In June of the 29th year of Wanli, Ge Cheng, a 34 year old man from Kunshan, Jiangsu, decided to do something important.
He used to be an ordinary textile worker, and has been struggling to survive in Suzhou City for many years.
At that time, Suzhou was one of the centers of the silk weaving industry in the south of the Yangtze River, and the silk processing industry (such as dyeing) was also very developed. Gu Yanwu, also a Kunshan native, later recalled that at the end of the Ming Dynasty, there were “thousands of loom households” in Suzhou. According to the estimate that each loom required three workers to operate, there were about 1000 to 2000 looms in Suzhou at that time. Considering that there were only 173 official looms in Suzhou during the Jiajing era, Ge Cheng’s “parents” and Cao Shipin, who was then the governor of Jiangsu, said that every household in the east of Suzhou was engaged in the textile industry. It can be inferred that most of the looms were operated by small family workshops at that time.
This kind of small family workshop has weak anti risk ability. The profit of the workshop owner is not stable, and the career of the employed weaver is inevitably displaced. In his report to the imperial court, Cao Shipin once described the living conditions of the weavers in Suzhou:
“Wu Minsheng has the most numerous teeth, and the constant output is rare,… people who live on floating food will live and die if they lose their jobs.”
Trying to find a job and keep themselves and their families alive has exhausted all the efforts of these weavers. Ge Cheng is no exception.
But the times often do not pity those who work hard, because they have never had the opportunity to participate in formulating the rules of the times. Two years ago, in February of the 27th year of Wanli, a new variable of the times suddenly came to Suzhou, a eunuch named Sun Long, a chief eunuch, who was ordered by Emperor Wanli to “collect taxes from Su Song and other governments”.
Sun Long previously worked as a prefect of Suzhou and Hangzhou, and had a deep understanding of the silk weaving industry in Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces. The emperor asked him to take charge of “Su Song and other government taxes”, which meant that he had more ways than others to squeeze more “taxes” from the people. Since the 24th year of Wanli, the Ming Shenzong has sent eunuchs to the outside world to serve as mine supervisors and tax envoys under the pretext of three major levies (the use of troops in Ningxia in the 20th year of Wanli, the use of troops in Korea, and the use of troops in Bozhou in the 2nd and 17th year of Wanli), and these people have bypassed the bureaucratic system, They directly raided the civilian people on behalf of the imperial power. In only three years, Emperor Wanli used eunuchs to establish a new wealth collection system covering the whole country. This was historically known as the “disaster of mining tax”.
The reason why Emperor Wanli was more willing to use eunuchs instead of relying on the traditional rule of the basic bureaucratic group was that there were always some people in the bureaucratic group who “followed the Tao but not the monarch”. They were not only unwilling to effectively implement his plan for collecting money, but also criticized him. Moreover, the corruption of the bureaucratic group also gave him a headache. He felt that the income of the bureaucratic system in the plan of collecting money far exceeded that of the imperial power. Therefore, Emperor Wanli would rather have a large number of vacancies between central and local officials for a long time, rather than have such vacancies affect the normal operation of government affairs, than appoint and fill them. He was more willing to organize a new absorption machine composed of eunuchs.
Sun Long is a member of this new absorption machine, namely the so-called “tax envoy of mining supervision”.
At that time, the core work of the mine supervisors was to supervise the people’s gold and silver mining on behalf of the imperial power. The imperial power paid nothing in the mining process, the people were responsible for all mining work and costs, the local government was responsible for armed prevention and control, and the mining income was distributed by the imperial power and the people by fifty percent. The mine supervisors are not interested in prospecting, let alone going to the mine cave. When they arrive with the task assigned by the emperor, they often choose to directly apportion the amount of money they have collected to the local government, and they must pay it when it is due. As for whether there are gold and silver mines in the area and whether the mining is smooth, the mine supervisors do not care.
The core responsibility of tax envoys is to directly collect extra legal taxes from the people on behalf of the imperial power. That is, in addition to the tax card controlled by the original bureaucratic system, another tax card controlled by the eunuch is added. These tax cards were ingeniously named. People at that time lamented that there was a chicken tax, a pig tax, a road tax, a land tax on landing, and a fish tax even where there was no fish. Another means is to directly establish a revenue collection quota and apportion it to local merchants, who must pay in full when due. As for the business situation of the merchant, the tax envoys did not care whether it was profitable or not.
According to incomplete statistics, from the 25th year of Wanli to the 34th year of Wanli, on average, the tax commissioners of the mining administration presented 1.71 million liang of silver and 3600 liang of gold to the Emperor Wanli every year. The income of eunuchs and their servants was about 3 to 10 times that of the emperor. For example, a small participant under Chen Zeng’s command of Shandong Mining Supervisor followed Cheng Shouxun and found “more than four hundred thousand (two) pieces of prohibited jewelry and silver” when he was raided.
Sun Long’s ability to collect money is also excellent. In March of the 38th year of Wanli, that is, one year after he was responsible for the “taxes of Su Song and other governments”, Sun Long paid a tribute of 30000 liang of silver from the internal treasury to Emperor Wanli. This means that the wealth he and his followers actually scraped from Susong and other places this year is about 100000 to 300000 taels of silver. Sun Long’s search is so effective because he has two basic means:
(1) A large number of singles and local ruffians were employed. His participation in Huang Jian was originally a cruel official, while Tang Shen and Xu Cheng, the appointed tax officials, were local bachelors in Suzhou. These people don’t care about the local climate review and the old people’s feelings at all, and do the work of collecting money by hook or by crook.
(2) Set up a large number of tax cards. It was called “the establishment of the Internet is as dense as autumn tea”. Sun Long declared to the outside world that “stop debating businessmen and not recruit businessmen”, which seems generous, but in fact, “set up nine separate rules and five hurdles”, with great efforts to accumulate wealth.
The so-called “stop debating merchants, and do not levy taxes on merchants” means that new tax cards only levy taxes on outsiders, not local merchants. However, the tax cards were stacked on top of each other, and the non local merchants were unwilling to throw themselves into the trap, which led to a chain reaction. First, “there are few resellers in Wuzhong, and the loom of weavers is decreasing”. Without foreign merchants to purchase, the weavers cannot sell their silks, and the funds cannot be recycled. Many family textile workshops have to stop production. Then, the shutdown of the textile workshop also affected the dyeing workshop, which had no business and had to stop production. Finally, Cao Shipin, the governor of Jiangsu Province, witnessed the outcome:
“As you can see, there are thousands of dyeing workshops, and thousands of dyeing workers are scattered. There are thousands of weavers in the machine room, and these are good people who are independent.”
In the 29th year of Wanli, the man-made disaster still existed and was getting worse. Sun Long wanted to complete the amount of money, but the economy of Suzhou and other places had declined seriously due to the previous raids. Sun Long had to expand the scale of his claws and increase the amount of money. The natural disaster came again. That year, “there was no wheat in the flood” and “the price of silk was very high”. The flood not only reduced the grain production of Suzhou people, but also affected the local silk supply. When grain production decreases, rice prices will rise; As silk production decreases, the price of silk will also rise. The former seriously increases the living cost of textile and dyeing workers; The latter has seriously increased the production costs of textile workshop owners. So: at this end, it is increasingly difficult for workers to find jobs; At the other end, the cost of living for workers is still rising.
In Suzhou that year, there was such a popular song “Tax Official Ballad”:
In April, water kills wheat, in May, water kills grain, and vast fields become rivers.
Why should Zier Xiamin be guilty? Don’t shout when you look up every day!
It’s OK to kill grain and wheat, and tax officials will kill me!
The flood in April destroyed the wheat, and the flood in May destroyed the rice. All the field roads have become vast rivers. God, what have we bottom people done wrong? We looked up and asked the sky, but the sky was so high that we could not hear our call sign. The flood killed wheat and rice, but the tax official also wanted to kill us!
When the weavers looked up and asked the sky “Why am I so miserable?”, Sun Long’s head was as big as a fight. He can’t finish this year’s money collection quota, but he must finish this year’s money collection quota. So he did three things:
(1) Misappropriation of funds. “Temporary borrowing of treasury bank”. He misappropriated a sum of silver from the local government’s treasury to make up for the amount of money he collected for the emperor.
(2) Increase the search and seizure efforts. Twelve tax officials, including Huang Jianjie, Tang Shen and Xu Cheng, were sent to the grass-roots level to investigate taxes, “increasing without authorization”; It was said that “all rascals enter the scene”. As long as you enter and leave Suzhou City, you have to pay taxes on a chicken and a bunch of vegetables.
(3) Increase taxes. “One piece per machine, three coins of tax and silver; one piece of satin, five cents of tax and silver; and one piece of yarn, two cents of tax and silver” – this tax rate seems very low, but in fact, on the premise that every piece of satin and yarn has to pay high taxes when it is transported out of Suzhou, the merchants have to levy repeated taxes on the weavers.
The consequences are:
“All the loom households stopped weaving, while the weavers starved to death by sharing their own share.”
“The people of Wu cried when they walked on strike.”
Weavers and merchants are not fools. Knowing that they can only lose money if they continue to operate, they naturally choose to close their doors and close their businesses, or even switch to other businesses (known as “Jihu Yahang widely pays taxes and changes their businesses accordingly”). After they go out of business, they can still support for a period of time more or less depending on their previous savings. The textile workers, who depend on their employment, have come to the end of their life. They were said to be “afraid when people heard of it. Let’s stop weaving, and everyone will die of hunger” – to die of hunger has become their predictable fate.
On June 3, when everyone was “suffering, there was no way to plan”, Ge Cheng called together dozens of influential figures in the weaving circle and held a meeting in the Xuanmiao Temple in the city (there were also materials saying that Ge Cheng was only one of the leaders of many incidents, not the top commander). At the meeting, the people decided to start an uprising the next day to “kill the staff and expel the grandson”, kill those tax officials who were acted by local ruffians and hooligans, and drive Sun Long out of Suzhou. Ge Cheng is willing to be the leader of the incident – naturally, it means that he is highly likely to be killed as the “chief villain” afterwards. Ge also asked that people should not affect the innocent, and all actions should be “based on what I pointed to by the plantain fan”.
When Ge Cheng and more than 2000 weavers came to the tax card held by Huang Jianjie, Huang was exploiting a melon seller. When he entered the city, he had already paid the melon tax. After selling the melon, he bought four liters of rice in the city. When he left the city, he was asked to leave one liter of rice as the rice tax. When the weavers saw this, they “attacked the construction festival together and killed it”. Later, he turned to other tax cards, killed Xu Cheng and others, and set fire to the houses of Tang Shen and others. “All tax officials who are in the local area were beaten and killed” (some materials said that the victims also included their families, and they had the behavior of splitting their corpses to vent their anger).
Finally, the team surrounded the weaving yamen, and Ge Cheng went to see Zhu Xieyuan, the governor of Suzhou, as a single man, and said that he was “willing to win the tax supervisor Sun”. Nobody in Suzhou officialdom dares to hand over Sun Long. They can only appease textile workers and help Sun Long escape to Hangzhou quickly.
The third day after the incident, the tax officials had been punished by the weavers. On the fourth day, the weavers posted a list at the six gates of the city, saying that the work of “eliminating harm for the people” had been completed, and that “all the residents in the four directions were safe” and could resume their normal life. On the fifth day, the local government began to take action and ordered the arrest of the “rioters”. Ge Cheng turned himself in and said:
“I am the advocate of righteousness, and I am just enough. If we do not involve civilians, there will be chaos.”
Ge Chengsui was jailed for this. The local official was moved and renamed “Ge Xian”. It was said that when Ge Cheng was in prison, “ten thousand people cried and gave him away.”.
Since then, Ge Cheng has been imprisoned for a long time. This kind of disposition may be because the government considered that Ge Cheng was sentenced to death and immediately executed, which may lead to riots again. In order to set an example to others, Sun Long later killed a rifle to point out the Jihu Wang Zhi and Yaren Ao Zhen who took part in the Xuanmiaogan uprising as leaders. At that time, Wang Zhi was eighty years old and died in prison; Ao Zhen was exiled to the army.
More than ten years later, Ge Cheng was released from prison by a “four amnesty” (an occasional large-scale amnesty held by the imperial court). The local gentry and people did not forget him, and most of them honored him as “General Ge”. There was a new wealthy businessman named Cheng Shangfu. Maybe he saw Ge Cheng alone and gave him an “Aiji”. Ge took it and returned it to his mother’s home.
In the third year of Chongzhen, Ge Cheng died at the age of 63. The great Ming Dynasty bottom common people were buried next to five other great Ming Dynasty bottom common people – those five people, Yan Peiwei, Yang Nianru, Zhou Wenyuan, Shen Yang, and Ma Jie, who had beaten the Royal Guards and scolded Wei Zhongxian, and then turned their necks to sword, giving generously to justice.
Ge Cheng’s Tomb