Eighth year of Chongzhen

Chapter 284 Official Ship
Huai'an Chaoguan is located in Banzha Town, Beibanzha Town, Fucheng City, Huai'an, and it is also the largest of the eight major Chaoguan on the canal.

Huai'an, as an important water and land hub, was the water transportation center, river management center, grain transfer center, water boat manufacturing center, and salt taxation center of the Ming Dynasty; in the heyday, the grain grain that entered Beijing through Huai'an was about 400 million shi every year, and the amount of grain it turned over Tariffs accounted for more than half of the total tariffs.

Banzha Town is located in the northwest of Huai'an Fucheng, facing the lake and backing the sea, with the left river and the right river, and it is the main road for boats and vehicles from north to south. "Shanyang County Chronicles" records: "All the grain ships from Huguang, Jiangxi, Zhejiang, and Jiangnan end up in Shanyang and travel north along the canal. , so the water administration is connected to the seven provinces, and Shanyang Banzha is actually an important throat.”

The Huai'an Quguan, located in Banzha, consists of three parts, one is the Yamen of the Huaiguan Supervision Office, and the other is the Huai'an Gate. These two major parts constitute the main body of the Huai'an Quguan.The third is the ancient town of Banzha, which was formed due to the Huaian Pass.

Huai'an Chaoguan has a total of [-] passes and [-] cards.The three passes are Banzha Pass, Suqian Pass and Haizhou Pass.The eighteen cards are: Upper Shop, Lower Shop, Qinghe Sluice, Wharf Yin, Gaoliangjian, Shunheji, etc. These checkpoints are all located at the key points where the water network converges to the canal, which prevents passing through to the greatest extent. Smuggling of all ships on the Grand Canal.

The Huai'an Pass is located on the banks of the embankment of the canal.It consists of a two-story customs building and other auxiliary buildings. On the top of the building, there are four big characters "Huai'an customs", which can be seen from a long distance. The specific things of the customs are the inspection of cargo ships, customs declaration, tax collection, etc. matters.

At the end of the day, Huai’an Pass released a row of boats from the Shi Wharf to block the surface of the Grand Canal. All passing boats had to anchor here and wait for the inspection and tax payment the next day.Often the ships waiting to pass the customs can only line up for two or three miles, and the fleet can line up five or six miles away at the busiest time.

On the second day at midnight, the boat bridge blocking the river was removed, and the inspector led the "skewer hand", "money account" and the servants to board the boat for inspection.The skewer used a scaled skewer to measure the draft of the ship, and the cargo capacity was blurted out and reported to the supervisor.Banknote households work according to professional division of labor. Tea banknote households inspect tea, silk cloth banknote households inspect cloth, and bamboo, linseed, beans, sundries, etc. are also inspected by special personnel. In this way, tax forms are filled out and taxes are collected.

Since Zhu Youjian made the decree to change the customs clearance business tax to [-] one tax, although the tax revenue of Huai'an Chaoguan has increased a lot, the process of tax collection has also been disputed, and many businessmen have continued to complain about the court's increase in business tax. .

After the opening and closing of the day, most of the ships were released after paying the duty one after another. As time went by, when it was almost noon, the number of ships queuing had gradually decreased.

At this moment, an official ship sailed towards Chaoguan from the south, with a large black-and-white flag waving in the wind on the bow, with the five characters "Liu, the prefect of Yangzhou" embroidered on it.

In front of the official ship, there were still more than a dozen merchant ships and tank ships of various sizes waiting to be released after tax payment. However, a gong sounded on this official ship. The Elder’s relatives are on the boat! Anyone who is irrelevant waits to avoid quickly!”

Zhao Fangzhi, who is in charge of supervising the inspection of the goods by hand today, is Chaoguan duty supervisor Zhao Fangzhi. Seeing that the busiest part of the day is about to pass, it is getting late, and he is planning to go to Banzha Town after he is on duty. In Wang's Tavern, he asked the boss to cook some authentic Huaiyang dishes, and when he had a pot of old wine for a few glasses, the sound of gongs and shouts from not far away brought him back to reality.

"Xu San, go and inform him, tell that guy not to make noise! ​​No matter who passes by, you have to wait in line! The court's tax is more important than anyone else!"

Zhao Fangzhi ordered impatiently.

After the attendant Xu San agreed, he jumped from the merchant ship to the inspection ship at Chaoguan with a servant, and directed the boatman to sail towards the official ship.

The reason why Zhao Fangzhi didn't order the merchant ships queuing up to give way to the official ships was not because he was honest and selfless and fearless of power. Although he was only a rank eighth rank, he was dispatched by the Ministry of Household Affairs and was directly under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Household Affairs. , has nothing to do with local officials in daily life.Besides, in the capital, the fourth rank is not considered a high-ranking official, and the second and third ranks such as the Minister of the Ministry are often seen. After a long time, the sense of fear is less, so whether to buy the account of the local official depends entirely on the mood. .

He has been busy for almost two hours from Chenshi to now, and with the hot weather, he wanted to get off duty quickly to have a glass of wine to relax, and when that broken gong screamed, his mood suddenly turned bad.

Xu San quickly came to the side of the official ship on the patrol boat. He put his hands together in the shape of a trumpet, raised his head and shouted: "The villain was ordered by Superintendent Zhao to inform the nobles on board, please wait a moment, sir. The river will be cleared soon!"

After he yelled, not long after, a head poked out from the side of the official ship, looked down at Xu San and asked loudly: "How long will it take? The nobles on the ship want to go to Beijing to visit their relatives, so there is no delay!" "

Xu San is just a local helper. As a commoner, any official is something he can't afford to offend. He raised his head with a smile and replied: "My lord, at most half an hour later. , invite the nobleman to have a cup of tea and wait for a while!"

The head disappeared in a blink of an eye on the side of the boat, apparently going back, Xu San ordered the boatman to set up the boat and circle around the official boat and go back.

"Master Zhao, the villain has already reported it, but there is one thing that I don't know whether to say or not. If the master doesn't want to listen, just pretend to be a villain and say nothing!"

Xu San who returned to Zhao Fangzhi said in a low voice.

"What's the matter? Tell me and listen!"

Zhao Fangzhi stood on a merchant ship loaded with cotton cloth, looked at the bank account that was issuing tax bills to the ship owner with his hands behind his back, and said casually.

"That villain can talk about it, and I hope Master Zhao will not blame the villain for being troublesome; when the villain just went to communicate, he found that the official ship had a deep draft and seemed to be carrying a lot of weight. The words of a human being, I am afraid that nothing is so heavy! The villain thinks, could it be...?"

Xu San has been helping Chaoguan for many years, and he has developed a pair of evil eyes. Although he didn't say what he said, the implication is very obvious: the official ship under the flag of the prefect of Yangzhou is pulling life and death, and it is not ordinary. many.

Zhao Fangzhi's heart moved when he heard this.

It is too common for official ships and tank boats to carry private goods. Officials at the bank usually just turn a blind eye and let them go. After all, it is not worthwhile to offend others for official business.

But according to what Xu San said, this ship didn't seem to be a problem of carrying private goods, but was directly trafficked by an official ship. This kind of thing has happened before, but it is very rare. It just so happened that I encountered it today. What to do.

After thinking about it for a while, Zhao Fangzhi decided to let the matter go by pretending not to know.After all, the other party is a fourth-rank high-ranking official. Although he has nothing to do with him, he may become his boss someday.

Just when he was about to open his mouth to order to let go, Xu San beside him suddenly said in a low voice: "Master Zhao, besides our Huai'an Chaoguan, there are seven other passes on this canal all the way to the capital. It doesn't matter, but if there is a money pass where the grand master is serious, once the matter is found out and the court blames him, the grand master will probably die!"

Xu San relied on several layers of relationships to be able to be a close follower by Zhao Fangzhi's side. If something happened to Zhao Fangzhi and he resigned because of this, he would also lose his job.

Supervisor Chang Sui is a fat job, which is equivalent to the position of personal secretary of the leader of later generations. In many cases, supervisors will not personally order the subordinates, bank accounts, and slaves, but command them through Chang Sui.

When the supervisory inspection is on duty, not every ship has to follow him, and he can't take care of so many merchant ships. Generally, the shippers and cashiers are divided into teams of several people to inspect the goods and collect taxes. The supervisory committee will order Chang Sui went to supervise those subordinates instead of himself.At some point, Chang Sui will take the opportunity to join forces with the skewers and money holders to collect bribes from the merchants, and then underreport the draft of the merchant ships, the quantity and value of the goods, so that the merchant ships can reduce the payment of merchant taxes.

Xu San's words immediately woke up Zhao Fangzhi.

The supervision and inspection of the Canal Chaoguan is a fat post, which is a typical lowly position and a position with great wealth. The senior officials in the court are also well aware of this, so important positions such as supervision and inspection will not be held for too long , generally no more than two years will be required to replace people, so as to prevent the emergence of small officials and huge corruption.

But even so, after two years of supervision and inspection, in addition to normal income such as salary and Beijing subsidies, there are also a lot of gray income. It is a common practice for them to accept bribes from frequent contacts with large merchants on the canal. In return, the supervision It will also overestimate the measurement of those large merchant ships.

But now there are not only officials from the Ministry of Households in the eight chaoguans, but Jinyiwei and Yushi Xunhe were also added last year.Normally, the Jinyiwei Xiaoqi of each Chaoguan sent people to watch over the tax collection, but the Xiaoqi of Huai’an Daguan seemed to have some official business in the past two days. The general flag took most of the school captains to Linqing, and only Several lieutenants were looking after the house, so I felt a little more relaxed.

Since Zhu Youjian decided to levy commercial taxes on the canal, Jin Yiwei and Xunhe Yushi came successively to strengthen the supervision of Chaoguan.

Although I have not heard of any bank officials who have been punished for accepting bribes, many inspectors, bank account holders, and skewers of various banks were arrested, and in the end they ended up with ruined families and no wealth.

If this official ship with obvious signs of smuggling slipped past his hands, but was caught later, then he must have no good fruit to eat.

But I can't make the mistake of offending others in person, so it's better to use others to investigate and deal with the matter. If there is a reward from above, I can get a second job, and if nothing happens, I have nothing to lose.

Thinking of this, Zhao Fangzhi ordered: "Xu San, you secretly order to slow down the speed of inspection, and report this matter to Jin Yiwei as soon as possible!"

(End of this chapter)