The Wanli Emperor of the Ming Dynasty was extremely rebellious

Chapter 326: The Mystery of Converting Rice to Mulberry
How to do this overseas business?

Wanli thought about it carefully, then asked, "Where are your main business areas now?"

Can this deceive you?

To deceive the king is to seek death!

Li Dan said honestly, "Right now, we're mainly going to Japan, Annan, Luzon, Siam, and Srivijaya. Luzon is occupied by the Spanish, so we're going there to do business with them."

If we could grab all the business in these places, the profit would probably be more than 30 million taels a year.

Wanli nodded slightly, then asked, "So what kind of goods do you mainly sell?"

This problem is not a big deal. I have already said that we are doing business with the Japanese pirates, and His Majesty is not angry. So there is naturally no problem in buying or selling anything.

Li Dan explained in detail, "We mainly sell raw silk, silk fabrics, cloth, porcelain, tea, medicines, lacquerware, ironware, sugar, etc. In addition, we also purchase spices, sandalwood, pearls, ivory, sugar and other goods from Southeast Asia and sell them to Ming Dynasty and Japan."

Raw silk and silk?
Wanli was quite curious and asked, "You put raw silk and silk in the front. Is this because raw silk and silk are in the greatest demand?"

Li Dan nodded repeatedly and said, "Yes, Your Majesty, people will take as much raw silk and silk as we can produce every year.

The profits from raw silk and silk are also astonishingly high. The purchase price of raw silk in our Ming Dynasty is five or six coins per catty, and it is sold to Japan at five or six taels per catty. If it is woven into high-quality silk, the profit can be more than twenty times.

We can earn 500,000 to 600,000 taels of silver by selling more than 100,000 kilograms of raw silk to Japan every year. The Portuguese also purchase raw silk from Guangzhou and sell it to Japan, and they can also earn 500,000 to 600,000 taels of silver a year.

The labor cost of weaving silk in the Ming Dynasty is only about two or three coins per piece, and the raw silk used to weave one piece of silk is about one catty. However, after weaving, it can be sold to Japan for fifteen or sixteen taels per piece.

Raw silk and silk are so profitable!

By the way, there seems to be a plot in a certain drama where rice is replaced by mulberry trees.

Wanli thought for a moment and then asked, "If one acre of land is planted entirely with mulberry trees, how many kilograms of raw silk can be produced?"

Li Dan explained in detail, "There's no fixed number for this. According to Tang Zhen's 'Lazy Poverty', one mu of mulberry trees yields eight catties of silk. According to Ye Shizhuo's 'Notice to Encourage the Development of Mulberry Fields', even if good fields are used to grow wheat, in a good year, the yield is two dan per mu, which is only worth one tael of silver. However, if mulberry leaves are grown, each mu of leaves can be harvested to feed the silkworms and yield nine catties of silk, which is worth five or six taels of silver."

Even if one acre of land produces eight catties, and even if it is purchased at five cents per catty, it is still four taels of silver per acre. And one acre of land produces two stone of grain, which is only worth one tael of silver according to the grain price in Southern Zhili. Is it really feasible to change from rice to mulberry?

Since the profit from raw silk is so high, why not plant mulberry trees on all the land that can be used to grow mulberry trees?

If the policy of replacing rice with mulberry trees really happened in history, then Jiajing was fooled by the Yan Party!

Jiajing did not bother to understand the output of raw silk and how much raw silk was needed to weave one piece of silk. Yan Dang said that all the land in the nine counties around Taihu Lake needed to be converted from rice to mulberry in order to produce 500,000 pieces of silk. This was purely for the purpose of annexing farmland.

If we calculate based on the assumption that one acre of land produces eight pounds of raw silk, then 500,000 pieces of silk can be produced by converting only 70,000 acres of arable land from rice to mulberry trees. Every county around Taihu Lake has at least hundreds of thousands of acres of arable land!
The Yan Party wanted to use this opportunity to annex farmland. The total amount of arable land in the nine counties around Taihu Lake is estimated to be more than 7 million mu. They only need 70,000 mu. They want the land of nine counties. Isn't this annexing farmland?
This can also be seen from the price of land offered by the Yan Party.

They actually offered an extremely low price of six or seven stone of grain per mu!
The fields around Taihu Lake produce about fifty shi per mu in a good year, more than forty shi per mu in a normal year, and more than thirty shi per mu even in a disaster year. Yet they only produced six or seven shi!
If Jiajing really agreed to the change, the Yan Party would make a fortune.

Therefore, changing rice crops to mulberry trees was a scam carefully planned by the Yan Party. The purpose was not to produce silk at all, but to use the imperial edict to annex farmland!
If they annex all the farmland in the nine counties around Taihu Lake, the people there will have no land to grow crops. They can also take the opportunity to raise the price of grain, and all the money the people have worked hard to earn from growing mulberry trees, raising silkworms and weaving silk will be eaten up by them!

The Yan Party’s situation is truly vicious.

But then again, since the profit from raw silk is so high, why not switch from rice to mulberry?
This is still related to grain. It was mentioned in the play that if the nine counties around Taihu Lake changed from growing rice to mulberry trees, then seven to nine million dan of grain would have to be transported there every year.

If we calculate based on the loss of about two dan for every dan of grain transported, even if the transported grain was purchased at one tael of silver for two dan, the annual cost would still be more than 10 million taels including the loss.

This is just a small part. Based on the annual grain production of 7 million to 9 million dan, the population of the nine counties around Taihu Lake is about 700,000 to 900,000. And based on the fact that each person had more than ten acres of land in the early Ming Dynasty, no matter how the fields there have been merged now, the 7 million to 9 million acres of fields are still there.

By this calculation, if all rice crops were replaced with mulberry trees, the raw silk production alone could be around 60 million jin (approximately 10 million jin). Even if the purchase price was 5 qian (approximately 10 million jin), that would be 30 million liang (approximately 10 million liang) of silk. Weaving it into silk would cost over 10 million liang (approximately 10 million liang) of silk labor.

In other words, even if the Yan Party was not deceiving Jiajing, if they really wanted to convert all the fields in the nine counties around Taihu Lake into mulberry trees, they would have to invest at least 50 to 60 million taels every year!
Can raw silk and silk be sold for so much money?

Even if we can really sell 50 or 60 million taels, the profit will be zero, and a year's work will be in vain.

If you want to make money, even if you reduce the price of silk sold overseas to two taels of silver per piece, that would still be more than 100 million taels!
This is a joke. Raw silk and silk alone sold for more than 100 million taels. I guess the whole world can't produce that much silver in a year.

Therefore, replacing rice with mulberry is a big scam, don’t even think about it.

Wanli thought about it carefully and asked, "Where are the main places producing silk now?"

Li Dan pondered, "Right now, the largest raw silk production area is the Zhejiang region centered on Taihu Lake, followed by Bashu, and then the Guangzhou area."

Bashu is still second, which is great. As long as Bashu is suitable for growing mulberry trees and raising silkworms, there is no need to change from rice to mulberry trees.

Wanli pondered for a moment and then asked, "How much raw silk do you think the Ming Dynasty can produce in a year? Just give a rough estimate."

How do you estimate this?
Li Dan thought about it carefully, then said cautiously: "Your Majesty, the three major government-run weaving factories can produce 300,000 pieces of silk a year, while the raw silk sold by us and the Portuguese is more than 300,000 kilograms a year.

There were also many people among the people who planted mulberry trees, raised silkworms and wove silk, and most of the scholars who had achieved official titles wore silk and satin.

By this calculation, next year's raw silk production should be around one million catties."

Is it so little? One million jin only requires more than 100,000 acres of land. Is it because there is not enough land or there are not enough people growing mulberry trees and raising silkworms?

If raw silk and silk are so profitable, it would not be a problem for me to produce 10 million kilograms a year. There are only more than one million acres of land. I can plant them on the hillsides in Bashu without having to convert a single acre into rice fields.

Wanli thought about it carefully, and then asked: "Can these raw silk and silk really be sold at any price?"

This is hard to say.

Li Dan thought about it carefully, and then said carefully: "I am not very clear about how much raw silk and silk products can be sold in other places. I do know about Japan. If the raw silk we and the Portuguese sell to them exceeds 400,000 kilograms a year, they will not be able to sell it all internally and will have to sell it to the Spanish.

The Spanish did not think that the raw silk they bought was too much; they would take whatever they could get to Luzon.”

Is that so?
Upon hearing this, Wanli nodded slowly and said, "Okay, of the 300,000 pieces of silk produced annually by the three major government-run weaving factories, I will give you 200,000 pieces. In addition, I will send governors and inspectors to Zhejiang and Guangzhou to strictly prohibit the sale of raw silk to the Portuguese or even private individuals. I will try my best to buy all the raw silk from those two factories for you.

In addition, I will find a way to produce more silk in Bashu. It should not be a problem to produce an additional one million pieces next year. You can go to Luzon and see how much the Spanish can eat. If they think it is not enough, I will find a way to increase production.

My God, two hundred thousand pieces of silk would be three million taels, and if we collect about five hundred thousand kilograms of raw silk, that would be another two million taels. If we increase the production by one million pieces of silk, that would be another fifteen million taels!

Can the Spanish eat it?

Li Dan calculated carefully, then bowed repeatedly and said, "Your Majesty is wise. This amount of raw silk and silk should be enough."

This amount of raw silk and silk should indeed be enough. The two together add up to 20 million taels a year. Can these two things alone be exchanged for so much silver in a year?

To be honest, even Wanli felt it was a bit mysterious.

He is not Jiajing, who doesn't understand anything and just listens to the Yan Party's nonsense.

(End of this chapter)