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Author: Erzi Congzhou

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Everyone nodded, only Wei Fei said: "What the hell? I don't believe that people in ancient times could make elbows as fine as this after eating locusts. Oil was such a precious thing for ordinary people at that time? How could they possibly take it?"

Come to stir-fry locusts?”

"So even if we eat locusts, we usually eat them by grilling them on bamboo skewers like we did when we were kids."

"The same goes for shrimps at that time. They were usually white-baked and dipped in seasonings. So I would like to ask: Do grilled locusts and white-baked shrimps have similar tastes? Can they trigger the association you mentioned?"

"Damn! I'm trying to trick someone from the past into using someone from today." Zhou Zhi handed over his hand and said, "Thank you for reminding me, I almost made a joke."

It was rare for Wei Fei to be so thorough in liberal arts, and he suddenly felt proud: "Am I considered a one-word master?"

Yang He smiled slowly and said: "Actually, there are too many people today imitating the ancients. Let me ask you, how much land do you think should be considered a landlord?"

"Well...you have to have twenty or thirty acres, right?" Xiang Yu said.

"Is twenty or thirty acres too much?" Fang Wenyu said: "One family can't finish planting. I think more than ten acres is too much. If I hire people, does it count as a permanent laborer?"

"A family in Shimu could manage to cook for a whole year, and don't forget that at that time, a family usually had more than three people."

"So it is correct to say that the feudal dynasty was a landlord class regime." Zhang Lu said: "At that time, in order to support a person's full-time study, the family still had to have more than ten acres of land."

"Hehehe, it's a pity that the reality is different..." Yang He smiled with an "I knew you would think so" face.

"What's going on?" We are all good kids who love to learn. Everyone is familiar with the standard answers on the political test paper, but without exception, we have not investigated such details, and we still just swallow them all.

In order not to affect their ability to fill in the standard answers, Zhou Zhi never explained this aspect to them in detail.

Today is an opportunity to popularize science. Zhou Zhi smiled and said: "Actually, this issue is a bit complicated, but according to the results mentioned in the article "Sichuan Land Reform and Its Significance in the Early Years of Liberation", after the land reform, the average number of farm laborers increased from 0.2 acres to 2.37

Mu, poor farmers increased from 0.5 mu to 1.6 mu, and landlords dropped from 14.59 mu per capita to 1.47 mu.”

"In other words, the landlord class in central Shu at that time only owned fifteen acres of land per capita."

"Of course, since it is an average, there is both an upper average and a lower average. In terms of people, because of the existence of the pyramid effect, there must be far more people in the lower average than in the upper average."

"To sum it up roughly, there are too many landowners per capita of just a few acres. If there are five people in a family and two people are not working, then a family with more than ten acres of land has the conditions to be classified as a landlord."

"Of course, the division of landowners is not only based on land ownership. There are also two conditions. The first is that they have labor but do not work. In this case, the land they own is called 'interest land'. They rely on employment

Others work and gain profits through rent collection, of course they are landlords."

"There is also a situation where although you work yourself, you also need to hire long-term workers. This involves the ratio of self-owned land and land for rent. It can be divided into 'middle farmers plus small land rental', or it can be divided into rich farmers or even landlords."

"But what we need more ideas is that we cannot apply the present to the ancient, nor use this standard to apply the ancient, and then come to the conclusion that 'the feudal imperial examination is to select talents among the landlord class.'"

"Because in the Tang Dynasty, the land-acre system was very clear. In the early Tang Dynasty, one hectare of land was granted to each person, including 20 acres of Yongye land and 80 acres of Koufen land."

"Of course, it is not absolutely uniform across the board, and it also depends on whether there is a conflict between the local land and the population. But this quota has been used for a long time. In small rural areas, where land conflicts are prominent, it is also limited to one thirty acres."

"By the Song Dynasty, this standard had not changed much, and it was about one acre and thirty-five acres."

"This type of 'owning peasants' class who normally obtain land is the cornerstone of maintaining the rule of the feudal dynasty. They provide the vast majority of tax revenue for the country, and also perform military service and labor. They are the absolute main force contributing to the country."

"This group of people has been called the 'good family' since the Han Dynasty. In Du Fu's poem, 'On what day will the Huru be pacified, the good man will stop his expedition?' The good man refers to them."

"The children of this population are also the main participants in the imperial examinations. Many dynasties even stipulated that only the children of these people can participate in the imperial examinations. Other craftsmen, musicians, merchants, and those with low status are not allowed to participate."

"This part of the population has been the majority of the country's population for most of the history. It is unscientific to simply and crudely classify them as the 'landlord class' according to modern standards, because they were actually ordinary families in ancient times.

, or belong to an ordinary family with slightly better conditions."

"If the Land Equalization Order must be applied according to the standards of Shuzhong during the land reform, then except for farm laborers, almost everyone in the world who cultivates land will be a big landowner."

"Therefore, it is too simple and crude to use Xizhe's method to divide China's feudal dynasties. Many claims are untenable after actual research."

"Ye Shi in the Southern Song Dynasty investigated the household registrations in Liangzhe Road at that time. Let us give another example. In the Song Dynasty, household registrations were divided into principal households and customers. The principal household was the person who owned private land, and the customer was the person who rented state land and private land."

"According to the amount of household property, urban families are divided into ten classes, and agricultural families are divided into five classes."

"Ye Shi once made statistics on the households within thirty miles of Wenzhou City, and classified them as the first class with more than 400 acres, the second class with 150 to 400 acres, and the third class with 30 to 150 acres.

Fourth class."

"Although there is no fifth grade, we can calculate it through simple mathematics."

"And there was an official document from Kaifeng Prefecture at that time that those with less than 20 acres of land could apply to the government. So we can roughly think of fifth-class households as having more than 20 acres of land."

"This result is also comparable to Ye Shi's statistics."

"Finally, let's talk about the conclusion. The conclusion is that it conforms to the pyramid structure. The fifth-class households account for 70% of the total, the third and fourth-class households account for 10%, and the remaining 20% ​​of the head household population accounts for 8%.

The land of ten.”

"Remember these people's standards. The minimum farm property of a household is more than twenty acres."

"In addition, there are customers. The proportion of main customers in the Song Dynasty has not changed much, about 35%."

"There were two types of customers in the Song Dynasty: those who farmed land for the state and those who farmed land for private individuals."

"The people who farm land for the country are similar to our current rural areas. These people pay rent in lieu of tax. Their labor service is heavier than that of homesteaders, but the rent and land tax are about the same."

"The remaining part of the land that is farmed by private individuals are the real farm laborers. This part is the most exploited, but like the other extreme landlords, they also only account for a very small part of the total population."

"So the ancient standards for land tenure were themselves quite complicated."
Chapter completed!