorong's eyes widened in alarm. "Father, Tenth Brother would never go so far!"

Gao Conghui was now even more certain. This third son of his might be somewhat timid, but he was by no means stupid, for he had understood what was happening the moment his father began making these arrangements.

"Tenth Brother may not go so far, but I do not trust the men around him—especially the fleet Chief Commander Li Duan. He has enormous interests in the Flying Tiger Army and will not willingly submit to the court.

Sanlang, I will have my armored guards escort you out of the city by a side gate. Go see Ma Zhaoyuan, Duke of Jiuquan, and tell him that I, Gao Conghui, am willing to obey the imperial decree and allow the court's great army to enter Jiangling. See what his response is."

Having said this, Gao Conghui let out a long sigh, and his eyes were even somewhat moist as he looked at Gao Baorong.

"Since I, Gao Conghui, succeeded to Nanping, I have risen early and retired late. I have borne the foul name of Gao the Scoundrel for decades, all to preserve my Gao family's foundation. I never thought that in the end it would all come to naught."

Gao Baorong felt only grief welling up from his heart. With a thud he knelt prostrate before Gao Conghui and wept aloud.

Gao Conghui pulled Gao Baorong up from the ground. "My son is prudent and steady, and should be able to preserve the Gao family's wealth and honor. In days to come, do not seek too much. If you can become a wealthy man in the Eastern Capital, that will be enough.

It is only I who find it hard to let go of this knot in my heart. When Sanlang goes to the Duke of Jiuquan, you might ask him to memorialize the Son of Heaven on my behalf. If I could be permitted to remain in Jiangling for a time, that would be boundless imperial grace."

Gao Baorong soon went out and met with Ma Zhaoyuan, and Ma Zhaoyuan likewise swiftly dispatched Gao Conghui's extravagant request by eight-hundred-li express courier to the Eastern Capital, Kaifeng Prefecture.

At this time, Zhang Zhao had been continuously carrying out optimizations of court administration. In truth, this era was also a very important turning point in Chinese history.

Before this, limited by productive forces, the classes on the Chinese land were sharply divided, and the word "wealth" was tightly bound to power.

With power came money, while ordinary commoners went their whole lives with little money to speak of. The two sides lived in almost two separate worlds in terms of food, clothing, and daily necessities.

But by this time—to be precise, in the early Northern Song, another ten or twenty years later—those boundaries were almost completely broken down.

The development of productive forces caused the word "wealth" to begin spreading downward among the common people, and households with surplus means, even relatively well-off commoners, gradually increased.

The development of productive forces also brought prosperity to handicrafts and the commodity economy. The strict ward-and-market structure of the cities was broken down, and the phenomenon of isolated rural hamlets where most people never left their village in a lifetime also began to diminish.

At the same time, the further development of printing allowed knowledge to spread from great aristocratic clans, and even lesser gentry families, ever downward to the ordinary commoners below.

Historical records say that in the Northern Song period, even shepherds in Hebei could read and write, as proven by the cliff inscriptions discovered in later times at Shijiazhuang.

The south was even more striking. In places like Jianzhou on the Fujian circuit, five or six households out of ten both farmed and studied.

For this reason, many later historians have called this period the Tang-Song Transformation.

This was a period of great transformation that permeated every class of Chinese civilization, and also an important reason why the Song dynasty—so inept and cowardly an era—could still have many admirers in later times.

Setting aside its ineptness and cowardice, most urban commoners and independent farmers in this era lived better than those of the Han and Tang.

Of course, tenant farmers did not share in any of this. No matter the era, they never lived well.

Even in later ages, those "tenants" paying exorbitant rent in first- and second-tier cities mostly bore no light burden of pressure.

And the reason Zhang Zhao could feel the pulse of this era was that Shan Zhu'er, Luo Shande, had described a peculiar situation to Zhang Zhao from Haozhou.

It was this: in the Haozhou unrest, large numbers of farming households had been incited by local great clans to oppose the court. They dammed streams and built fields on the hilly terrain of Haozhou, held forts, and defended them with great tenacity.

It was precisely because of the mountain forts everywhere that Gao Yunquan had been forced to request a large army from the court.

But Zhang Zhao paid no attention to whether these Haozhou people were tenacious or not. What interested him was their craft of damming streams and building fields on the hills.

For this was the great weapon that had allowed southern China to develop so rapidly: terraced fields.

Primitive terraced fields had been invented around the Qin and Han periods, but neither their construction nor their cultivation had ever reached scale, and they remained quite crude.

Because at that time the Central Plains had not yet been fully developed, there was no need to spend time and effort opening up terraces in the mountains.

The terraced fields of the late Tang and Five Dynasties period were probably best known among the Hani brethren of Yunnan. At this time they were called the Heman, and were ruled by the Dali Kingdom established by Duan Siping, Military Governor of Tonghai.

And the Dali Kingdom, tucked away in Yunnan, was able to thrive in later times in no small part thanks to terraced fields.

The moment Zhang Zhao realized this was a heaven-sent opportunity to promote terraced fields, he immediately ordered the Brocade Robe Personal Guard to interrogate the captured rebel leaders who had been brought to the capital and were originally to be executed.

The result was excellent feedback. Because of the Southern Tang court's exploitation in Huainan, a mountainous prefecture like Haozhou could only demand fields from the mountains. Drawing on Qin and Han period experience, the locals had quickly developed terraced fields into something quite presentable.

From terraced fields, Zhang Zhao also thought of Champa rice. According to the timeline, the Champa rice varieties of this period had already matured.

In practical terms, the yield of Champa rice was not so exaggerated. Those high-yield Champa rices in the history books were new varieties selected after introduction.

The true advantage of Champa rice lay in its drought resistance, early ripening, and its excellent compatibility with terraced fields.

In the past, there was another important reason terraced fields never developed in the hilly and mountainous regions of the southeast and south: irrigating terraces was relatively difficult, and there could never be large amounts of freely available water.

As a result, the native rice varieties that especially needed water had no particular advantage in yield on terraced fields.

But Champa rice was different. This thing was especially drought-resistant, and planting it on high mountain terraces was exactly right.

Moreover, its growth cycle was short — at the fastest, it could be harvested in around fifty days — and combined with its drought resistance, it could even be used for emergency relief.

Terraced fields and Champa rice were a perfect match.

After learning all this, Zhang Zhao also took stock of his own advantages. His greatest advantage was still knowing the outcome in advance.

For example, with Champa rice, when Emperor Zhenzong of Song ordered it promoted nationwide back then, he was actually very worried about it. He went back and forth several times before finally deciding to promote it.

Because he did not know whether this thing really was drought-resistant, short in its growth cycle, and high-yielding. He had never seen a Champa rice harvest with his own eyes, and he was terrified of being fooled by the officials below him.

Another example was terraced fields. By the time they were truly promoted, it was already the era of New China.

The laziness of successive rulers, who ignored the benefits terraced fields brought, was one reason.

But another reason was that they did not know whether what they were doing was definitely correct.

In this era where food was the heaven of the people, any improvement in agriculture could not afford the slightest mistake.

But Zhang Zhao clearly knew the outcome. The only problem was that Champa was too far away, and the Zhou state's navy was still in the construction stage, to say nothing of sending large ships out to sea.

However, an opportunity soon arrived. Liu Congxiao, who originally held the two prefectures of Nan (Zhang) and Quan, sent his Marshal Huang Yuxi bearing sixty jin of borneol incense and five gold-and-jade diexie belts decorated with xiezhi figures and adorned with rhinoceros horn, traveling several thousand li to the Eastern Capital, Kaifeng Prefecture, to pay court to Zhang Zhao.

This Liu Congxiao had originally been a general of Wang Min. After the Southern Tang destroyed Wang Min, Liu Congxiao outwardly obeyed the Southern Tang's orders, but in reality he held Quanzhou and was effectively an independent warlord.

Originally he would not have seized Quan and Nan Prefectures so quickly, but in this timeline, just as the Southern Tang had conquered Wang Min, Zhang Zhao raised a great army to attack the Southern Tang. Li Jing had no attention to spare for these few prefectures of Min, and hurriedly withdrew his troops from the Min region.

Thus Liu Congxiao and others rapidly expanded their power. After he defeated the Qian-Yue army that had tried to seize Quanzhou in the wake of the Southern Tang's withdrawal, his elder brother Liu Congyuan also quickly took control of Nanzhou.

With Liu Congxiao as their leader, the two brothers formed a stable separatist power.

Liu Congxiao was a clever man. He knew that Quan and Nan Prefectures were small in territory and sparse in population, and could not form a state of their own. Although the Southern Tang was a paper tiger, it still had the strength to campaign against Quan and Nan Prefectures, so he took the initiative to submit a memorial to the Southern Tang requesting enfeoffment.

Li Jing, who had been beaten black and blue by Zhang Zhao and lost all face, was overjoyed. He immediately enfeoffed Liu Congxiao as Military Governor of Qingyuan Army and Surveillance Commissioner of Quan, Nan, and other prefectures, with the noble title of Duke of E.

But Liu Congxiao was very unwilling in his heart to submit to the Southern Tang. He wanted to submit to the Central Plains.

For one thing, when clinging to a powerful patron, one should of course choose the thickest leg to cling to. For another, the Central Plains was ten thousand li away from Zhangzhou, far less of a threat to him than the Southern Tang, which was right at his doorstep.

Once Liu Congxiao's envoy Huang Yuxi also brought the Southern Tang's edict enfeoffing Liu Congxiao, Zhang Zhao understood even better that Liu Congxiao was a remarkable fellow.

Because at present, according to legal principle, Li Jing was merely the King of Southern Tang enfeoffed by Zhang Zhao. What standing did he have to enfeoff a title like Duke of E? This was an obvious usurpation, and Zhang Zhao could completely use it as grounds to raise troops and campaign against the Southern Tang.

But for now, Zhang Zhao did not want to rap Li Jing on the knuckles. He wanted to deal with Meng Shu first.

Because Li Jing was nothing more than fat meat right by his mouth, while Meng Shu could barely still be counted as a hard bone.

Therefore, although Zhang Zhao did not agree to Liu Congxiao's requests for court enfeoffment and for establishing properties in the Eastern Capital Kaifeng Prefecture and the Divine Capital Luoyang, he richly rewarded Huang Yuxi and additionally appointed him Grand Master of Silver and Blue Light.

This expressed that Zhang Zhao was willing to accept Liu Congxiao's allegiance, only that the timing was not yet ripe.

However, while not accepting the allegiance, Zhang Zhao still wanted to use Liu Congxiao's navy.

Nanzhou (Zhangzhou) and Quanzhou had always been important cities for China's maritime trade, and the Fujianese were one of the main forces among Chinese going overseas.

So Zhang Zhao ordered Huang Yuxi to return immediately to the Qingyuan Army and convey his instructions to Liu Congxiao: if he could quickly dispatch large ships south to Champa and bring back twenty thousand shi of Champa rice seed for Zhang Zhao, then Zhang Zhao would accept his allegiance.

On the first day of the eighth month, after the grand court assembly, Zhang Zhao ordered Chief Minister Zhang Xichong and the Censor-in-Chief of the Censorate, Zhang Yuan, to select censors to supervise the various provinces.

Beginning from the first day of the eighth month, the court would dispatch supervising censors to each province to urge the provinces to begin the land equalization campaign. The surveillance commissioners of each province, and the wind-observing chiliarchs stationed in each province by the Brocade Guard, would also assist in supervision.

At the same time, the Revenue Bureau of the Secretariat and the Ministry of Revenue were also selecting revenue angels and transport angels to go to each province, to urge the localities to begin the asset assessment work for taxpayers — scholars, farmers, artisans, and merchants — under the new Two-Tax Law.

According to Zhang Zhao's requirements, officials also had to declare their assets in order to pay taxes.

This matter of the gentry and officials paying grain taxes together, which seemed extremely difficult in every previous dynasty, looked like a very hard thing to handle.

A ruthless man like the Yongzheng Emperor of the Manchu Qing was slandered to hell over this, so much so that my Fourth Master, who died suddenly, was given endings like being struck dead by lightning or having his head chopped off by Lu Siniang.

But with Zhang Zhao, this was just a matter of a single edict. Because this was the Five Dynasties — this was an era when military men could draw their swords and cut people down without needing a single word of disagreement.

What kind of civil official or country gentry would dare say they would not pay grain taxes? Did they still want their heads?

They had long been accustomed to paying grain and taxes, and moreover, at this time the civil official bloc had not yet grown strong enough to control everything in the state, so they were simply not an obstacle.

As for the military men, they truly did not want to pay grain taxes. But unfortunately, Zhang Zhao was now the biggest military boss of all, and the way military men solved problems among themselves was very simple — each relied on the sword in his own hand.

Right now no one could beat Zhang Zhao. If Zhang Zhao said their manors, shops, and other properties also had to pay taxes, then they would obediently pay taxes.

Of course, this tax-paying was just a formality. Whether civil or military, once one was tainted with the word "official," even if one paid taxes, one could not pay much. Tax evasion and underreporting were all too easy.

But Zhang Zhao did not care. What he wanted was to establish the habit of officials and gentry paying grain taxes. As for how much tax they evaded, once the whole country was largely pacified, there would be plenty of methods to slowly deal with them.

Land equalization and tax assessment were two great matters. After Zhang Zhao finished arranging them, he did something else that made everyone's jaws drop.

Sage Zhang pardoned two rebel leaders on the grounds that they had offered up the method of building terraced fields.

Not only did he pardon them, he also appointed these two men as Erudites of Agronomy, ordering the Ministry of Revenue and the Ministry of Works to cooperate with them in perfecting the terraced field construction method, and then promote it throughout the realm.

This was the great crime of rebellion! Offering up some terraced field construction method could spare one from death? And one could even become an Erudite of Agronomy — although it was not exactly an official post, it was still a status!

Afterward, Zhang Zhao went a step further, decreeing that anyone in the realm, regardless of status or which state they belonged to, who offered fine seeds, new farming tools, or new methods of cultivation, could, according to the magnitude of their contribution, be enfeoffed up to the rank of count.

This was the first new channel in thousands of years for obtaining a noble title other than through military merit, bloodline, or political achievement.

Afterward, Zhang Zhao also announced that those who obtained noble titles and Erudite of Agronomy status through agronomy could receive annual rewards from the imperial household ranging from fifty strings of cash down to fifty coins.

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Moreover, this quickly produced results. The common people of Jingshan County in Yingzhou, led by their County Magistrate, traveled over a thousand li to the Eastern Capital to present the seedling-transplanting tool, the seedling horse.

The so-called seedling horse was like a small crescent-shaped boat. A person could sit on the seedling horse to transplant seedlings without bending over into the field, greatly improving efficiency and saving time.

Zhang Zhao had officials from the Ministry of Revenue and the Ministry of Works test it, and it indeed had a very great effect in promoting seedling transplantation.

Zhang Zhao immediately promoted the Jingshan County Magistrate to Chief Clerk of Yingzhou, granted each of the Yingzhou commoners who had come to the capital twenty strings of cash, selected five people skilled in agriculture as Erudites of Agronomy to enjoy the imperial household's annual stipend, and further exempted all of Jingshan County from this year's autumn tax.

Once the news came out, the whole realm was shaken. At the end of the eighth month, commoners of the Southern Tang came from Haizhou to Huai'an Prefecture (Chuzhou) in the Zhou state's Jianghuai Province, and presented high-yield yellow-chaff rice seed to the Prefect of Huai'an Prefecture of Zhang Zhou.

Zhang Zhao immediately sent an edict to Li Jing, ordering him to quickly investigate the situation, and ordered the Brocade Guard agents stationed in Jianghuai Province to go and learn the details.

The so-called yellow-chaff rice was a native rice variety that greatly favored water, had strong waterlogging resistance, and at the same time had a yield no lower than Champa rice.

Because this yellow-chaff rice favored water and resisted waterlogging, it was most suitable for opening up the vast marshlands of the south, and it had an extremely important role in turning miasma-ridden swamps into fertile fields.

And that fool Li Jing — if Zhang Zhao had not enacted this benevolent policy, he would never even have known about the matter.

Only after the Prefect of Haizhou in the Southern Tang went to investigate did he learn that the Huangrang rice offered by this household was not only flood-resistant but yielded as much as three and a half shi per mu, far exceeding the two and a half shi of ordinary rice strains.

At this time one shi was one hundred twenty jin, so three and a half shi was 420 jin, while two and a half shi was only three hundred jin.

Faced with these figures, the Southern Tang side was terrified. They wanted to conceal the matter and not report it, but the Brocade Guard had long since learned the full details and had brought some of the commoners and rice seed to Huai'an.

Zhang Zhao's eyes darted, and he realized this was a fine opportunity to put pressure on Li Jing. He immediately dispatched Wang Jiu, a Vice Director of the Ministry of Rites, as an imperial envoy to Jiangning to rebuke Li Jing harshly.

Wang Jiu was famously fearless. He was the one who, back in the day, had grabbed the sleeve of Xieli Pijia of the Gaochang Uyghurs and refused to let go.

This time, coming as an imperial envoy, he simply berated Li Jing to his face before the entire civil and military court of the Southern Tang until the man was utterly humiliated.

His words were so sharp and venomous that Li Jing broke down several times and tried to withdraw, yet Wang Jiu still held him by the sleeve and would not let go, causing the Southern Tang's civil and military officials, high and low, to lose all face and dealing a heavy blow to Li Jing's prestige.

As for the Southern Tang commoner who had offered the rice seed, Zhang Zhao did not go back on his word. He immediately promoted him to Earl of Haizhou, fulfilling his highest promise.

With that, everyone in the realm who thought they had some skill began heading for the Eastern Capital, rivaling the rush of auspicious-omen offerings in years past.

As for the wish of Gao Conghui that Ma Zhaoyuan had sent word to report, Zhang Zhao summoned Zhang Xichong, Guo Tiance, and other civil and military officials to discuss it, and they all felt it could be reluctantly accepted.

Then Zhang Zhao had no problem with it, because he knew Gao Conghui could live at most another half year, and that was if his health held up well.

So Zhang Zhao sent envoys to notify Gao Conghui on one hand, while on the other he personally led three thousand elite troops of the Right Yulin Guard south from the Eastern Capital, Kaifeng Prefecture, traveling day and night.

A strategic city like Jiangling he had to go and arrange in person, and as for the Xidong barbarians within Ma Chu's territory, he also needed to find a way to deal with them.

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