On this day, Xu Shu happily came to find Guo Bin. He seemed to have found his own spring, although he was tired and thin, his spirit was becoming more and more vigorous, and he walked as if he was carrying the wind.

When Guo Bin saw it, he hurriedly picked up the kettle on the table and poured him a cup of tea.

If you want to talk about this tea, Guo Bin took a lot of effort to get it. This is not to say that there were no tea trees at this time, but written records show that our ancestors began to cultivate and use tea trees more than 3,000 years ago. Southwest China, including Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan and other mountainous areas, is the center of origin of tea trees. Due to geological changes and human cultivation, tea began to spread throughout the country and gradually spread to all parts of the world.

Jin Changxuan's "Huayang Guozhi Ba Zhi" recorded: "King Wu of Zhou cut down the Zhou, and he was the master of Bashu,...... Tea honey ...... All of them are tribute. This record shows that when King Wu of the Zhou Dynasty conquered the Zhou, the kingdom of Ba (present-day northern Sichuan and Hanzhong) had already paid tribute to King Wu of Zhou with tea and other precious products.

Since tea has long been available, and people in the Han Dynasty also drank it as a high-end luxury, why did Guo Bin have to work hard to find it? Because there is no word "tea" in this fashion.

The word "tea" comes from "Erya Shimu": "槚, bitter (that is, the original word "tea") also. ”。

"Erya" is known as the ancestor of dictionaries, and its writing time, the upper limit will not be earlier than the Warring States period, and the lower limit will not be later than the time of Emperor Wu of the Western Han Dynasty, so it can be roughly considered that around 200 BC, its record is roughly credible.

It was not until the Tang Dynasty that Lu Yu removed the word "荼" from "bitter" in the book "The Book of Tea" to become the current word "tea".

"The tea man, the Jiamu of the south, one foot two feet, or even dozens of feet. There are two people hugging the Bashan Gorge River, cutting it down and picking it up, its tree is like a melon reed, the leaf is like a gardenia, the flower is like a white rose, it is like a palmetto, the leaf is like a lilac, and the root is like a walnut. This is the description of the tea tree in the "Book of Tea".

Guo Bin didn't get tea until he entered Beijing. Since then, he has sent people to Bashu to buy tea.

Xu Shu picked up the teacup, drank it all in one gulp, motioned for another one, and said, "Lord, the household registration in the west of the city has come out." ”

Guo Bin was very surprised, and hurriedly said: "Where?" Get people in! ”

Xu Shu shouted outside, and two small officials came in with their burdens.

Looking at dozens of household registration booklets made of Cai Hou paper, Guo Bin couldn't help but admire Xu Shu's patience and perseverance.

These booklets were not recorded in accordance with the household registration record method at this time, but Guo Bin recorded them in the form of a later form according to his own habits. On one page is a household with the name, place of origin, current residence, date of birth, and age of the head of the household and family members.

Picked up a book, which read "Household registration book of Dahuaishu Village, Huaihua Township, Xicheng District, Yangzhai County", and opened it, only to see that the names and ages of people were written on the pages, and the family residence was remarked. At present, the property of the displaced person is limited, so the property column is vacant. Xicheng District is the official name of Chengxi New District, which is divided into six townships, and Huaihua Township is one of them.

Xu Shu said excitedly: "Lord, according to the instructions, all the registrations were made in accordance with the previous requirements, and the age was also remarked." The method of this form is really clear at a glance, and I don't know how many times stronger than the previous method of household registration records! ”

Guo Bin sighed in his heart, to say that this household registration is really a lot of changes, thanks to the dozen or so students who graduated from Fulongshan Academy.

It turned out that when Xu Shu handed over the completed household registration book to Guo Bin, Guo Bin was stunned: all the household registration was written on the bamboo slips, so it was also written vertically from right to left. The above is brief, Guo Bin didn't know the rules at this time, so he became more and more dizzy, so he ordered Xu Shu to sort it out again.

How to organize it?

First, use all good Caihou paper. Although this Caihou paper is more expensive than bamboo slips, it is much cheaper than brocade silk, and it is light and easy to carry and transport.

Second, it is all recorded in the form of a table. Each piece of paper records the information of a household, and the average number of people in each household is five, so there is still a lot of blank space on the paper, which is used as a place to record matters such as population and so on. In this way, there are ten tuns in one village, and one tun is ten households. Therefore, one volume per village, one volume is about 100 pages. There are six townships in Xicheng District, and each township is divided into ten villages. There is a copy of the household registration in the village and one in the township, and one copy in the county.

Thirdly, and most importantly, write all the age, which is one year.

The first two are easy to do, as long as the materials are sufficient, it can be done with a little more manpower. It's just that this third point is a bit difficult for strong people.

Why? Only because of the way the age is recorded.

At this time, the household registration generally only records the date of birth, but does not record the age of the person. It's not that the ancients didn't know how to count, but they didn't have this habit.

To understand this question, we must first understand why the only country in the world that is in the Chinese cultural circle has a false age.

In later generations, everyone is born with an age, but the official record age is often one year younger than the old people say your age, that is a virtual age. Therefore, when many people have to write their age, they often write their own age and look young.

So why do we have a void age?

This is not the pain in the ass of our ancestors, and it has to be added to us, but the so-called age of our ancestors is not the same thing as the so-called age of later generations.

In later generations, it was used internationally to calculate the length of time that has elapsed since birth at the age of zero. Our ancestors were recorded as one year old at birth, and one year was added to each Spring Festival (the ancient meaning is now the beginning of spring).

Therefore, the age of the next generation is calculated as the length of time, which is the exact unit of length; In ancient China, the calculation of imaginary years focused on the year after birth, which in general terms refers to the year, which is a relatively rough calculation method.

The method of calculating the age of the year is very simple, and there is nothing that modern people do not understand, and the meaning it represents is more accurate; Moreover, it is easier and faster to calculate people's age in the year of the Common Era. Therefore, in modern times, the official use of the year is mostly used to record.

However, the "fifteenth year" mentioned by the ancients in China refers to the fifteenth year after birth. In a more extreme way, "one year old" refers to the first year after birth, which is the so-called "one year old at birth". Therefore, we may have heard of "28 years old" or "15 years old", or even "1 year old", but we have never heard of "0 years old". Just because as soon as a person is born, it is the first year.

Even newborns born on Chinese New Year's Eve are called "two years old" on the first day of the new year.

To put it simply: "The imaginary year is counted from the first year, and it is one year older in the new year, according to the lunar calendar (lunisolar calendar); The age of one is counted from zero, and the birthday is one year longer, according to the foreign calendar (solar calendar). But it is by no means a fallacy circulating on the Internet in later generations, that is, the mistaken belief that Chinese have a special traditional concept of taking pregnancy as the starting point of life.

This view is that in ancient times, the Chinese believed that after pregnancy, a new life had begun. Taking October pregnancy as the first year, also known as the virtual age, this year remembers the hardships of ancient human reproduction, remembers the great grace of mother's pregnancy in October, and also reflects the traditional virtue of Chinese respecting the old and loving the young. Therefore, I mistakenly think that there are no unified rules for traditional Chinese age counting methods (there are many or regional differences), but it is a chicken-and-duck talk, which is nonsense.

Guo Bin's diligent pursuit of a complete and concise household registration system is not to find fault with Xu Shu's work, but based on practical needs.

In the feudal society based on the rural economy (or agriculture), the role of the household registration system is mainly reflected in three aspects: economic, political, and military.

Economically, it is divided into: forced labor and taxation.

During the Qin and Han dynasties, adult men were required by government law to perform forced and military service for the government. The age of starting service, that is, the age of Fu, was 17 years old in the Qin period, and 20 years old in the second year of Emperor Jing of the Western Han Dynasty (155 BC). The so-called "Fu nationality" means that men of appropriate age are registered, and civilians are recruited for labor and even soldiers, all according to the register. In other words, at this time, only those who have reached the age of Fu registration are registered.

Guo Bin asked Xu Shu to record the newborn babies in the book, which is to better understand the population situation in the jurisdiction and to better implement the strategy of compulsory education.

Since the Qin Dynasty, China has had a poll tax. It was created by Shang Ying, called oral endowment in the Qin period, and in the fourth year of the Han Dynasty (203 BC), Liu Bang, the ancestor of the Han Dynasty, ordered that the people should give money from the age of fifteen to fifty-six years old, and one hundred and twenty yuan per person was calculated, which was to calculate the endowment. In the Han Dynasty, a household survey was conducted in August every year, which was called "case ratio", that is, the tax was levied at this time, so it was called "August counting". In the Eastern Han Dynasty, it was also called oral arithmetic.

Therefore, if the imperial court wants to recruit manpower to build a palace or levy a poll tax, this household registration book that Xu Shu has just compiled is the basis.

Politically, since the beginning of the Shang Dynasty, the law of joint sitting has been implemented, and if one person commits a crime, not only the household will be punished, but the neighbors will also be punished, although it is very lacking in the spirit of modern law, it is a good system for mutual supervision to maintain social stability.

Its military role is reflected in the conscription for military service.

In the future, Guo Bin will participate in the war to exterminate the Yellow Turbans, and to participate in the war of the princes competing for power, all soldiers are needed, and this household registration is also the most important evidence, and the 30,000 new residents in the west of the city have also become the most important source of soldiers for Guo Bin to recruit in the short term. Because none of these people who survived the famine were weak, they either did not know martial arts, but they were certainly physically superior to ordinary people. This is also the reason why Cao Cao was invincible after he recruited more than 300,000 Qingzhou soldiers in later history: these people are all strong troops!

And Guo Bin asked Xu Shu to mark his age on the household registration for the convenience of recruiting soldiers.

In order to cooperate with this strategy, Guo Bin has written a song and sent it to the capital, the content of which is to take the first year of Emperor Ping of Han as the first year of AD.

In the autumn of the sixth year of Guanghe, Taizu wrote a book, wanting to take the first year of Emperor Ping of Han as the first year of A.D., in order to facilitate counting, and the Son of Heaven followed.

--"Taizu Benji"