Chapter 121 Section 3 The whole county is full of centenarians

The out-of-shape appearance of the yellow book is not the most frightening thing, but the serious inaccuracy of the content of the yellow book. It stands to reason that with the passage of time, economic development, and population growth, the total amount of land in the Ming Dynasty should gradually increase.However, the record in the Yellow Book shows just the opposite—fewer and fewer fields actually pay taxes and grains.In the twenty-fourth year of Hongwu (1391 A.D.), the Yellow Book recorded that the total amount of land in the country was more than 8 million hectares.In the 15th year of Hongzhi (AD 1502), the total amount of land in the country listed on the yellow book was only 4,292,310 hectares and 75 mu. Tsuchida actually reduced by half. (Volume 2 of Houhu Zhi) Similarly, the population of the Ming Dynasty actually declined gradually.In June of the eighth year of Jiajing (AD), Huo Tao raised this question on the eve of compiling the "Da Ming Hui Dian".In his memorial to the emperor, he wrote: "In the early years of Hongwu, there were 16.55 million households, and 65.54 million households. When the war broke out, the household registration withered, and it was a widow. Hongzhi In four years, the peace will last for a long time, and the household registration will be complicated. The households are only 9.11 million, which is reduced by 1.54 million in the first year; the population is only 53.28 million, which is reduced by 70 in the first year. One hundred and sixteen thousand." (Volume 102 of Shizong Jiajing Shilu) That is to say, in the 26th year of Hongwu (AD 1393), according to the statistics of the yellow book household registration, the population had reached 6,054. Fifteen thousand eight hundred and twelve people.However, by the fourth year of Hongzhi (the year of A.D.) when the number of household registrations was compiled, the population had decreased to 53.2811158 (Wanli "Minghuidian" Volume 9, "Total Number of Household Registration") .It stands to reason that during the Hongwu period, the military revolution had just ceased, and during the Hongzhi period, there was peace for a hundred years, and remote areas such as Guizhou had already begun to be included in the household registration statistics, so it was impossible for this to happen.This only shows that the yellow book system has lost its effectiveness.

One of the purposes of Zhu Yuanzhang's formulation of the yellow book system was to make rich households bear more taxes, thereby reducing the burden on poor households, so he divided ordinary people into "three classes and nine classes".The division of upper, middle and lower households varies according to the situation in different places.In addition to normal taxation, wealthy households also have to undertake tasks such as assisting the government in collecting taxes, while the burden on poor households is greatly reduced. But after the mid-Ming Dynasty, the actual situation was completely reversed.Grass-roots officials made a lot of self-serving frauds by making books. They did not enter the population and land information according to the actual situation. Through passing on, the poor paid more taxes and the rich evaded the reality.Wealthy households who are capable of making a living are all listed as "lower rules" poor households in the yellow book, while some poor households are listed as "upper rules" and "middle rules" for no reason.Historian Gu Yanwu said:

Husbands who examine households originally thought that they should separate the rich from the poor and serve as errands, for the convenience of the poor.Now in Caoyi, for decades, the rich and powerful households have been doing tricks and fleeing to the top;The county magistrate's eyes and ears are not close enough, the poor are merged, and the rich are eliminated. It is often the same...Bei County (Wanli) was appointed in the 33rd year at the beginning of his tenure. Insufficient, those who call out to the heavens are compared to the middle-level households in the book; those who are called the low-level households are all from the branches of rich families... ("Tianxia Jun Guo Li Disease Book" Volume 39) Another important purpose of Zhu Yuanzhang's establishment of the yellow book system is to maintain the household registration system and prevent free movement of the population.After the mid-Ming Dynasty, these two goals were completely defeated.

In the second year of Yongle, Chen Ying, the censor of Zuodu, said: "In the world, there are no less than ten million households, and no less than two million official and military households." However, in the fifth year of Zhengtong, after the control of the Ming Dynasty declined, the number of military households who fled reached 1.2 million ("Records of the Zhengtong Emperor").The soldiers in the guards are far less than the regulations, some are only half, and some are less than two to three ("University Yanyi Supplement", Volume 117, "Yan Wubei").

What's more serious is that ordinary households also began to flee in large numbers. During the Xuande period (AD 1426-1435), the situation in Taicang County in the south of the Yangtze River was as follows: Chen (referring to Zhou Chen, who was the governor of the south of the Yangtze River at the time) tried to test the household registration of a city in Taicang. During the Hongwu period, he saw that Ding granted 16 acres of land. One thousand nine hundred and eighty-six households; the book was compiled in the seventh year of Xuande (AD 1432), and there are only one thousand five hundred and sixty-nine households in one ten miles.In fact, only seven hundred and thirty-eight households were seen, and the rest all escaped the number of false reports. (Zhou Chen's "Book of the Officials of the Ministry of Households") During the Longqing period (AD 1567-1572), the situation in Funing Prefecture, Fujian Province was as follows:

The nationality of Wuzhou, from Jiajing to Hongwu, the household is reduced by two-thirds, and the mouth is reduced by five-thirds.From now on, we can't add even one tithe to Jiajing. (Vol. 92 of "Tianxia Jun Guoli Disease Book", "Funing Prefecture Chronicle") During the Wanli period (AD 1573-1620), the situation of Yingtianfu in the south of the Yangtze River was as follows: ... (Ying Tianfu) At the end of Jiajing, the household registration was half of that of Zhengde, but now it is only one-fifth... (Ibid., Volume 14, Jiangnan 2, Yingtianfu) These few examples can be seen in the middle and late Ming Dynasty. The prevalence of flight.In this case, the Lijia system cannot be maintained.In most areas, "lijia are few and household registration is depressed" ("Shaanxi Tongzhi" Volume 86, "Beichen Disasters and Changes"), "the Lijia is not complete" ("Emperor Ming Decree" Volume 20).

During the Jiajing period, in some areas in the south of the Yangtze River, "there are only four or five armors in one mile, and only one or two mouths in one armor" (Volume 33 of "Tianxiajun Guoli Disease Book"). In the situation in Shaanxi at the end of the Ming Dynasty, "in one mile, there were only a dozen or so households, and in one eleven households, there were only a dozen or so households, and there were several who fled altogether" ("Huang Ming Jing Shi Wen") "Compilation" Volume 105, Discussion on Shaanxi Matters). Because of this situation, people began to call the Yellow Book a "false book":

At the beginning of the country, there was a fixed number of fields and grains; since Hongwu, all the yellow books have been made, but today's grains are the grains of Hongwu's early years, and today's fields are consumed twelve or three times, which is not due to the military... and the cunning people are traitors. , there are all kinds of disadvantages, such as flying, deceitful sending, and false suspension. Therefore, the book of a house without land has land, and the book of a house with land has no land. . (Volume 86 of "Tianxia Junguoli Disease Book") The yellow book of this period has long since completely lost its role in managing household registration and collecting taxes and labor reasonably.

Every ten years of great construction, the people spend unlimited money, but they are put on the shelf. (Volume 29 of "Huangchao Jingshiwenbian") Whenever the government is ordered to compile a book, it usually delays again and again until it is too late. Books, the rate is all transcribed from the old version, there is no real number” (Volume 10 of "Houhu Zhi").The staff of the Houhu yellow book library checked the new books sent from some areas with the old ones from the previous time, and found that the old and new books were exactly the same in terms of Dingkou, property, dismissal, and reality, and some of them were in the new yellow books. The households that are still registered in the book, in fact, have all died out more than a hundred years ago, and they have also been marked as extinct in the previous yellow books, but they still have to copy them every year, betting that "extinct households, no property ".They did not dare to remove these households from the records, for fear of being refuted by the Houhu Yellow Register.

What's even more ridiculous is that many of the people recorded in the yellow books in some areas are over 100 years old. According to calculations, in the eleventh year of Wanli (AD 1582), there were as many as 3,700 households with a population over 100 years old in Xinghua County, Yangzhou Prefecture, and each household often had such elderly people. There were one or two people or even more than 2,900 households, some of whom were propertyless (Volume 10 of Houhu Zhi).This strange thing is obviously caused by the fact that the bookmakers blindly copied the old books, and generally added ten years each time.In the thirteenth year of Shunzhi in the early Qing Dynasty (AD 1656), Sun Tingjing, Minister of the Ministry of Household Affairs, also reported to Emperor Shunzhi that the names and property of households opened in some yellow books in the late Ming Dynasty were still the names and numbers of the Hongwu period in the early Ming Dynasty.

Now that the yellow book has gradually lost its value, a set of books appeared for the practical use of the prefectural and county yamen, but not reported. At that time, it was called the real collection document, or the real collection yellow book, and it was also called the white book. "Ancient and Modern Book Integration" said about the situation at that time: The so-called yellow books only take the fictional text, not the truth.There is a tax collection department that compiles and shakes, and it is a volume, called the white volume. (Volume 18 of "Household Editor-in-Chief") Finally, the Ming Dynasty had to replace the yellow book system nationwide.With the implementation of the one whip method, the yellow book system could have come to an end, but under the power of the "ancestral old system", the yellow book is still made up and sent out every year according to the old rules.The yellow book system no longer has any positive meaning, and the rest are all disadvantages and scourges.Its series of processes from fabricating, explaining, keeping, checking, and making up have degenerated into a complete process of repeating science and fraud.

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