Chapter 602 Are you worthy of being called feudal? (Please vote, please book)
Under the earthen wall of Yaocun Town, three landlords wrapped in patched silk clothes were drinking porridge with coarse porcelain bowls. These three landlords were all from Yaocun Town. You can tell at a glance that there was a little landlord, that is, they could be considered a landlord in East Asia. If they were to throw them to Russia, they would definitely be called a poor peasant after the October Revolution.
Let’s look at the food in the three of them. The bowl of the landlord named Kong was made of sorghum rice and added some vegetable leaves. It tasted so delicious!
The pickled vegetables of the landlord surnamed Meng were as thin as twine, and he was reluctant to swallow them in one bite. He had to chew them slowly and eat them mixed with millet porridge.
Only Yao Xiucai's bowl was calm with a piece of dried bacon - this was his "benefit" to be a private school teacher. One of his students was admitted to the "new scholar" of Yanzhou Prefecture to give him a gift from the teacher. The boy went to the official school run by the Datonghui in the mansion to study. I heard that he could be a local official after graduation. I was so envious!
"Three masters, foreigners are asking questions!" As soon as Bai Siwen's Beijing film fell, three silver dollars in Taiping fell on the bluestone slab. The three men hurriedly got up, picked up the silver dollars, finished the remaining meal in a few bites, and happily arrived in front of Moore and Friedrich.
Moore squinted his eyes and looked at the three "landlords": Kong's cloth shoes were broken, and he could see his toes. Meng's robe had long been washed off. Yao Xiucai's blue silk robe had patches of the same color at the elbow. Friedrich sketched in his notebook: The thinness and shabbyness of the three formed a huge contrast with the fat and glamour of the European manor.
"I am Kong Zhaoming, the 76th generation grandson of the Kong family in Qufu." When the landlord surnamed Kong bowed, an opium smoke gun appeared on his waist, which was polished brightly.
Bai Siwen sneered and pointed at the smoke gun: "If you smoke again, you, the 76th generation grandson of the Kong family, are going to beg for food!"
Kong Zhaoming, with a smoky face, sighed: "There is no way, I can't quit. I'm seeing opium getting more and more expensive. Just live one day!"
The landlord surnamed Meng also sighed: "Meng Guanglu, the descendant of the sub-saint Mencius."
After Bai Siwen looked at the normal-looking Mencius: "Why did Brother Meng sigh? Could it be that the smoke is too?"
Yao Xiucai on the side said, "He didn't suck that, but his father smoked big cigarettes and lost more than half of the 50 acres of land. Last year, he sucked it too big and went straight to see the Assassin."
"Stop talking, Mr. Yao, don't talk." The landlord surnamed Meng shook his head repeatedly.
"I'm in Yao Wenxue." Yao Xiucai bowed and also claimed his name.
Bai Siwen glanced at his blue shirt: "Are you a ration student?"
Yao Xiucai sighed and shook his head gently: "It's all the past. Now the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom refuses to admit it."
"Svenson," Moore called Bai Sven's foreign name, "What is a student? Is he a nobleman or a privileged identity similar to a Japanese samurai?"
"The students are not nobles, and they are different from Japanese samurai. The soldiers are inherited from the ancestral ages, and the students are obtained." Bai Siwen thought for a while and said, "It's a bit similar to the diploma in Europe? It's a good diploma, but it's not qualified to be an official. You can get it by taking the imperial examination. You can see the officials without kneeling. The government subsidizes four taels of silver every month, which is also the number one figure among the clans. However, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom now does not recognize the fame of the Qing Dynasty, and his students are in vain."
"What? Twenty or thirty acres of land are also considered landlords?" Friedrich's pen tip almost poked the paper page. In his hometown in Prussia, the manor housekeeper managed more than 2,000 Chinese acres of land. With twenty or thirty acres of Chinese acres, farmers can only be considered small producers.
Yao Xiucai smiled bitterly: "There is 600 acres of land in the town, and that is the real master. A small family like us." He suddenly lowered his voice, "The Yellow River had a flood two years ago. Wang Juren took six thugs to force the tenant farmers to pay the rent and beat two people to death on the spot - that's what it means to be majestic!"
Moore noticed that Kong Zhaoming's shoulders were shaking. This "saint" was shaking in the flood of the Yellow River two years ago, but the tenants resisted the rent. He, a small landlord with only 30 acres of land, could not afford to support the thug, so he had to endure it.
Now the farmers' association of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom has been opened to Qufu County, which is specially supported by tenants and poor farmers. I wonder how long will his thirty acres of land be protected?
"Are there many landlords like Wang Juren in Shandong?" Moore asked in stiff Chinese.
"How could it be a lot?" Yao Xiucai shook his head, "Six hundred acres, where can ordinary people save up? Wang Juren saved some money because he passed the Juren and had the opportunity to be a screenwriter. He bought five hundred acres of land, and thus he had the current family business. However, he had five sons, none of whom did not have the fame of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. Once he died, his family property would be divided into five."
After listening to Bai Swen's translation, Moore asked: "Svenson, are you popular in China's inheritance system?"
Bai Siwen nodded and said, "Yes, a good family business cannot help but divide it into three parts. Therefore, most of the country landlords in China are small families, which is not worth mentioning."
Friedrich wrote in his notebook: "China's inheritance system may be an important reason why Chinese landlords generally became small producers, and the general pocketization of landlords made it difficult for them to obtain or maintain feudal characteristics."
Moore asked at this time: "Svenson, how big is your farm? How many serfs are there?"
Bai Siwen smiled bitterly and said, "My house is not big, covering an area of ​​about 500 acres of serfs, or something. Just such a big house, why do you still raise serfs? It's so easy to rent it to tenants?"
Friedrich shook his head and said, "Without serfs, you can't control the population Svenson, you are still not feudal enough!"
Moore asked again: "Svenson, how much land did your entire Eight Banners Group occupy and how many serfs have you controlled?"
Bai Siwen looked proud: "The Eight Banners nobles have hundreds of thousands of people, occupying 70 million acres of land. There are always hundreds of thousands of slaves below! How about it, is it feudal enough now?"
Friedrich and Moore looked surprised.
"That's it?" Friedrich said, "China is so vast, with no less than one billion mu of arable land and pastures, with a population of 40 million. The largest feudal group only accounts for about seven percent of the land and a few thousandth of the population. It's incredible!"
Moore also felt deeply: "You seem too unfeudal! Well, China's society is really unique, not only is it very different from Europe, but it is even very different from Japan and the original North Korea!"
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When the dusk shrouded Yaocun Town, Moore wrote under the inn oil lamp: "The Chinese landlord class is essentially petty bourgeoisie - they lack hereditary privileges, land ownership is highly fluid and easily dispersed, and their economic status is between rich peasants and poor peasants in Europe. Only a small number of large landlords can control a certain amount of violence. However, there is no clear dependence between large landlords and small and medium-sized landlords, making it difficult to form a samurai group or a knight group. In fact, the economic status of most large landlords is also very unstable, and their political power usually needs to be obtained or maintained through the imperial examination, which makes their power inheritance full of uncertainty."
Friedrich opened the "Fish Scale Book" that helped him record the land distribution in Yaocun Town by the student "Tianshi Moore": The largest landlord Wang Juren in Yaocun Town, accounting for less than 10% of the arable land in the town. In Prussia, many Junker nobles single manors account for 40% of the land in the county or county.
"They are not feudal lords, but the middle class that was exploited by the feudal system." Moore knocked the account book with his pipe, "The ones who truly mastered the violent machine are the Eight Banners nobles and bureaucratic groups - these people are feudal fortresses in the East! However, the Eight Banners nobles and the Han bureaucrats who depend on them can directly control the land that can be directly controlled by the Han bureaucrats. However, the Han bureaucrats have a large mobility because they need to be produced through the imperial examination and have a high degree of feudality. Therefore, although the Qing Dynasty in China was a feudal dynasty, the empire it ruled was not very feudal. For feudal dynasty, this was a fatal weakness!"
"This may be the reason why their feudal rule quickly collapsed under the attack of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom!" Friedrich said while writing in his notebook: "The weak feudalism makes it difficult for all dynasties in China to form a stubborn rule, which may be the reason why dynasties frequently occur in Chinese history."
Moore finally concluded: "The feudal lords in Europe and Japan rely on swords to inherit power, but Chinese landlords pin their hopes on brushes. Their knowledge is even worse than the two nobles in North Korea. The two lords in North Korea can at least monopolize the imperial examinations and maintain the inheritance of the direct descendants of the aristocratic families. The relatively fair imperial examination and production analyses make it difficult for Chinese landlords to achieve true feudalization."
At this time, Bai Siwen lit a Cuban cigar and took a sip, saying sadly: "Our ancestors are very knowledgeable and think that the Han system is easy to use. I didn't expect that there are so many feudal systems in the world that are better than the Han system, even if they are like Japan, they are better than today!"
Friedrich drew the triple pyramid in his notes: the top of the tower is the nobles and bureaucrats, the middle class is the imperial examination landlords, and the bottom class is the poor tenant farmers. He looked at the triple pyramid and suddenly said: "Carl, have you noticed that China's social structure is very similar to those of European countries that have experienced revolutionary storms!"
Moore showed expectant eyes: "Yes, the stability of European countries under the rule of the bourgeoisie is far less than that of the suffocating feudal era!"
When the updater rang the third update, a team of militia from the peasant association held a torch and passed the inn where Moore and Friedrich and others lived, and walked towards the mansion of the Wang family Juren to the north of the town. The house was now occupied by Wei Changhui, Hong Renyi, Zuo Zongtang and their personal guards. Bai Siwen looked up at the window and looked at the moonlight. Under the moonlight, the lecturers of the Qufu County Peasant Association were posting slogans "There are lands" everywhere. The storm of the land is coming!
Chapter completed!