Who killed the Ming Dynasty?

Chapter 112 It's about the person, not the tool.

Zhu Cilang picked up the celadon teapot and refilled everyone's teacups:

"Sir, your insight is crystal clear; this is precisely the crux of the matter."

He held the teapot and looked at everyone.

"But you gentlemen might consider further: where exactly does the root of this problem of oversight lie?"

Huang Zongxi picked up the freshly poured tea and replied:

"The vessel itself has no spirit; its power lies in the person who wields it, not in the vessel itself."

"What a profound truth! It lies in the person, not the tool! A single sentence that shatters an age-old mystery!"

Zhu Cilang immediately picked up where he left off, a look of admiration flashing in his eyes.

"People can be good or evil, and it's hard to tell the difference between them; loyalty and treachery are as different as heaven and earth."

"Some people outwardly appear good but inwardly evil, contradicting themselves on both sides."

Some people start out good but end up evil, changing their minds halfway through;

"Some people are less virtuous and more prone to evil; their nature gradually changes."

"Some people are tempted and lose their way, abandoning good for evil."

—And so on and so forth!

He paused briefly, then continued.

"The human heart is like water; its purity or turbidity lies only within a small space. I ask you, gentlemen—can this be controlled?"

Chen Zisheng suddenly grabbed his teacup and took a big gulp, even chewing a tea leaf between his teeth:

"Is such treacherous human nature beyond redemption? Are we simply allowed to corrupt the nation?"

Huang Zongxi suddenly flicked his sleeve and bowed slightly in the direction of Zhu Cilang:

"I'd like to see what they've got!"

"How will you, young master, dismantle these twenty-eight interlocking nine-ring puzzles?"

The air froze instantly.

All eyes were on Zhu Cilang.

Chen Zisheng leaned forward and grabbed the corner of the table, the ink in the inkstone swaying slightly with his rapid breathing.

Zhu Cilang suddenly grabbed the abacus beads from the table, and his tone changed:

"I don't know either... I'm just a silk merchant, how would I know about these court intrigues..."

A collective sigh of disappointment immediately followed.

In a fit of anger, Chen Zisheng slammed his wine cup to the ground, splashing wine onto the hem of Huang Zongxi's robe.

Zhu Cilang suddenly slammed the abacus beads onto the table, a glint of clarity appearing in his eyes:

"Gentlemen, do not be anxious. The new emperor in Nanjing is said to have prepared a sound method of surveillance to quell this chaotic world."

He paused, then looked around at the crowd.

"But I wonder if this potent medicine can cure a disease that has festered for centuries?"

Huang Zongxi burst into laughter:

"If the Censor's seal were effective, then every one of the twenty-eight radishes in my backyard should be engraved with 'Imperial Patrol'!"

The crowd burst into laughter, startling the copper bells on the eaves into a frenzy.

Suddenly, a jade button tumbled out of Huang Zongxi's sleeve with a "clink," bounced twice on the ground, and split in two.

As the laughter subsided, Huang Zongxi bent down to pick up the broken jade pieces and examined them closely in the sunlight:

"It's a fine piece of jade! If it hadn't broken and been exchanged for money, it could have bought a few good hoes, allowing farmers to cultivate an extra half acre of wasteland."

With a flick of his wrist, he tossed the jade clasp toward the young boy by the door.

"Take this and exchange it for candy. Remember—the sweet stuff is candy, the bitter stuff is tax!"

Zhu Cilang's hand holding the teapot paused almost imperceptibly, and a drop of water was about to fall from the spout.

Huang Zongxi, quick-witted and agile, gently lifted the water droplet with his finger from the bottom of the pot, causing it to retract. He grinned.

"Young master, please don't be alarmed. This jade clasp was part of my wife's dowry. It just broke in two, and she'll inevitably have to kneel on the abacus when she gets home."

The entire room erupted in laughter once again!

Before the laughter had even faded, a seagull swept past the window, its reflection scattering across the shoes of the skipping children as they hopped away.

Zhu Cilang turned the celadon teacup on the table and slowly spoke:

"Sir, your apt analogy of 'sweet sugar and bitter tax' reminds me of my experience when my merchant ship passed Huanghu Rock just now."

He suddenly pulled a tax bill from his sleeve, which listed twelve items.

Huang Zongxi took the tax bill and used an awl to poke the words "River God Incense Money" three times heavily:

"This is what Huang calls 'the harm of accumulated problems that cannot be reversed'!"

[If old taxes aren't abolished, new taxes will keep being added, and once they're added, they can never be reduced back!]

"During the reign of Emperor Taizu, the commercial tax was one-thirtieth, but now it's exploited at every level—"

He grabbed a few salted roasted peanuts and threw them onto the tax form.

"Just like these peanuts, farmers want to exchange them for silver to pay taxes, but first they are pressured by brokers to lower the price, and then they are exploited by tax officials."

"In the end, even the seeds were lost; this is what is meant by 'taxes not reflecting the harvest'!"

The grain grown cannot be directly taxed; it must first be sold cheaply to merchants for silver, which is then used to pay taxes.

Zhu Cilang said no more, picked up a wolf-hair brush and wrote quickly, three strings of numbers appearing on the paper:

"Gentlemen, please look at this muddled account—"

Chen Zisheng leaned forward, stared at the numbers on the paper, and gasped.

Zhu Cilang continued:

"During the Zhengde reign, the annual revenue was equivalent to two million taels of silver. By the end of the Jiajing reign, it had risen to four million taels, and by the thirteenth year of the Chongzhen reign, it had reached twenty million taels."

"Twenty million!"

Chen Zisheng screamed, his face turning deathly pale.

"The nine border regions have been owed wages for three years, yet the people of Shaanxi are still eating clay. This silver...this silver has all flowed into whose treasury?"

Zhu Cilang pointed his finger heavily at the entry for "pre-collection of funds for suppressing the rebellion":

"The three taxes were originally intended for suppressing bandits, but last year, ten counties in Shaanxi Province began collecting them in advance until the twentieth year of Chongzhen's reign."

"The soldiers of the Henan garrison have not received their pay for three months, and the commander of a thousand men has led his troops to rob tax silver—this is not tax collection; it is clearly pouring tung oil on a pile of dry firewood."

Chen Zisheng gripped the edge of the tax form with two fingers, pulling the Xuan paper straight.

"The young master's accounts are even clearer than those of the Minister of Revenue!"

"But this silver neither went into the national treasury nor ended up in the pockets of ordinary people. Could it all have been turned into incense ash and offered to the City God Temple?"

Zhu Cilang sneered:

"The money naturally ended up in the pockets of corrupt officials and powerful clans."

He paced to the window, looking down at the dock below, his voice somber:

"Officials at all levels embezzled tax revenue by colluding with local powerful families; princes and nobles seized vast tracts of land but did not pay taxes, causing the court's tax revenue to dry up, leaving them with no choice but to intensify their exploitation of the common people."

Huang Zongxi, his hair standing on end in anger, suddenly picked up his brush, and ink flew everywhere:

"I'll write the letter tonight!"

"If the emperor still considers this Ming Dynasty to be the rule of the Zhu family, he should see how the people's hard-earned money has been siphoned off!"

"Sir, wait a minute!"

Zhu Cilang suddenly pressed his hand down.

"Tax supervision is merely a symptom; the real malignant tumor is a wound that cuts to the heart. Do you dare to dissect it and see for yourselves?"

Huang Zongxi suddenly straightened his body, his voice resolute:

"I'd gladly offer my liver and gallbladder to wash my ears!"

Zhu Cilang suddenly turned to face the crowd, his blue cloth robe being lifted by a corner by the draft.

Sunlight streamed in through the window crack, splitting his silhouette into light and shadow.

"Living space, the living space of the lowest-class people!"

Before he finished speaking, his finger suddenly pointed out the window.

Everyone was startled, and their eyes all turned to look—

There was a hunchbacked old fisherman, his carrying pole bent into a crescent shape, walking with faltering steps.

Two bluefish suddenly leaped out of the fish basket, splashing their blood-red scales on the stone pavement. The leather boots of the official's sedan chair bearers ran over the fish without hesitation.

Zhu Cilang's voice, with its penetrating power, broke through the rising aroma of tea:

"Living space is divided into two parts—"

"Firstly, it refers to tangible living space."

"Secondly, it is the invisible living space."

"The tangible are fields and houses; the intangible are opportunities for survival. The former can be measured, the latter is like a candle flickering in the wind!"

His voice suddenly rose, startling Chen Zisheng so much that he almost dropped the teacup in his hand.

"As you can see, from the Hongwu Emperor to the Chongzhen Emperor, there were two hundred years of relentless oppression!"

He suddenly looked at Chen Zisheng, as if questioning the heavens:

"Those in power used rules as knives and etiquette as anvils, slicing Emperor Taizu's grand vision of 'the people are the foundation of the state' into a fish-scale-like mess of 'the rich feasting behind the red gates.'"

"The real cancer did not originate with the Wanli mining tax, nor did it end with the Chongzhen Emperor's abolition of the postal service!"

Chen Zisheng's eyes were bloodshot:

"What is that?"

The old man on the left, holding his cup, froze in mid-air.

The young scholar on the right held his breath, his eyes filled with horror.