stubborn thief

Salt is a major policy.

In the northwest, tea is also of great importance.

After appointing Sun Zhensheng as the Imperial Censor of Salt Inspection to investigate the salt administration, Liu Chengzong soon received news that another Sanyuan salt merchant, Liang Xing, had arrived in Xi'an.

This person, after meeting with Liu Chengzong, followed almost the same process and was appointed as the Imperial Censor of Tea Inspectorate and entered the same yamen as Sun Zhensheng.

Both of these businessmen were stunned by the official positions thrown down by Liu Chengzong.

There is no way to resist.

This has nothing to do with Liu Chengzong's power or the level of the official position he was granted.

It's all about this position.

  Historically, the biggest wish of businessmen after becoming rich is to let their descendants study hard and obtain official positions. Why?

Because doing business is controlled by others.

Small businesses are controlled by the municipal government, and large merchants are controlled by policies. This strong relationship between management and being managed is the underlying logic of businessmen becoming officials.

The position offered by Liu Chengzong allowed the managed to become managers, or even policy makers. How could Sun Zhensheng and Liang Xing refuse?

There is no better position than this.

If there is, it is to give the position to their son, and the old man is only responsible for taking advantage of the power of others.

Of course, Liu Shizi actually thought about this, but at the age of fifteen, Sun Zhiwei could not even become an official, and he could only join the children's camp as a soldier.

Liu Chengzong did not ask too much of these two officials who came from merchant families. He just gave them a word of advice.

"As a Confucian businessman, you must have one of the three qualities: loyalty, filial piety, benevolence and righteousness."

This is both encouragement and warning.

However, Liu Chengzong did have high expectations for the work of these two people.

As far as the salt law is concerned, private salt is equally fatal to the Marshal's Office.

Although green salt is inexhaustible, it is guarded by the various Mongolian tribes at sea. The region and environment can most likely eliminate smuggling of salt at the source.

But if the problem of private salt was really so easy to solve, it would not have been a major problem in every dynasty.

This involves this definition: What is private salt?

The largest salt field in Shaanxi, located in Huamachi, is still abandoned for the time being. It is also the source of illegal salt in Shaanxi. Although its salt reserves are less than one percent of the many salt lakes in Qinghai, its annual output is greater than that of Qinghai salt due to its early development and large population using salt.

During the Zhengde period, the annual output of official salt there was 54 million kilograms, which was exported to Xi'an, Yan'an, Ningxia and Yulin.

Even though the salt permit system was changed several times, from six to eight stones of salt per permit to 200 kilograms of salt, it was still able to maintain an annual output of 16 million kilograms.

In fact, the number of salt permits also shows the beginning of the collapse of the salt law in the late Ming Dynasty.

Fifty-four million kilograms of salt is enough to supply the people of Shaanxi, Gansu and Ningxia, and to pickle meat and raise livestock.

According to the rationing system during the Hongwu period, each male adult was entitled to only three catties of salt per year, and the amount given to wives and children was reduced in proportion. But that was the early years of the Ming Dynasty, and by the Yongle period, the amount became one catty per month for adults and half a catty per month for children.

Since the Zhengde period, the population of Shaanxi, Gansu and Ningxia did not decrease significantly until the Tianqi period, but Huamachi, as the main production area of ​​official salt, saw its annual output drop sharply to 16 million jin.

  What about the remaining salt?

Part of it was drawn from Jie Chi in Shanxi, and the other part was taken away by private salt.

The problem of smuggled salt is actually not that complicated, and the smuggled salt dealers are by no means killers who have a large amount of armed protection and are armed to sell salt.

Too low-end.

Historically, it has been easy for private salt dealers to rebel and become leaders, not because they possess powerful military force, but because the salt smugglers have connections and influence in the army that guards the salt ponds, the places where private salt is sold, and the government that supervises the salt administration.

  To put it bluntly, where does the illegal salt come from?

If someone hides in the mountains and organizes hundreds of people to dig rock salt mines, and gathers dozens of poor people to work hard in the saline-alkali land to make salt, he is not a salt smuggler.

They worked diligently day and night, risking their lives to produce thousands of kilograms of local salt with poor technology and mixed taste. After much trouble, they sold it, but there was still the possibility that the official salt would squeeze out the customers.

  What kind of hardworking and wealthy township entrepreneur is this?

There are indeed huge profits involved. Dozens of people can earn what others earn in one or two years in just two or three nights.

However, the production method of these chemists who made a living by physical labor posed limited threat to the country and society, so the imperial court was too lazy to arrest them.

The salt smugglers’ largest supplier is the government.

Private salt is official salt.

The officials in charge of salt affairs, the troops guarding the salt lakes, and the royal relatives who disrupted the salt law, all skipped the hard work of making and extracting salt with a simple piece of note.

Millions of kilograms of official salt were shipped out and distributed by salt smugglers who acted as white gloves.

There is no need for armed escort, everything is done according to the procedures for official salt. The Salt Lake Army sends out garrisons, and local officials mobilize corvée labor to transport the salt to the official salt sales area and sell it to official salt dealers.

The money from buying and selling official salt went into private pockets, so it was called private salt.

The official salt company was not afraid of competing with the salt merchants who made their own salt. They controlled the best raw material production areas and built a circle around the salt pond. They could use an iron spoon to scoop out salt of a purity that others could not achieve even after refining the salt for several times.

Even if they were to fry local salt together, the government could mobilize corvée at no cost and also had better purification technology.

Your private salt is cheap and of poor quality, my official salt is of good quality and even cheaper, you will be squeezed to death.

  The problem is that they use the same official salt as you, use the same channels as you, sell it in the same area as you, and charge the same price as you. How can you fight back?

This is why the imperial court wants to crack down on private salt sales.

Since they couldn't do anything to the people above them, they could only strike hard at the illegal salt dealers.

As long as there are people in the Marshal's Office, there is also this risk.

But that was a long time later. As for the current problem of smuggled salt all over Shaanxi, Liu Chengzong had no intention of taking care of it.

Shaanxi has been in such a mess in recent years that the government salt is no longer available, so ordinary people have to eat some local salt made from their own saline-alkali land. What's wrong with that?

Human nature.

Once he has straightened out the salt business, established the salt permit price and the official salt price, he will naturally be able to defeat all those private salt-making workshops.

In fact, there were no large-scale private salt workshops at that time. After all, the largest gang that made private salt and refined saltpeter was just taken over by him a few years ago.

They are Zhou Qing, the star of the sky, and Hui Dengxiang, the star of the mixed sky, who are active in the Hengshan area.

These two were former subordinates of Wang Jiayin who came from the frontier army. It seemed that they had a tradition of being bandits. At that time, Wang Jiayin occupied Hequ and attacked Fugu County.

Zhou Qing, like Hui Dengxiang, took refuge in the Hengshan mountainous area, connected with local bandits, and soon transformed from a rebel army into a regional gang.

They lived off the mountains, and their various teams set up camps in the mountains, boiling salt and saltpeter, cutting wood and selling timber, making firecrackers, kidnapping people and smashing kilns, reclaiming mountain land, hunting and collecting herbs, robbing merchants and travelers, and stealing military supplies... they did all kinds of work.

The salt and saltpeter they refined were not only enough for their own use, but also sold to Yansui Town and Yan'an Prefecture, and their business was very big.

It’s just that they lack credit towards Yansui Town. Today a brigade comes to sell some things, and tomorrow another brigade comes to loot the fort.

No rules.

At present, the people in the Hengshan mountain area are being registered with their assistance in preparation for their future incorporation into Yan'an Prefecture.

As for their troops, the Marshal's Office also sent Huben officers and Yulin Lang to escort a batch of captured Ming army standard equipment.

The goal is to streamline the personnel, eliminate the old and weak, and reorganize them into two independent thousand headquarters.

In the next northern expedition this year, Liu Chengzong planned to deploy them on the flanks connecting Yansui Town and Ningxia Town as the vanguard to infiltrate the two towns. Compared with the salt law of the Marshal's Office, the tea policy is much more difficult.

After all, Liu Chengzong controls the largest blue salt producing area, and Huamachi Salt City in Shaanxi is also between the two border walls. It is currently an ownerless land between the Marshal's Mansion and Ningxia Town.

The problem with the tea policy is that although there are some places in the Northwest that grow tea, even in Xi'an, Weinan, Baoji and other places, they can produce extremely high-quality tea.

But the output is too small.

For the Marshal's Office, the quality of tea is not important, what is important is the output.

The existing tea supply is intermittent, even for the regular troops of the Marshal's Office, and can never meet the needs of life.

There is no need to consider the three million Mongolian and foreign tribes in U-Tsang, Qinghai, Tianshan, and southern parts of the desert.

Because the diet structure of the marshal army under Liu Chengzong was very similar to that of the nomadic warriors imagined by the Han people.

They are the kind of nomadic nobles who eat horse milk, cheese, ghee and meat every day.

In reality, nomadic warriors did not even have surnames, and were private property of the feudal nobles just like cattle, sheep and horses.

Moreover, its status far exceeds that of cattle and sheep. It can not only herd cattle and sheep, but also be used to wield a spear to attack people. It is an important part of property.

How can there be a principle in the world where property eats property?

The potential market for tea from the Marshal's Mansion even exceeds that of the entire Ming Dynasty.

But that’s where the embarrassment lies.

Even Liu Chengzong, who moved his base to Xi'an Prefecture, apparently controlled the largest tea-making center in the northwest, whose specialty was Pu'er tea.

But in this tea-making center, the most grown crops are cotton and grain, and not a single tea tree is planted.

Liang Xing, a native of Sanyuan who was appointed as the Imperial Censor of Tea by Liu Chengzong, was also a salt merchant.

However, the difference is that Liang Xing not only has a salt pit in Yangzhou, but also has his own tea company in Jingyang, recruits workers and opens a factory, and his business is quite big.

If Sun Zhensheng was more like a local gentry than a businessman, then Liang Xing was a businessman.

He had no interest in organizing a militia to fight against the marshal's army, so he donated ten taels of silver.

He also learned from Ye Ding that the Marshal's Office wanted to summon him to discuss business matters, so he changed the name of his tea company before leaving.

His name is Liu Dasheng.

Moreover, unlike Sun Zhensheng, he did not come empty-handed. He was accompanied by more than ten servants, carrying silk from Shanxi, kiln wares from Yaozhou, deer antlers and tiger bones, Jingyang Fu bricks, and even two tiger skins.

Although these were common items for Liu Chengzong, they were relatively valuable gifts among ordinary people.

When they met Liu Chengzong, because Liang Xing was much younger, and the Grand Marshal called him "brother", he was so moved that he planned to donate money to support the military.

The leader of the Northwest outlaws calls me his good brother. Who can resist that?

Liu Chengzong did not ask this man about salt, but only talked about tea.

Liang Xing also reciprocated Liu Chengzong's respect by speaking business and pointing out a clear path for him with his professional vision.

The Marshal's Office would be qualified to discuss tea policy only if it had control over one of the two major tea producing areas, Huguang and Hanzhong.

Otherwise, it would be useless to have Jingyang, an important tea-making town, in our hands, but it would be like throwing a pearl away in the dark.

Here in Liangxing, Liu Shizi learned more about Jingyang's handicraft industry.

The raw materials of Jingyang Fu tea were mainly dark tea from Baoning, Sichuan and Hanzhong, Shaanxi in the early years.

Because Sichuan tea and Shaanxi tea have low production and high prices, while Hu tea has high production and low prices, merchants smuggle Hu tea into Shaanxi.

  The officials were naturally happy to see this happen. They thought that although the Hu tea was bitter, it was drinkable with butter and cheese... Selling it to the Tartars was appropriate since they would not drink it themselves anyway!

Therefore, every year six million kilograms of Hu tea enters Shaanxi through Longjuzhai in Shangnan, crosses the Weihe River and is transported to Jingyang for processing. Hu tea then becomes one of the raw materials for Pu'er tea.

Jingyang relies on the Jing River. The river water is cold and slightly bitter, and is alkaline. Using Jing water to ripen the tea skin is particularly gentle, and it is also uniquely suited for tea making and fermentation.

Therefore, there is a huge group of leather workers and tea workers in the local area. From February to March every year to August and September, tens of thousands of leather workers and tea inspectors gather together, and there are also thousands of idle people carrying boxes and goods. These people are the foundation of the developed handicraft industry in Jingyang.

Relying on the local special production technology, the inspected tea leaves are pressed into bricks and sent to Xining, Gansu, Ningxia and other places.

However, this trade route was almost cut off in the second year after Liu Chengzong entered Qinghai.

Because these official tea bricks were used to exchange for horses at the frontier.

Without horses, there was naturally no place to exchange tea. Although there were other places to go, they could not consume the huge amount of tea bricks weighing nearly 10 million kilograms, and they could not be sold in Shaanxi.

Brick tea is border tea, and Han people do not drink brick tea.

A large amount of tea bricks were piled up, and the trade route became blocked the following year.

By now, we have experienced the Miao soldiers from Huguang entering Shaanxi, the defeated army entering Huguang, and the peasant army from Shaanxi entering Huguang, with troops from all directions running back and forth.

When Zhao Zhirui, the deputy general of the Guanzhong Brigade, entered Wuguan, the road was completely blocked.

Liang Xing’s suggestion was to reopen this trade route.

Either stabilize the order in Hanzhong, increase the production of Hanzhong raw tea, transport it to Jingyang, process it into Pu'er tea, make it into tea bricks, and sell it to Qinghai, U-Tsang, Mo Nan and other places to buy back war horses.

Liu Chengzong stopped immediately after hearing this and said, "We don't have to exchange tea for horses. We can also exchange tea for medicinal herbs."

The Marshal's Office lacks everything except horses.

Although Longju Island's work in breeding and improving war horses has only begun to show results.

However, although fighting continued at the front, the number of war horses did not decrease, but was replenished due to the spoils of war; while the number of war horses in the rear had been steadily increasing, and their arrival was inexplicable.

Every year horses are driven here from the Tianshan Mountains, foals are born every year in the herdsmen settlements in Qinghai, and the chieftains in Kangning who have not been exterminated send fifty or sixty horses to the sea in order to demonstrate the significance of their existence.

Even on the battlefield of Heka grassland, there are several groups of wild horses of excellent breeds after two years.

Oddly enough, Cui Cong of Longju Temple improved the horse breed at sea, and the foals that he bred with great effort were very precious.

A stallion is served by more than a dozen people. If it goes out for a run, it may step on a snake hole in the grassland and break its leg. If it stays at sea, it may get diarrhea and die if it eats casually.

It happened that during the great war between the Marshal's Office, the Northern Yuan Dynasty and the Oirats, the war horses that were not collected became wild horses with no one to take care of them, and they were able to breed with the local Hequ wild horses and form a population.

Liu Chengzong had more idle horses than he had soldiers.

Theoretically, the more horses there are, the better. Five military horses can be selected from ten civilian horses, and after comparison, one or two good war horses can be obtained from the five military horses.

But that is just theory, or in the days when the climate was normal and the temperature was suitable, one could raise three to five million horses and select them carefully.

In this cold ice age, Liu Chengzong's choice was to improve the horse breed and keep it for the future.

In actual use, war horses, like donkeys and mules, are just tactical equipment.

With usable performance and sufficient quantity.

Assume the responsibility of consumables. (End of this chapter)