Dominate the Country

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There is no county magistrate in Lushan County. In addition to the county magistrate, there is only one chief clerk and a clerk in the county government. Yes, the clerk is only one horizontal line away from the clerk. Without this horizontal line, he is a dignified official appointed by the court.

The position of arresting and prison in the county is a civil official who is not in the mainstream (below the ninth rank). When the positions of county magistrate and chief clerk in the county are not complete, the clerk will concurrently perform his duties. Therefore, the position of clerk is selected by the Ministry of Personnel and appointed by the emperor, and is a "court official". In "our great Qing", the annual salary of the clerk is 31 taels, 5 coins, and 2 cents of silver, and the silver for maintaining integrity is 80 taels.

The clerk of Lushan County is not from Lushan, he is from Ruzhou, the governor of Ruzhou. It is said that he followed the path of Lord Zhoutong Li. Zhoutong is the Tongzhi in the state, just like Zhoupan is the Tongpan in the state, which is equivalent to Tongzhi and Tongpan in the prefecture. The rank is the first class. Ruzhou has only four counties, with Zhoutong but no Zhoupan.

Li Dianshi is a person who really knows how to be an official. He has been in Lushan County for two years. Although he also ate a lot, he only took his own share and never reached out for what was not his. Such people are real officials, and they make money in harmony. No one will reject such people, who have a backstage - he himself is also surnamed Li, and I don’t know how deep his relationship with Li Zhoutong is. Li Zhoutong is from Xuzhou, which is next to Ruzhou.

Xuzhou is also a direct-controlled state, which is Xuchang in later generations.

The Chen family had a "serious" understanding of Li Dianshi. This Dianshi and Li Zhoutong had no apparent relatives. But Li Zhoutong pushed him to come to Lushan to be Dianshi, not others, so there must be a reason. It’s just that the level of the Chen family has not reached that level, so there is no way to find out the details.

Anyway, Li Dianshi is a well-behaved person. After coming to Lushan, he did not pose a threat to the Chen family. Chen Hui was also very respectful to him on weekdays. There was no lack of etiquette.

Today, Chen Hui invited guests. The Chen family had no happy events, but they were just happy that the summer harvest was over and everyone was relaxed. Of course, the coverage of this "everyone" was actually very small. In addition to a few genuine yamen runners in the household room, there were also the clerks of the other five rooms and the heads of the three shifts. Chen Hui opened three tables at home, two tables for yamen runners, one table for clerks, heads of the shifts, as well as Li Dianshi and Mr. Lu, the financial advisor of the county magistrate. Li Dianshi sat at the head, and Mr. Lu and Chen Hui sat on the left and right.

As a clerk in the household room, Chen Hui could only get so far. The ultimate boss of Lushan County, Yue Wenhai, the magistrate, Chen Hui could not invite him, because he did not have enough face. Moreover, for Yue Wenhai, it was an absolute shame for a dignified official who was born as a Jinshi to befriend a small clerk in the county yamen! Even if this person is his right arm that he can use at work.

In the officialdom of the Qing Dynasty, officials could only be left by other officials. There was a huge difference between officials, which was not comparable to the difference between the county magistrate and the director in the 21st century.

The dishes were not innovative, but still the same old ones. Chickens, ducks, geese, pigs, cattle, sheep, fresh carp, pheasants and hares, which were all year round mountain products. But did Chen Hui really have no other intentions for this banquet?

As early as when a group of people came to Chen's house to drink tea and chat, waiting for the banquet to be prepared, many people had already noticed it. The Chen family changed the utensils, tea cups, fruit plates, and the color was absolutely different from before. This is a kind of rich white!

Lushan County is not Inner Mongolia. For a while, they could not associate this white with milky white, but only rich white.

When a group of people drink tea, the lid of the teacup will inevitably touch the teacup. Of course, many people ignore the crisp sound, but there are always a few people who are interested. Some of them even run kiln factories at home. They know a little about porcelain and immediately know that these utensils of the Chen family are... not ordinary.

Some of them even frowned and thought about all the porcelain they had heard of in the past.

They looked at the teacups and fruit plates with serious eyes. These bone porcelain utensils were transported to the city from Tumen the day before yesterday. The color is moist and the surface is white, which can make the outlines on them more eye-catching. Moreover, the quality is lighter than porcelain. If you look closely, the body of these utensils is much thinner than porcelain. And unlike traditional white porcelain, this kind of porcelain is more colorful under the light.

When the banquet started, when those interested people saw that the large and small plates, large and small bowls, soup spoons, and wine utensils on the table were all this kind of porcelain, many people understood that Chen Hui's family must have bought a large number of such porcelain. But no one heard the rumors. Many people present knew that Tumen had just sent a batch of things to the Chen family two days ago, but this was normal. No one realized that this novel porcelain in front of them would be made by the Chen family themselves.

After drinking, the chest and courage are still open. Once a man drinks, he can't get up in a short time. The banquet started at the end of the You hour, and the whole Xu hour passed, and he was still drinking. However, during this banquet, the topic of everyone's chat changed from the previous officialdom anecdotes and gossip to the Chen family's toilet.

The flush toilet made its first appearance in the hall in public. The Chen family had repaired the toilet many days in advance. Once the batch of toilets arrived, everything was done in just half an hour. Very rustic earthen cement, but it was enough.

Chen Ming has been in Tumen for two months. During these two months, he did not immediately start iron smelting, but just surrounded the inside and outside of Xiaonangou, and also threw out earthen cement and flush toilets. Both of these things were very simple, and for the Chen family, it was a simple process, and the experiment was successful. However, it would take time to turn a special item into a popular product.

For two months, the Chen family produced bone china with good appearance, 600 flush toilets, and thousands of bags of cement, all of which were used in the construction of Tumen and Xiaonangou. Especially the latter, the Chen family replaced the wooden fence of Xiaonangou with a 13-foot-high wall, and paved the road from the entrance of the village, but it is far from complete.

During the two months in the countryside, Chen Ming received a letter from Chen Gang, sent several letters to Lushan County, and then saw the salt distribution at Tumen Market twice. From the 13th to the 17th and 18th of each month, during these four or five days, the villages in the middle and upper reaches of the Yinma River sent young and strong people to buy salt. Of course, these mountain people would not sell all of them with money, they would barter. They used dried wild game, fur, medicinal materials, and iron smelted in their own villages to exchange for generations of yellow private salt at Tumen Market. Chen Ming dared to bet with his own eyes that the private salt was definitely mixed with soil.

After two salt distributions, Chen Ming finally had a direct understanding of the lowest level of the Chen family's interest system, which included at least forty villages. The lives of these mountain people were really hard. They used all their income to exchange for salt and food, which were necessary for their lives. These were two materials that every village needed to buy, and the land in the mountains could hardly feed all the people.

Poor villages could only sell salt and food, and wider villages could sell some cloth. In addition to these trade teams represented by villages, there were also the mountain people themselves, who were also customers of the Tumen trade circle, but their purchasing power was quite poor.

Chen Ming did not intervene in the first salt distribution, but he followed Chen Erbao as a little follower during the second salt distribution. This private salt benefit gave him a rough estimate.

More than forty villages would use two or three hundred kilograms of salt a month, and at least one hundred or so kilograms, because the mountain people could be considered heavy manual laborers. Those villages have 500 to 600 people, and 200 to 300 people. They not only use the salt for the month, but also save some for winter. Once the mountains are blocked by heavy snow in winter, the traffic in and out of the mountains is cut off. This is the case in Xiaonangou and other places. And the mountain people use salt to pickle wild animals and bacon.

As for a catty of salt, the official salt of Lushan is 18 copper coins per catty [In the article "Investigating and Discussing the Price of Salt" compiled by Luoyang County Magistrate Gong Songlin in the tenth year of Qianlong, it is said that during the reign of Emperor Kangxi, the price of Luoyang salt was 15 copper coins per catty; during the reign of Emperor Yongzheng, Luoyang County Magistrate Wu Gong ordered that it be reduced to 13 copper coins per catty. ] The price of private salt is only one-third of the official salt, and the quality is better than the official salt.

Tumenji distributes 8,000 to 9,000 catties of salt at a time, because the salt consumed by Tumenji’s own people is also private salt. However, the profits from eight or nine thousand kilograms of private salt are really not worth mentioning for the entire Chen family. What really accumulates wealth for the Chen family is the wild delicacies, furs and iron materials that the Chen family gets from these mountain people. This is the fundamental reason why the Chen family's private salt team has a standing manpower of as many as fifty or sixty people.