On the second day of the Chinese New Year, Master Zhao really brought several boatloads of rice, flour, grain and oil to visit the five-guarantee households in the county... Oh no, the widows, widowers and poor people.

Unfortunately, there were no reporters and no way to take pictures, so I could only ask Xu Yuanchun to draw a few sketches, which was better than nothing.

County Magistrate Zhao also made a special trip to the Kunnan Lake embankment construction site to wish the laborers who did not rest during the Spring Festival a happy new year and naturally gave them some reward money.

Although each person gets a small amount, there are so many people working, so it ends up being another huge expense.

After spending all this money, Mr. Zhao had basically used up all the money he had worked so hard to earn before the New Year...

But it doesn’t matter, there is still a long time to come, and you can make more money.

The third day of the first lunar month is the beginning of spring, and grand ceremonies to welcome the spring are held throughout the country on this day.

Master Zhao also wore sacrificial robes, led the officials and people, held high up the sign with the word "Spring", played music, rang gongs and set off firecrackers, and worshipped the Spring Ox and the God of Grain with great fanfare.

After the worship was over, Master Zhao personally plowed a field outside the county town, meaning that he was plowing the field on behalf of the emperor in order to pray for a good harvest.

Then the Spring Festival team carried the paper-made Spring Ox and Mang God to the "Spring Festival Pond" in front of the county government hall and offered them there, waiting to "whip the spring" the next day.

In addition, the owner of the oxen selected by Mr. Zhao to cultivate the land and the land he cultivated personally can enjoy tax exemption during this year.

~~

On the fourth day of the first lunar month, the county held a Spring Whipping Ceremony.

On this day, the county government's gate, main gate and ceremonial gate were opened to the public.

There were incense tables and offerings in front of the hall, and people were playing flutes and music. For a county, it was quite grand.

At the beginning of the ceremony, Mr. Zhao led the officials and the people to kneel facing north and worship the Spring Ox God. After they stood up, County Magistrate He beat the drum three times, and the officials circled the ox three times with colored sticks, and the clerk in the ritual room sang loudly: "Whip Spring!"

Master Zhao took the colored stick and beat the Spring Ox. The ox's stomach, which was filled with red dates, walnuts, grains and other crops, fell to the ground.

The people who had been waiting for a long time cheered and rushed forward, scrambling for food to get a good start, hoping for a good harvest this year!

Once the Spring Whip Ceremony was over, Mr. Zhao's official duties during the New Year were finally over, but he was still busy.

Because he promised Ning An that they would go to a garden in Suzhou to stay for two days, with no one else but the two of them...

How could Mr. Zhao, who had nothing in his pocket, say no? After returning to the magistrate's residence and changing into casual clothes, he slipped out through the back door, boarded the princess's carriage, and headed straight for Suzhou City!

It's not easy for the master...

~~

The days of the New Year pass the fastest. Before we know it, it is the sixth day, the day when the government offices open for business.

However, from the 11th to the 20th of the first lunar month, officials had ten days off granted by Emperor Chengzu, so the five days between the two holidays inevitably made people restless and difficult to concentrate on their work.

Therefore, usually, the superiors would not arrange any important tasks during these days, and the plans for the new year would be left until after the Lantern Festival holiday, when everyone has calmed down and made arrangements.

But the current governor of Yingtian is Hai Rui, so it is obviously not the same as usual.

On the sixth day of the Lunar New Year, after the opening ceremony of the Nanjing Yingtian Governor's Office, Hai Zhongcheng brazenly announced two new policies that shocked the south of the Yangtze River!

First, from now on, "officials and civilians will share the same land and grain!"

The governor's office ordered that all counties in the ten prefectures and one state of Yingtian should immediately and thoroughly revise the land registers and change all official fields into private fields. From now on, all fields in the south of the Yangtze River will be treated equally and taxed according to the rate of private fields!

This is an initiative that Lin Run has been promoting while he was in office.

Previously, Jiangnan had a distinction between government fields and private fields, with government fields accounting for as much as half. Since the rent and tax on government fields was twice that of private fields, the people who were allocated government fields had to work hard for a year but could not even fill their stomachs, and had to sell their children to pay the taxes, which was not worth it.

Therefore, they either fled and abandoned the land, or donated the official land to the powerful families to avoid heavy taxes. As a result, Jiangnan had a heavy tax in name only, but in fact it failed to complete the tax task every year... For local officials, this was a more serious crime than corruption and bribery.

They could only find ways to complete the court's tax collection tasks, such as imposing additional taxes on people's land or on industry and commerce.

As a result, officials were miserable, farmers were living in dire straits, and citizens were full of complaints, which led to civil unrest in the south of the Yangtze River.

"Officials and civilians share the same land and grain equally" was the best remedy to solve the plight of officials and civilians in Jiangnan. Since then, official farmland has no longer suffered from heavy taxes, and the burden on civilians to cultivate official farmland has been reduced, so those who abandoned the farmland will naturally return to cultivate the land.

In this way, the government's tax revenue seems to have decreased, but in fact, the government fields had already had little income before, so the tax revenue for the prefectures and counties was actually increased.

Of course, it takes great courage to implement such a new policy that changes the ancestral law. For the Ming bureaucrats who are used to seeking stability, it is really hard to imagine.

This new policy is already exciting enough, right? But the second new policy is even more exciting!

~~

Hai Rui's second new policy - combine the land tax, corvée and other miscellaneous taxes of all counties and prefectures into one, collect silver taels, and pay it per mu! From now on, all counties and prefectures in Yingtian's ten prefectures and one state will immediately implement the "One Whip Law"!

Specifically speaking, in terms of land tax and various levies and miscellaneous taxes, they will be divided entirely according to the amount of land. The more land, the more it will be paid; the less land, the less it will be paid; and if there is no land, no tax will be paid.

As for the other major part of the tax and labor service, "corvée", Hai Rui ordered each county to compile a "tiger head and mouse tail book", breaking the traditional division of lijia and registering all households in the county, big or small. The big and rich households with more people and grain were listed at the front to bear the heavy labor service, while the small and poor households with less people and grain were listed at the back to bear the light labor service.

The front part is for big households like a tiger's head, and the back part is for small households like a rat's tail, so it is called the "Tiger Head and Rat Tail Book".

At the same time, the governor's office ordered all prefectures to calculate the grain tax of each county and use it as a basis for assigning corvée labor in each county.

Then, each county calculated the total amount of silver needed to hire laborers according to the number of corvée labor given by the prefecture, deducted the exemptions for scholars and chaste women, and distributed three-quarters of the silver on the land.

The remaining one quarter was evenly distributed among all the people in the county.

The most obvious benefit of this method of "counting the grain and grain of a county and assigning corvée to the county" was that it abolished the "rotational corvée system" that had been in place for 200 years in the Ming Dynasty. The original system of assigning corvée in rotation based on the number of people was changed to a system that combined the number of acres of land owned and the number of people.

Moreover, in the silver tax, the weight of land accounted for three quarters, and the weight of the population accounted for only one quarter. In this way, the burden of the people with no land or little land was naturally greatly reduced.

The burden that was lightened for the common people naturally fell on the heads of the gentry who owned more land…

It is conceivable how the wealthy families in Jiangnan would react to this.

Well, I guess I'll just have to bear with it for now... Lord Hai has sentenced more than 15,000 cases, but the sentences have not been executed yet!

The defendants in those cases overlapped greatly with the wealthy and powerful families in Suzhou. If anyone dared to speak out against it, the government would arrest them immediately! !

Niu Chenshi and others suddenly realized that it was no wonder that Hai Gong was obsessed with filing lawsuits and trying cases before the New Year. It turned out that it was all to pave the way for the new policy at the beginning of the year.

It’s high, really high!