Looking at the utterly bewildered gaze of the cat, Chu Qiguang set it back down on the ground, turned to his sister, and said with solemn gravity, "Little Sister, if your brother ever finds out you've wiped your backside with a cat, I'll wipe my backside with you from then on."
His sister stared at him, eyes wide with shock.
Chu Qiguang asked, "Can you lick yourself clean, too?"
"Mother!" Panic instantly flared across the little girl's face. The six-year-old began to scream incoherently, but Chu Qiguang grabbed her and clapped a hand over her mouth.
He chided her, "I'm only teasing you! A little girl like you shouldn't be doing such ridiculous things."
Having scolded his sister, Chu Qiguang felt the psychological urges surging inside him, constantly racking his brain for a way to relieve them.
He recalled his past experiences on Earth, well aware that once this affliction flared up, enduring it through sheer willpower was nearly impossible. He had to treat the root cause and ease his mental stress.
Watching Chu Qiguang's face grow paler and the cold sweat beaded on his forehead, his sister secretly thought, *It must be a truly massive one...*
Just then, the faint sounds of an argument drifted from inside the house. Curiously, Chu Qiguang asked, "Who came to our house?"
His sister shook her head. "Auntie Chen from next door brought some people to see Mother."
"Auntie Chen from next door?" Chu Qiguang's eyes narrowed slightly. Piecing together what he had seen and heard in the village over the past two days, he already had an inkling.
He trotted up to the door of the earthen house and pricked up his ears, listening to the conversation within.
...
Inside the tiny earthen room, aside from a small low table, there was only an earthen kang bed.
Yet inside this practically destitute home, six people were packed together at that moment.
Aside from Ergou's mother, there were Auntie Chen from next door, the local lizheng, as well as the Wang family's housekeeper and two of their servants.
Ergou's mother wore a dejected expression as she spoke with a middle-aged man dressed like a steward.
The middle-aged man wore a blue, narrow-sleeved robe with a round collar and a wrapped headcloth. His right hand stroked a goatee, and his eyes darted from time to time, radiating shrewd calculation.
Ergou's mother said in a low voice, "Housekeeper Wang, the average price for dry fields in Qingyang County is ten taels of silver per mu. Even in a famine year, it easily fetches five taels per mu. Now you're demanding to buy our family's land for four taels a mu—you're truly leaving us no way to live..."
The man addressed as Housekeeper Wang stroked his goatee and drawled, "Mistress Zhou, it's not as if this old man is bullying you. The harvest is poor this year, and times are tough for everyone."
Ergou's mother pleaded submissively, "But..."
Housekeeper Wang's eyes glared, his patience wearing thin. "A drought has struck the fields, and no one can pay the imperial grain tax. My master had the benevolence to offer to buy up your family's land so that the folks in the village can pay their taxes, and next year he will lease the land back to you cheaply. Are you really going to bite the hand that feeds you?"
Beside him stood another rough-skinned man in a short hemp tunic—the lizheng responsible for pressing the collection of the grain tax.
In the Great Han Dynasty today, one hundred households constituted a li. The ten households among them with the most land and adult males took turns serving as lizheng, rotating once every year, tasked specifically with collecting taxes and conscripting corvée labor.
The lizheng snapped in annoyance, "Ergou's mother, if you can't pay the grain tax, the county yamen runners will be forced to come down and collect it themselves. They won't be anywhere near as reasonable as your own village folk!"
Housekeeper Wang added, "If your family isn't willing to sell the land, then borrow some high-interest loans to pay the grain tax first and talk later..."
At the mention of those predatory loans, Ergou's mother vigorously shook her head. Those loans were usury distributed by the Wang family. With compound interest piling up, selling Ergou wouldn't even begin to pay it off. Several families in the village had borrowed from them and ended up utterly ruined; Ergou's mother would never dare touch them.
Worn down by this relentless cajoling, Ergou's mother, who had long since lost all direction, nodded submissively. She was about to press her handprint to the deed, agreeing to sell the household's land.
"Wait!"
At that moment, the pale-faced Chu Qiguang pushed open the door and stepped inside. He glared at the men. "This land cannot be sold."
Auntie Chen frowned. "Gouzi, there's no business for you here. Go outside and play with your sister for a bit."
Chu Qiguang looked at Ergou's mother and said, "Mother, if we sell this land, our family will become the Wang family's slaves for generations to come."
Seeing herself ignored, Auntie Chen said in annoyance, "Do you know how many people want to place themselves under the Wang family and can't even manage it? If you work hard for the Wang family, you won't have to pay taxes, nor will you be conscripted for corvée labor. That is what a truly good life looks like!"
Ergou's mother hastily made placating apologies: "My boy is just talking nonsense. I'll sell the land right away. I'll sell it."
Chu Qiguang knew the Wang family was taking advantage of this year's drought to annex land. He held his mother back and asked, "How much land tax do we have to pay this year?"
His mother replied, "Two shi of wheat, converted to two taels and two qian of silver."
Chu Qiguang frowned. In the county, a grain basin filled level to the brim was one dou, and ten dou made one shi. Each dou scooped counted as one.
As for converting it into two taels and two qian, Qingyang County had implemented commuted silver collection several years ago, meaning they no longer took physical grain, but rather collected the equivalent in silver as taxes.
Ten qian equaled one tael of silver, bringing the total to 2.2 taels.
Hearing his mother mention two shi of wheat, his brows knitted tightly. "Didn't they only demand five dou last year?"
The lizheng beside them snapped impatiently, "A new county magistrate took office this year, and he's pursuing back taxes from previous years! The whole of Qingyang County is in utter turmoil over it; your family isn't the only one having to plug past holes."
Chu Qiguang listened, then spoke slowly, "All year round, our family scrapes food from the soil—plowing the ground, sowing seeds, applying manure, hauling water, threshing grain... Aside from farming, we have to endure corvée labor. We don't get a single day of rest. Over an entire year, we harvest only five or six shi of wheat at most.
"Every year, after paying the land tax and the adult male poll tax, there are the extra surcharges slapped on by the county yamen: equalization fees, material fees, cartage fees, treasury keeper fees... Every single thing costs money. Once those are paid, there are the worship donations for the Daoist abbey and all the customary tributes.
"On top of that, we have to seek out grain merchants to exchange our crop for silver to pay taxes, and we get exploited yet again. The grain we turn in has to be thoroughly dried and husked, but the grain we buy from them has water mixed into the bottom and is measured with tampered dou measures. Back and forth, for the exact same dou of wheat, the price difference in silver is more than ten percent.
"After toiling for a whole year, we're left with barely over four shi of grain. Divided among the three of us and broken down day by day, that comes to just over four liang per person each day. On top of that, some must be bartered for oil, salt, and clothing... With all that, how much is left for each person a day? Do you think that's enough to eat? If we hadn't caught fish and shrimp in the river and dug up bamboo shoots on the mountain behind us—living off the mountains and waters—we would have starved to death long ago!"
The lizheng snarled, "Collecting grain and paying taxes has been an unalterable principle since ancient times! Does a child like you get to lecture us?"
Chu Qiguang wasn't intimidated in the slightest. In fact, as he spoke, the psychological symptoms wracking his body were rapidly receding.
Sensing this, he grew increasingly emboldened the more he spoke: "The officials above want to clear out back taxes, but my family has paid every bit of the grain tax for our five mu of land year after year, never a copper short! Exactly who owes those taxes? Is it the lands that the village's wealthy households commended to the Daoist abbeys? Or the arable fields hidden under the names of extinct households? You people were the ones who poked these holes in the first place, and now you want to bleed my family to patch them up?"
Chapter 4