The clerk ran out and found two yamen runners who hadn’t yet finished their shift and left, instructing them to go fetch the county magistrate.
Oh, the county magistrate was still outside the city. The eastern family of Qijia Village had a corner of their rice paddy eaten away, claiming it was done by the western family because the village ox had been the western family’s turn to use the day before.
The western family wouldn’t admit it, saying that when they had seen that rice paddy the previous day it had already been eaten, and besides, they hadn’t taken the ox out to graze but had cut grass and brought it back to mix with bean fodder to feed the ox.
The two families couldn’t reach agreement, and the dispute grew larger and larger until the lawsuit reached the county magistrate. The magistrate had no choice but to go to Qijia Village to adjudicate the case.
The clerk finally managed to wait for the county magistrate before sunset, immediately greeting him with the jade pendant and quietly reporting Fu Yong’s matter to him.
As for Fu Yong and the others who remained at the yamen, they had already seen everything in the yamen that was open to viewing. The clerk had assigned a yamen runner to watch them. They couldn’t enter the office room, but just looking at the yamen’s main hall, dining hall, and the small room open to the public that sold salt was already shocking enough for them.
Fu Yong touched the tall tables and chairs in the main hall, sighing, “Have barbarian stools and barbarian tables become so popular?”
Before they entered the mountains, the county yamen had mostly still used low tables with mats spread behind them.
The yamen runner looked at them as if they were country bumpkins and said, “Now even wine shops and restaurants have switched to tables and chairs. Only in big cities like Luoyang do some wine shops and inns still use floor tables and mats.”
Fu Yong went to look at their dining hall, but only got a glance before being stopped. “The dining hall has no food left.”
When Fu Yong saw the salt office, his mouth dropped open. He quickly asked, “Salt comes from the county yamen? What’s the price of salt now?”
“Seven wen per jin. It’s official salt now – salt can only come from the county yamen. We have a special salt official in our county yamen.” The runner looked at them puzzled. “This was announced previously. Because it’s an important national policy, all the village heads and village elders were summoned to memorize it and convey it to the villagers. Students also go to the countryside from time to time to promote it. How could you not know?”
Fu Yong took the opportunity to explain, “We fled into the mountains due to the warfare and haven’t emerged for over three years, so we don’t know how drastically the outside world has changed.”
The runner was shocked when he heard this. “You came out from the mountains?”
Fu Yong nodded, and the runner immediately asked, “Are there many of you? Do you want to register as residents of our Liang County?”
They had basically scraped up all the people still wandering on the roads and streets. As soon as they saw anyone, they would pull them to the county yamen to register and create household records, giving them land, grain, farming tools, seeds, and houses, all to get them to settle in this county.
The neighboring county was particularly annoying, putting out the slogan that they would give people mud brick houses, while their county currently only had the capacity to give thatched cottages. The brick kiln was rather far from their county, and buying bricks required a long wait in queue. Moreover, their county currently had no suitable clay for firing bricks.
Alas, the county magistrate was right – being dependent on others meant suffering some grievances. They couldn’t compete with the neighbors in recruiting people.
It could already be foreseen that after this year’s autumn harvest, their county’s total population would be less than the neighboring county’s, new population would be less than the neighbors’, tax revenue and everything else would be less than the neighbors’.
The runner looked at Fu Yong eagerly and asked, “How many of you are there? Are you all in the mountains? Are there many able-bodied people? Hahaha, it doesn’t matter if they’re not able-bodied – we like elderly people too. As long as you come, we’ll build you a house and allocate land. You won’t need to worry about grain seeds or farming tools either – the yamen will provide everything directly…”
The people behind Fu Yong were very tempted and couldn’t help looking at him.
Fu Yong, however, remained calm, withdrawing his gaze from the salt office and asking, “Is it the占田制 – Occupied Field System? How much tax must the common people pay each year? Are the seeds and farming tools rented, what’s the interest, or how long must they be returned?”
The runner was startled and quickly waved his hands. “Don’t speak carelessly! Our Great General’s current policies are quite different from the court’s previous Occupied Field System.”
He frowned in distress. “I don’t know what this system is called either. The county magistrate mentioned it once, calling it something like equal distribution. The land we give is genuinely good land – we organize people to clear and cultivate it. It’s not like before when they would just levy taxes and you could occupy as much as you could.”
Emperor Wu of Jin had issued the Occupied Field System, allowing people throughout the realm to occupy and cultivate wasteland. Men could occupy seventy mu of land, women thirty mu. Male adults were taxed on fifty mu of land, adult women on twenty mu.
Wasteland, wasteland – as the name implied, this meant land that had never been cultivated, which the common people had to scramble for and clear themselves. Regardless of whether they could clear enough land to meet the quota, they still had to pay taxes on fifty and twenty mu.
So to have enough grain, the common people could only desperately clear and cultivate land.
The land of gentry and wealthy landowners remained their own land, while the nation’s tax revenue still depended on ordinary people. The common people worked themselves to death their entire lives, all earning money and clearing land for the state and landlords.
Because there were no restrictions on buying and selling land, the land they cleared and enriched would always flow to the gentry and wealthy in various forms.
The runner had occasionally stood outside the county magistrate’s door and heard him discuss this topic with senior students from the school, so he had some impression of it.
He said proudly, “Our Great General’s field system is different. All under heaven, there is no land that is not the king’s land, so land left fallow for more than five years can be considered ownerless. The court directly reclaims ownerless land as state property and redistributes it to the people.”
“We can all receive allocated fields. According to last year’s new policy, newly registered households, regardless of whether they’re male or female adults, as long as they’re between fourteen and fifty-five years old, can all receive full allotments of口分田 – personal sustenance fields and永业田 – hereditary estate fields.” The runner often went to recruit people and register them to allocate fields, so he was most familiar with this national policy and could recite it backwards and forwards. “In our county, personal sustenance fields can be allocated at forty mu, hereditary estate fields at twenty mu.”
Worried they couldn’t distinguish between personal sustenance fields and hereditary estate fields, he explained on the side, “Personal sustenance fields are given to you for cultivation, but after death must be returned to the state. Hereditary estate fields can be passed down to children and grandchildren, but cannot be privately sold.”
“Oh right, you don’t know yet – now not only can fields not be sold, they also can’t be bought. Even officials and wealthy families cannot buy or sell land. If you want to obtain land, you must register as residents!”
Dong Shu exclaimed in amazement, “Sixty mu per person – wouldn’t a household of two have one hundred twenty mu of land? Can they even farm it all?”
“Of course they can’t farm it all,” the runner glanced at him and asked, “Have you never farmed? This land needs to be rested. Farm it one year, and it’s best to leave it fallow one year. This is called alternate cultivation. Therefore, one person actually only cultivates about thirty mu per year, and from these thirty mu several mu must be set aside for growing mulberry and hemp.”
Having reached this point in the conversation, the runner looked around and lowered his voice. “I have inside information – the Great General also feels the allocated fields are too few and plans to allocate more later to encourage us to grow more mulberry and hemp. I just don’t know if this land can be passed down to children and grandchildren.”
Dong Shu, who had been confined to the mountains where every plot had to be intensively cultivated and averaged only four mu per person, was shocked. No wait – if that were the case, unless the mountain population always remained around one hundred people, otherwise when births exceeded deaths, wouldn’t they have even less than four mu per person?
When the mountain population grew to a certain point, could they really continue hiding in the mountains forever?
The death rate could never be higher than or equal to the birth rate.
So County Lord’s family had never planned to stay in the mountains permanently – they wanted to come out!
Dong Shu looked at Fu Yong with a face full of shock.
Fu Yong’s heart was also finally beating violently because of this different field system.
He murmured, “Everyone has fields – this is the均田制 – Equal Field System—”