Huang Laohan was an ordinary peasant from a small village in Chuyuan Province, his family had farmed for generations, barely making ends meet with a few acres of thin land. After the implementation of the One Whip Law, the previously in-kind taxes collected by acreage were converted to silver, forcing Huang Laohan to sell the grain he painstakingly grew at the market to exchange for silver taels to pay the tax.
However, the market grain prices fluctuated greatly. In a good harvest year, the grain prices were low, and even if Huang Laohan sold all his grain, he couldn't gather enough tax silver; not to mention now, it's a disaster year, with poor crop yields, making things worse.
