A paradise without taxes
"In the Taiyuan period of the Jin Dynasty, the Wuling people made a living by fishing. They walked along the stream and forgot the distance of the road. Suddenly they came across a peach blossom forest, hundreds of steps across the bank..."
At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, , Wei, Shu and Wu divided the world. After the Three Kingdoms, there were and two Jin . Let’s not talk about how many years Eastern Han Dynasty was, but just talk about the Three Kingdoms, more than 60 years, Western Jin Eastern Jin Dynasty combined for 155 years, more than 200 years, one word: chaos.
Regimes change frequently, powerful forces will always stand, but the central treasury has always been empty. These days are so difficult for ordinary people. Isn't that right? If the national treasury has no money, it will resort to various methods to collect taxes from the people. The familiar " Peach Blossom Spring " was born under such a background of the times.
Some friends may not know that in the Western Jin Dynasty, it implemented the land-occupying and class-field system. What does it mean? It was the Western Jin Dynasty that felt that everyone should have a certain amount of land, and then everyone would pay taxes based on the number of acres it imagined. Don’t you think it’s ridiculous and funny? Do you think this is all nonsense? Indeed, it’s all nonsense.
How much tax do people pay? The imperial court does not actually measure the land, nor does it check the accounts on the spot. It says how many acres of land you have, how many acres of land you have to pay in tax. It doesn’t matter that many people may not even have an acre of land. Anyway, it doesn’t care whether you have land or not. It thinks you should pay as much tax as you have land. Isn’t this forcing people to evade taxes?
During the Eastern Jin Dynasty, the rulers finally discovered that the previous policies did not work. Still, the land will be measured and then taxed. However, measuring land is a bit too much of a test on the management skills of grassroots civil servants. What's more, so much of the land in Kyushu has been occupied by noble families, how much more can the court measure?
Look at the Shanyin rich familyKong Lingfu. In addition to the farm in their hometown, they also built a mansion in the next county with a radius of thirty-three miles, including 265 hectares of land and water, nine large orchards, and two mountains. Let’s look at the Diao family, a large landowner living in Jingkou. They have been a big family for a century and have accumulated tens of thousands of hectares of land!
The Eastern Jin Dynasty gathered together, so in the first year of Taiyuan, they simply abolished the system of collecting rent based on the field and changed it to collecting taxes based on the head. But is this better? To be honest, the problem is even bigger if the taxpayers do not tax the land.
Why do you say that? The gentry families we just talked about started with a few hundred hectares of land, but if they pay taxes per head, he said, I'm sorry, my family only has three members. If you pay taxes this year, won’t you pay less taxes? In contrast, the land occupied by ordinary people was less than a fraction of that of these nobles. Many people even had no land, but they had to pay the same tax.
In the first year of Taiyuan, Tao Yuanming12 years old. The imperial court slapped it on the head, and the tax system became more and more regressive. Those with money took advantage, while those without money were overwhelmed. Farmers went bankrupt and rural areas were in decline. Such human tragedies have become the source of Tao Yuanming's art.
In the fourth chapter of " Return to the Garden and Live in the Fields ", he wrote: "Wandering among the hills and ridges, people still live there. There are remains of wells and stoves, and decaying mulberry and bamboo trees." He went back and forth between the wilderness cemeteries, and it was vaguely possible to see that people lived here before. There are still traces of the well and the stove in the house, but of the mulberry trees and bamboos in front of me, there are only some dead branches and rotten wood left.
In "With Liu Chaisang", he also wrote: "There is no one to return to, and ruins are seen from time to time." Liu Chaisang invited Tao Yuanming to live in seclusion in Lushan together, but Tao Yuanming politely refused. On the way home alone, wherever I looked, there were ruins, desolate and miserable, with no human habitation.
Farmers are bankrupt everywhere, and cottages are in ruins. This dilapidated reality also adds a touch of unrealistic idealism to the pastoral life in Tao Yuanming's works. "The distant village is warm, and the smoke in the ruins is still there." "Picking chrysanthemums under the eastern fence, you can leisurely see Nanshan Mountain."This is his ideal pastoral life, but such pastoral joy is not the most ideal state in his mind. The most ideal pastoral life also depends on the "Peach Blossom Spring".
After the end of "Peach Blossom Spring", there is a poem at the end. There are several sentences in it: "The shadow of mulberry and bamboo hangs down, and the crop of millet is always in season. Spring silkworms collect filaments, and autumn ripens the royal tax. ""Mi Wang Tax". Mi means "no". This sentence means that in the Peach Blossom Spring, farmers farm according to the natural seasons. They raise silkworms in the spring and reel out long silk; they harvest in the autumn and do not need to pay any tax. It is so beautiful!
In such a peach land where no tax is required In Huayuan, men, women and children all live happily. The children sing freely and lively, and the old people play and rest leisurely. When they ask the fishermen about the situation outside, they have been living in seclusion since the Qin Dynasty, and they don’t know the outside world. They have experienced so many dynasties such as , the Western Han Dynasty, , the Eastern Han Dynasty, the Wei Jin, and so on. l2 Social unrest, dynasty changes, the winner is the king, and royal taxes are levied. And when the rulers began to impose excessive taxes, the distribution of interests was seriously unbalanced again, the world ushered in another chaos, and a new round of struggle for kings and hegemonies was about to begin. This cycle goes on and on, when will it end? Why not come together in the Peach Blossom Spring and enjoy the natural joy without royal taxes? Writer: Yang Mei, Bachelor of Finance, University of International Business and Economics, Master of Laws, Peking University Editor: Liang San Reading on the Road: Unauthorized reproduction is prohibited
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