Asking someone to write an epitaph shows that the two have a close friendship, and it is a first-class recognition.
During the Zhiping period, although Wang Anshi was not the prime minister, he was able to write an epitaph for Zhang Youzhi and compare him to Liezi. The kind of gentleman Zhuang Zhou praised not only praised his character, but more importantly, was affirmed and praised by the prime minister.
Zhang Youzhi was clearly Liezi, the man who was praised by Zhuang Zhou as a man of idleness and wild cranes, so he did not pursue fame and fortune, but he was not a relic of the Southern Tang Dynasty who refused to serve in the Song Dynasty because of his hatred of destroying the country.
If you, Deng Runfu, are dissatisfied, you can go to Wang Anshi to settle the score.
This is the advantage of asking celebrities to write epitaphs. Even Wang Anshi himself cannot rashly overturn what he has said.
As for Zhang Yue, he found a moral solution within a moment.
The officials originally felt that this matter was a myth and that even if Zhang Gu was a surviving official of the Southern Tang Dynasty, Zhang Youzhi was not.
even if! This cannot dissuade him from using Zhang Yue.
But Zhang Yue saw something in his heart. He was demoted from Bianjing to Fujian, thousands of miles away. When he arrived in his hometown, he didn't even enter the house to chat with his classmates, but he immediately returned to Bianjing because of an edict from the emperor.
If there was any urgent mission, that would be fine. But at this time, Deng Runfu wanted to prevent himself from being reinstated and being reused, so he maliciously claimed that he was a disciple of the Southern Tang Dynasty.
Did he travel thousands of miles just to explain to the officials?
Is it possible to be an official only with the word "seeking"?
Zhang Yue said: "This matter is extremely ridiculous. There is a treacherous minister who intends to slander and destroy my reputation, and it involves the teacher's reputation, so I analyze his thoughts. But even if your majesty trusts you, what is the use of my various words?"
"Even if it is a white jade, there are only slight flaws in what you say, no matter whether it is well-founded or not?"
When the officials heard this, they knew that Zhang Yue was angry, but how could they doubt the reputation of an important minister? What if Zhang Yue loses his temper?
The official couldn't sit still on the dragon's throne, and even said to comfort him: "Zhang Qing, you don't care about meticulousness when doing great things, and don't hesitate to make concessions when doing great things. Why should you take it to heart if you just say a few words to your ministers?"
After the official finished speaking, he immediately realized that he had said the wrong thing. "Da Xing does not care about meticulousness, and does not give up on small concessions." This shows that there are still doubts about Zhang Youzhi's affairs.
After listening to the official's words, Zhang Yue narrowed his eyes and said, "Your Majesty, before the fire in the Third Division, when I was in charge of the Accounting Department of the Third Division, apart from auditing, I achieved other things."
Li Xian, who was standing by, heard this and wondered if Zhang Yue was going to raise his cards and criticize Lu Huiqing. As far as he knew, Zhang Yue must have unfavorable evidence against Lu Huiqing, and now he happened to be criticizing Lu Huiqing in the temple.
In fact, the officials also guessed that Lu Huiqing instructed Deng Runfu to impeach Zhang Yue when he returned to Beijing, but this was the scope of the dissent he allowed.
But Zhang Yueruo fought back...
The official said: "Qing Zhang, please tell me!"
Zhang Yue said: "I totaled the number of households in the world last year. The first-class households had 350 acres of cultivated land, and the second-class households had 200 acres... and based on this, it is estimated that there were 27,500 acres of farmland rented out in the world. Eight hundred thousand acres..."
The official was surprised and said, "How did Zhang Qing calculate it?"
Li Xian also looked in disbelief. They originally thought that Zhang Yue went to the Third Division to audit the accounts, but they did not expect that Zhang Yue used the information he checked in the Third Division to do another thing.
Zhang Yue looked at nothing else and read out in front of the audience as if there was a manuscript drawn out of thin air: "Among them, the cultivated land of the third-class households and the fourth-class households are 100 acres and 60 acres respectively... and this dynasty has a fixed land rent. Land rent, but generally speaking, the split system is used, which is the annual income of the land, and it is like the civil law. In addition to the land rent, there are also cattle rent, etc. "
"Taking the folk customs of Jiangxi as an example, five out of ten people are recruited to plow the fields, and six out of ten are recruited to use oxen..."
"And there are two types of taxes for households, money for exemption from service, money for young crops, and money for purchase, and money for one's own birth... I calculated that the land tax per acre in the world is sixty-one pence."
After hearing this, the official said: "The land tax in the world is sixty-one cents per mu, so how much is the income from each mu of land?"
Zhang Yue said: "For medium-sized acres, the yield of rice and wheat per mu is one stone and a half, but there are mountains and dang that are not suitable for growing grain. If we leave the wasteland fallow, the yield per mu should be calculated as one stone and two. Two stones of rice are equivalent to one stone of rice, and wheat produces flour." Then it is 80%. In Kaifeng Prefecture, one stone of rice is about 800 to 1,000 ren, and for wheat, it is about 300 ren."
"There are many kinds of wheat in the north, and Shaanxi and Hebei are both Xixia and Liao countries. Therefore, the local tax is almost more than 20%, not counting other government assessments."
The official didn't ask any questions.
Zhang Yue continued: "I have calculated that in addition to farming, rural households in the world also have income from cattle, silk, hemp, tea, straw, etc. Their average annual income is 45 guans and 830 taels. Among them, the first-class households have six One hundred and thirty-one, the fifth-class households are thirty-one, and the customers are eighteen.”
…
Outsiders were confused, but officials were interested. Not only was Zhang Yue's detailed data enumerated, the most important data, if they were accurate, would be a matter of national and people's livelihood.
There are so many ministers in the world who talk about things in general, citing scriptures, but if they are asked to come up with detailed figures, every one of them is dumbfounded.
Even Wang Anshi only gave a rough outline and never listed them in detail like Zhang Yue.
In a nutshell, let data speak.
Whether the people are living well or not depends on whether the country's policies are being implemented. Data represents everything, not officials' verbal comments about whether things are good or not. Among so many ministers, apart from Zhang Fangping, Zhang Yue is probably the only one who has this ability.
However, Zhang Fangping still had to take a notebook and read out the detailed statistics compiled by the three departments.
But Zhang Yue didn't need it at all. These economic figures, which were related to the lifeblood of the country, seemed to have been recited before the king's prelude, and they were as familiar as they were.
This move really shocked the officials.
What does this mean? All the accounts in the world are clear.
Prime Minister, what are you trying to kill? Aren’t you managing this country for the emperor?
Don’t you know the country’s most basic economic figures? Are you qualified to talk about governing the country?
How can Zhang Yue be so aware and in control of everything?
Anyway, the official knew that with his own ability, he would never be able to keep all these numbers in his heart and tell them like a treasure.
Therefore, the emperor is only an emperor, and the Nine-Five-Year-Old Lord is just a mortal after all. To govern the country, we still need to hire capable people to do it.
Zhang Yue continued: "Among them, the number of first-class households is less than five out of a thousand...the fifth-class households account for at most 40% of the world's households, and the number of customers is close to 30%..."
"I arranged this arrangement by dividing the number of households from the first to the fifth class by the annual income, and the resulting figure is 42/100..."
Zhang Yue listed the famous Gini coefficient in later generations. Zero represents absolute average. 0.2 or 3 represents the relative average between the rich and the poor. Generally, if it is less than 0.4, it means that the gap between the rich and the poor is relatively good, and if it is above 0.4, it means that the gap between the rich and the poor is relatively large. , and above 0.6 is extremely large.
In the Song Dynasty, it was 0.42. This number shows that the wealth is indeed relatively uneven, but the problem is not big.
Zhang Yue said: "It is well known that this dynasty has never suppressed annexation, and the land is open to trade. Although the rich have fields and the poor have no place to stand, breaking up the annexation is not the most important thing. It is better to suppress the annexation and govern it."
Lu Huiqing talked about breaking up the annexation and believed that the annexers were extremely powerful and must be eradicated. However, Zhang Yue said that it would be better to suppress them. There was no need to pursue them as fiercely as Lu Huiqing!
ps: The data is excerpted from a certain master on the Internet. Some of it may not be so prepared. Just take a look.
