In fact, Zhao Xirui had no intention of reading it at first, but after a quick glance, she saw that the piece of paper contained Su Yonglin's experiences when she was nine years old. Out of curiosity about her husband's childhood life, Zhao Xirui decided to continue reading.
But she didn't expect that this was not the boring diary Su Yonglin kept when he was young, but the beginning of subverting the old world.
In the first part, Su Yonglin described his privileged life in childhood and his once vulgar ideals. This made Zhao Xirui very interesting and felt that her husband was once a vulgar person.
But in the middle part, Su Yonglin changed the subject and began to describe the fragmented world he saw in his eyes.
On one side are the wealthy and happy lives of the families of bureaucrats and landlords, while on the other are the miserable people at the bottom who freeze to death in the snow and starve to death.
Su Yonglin was shocked and confused by the two completely different living conditions of the landlords and farmers, so he raised a question in his manuscript.
Why do farmers still starve to death when there is no free land everywhere?
Su Yonglin calculated in detail the food needs of a family of five for a whole year, as well as the normal food production of ten or twenty acres of land, and the conclusion he came to was very confusing.
In a normal year, the grain produced by a five-member farm with more than ten acres of land is obviously enough to eat, and there is even a lot of surplus, enough for farmers to fill their stomachs and reproduce.
But why did he travel to the southeastern coastal areas in normal times but repeatedly see farmers going bankrupt and becoming landless refugees, eventually starving to death?
Is it because they are not hardworking enough, or is it because God is not showing favor and the food harvest fails?
neither.
Su Yonglin also described in detail a process he witnessed with his own eyes when small and medium-sized county officials went to the countryside to collect taxes.
He clearly recorded the process of the petty officials arbitrarily raising the tax amount and the farmers who begged but were brutally beaten. He also noted that this was the third increase in taxes in addition to the normal tax.
In addition to the normal taxes stipulated by the court, these officials would also use various reasons to create extra sects under clever names, and constantly draw blood from farmers to fill the deep hole of their desires.
For farmers, this is too cruel.
From this, Su Yonglin came up with a guess.
It’s not that farmers are not hardworking enough or God doesn’t reward them, so they don’t have enough food to eat.
The grain they normally produce is enough to keep them fed and clothed. However, due to the intervention of external forces, farmers have been robbed of most of the grain they produce, resulting in them not having enough to eat or even starving to death.
He called this process exploitation.
Zhao Xirui continued to look back, from Su Yonglin's account when he was nine years old to when he was twelve years old. He was shocked when he saw more than thirty cases of forced tax collection by the government recorded by Su Yonglin.
Most of them were caused by man-made disasters, due to some magical operations or corruption by local officials, which led to a deficit in the government treasury, and because they were worried about being traced by the superiors, they made up for it by arranging additional taxes on farmers to fill the financial deficit.
By this time, Su Yonglin's thoughts had obviously gone a step further, evolving from deep sympathy and deep helplessness to leading these farmers to fill their stomachs through armed struggle.
He pointed out that within the existing political framework, no matter how hard farmers work on the land, they will never be able to have a full stomach because the system will not let them have a full stomach.
Unless there is a chance encounter and one suddenly becomes a landlord, or a scholar is born in the family and thereby achieves a jump in social class, it is absolutely impossible to make a decision.
But whether you become a landlord or have a scholar in your family, this is a small probability event, and the channels for social advancement are narrow.
The vast majority of farmers cannot legally get rid of their exploited status through these two methods, and can only die in the process of being exploited day after day.
Therefore, the main culprit that makes farmers hungry is not laziness or natural disasters, but man-made disasters.
The Song Dynasty was established by the reactionary political group headed by Zhao Guanjia of Lin'an, which led to the peasants under its rule not having enough to eat. They lost their land under the double exploitation and blows of the government and landlords, and then became refugees, and then starved to death and froze to death. .
They regard farmers as cattle and horses, not as human beings.
If farmers want to stand up and have enough to eat, they must overthrow this extremely reactionary regime and establish a new country in which they are the masters of their own country.
There will be no cruel exploitation in this country, and there will be no cruel bureaucrats and landlords. Farmers can fill their stomachs through labor, make money further, and live a better life.
In short, we want to rebel.
This is not an ordinary rebellion. We must not only settle accounts with Zhao Guan's family, but also with all the superior people who exploited us.
Finally, a country was established where there would be no cruel exploitation and unreasonable taxes, and no one would starve to death. Tens of thousands of mansions were built to shelter the poor people all over the world.
Seeing this, Zhao Xirui was so surprised that she was speechless. She stayed in Su Yonglin's study and didn't even eat dinner that day. She kept reading Su Yonglin's manuscript until late at night.
Then it was the same on the second day, the third day, and the fourth day. For several days in a row, the maid had to ask before eating.
She read all of Su Yonglin's manuscripts three times, from beginning to end. She felt that the worldview she had built based on books and knowledge in the past was crumbling. She felt that she was in a very strange state.
She had read Confucian classics under the guidance of Zhao Zuoliang and also studied on her own. She recognized the wisdom and morality of the saints in the classics and believed that all the principles in the world were basically here.
As long as a society is constructed according to these principles, then this society must be beautiful, just as beautiful as her career as a young lady.
But this is not the case. Su Yonglin said that what he saw in those books was benevolence, justice and morality, but what he read was the naked word "cannibalism". This society is cannibalizing people.
They do talk about benevolence, righteousness and morality, but they only talk about benevolence, righteousness and morality to fellow scholars.
To them, the majority of farmers are not even individuals. How can they be worthy of discussing benevolence, justice and morality with them?
They are just a group of talking production tools, nothing more. If they can't produce without eating, they don't even intend to leave them even a morsel of food.
While talking eloquently about benevolence, righteousness, morality and the unity of the world, they turn a blind eye to the death of people from freezing and starvation. Is this the benevolence, righteousness and morality of Confucian scholars?
Are farmers not human beings?
If farmers, who are a vulnerable group, are not treated as human beings, who have the right to talk about benevolence, justice and morality?
That's hypocrisy.
After Su Yonglin put forward this point of view in his manuscript at the age of sixteen, he had already decided to leave the Southern Song Dynasty and rebel in the Jin Kingdom. He also put forward his own view of contradiction.
Principal contradictions, secondary contradictions, national contradictions, class contradictions.
The Southern Song Dynasty seemed weak, but the government and the landlords were closely connected and collaborated closely with each other. They suppressed the peasants too hard. It was difficult for the nascent uprising force to find room for survival in the Southern Song Dynasty. Once they were grasped, it was the main contradiction and they could not find allies. Otherwise, there is no opportunity for development and growth.
The Jin Kingdom is different. There are other conflicts that can be dealt with. The ethnic conflicts between the Jurchens and other ethnic groups can make a big fuss and buy time for the rebel army to develop and grow. Therefore, rebellion in the Jin Kingdom is simpler and easier than rebellion in the Southern Song Dynasty.
So Su Yonglin trained his own team, educated them, let them read and write, taught them what they saw and thought, and strived to make them like-minded people.
Then, head north together.
Zhao Xirui knew what happened next. Su Yonglin relied on Zhao Kaishan's local power to gradually develop and grow, and finally reached the top and became the de facto master of the Liberation Army.
And further led the Liberation Army to defeat the Jin Army and destroy the Jin Kingdom, creating such great achievements that even the maids around Zhao Xirui said that Su Yonglin was about to become emperor, and then made Zhao Xirui the queen.
Zhao Xirui was still a little confused at the time. She felt that everything was so dreamy that she couldn't believe it.
But compared to Su Yonglin becoming emperor and himself queen, isn't the content in his manuscript even more unbelievable?
