Gong Yixiang, a Shaowu merchant, heard that the price of the yellow book in Chaozhou, Guangdong, was very high, so he went to Yongfeng Qili Street in Jiangxi Province, bought twenty quintals of Mao Whip yellow book paper, and rushed to Chaozhou by boat to sell it.
Seeing that it was about to arrive in Chaozhou, the ship stopped and rested in the bay five miles from the city. It was around the second day and there were no other boats nearby.
Unexpectedly, there was a habitual thief Zhu Qing in Chaozhou City who happened to pass by and found that only this ship was moored in the bay, so he returned to the city and entangled his accomplices Lang Yin, Ji Zhengxian, Mei Tingchun and others, and came to the ship with more than twenty people.
Early the next morning, Zhu Qing came to the city and sold the few cartons of yellow book paper he had looted and exchanged them for silver.
When the robbery occurred, Gong Yixiang hid under the rudder of the ship to escape the disaster, and Tianming bid farewell to the ship's family, wrote a complaint, and went to Guo Qingluo's mansion to file a complaint.
Old Master Guo read the complaint and asked Gong Yixiang: "Your paper was robbed, and no one knows who robbed it, such a headless case, teach Old Master where do I go to catch the strong thief?" ”
Gong Yixiang cried and complained: "The small borrower bought twenty cartons of yellow book paper to sell, hoping to earn silver to go back to support the family, but now all of them have been robbed, and the small one really has no way to live." ”
Old Master Guo said, "I approved your resignation, and you have the right to find a guest house to stay and wait." ”
Old Master Guo immediately sent four captors to the city to investigate, and when he found out the south gate of the city, he saw a man carrying five or six yellow books of paper to sell there, so he arrested this person along with the paper.
Old Master Guo asked, "Where are you from?" Where did this paper come from? ”
The man replied, "The little one is a Bayman surname, and his surname is Hu Minggui." ”
After Guo Ye finished asking, he ordered Gong Yixiang, who had filed the complaint, to identify him.
After Gong Yixiang read it, he immediately said, "This paper is a villain, but it was deliberately cut off." ”
Old Master Guo ordered someone to hang Hu Gui up and asked, "How did you rob the guests' papers and dare to sell them outside the city?" ”
Hu Gui replied, "There is only one old mother in the small family, and she is a lame person, how can we rob him of paper?" ”
Old Master Guo asked again, "If you didn't rob him, where did that paper come from?" Let's be honest! ”
Hu Gui replied: "In the morning, when I went to the bay to fetch water, I saw that a few books of paper fell on the ground, so I picked them up and went home. The mother saw that there was a mark on the paper, and asked the little one to cut the mark and sell it, and then buy a few liters of rice to go home. The little one really didn't know that it was someone else's robbed paper. ”
Old Master Guo said, "Put you in jail for the time being, and release you when you get the real thief!" ”
Hu Gui cried: "Don't tighten the small ones until they die, I'm afraid I'll starve the old mother in the family." ”
Old Master Guo said, "You are a filial piety, and the person who fulfills filial piety will certainly not do such an unrighteous thing." Put you back for the time being, and if you find out in the future that the thieves are related to you, you will not be spared at that time. ”
After letting Hu Gui go home, Guo Laoye thought about it carefully and believed that this case could only start from the stolen goods, but how could he find the stolen paper?
Old Master Guo asked Gong Yixiang, "What are you doing next to the ship?" ”
Gong Yixiang replied: "There is only one large stone on the side of the ship, which is used for tying the ship." ”
Old Master Guo immediately summoned dozens of people to the bay to carry the big stone to Yamen for interrogation.
When the servants heard that they were going to interrogate the stone, they all laughed, "Is our old master crazy, how can he ask someone to lift the stone, is it difficult for the stone to talk?" ”
When the people went to the bay to carry the stones to yamen, this incident immediately caused a sensation in the entire Chaozhou capital, and the people inside and outside the city came to see how Old Master Guo judged the stones.
The whole city of people came one after another, crowding the entire yamen. The servants rebuked and drove the people away, but Old Master Guo ordered someone to open both gates of the yamen and let the people in.
Old Master Guo stood up and asked Shi, "Gong Yixiang's paper was robbed by thieves, you must know about it, hurry up and report it in detail." ”
Old Master Guo asked three times in a row, but the stone never said a word, and Old Master Guo asked the servant to hit the stone twenty times.
The servants laughed as they fought, and when the people saw it, they laughed a lot.
Guo Ye said angrily, "Lord, I'm here to interrogate witnesses, what are you laughing about!" Then he asked the servant to close the first door and the second door.
When the people saw that Old Master Guo was about to close the door, they all panicked.
Old Master Guo scolded, "Er Wait laughed in front of the official, he should have been punished severely, was Er Wait willing to punish or fight?" ”
The people shouted in unison, "The little one is willing to be punished." ”
Old Master Guo said: "There is nothing to enter the public gate, and everyone present is fined a knife, and they all go to the scrivener to fill in their names and addresses." ”
Everyone filled in their names and addresses as instructed, and Only then did Old Master Guo let everyone leave.
The people went all over the city to buy paper, and for a time all the paper shops in the city were bought by the people.
When Mr. Guo saw that the people had handed over so much paper, he wanted to come to the thieves who robbed the paper and always wanted to sell it, presumably the paper that Gong Yixiang had been robbed must also be among them, so he asked Gong Yixiang to recognize the paper.
Gong Yixiang went to yamen to identify it, and recognized that the seven knives of paper were his own, and the rest were not.
Old Master Guo compared the paper that Hu Gui had sold earlier, and it was exactly the same, but the marks on the paper were cut off.
Old Master Guo immediately called the people who handed over the paper to ask, and the people who bought Gong Yixiang's paper said that the paper was bought in Xie Hui's shop outside the south gate of the city.
Old Master Guo hurriedly asked Ya Gong Yin and to go to the South Gate to take Xie Hui to the palace.
Old Master Guo asked, "Who sold you this paper?" ”
Xie Hui replied, "It was Zhu Qing who was ten miles outside the city who picked up paper and sold it to the villains." ”
Old Master Guo ordered: "The people who handed over the paper should take the paper back, I am asking you to wait to help find the stolen goods, where is to punish you." ”
Only then did the people understand Old Master Guo's intentions, and they all prostrated their heads and led the paper away.
Old Master Guo immediately ordered Ya Gong to go to Shilipu to take the Bamboo Green Lock to Yamen based on Xie Hui's confession.
Old Master Guo immediately ascended to the hall, pointed at Zhu Qing and scolded: "You thief head, how did you correct the party and rob Gong Yi of twenty cartons of photo album paper, and recruited from the truth." ”
Zhu Qing slyly argued, "Little Shang Chenghai bought salt, and only came back today, where to rob his paper?" ”
Old Master Guo took Gong Yixiang's paper and asked, "Which one sold this paper?" ”
Zhu Qing replied, "The little one doesn't know." ”
Xie Hui, the owner of the paper shop, said: "The morning before yesterday, you carried four loads of paper to my shop to sell, and only sold half the price, why don't you recognize it now?" ”
Zhu Qing saw xie Hui, who had a paper shop, testifying, and seeing that Old Master Guo had already obtained the stolen goods, he immediately bowed his head and confessed that on the seventeenth night of this month, when he saw a boat moored in the bay, he gathered thirty-seven people, including Tongdang Langyin, Ji Zhengxian, and Mei Tingchun, and robbed twenty quintals of paper, and left eight knives of paper behind Hu Gui's house. On the morning of the eighteenth, he picked four quintals to Sell at Xie Hui's shop and got five or two pieces of silver.
Old Master Guo immediately dispatched dozens of infantrymen and escorted Zhu Qing to detain the remaining thirty-seven members of the party.
Old Master Guo returned all the yellow book paper back to Gong Yixiang, and Gong Yixiang thanked him again and again and took the paper. Xie Hui was also released back to the store.
Old Master Guo beat Zhu Qing and the others eighty times, regardless of whether they were subordinate, each of them planned to be sentenced to death, and waited for the review before executing.
The story comes from the "New Mingong Case", also known as the "Guo Gong Case".
The so-called Yellow Book, also known as the Yellow Book of Enlistment, is a household registration edition made in the Ming Dynasty to verify the hukou and enlist the enlistment. In the fourteenth year of Ming Hongwu (1381), the Ming Dynasty established the yellow book system on the basis of the household post system.
The yellow book is based on households, detailed listing of townships, names, ages, Dingkou, farmhouses, and assets, and according to the occupation, the household registration is demarcated, mainly divided into three categories: civilian, military, and craftsman.
In addition to the generally enslaved people, there are also Confucian, medical, yin and yang households. In addition to the military households that generally provide military service, there are also lieutenants, lux, bows, pavers, etc. Craftsmen's registers, registered handicraft households, undertake to the government as well as craftsmen and cooks, tailors, horses, boats, etc. There are also stove registers, registered salt households.
The compilation of the yellow book is still issued by the government to each household, filled in every year, and the local officials verify the changes in their Dingkou, farmhouses and assets, etc., and the materials accumulated year by year are used as the basis for the 10-year large-scale yellow book.
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