The information of popular science content comes from academic journals, and the first-hand literature comes from the relevant bills of the local government of Shazhou in the Tang Dynasty excavated from the archaeology in the Dunhuang area.

Taking horse breeding as an example, there was a distinction between "stallions" and "private horses" in the Tang Dynasty. So after a specific place, how do the relevant institutions raise horses?

I will take the Shazhou Mansion and the Doulu Army as examples to illustrate.

Let's start with the difference between a stallion and a private horse. In fact, there is no essential difference between the horses themselves, the real difference lies in who pays for it. The stallion is the account of the government office, and it will eventually be summarized to the household department of Chang'an. In addition to the special funds for "regular horse breeding", other accounts can be used as a source of money for raising private horses as long as there is a demand.

I won't expand on it here, just talk about the government process of raising horses, and here the stallion and the private horse are the same.

For example, it is January, and according to the regulations, the commissioner takes out a month's worth of forage for a certain horse. Settled on a monthly basis and assessed on a monthly basis.

A horse will eat about 0.03 stone of concentrate and about 0.1 stone of hay every day, and if it is counted as 30 days a month, it will eat 0.9 stone of concentrate and about 3 stone of hay.

How is this process done?

Here's how:

If Commissioner A has 10 stallions and 15 private horses, then he needs to go to the branch envoy to receive the money first, and the 10 stallions will go to the special fund for raising horses, and the 15 private horses will be supervised by the branch envoy.

I don't know, and it's hard to say, this is an exclusive matter of the yamen, but the envoy will definitely give it according to a certain standard, but it will be different or even very different when it comes to some special circumstances in a certain place and at a certain time.

Then Commissioner A will get two tables from the branch envoy, one for the stallion and one for the private horse. For example, if the stallion says how much forage is fed for each of the 10 horses that need to be fed, yes, the 10 horses are recorded separately.

Because war horses, transport horses, and even mules and donkeys, different livestock, feeding standards are different. Commissioner A needs to be fed according to the standards set by the imperial court.

After getting the money, Commissioner A's next step was to "buy" the forage instead of going directly to the storehouse to collect it.

This game may be incomprehensible to later generations, and there is no record in the history books, but the archaeological evidence is hundreds of examples to prove the existence of this process. Of course, from a modern perspective, we will find that some rules of the game are common in ancient and modern times.

This can be shown from the side that the commodification of the Tang Dynasty may not have been so smooth because of the hindrance of the feudal system. However, monetizing and unifying property is already a standard process.

From here, it can also be understood why the two tax laws can be implemented smoothly in the later period, because the original government affairs have already met this prerequisite.

The advantage of this is that the accounts are clear and there are relatively uniform implementation standards, which is clear at a glance.

So where does Commissioner A go to buy forage?

You can find a grassland opened by the government and specialize in docking. Or find a private purchase. Of course, you can also directly pretend to be a thief to rob.

In short, the process is not the problem, the result is, whether the forage is obtained or not is the core.

What the government wants is whether the things on the bill list are in order, and Commissioner A is usually not a rogue official, but a non-rogue official found in the local area, and most of them are so-called "technocrats". Of course, they weren't clerks.

Commissioner A received the forage money from the Yamen, and then went to buy the forage and feed the horses. A month later, interviews will be conducted with the examiners of the yamen to check whether the horses are being fed as they should be and how they are doing.

And that's it.

In the meantime, there is a process from the appropriation of government decrees, to the purchase and execution, to the final assessment. Of course, there are also a lot of "unspeakable" routines here. For example, whether the support envoy gives more or less money, and the price of forage in different places sometimes varies greatly, and so on.

When I say this, I actually want to illustrate one point: the basic government affairs of the Tang Dynasty required a large amount of cash circulation. Sometimes, after the path dependency is formed, the government will issue an IOU. For example, the place where the forage is purchased is relatively fixed, the clerk is not changed often, there is more forage in the local area, the price is stable, and so on!

This is somewhat similar to running a fixed program, skipping the "self-test" in between, but it's essentially the same.

It's just that many times it is omitted because of "trying to save trouble".

It can also be seen from this point that during the Tang Dynasty, the government was not hasty. If you want to take advantage of loopholes, it also requires considerable wisdom and means.

Don't take people for fools, after all, Datang is also the pinnacle of ancient Chinese feudal society with a population of more than 60 million, don't underestimate feudal society!

Okay, let's get down to business.

It's so hard to write, and in addition to the code words, a lot of time is spent looking up information. Writing this book, I fully realized the bitterness of working hard in society, there is no backstage and no person holding his thighs, how difficult it is to make a name for himself.

I actually have a lot of opinions about some things about this book, but I can't talk about it here, and I hope that some readers who know about it don't say it in the comments, anyway, the guys in the group basically know.

Because I don't have wings on my back, no sweet dad behind me, and no organization on my head, I can only go down in person, pull down my face and beg for a sentence: I hope that those readers who can write can write more long reviews in the general book review area (not chapter reviews) to add a little heat to the book.

I'm just a book writer, and I don't have any advantages other than that. Not only that, but there are also some unspeakable negative buffs.

Anyway, it doesn't take the reader's money to write a review, and I can still be cheeky and plead, if I ask you to spend on this book, I will definitely not be able to open this mouth.

The comment area basically does not delete book reviews, only those who are scribbled will be deleted, and the atmosphere is relatively friendly. What are the reviews of many other book controls, and how many water armies have been invited, I believe that anyone with a discerning eye can see it, so I won't say more.

This book is getting better, accumulating steadily, and the entire appearance of the Tang Dynasty will be framed little by little as the plot progresses, don't take the rules of general historical literature to set this book.

I can say that even if I write three million words, the plot of this book will not collapse, let alone water. Why, I planned it when I opened the book.

From this book, Yang Yuhuan, Yang Guozhong, and An Lushan have been promoted, and they have been given lunches, you should know that I wrote the book as a whole layout, not a mess in the front and a mess in the back.

In order to ensure the rhythm and plot of the whole book, except for the things that are not allowed to be written at the starting point, there is nothing that I dare not write, please keep looking forward to it.

Thanks again.