The Peasant Girl’s Splendid Manor

Mo Yan never thought that Zhao Dafu would take the initiative to stand up and confess his corruption. He even told the whole story as if he were pouring beans into a bamboo tube.

What Mo Yan didn't expect was that Zhao Dafu was forced to be greedy by the tenants in Chenjiacun out of help, and the time he had been greedy was not as long as she had guessed.

This matter started ten years ago. Ten years ago, a moderate drought occurred in the capital city. Although people did not starve to death, the crop yields were greatly reduced, and some even failed to harvest. At that time, the imperial court deliberately reduced taxes so that the people affected by the disaster would not have difficulty living.

At that time, dozens of families in Chenjiacun who had rented the fields on Zhuangzi were also affected by the disaster. They didn't have much harvest to begin with, and they had to go hungry after paying the rent. These tenants had no choice but to come to Zhao Dafu, hoping that Zhao Dafu could intercede with the owner of Zhuangzi, the corrupt official who was executed a few years ago, and lower the rent.

Zhao Dafu was not a hard-hearted person to begin with, so he agreed to intercede with his master on their behalf. However, he was only a small steward in Zhuangzi and was not qualified to see his master in the main house in the city. He could only express his intention to reduce the rent to the corrupt master through the chief steward. As a result, I don't know whether it was the corrupt official who was hard-hearted or the big manager who wanted to take advantage of it, but in the end he was unwilling to reduce the rent at all.

On a personal note, the tenants were very dissatisfied with the corrupt official's unwillingness to reduce the rent. Especially when they heard that other landlords had reduced the rent for their tenants, or even refused to rent at all, this dissatisfaction reached its peak, so several Ten households of tenant farmers banded together and refused to pay rent.

Zhao Dafu had no choice. If he didn't pay the rent, it was because he, the manager, was not doing his job well. If the superiors blamed him, the whole family would have to live and die, and he couldn't bear this responsibility. So, he summoned the tenants together, hoping to persuade them to pay the rent on time and in quantity. Unfortunately, he could not make the tenants compromise even if he brought out the name of the corrupt official.

The two sides were in a stalemate for many days. When the final deadline for rent payment came, Zhao Dafu almost knelt down, and the tenants "reluctantly" agreed to pay the rent. However, the rent must be paid according to the standards they set again.

The standard for those tenants is to pay rent according to 70% of the harvest. The rent is still 60%. The remaining 30%, except for a small portion given to Zhao Dafu, most of it belongs to them. In this kind of drought year, grain production is reduced on a large scale, and the harvest is uncertain. Isn't it just how much they say?

At that time, Zhao Dafu only needs to fool the people above him, and no one will find out about the 30% of the food they secretly bought.

Although Zhao Dafu was unwilling, he was already riding a tiger and was unable to get off. He thought about the lesser of two evils for a whole night, and finally agreed to the tenants to help deal with the stewards who came to collect grain.

The steward who came to collect the grain did not know that Zhao Dafu was "rebellious". After weighing the scales, he saw that the rent was much less, so he just assumed that the grain production had dropped too much and did not suspect anything. From that incident, Zhao Dafu also gained a lot of benefits. The grain he received cost him thirty taels of silver, which was their family's total income for a year.

However, what Zhao Dafu never expected was that the dozens of tenant farmers who had tasted the benefits were not satisfied. They repeated the same trick the next year, giving Zhao Dafu benefits and asking Zhao Dafu to help cover up.

How could Zhao Dafu be willing to "collude" with them? However, those tenants were not stupid, and directly threatened him with his greed for grain last year. Zhao Dafu had no choice but to feel deep in his heart that his master was not short of the money and he had benefited from it, so he compromised after a short while of consideration.

This compromise lasted for ten years. Even if the owner of Zhuangzi later changed hands and became the imperial court, the tenants could not stop. Fortunately, those tenants were also sensible and knew that if they did too much, they would be easily discovered, so they only dared to deduct 10% or 50% in good harvest years. But in fact, only 10% would be more than 30% in famine years.