Do you know the long song of laughter?

Chapter 433 Why not eat minced meat

"Zhong Huai?"

When Shen Congxing and Zhao Ceying were approaching Fuyuan Inn with their gifts, they ran into Gu Tingye, who was carrying his luggage and preparing to leave the city.

The two men quickly dismounted and walked over.

"Zhong Huai, are you leaving?" Shen Congxing glanced at the bundle hanging next to the saddle.

"Well, I originally planned to rest in Yuzhou for one night and then rush to meet up with my wife and the others." Gu Tingye said.

"Zhong Huai, why are you so anxious? I haven't thanked you for what you did yesterday." Zhao Ceying said.

"Well, they are all small things. I can't help much." Gu Tingye waved his hand.

"Zhong Huai, there's no need to rush to leave today. If it weren't for you, we wouldn't have known those assassins were dead men. You must give us a chance to thank them no matter what." Shen Congxing said.

"Uncle is right. We must give us a chance to express our gratitude," said Zhao Ceying.

Gu Tingye refused for a while, but the two men refused to let him go, so he could only follow them back to the inn with helplessness.

He had no intention of leaving, he was just trying to retreat by advancing.

Gu Tingye naturally felt that neither Zhao Zongquan nor Shen Congxing really trusted him.

Gu Tingye could understand their distrust, and he was a little anxious last night.

After thinking for a long time, Gu Tingye prepared to retreat and pretended to leave.

The three of them entered the inn. As it was still early, they ordered some tea and snacks and sat down to chat.

At first, they were just chatting. After chatting for a while, Shen Congxing pretended to be casual and asked, "This time, suppressing the rebellion in Jiangnan is a good opportunity to make meritorious deeds. It's a pity that Zhong Huai didn't catch up. Why didn't you think of going directly to the army? If you went to find the Duke of Ying, you would have caught up."

"Ugh."

Gu Tingye sighed and said, "Of course I have thought about it. If the person leading the troops was someone else, I would go. Unfortunately, the one leading the troops is the Duke of Ying. The Duke of Ying is upright and honest, and my reputation was not very good before. If I go to find the Duke of Ying, I am afraid I can't even enter the gate of the military camp."

Both Shen Congxing and Zhao Ceying believed Gu Tingye's explanation.

The Duke of England is not only upright, but also very principled, and he looks down on those spoiled children.

Moreover, Gu Tingye left without even saying goodbye, and it didn't seem like he had any purpose.

What's more, the Zhao family only has a seemingly noble royal family status, which is actually very embarrassing. It is far inferior to those earl's palaces, not to mention the Gu family's marquis's palace.

After realizing this, the suspicions that had arisen in the two people's minds because of what Zhao Zongquan said last night disappeared in an instant.

At the same time, I feel a little guilty.

"Zhong Huai, do you think those assassins will attack again?" Shen Congxing asked.

"Since Brother Shen asked this, it means you already have the answer in your mind, right?" Gu Tingye said with a smile.

Shen Congxing and Zhao Ceying looked at each other, their faces somewhat gloomy.

Their faces were gloomy, not because of Gu Tingye, but because of their worries about the future.

Although what Gu Tingye said were just guesses, judging from the assassin's crazy actions, it might be true.

"You two, listen to my advice. It's best to persuade Zhao Tuanlian to go to Bianjing. Only in this way can he survive. Otherwise..."

Gu Tingye shook his head and didn't continue.

"Zhong Huai, to be honest, it's not that we don't want to go. It's just that my father and I are from royal families. According to court rules, we are not allowed to leave Yuzhou without an imperial decree. Moreover, the assassins dare to be so unscrupulous in the city. Once we leave the city, we can't mobilize troops to accompany us for protection, which will only be more dangerous." Zhao Ceying said.

"The more so, the more we should go. Prince Yan should be taking action soon, and there will be more assassinations to come. The assassins must not have expected that Zhao Tuanlian would leave the city. The assassins are few in number, and as long as they take the wilderness paths all the way, the assassins in the dark will not be able to search for them. If Zhao Tuanlian is willing to go to the capital to expose it, I am willing to sacrifice my life for him!" Gu Tingye said seriously.

"Zhong Huai seems to want my brother-in-law to go to Bian Jing?" Shen Congxing asked.

Gu Tingye said angrily, "My Gu family is deeply favored by the emperor. I suspect that Prince Yan intends to rebel, but I have no evidence. This time I left the capital to escort my wife's grandfather back to his hometown, also to avoid seeing it. If Zhao Tuanlian is willing to go to Bianjing to expose it, it will be convincing enough, even if the emperor does not believe it, he will take precautions."

"Zhonghuai, you leave Yuzhou first. I will go back and discuss this matter with my father. I will definitely persuade my father to go to Beijing to expose King Yan!" Zhao Ceying said.

After all, Zhao Ceying was still young and not as cautious as his father.

And he knew that going to Bian Jing to report was the best way.

Otherwise, if Prince Yan succeeds, the end of them father and son will be very miserable.

His father hoped that Prince Yan would not succeed, but Zhao Ceying did not want to take the chance.

If Prince Yan succeeds, it will be too late to regret.

If they, father and son, wanted to go to Bian Jing, they could only go secretly with a few guards. Gu Tingye was good at martial arts, and having him around would provide more protection.

"I can stay in Yuzhou for a few days." Gu Tingye said after a moment of silence.

"Thank you, Zhonghuai!" Zhao Ceying stood up and bowed solemnly.

……

"Ce Ying, have you really decided?"

On the way back, Shen Congxing asked.

"Uncle, do you think there is any other way now? And you also saw the attitude of those Yuzhou officials last night. If we don't make a decision, even if we can save our lives in the assassination, will King Yan let us go after he succeeds?" Zhao Ceying said.

Shen Congxing was silent for a while, then said, "But my brother-in-law is very determined and will never agree to it."

"Everything depends on human efforts. Uncle, you have to help me!" Zhao Ceying said with a firm look.

"Okay!" Shen Congxing nodded.

……

Li An didn't know what happened in Yuzhou, but as the Queen's birthday got closer, he became more and more nervous.

After all, many things have deviated from their original track, and he is worried that Gu Tingye will not be able to bring Zhao Zongquan to Yuzhou as scheduled.

However, Ang Lee could only suppress his nervousness in his heart. He still went to the Hanlin Academy to work every day, and during his days off, he was busy preparing for his wedding with his parents.

Although Ang Lee felt that the wedding might not be held as scheduled, he couldn't tell his parents, so he had to let his parents arrange it.

During this period, Li An also received a letter from Wang Anshi, in which Wang Anshi gave a detailed account of the improved system of allocating land tax.

Li An was not completely clear about the detailed system of allocating land tax to each household in history, but after seeing the system improved by Wang Anshi, he felt that it was very feasible and could not find any faults with it.

However, as Li An got to know more about the internal situation of the Song Dynasty, he found that he had previously thought the problem was too simple.

The original intention of allocating taxes to each acre was to make those who owned land pay more taxes, and those who did not have land pay less.

However, there are very few people in the Song Dynasty who own land, and a large amount of land is in the hands of landlords and powerful people.

The common people did not have land, so they rented land from landlords and still had to pay taxes.

The landlords and powerful people collected high rents, and the people had only enough food left after paying taxes to make ends meet.

At first glance, after the land tax was distributed according to the acreage, these people who became tenants but had no land on their hands no longer had to pay taxes.

But that’s not actually the case at all.

People without land do not need to pay taxes, so part of the tax falls on the landlords. How can the landlords be willing to pay more money and grain to pay taxes for nothing?
Maybe some people would be willing to do so, but most certainly would not.

If they are unwilling to do so, they will increase the rent of the tenants and transfer the tax back to the people.

Doing so will not only be meaningless, but will increase the burden on the people.

Some people may think that it is nothing more than a change of form. At most, the people do not get any actual benefits. How can it increase the burden on the people?
For example, originally landlords collected 60% to 70% of the rent from tenants, and the common people could get 30% to 40%.

The taxes that the people need to pay may be less than one tenth of the 30 to 40 percent.

When the tax revenue was transferred to the landlords, those landlords would not add rent to the people just because the tax revenue was collected, because it would be difficult to calculate.

It is very likely that the people will be given an extra 10%, with the result that those tenants who do not have land will pay more than they were originally required to pay in taxes.

This is just one point. There is a bigger disadvantage, which is tax exemption.

In ancient times, people relied on the weather for their livelihood. If a disaster occurred somewhere, the imperial court would exempt certain taxes based on the severity of the disaster.

Would those landlords and tyrants be merciful and collect less rent from the people just because the court collected less taxes from them?
Previously, when Li An proposed to distribute the tax rate according to the amount of land, he overlooked a fatal problem.

Historically, the purpose of equalizing the land tax was to curb land annexation.

However, the Song Dynasty did not stop land annexation from the very beginning, and even encouraged it.

In ancient times, when a dynasty had been established for a hundred years, the problem of land annexation had already become very serious.

This was even when the imperial court had policies to suppress it.

The Song Dynasty did not curb it. Now that it has been a hundred years since its founding, one can imagine how serious the problem of land annexation is.

The method of allocating taxes based on land use is a way to curb the annexation of land, but it is not a solution to the problem of land that has already been annexed.

This is just like taking medicine to prevent certain diseases. It can prevent them when you haven’t contracted the disease, but once you have contracted it, the preventive medicine is useless in saving your life.

Since Li An knew all this, why didn’t Wang Anshi think of it?

Ang Lee has also thought about this question, and after much thought, he thinks the only explanation is "Why not eat meat porridge?"

It’s not that Wang Anshi was unaware of the suffering of the people, but that his understanding was not deep enough.

Wang Anshi served in local positions for many years, but in ancient times there was a saying that imperial power did not extend to the countryside.

Wang Anshi came from a wealthy family and after becoming an official he worked in counties and state capitals, so he did not have much understanding of the real situation among the people.

In addition, he was obsessed with reform and was thinking about the policy of reform all day long, and he did not have a deep understanding of the situation among the people.

This can be seen from the fact that when he later carried out reforms, various problems arose locally because of his reform policies, but he stubbornly believed that these were the growing pains of reform. It is not difficult to see that Wang Anshi was a bit idealistic.

After careful consideration, Li An wrote a letter to Wang Anshi, telling him about the problems he had discovered regarding the land-based tax system, and asked him to go to the countryside more often to understand the real situation among the people and think about how to solve these problems.

During this period, Ang Lee has also been thinking about reform.

He had previously suggested that internal problems could be solved step by step first.

However, during this period of time, Ang Lee thought about it carefully and realized that this approach was indeed feasible, but it would ultimately involve core issues.

This is the three most serious redundancy problems in the Song Dynasty.

The so-called three redundancies are redundant officials, redundant soldiers, and redundant expenses.

Whether it is a thorough investigation of the salt business or other things, it can only bring about a certain improvement in the situation of the court.

The real problem of the court was the unnecessary expenses caused by redundant officials and soldiers.

During the first few decades of the Song Dynasty, the problems of redundant officials and soldiers were not serious, so the court had a surplus of tax revenue every year.

However, as the problems of redundant officials and soldiers became more and more serious, the issue of honor expenses became more and more prominent.

Even if a thorough investigation of salt, tea, horses and iron could increase some income for the court, if these two problems were not solved, the problem of redundancy would become more and more serious and would eventually drag down the Song Dynasty.

The reason for redundant officials was that the number of people admitted to the imperial examinations was too large each time, and coupled with the problem of the system of hereditary titles, the number of officials increased more and more.

The salaries of officials are already high, and an increase in the number of officials means an increase in expenditure.

The solution is very simple: limit the number of people admitted to the imperial examinations and the number of officials appointed through imperial concubines, and at the same time reduce their salaries.

But no matter which point, most civil servants in the world will not accept it.

As for the problem of redundant troops, it is also difficult to solve. The fundamental problem of redundant troops is that with the Liao Kingdom and Western Xia on the side, there is no strategic location to defend in the north, and a large number of troops are needed for defense.

In addition, the weak combat power of the Song Dynasty army was also a drawback. The court could only continue to increase the number of troops.

To solve this problem, we must increase the combat effectiveness of the army and then reduce the number of troops.

The only way to solve the financial crisis is to increase revenue and reduce expenditure.

However, the civil servants and the military, which were the areas where the Song Dynasty needed to cut costs the most, could not do so due to various problems.

Even if it is open source, it can only temporarily plug these two holes, but not completely plug them.

In fact, there is another way, which is to fight.

Once we can recover the territories occupied by Liao and Western Xia, there will be no need to maintain so many troops as the threat will be gone.

At the same time, as the territory expanded, not only did the court's taxes increase, but the number of officials needed also increased.

However, the various internal problems of the Song Dynasty and the combat effectiveness of the army could not support doing so.

In this way, it seems that we have fallen into a vicious circle again.

As a time traveler, although Ang Lee is not familiar with history, he knows some good policies of various dynasties in history.

But no one could think of a solution to the problem at hand.

Ang Lee wrote down all his ideas and told Wang Anshi about them, letting him worry about it.

……

That day, Li An returned home from work and Li Nan called him.

Tell him that he and Liu are planning to go back.

It is already mid-September, and there are still nearly two months until Ang Lee's wedding.

Li Nan planned to go back to Yangzhou with Liu to bring Li An's grandparents, uncle's family, and Liu's maternal relatives over.

There must be an elder present to propose marriage. Secondly, the Li family has no relatives in Bian Jing, so he can't get married without relatives showing up.

After listening to this, Li An thought about it and agreed.

It is not long before Prince Yan takes action, and Bianjing will surely be in chaos for a while. Parents who stay in Bianjing will be worried.

Their return to Yangzhou was a good opportunity to avoid this turbulent period.

However, Li An was worried about letting the two of them go back, so he went to his master's martial arts school and hired eight young men who had learned martial arts from his master.

These young men are not very skilled in martial arts, but they are definitely much stronger than ordinary people. Li Ang's parents can rest assured that they are protecting him.

(End of this chapter)