Chapter 59: Mobilizing the Masses (Part 2)

Tan Guihuang said, “If times were peaceful, we could live without worry just by drying salt.” He said that in reality, this saltworks could produce more than a thousand yin of salt a year. Salt merchants from Leizhou alone used to come and buy several hundred yin every year. Since Landlord Gou took over, he had driven the merchants from the mainland away to monopolize the salt trade.

“Why?” Wang Luobin found it strange. For salt merchants, it didn’t matter who they bought salt from. Why would Landlord Gou, after taking over the saltworks, forbid old customers from buying salt?

“His family has a salt company in Qiongshan. All the salt is transported to Qiongshan,” Tan Guihuang sighed. “He has his own channels to sell salt to the mainland, so why would he care about the merchants from Leizhou?”

It seemed there was an element of collusion between officials and merchants here. However, none of them understood the salt laws of the Ming Dynasty, so they couldn’t figure out the key to the matter.

“As long as there is salt, why worry about not having food and clothes?” Xi Yazhou waved his hand. “The salt merchants on the mainland are all rolling in money. Is it so hard for us, who work so hard drying salt, to make a decent living?”

Tan Chengqing’s joy suddenly turned to silence. He sighed softly. “We’re just afraid we won’t be able to keep the salt after it’s dried.”

“Don’t worry about that!” Xi Yazhou said with full confidence. “We are here. You know about these firearms, right?” He weighed the SKS rifle beside him, the blue steel of the gun gleaming faintly in the light of the kerosene lamp. “The several hundred militiamen of Huangjiazhai were finished off just like that. Are we still afraid of a few bullies who prey on the weak?”

“But what if you leave? It will be even worse.” Tan Chengqing was clearly worried about the future. “The government says you are pirates, and you say you are sea merchants. Whether pirates or merchants, you can’t stay in Lingao for a lifetime. You have iron ships and fast guns, you can leave whenever you want. But Landlord Gou is connected to the government—” He then detailed how Landlord Gou had taken over the saltworks in the past, his expression growing more disappointed. He emphasized how the clerks and runners in the yamen had all taken bribes and helped Landlord Gou oppress them, leaving them with no place to seek justice.

Xi Yazhou nodded and asked, “How many people does the Gou family have?”

“His own clan has two big households,” Tan Guihuang was obviously more familiar with the local situation than his son. The Gou family originally had two brothers. The one in the countryside was the elder Gou, whose family kept more than a hundred retainers and vicious servants, some of whom were fugitives from the mainland and were very fierce. The younger Gou, because his son had become a shengyuan, had moved to the county town, where he specialized in dealing with the government and monopolizing lawsuits. These two households colluded with each other and were a local power.

“How many people were in your village at that time?”

“There were more people in the village back then, over three hundred households.”

“Three or four hundred households, that must be at least three or four hundred able-bodied men, right?” Xi Yazhou said. “You had three or four hundred men, and you just watched as someone took over your industry?”

His words made the two men present blush and lower their heads. Just then, a clear female voice was heard: “It’s not everyone’s fault! It was all caused by the government.”

Everyone looked and saw it was the girl disguised as a man. Seeing that everyone was looking at her, she realized she had forgotten her disguise and became flustered, standing up as if to flee outside.

Du Wen quickly comforted her. Although they couldn’t speak the same language, she just smiled and held her hand. With another woman present, the girl calmed down, and a blush appeared on the part of her face not covered in soot.

“You’re Xiao Qin, right? Village Chief Tan’s daughter.” Xi Yazhou said, offering her a piece of fruit candy. “Don’t be afraid, we knew you were a girl all along.”

Tan Guihuang smiled apologetically. “She is indeed my brother’s child. Although she’s a girl, she’s his only child. Her father treasures her and has been reluctant to arrange a marriage for her, even though she’s getting older—”

In fact, the girl was only seventeen or eighteen, but in an era of early marriage and childbirth, she was indeed considered old. The girl refused the candy and instead ran over to Xi Yazhou, knelt down, and kowtowed repeatedly, begging him to help rescue her father and the other elders.

Du Wen quickly pulled her up and, regardless of whether she could be understood, rattled off a speech about gender equality, which made Zhang Xingjiao’s face turn red with anger, and he refused to translate a single word.

“Don’t worry, Xiao Qin. We will definitely help you rescue the captured villagers.” Xi Yazhou would never pass up an opportunity to show his heroic side in front of a girl. He patted his chest with an expression of utmost reliability. “Just tell us about the government’s involvement.”

It turned out that in the forty-fifth year of the Wanli era, after the earthquake in Lingao, the Ma’niao saltworks suffered great losses. The salt workers had specially submitted a petition to the county yamen at that time, requesting an exemption or a few years’ deferment of the salt tax. Although many of the salt fields were destroyed, the actual production capacity of the saltworks still had some surplus. The main problem was the huge damage to personnel and property caused by the earthquake. A respite of three or four years would have been enough to recover. But the Gou family had long coveted the saltworks. They used this opportunity, having the younger Gou conspire with a familiar clerk in the county yamen and bribing the magistrate’s advisor, to have the petition suppressed and destroyed. The elder Gou then took the opportunity to take over the salt tax collection. He used many yamen runners and thugs to press for the salt tax in the salt village day after day. The village, under duress, could only ask him to pay on their behalf, and from then on, they fell step by step into his grasp. Although the county magistrate later became aware of the matter, it was a golden rule for officials not to offend the local powerful clans. As long as the salt tax was collected normally every year and the Gou family continued to send him gifts, he turned a blind eye.

“In the end, it was the government that backed him up,” Xi Yazhou said. “Right?”

“Yes, with the government backing him, who can do anything to him?” Xiao Qin said with a look of helplessness. “Even if he came alone, we wouldn’t dare to do anything. Otherwise, with just his men, Brother Chengqing could take on three of them at once.”

Xi Yazhou knew they were getting to the core of the matter—the Gou family’s methods were not uncommon, just a case of “collusion between officials and criminals.” Collusion between officials and merchants, officials and criminals, and officials and bandits were all common social phenomena in Chinese history. Even in the 21st century, a successful person, no matter which path they took to success, always had the shadow of an official behind them. Merchants needed to make excess profits, and gang leaders needed a safe backer; all these relied on figures in the government. Even in the relatively aloof intellectual circles, it was known that an official’s hat was much more powerful than academic achievement. The Gou family of Ming Dynasty Lingao was simply following the same pattern.

To confront the government was to rebel. The common people did not actually like the governments of the various dynasties that ruled over them, but the government had harsh laws and armies—in modern terms, it controlled the “machinery of violence.” Whether you liked it or not, you had to obey it. Even the heroes of the greenwood followed the golden rule of “not fighting the officials.”

To ask the common people to confront the government, in any form, was tantamount to “rebellion”—a path the common people would absolutely not take unless they had no other choice. Xi Yazhou was certainly not naive enough to think that his encouragement could make the people shed their blood for the transmigrators’ cause. His policy was a roundabout one, perhaps what could be called a “curved revolution.”

“In the end, the Gou family is so rampant for two reasons: they keep thugs, and they collude with the government,” Xi Yazhou said with a slight smile. “The first reason is insignificant. As long as everyone can unite, his few men are not even enough to fill the gaps between our teeth. The key is the second reason. Since he can collude with the government, so can we.”

The people from the salt village stared dumbfounded at this kūnzéi “sea merchant leader,” probably finding it incredible. After a moment, Tan Guihuang cautiously said, “Does the master also know people in the government?”

“To be honest, no.”

“Then how can you connect with the government?”

“Why do you think the government connects with a local tyrant like the Gou family?”

“Isn’t it for the money?” Tan Chengqing said with a look of contempt.

“That’s right. Since the officials are greedy for gold and silver, what he has, we also have.” With that, he explained his idea to the salt workers.

The plan was not complicated: first, to seize back the right to manage the salt tax collection. With this, the Gou family had an official status. If this signboard was not smashed, the salt workers would still be terrified. As for how to seize it back, the salt workers didn’t need to worry; the transmigrators would handle it.

Once the right to the salt tax was taken back, the Gou family would have no legitimate excuse to interfere with the saltworks’ production. All he would have left was a bad debt that had been dragging on for more than a decade. Xi Yazhou understood this kind of loan-sharking with compounding interest from his time: as long as the debtor had even a little economic capacity, the creditor would never say the debt was cleared. So, rather than continuing to pay this unclear debt, it was better to write it off completely and default on it.

Losing the golden signboard of managing the salt tax, the debt issue would become a purely civil dispute, not related to the imperial grain and national tax. No matter how capable he was of colluding with the government, it would not be so easy for officials to come forward on his behalf.

Once they took back the management of the saltworks and were no longer exploited by him, the income from selling salt would be guaranteed. If they paid the salt tax and the various “customary fees” to the county as usual, the government would suffer no loss in either public or private aspects. The Gou family’s usefulness would be gone. Without usefulness, would the government still be willing to look after them?

“It’s not that simple.” As soon as Xi Yazhou finished speaking, Tan Chengqing smiled bitterly. “The Gou family is extremely familiar with the clerks and runners of the three classes and six divisions in the yamen. They have had dealings for generations, and their roots are deep and intertwined. Just for you masters to want to collect this salt tax, you won’t even get past the Household Office.”

The administration of a county in ancient times was less “rule by officials” and more “rule by clerks.” Since the Song Dynasty, local officials of prefectures and counties were mostly selected through the imperial examinations. The administrative affairs of a prefecture or county were extremely trivial. In addition to a set of cumbersome procedures for various matters and basic laws, the number of precedents that should be cited or could be used for analogy was enormous. For a certain official matter, which law or regulation to follow could not be found in the statutes and collected canons. If a small mistake was made or a fault was found by a superior, at best it would be rejected, at worst, a reprimand, which would be unbearable. At this time, one had to find a past precedent to apply to ensure it was foolproof. But what precedent to find was a science in itself. This was called the “way of the clerks.”

Those who came from the imperial examinations could speak eloquently about classics, history, and policy, and could recite poetry and the words of Confucius by heart, but few could grasp the intricacies of local administration. Not to mention anything else, just a single fish-scale register would look like gibberish to an outsider, but someone who understood it would know it contained information about the area, location, form, output, tax amount, and owner of the land. Therefore, to avoid making mistakes, or because it was too troublesome, officials could only entrust these matters to the yamen runners and clerks of the three classes and six divisions. The humble clerks in ancient society actually held the local administrative power.

Because the clerks were often hereditary and had deep connections with the local powerful households, their ties could not be severed by simple economic means. Therefore, Xi Yazhou’s plan sounded rather idealistic to them.