Yang Yan

Biography

Family Background and Early Years

Yang Yan was born in 727, the fifteenth year of the Kaiyuan era, in Tianxing County of Fengxiang Prefecture. Historical sources describe him as handsome and bearded, imposing in bearing, and magnificent in literary talent; in the Qian-Long region he was called “Little Hermit Yang.” His family was famous for filial conduct. His father and grandfather had both received official commendations for filial piety, and by Yang's generation the family had six commemorative gate towers, something the sources called unprecedented.

The exact date of Yang's first official service is unclear in the histories. The Old Book of Tang says that Lü Chongben, Military Commissioner of Hexi, recruited him as chief secretary. The identification is disputed: some scholars argue that Lü never served in Hexi and that the title may be an error for Military Commissioner of Guannei or Hedong, while others believe the patron was actually Du Hongjian. In any case, Yang entered a military commissioner's staff relatively early and began his official career there. While serving on a staff, he reportedly took revenge on Li Dajian, magistrate of Shenwu, who had insulted him while drunk. With subordinates he tied Li's hands behind his back and beat him two hundred times with an iron rod, almost killing him. Military Commissioner Lü Chongben valued Yang's ability and did not punish him. The episode illustrates both the bold and high-spirited and the vindictive sides of Yang's personality as presented in the source.

In 753, the twelfth year of the Tianbao era, Yang wrote the “Wall Inscription for the Office of the Military Commissioner of Hexi,” when Geshu Han was military commissioner. Its ornate style was widely admired and shows that Yang already possessed a substantial literary reputation.

Middle Years: Declining Office to Serve Family and Drafting at Court

In 759, the second year of the Qianyuan era, Deputy Supreme Commander Li Guangbi petitioned to make Yang a staff officer, but Yang refused. The court then summoned him as a diarist, which he also firmly declined, abandoning office to care for his family in the Qi region. After the death of a parent, he observed mourning in a hut by the grave and wept continually. Reports of auspicious purple fungus and a white sparrow accompanied the mourning, and his household received official commendation.

Long after the mourning period ended, Yang returned to office as assistant director in the Bureau of Merit, then moved through the Ministry of War to director in the Ministry of Rites and drafter of edicts. In 766, the second year of Yongtai, rebellion broke out in Western Sichuan. Grand Councilor Du Hongjian went to Sichuan as deputy commander for Shannan and Jian'nan, and Yang accompanied him as staff officer while serving as director in the Ministry of War. In Sichuan Yang and Du were closely associated. They once climbed a post station tower on the Jialing River to view the moon and banquet, and Du performed on the jiegu drum while Yang and others watched. Scholarly research cited in the source suggests Yang may also have met Du Fu on the journey into Sichuan.

After returning to court, Yang became a Secretariat drafter and shared responsibility for imperial edicts with Chang Gun. Chang was especially skilled at appointment edicts, while Yang excelled in proclamations of imperial favor. They were called “Chang and Yang,” and contemporary opinion held that no edict writers since the Kaiyuan era surpassed them. Yang also wrote a stele text for Li Kailuo, father of Li Guangbi, whose polished prose was widely circulated. Crown Prince Li Shi, the future Emperor Dezong, heard of it and had a rubbing mounted on a wall for admiration. As Secretariat drafter, Yang treated talented people courteously and took pride in promoting younger figures, winning considerable popularity.

Alignment with Yuan Zai and Demotion to Daozhou

It was also while serving as Secretariat drafter that Yang began aligning himself with Grand Councilor Yuan Zai. Yuan came from Qizhou, the same commandery as Yang, and the New Book of Tang also says Yang was Yuan's nephew by marriage or maternal relation. Yuan, while in power, secretly selected officials of literary talent and reputation to cultivate as possible successors. He first chose Vice Minister of Rites Liu Shan, who died; then Vice Minister of Personnel Xue Yong, who was demoted for an offense; finally he selected Yang Yan and treated him with unmatched intimacy. In the twelfth month of the ninth year of Dali, 775, Yang was promoted to Vice Minister of Personnel and assigned to compile the national history.

In the third month of 777, the twelfth year of Dali, Yuan Zai was convicted, imprisoned, and ordered to take his own life. As a member of Yuan's faction, Yang was demoted the following month to adjutant of Daozhou. More than ten others, including Han Hui, Wang Ding, Bao Ji, Xu Huang, Zhao Zong, Pei Yi, Wang Dan, and Han Hui, were also demoted. Yang thereafter hated Liu Yan, who had presided over the investigation of Yuan Zai, laying the foundation for his later attack on Liu.

Appointment as Grand Councilor and the Two-Tax System

In 779, the fourteenth year of Dali, Li Shi became Emperor Dezong. The emperor had heard of Yang while still Crown Prince, and Grand Councilor Cui Youfu also recommended Yang for his literary talent and administrative capacity. In the eighth month Yang was recalled from exile and appointed Grand Master of Imperial Accord with Silver Seal and Blue Ribbon, Vice Director of the Chancellery, and Participant in Determining Government Matters. Yang possessed an impressive bearing and broad literary learning and had long enjoyed public fame; the realm reportedly expected him to become a worthy chief minister.

After entering government he turned to major crises facing the Tang. When the Tibetan Empire and Nanzhao jointly invaded Sichuan in the tenth month of the fourteenth year of Dali, Yang opposed recalling the former military commissioner Cui Ning and instead recommended other generals for the relief. More importantly, in response to the disorder of the fiscal system, he proposed the Two-Tax System in 780, the first year of Jianzhong.

The major provisions of the Two-Tax System were as follows: state expenditure was first estimated and total revenue then set accordingly; the zu-yong-diao taxes and miscellaneous corvée were consolidated into a land tax and household tax; liability was assessed according to land and property, so those with more assets paid more and those with less paid less; collection took place in summer and autumn, with the summer payment due no later than the sixth month and the autumn payment no later than the eleventh; taxes were assessed in money but could temporarily be collected in kind. The reform replaced the zu-yong-diao system that had existed for centuries since Northern Wei and became a major transformation in Chinese fiscal history. The source states that it helped the Tang government at a time when military separatism had weakened state finances.

Yang also restored the institutional division between public state revenues and the emperor's private stores. Previously, the realm's fiscal receipts had flowed into the Inner Treasury, the emperor's private treasury, under eunuch control, and no one knew the full amounts entering or leaving. Yang memorialized that revenues should instead be managed in the Left Treasury by the finance administration, thereby defending the principle that public revenue belonged independently to the state.

Framing Liu Yan and Fall from Power

After Cui Youfu withdrew from politics because of illness, Yang began to monopolize power. Remembering his old resentment, he decided to take revenge on Liu Yan. He first removed Liu from his concurrent responsibilities for transport, zu-yong taxation, salt and iron, and price stabilization. Early in 780 he accused Liu of falsely reporting affairs and had him demoted to prefect of Zhongzhou. Yang's ally Yu Zhun, Military Commissioner of Jingnan, then memorialized Emperor Dezong accusing Liu of slandering the court and claiming that Liu had written resentful letters to Zhu Ci and intended rebellion. Yang personally supplied fabricated evidence. Liu was eventually ordered to die. When his property was confiscated, however, officials found only “two cartloads of miscellaneous books and several hu of rice and wheat,” and public opinion considered the case a grave injustice.

The case caused Emperor Dezong to turn against Yang. The emperor elevated Lu Qi as grand councilor to divide Yang's authority. Yang despised Lu and was ashamed to associate with him, frequently pretending to be ill rather than dine together, which caused Lu to hate him. In 781, the second year of Jianzhong, Lu blamed Yang for Li Xilie's delay in campaigning against Liang Chongyi. Emperor Dezong accepted Lu's accusation and in the tenth month demoted Yang to adjutant of Yazhou. On the journey Yang wrote a poem lamenting the ten-thousand-li exile and asking where Yazhou lay beyond the “Gate of Ghosts.” Before reaching his destination, he was ordered to die, at age fifty-five.

The Fight to Return Public Revenue to the Left Treasury

Under the old Tang system all gold and silk of the realm was stored in the Left Treasury under the Court of the Imperial Treasury, which reported the amounts each season while the Bureau of Review checked receipts and outlays, so that levels were cross-checked and little was lost. When Diwu Qi became finance and salt commissioner, the capital swarmed with powerful generals making unbounded demands that he could not control, and he petitioned to move the revenues into the imperial privy treasury, the Daying, managed by eunuchs; the emperor found this convenient for his own needs and it never came out again. Public revenue thus became the sovereign's private hoard, the offices could not see its size nor measure its increase or decrease, and for nearly twenty years more than three hundred eunuchs administered it, feeding on it and entrenching themselves immovably. As chancellor Yang Yan bowed before Emperor Dezong and argued that "revenue is the great foundation of the state and the throat of the living people, on which order and disorder, lightness and weight all depend", and that whereas former ages chose great ministers for it and still feared failure, now eunuchs held the root of the state, so that even great ministers knew neither abundance nor want and could not compute the realm's interest; he asked that it be returned to the offices, with the palace's annual needs measured and an amount handed in without shortfall, "and only then can government be discussed". Dezong issued the decree that day: all revenue to the Left Treasury, by the old forms, with three to five hundred thousand brought into the Daying each year and the Finance Commission reporting the full figure first. Yang Yan changed the sovereign's mind with a few words, which contemporaries thought remarkable, and his reputation spread at home and abroad.

The Background of the Two-Tax System

Under the early Tang the statutes provided for the grain, labour and cloth taxes. In the Kaiyuan era Xuanzong, governing by leniency, kept no registers, so households multiplied and the dikes were unguarded: the men who paid and laboured died under other names, the fields were exchanged under different assessments, and rich and poor rose and fell out of their former grades, so that the ministry kept only empty documents and no longer the truth. Frontier guards were exempt from the taxes for six years, but Xuanzong, busy with the barbarians, had many who died abroad and never returned, and the frontier commanders, enjoying favour, concealed the deaths, so that their names remained on the rolls; by the Tianbao era Wang Hong, as household commissioner, intent on squeezing out revenue, took the old registers and computed that the men being still on them had not vanished but were concealing taxes, and collected thirty years of arrears beyond the six-year exemption, so that the realm suffered without redress and the system had long been rotten. After the An Lushan troubles armies rose everywhere and famine and plague followed; requisitions, transport and endless labour ruined the households and emptied the registers. The needs of army and state depended on the finance and transport commissioners, while the provinces fed themselves through the military governors, several tax offices acting without coordination, so that the structure collapsed, the court could not oversee the commissioners nor the commissioners the prefectures. Corrupt ministers and cunning clerks turned it to their profit, and fortunes were embezzled under the guise of tribute; the regions with great armies kept the wealth for themselves, the imperial revenue from them was slight, and the names of levies ran to hundreds, the abolished not struck out nor the heavier removed, while the people gave up their blood and sold their kin, sending in month by month without rest, the rich avoiding service through office or monkhood and the poor paying more, until the realm was gaunt and wandering, hardly four or five households in a hundred remaining on the land, and so for nearly thirty years.

The Provisions of the Two-Tax System

Yang Yan, taking the occasion of an audience, set out the abuses at length and asked for a two-tax system with a single name: all costs of labour and all money levies to be assessed in advance and imposed on the people, "measuring outlay to fix intake"; households, whether registered or guest, to be listed by present residence; persons, whether adults or minors, to be graded by wealth; itinerant merchants to be taxed at one thirtieth in the county where they were, so as to bring them level with residents; the household tax to be collected twice, in summer and autumn, the summer payment by the sixth month and the autumn by the eleventh; the grain, labour and miscellaneous corvees to be abolished while the adult rolls remained, reported as before; and the land tax to be assessed equally on the acreage registered in the fourteenth year of Dali. After the first year, where households increased and taxes fell, or people scattered and the assessment became unequal, the governors were to be promoted or dismissed, with the Finance Commission supervising. Dezong approved and proclaimed it; those who managed the taxes obstructed it as unprofitable, saying the old grain-and-labour law had stood four hundred years and should not lightly be changed, but the emperor carried it through without doubt and the realm found it convenient. Thereafter "people settled on the land without a general registration, revenue rose without heavier levies, the registers revealed the truth without being remade, and corrupt clerks had no gains to take", and the power to adjust the burden came back to the court. In the first month of 780, at the amnesty proclaiming the new era, it was further decreed that "beyond the two taxes, whoever levies a single cash shall be punished as a perverter of the law".

The Plan to Wall Yuanzhou and the Revolt of Liu Wenxi

Late in the Dali era Yuan Zai had proposed walling Yuanzhou to block the Xiongnu road into the empire, but nothing was done before he was killed. Yang Yan, in power, memorialised in the second month of 781 for the walling of Yuanzhou, first sending a memorandum to the Jingyuan military governor Duan Xiushi to prepare; Duan replied that a long-term frontier policy should be pursued with deliberation and not hastily begun, and that since spring farming had begun the work should wait for the slack season. Yang Yan, angry, recalled him as director of agriculture and appointed Li Huaiguang to supervise in front, with Zhu Ci and Cui Ning each leading ten thousand as flanking support. In the third month the decree reached Jingzhou to prepare, and the troops there protested that they had been the western gate of the state for more than ten years, that at Binzhou they had just settled to farming and now, having cleared the wilderness at Jingzhou and built walls with their own hands, were to be thrust beyond the frontier as if they had done wrong; Li Huaiguang, commanding the Shuofang army, was severe and had killed several senior generals, and Liu Wenxi, a subordinate at Jingzhou, seizing the resentment, refused the decree and memorialised for Duan Xiushi's return or else Zhu Ci, refusing all orders even when Zhu Ci replaced Li Huaiguang, holding the city and sending his son to the Tibetans for aid. With drought and unrest, the ministers asked that Liu Wenxi be pardoned, but Dezong refused and reduced his own table to pay the troops; Zhu Ci and Li Huaiguang besieged and ringed the city, and the cavalry officer Liu Haibin cut off Liu Wenxi's head and sent it to the capital. Historians judged that but for Liu Haibin's loyalty the frontier would have risen, and that the trouble came from Yang Yan changing commanders by his own likes and dislikes and so incurring the soldiers' hatred; in the end Yuanzhou was never walled.

The Destruction of Liu Yan

Having contrived Liu Yan's demotion, Yang Yan, knowing that the agriculture minister Yu Zhun was at odds with him, made Yu military governor of Jingnan and hinted that he accuse Liu Yan of plotting rebellion at Zhongzhou; Yu accordingly reported that Liu Yan had written to Zhu Ci seeking intercession and full of grievance, and Yang Yan made the case good, which Dezong believed. Liu Yan was put to death at sixty-six, and the confiscation of his property yielded only two cartloads of miscellaneous books and a few bushels of grain, so that the realm thought him wronged; his family was exiled to Lingnan and dozens were implicated, and only in 789 did Dezong, repenting, employ Liu Yan's son as an imperial physician of the fifth rank. Li Zhengji repeatedly memorialised asking on what charge Liu Yan had been killed and attacking the court, and Yang Yan, fearing to be thought the author of it, sent confidants to the provinces — Pei Ji to the eastern capital, Heyang and Weibo; Sun Cheng to Zelu, Cixing and Youzhou; Lu Dongmei to Henan and Ziqing; Li Zhou to Shannan and Hunan; Wang Ding to Huaixi — ostensibly to proclaim comfort but in truth to spread slander, saying that "Liu Yan's offence was that in past years he attached himself to the wicked and plotted to make the consort Dugu empress, and the sovereign himself detested him, no more than that". Someone secretly memorialised that Yang Yan sent five envoys to the provinces lest the world blame him for Liu Yan's death and to shift the blame to the emperor; Dezong had eunuchs verify it with Li Zhengji, found it true, and from then on intended to kill Yang Yan, waiting for an occasion.

Entanglements with Cui Ning, Liang Chongyi and Li Xilie

When Cui Ning came to court in 779 he was made a minister and given charge of the late emperor's tomb; holding that the choice of censors belonged to the censor-in-chief and not to the chancellors, he proposed Li Heng, Yu Jie and others as censors, at which Yang Yan was furious and the matter dropped. In the tenth month, when Nanzhao and the Tibetans invaded Shu in three columns and Cui Ning was at court with no commander in the province, Dezong urged him back, but Yang Yan, fearing that Cui Ning would resent him and be hard to control in Shu, told the emperor that Shu was the richest land in the realm and that Cui Ning had held it fourteen years, so that to send him would mean "defeat loses it and victory does not gain it for the state"; instead he proposed sending Zhu Ci's seasoned Fanyang troops mixed with the guards, which would let the court plant its own men in the Shu army and then replace the commander and recover its power. Dezong agreed, stopped Cui Ning's return and sent four thousand guards and five thousand Fanyang troops to join the Shannan army in routing the invaders, taking six thousand heads and six hundred prisoners, with eighty or ninety thousand perishing of cold and hunger in the gorges. Afterwards, though Cui Ning was given three commands, Yang Yan appointed three subordinates as acting commanders to strip him of real power, to general indignation. When Liang Chongyi rebelled and Dezong wished to give Li Xilie of Huaixi command of the campaign, Yang Yan argued that Li Xilie had been Li Zhongchen's adopted son and dearest subordinate and had nevertheless driven him out and taken his place, and that one so disloyal could not be trusted, and would after defeating the rebels demand more than the throne could give; Dezong did not listen. Earlier, on his way south, Yang Yan had passed through Xiang and Han and urged Liang Chongyi to come to court, without success, and had sent Li Zhou to persuade him, so that Liang's refusal and rebellion were thought to have been forced by Yang Yan; and now his stubborn opposition to Li Xilie further displeased the emperor.

The Struggle with Lu Qi and His Death

When Dezong asked which ministers could bear great responsibility, Lu Qi proposed Zhang Yi and Yan Ying while Yang Yan proposed Cui Zhao and Zhao Huibo; the emperor, finding Yang Yan's views impractical, dismissed him as chancellor to be left vice-director, and a few days later raised Lu Qi to be a chancellor. Lu Qi was without letters and of sorry appearance, and Yang Yan, despising him, would not stand with him, often pleading illness to sit in another pavilion and refusing to dine with him, so that Lu Qi bore a grudge. By the old rules the secretariat drafters each supervised two of the Six Ministries to settle memorials, a post abolished early in the Kaiyuan era, and when Lu Qi proposed restoring it Yang Yan firmly refused; when Lu Qi secretly reported the fault of a secretariat clerk and had him dismissed, Yang Yan angrily said that "the clerk is my own subordinate, and if he errs I will deal with him; why do you interfere?" Lu Qi then brought Yan Ying, at odds with Yang Yan, to be censor-in-chief; Yang Yan's son Yang Hongye was worthless, breaking the law and taking bribes and commissions, and Yan Ying, trying him, found other offences besides. In the matter of Zhao Huibo buying Yang Yan's eastern capital house as an official residence, the censors counted it as a bribe at a high valuation, and when Lu Qi asked the director of judicial review Tian Jin for the sentence, Tian held that under the law a supervising officer buying with a margin of profit should be treated as demanding and stripped of office; Lu Qi, angry, demoted him to Hengzhou, and had other judges rule it embezzlement by a custodian, punishable with strangling. In the Kaiyuan era Xiao Song had proposed to build a family shrine south of Qujiang but had desisted because the place was one the emperor frequented; Yang Yan built his shrine there, and rumour said that "the ground has a royal aura, and Yang Yan took it with designs beyond his station". In the tenth month of 781 a decree recited his "ruining the law and destroying the rules, deceiving the sovereign for private ends" and "giving free rein to fraud to amass bribes", and sent him to be assistant commander of Yazhou with post-horse speed. On the road he wrote the poem "Written on the Way into Exile at Yazhou": "one going is ten thousand li; knowing a thousand things, a thousand never to return. Where is Yazhou? Alive I pass the Ghost Gate." Halfway there he was ordered to die, in his fifty-fifth year.

Measures of the Early Jianzhong Era

The amnesty of the first month of 780 proclaiming the new era contained more than the two-tax system: beyond the two taxes, anyone levying a single cash was to be punished as a perverter of the law; regular attending officials, the military governors and defence commissioners of the provinces, army commanders, prefects, sub-prefects and judicial officers had, within three days of appointment, to submit at the Hostel of the Four Quarters the name of a man to replace them, while provincial officials had the memorial forwarded by their superiors to the Chancellery and Secretariat, vacancies being filled by the most recommended; and offices at court above the sixth rank in princely households and superfluous posts in prefectures and counties were to be reduced. Since the troubles began, military governors had always held concurrent court and provincial posts; now Han Huang was made prefect of Suzhou and Du Ya sub-prefect of Hezhong with command of the local defence, without court office, and thereafter such concurrent censor posts were given up. In the same month the transport, grain, labour, green-sprout and salt commissions held by Liu Yan in the eastern capital, Henan, the Huai and Jiangnan and Shannan East were abolished, the revenues of the realm given to the bureaux of revenue and granaries with officials chosen by the Chancellery and Secretariat, and Han Hui made vice-minister of revenue in charge of the Finance Commission and Du You given charge of the Huai and Yangtze transport, as under Liu Yan and Han Huang before.

The Lingyang Canal Works

As chancellor Yang Yan proposed cutting the Lingyang canal in Fengzhou, conscripting labour from the capital region to work at the western city, so that the villages were disturbed, and the work came to nothing. In the third month of 780 the supervising censor Zhang Zhu impeached the censor Yan Ying for "cutting the Lingyang canal and concealing the decree", so that Yan Ying lost office and Zhang Zhu received the crimson fish-bag. The affair entangled with the feud between Yang Yan and Yan Ying and became one of the distant causes of Lu Qi's later bringing Yan Ying in as censor-in-chief to prosecute Yang Yan.

The Drum Gathering and His Progress to Shu

In 766, as vice-minister of war and adjutant, Yang Yan accompanied the commander Du Hongjian into Shu to put down disorder. According to the Record of the Jie Drum, Du Hongjian was a master of that drum and at Chengdu had received two drumsticks from a man who said he had kept them in the groove of his back for ten years; leaving Shu, at the western border of Lizhou, on a night of fine moonlight, he climbed the post-station tower with his retainers Yang Yan, Du Ya and others to look at the river moon and drink, and taking out drum, clappers and flute with the sticks, played several pieces with such vigour that "the apes and birds of the four mountains were startled and cried out", to the wonder of the company; Du recalled how he had once seen a flock of sheep bow and lift their heads to the drum, and two dogs fall silent and listen. Scholars have also suggested that Yang Yan may have met Du Fu on the way to Shu.

His Family

Yang Yan's great-grandfather Yang Dabao was magistrate of Longmen early in Wude; when Liu Wuzhou took Jin and Jiang he refused to surrender, and the city falling he was killed and honoured posthumously as Marquis of Complete Fidelity. His grandfather Yang Zhe was honoured with a banner at his gate for exceptional filial conduct; his father Yang Bo, having passed the examinations, retired and lived in seclusion, and when Xuanzong summoned him as remonstrance official he gave up the post to care for his parents, was likewise honoured at his gate, and was given by Suzong the title of cavalier attendant and the style Master of Profound Stillness, being recorded among the recluses. Yang Yan was known between Qian and Long as "the Younger Mountain Man of Yang"; the Old Tang History describes him as "fair-browed and majestic, with a vigorous and splendid style", and the New Tang History that "he early bore the judgment of his time, and the realm looked to him as a worthy chancellor". In office he served as vice-minister of war, adjutant of the Shannan command, vice-minister of rites, drafter of edicts and secretariat drafter, and was promoted to vice-minister of personnel by Chancellor Yuan Zai; Yuan Zai, of the same prefecture and a kinsman, praised his edicts of grace — "from the Kaiyuan era onward, in judgments on the drafting of decrees men spoke of Chang and Yang" — and so advanced him to vice-minister of rites.

The Working of the Two-Tax System

The two taxes rested on the household tax and the land tax, their essence being that "households, registered or guest, are listed by present residence, and persons, adult or minor, graded by wealth". The household tax was assessed by grade of property, with no distinction between taxable and exempt households; the rate was based on the household tax, the land tax still being paid in grain while the rest was commuted into money and taken as the standard for later years, itinerant merchants paying one thirtieth. After its introduction the number of levies fell, the times of payment were concentrated and the procedure simplified; the tax base widened to officials, guest households and itinerant merchants; assessment by property was more just than assessment by persons; and the court's control of finance was strengthened. Yet in practice it still failed to balance revenue and expenditure, was arbitrarily increased, and made payers lose by the exchange between goods and money — faults on which later discussion fastened.

The Abuses of Cui Ning in Shu

Yang Yan's conflict with Cui Ning had a background. Long established in Shu, Cui Ning's troops grew strong, while he "gave free rein to extravagance and desire, and violated the wives and concubines of his officers", the court enduring it in silence; he kept his brother Cui Kuan at the capital to bribe Yuan Zai and his son, so that Cui Kuan rose swiftly to be assistant censor-in-chief and his brother Cui Shen to be supervising secretary. Coming to court in 779, Cui Ning became a minister and was charged with the late emperor's tomb, and, holding that the choice of censors belonged to the censor-in-chief and not to the chancellors, proposed Li Heng, Yu Jie and others as censors, coming directly into conflict with Yang Yan's authority as chancellor, so that the matter was shelved. All this made Yang Yan especially wary of him.

Yuan Zai's Legacy and Yang Yan's Revenge

Mindful of Yuan Zai's promotion of him, Yang Yan "devoted himself to carrying out Yuan Zai's former measures in repayment". His memorial to wall Yuanzhou was Yuan Zai's own late-Dali proposal, forestalled by his death; and his contriving of Liu Yan's fall was bound up with his conviction that "when Yang Yan was demoted over Yuan Zai, Liu Yan rejoiced and said so openly at court". In his last years Yuan Zai took Xue Yaoying as a concubine, lodging her with curtains of gold thread and unrusted rugs, dressed in dragon-gauze, and only Jia Zhi and Yang Yan were shown her singing and dancing; Yang Yan's song for her, "a heavenly woman with snowy face and pale brows, on phoenix pipes and wings about to fly away", shows how close the two men were. These old friendships and grudges coloured the appointments he made once chancellor.

Repercussions after Liu Yan's Death

The death of Liu Wenxi left Li Zhengji, Tian Yue and others uneasy; and after Liu Yan's death Li Zhengji and his like grew more afraid, saying to one another, "how can our crimes be compared with Liu Yan's". When the walls of Bianzhou, being cramped, were to be enlarged, rumours in the east held that "the emperor means to sacrifice at Mount Tai and is therefore walling Bianzhou", and Li Zhengji in fear sent ten thousand men to camp at Caozhou, while Tian Yue gathered his forces and prepared, in concert with Liang Chongyi and Li Weiyue, so that the people of Henan were thrown into alarm. The chain of reactions shows how Liu Yan's killing stirred the military governors.

Entanglement with Yan Ying, Yuan Xiu and Zhang Guangsheng

Hearing that Yuan Xiu was at odds with Yan Ying, Yang Yan raised Yuan Xiu from exile to be prefect of the capital and set him to watch for Yan Ying's faults; but Yuan Xiu, once in office, became friendly with Yan Ying, at which Yang Yan was furious. When Zhang Guangsheng was planning the killing of the Uighur chief, Yang Yan made Yuan Xiu envoy to the Uighurs, and he was nearly killed by them. Yan Ying, later charged with inaccurately measuring fields, was transferred to be director of judicial review, which men of the time regretted. These appointments, bound up with Zhang Zhu's impeachment of Yan Ying, show how vindictive Yang Yan was in his use of men.

Major Activities

Political Activity: Creation and Implementation of the Two-Tax System

Yang Yan's most important political contribution was proposing and implementing the Two-Tax System. After the An Lushan Rebellion, the equal-field system broke down, the zu-yong-diao system could no longer be sustained, household registers were disordered, taxation was unequal, and state finances were strained. In 780 Yang proposed assessing revenue according to expenditure needs, merging the older levies into a land tax and household tax, taxing according to assets, and collecting in summer and autumn. The reform simplified taxation, broadened the tax base, and increased state revenue, becoming a major turning point in Chinese fiscal history. Later dynasties continued important elements of the system until significant changes under the Ming Single Whip Law.

Yang also restored the separation of public state revenue from the emperor's private treasury. Because all fiscal receipts had previously entered the Inner Treasury under eunuch management, public and private funds were mixed and abuses proliferated. Yang proposed placing revenue under the Left Treasury and finance administration, preserving the principle of independence for public revenues.

Literary Contribution: “Chang and Yang” and the Art of Edict Writing

Yang was an accomplished writer, especially skilled in official edicts. When he and Chang Gun shared responsibility for imperial documents, Chang was strongest at appointment edicts and Yang at proclamations of imperial favor, and they were jointly called “Chang and Yang.” Contemporary opinion held that since the Kaiyuan era no writers had surpassed them in the beauty of official edicts. Yang's “Wall Inscription for the Office of the Military Commissioner of Hexi” and “Stele of Li Kailuo” were widely admired. He also painted. Zhang Yanyuan, viewing Yang's landscape painting, said it made him imagine the man himself as imposing and free-spirited. The Complete Tang Poems preserves two of Yang's poems.

Travels: Campaign in Sichuan and Roads of Exile

In 766 Yang followed Du Hongjian into Sichuan to suppress unrest, serving as a staff officer while holding the post of director in the Ministry of War. During the journey and his stay in Sichuan, he shared a moonlit banquet with Du on a Jialing River post-station tower. Scholars cited in the source suggest he may have had contact with Du Fu on the route. In 777 he was exiled to Daozhou, then recalled in 779. In 781 he was again demoted, this time to Yazhou, and composed his exile poem on the road before receiving the order to die near the Gate of Ghosts.

Contemporary Associations: Yuan Zai and Liu Yan

Yang owed important advancement to Grand Councilor Yuan Zai and joined Yuan's political faction, which drew contemporary criticism. After Yuan's fall, Yang was demoted and came to hate Liu Yan for leading the investigation. Once grand councilor, Yang framed Liu and brought about his death, an act widely condemned at the time and one of the major causes of Yang's eventual loss of power. He was paired with Chang Gun as “Chang and Yang,” maintained official ties with Du Hongjian and Du Ya, and later engaged in political struggle with Lu Qi.

The Beauty of His Edicts and His Letters

Yang Yan was a fine writer and master of the imperial edict, and while he and Chang Gun together handled the drafts they were known as "Chang and Yang": Chang excelled in commissions of appointment, Yang in edicts of grace, and from the Kaiyuan era onward the two were the most celebrated for the beauty of their decrees. As secretariat drafter he was courteous to the worthy and took the advancement of juniors as his task, winning men's hearts; he wrote the tomb inscription for Li Guangbi's father Li Kailuo, so elegantly that it was recited among literati, and Li Shi, then heir apparent and later Emperor Dezong, had a rubbing made and pinned to his wall. He also wrote a song for Yuan Zai's singer Xue Yaoying, "a heavenly woman with snowy face and pale brows, on phoenix pipes and phoenix wings about to fly away", and often watched her sing with Jia Zhi; on the road into exile he left the poem "Written on the Way into Exile at Yazhou", and two of his poems are collected in the Complete Tang Poems.

His Skill in Painting

According to Zhu Jingxuan's Record of Famous Paintings of the Tang, Yang Yan "in spirit matched the clouds and wind, in letters rivalled Yang and Sima", and painted pines, rocks and landscapes "beyond the common level". He first presented himself as a recluse to the palace secretary Lu Huangmen, who treated him generously; knowing his gift for painting but not daring to ask, and learning that his family in Luoyang was short of food and clothing, Lu sent men secretly with several hundred thousand cash to Luoyang to supply the household and brought back a family letter for Yang Yan to see. Deeply moved, Yang Yan spent more than a month painting a landscape screen for him, "with pines, rocks and clouds moving as if made by nature, so that all who saw it called it marvellous", and it was ranked among the highest class. Zhang Yanyuan said that in his landscape one "could see the man himself, lofty and free", so that his standing as a painter was likewise respected.

His Financial Thought and Later Discussion

With the two-tax system Yang Yan advanced the principle of "measuring outlay to fix intake", first reckoning the state's needs and then arranging the levy accordingly. Scholars from the Ming onward have much discussed the system's immediate results and long-term effects, Wang Fuzhi holding that it "benefited one age little and harmed later ages greatly", while the Thousand Years' Eye lists Yang Yan with Sang Hongyang, Kong Jin and Yuwen Rong as financiers whose "methods disordered the realm" yet whose measures later ages would not cease to use. Such judgments come from later hands and differ from the Comprehensive Mirror's record that under the two taxes "within a year the levies were lighter, the people were not distressed and the state's needs were met"; the two should be kept apart.

Friendships and Grudges

Yang Yan's friendships were tangled with grudges. In the Dali era, when Liu Yan was minister of personnel and Yang Yan his vice-minister, the subordinate Linghu Huan, dividing posts, "gave the good ones to Liu Yan and the poor ones to Yang Yan", which Yang Yan resented; and early in the Jianzhong era, when Linghu Huan was vice-minister of rites and Du Feng, son of the late chancellor Du Hongjian, sought entry to the Hongwen Academy, Yang Yan asked him to act for the young man, but Linghu Huan memorialised Yang Yan's signed request itself, saying that a chancellor had pressed him privately, so that Dezong in anger would have had him beaten and exiled, Yang Yan pleading hard to reduce it to a demotion to Hengzhou. Lu Sigong bribed Yang Yan with treasures and received in return the recording of his merit in pacifying Guangzhou, becoming minister of war and keeper of the eastern capital. Du You was summoned to court by Yang Yan and served as a transport commissioner and then vice-minister of revenue, taking charge of the Finance Commission. Fan Ze, being on good terms with Yang Yan, was recommended as a remonstrance official and rose through the ministry of personnel. On the other hand, when Yang Yan was exiled, Yao Mo's subordinate, the Lantian magistrate Cui Qing, broke the rules to obtain him leave, bought fine felt with twenty thousand of his salary to make a warm carriage for Yang Yan's sick wife and helped with his expenses; two years later Yang Yan returned as chancellor and promised to recommend Cui Qing within a month, but never did, and Cui Qing ceased to care. These dealings, together with his grudges against Yuan Zai, Liu Yan and Lu Qi, form the many sides of his official life.

Personal Relations

• Yuan Zai: From the same commandery and related by family; one account says Yang was Yuan's nephew
• Yang Lang: Son; served as Palace Censor
• Chang Gun: Shared responsibility for imperial edicts; together known as “Chang and Yang”
• Du Hongjian: Yang's superior during the Sichuan campaign
• Du Ya: Fellow staff officer under Du Hongjian
• Cui Youfu: Recommended Yang for appointment as grand councilor
• Li Yu, Emperor Daizong of Tang: Demoted Yang to adjutant of Daozhou
• Li Shi, Emperor Dezong of Tang: Appointed Yang grand councilor and later ordered him to die
• Liu Yan: Framed by Yang and ultimately ordered to die
• Lu Qi: Political enemy whose accusations contributed to Yang's final demotion and death

Historical Assessment

Tang / Contemporary

Emperor Dezong once told Li Mi that Yang Yan treated him like a child: whenever Yang submitted a proposal, if the emperor approved it Yang withdrew, but if not, he threatened to resign. The remark shows Dezong's dissatisfaction. Li Mi, however, believed Yang's crimes did not merit death and that Lu Qi had framed him.

The historical commentary in the Old Book of Tang says that Yang had early literary talent and cultivated personal principles, but while serving as Secretariat drafter attached himself to Yuan Zai and thereby lost public esteem. After being demoted because of Yuan's case, his resentment deepened; when he later obtained power, he pursued every slight, allowed a harmful and dangerous nature to govern him, followed personal likes and dislikes rather than public justice, and finally brought about his own downfall.

Song and Yuan Periods

Sun Fu's Historical Judgments on the Tang said that Yang possessed considerable talent but lacked impartiality and therefore could not bring his achievements to completion, ultimately ending in disaster.

Sima Guang's Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance, discussing the Two-Tax System, records that Yang assigned taxes on abandoned registered households either to new residents or to original owners where identifiable, and says that after a year of implementation levies were light, the people were not distressed, and state expenditures were adequately funded. This gives a positive assessment of the reform's practical effects.

Ming and Qing Periods

Ming and Qing scholars generally recognized the institutional innovation of the Two-Tax System while criticizing Yang's personal conduct. Wang Fuzhi, in Du Tongjian Lun, argued that Yang killed Liu Yan out of private resentment and Emperor Dezong in turn killed Yang out of private resentment, identifying Yang's vindictive character as a cause of his disaster.

Modern and Contemporary

Modern scholarship often evaluates Yang from the perspective of institutional history. Qian Mu, in Outline of National History, called the Two-Tax System a major transformation in the history of Chinese taxation and saw the principle of determining revenue from expenditure as containing an early form of modern fiscal thinking. Lü Simian, in History of the Sui, Tang, and Five Dynasties, argued that Yang was talented but morally flawed: the Two-Tax System was sound, yet its implementer's character cast a shadow over it. Huang Yongnian and other scholars have analyzed the political struggles among Yang, Liu Yan, and Lu Qi and argue that Yang's death reflected both his personal character and Emperor Dezong's methods of controlling ministers.