Not surprisingly, all of these disastrous factors led to a rise in suicides. The clarity in which Mr. Spence illustrates these events gives the reader an interpretation which is overwhelming.
A clear insight to T'an-ch'eng's economy and it's economic policies is explained in chapter two, The Land. T'an-ch'eng's government had a rather simple philosophy, the more a person made, the more the person was expected to pay. The taxes were paid based on percentage of what a person made, or sometimes could be paid by volunteering to work for the government. The government did not take interest in its taxpayers; the only exception being when people were unable to pay at all. History shows that there was a schedule of nine tax payments. People were required to pay more during the harvest seasons and less during the hottest midsummer months. Chinese government was structured and devised in creditworthy and hierarchal system; this insured that the taxes were collected in full without any missed defrayments. Even so, theft and cheating was a common occurrence at the city's market, so government officials created collection points for the farmers to avoid direct contact with middlemen. One could assume that because of the sheer magnitude of the land, and for the time period, some people would fall through the "cracks" of the taxation system, however Mr. Spence portrays a different picture. The taxation system generated problems of its own; because many families could not afford the tax starvation was a big problem. By today's standards Mr. Spence makes the history of China sound like "hell on earth" at many points in the book. Many of the factors presented by Mr. Spence give the reader a closer look on the financial struggle of an ordinary seventeenth century farmer. .
In part three, The Widow, Mr. Spence advertises to the reader women's values and their characteristics in T'an-ch'eng County. Through Local History, Mr.
