Transmigrating to the Late Han: I Keep Wang Mang’s New Policies Alive

In the third year of the Dihuang era, snow fell over Chang'an. Wang Yu, a history student, opened his eyes just in time to see a starving man clutching one of Wang Mang’s newly minted “cloth coins” and weeping. This coin, supposedly “worth half a hu of millet,” was already regarded by ordinary people as worthless scraps of paper.

He understood: Wang Mang’s tragedy was never that his ideas were too far ahead of their time. It was that his lofty ideals came crashing down on the people:

The Well-Field system promised to distribute land equally, but officials seized the opportunity to grab fertile fields. Farmers lost their ancestral land and still had to pay taxes according to fictitious records;

The currency system changed five times in three years. Gold was exchanged for tortoiseshell, and copper coins for bolts of cloth. Merchants shut their doors at the sight of official currency;

The state monopolies on salt and iron became a way for officials and merchants to share the profits. A jin of salt could cost three dou of millet, making it even more ruthless than the powerful clans’ extortion...

“The reforms weren’t wrong. The problem was that the classics were being misinterpreted.” Wang Yu gripped a sheet of mulberry-bark paper bearing his map of the land registers.

He would put the derailed reforms back on track:

Replace the “royal fields” with a “three-copy land-grant register.” The government, farmers, and village head would each keep a mulberry-paper copy. Red seals bearing the Big Dipper pattern would make any tampering obvious;

Abolish the twenty-eight kinds of assorted coin and keep just two new currencies, stamped with a firm guarantee: “One guan exchanges for three dou of millet.” Make the notes from tung-oil-soaked paper, impervious to water and fire;

Appoint “citizen overseers” to the salt and iron workshops. Keep the ledgers on insect-resistant paper and post them at the village entrance each month. If a jar of salt cost more than the market price, the official responsible would lose his hat.

When Zhao E, a farmer from Jiaodong, held up her paper register and dared the village head to “try forging it,” and when refugees in Langya used their hemp-paper household records to claim life-saving grain, Wang Mang’s reforms finally began to take root among the people.

Wang Yu gazed at the new coin design on his desk. It bore no era name like “Tianfeng,” only the words “Trust of the People.”

He hadn’t come to overthrow Wang Mang. He had come to turn those ideals, so far ahead of their time, into something ordinary people could hold in their hands.