Background!

As a general returning victorious, Bai Yifei showed little pride. When facing the royal decree, he still dismounted respectfully. Then, stopped by the eunuch from kneeling to receive the decree, he bowed and accepted the rewards bestowed by the King of Han 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.

Also called a fief, granted land, or enfeoffed territory.

It was a special right under the feudal system.

Ancient taxes came in two forms.

One was taxes in kind.

The other was corvée labor.

Taxes in kind were easy enough to explain. Anything circulating on the market counted as goods in kind, such as the most basic grain and meat, or more valuable silk and cloth. These goods could also be converted into one another. If one came up short, money could be used to make up the difference.

Take a farming household, for example.

This year, they needed to pay two hundred jin of grain in taxes.

But they only had one hundred jin stored at home.

Under such circumstances, the household could use other things to fill the gap—for instance, ten jin of cloth woven overnight by the wife and mother at home. Based on market prices for cloth and grain, it could be converted to offset some portion of the missing hundred jin of grain. Generally speaking, though, people would never let the government calculate the exchange rate, because the government's rates were always based on the lowest prices. It was truly too unfair to ordinary people.

If they could arrange their time properly.

Ordinary people would often take the cloth