Daming Yinghua

Chapter 124 Yanzhou Coal Industry
The mouse-bearded tax collector, when he heard the words "Lu Wang's Mansion", his heart skipped a beat, and then carefully savored the informative sentence "My own lamp", and he quickly let go of the last bit of arrogance.

"Dare to ask the honorable driver?"

Zheng Haizhu said: "It's written on the road guides. My surname is Zheng, and this son's surname is Wu. We are ordinary people in the south of the Yangtze River. This time, the concubine's birthday coincided with the craftsmen at home thinking about fresh lanterns, so we sent them over. By the way, I also transported the Hangzhou Jinzhe rice collected by the tribe to the shop in the north. The latter is indeed a commodity, and there is no need to hide it from the tax master."

Mouse Beard squeezed out a smile and said: "It's not that I'm embarrassing you, but it's because of my duty. We're doing business for the court, so don't be confused. Let me ask you one more question, the Lu Palace, the person who came to contact you is... ...?"

Zheng Haizhu said generously: "It's Mr. Zhang, the long history of the palace, from Shanyin, Zhejiang. I'm a cousin of the Zhang family."

Mouse Beard squatted at the bank every day, and came and went with all kinds of people, honest, cunning, timid, arrogant, noble, and lowly, he had never seen any of them.

The woman in front of her was wearing a high-quality dress, worth at least 30 taels of silver, and her words and deeds were full of grace and grandeur, as if she was used to dealing with noble people.

Zheng Haizhu saw that the fierce arrogance of the mouse beard was gone, so he changed his tone more and more gentle, and discussed in a low voice: "Before everyone is watching, the tax master and his men have boarded our boat and returned empty-handed. Let the boat behind see , it’s not right. Please ask the tax master to fill out a form, and I’ll ask the guy to hand it in according to the number.”

Mouse Beard was overjoyed upon hearing this.

The steps were taken happily, and I didn't hurry down,

He whispered a few words to his servant, and the servant went ashore in a hurry, and brought back a tax deed with the amount written on it in no time.

Zheng Haizhu took a look, 30 taels.

Okay, this figure is still fair, and it should squeeze out the water that officials at different levels want to embezzle.

"Xu San, pay the tax and collect the official receipt. Don't forget to thank the tax master."

Xu San complied, and the last move was naturally to stuff the few pieces of silver that he had just picked up from the deck back into the sleeve of Mouse Beard.

……

This time Zheng Haizhu left Jiangnan and traveled north and south, and Wu Bangde crossed the sea from Dengzhou to Liaodong to meet Mao Wenlong, which was indeed only the second stop.

The first stop is Luwang Mansion in Yanzhou, located in the southwest of Shandong Province.

In Xia Yueli, when Zheng Haizhu reconfirmed from Zhang Dai that his father Zhang Yaofang was still the long history of Lu Palace, he included this itinerary in his business trip plan.

"I'm a person who wants to make a big business, so I have to have a boat on the canal. Lu Wangfu is not far from Jining Pass on the canal. Mr. Zhang, please introduce me to your father."

Zheng Haizhu said it directly, and Zhang Dai did not refuse, and also helped out with ideas, saying that this year's late autumn happens to be Princess Lu's 30th birthday, and he can write to his father, saying that special craftsmen from Shanyin have made Zhejiang special features To celebrate the birthday lanterns, I entrust Miss Zheng to escort them to the door.

Zheng Haizhu was overjoyed, and praised Zhang Dai's good method, revealing the elegant taste that the rich and powerful loved so much, it seemed very natural to visit him.

So, after arranging the Songjiang Firearms Workshop and the Zhenjiang Insurance Company, she confidently took the first step to explore the path to the suzerain vassal of the Ming Empire.

The suzerains and vassals were a huge group in the Ming Empire.

Zhu Yuanzhang conquered the country 300 years ago and divided his descendants into various places.

Among them, Lu Fan can be said to be a branch that drives low and goes high.

The first king of Lu was Zhu Tan, the tenth son of Zhu Yuanzhang.

Zhu Yuanzhang liked Zhu Tan very much, so he set his fief as Yanzhou, which is not far from Nanjing and guards the main canal.

However, after Zhu Tan arrived in Yanzhou, he was obsessed with the psychedelic story of immortality. Under the flickering of a group of wandering warlocks, he took a lot of elixir and almost lost his eyesight.

The scammers were scared, so they could only continue to make up nonsense, falsely claiming that if they collected all 99 "life roots" of boys and refined them into pills, King Lu would eat them and his eyesight would be restored.

Zhu Tan and Princess Tang set up a playground in the mansion. On the grounds of having fun with the people, they recruited young boys from the homes of poor people and the Shandong garrison. After castrating and removing their genitals, the children were castrated put back.

This thing was done so devoid of conscience, Shandong soldiers and civilians soon gathered at the governor's office to cry for injustice.

After the governor gave the performance, Zhu Yuanzhang was so angry that he vomited blood, and Zhu Biyu criticized: "This couple, the death penalty must not be escaped, and they should be the daughter of Ling Chi Xinguo (that is, Princess Lu)."

These words, of course, were said to appease the anger of the people of the world.In fact, because Xin Guogong Tang He was Zhu Yuanzhang's brother from Weishi, the emperor did not really kill Xin Guogong's daughter, Princess Lu, but secretly ordered Princess Lu to commit suicide.

As for Zhu Tan, he soon died under the influence of the heavy metal elixir.

Zhu Yuanzhang bestowed on the first King of Lu an evil posthumous title, "Desolation" of "lewdness, shamelessness, absurdity and stupidity", in order to calm the anger of the people in Lu.

However, the several vassal kings after King Lu Huang had a good reputation.

And the current Lu Wang Zhu Shouhong, who is the employer of Zhang Dai's father Zhang Yaofang, will live until the reign of Chongzhen.

In Zheng Haizhu's eyes, how could he not try to discover such contacts?

What's more, if she, a small retail investor who was often full of energy stocks before crossing, had no association with "Yanzhou" where Lu Wangfu is located, it would be a bit unreasonable.

……

"Miss Zheng, to the north of Huai'an, there are many small mines exploited by private households. They were basically abandoned because of the excessive collection of mining taxes and eunuchs in the past few years."

After the boat left Huai'an Chaoguan, Wu Bangde walked to Zheng Haizhu's side and pointed to the direction behind the plain in the distance.

Before departure from Zhenjiang, Zheng Haizhu had told Wu Bangde about the itinerary.

Compared with ordinary capitalists like Zhang Dai, Wu Bangde is a side-by-side fighter that Zheng Haizhu values ​​more, and she naturally has more confessions to Wu Bangde.

So Wu Bangde knew that when Zheng Haizhu went to make friends with Lu Wangfu, he actually valued a resource in Yanzhou: coal.

Wu Bangde originally grew up in Jiliao, and lived in the capital for a while when he was young, so he is much more familiar with coal as a fuel than the gentry in the south of the Yangtze River.

He told Zheng Haizhu with certainty that the imperial court was not too strict about mining coal. There were very few official coal mines in Ming Dynasty. Even in the Xishan and Mentougou areas of Beijing, [-]% of the coal mines were privately mined.

At the same time, he was even able to talk to Zheng Haizhu about how to ventilate the small coal kiln and how to use moso bamboo to discharge poisonous gas (that is, gas) from the technical level of what he saw and heard.

However, Wu Bangde never knew that Yanzhou had coal.

At this moment, Zheng Haizhu turned his head and said to Wu Bangde: "Yes, you see, there is coal in Huai'an near Xuzhou, coal in Henan in the west, and coal in Boshan, Shandong. Yanzhou is surrounded by these three places. Wouldn’t there be coal? In my opinion, there must be coal, and there are probably two reasons why no one opened the kiln.”

Wu Bangde said: "What's the explanation?"

Zheng Haizhu said: "First, the terrain is superior there, and the winter moon is actually warmer than the Jianghuai River. The people who are hardy and frost-resistant are not like the people in the capital, who need to burn coal to keep warm in the winter moon. The princes and rich people, although they are more expensive , but there is no shortage of money, so I can buy good charcoal by myself; secondly, both the Lu Mansion and the Confucian Mansion are in Yanzhou. The title of the eldest son of the Confucian family), digging a pond to raise koi is considered a major event, for fear of shocking the dragon veins."

Wu Bangde listened, and smiled lightly: "What about Lu Wang's mansion and Confucius mansion, are they as grand as the Long Live Lord? The coal mines in Xishan are not one thousand, but there are hundreds. I haven't heard the emperor say that they have disturbed the dragon's veins."

Zheng Haizhu also laughed.

One thing she admires about Wu Bangde is that he often has an instinctive reaction not to buy into the so-called authority, customs and routines.

To a certain extent, Zhang Yanke is a bit like him, but Zhang Yanke is not like Wu Bangde, who has seen the dangers of the world and the coldness of the army at a young age, so if it is not at the last moment of the country's subjugation, Zhang Yanke, who is safe in rich clothes and good food, will not Those who have the ambition to go on adventures like Wu Bangde.

Zheng Haizhu quickly stopped laughing, and said to Wu Bangde: "Zhilong told me that the artillery factory of the Frankies in Haojing often had a headache for fuel, because the furnace needed coal, and the coal in Guangfu had to be transported from Jiangxi. It is more troublesome than buying copper materials for cannons from Japan. Now we are going to open a firearms factory in Songjiang, and if we want to buy a large amount of coal, it is most convenient for Yanzhou to go to Jining Chaoguan and go down the canal."

Wu Bangde understood.

Zheng Haizhu and the others wanted to make cannons, Wu Bangde and his adoptive father Qi Jin both understood that it was a precautionary move, and they quite recognized it.

Wu Bangde just didn't expect that Ms. Zheng has drawn so meticulously, just like when my grandfather led the army to fight, where to set up the camp, where to store the food and supplies, and where to send them at night, they all need to think deeply.

Zheng Haizhu's style with military temperament made Wu Bangde feel very kind.

"Go to Yanzhou to see it," Wu Bangde added some encouragement in his tone, "the imperial court is short of money, and the expenses of the vassal clan have become a matter of repeated criticism. A small coal mine in Xishan can earn 5000 taels of silver a year. If there is coal in the underground of Yanzhou, and the Lu Palace is not stupid, would it ignore the cornucopia?"

Zheng Haizhu nodded: "At that time, you don't have to disclose that you are a descendant of the Qi family army, but just say that you are the shopkeeper who accompanied me in the business, and went up and down with Lu Wangfu to brag about the grand profit of the capital Xishan."

After saying that, Zheng Haizhu left the deck and went to the cabin to change the expensive gold-woven horse-face skirt that Yan Siqi had given her earlier.

This set of outfits used to fool the tax collectors along the way has to go to Lu Wang's mansion to support her, so as not to get dirty.

Wu Bangde turned around, still standing with his sleeves behind his back, as if he was looking up at the boatman straightening the bamboo sail, but actually looking at Zheng Haizhu's back when his eyes fell.

When Wu Bangde first saw Zheng Haizhu appearing in brocade clothes when he was dealing with the tax collectors at Chaoguan in Huai'an, he was in a trance for a moment.

He thought of the last appearance of another woman in his memory, also wearing an embroidered pediment and a horse-faced skirt with gold trim.

The adoptive father smiled and praised: "I used to look at Ah Mei like a tomboy, following Bond to dig out bird nests to catch toads, but now the girl has changed at eighteen, and she looks like a beautiful woman. Our Bond is really blessed."

In the past three years, this scene has often appeared in front of Wu Bangde's eyes, like the ice of the winter moon, piercing the depths of his heart.

After the severe pain settled, Wu Bangde felt that only by sacrificing his own loneliness and desolation in the remaining long years would he feel better.

He stood on the deck in a daze until he saw Zheng Haizhu get out of the cabin again, wearing a dark sarong, walking to Xu San's side, discussing how to sell rice after arriving at Chaoguan in Jining.

She is not her, not at all.

Wu Bangde said to himself.

(End of this chapter)