Chastity Layman

Hall of Liangyi.

Li Shimin asked Baiqisi Li Junxian about Qin Lang's situation in Fengzhou. Counting the days, it has been more than a month since Qin Lang left Chang'an.

"The report sent back by the minister Baiqisi said that Duke Yi is doing two things in Fengzhou now, one is to collect fur, and the other is to dig coal."

Li Junxian also came from Wagang. Back then, he was also under Qin Huqi's command, so he had a good relationship with the Qin family, and of course he was more protective of Qin Lang. In fact, the Baiqi secret agents sent to Fengzhou sent back The information is very rich.

Some people even said that Qin Lang was idle all day long.

When Qin Lang arrived in Fengzhou, he didn't organize his army or prepare for battle, but collected wool all day long, and even the three thousand forbidden troops he brought with him were also collecting wool.

Li Shimin smacked his lips when he heard this, as if he had expected it.

"How much wool did he collect?"

"It is said that a million catties of wool were harvested, and the Turkic people were given ten cents for each catty of wool, and more than 100,000 sheepskins were harvested."

As soon as this number came out, Li Shimin was stunned.

More than 100,000 sheepskins were collected, which is too much, right?

"I haven't seen a large amount of furs being shipped back to Chang'an recently?" Li Shimin asked.

"Yi Guogong opened fur processing workshops in Fengzhou and Lingzhou. He first cleaned and sorted the fur collected from the Turkic people in Fengzhou, and then transported the fur back to Lingzhou. Further processing in Jingzhou. The wool is spun into yarn, the skin is made into mature skin, and then transported to Jingzhou for further processing, the wool yarn is spun into woolen blankets, woolen clothes, and even woolen cloth, and the leather is processed into belts Leather shoes, leather boots, leather jackets..."

Li Shimin was silent.

·······

Toyosu.

Jiuyuan City.

In the ice and snow, Jiuyuan City is still extremely lively, with caravans going back and forth all the time.

A stout man in a leather robe stood there shouting, and a team of twenty people gathered.

"Let's count the goods and camels again."

A big tent, a team leader, 20 camel workers and men, then 200 camels and horses, 10 hounds, full of goods, the goods are very complete, tea bricks, green salt, sugar, wine, and iron pot wood Bowls, wooden barrels, clay pots, milk teapots, silk needlework combs, copper mirrors, etc., various sundries, etc.

Such a caravan, after purchasing all the goods in various shops in Toyosu, will be recorded on the account first, and then they will settle the account after they return.

The goods in each store in Fengzhou are quite complete, and basically there are only two or three sellers for each type of goods. Qin Lang, the governor, guarantees the quality of the goods.

The reason why Qin Lang dares to guarantee this is because the shops in Fengzhou City are all from the more than one hundred shops he brought here before, and they are all from his own family.

In fact, these caravans selling goods are also people from various families who came with Qin Lang before.

Qin Lang established the Fengzhou Chamber of Commerce here, and both sellers and buyers joined the Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber of Commerce has a strong binding force on these merchants operating in Fengzhou. There is a convention of the Chamber of Commerce, and no one can violate it, otherwise the Chamber of Commerce has the right to disposal.

Now almost every day, after purchasing goods in Fengzhou, caravans leave Fengzhou, go deep into the depths of Houtao grassland, and go directly to the pastures of herdsmen to trade.

In this way, the transaction volume can be expanded, and the benefits can be expanded. In the past, Yu Sheshe was a middleman and mastered the channels, so he had the right to set prices and deliver goods. channels, but the ability to distribute goods is limited, and the volume cannot increase.

Now Qin Lang asked the Fengzhou Chamber of Commerce to go directly to the bottom, the channel was opened up, the pricing power was controlled, and the volume also increased.

And Qin Lang also left a lot of benefits to Qin Guochang and his son Qin Guochang, so Qin Minister and Qin Guosheng, who are now in charge of the family business, don't have any objections.

A caravan with two hundred loads can travel farther.

In particular, Qin Lang's sales method is also very different from the past. Based on the herdsmen's love and demand for Datang products, and based on their lack of cash, he set up credit loans.

If you have fur, you can cash it in cash. If you don’t have enough fur, you can buy it directly if you like it, and you can keep it in the account.

Don’t be afraid even if you buy too much, and don’t worry that you won’t be able to pay it back. When the next season comes, if you still haven’t paid back the money, you can use fur or livestock to offset the debt.

It can even be done in installments.

IOUs require interest, and there is a handling fee for installments.

Of course, the herdsmen can enjoy the goods they want from the Tang Dynasty in advance, but they have to pay some interest.

All the white strips have a sentence written on them.

The father's debts are paid off by the sons, the husband's debts are paid off by the wife, there is no future after death, and the debts of the family are wiped out.

The caravans that went deep into the grasslands were actually small dealers of Fengzhou Commercial Bank. They went deep into the grasslands to trade with herdsmen, which greatly expanded the transaction volume.

For the herdsmen, the goods are more abundant, and the price is even cheaper. Without the exploitation of middlemen, whether it is selling fur livestock or buying goods, they get more money than before. Affordable, not to mention, IOUs can be issued, and installments can be made.

Ever since, the buying enthusiasm of the Turkic herdsmen has exploded.

On the grassland, a leader like Yu Sheshe is of course extremely rich, with tens of thousands of camels and horses, hundreds of thousands of cattle and sheep, and general tribal leaders and chiefs also have thousands of camels and horses, and tens of thousands of cattle and sheep.

The richer herdsmen have hundreds of camels and thousands of cattle and sheep.

As for ordinary herdsmen families, life is not so good. In fact, life is very hard on the grasslands. To maintain a family life, they usually have more than a hundred livestock, often raising a dozen horses, twenty or thirty Cattle, a few camels, and one or two hundred sheep.

Of course there are poorer ones, but those are already slaves of the nobles and have no private property.

The grassland is vast. Although the herdsmen graze on the same pasture as a tribe, the herdsmen are usually far away from each other. Sometimes they may not see a stranger for a month or two.

Under such circumstances, transportation is inconvenient, and trading is even more inconvenient. The herdsmen are basically self-sufficient. Many commodities and materials are very scarce, and it is difficult to buy them. The transaction of items such as salt can only be traded for one year. Only when the caravan came over several times can they be traded, and there is no qualification for bargaining.

But now, the Han caravan consists of 20 people, and 200 camels and horses come loaded with goods. Every time they go to a herdsman’s house, they will set up a tent to sell various products to the herdsmen. The products are rich in variety and of good quality. , especially the price is relatively reasonable.

If you don't have money, you can trade furs, ghee for jerky, or even herbs for livestock.

If you really can't get anything out, you can still write an IOU, and you can also pay back in installments.

When the caravan goes out for ten days and a half months, it can clear all the goods of the two hundred camels and horses it brought, and exchange them for sheepskin, sheepskin, cowhide, horns and tendon, even cattle and horses, herbs, and sometimes slaves.

In Fengzhou City.

The warehouses are full of wool, sheepskin, cowhide, dried meat and other things, and there are many cattle and sheep locked in the pens.

The slaughterhouse slaughtered these cattle and sheep non-stop day and night. Qin Lang didn't have so much fodder to feed these cattle and sheep, and it was impossible to drive all the way to Chang'an in Guanzhong to sell them. The cost was too high, and there was no grass to eat along the way. Not worth it.

So they were all slaughtered on the spot.

Li Daliang, the governor of the school, is now equivalent to a big butler of the chamber of commerce, checking the accounts every day, and collecting taxes by the way.

Although Fengzhou Chamber of Commerce was opened by Qin Lang himself, the tax still has to be collected.

Merchants who brought goods into Fengzhou from the south had to collect taxes, and merchants who received goods from the grasslands also had to collect taxes.

There is a very detailed tax list with different tax rates for different commodities.

All live animals are taxed on a head-by-head basis. For example, camels are taxed 1,600 yuan, Turkic war horses 1,000 yuan, ordinary mares 400 yuan, cattle and mules 500 yuan, donkeys 250 yuan, and sheep 500 yuan. Ten qian, which is basically a tax of one ten.

For goods out of Fengzhou, the tax is levied on the basis of the load, or by the quantity. For example, a large bag of cloth with thirty-six pieces is levied 1,800 yuan...

For salt, tea, wine and sugar, they are also taxed according to the special tax law.

Taxes are levied on entry and exit, and the tax rate is generally not low.

However, the merchants in the chamber of commerce are very active and enthusiastic, and even taxation will not be able to support the high profits.

It's almost like stealing money.

The 10,000 tents set up by Yu She have hundreds of thousands of cattle and sheep for the rich, and one or two hundred cattle and sheep for the poorest. They really like Datang products.

When things are laid out, you want to buy everything, you want everything, if you don’t have money, you can change it, if you don’t have anything to change, you will owe an IOU.

This year was originally a disaster year, and the cattle and sheep could not be kept, so they were meant to be killed, so they simply killed more at this time.

The wool, sheepskin, and cowhide accumulated in previous years, and even animal skins and bird feathers from hunting, were all discounted to merchants. Although Fengzhou Chamber of Commerce has set a purchase guide price for each caravan, who would not suppress the price.

The herdsmen don't think the price is too low or anything. For them, fur is so common, even cattle and sheep are worthless things.

So now every day at the gate of Fengzhou city, people are queuing up to clear goods and pay taxes.

Li Daliang's hands trembled when he opened the tax bill.

"It's only been less than a month. Guess how much tax we have collected?"

Li Daliang walked to Qin Lang's public room, and sat down on the heated kang, "A total of seven thousand seven hundred and fifty-two guan, oh my god!"

Qin Lang chuckled, but was not too surprised by this number.

One out of ten taxes, or taxes on entry and exit, can the tax be reduced?

In fact, this is only part of the tax now. After all, many businessmen have filed their taxes but have not yet paid them. Qin Lang allows them to settle the taxes every quarter after they file their taxes.

In this way, merchants can circulate better.

In the past, there was only one caravan. Up to now, 580 companies have registered under the Fengzhou Chamber of Commerce.

This is change.

The processing workshop opened by Qin Lang is currently overwhelmed due to lack of manpower. A large amount of wool is piled up there and cannot be cleaned, and it cannot be packed and transported to Lingwu. The same is true for leather, which is piled up like a mountain.

On the other hand, the merchants of various commodities in Fengzhou City are out of stock, and the replenishment cannot keep up.

There is a huge gap in tea, cloth, salt wine, and many sewing pots and bowls.

More and more merchants came to Fengzhou and joined the Fengzhou Chamber of Commerce, and as the first hundred or so who came with Qin Lang, they seized the opportunity and finally made a lot of money.

"Lack of manpower!" Qin Lang sighed.

Because of the lack of manpower, the 3,600 forbidden soldiers now started to work part-time in the chamber of commerce to earn extra money, slaughtering cattle and sheep, frying wool and scraping skins, and earning a lot of extra Kaiyuan Tongbao every day, really tired and happy.

Every day, you can eat big chunks of beef and mutton, sleep on the heated kang, and earn a lot of Kaiyuan Tongbao every day. Although Fengzhou is cold, everyone really misses Chang'an!