Huang Liu-hung

Huang is a magistrate in T'an-ch'eng County, stationed in T'an-ch'eng city. Huang is a Chinese imperial official who has passed his Confucian examinations and is posted in T'an-ch'eng. He realizes that T'an-ch'eng is a poor area, where the population has been decimated. Huang tries to have the tax burdens of people cut, especially in areas where farming has ceased to function. He tries to collect taxes from rich landowners, not only from poor farmers. Huang is fearful that many people in T'an-ch'eng are committing suicide because life is so difficult. In some ways, he is compassionate, but he is also a product of the often unyielding Chinese official system of Confucian ideals and ethics. He is often overwhelmed by the corruption and arrogance of the rich, and the despair and degeneracy of the poor. He sees couples meeting and having affairs in abandoned temples, and women giving...