MLMD -Chapter 200 The Under‑the‑Table Currents

A “market shutdown” refers to the suspension of commercial activity. It is usually a tactic used by merchants who band together to stop doing business in order to force the other side to compromise and give in to their demands. Often it is a way to protest social injustice or the infringement of their own rights. In essence, it is a form of public demonstration to express perceived unfairness.

Such shutdowns normally cause great inconvenience to the public and draw widespread attention. Yet in the end, because people still have to make a living, business usually resumes sooner or later.

By the Ming dynasty, merchants had already perfected this tactic. Whenever the court introduced any policy unfavorable to them, Ming merchants would raise the banner of a market shutdown to threaten local officials and even the imperial court.

Some might ask: Didn’t Zhu Yuanzhang personally establish the hierarchy of “scholars, farmers, artisans, and merchants,” placing merchants at the very bottom? How, then, could they dare to shut down markets so brazenly? Wasn’t that openly defying the court? Weren’t they afraid of imperial wrath?

To understand this, one must look at the Ming political system.

Almost every founding emperor was obsessed with power, and Zhu Yuanzhang was no exception. After founding the Ming, he came to detest the post of prime minister, finding it both annoying and obstructive. In the thirteenth year of Hongwu, using the Hu Weiyong case as a pretext, he abolished the position altogether. He then established the Six Ministries, using this system to keep all authority firmly in his own hands.

What Zhu Yuanzhang failed to realize was that the prime‑ministerial system had lasted in China for thousands of years for a reason. A prime minister was essentially the emperor’s chief assistant, helping manage all officials and relieving the ruler of the endless tedium of state affairs. But Old Zhu thought this assistant was an eyesore who encroached on his power, so he simply fired him.

He did not understand that anyone who tries to fight against the laws of history and objective reality will pay a price. Zhu Yuanzhang himself was diligent, but his descendants would not necessarily be so.

When his son Zhu Di seized the throne from his nephew, he soon found that, without a prime minister, being emperor was exhausting—up earlier than a rooster, sleeping later than a dog. He needed an assistant. Yet the prime minister’s post had already been abolished by his father, and he could hardly go against his old man’s legacy. This left Zhu Di in a bind.

Human ingenuity, however, is boundless. Zhu Di created another institution: the Grand Secretariat. He set up a cabinet with three to four Grand Secretaries to help handle state affairs. At first, the cabinet was nothing more than an imperial secretariat, dealing with paperwork. But after Zhu Di’s death, the later Ming emperors grew increasingly incompetent, and as a result the cabinet’s power kept expanding. As the cabinet grew stronger, so did the civil‑official clique.

And where did many of these civil officials come from? From the merchant class.

Merchants might be greedy and money‑minded, but they were not shortsighted. Over more than two hundred years of the Ming dynasty, merchant families quietly invested in educating their sons, sending them to study and sit for the imperial examinations. Once these sons obtained degrees and entered officialdom, the first people they thought of repaying were not the court, but their own families. After two centuries of this, merchant power had grown into a vast interest group. With such enormous influence, stirring up a market shutdown now and then was nothing to them.

When Fang Jiuming proposed a shutdown, the assembled merchants thought it over and found the idea quite appealing. It would teach Yue Yang a lesson—let him know that taxes were not something to be levied at will. If he behaved himself, perhaps they might even toss him a bone. If he did not, they would show him just how many eyes the King of Hell really had.

Seeing everyone nod in agreement, Fang Jiuming smiled. Among those present were grain merchants, salt merchants, and many who dealt in medicine, cloth, furs, pawnshops, inns, banking, tea, and warehouses. If all of them shut down at once, the entire city of Hunyuan would be paralyzed. The court would surely be furious and send inspectors to investigate, and stripping that fellow Yue Yang of his office would be only a matter of moments.

At this point Fang Yingdi rolled his eyes and came up with another idea. With a sinister smile he said, “Gentlemen, if only the merchants shut down, it may not be impressive enough. Why don’t we also stir up the academy students to go on strike from their classes, and at the same time report to the court that Yue Yang is persecuting scholars and insulting learning? That way, the commotion will be even greater.”

“—Hiss…”

Everyone sucked in a sharp breath. Fang Jiuming’s proposal of a market shutdown alone was already serious enough—at worst, Yue Yang would be dismissed from office. But if Fang Yingdi managed to incite the students to boycott classes and accuse Yue Yang of persecuting scholars, once such a charge was substantiated it would be a capital crime—dismissal and execution. That was far too ruthless.

Seeing their hesitation, Fang Yingdi swept his gaze across them and sneered. “What, are you afraid?”

“Young Master Fang, it’s not that we’re afraid—we just dare not,” one merchant said, shaking his head. “Our Academic Supervisor, Lord Liao, is an upright and stubborn man. He will never agree to encouraging the students to strike. If things get out of hand, we won’t be able to clean up the mess.”

“He won’t agree?” Fang Yingdi laughed viciously. “What use is an old pedant? Most of the students in the academies come from our merchant families. If he says no, does that mean they won’t strike? This strike is going to happen!”

After the merchants dispersed, they immediately set things in motion. Over the next few days, Hunyuan Prefecture seemed calm on the surface, but beneath it dark currents were surging. A storm was about to break.

At Huai Mountain Academy in Hunyuan, an angry voice filled a classroom:

“The calamity of commercial taxation was already plain to see in the Xianzong era—tax upon tax on every man and every good, squeezing people to the bone until the populace can no longer bear it…”

“Taxes are a scourge! Shanxi is no Jiangnan—our land is barren and our people poor. How can we withstand such bone‑scraping exploitation? General Xuanwei’s actions are nothing but competing with the people for profit. If taxes are levied everywhere, merchants will be ruined, people will scatter, and livelihoods will wither away. This must not be allowed!”

The speaker was a young man dressed as a scholar, in a Confucian robe and square scholar’s cap. He was quite handsome, but his face was twisted with hatred and anger, his eyes almost spitting fire. He was Wang Chenglin, the very man Yue Yang had driven out of Yingzhou.

The past two years had been hard on him. After Yue Yang rose to power in Yingzhou, the Wang clan, fearing retribution, had moved en masse to Nanjing under the leadership of Patriarch Wang Shoucheng. While in Nanjing, Wang Chenglin studied hard and, in last year’s provincial examination, he actually passed and became a juren.

By Ming rules, a juren was already qualified for office. But in the late Ming there were far too few real vacancies—many jinshi were still waiting at home, so a mere juren like him would have to wait till the end of time. Only after repeated efforts by his father Wang Shoucheng and his elder brother Wang Chengdong did he obtain a post as an instructor in Hunyuan. In any case, with a juren’s status, teaching children was easy enough.

But not long after he arrived, Yue Yang also came to Hunyuan. When Wang Chenglin learned that Yue Yang had become Vice Commander and was in charge of Yingzhou, Hunyuan, and the entire northern route, his first thought was to run. He knew all too well how much hatred he had earned back then. If Yue Yang discovered that he was teaching here, his death would not be far off.

After a few days, however, Wang Chenglin gradually calmed down. He realized things were not so dire. Yue Yang, a high‑ranking third‑grade official, had no reason to care about a nobody like him. For several days he had been frightening himself.

Once he came to his senses, a new plan took shape in his mind. He would observe Yue Yang closely, lurking around him like a venomous snake, waiting for a chance to strike. Now, that chance had finally come.

When Wang Chenglin heard rumors in the academy that Yue Yang was going to impose commercial taxes on the city’s merchants, he knew the moment had arrived. Coming from a powerful clan, he understood very well how commercial taxation worked in the Ming. In these days, there was no merchant who did not evade taxes. Merchant power was so great that local officials were often helpless. Whenever an official or the court showed any intention of taxing them, merchants would mobilize public opinion and their allies in the bureaucracy to slander, defame, or even frame their opponents. In the end, the court usually had no choice but to compromise.

Thus Wang Chenglin immediately transformed himself from a mere teacher into the vanguard of the anti‑tax movement, rallying his students to launch furious attacks on Yue Yang.

Another person who joined him as a standard‑bearer against Yue Yang was Academic Supervisor Jia Zizhen. Sixty‑two years old this year, Jia owned thousands of mu of farmland and more than a dozen shops—by all accounts a wealthy man. Yet he was notoriously stingy; outside of festivals, his family barely ate meat. One could easily imagine how furious he was when he learned that taxes would be levied on him.

After Wang Chenglin’s impassioned speech, the old man trembled as he spoke:

“I personally witnessed the calamity of commercial taxation in the Wanli reign. War filled the roads, disaster spread through the land. It was not merchants who suffered—it was the people. The sages have said: taking wealth from the people is not the way to create wealth. The way to create wealth lies in two things—production and frugality. Surcharges harm by the amount collected, but commercial taxes harm day by day. To levy commercial taxes is to rob the people of their wealth. This will provoke the wrath of Heaven and the resentment of men. The Ming will be plunged into darkness, and our northern Shanxi will be ruined and desolate!”