The pork butcher is smoother than a pig butcher!

Chapter 497 Luxury Goods (Part 1)
Late summer to early autumn.

The military settlements and farmers in Kansai were extremely busy.

Grapes, melons, pears, pomegranates, apricots, peaches and other fruits are ripening one after another.

Those who are supposed to brew wine should brew wine.

Those that need to be dried should also be made.

Since people learned to store fruit in clay boxes, they can now enjoy fresh fruit from Kansai even in winter.

As a result, a large number of fruit vendors traveled back and forth between the inside and outside of the Great Wall.

The farmers had barely finished harvesting three to five acres of fruit when they were already busy harvesting cotton.

In the Kansai region, the number one cash crop is undoubtedly the mulberry tree, followed by cotton.

Cotton is a real pain to grow. When you're planting it, you always feel like you don't have enough land, but when you're harvesting it, it's a nightmare.

Where are there any machines operating these days?
All harvesting must be done by hand!

Once the outer shell of a cotton boll bursts open, it hardens and becomes extremely sharp at the tip, so it can easily prick your finger if you're not careful when picking cotton.

To remove all the cotton from the cotton boll, you need to be precise.

You have to keep bending over and picking them with both hands.

The days in Kansai are very long, and it gets very hot around midday.

Even worse, the cotton branches can scratch your legs and pierce your summer cotton pants, causing itching and pain.

I can't even ask someone to help me with the work.

Who doesn't have dozens or hundreds of acres of cotton fields?
Go ahead and pick it!

They picked them one by one without making a sound!

The cotton-picking season is a childhood nightmare for children in the Kansai region.

Anyone who is not of childbearing age or bedridden and unable to get up must join the cotton-picking army.

The farmers are tired but happy.

Despite the large amount of cotton fields now planted in the Kansai region, cotton prices are rising year after year.

As soon as the fruit is picked from the ground, nearby weaving workshops send camel carts to buy it.

Some families with many members can harvest ten acres a day and turn them into thirty taels of silver on the same day!
One day of hard work is equivalent to ten years of work for the whole family!

Adding in the profits from two seasons of wheat and fruit, a family earning a hundred taels a year is not a dream at all.

New and old immigrants alike lament that they don't have enough relatives; they've introduced almost everyone who could come to Kansai in the past few years.

They're making so much money from referral fees they can't keep their hands full.

Moreover, everyone who came along was extremely grateful to the person who introduced them.

Now, the number of cotton weaving workshops in Kansai has increased from one in Ganro River to one or two in each garrison.

They were all on a scale where each spinning mill had thousands of female weavers working.

Every year after the new cotton harvest, the weaving workshops work for no less than six hours.

The hand-cranked spinning machines were turned into fiery wheels.

If each workshop didn't have a sufficient supply of ice, the space where thousands of people were working would be suffocating.

When are the two border trade cities in Kansai most popular during the year?
The answer is still late autumn!
The crops in the fields have all been harvested and stored.

The livestock that had gained weight for winter were now plump and strong.

Both buying and selling are suitable!

This year, due to the influx of a huge number of foreign merchants into Bagua City, the workload of the Yili garrison has increased significantly compared to previous years.

Upon hearing this, Gan Minglan also brought people to Yili Bagua City, wanting to see what kind of people these foreign merchants were.

Okay.

This led them to discover that the Western merchants were truly different from those they had encountered before. Those previously referred to as "foreign merchants" mostly referred to merchants from the western regions, whose territory later encompassed Central Asia.

They have light yellow skin, black hair, and eyes.

Those who came this time were all foreign devils with high noses, deep-set eyes, and mostly brown or golden hair.

The goods they brought were also very different from those of the Central Asian merchants.

For example:
Some pieces feature ornate and extravagant designs, adorned with large gemstones, especially diamonds, rubies, sapphires, and emeralds.

The inner glass is colorless and transparent, crystal clear, while the outer glass is decorated with gold foil carving and engraving techniques, featuring various patterns on double-walled glass goblets, bowls, jugs, and mirrors.

Among these products, pocket watches and clocks are the most popular.

Each new registration alarmed the tax officials.

Simply put, it's too gorgeous, too exquisite, and too ingenious!
These luxury goods account for as much as 50% of the first tier of the tariff list!
This is a rule that General Gan helped the tax office set up.

Shocked faces of Kansai tax officials stationed in Iri (image):

"General, last year some tariffs already rose to 40%, why are they going to rise again this year? Isn't 50% tariff a bit too high?"

Little did they know that General Gan was cursing the foreigners in his heart at that moment.

Jewelry adorned with various gemstones is one thing, but those pieces will be passed down through generations.

But why do glass products always cost thousands of taels of silver?
"As far as I know, these glass products are made by firing a type of stone. Once the firing technique is cracked, their value will rapidly decrease. Foreign merchants won't have high import costs in their own countries, so even if we raise tariffs to 50%, the profits from this trade will still be considerable."

Luxury goods have only one good point: they don't rip off the poor!
However, if the imperial court wanted to sell these items in the Bagua City of Yili, it had to reap the benefits of this wave of luxury goods tax revenue.

Taxation official: "."

Should they warn those gullible merchants?

"It's no use telling them. As long as we don't have the secret techniques for firing glass, we can forget about lowering the price of glass!"

For wealthy merchants who wanted to demonstrate their capabilities and wealth, these glass vessels were undoubtedly the best tools for showing off.

The market demand is there for all to see.

really.

Even though the first-time merchants were very dissatisfied with this round of tariffs and grumbled for a long time, they still obediently lined up to inspect their goods and pay the taxes in the end.

There is nothing we can do.

Goods without customs certificates were considered illegal goods within the territory of the Yongtai Dynasty.

Black market goods are not protected by the authorities.

We do not accept claims of being scammed, robbed, or cheated.

Paying taxes is like buying yourself insurance.

If tariffs were levied at 50% of last year's market price, will we earn 10% less this year?
The wool still comes from the sheep!

Not to mention that jewelry and glassware can easily cost tens of thousands of taels of silver, a small mechanical pocket watch can cost as much as five hundred taels!

Larger clocks, with slightly more elaborate inlays, can be priced between one thousand and three thousand taels.

Do you think it will be hard to sell at such a high price?
The merchants from inside the pass almost came to blows over the robbery.

Enraged, Gan Minglan had Steward Zhu disguise himself as an ordinary merchant and buy ten watches and three wall clocks in one go.

He said viciously:

"Secretly find the best craftsmen for me with a large sum of money, take these clocks apart, and make them ourselves! I refuse to believe that if we can make every single part exactly the same, we can't put them together as a complete set!"

Liuli involves chemistry, and she really has no choice but to accept it.

However, she believes there's a chance to make a mechanical watch by hand.

Manager Zhu didn't care how much technology was involved in the clock; whatever his master said he could do, he had done so far.

Just do it!