Chapter 153: Gao Lishi is not short of money

Humans are emotional animals, and being animals, they possess their own joys, sorrows, anger, and delight, as well as the pain of parting and the happiness of reunion. Although Gao Lishi was a eunuch, his physical incompleteness made him cherish familial affection all the more. He established his own household, hoping to age like a normal person with a devoted wife and a house full of children and grandchildren, and to have someone dress in mourning and send him off with proper ancestral rites after his death.

At the same time, humans are greedy—greedy for money, power, and beauty. From the emperor down to the common folk, everyone has their own desires and dreams. Without considering the evil within human nature, one can never truly perceive its goodness.

Gao Lishi had no need for money, nor was he avaricious. Wealth was not something extraneous to his existence; rather, he simply had no use for it.

People become officials for the sake of power and wealth, and the methods of acquiring ill-gotten gains generally boil down to two: embezzlement and bribery for personal enrichment, or leveraging official position to engage in private commerce and business ventures.

The Tang Code stipulated: "Any official, or his co-resident relatives of the major mourning grade and above, who personally engages in industry or commerce, making it their exclusive household profession, shall be barred from holding official office."

In other words, if an individual or their close relatives engaged in commerce, that individual was disqualified from holding public office. For serving officials to concurrently engage in commerce within their jurisdiction was illegal. Even if goods were bought and sold at fair prices, the offender was punished with fifty blows of the light stick; if the transaction was manifestly unfair, the crime was judged according to the statute on twisting the law and rendering unjust verdicts. Officials who conducted business on behalf of the government, resulting in losses or debts, were punished under the statute for receiving stolen goods, with the penalty reduced by two degrees. If an official dispatched subordinates or market administrators to conduct business, and profits were made without the official's knowledge, the official was innocent; if the official knew, he was punished in accordance with the law penalizing officials whose family members engaged in commerce within their jurisdiction with the official's knowledge. Depending on the severity of the circumstances, the subordinates or market administrators were also punished with forty to eighty blows of the heavy stick. If an official's family members made a profit from doing business within his jurisdiction, the punishment was reduced by two degrees compared to the crime of the official himself engaging in commerce. If the official had knowledge, he was penalized equally with his family; if ignorant, the punishment was reduced by five degrees compared to that of the family members. Officials in supervisory positions were punished more severely for engaging in commerce than non-supervisory officials and their families.

Since ancient times, for every policy from above, there had been a countermeasure from below. Officials devised endless variations and tricks to amass wealth. If they could not let their family members openly engage in commerce, they would covertly purchase shares for profit, abusing public authority to open doors of convenience. In essence, this was no different from the collusion between officials and merchants in later generations, and one cannot claim that the ancients were any less clever than their descendants.

In this regard, the Song Dynasty handled the containment of official-merchant collusion better than any other feudal dynasty.

Much like the rampant corruption among officials in the Ming Dynasty, the income of Tang Dynasty officials was not particularly high, nor was there any equivalent to the Qing Dynasty's integrity-nourishing allowances. Furthermore, the salaries of Tang Dynasty officials operated on a dual-track system: the salaries of capital officials were paid by the imperial court, whereas the salaries of provincial and external officials had to rely on the interest generated by official office funds, resulting in systemic inequality.

When Gaozu of Tang established the Great Tang, he simultaneously formulated the salary standards for Tang officials. Compared to the Sui Dynasty, the wage levels were adjusted downward, a decision related to the devastation of productivity and the impoverishment of the populace caused by wars—a policy that was entirely correct given the circumstances of the time.

There are two amusing anecdotes: In May of the year 807, the great poet Bai Juyi was serving as a county magistrate in Shaanxi. Seeing the local peasants harvesting wheat amidst the scorching summer heat—their feet steaming in the heat and breath panting, their backs burning under the blazing sky—he could not help but sigh deeply, while deeply cherishing his own existing treatment of not having to till the land or engage in agricultural labor. He opened his payroll slip and saw an annual income of three hundred shi of grain: "An official's salary is three hundred shi." Whereupon he said to himself: "Mr. Bai, be content! Be grateful!"

Han Yu once served as a doctor in the Directorate of Education, a position roughly equivalent to the president of a national university in the Great Tang. What was his annual salary? Checking historical records, it was on par with that of a county magistrate: twenty thousand coins. This was the standard during the reign of Emperor Wuzong of Tang; Teacher Han served slightly earlier, but the figures should be reasonably close. During a morning lecture once, his students mocked him: "Teacher, how poor you are! Your children are crying from the cold, and your wife is howling from hunger." Teacher Han retorted: "I do not need to plow the fields, and my wife does not need to weave cloth. Our whole family 'sits in peace and eats,' and I am quite content."

In truth, this was Teacher Han using the mouths of his students to lament his poverty. Of course, he had ways to generate extra income—namely, writing epitaphs for others, a service that supposedly commanded very high fees.

The salaries of Tang Dynasty officials were higher than those of the Ming Dynasty, but even so, they were hardly exorbitant. If one attempted to support a family on such meager earnings, one's relatives would have starved to death long ago.

Some might view the income of Tang Dynasty officials through the lens of later generations, making a vertical comparison and discovering that Tang officials' salaries were surprisingly much higher than those of later officials. Such a claim is biased.

First of all, the salaries of officials in later eras constituted solid, tangible income—ignoring gray income for the moment—which was more than enough to support a family of three or four. Moreover, parents often had retirement pensions, and wives and children frequently had their own incomes as well, meaning that the actual household expenses borne purely out of the official's salary were not that high.

Now let us examine the salaries of Tang Dynasty officials. This meager income had to support an entire extended household. Leaving aside the retinue of wives, concubines, and children, there was also a host of maids and servants who required tips and rewards—all of which cost money. Just as subordinate clerks and runners of various dynasties were not part of the official imperial establishment, these household servants also expected rewards for their everyday services. If an official refused to resort to corruption, he had no choice but to dig into his own pocket and live frugally; otherwise, there was always the path of doing business!

Gao Lishi's situation differed from that of ordinary officials. It was not that he had no need for money, but rather that he never had to worry about it at all. The generous rewards bestowed by the emperor and the annual tributes paid by officials were more than enough for him to squander across ten lifetimes without depletion.

After all, as a man approaching seventy, his energy was beginning to lag. He rubbed his aching temples, closed the documents on the desk, and prepared to return to his quarters to rest. As he walked to the door and cracked it open just a sliver, a gust of cold wind whistled into the study. The flame of the oil lamp flickered, plunging the room into alternating light and shadow like a ghost drifting about, while the documents on the desk rustled in disorder.

Gao Lishi paused for a moment, gently closed the door, walked back to the desk, picked up the documents once more, and muttered something under his breath...

After a long while, Gao Lishi twitched his snow-white eyebrows slightly, a sharp glint flashed in his eyes, and he let out a cold snort from his nose: "A pack of fools...!"

P.S.: Historically, there are two starkly contrasting voices regarding the evaluation of Gao Lishi: the narrative of eunuchs throwing the state into chaos, and the records of a loyal minister protecting his sovereign. But if this author were to speak, Gao Lishi appears much more like a genuine, vivid historical figure with a fully fleshed-out personality, experiencing both joy and sorrow. Those black-and-white historical figures found in textbooks are not real human beings; such people could never exist in real life. They are more like molded clay figurines, serving as mere tools for those in power.

Human beings cannot be absolutely divided into good and bad; there are only relative differences shaped by historical periods. Viewing historical figures through a modern lens is inherently biased. Placed within the environment of his time, as far as Emperor Xuanzong of Tang, Li Longji, was concerned, Gao Lishi was a perfect minister who fulfilled the duties expected of a subject. If such a man were placed in today's workplace, which leader would not adore someone like Gao Lishi?

At the same time, humans are hypocritical and possess multifaceted personalities. In front of Emperor Xuanzong, Gao Lishi was a eunuch adept at discerning the innermost thoughts of his superior; in front of government ministers, he was a powerful statesman holding the power of life and death. Even members of the imperial family had to address Gao Lishi as "Elder" or "Grand General"!

In his later years, Emperor Xuanzong was infatuated with Yang Yuhuan, but he valued Gao Lishi—who had spent four to five decades by his side—even more. It was precisely because he trusted Gao Lishi completely that he could afford to neglect affairs of state and skip imperial audiences, secure in the belief that Gao Lishi could help him manage state affairs, thereby leaving him time to focus on researching music, opera, and dance. Was this wrong? From the perspective of human nature, an emperor who had toiled diligently for over forty years to manage such a vast empire bore a burden of hardship that only he and Gao Lishi truly understood. If anyone is to be blamed, it can only be the feudal dynastic system. When the An Lushan Rebellion broke out, Emperor Xuanzong of Tang was already seventy years old. Could a seventy-year-old man still manage to remain the helmsman of the Great Tang?

A seventy-year-old in later eras would already be retired at home, enjoying the benefits of modern retirement systems. Yet, absolute power brings absolute fear and crisis. Emperor Xuanzong could not possibly relinquish the power in his hands, nor could Gao Lishi. The struggle for power has always been bloody, devoid of the slightest shred of humanity. Can this truly be considered the fault of Emperor Xuanzong and Gao Lishi?

In this book, the author presents no one-dimensional character archetypes, but living, breathing human beings. Just like people of later eras, they had their own careers, families, and friends, as well as political rivals, passions, and grievances. The reason for dedicating so much space to explaining this is simply to present historical figures and their social context to the reader, leaving judgment of right and wrong entirely to the individual!