As the weather grew colder, the common people in the north covered their most important wheat seedling fields with a layer of straw, and everyone began to have more free time.
Zhao Hanzhang issued the corvée labor order at this time. Considering the war had just ended this year, she didn’t issue a very heavy corvée order—she only required each household to provide one adult male for fifteen days of service.
They could dredge channels, level official roads, or repair roads and buildings in their own villages. For households without adult males, women served half the labor. She instructed the village heads in each province and county to arrange carefully and not exhaust the people’s strength.
The decree was issued not only to the provinces and commanderies but also to the schools in each commandery and county, requiring each school to assist counties in publicizing the work while helping counties manage the corvée laborers.
There was also an element of supervision in this.
The county magistrates weren’t stupid either—they knew Zhao Hanzhang was preventing them from embezzling or misappropriating the corvée laborers’ food and wages.
That’s right—corvée service now was a bit different from before. The county office was responsible for meals and would also pay a certain wage.
Although the wage was extremely small, it still felt different.
Previously they had no wages for corvée service, and some places didn’t even provide meals—you had to bring your own food when going to serve.
Zhao Hanzhang had always trusted the students in the schools more, and those students lived up to Zhao Hanzhang’s trust. They were full of enthusiasm—not just the orphans and children from poor families, but even the aristocratic children who entered the schools later. After joining the schools, they too were filled with passion, as if willing to sacrifice everything for Zhao Hanzhang, for the country, for the people.
Moreover, Zhao Hanzhang had opened channels of communication between county schools and the Imperial Academy. Students could not only write letters to students and teachers at the Imperial Academy for discussion and questions, but could also reach the Emperor’s ears through the Imperial Academy.
Well, that meant reporting to Zhao Hanzhang, such as about local county magistrates embezzling and accepting bribes, or oppressing the people with harsh policies.
Apparently last month there were two county magistrates who misappropriated relief grain distributed by the court, resulting in double-digit deaths from starvation in their counties, so students wrote letters to the Imperial Academy.
Students at the Imperial Academy immediately forwarded the letters to the Censorate, which passed them up to Zhao Hanzhang.
Zhao Hanzhang immediately ordered censors to investigate the two counties. Indeed they found corruption and cruelty, so the magistrates of both counties were replaced. Not only that, both magistrates’ homes were raided, and the two were imprisoned and escorted to Luoyang for trial.
No one knew if they would be executed.
According to Jin law, embezzlement alone wasn’t enough for execution—at most you’d lose your position. But… they had caused terrible consequences, and Zhao Hanzhang had always loved the people. This was also the first corruption case after the war ended. Any official with discernment felt the two magistrates were in grave danger.
Zhao Hanzhang would very likely make an example of them.
This couldn’t really be blamed on Zhao Hanzhang—blame those two for being too stupid. Even if they wanted to embezzle, they should have at least waited a while longer. Right now was the time when everything was being rebuilt and political control was being consolidated. Zhao Hanzhang was just waiting to establish her authority. These two delivered themselves right to her doorstep—how could she possibly pass up the opportunity?
Those two counties, one in Yanzhou and one in Yuzhou—everyone knew about it so quickly and clearly entirely because of the gazette now being widely distributed nationwide. Well, no—excluding the Jiangdong and Jiangnan regions, the gazette was distributed everywhere else.
The so-called gazette had existed since Han times, though there were very few. Basically, officials from each commandery and county stationed in the capital would copy down recent imperial edicts, decrees, ministers’ memorials, and major events at court, then send them back to their commandery.
Usually it was once every half month, but if particularly major events occurred at court, they might send them more frequently, every three or four days.
This way, southern officials could know what happened in the north, northern officials could understand the southern situation, and the capital served as a political information hub.
Of course, this system only functioned during peaceful years. Before Zhao Hanzhang restarted the gazette, large-scale gazette distribution in Dajin had been suspended for over twenty years. Only some governors and commandery administrators with greater power would send people to stay in the capital to collect this information and send it back.
Zhao Hanzhang used to freeload off Zhao Zhongyu’s gazette. Each time he received a gazette, he would have someone copy it for her, and he would supplement it with much information not included in the gazette.
When Zhao Hanzhang set up her own gazette system, she didn’t do it that way.
Because the craftsmen at the paper mill were very capable. After several years of exploration and experimentation, they could not only make good paper from tree bark but could also mix wheat straw, rice straw, and various other materials to make good paper.
This kind of paper was even cheaper to produce, and the paper mill had expanded. Every day they could produce large quantities of paper.
With paper, plus the increasingly mature movable type printing at the publishing house, Zhao Hanzhang could expand the gazette.
She entrusted the gazette to the Imperial Academy and the publishing house, establishing a Gazette Office within the Imperial Academy, with Imperial Academy students holding positions within it.
She required them to produce a gazette every two days. The gazette would not only include decrees, edicts, and major court events from those two days, but also some officials’ views and suggestions on various政治matters. They could even include good essays and poems in the gazette.
This kind of gazette wasn’t just for commandery and county governors anymore. Every county school had to have it. Students at the schools received the gazette for free, but they also had obligations. Their obligation was to read aloud to the common people in their county the decrees and edicts in the gazette, as well as important court measures that affected their vital interests.
At the same time, the gazette accepted submissions from officials and renowned scholars nationwide.
Of course, non-renowned scholars could submit too. As long as what they wrote had substance, Zhao Hanzhang permitted it to be printed. Oh, because the gazette required a very high level of literacy, the director of the Gazette Office was concurrently held by Zhao Cheng.
He also handled manuscript review. Zhao Hanzhang only looked occasionally.
After the gazette was produced in the capital, it would be sent through the postal system to each province, from provinces to commanderies, and each commandery would reprint the same gazette to send out.
However, Zhao Hanzhang’s publishing houses and paper mills currently only had eight locations. Some commanderies still didn’t have them, so they could only buy from nearby provinces and commanderies.
The cost of buying the gazette wasn’t much—mainly the transportation costs were high. So Youzhou Governor Shi Lei and Bingzhou Governor Beigong Chun, who lacked publishing houses, both submitted memorials requesting the court also establish publishing houses and paper mills in their territories.
Zhao Hanzhang agreed, ordering each province and commandery to find locations and build publishing houses and paper mills themselves, as well as gather craftsmen. She would provide the blueprints.
Currently, publishing houses and paper mills everywhere were modeled after Xiping’s publishing house and paper mill. Xiping’s were also the most advanced. By now they had expanded three times. The paper mill had long since achieved scale, producing over fifty thousand sheets of paper daily, reaching as high as ninety thousand sheets at peak times.
Of course these were large sheets that could be cut. For books printed in our current format, each sheet could be cut into sixteen pages.
Don’t think that because production capacity had increased, paper was sufficient.
Never mind other uses—just the court’s daily office paper consumption was enormous.
Settling refugees, creating registers and recording names, handling household registrations, and recording various information all required large quantities of paper.
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