Chapter 54: The World Is Full of Clever People

The imperial court's taxes and levies were numerous and varied — payments in silver, payments in grain, and corvée labor obligations — a complex tangle of items that made paying them troublesome and collecting them troublesome, with plenty of opportunities for manipulation along the way.

Over twenty years ago, Senior Grand Secretary Zhang Juzheng implemented the Single Whip Law, which consolidated silver payments, grain, and labor service all into a single silver payment; the common people only needed to pay in silver, and the court would then use that silver to purchase grain and hire labor.

Under the Single Whip Law, the court did indeed collect considerably more silver, but while it was convenient for the court and the officials, it failed to account for the actual circumstances of the common people.

Rural farming households wove their own cloth and tilled their own land, entirely self-sufficient; when they occasionally needed sundry goods, they bartered item for item. Their reserves of silver and copper coin were extremely small. It was not just the peasants — even many small and mid-sized landlord households only stored grain and goods, and did not necessarily have much silver coin on hand.

Once this Single Whip Law came out, the autumn taxes could no longer be paid in grain as a substitute and had to be collected in silver. They could only sell off the grain in their hands, but the money supply was insufficient — grain was plentiful and coin was scarce — which drove grain prices down low. Peasants and small and mid-sized landlords had to sell huge quantities of grain just to scrape together enough for the taxes.

Once autumn passed, they had to rely on their stored grain to survive the winter, spring, and early summer — the so-called "hunger gap" when the old crop is exhausted and the new has yet to ripen. Selling off extra harvested grain to pay the taxes left their stores insufficient. People starve without food, and when it came to that season, they had to find a way to fill their bellies, and borrowing money to buy grain was the only path left.

And during the spring hunger gap, with many people and little grain, grain prices soared. When borrowing failed, they could only turn to usury. But how many could ever repay those loans? One thing led to another, and in the end they could only sell their people and sell their land, going completely bankrupt.

"... Skinned alive in autumn, skinned alive again in spring. Many landlord and wealthy households couldn't survive it. Your grandfather and grandmother ruined their health from overwork in those years. Our family was still of Centurion background — others had it far worse..."

He Cuihua had grown up in the countryside outside the city walls. She had seen and heard such things all her life, far too many to count. As she spoke, her expression and tone grew distant — she had clearly sunk deep into memory.

Before she could finish, Senior Grand Secretary Zhang Juzheng was posthumously purged after his death. Some of his family starved to death, others committed suicide. And since Grand Secretary Zhang, the man who had pushed through the Single Whip Law, was convicted and purged, the tax law he had promoted was naturally to be repudiated as well.

But repudiation was one thing — not a bit less silver was actually collected. The lower levels still collected at the quotas set under the Single Whip Law, and on top of that, all the old miscellaneous levies were added back in. To call such compounding "piling calamity on calamity" would be far too mild.

"... It was lucky your maternal grandfather sold off all the family land to someone else. A little over a year later, the family that bought the land had sold off all their land too. The entire village became tenant farmers to another family. Many big landlords seized the chance to gobble up land..."

Peasants went bankrupt, small and mid-sized landlords went bankrupt — yet not everywhere withered. The scholar-gentry, whose examination degrees exempted them from taxes, reaped enormous advantages.

"... Those scholars didn't have to pay taxes. Many households simply gifted their land to them outright, willingly becoming their permanent laborers and tenant farmers. Even many landlord and wealthy households without degrees did the same..."

The true beneficiaries were the great landlords. A great landlord who could dominate a region did not rely solely on the land and wealth he possessed; his household invariably had official connections of one sort or another, and some were themselves officials or imperial relatives. Through these means they annexed land on a massive scale, and by exploiting tax-exemption privileges they avoided those levies entirely — their wealth and power snowballing ever larger.

As for the Guard garrison, the Commander and several Battalion Commanders used more or less identical methods to take all the military households' land into their own names, turning the military households into their personal serfs.

"... Your grandfather and grandmother didn't want to give the fields passed down from the ancestors to anyone else, so they worked day and night without rest and wore themselves sick..."

"What are you rambling on about in there — you trying to keep the child from sleeping? Get back here!" Just as He Cuihua was speaking, Zhao Zhentang's impatient low growl came from outside the door curtain. Apparently she had been talking too long, and he had come to check.

"When you talk it's fine, but when I talk it's not." He Cuihua shot back a remark, then smiled and stroked Zhao Jin's head, saying softly, "It's too late. Xiao Jin, sleep well."

He Cuihua tucked the blanket in tight around Zhao Jin before walking out. He could still hear her talking with Zhao Zhentang: "The child was already asleep, and then you had to go yell and startle him awake."

"Why bring up all that rotten old business? Life inside the walls and outside the walls gets lived all the same..."

The voices gradually faded into the distance. The lamplight seeping through the gap in the cotton door curtain had gone dark as well. The nights of this era were profoundly quiet — the occasional bark of a dog only set off the silence all the more.

Zhao Jin, exhausted after the long day, did not slip into dreams as he usually did. He lay under the covers, eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling. Zhao Jin was too excited to sleep.

"Sell grain cheap in autumn to get silver for taxes, buy grain dear in spring to survive the hunger gap" — buying low and selling high. How many blood-drenched tragedies were contained in that, how much cruelty, even his own family's past — Zhao Jin noticed none of it. All he saw was the glitter of gold.

Though he had gone to bed very late, he rose early the next morning and ran two extra laps beyond his usual. The front of the Wang household was finally not so bustling. The gatekeeper who had come out to sweep gave Zhao Jin a curious look, wondering why the normally steady and composed youth was so happy today.

After breakfast, Zhao Jin and the little girl headed together to his second uncle Zhao Zhenxing's home to practice martial arts. On the way, Zhao Jin thought excitedly that the days ahead would no longer be so dull and routine.

He carefully and tactfully put forward his suggestion at the dinner table: the family had a fair amount of silver saved up that wasn't needed for the moment — could they use it to buy and store grain? That way they could turn it over at least a few times a year, growing it like a rolling snowball.

"The kid sure knows a lot." Zhao Zhentang smiled and rubbed his head. He Cuihua smiled and ladled out more rice. Neither of them continued the topic.

Several days passed, and neither of the Zhao couple showed any reaction at all. Zhao Jin went to talk to Zhao Zhenxing about it. He knew his second uncle took him seriously and wouldn't dismiss his words as a child's joke.

"I thought you'd grown up. Never expected you're still a child after all — full of wild fancies."

This discouraged Zhao Jin even further. He tried a few different angles, but Zhao Zhenxing remained unmoved. Zhao Jin was at his wit's end. He had originally hoped his second uncle would persuade his parents — he hadn't expected his words to carry so little weight.

Rebuffed on several fronts, Zhao Jin could only turn to his last resort. He brought the matter up with the other youths. The Wang, Chen, Sun, and even Dong families all had the financial means for it.

After he spoke, everyone was indifferent — practically no one reacted at all. Zhao Jin felt disappointed, but also felt something was off. Buy low, sell high, skinning them layer by layer, growing like a snowball — why was no one tempted by such an allure?

Ten-odd days later, Zhao Jin learned the news at the dinner table. It was his father, Zhao Zhentang, who brought it up with considerable disdain: "The Sun Jia family really must have lost their minds, actually lending money and buying up grain. Yesterday Head Clerk Zheng led men to their door to audit the books and investigate their taxes. They actually dared to stick their hands into matters that pass through the yamen. If the Sun family didn't have a few capable relatives over in Fengyang, they'd have been burglarized and wiped out in the middle of the night long ago."

A shiver ran through Zhao Jin when he heard this. He finally understood why no one had paid his suggestion any mind.

The next day at the goods yard, Sun Dalei, who was never absent, did not show up. When Zhao Jin brought the matter up in casual conversation, Wang Zhaojing said, "Lending money, buying grain, and amassing land — those are things the yamen people and the local gentry strongmen do. If an outsider reaches in, they're just courting destruction. I always thought the Sun family were shrewd in business. I never imagined they'd be so shortsighted."