The Corrupt Official Lin Zhao Lived to 88

Lin Zhao transmigrates and becomes a farmer’s son.

When he is six, a fortune-teller at the village entrance tells him, “You have a mean look about you. You won’t live past thirty.” His father is furious and wants to hit the man, but Lin Zhao just laughs. If he won’t live past thirty, then he’ll live this life to the fullest.

Too poor to afford paper and ink, he spends three years eavesdropping outside a window. When people sneer, “A peasant like you thinks you can pass the imperial exams?” he studies his way to the capital and tramples those mockers underfoot.

On his first day as an official, someone explains the rules: “If you want to climb the ranks, you have to learn to bow your head.” He nods, then turns the county’s powerful families’ land records inside out.

He implements the single-whip tax reform, and the gentry call him a local oppressor. He introduces the poll tax reform, and the powerful call him a cruel, corrupt official. He makes officials and gentry pay taxes alike, and all the respectable people in the land want him dead.

Someone asks, “Lord Lin, aren’t you afraid of making enemies?”

“I am. But I’m even more afraid that after I die, the common people will stand at my grave and curse me: ‘That damn official did nothing while he was alive.’”

At sixty-three, his political rivals join forces to impeach him, and he is dismissed from office and sent home. Before he leaves, the people of the capital kneel for ten miles, calling him “the upright lord.” Those who wanted him dead are baffled. What the hell kind of official is this?

At eighty-eight, he lies in a chair in the courtyard, basking in the sun. His son asks, “Father, was this life worth it?”

He smiles but says nothing.

Years later, people open his diary. The final page contains just one line:

“They called me a crooked official, but the common people called me the upright lord. This bureaucracy really is damn interesting.”