History of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms

Chapter 838 Chai Rong Governs the Country 4
2. Economic Reform
1. Land Reform

At the beginning of Chai Rong's reign, the Northern Han colluded with the Khitan to invade the south, and then the "Battle of Gaoping" broke out. The destruction of the war on the economy was obvious. In the places ravaged by the war, the people died and fled, and large areas of land were abandoned. A large amount of wasteland will inevitably lead to a reduction in grain production, and the shortage of grain will inevitably trigger a series of chain reactions. Therefore, land abandonment is the primary problem that needs to be solved urgently.

In the first month of the second year of Xian De (955) after the war, Chai Rong issued an edict to encourage farmers to cultivate unowned wasteland on their own initiative. If the owner of the land returned within three years, the cultivator only needed to give half of the land to the owner; if he returned within five years, he would have to pay one third; if he returned after five years, sorry, the land would belong entirely to the cultivator.

At the same time, this measure was also very humane, considering that some people in the border areas were abducted by the Khitans and did not want to escape and might not be able to escape in a short time. In response, Chai Rong stipulated that "those who return from the foreign borders to farm" should return two-thirds of their land within five years; half within ten years; one-third within fifteen years; and no return was required for those who return after fifteen years.

In this way, the enthusiasm of the farmers was fully mobilized, and they rushed to cultivate the uninhabited wasteland, and those landlords and rich peasants who had fled abroad would return to their hometowns at all costs.

A decree solved the problem of abandoned land and the economy recovered quickly.

2. Equal distribution of land and equal taxation

This story starts with a famous poet, a descendant of the Xianbei Tuoba clan of the Northern Wei royal family. He passed the imperial examination at the age of 14 and became prime minister at the age of 43. He and Bai Juyi passed the imperial examination in the same year, and they were lifelong friends, a famous couple in the Tang poetry world. The Complete Tang Poems contains a full 28 volumes of his poems, note that it is "volumes", not "first volumes", which contributes to the nine-year compulsory education and the beautiful memory of "reciting the whole poem".

This man is handsome and elegant. When he was a teenager, he fell in love with a naive and innocent rich second-generation girl. However, this girl was just a "rich second-generation", not a "official second-generation". Although her family was well-off, she was not a civil servant family after all. Compared with him who had passed the national examination (Mingjing Ke Jidi), there was a class gap. Soon, the teenager went to Beijing for an interview and was selected by the mayor of the capital.

On one side was fame and fortune within reach, and on the other side was a girl named Xiaofang in the village. After a brief and painful struggle, the young man decided to compromise with reality, broke up with his first love, and soon married the daughter of the mayor of the capital.

At first, he only regarded the daughter of the capital mayor as a stepping stone for his career, and he attached great importance to this marriage, but not to the marriage partner. He never expected that the daughter of the capital mayor was not only beautiful, but also gentle, considerate, dignified and virtuous, and well-versed in poetry. Although she was born in a wealthy family, she was not greedy for wealth. When he was unsuccessful, she was content to live a poor and hard life with him... She was simply his ideal goddess, and his attitude immediately changed from indifference to being inseparable and in love with her.

The couple's relationship grew stronger and stronger, and they wrote love poems to each other. However, this sweet marriage only lasted for 7 years. His wife died of illness at the age of 27.

It took him a long time to recover from the grief of his deceased wife. Days passed one after another. On the third day, he went to visit a popular female poet. The two hit it off and felt that they had met each other too late... However, the poetess's background was not as good as his first love. She was from the "music class", that is, the wives and daughters of criminals or their descendants were put into a special list and forced to engage in music for generations, which is what history books often say "the wife's property was confiscated by the government". Some people also say that she was an official prostitute. In short, at that time, she had the most humble background.

Obviously, if the two of them registered and got married, it would be a great loss to him who was determined to get an official position. So, the romantic and suave man chose to give up. Life is not only about the present, but also about poetry and the distant.

In addition to her family background, the poetess was 31 years older than him. He was 42 years old and full of vigor, while she was years old and still charming. In the end, the poetess saw through the world, put on a Taoist robe, and became a nun, free from all worries.

After bidding farewell to his 42-year-old aunt, he went to work in Shaoxing, Zhejiang. It happened that a famous opera troupe came to the place for a national tour. He had just experienced the pain of a broken heart, so he chose to watch the opera to relieve his boredom and worries. It didn't matter that the troubles of the broken heart were immediately thrown away, because when he saw the actress on the stage, he immediately exclaimed, "I'm in love again..."

The actress on the stage was the female owner of the troupe, a married woman who started a business with her husband. However, he did not mind being a mistress at all, and used his power to openly pursue the actress, causing a sensation in the city and making it known to everyone. Not only was it known to women and children in the free shipping areas of Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai, but even colleagues in the court also made fun of it. It can be said that in that era without the Internet, Weibo and YouTube, this man became a top star in the country with his romantic scandals.

Although his scandal with the actress was a hot topic across the country, the actress's background and her label of "married woman" would inevitably lead to the failure of this relationship.

Scumbag.

Generally speaking, people have a "first love complex". Even if the man is a scumbag, there will be a time when he is innocent and naive. The beauty of first love lies in its innocence, which only talks about feelings and not reality. Therefore, first love often leaves people with beautiful and immature memories.

Even this scumbag, when he got old, looking back on the past, what he couldn't let go of the most was still his first love, and the one he couldn't let go of the most was still the infatuated girl back then... So he picked up his pen and wrote a novel (legend), turning himself and his first love girlfriend into the hero and heroine in the novel. This novel has been circulated to this day, adapted into a drama, and put on the screen. In the novel, the heroine's name used the real name of his first love girlfriend - Cui Yingying; and he used the pseudonym Zhang Sheng. The book is called "The Story of Yingying", and later generations have continuously adapted and improved it on the basis of it. The most well-known one developed from it is a Peking Opera repertoire - "The Romance of the West Chamber".

He let Cui Yingying down, so Zhang Sheng and Cui Yingying in the book broke through the feudal shackles with the help of Hongniang and lived a shameless and happy life from then on.

When he was mourning his late wife, he even wrote down the famous line "Once you have seen the sea, all other waters are but puddles; except for Mount Wushan, all other clouds are but mounds." However, judging from his later behavior, it seems that it is hard to say whether it is water or cloud, so whenever someone quotes this line in a love letter, there are always people who hypocritically say it is unlucky.

He left "The Story of Yingying" to his first love Cui Yingying, left the eternal masterpiece of the vast sea and Wushan Mountains to his deceased wife, left "A Gift to Xue Tao" to his old aunt, a female poet, and left "A Gift to Liu Caichun" to the actress.

He is Yuan Zhen, a famous poet in the Tang Dynasty.

Yuan Zhen, a scumbag and romantic poet, not only made outstanding contributions to nine-year compulsory education, but also deeply influenced the reforms of the Later Zhou Dynasty, the fuse of which was his actions as the governor of Tongzhou.

Yuan Zhen's works were collected in the 100-volume "Yuanshi Changqing Collection". Chai Rong read through it in his spare time and was moved by one of the articles, "Equal Distribution of Land".

This "Equal Land Distribution Memorial" was also included in the Complete Tang Poems (Volume 0651). At that time, Yuan Zhen was demoted to Tongzhou. After a detailed investigation, Yuan Zhen submitted a memorial to the court and proposed a targeted reform plan. The original name of the memorial was "Tongzhou Memorial on Equal Land Distribution".

In his memorial, Yuan Zhen pointed out the unfairness and injustice of Tongzhou’s taxation. For example, the government collected taxes based on the survey conducted 36 years ago, but the actual situation was that due to the serious desertification of land and population migration, many lands had been abandoned, and the people were still paying taxes for lands that did not exist. Another example was the powerful landlords who annexed lands, but there was a serious situation of tax evasion (only 70% of the tax was collected for every 80% of the land), and the tax evasion rate of the land was as high as % to %! And so on and so forth…

Therefore, Yuan Zhen proposed the suggestion of "equal distribution of land and equal taxation", which means that taxes should be evenly distributed according to the actual number of acres of land and its fertility. This would reduce the burden on the poor and at the same time crack down on tax evasion by the rich. It would not only increase the government's fiscal revenue, but also prevent population escape and narrow the gap between the rich and the poor.

After reading this article, Chai Rong was deeply inspired, so he ordered people to make it into "Diagram of Equal Field Distribution" and gave it to all military governors and provincial governors, requiring everyone to have a copy. Today, it would be promoted as a must-read on "Study to Make the Country Strong" so that all local officials and administrative heads in the world can learn its ideas and understand its spirit.

Afterwards, Chai Rong issued an official edict, saying that he had no sleep in the long night, and he read the scumbag's "Equal Land Distribution Table", which made him applaud and slam his head. He forwarded it to princes for viewing, and found it shocking. He used it as a map of equal land distribution, which was forwarded all over the country and liked three times.

Chai Rong immediately took action and sent out a central special inspection team of 34 people headed by Zuo Sanqi Changshi Ai Ying to promote the equal-field reform in various provinces across the country.

Ai Ying and others left Beijing in October of the fifth year of Xian De (958). By February of the following year (10), the reform work had made phased progress.

Take the capital city (Kaifeng Prefecture, Bianzhou) as an example. According to the original official records, the total taxable land was more than 10 hectares. After field investigation, it was found that there were actually more than 2 hectares more than that. In other words, these more than 4 hectares were "illegal households" who evaded taxes. It is really shocking that under the emperor's feet, the proportion of "illegal households" is as high as 2%! Not to mention other areas where the emperor is far away.

After organizational research, it was decided to reduce or exempt taxes on 3 hectares of land, and then ordered other regions to implement the same ratio.

It was found that 4 yuan was exempted and 2 yuan was exempted, and the tax reduction ratio was as high as 3%+! Obviously, Chai Rong's "Equal Land Reform" was not to squeeze money from the hands of the poor people, but also fully took into account the emotions of the rich class, reflecting the moderate nature of the policy. On the basis of increasing taxation, it grasped the real situation of the national economy, and at the same time reduced the resistance to reform to a minimum, making it practical.

From this perspective, Chai Rong can also be called a great reformer.

(End of this chapter)