Chapter 446: Yangzhou

Ding Wu was summoned before Zhao Jin and told to recount everything he knew about the Grass Den in full detail.

"... So there are quite a few villages and hamlets inside the Grass Den. No taxes or levies need to be paid there. Though there's a lot of saline-alkali land, there's even more that can be farmed..."

"... After the Eighteen Hamlets of the Grass Den were wiped out, all that's left inside the Grass Den are bandit dens..."

"... The Feng family seizes people to make salt by the sea. The women and children are sent to Yangzhou and Qingjiangpu to be sold off..."

"... Every year, the Ding Family Enclosure farms and sells its harvest, but fifty percent or even more of the earnings have to go to the Feng family. Even so..."

"... East of Shuyang City, near the sea, the Feng family has already built several large manors. I hear they're used to store salt and quarter their men..."

A great deal of information could be gleaned from his words. The Feng family did not want refugees building villages and hamlets in the Wasteland Flats, but such things were impossible to prevent entirely. The region was vast, and with Shandong, Henan, and Fengyang Prefecture suffering disasters year after year, people always found their way in.

Furthermore, the Feng family needed a large labor force that didn't appear on the official books. Besides making a fortune in "official private salt," their household also had a hand in true private salt. And judging from Ding Jun's account, their operation was likely larger than any salt lord's.

As Ding Jun spoke, his voice began to choke with sobs. "In years past, no matter how tight things were, everyone would still go outside the enclosure to buy a few strings of firecrackers. They'd break them apart and everyone would take some to set off..."

As it happened, just as he said this, firecrackers began crackling and popping somewhere outside, reminding everyone that it was now the New Year, the First Month.

The days from the first to the fifteenth of the First Month were the liveliest of the year. Even a desolate place like Xuzhou bustled with excitement, to say nothing of Yangzhou city. Nowadays, when people spoke of this place, they all used the same four words to describe it: "Wealth Beyond Compare Under Heaven."

Haizhou produced Huai salt, but the distribution hub was in Yangzhou. Over two-thirds of the realm consumed Huai salt. Every year, boat after boat of gleaming white salt went out, and boat after boat of gleaming white silver came in. The salt merchants dealt with the authorities, and these dealings were often hereditary. The silver amassed generation after generation piled up into fortunes of staggering magnitude.

The salt tax was one of the fundamental revenues of the Great Ming, yet the amount collected grew smaller and smaller. According to regulation, the annual quota was seven to eight million taels, but after all the deductions and discounts, only a little over a million taels were actually handed over. Whenever the court sent officials down to straighten things out, the collection would increase slightly, but then it would quickly revert to the old ways.

The silver earned from official salt and private salt, and the salt tax skimmed off the top, naturally could not all be swallowed by the salt merchants alone. Every office in the Inner Court, the Outer Court's Grand Secretariat and Ministry of Revenue, the local Salt Transport Bureaus and inspection stations, and civil and military officials on every side — everyone got their share.

So much silver spread around naturally bought convenience and personal favors in return. Over many long years, a vast and intricate web of connections was built, all-encompassing and leaving nothing untouched.

Beyond the official sphere, the same held true in the Jianghu and even among the religious sects. Everyone wanted to get rich from salt. The outlaws and greenwood men on land went without saying. On the water, the grain transport routes were the domain of the sects. If they wanted a cut of the salt profits, they naturally had to help the salt merchants out, and these relationships grew tighter and tighter.

By the Wanli reign, everyone had grown practiced in these dealings and had seen much. Many salt merchants raised their own militia and guards, or formed close ties with Jianghu outlaws. This was nothing new. After all, one could only be at ease when the blade was in one's own hands.

But none of this was visible on the surface. An outsider arriving here would see only row upon row of shops and trading firms, the thronging crowds of pedestrians and traveling merchants on the streets, and the gathering of ten thousand merchants at this canal hub.

In the First Month, no hint of spring greenery could be seen even in Yangzhou. The official road east of the city led straight to the canal docks. Not far from the East Gate was a water gate connecting the north and south water passes. Gaogiao Dock and Twelve Docks were also located here.

This was the most bustling time of the season. Elsewhere during the First Month, households shut their doors to celebrate inside while the streets lay quiet. Yangzhou was different. Both inside and outside the city, all was clamor and prosperity. People rode out of the city to visit friends or entered the city to call on relatives, in light carriages and on horseback, strolling slowly in new clothes — truly a scene of peace as far as the eye could see.

Not far from the official road lay Baoyang Lake, which later generations would call Slender West Lake. Though its name had not yet acquired such elegance, it was already a pleasure ground for Yangzhou's rich and noble families. Up in Xuzhou, even the Yellow River had frozen solid, yet here on Yangzhou's lake, only a few thin sheets of ice lingered in the shaded spots. What met the eye were the painted pleasure boats moored at Twelve Docks — decorated in vermilion and blue, adorned with gold and silver leaf, carved beams and painted rafters floating upon the water. From within drifted soft humming and chanting, the music of strings and pipes, and now and then peals of laughter and merry voices, setting the imagination endlessly adrift.

Li Dajin walked along the official road. He no longer looked like an armored warrior. He wore a black robe with red trim, a square cap on his head, and a long saber at his waist — every inch the image of a yamen constable chief.

As Li Dajin walked, people occasionally came up to greet him, all of them polite and deferential. This Master Li was no idle runner with no real standing, but the Deputy Chief Constable who drew a yamen salary. It was said that even the various lords in the prefectural yamen treated him with great courtesy.

Holding office in a wealthy place had its advantages and its difficulties. The advantage, of course, was the abundance of silver — one term and you were set for life. The difficulty was that you could never truly be in charge and had none of an official's proper authority. If your sedan chair bumped into someone on the street, that person might well be a servant or slave of some household, or a relative of some powerful figure, and you would have to take the initiative to apologize and pay compensation. That said, it was still better than Suzhou, Hangzhou, or Songjiang, where any random person on the street might well be connected to some grandee in the Six Ministries or the Grand Secretariat.

Beyond being unable to assert official authority, one also could not truly control yamen affairs. Officials came through the examination system and served only a few years per posting. Just as they finally grew familiar with the work, they would be transferred away, so they relied entirely on the clerks and runners beneath them to handle matters. And the clerks and runners in the Yangzhou Prefectural Yamen and the Jiangdu County Yamen were all private servants and slaves of the various powerful houses, planted there to keep things under their control and avoid any inconvenience.

Li Dajin was one of the Feng family's men planted in the prefectural yamen. But the Feng family had so many people in the prefectural and county yamens that one more hardly mattered. Over time, people also discovered that this Master Li paid no attention at all to yamen business. With his excellent sources of information, he quickly learned the reason. The position of Deputy Chief Constable had been given to him purely for the sake of convenience. All the blade-wielding, rough-and-tumble fighters in the Feng family's outer residences were under this Li Dajin's command. The Jianghu figures of Yangzhou, both on water and on land, all had to give him face.

What kind of figure was he, then? Put plainly, he was merely a household guard of the Feng family. Yet he more or less managed both the overt and covert spheres of Yangzhou, holding a status akin to a hidden dragon head.

There were even rumors that Li Dajin's authority was such that he could casually summon a force of nearly a thousand men — enough to warrant at least the rank of Battalion Commander or Defense Commander.

Though people held him in awe, Li Dajin conducted himself with great restraint in Yangzhou. He knew the Feng family was powerful, but the other families were not to be trifled with either. The Feng family's might lay in extending its reach into Huai'an Prefecture. The other families might not make as many moves, but their wealth and influence were only slightly inferior to the Feng family's, and they had heaven-reaching backers behind them. If he ever offended them, he wouldn't even know how he died.

Today was the fourth day of the First Month. The roads were lined with vendors selling all sorts of novelties. Adults led their children along, strolling in their new clothes, with happy laughter and chatter everywhere. As Li Dajin walked through the crowd, his eyes swept about from time to time. Several ordinary-looking figures smiled ingratiatingly and lowered their heads. Li Dajin frowned and shook his head, and those figures bowed and scraped as they departed.

Li Dajin knew these men were all petty thieves, here to take advantage of the New Year festivities to make a haul. Though his title of Deputy Chief Constable was only nominal, he still felt obliged to do the work that came with it. This was Li Dajin's habit in all things: regardless of whether a post was substantive or in name only, if he had a duty, he would carry it out seriously.

Back when he served under the Wolf Mountain Vice Regional Commander, he couldn't stand his comrades breaking the rules, and as a result he earned the enmity of everyone. Had his elders not had deep connections in various places, he might well have been stabbed in the back. It was because of this that he had been sent over to the Feng family.

No one expected him to rise in the Feng household. Back then, Li Dajin was merely a Squad Commander, in charge of a few dozen men. Now, while serving the Feng family, he already held the rank of Battalion Commander in the army — a solid, substantive post he could take up the moment he reported for duty. The Feng family was never stingy with its people.

Li Dajin walked on at a leisurely pace. The Feng family also had a magnificent mansion inside the city, but the custom among Yangzhou's city grandees was to maintain estates outside the city, and during the New Year season they all resided there.

Which household didn't have a hundred or several hundred servants, and needed to keep a theatrical troupe or the like? Inside the city, with so many people and so many residences, there was simply no way to spread out comfortably, and staying there felt quite stifling. Outside the city, things were far more convenient.

As Li Dajin stepped out of the city gate, he glanced back. The prosperity remained, the happy laughter and chatter continued. Yet he couldn't help thinking of the scenes inside the Grass Den. Compared to Yangzhou, even the phrase "heaven and earth" felt too close.

After all these years of clearing out, the Grass Den had grown more and more desolate, left only to serve as the Feng family's foundation. Li Dajin had returned from there not long ago, and whenever he thought of Zhao Jin, who had escaped, he felt deeply uneasy.

The estates of Yangzhou's wealthy families prized being near the water and not far from the city walls. The Feng family's mansion and garden estate satisfied both criteria, and its vast size went without saying.

Salt merchants, however rich, were still merchants at bottom. When the New Year came, they had to go everywhere delivering gifts and paying visits. But the Feng family was different. Outside their gates, carriages and horses lined up to offer greetings and presents.

The Feng family patriarch, Feng Jinfa, was sixty-three this year. His greatest achievement was not restoring the family fortune after it had utterly collapsed and expanding it several times over, but rather that among the scholars he had once funded, some had become high officials in the capital and the provinces. One was a Vice Minister of the Ministry of Personnel, another a Grand Coordinator of Henan. Beyond that, through a long and roundabout path, he had managed to claim kinship with a certain eunuch in the Inner Court, and he kept nurturing these connections ever closer and more cordial.

Every year, the Feng family indeed sent large sums of silver to various quarters, but thanks to this care and protection, they earned even more each year, and the local authorities grew ever more in awe of them.

The current head of the Feng family, Feng Shaoxian, followed much the same path as his father. But having failed at his studies, he instead cultivated close ties with several garrison commanders north of the Yangtze, and through his old days of carousing and debauchery, he had become friends with many of the ennobled families in Nanjing. With this kind of backing, the family business naturally continued to flourish and prosper.

Li Dajin naturally did not need to use the main gate. He entered through a side door. The servants on guard there knew him well and let him in with a smiling greeting.