The difference between the prefectural government and the county government is not only in the door knockers, the more obvious difference is in the lobby.

For example, the lobby of Kunshan County has three rooms, while the lobby of Chaozhou Prefecture has seven rooms. The roof is decorated with tile beasts, and the beams, pillars, and eaves are painted in turquoise.

The lobby of the government office is located on a four-foot-high bluestone base with three steps. In front of the platform in front of the hall, there are three more steps, fully demonstrating the standards and majesty of a government office.

In the lobby, on both sides of the desk, there are ceremonial signs such as "Silence" and "Avoidance", as well as the official title plate of Mr. Zhao Erye.

Although Mr. Zhao Erye's ceremonial guard was less than that of the prefect, the plaque with "Wuchen Number One Scholar" was more valuable than countless flags, fans, umbrellas and spears.

Actually, this plaque was brought by Liu Rugao the day before yesterday. When Mr. Zhao Er was guarding the city in **zhou, he saw that all the official sedan chairs and ceremonial guards were left with him.

Liu Rugao wanted to take the opportunity of returning the ceremonial guard to privately apologize to Mr. Zhao, but he didn't know whether Zhao Shouzheng was really busy and didn't want to see him. In short, he didn't see his noble classmate until today.

Looking at Master Zhao sitting in front of the screen painted with the sea, river cliffs, clouds and geese, with the glittering aura of the protagonist all over his body, Liu Rugao wanted to slap himself twice. How could he be so short-sighted?

~~

Qin Shunhan, Huang Yilong and Liu Rugao are the only three Jinshi among the ten county magistrates.

The other six county magistrates were mostly from Juren families, and even Huilai County Magistrate Ye Chaozhen was a Suigong Jiansheng...

Compared with the county magistrates of Suzhou and Songjiang prefectures, all of whom were successful candidates in the two imperial examinations, they were indeed a bit shabby.

The Ministry of Personnel's Wenxuan Division did not make random arrangements when assigning officials. Basically, the importance of a region and the difficulty of becoming an official can be seen from the allocation of officials.

As mentioned before, the best conditions in Chaozhou Prefecture are in the small plain of Hanjiang River where the prefecture capital is located. The land here is fertile, the people are docile and obedient, the taxes are high and the troubles are few. Therefore, the two counties of Haiyang and Raoping located here have always been run by officials who were Jinshi graduates as county magistrates.

But later, the Japanese invaders raged along the coast and pirates frequently attacked, making the two counties restless. The officials who went there to gain experience often failed. For a time, they were regarded as a daunting task by the new scholars.

The Ministry of Personnel's approach to solving this problem is quite similar to the reform of state-owned enterprises in later generations. If the problem cannot be solved, it can be separated from it. Since it is the coastal part of the two counties that has brought various troubles, then the negative assets can be divested.

Therefore, in the 42nd year of Jiajing, the coastal parts of the two counties and part of Jieyang County were merged to form Chenghai County, which means "clearing up the sea atmosphere" and let Chenghai County take on the responsibility of coastal defense and protect the Hanjiang Plain behind it.

Haiyang and Raoping, which were lightly equipped, became the favorites of the new Jinshi. And Chenghai County, which was responsible for bearing the attacks of the pirates, was naturally in charge of those inferior... crossed out, and replaced by the mature and steady Juren Jiansheng. Therefore, since the establishment of Chenghai County, the four county magistrates were all Juren, and the current Magistrate Cai was no exception.

As for the three counties of Chengxiang, Dapu and Pingyuan, they are all in the mountainous area in the north of Chaozhou. Together with the neighboring southern Jiangxi and Fujian, they formed the famous Central Soviet Area in later generations.

Our party chose this area because it was particularly suitable for revolution. In those days, the natives and the Hakkas fought every day. They would start fighting if they disagreed with each other, and the county town was captured several times.

Teng Biaozhang, the magistrate of Pingyuan, and Yan Ruoyu, the former magistrate of Chengxiang, were both kidnapped by rioters and taken to the mountains. The latter was detained for a full six months before being redeemed by the government.

After being released, the surviving County Magistrate Yan did not even enter the county town. He wrote a letter of resignation and ran back to his hometown overnight. He would not do this job no matter how much money he was offered...

Teng Biaozhang was luckier. He was held hostage for less than ten days. He persuaded the rioters to release him by appealing to their emotions and reason. The imperial court saw that he was a popular person, so they let him settle down in the mountains of Pingyuan County for eight years.

It is conceivable that no official who was a Jinshi graduate would be willing to risk his life and go to these four counties to explore the mountains, so these three county magistrates have always been reserved for Juren students.

The remaining four counties, Chaoyang, Jieyang, Huilai and Puning, have better natural environments.

Especially Chaoyang County, located in the Lianjiang Plain, has a considerable amount of arable land, but it is far from the jurisdiction of Chaozhou Prefecture and close to the sea. In this era, being close to the sea is synonymous with chaos. In fact, it was not so bad originally, otherwise they would not have sent a Jinshi to be the county magistrate.

But the unexpected happened. Last year, the imperial court recruited Lin Daoqian, who was entrenched in Xidong Village, Chenghai County. In order to avoid his threat to the Hanjiang River estuary, the damn gentry in the capital actually made some moves in the province and settled Lin Daoqian in Chaoyang County!

The gentry in Chaoyang naturally resisted fiercely, but they could not prevail. The province still settled Lin Daoquan in Xiawei and allocated him more than a thousand acres of fertile land so that he could support the troops.

Huang Yilong was in a terrible situation. He was doing his job as a county magistrate, but suddenly the province forced a great sea lord with a complete army to come in and said that from now on, you are a family and you must love each other. It would be strange if he didn't collapse.

In just over a year, nearly half of the people in Chaoyang County had left - some of them moved to the provincial capital or Jieyang and stayed far away.

What Magistrate Huang was unwilling to admit was that most of the people were seduced by Lin Daoqian. No matter they were good family members or desperate scoundrels, they all came to him with their families, which made him feel deeply ashamed.

What's worse is that the gentry and common people in the county felt that they were betrayed by the government, so they were full of anger and took their anger out on him, the incompetent county magistrate. Now in the county, he is basically a nobody and can't do anything. He just wants to finish his term and leave this damn place as soon as possible.

~~

The situation in Jieyang is that the county seat is located in the Rongjiang Plain, and the cultivated land area is also considerable. Unfortunately, the Lianjiang River also flows through the county, and there is also the Longjiang River. These three rivers with abundant water flow almost flood every year, forcing the people to flee every year. It is somewhat similar to Kunshan in the past.

But the situation in Jieyang is much worse than that in Kunshan, because half of the county is mountainous. The large mountainous area in Jiexi makes the county magistrate tremble with fear all the time, not knowing when the thunder will explode.

For example, this year, the beloved Li Zhifu disappeared in the mountainous area of ​​Jieyang, and there is no trace of him to date.

Last year, when Lan Yiqing and Lai Yuanjue started the rebellion, Jiexi was also the core area that joined the rebels. Therefore, Shi Wending, the magistrate of Jieyang, had lost all hope and was just waiting for the imperial court to dismiss him and investigate him.

As for Puning County, it was established at the same time as Chenghai County. The imperial court separated a part of Chaoyang County to establish this county. The name Puning was given to pray for "universal peace".

As I said before, people will talk about what they lack, so the role and situation of this county can be imagined. The public security in Puning County is extremely complicated, with bandits and pirates running rampant and having a very weak presence in the county.

Because of the chaos and poverty, there is not even a county seat. It has been eight years since the establishment of the county. Chenghai County was established at the same time and the county seat has been built long ago.

Puning County Magistrate Dai Jiuchou was still living in the home of a wealthy family in the county, leading a very miserable life.

But Puning County cannot be called the worst because there is also Huilai County.

The county is located in the coastal area bordering Huizhou. To the northwest are endless mountains. It is more than 110 miles away from the nearest Chaoyang County. It is very remote and is the first choice for the court to send people to guard the border. Therefore, the local people are extremely fierce and stubborn. They have always been the main force to go to sea. Entire villages and towns go to be pirates, so it is called the hometown of pirates.

Bandits would come down from time to time to rob. Sometimes the county magistrate had to rely on pirates to defend his hometown in order to save his life.

Being a county magistrate in a place like this, you can imagine how dangerous it is...

Basically, all the previous magistrates of Huilai either died heroically or were dragged into the pirates' trap and became their accomplices, and were finally beheaded by the imperial court... In short, everyone in the officialdom regarded coming here as a hell of a place, so even the candidates for the imperial examination were unwilling to come, and they could only find a student to take the blame.

Therefore, the court's request to the old magistrate Ye Chaozhen was very simple: just live well and don't surrender to the enemy and bring shame to the court.

As for taxes, grain, and court decrees, just deal with them as you see fit and don't force them.

This is the overview of the ten counties under the rule of Mr. Zhao. It is really sad to think about it. When people are officials in other places, they are called officials with a criminal record, which means they may lose their jobs at any time for some reason.

Being an official in Chaozhou means you are risking your life. It is not an exaggeration to say that it is like "waiting to die in the officialdom".

~~

Under such circumstances, the household registration and land tax were naturally terrible.

Chaozhou Prefecture has a total of more than 91,030 households and more than 620,000 people. Of course, this is just a look, the situation of Jiangnan's crazy concealment of household registration also exists in Chaozhou, but because a large number of people went to Southeast Asia, the discrepancy is not as large as in Jiangnan.

Haiyang County accounts for one third of the population, with a registered population of 150,000, but judging by the senses, there are also 300,000.

Chaoyang County is second, with about 100,000 registered people.

The rest of the counties have around 50,000 to 60,000 people. Only Pingyuan and Puning have the least, around 20,000 people...

With such a small population, taxes are naturally pitifully low.

The total amount of registered cultivated land in the prefecture was 36,000 hectares, and the autumn grain tax payable was 157,000 dan. The tax amount of the whole prefecture was only half of the tax amount of Kunshan County.

Kunshan County has 1,600 hectares of registered arable land, and pays 293,000 shi of autumn grain every year! I don't know whether I should be proud or cry...

"This shows how bad the conditions in our Chaozhou counties are..." several county magistrates sighed.

"This is a good thing." Master Zhao imitated his son's catchphrase and comforted everyone: "A low starting point means there is a lot of room for improvement, and the burden on farmers is light."

After a pause, he smiled and said, "We have a light burden. You don't know that when we were in Kunshan, the thing that worried me and my colleagues the most was how to get the minimum amount of imperial grain..."

He was just talking nonsense to comfort people. Every year, Kunshan County's imperial grain was collected by the Kunkaisi family for 70%, and the remaining 30% could be collected at will. In the last two years, there was too much money in the county treasury, so he even organized a tax rebate activity... As long as the people took the initiative to pay the tax grain to the county before the deadline, they could get a consumption voucher equal to half the value of the grain.

They have gone so far as to reduce the people's taxes by half in disguise. Does this mean they can't collect taxes?