The officials collected taxes without limit, and the people suffered terribly.
Tips
register
Literary/written register. In modern speech you'll usually see it inside compounds rather than alone: 收敛 'to restrain oneself; to converge', 敛财 'to amass wealth (often by improper means)', 敛容 'to compose one's expression'.
The action radical (a slim variant of 攴) on the right depicts a hand wielding a stick. It marks 敛 as an act of compulsion — gathering collected by force, restraining oneself with discipline — alongside 收, 教 and 改 in the action-on family.
Sits on the left and lends the sound, drifting noticeably from qiān to liǎn. Its meaning of all / together quietly reinforces the gathering sense too: everyone bringing offerings together is exactly what 敛 originally described — collecting tribute.
