When the court officials were struck speechless, it was his time to shine.
After a moment's silence, Zi Shou suddenly asked, "Does Chentang Pass have a hundred thousand households?"
Everyone turned to Zi Shou. Shang Rong answered, "Yes."
Zi Shou continued, "All hundred thousand households are to plant wheat and rice."
He delivered that sentence with breezy nonchalance.
Yet the ministers below felt as though an earthquake had struck their hearts.
The household registration system originated in the Zhou Dynasty, but the Shang Dynasty already had the Registered Field System, which conscripted laborers to cultivate public fields together.
Managing household registrations was also one of the Ministry of Revenue's duties within the Six Ministries. The restructuring of the Six Ministries remained incomplete to this day precisely because there were too many new things to sort through and absorb slowly.
The so-called Registered Field System had come about with the rise of the Well-Field System.
Each well-field was divided by irrigation channels or roads into nine square plots. The eight surrounding plots were allotted to eight households to cultivate, while the central plot was left unallocated, belonging to the court.
In other words, eight households cultivated nine plots. The land tax consisted of taking the year's harvest from the central plot as tax. In good years, everyone enjoyed a bountiful harvest together; in disastrous years, everyone suffered poor yields together.
It seemed fair, but in practice, problems abounded.
Each household cultivated its own private plot, so naturally, everyone worked with all their might for their own benefit. The public plot, however, was cultivated by all eight households together.
Unequal contributions, shirking, and cutting corners were therefore inevitable. This method required large numbers of officials to exercise strict supervision, but Great Shang simply did not have that many officials. Even if it