Background!

As a victorious general returning home, Bai Yifei did not display much pride. When faced with the royal decree, he still respectfully dismounted. Then, stopped by the eunuch from kneeling to receive it, he bowed and accepted King An of Han's rewards with both hands.

They included, but were not limited to, an estate of eight hundred households, all manner of gold, silver, and treasures, more than a dozen beauties he could neither see nor touch for the time being, and various other things.

An estate.

It was also called a fief, a granted territory, or an enfeoffed land.

It was a special right under the feudal system.

There were two kinds of taxes in ancient times.

One was taxes paid in kind.

The other was corvée labor.

Taxes in kind were easy to explain. Anything that circulated on the market counted as goods in kind, such as basic grain and meat, or more valuable silk and cloth. These goods could also be converted into one another. If there was a shortage, it could be made up with money.

Take a farming household, for example.

They needed to pay two hundred jin of grain in taxes that year.

But they only had one hundred jin stored at home.

In that case, the household could use other things to make up the shortfall, such as cloth woven overnight by the wife and mother at home. Suppose they had ten jin of it. Based on market prices for cloth and grain, it could offset some portion of the missing one hundred jin of grain. Generally, however, they would not let the authorities calculate the exchange, because the authorities always calculated according to the lowest prices. It was far too disadvantageous for ordinary people.

If they could arrange their time properly.

Ordinary people