My life skills in Daming Liver

"Ma'am, everything has been loaded onto the ship."

The maid Cuiping reported to Fang Ruolan, Fang Ruolan nodded, checked the luggage list again, and then said:

"Husband said that it takes fifteen days to reach Shanghai County by boat, so it's better to take a boat to save trouble."

Although Fang Ruolan said it was easy, the servants were still a little afraid of taking the boat.

Fang Ruolan's mother's family is Quanzhou, and Quanzhou itself has a tradition of going to sea.

So after the year Su Ze suggested to Fang Ruolan, when Changningwei went directly to Shanghai by boat, Fang Ruolan agreed without hesitation.

Now that the Lantern Festival is over, Fang Ruolan followed Su Ze back to Changningwei to celebrate the new year.

At the beginning, Su Ze was still nervous about whether Fang Ruolan would meet Lin Mojun.

It was later discovered that Su Ze was too worried.

Although women in the Ming Dynasty were more free after marriage than before marriage, Fang Ruolan, as a woman from an official family, rarely went out even when she returned to Changningwei.

In addition to following Su Ze up the mountain once and seeing the overseas crops Su Ze planted, Fang Ruolan also chatted with Lin Cainiang at most.

As for Lin Mojun, who is only a hundred households in the local guard, Fang Ruolan is not interested in knowing.

He lived in Changningwei until the fifteenth day of the first lunar month. Su Ze received news from Fuzhou Mansion that a batch of grain prepared by Eunuch Tao in Fuzhou Mansion was going to be shipped to the south of the Yangtze River, so Su Ze happened to set off from Changningwei and set off with this fleet. Shanghai.

If this route is safe, Su Ze will be able to quickly travel between Fujian and Shanghai in the future.

This time Su Ze was still on the lucky boat of Changningwei, but after Lin Zongyuan's modification, after replacing the upper deck of the lucky boat with a stronger oak deck, this lucky boat was also equipped with four newly bought doors. Western naval guns.

As a loyal supporter of cannonism, Su Ze added another Franc cannon at the stern.

This kind of firepower is already quite good in the East Asian waters, plus fifty bird gunners accompanying the ship, escorting Su Ze's family to Shanghai.

When sailing, Lin Mojun did not appear on the pier, which made Su Ze feel relieved.

This journey did not encounter any danger. It was Fang Ruolan's first time on a sea boat, and she was very interested in everything at sea.

But in fact, the scenery on the sea is very monotonous, except for the blue sky and the endless sea, Fang Ruolan soon became bored with these repetitive scenery.

Fortunately, the voyage was not long, and the fleet arrived in Shanghai in February.

In February of the thirty-seventh year of Jiajing, when Su Ze's family was unloading their luggage at the Shanghai wharf, just after the Chinese New Year, and after the offices of various ministries started to work again, several orders were issued from the sixth department of the capital to Nanjing and the thirteen Dao Buzheng made the yamen rush to leave.

The urgent reason for these orders is to prepare for the rebuilding of the Three Great Halls.

The first is the order of the Ministry of Industry, requiring Jiangxi, Fujian, Yunnan and other provinces to pay tribute to Huangmu to fund the great work.

In particular, there is a lot of wood in Yunnan. In addition to ordering Yunnan to harvest the wood, the Ministry of Industry also ordered Guangdong and Guangxi along the way, that is, the two provinces of Guangdong and Guangxi to contribute money and effort to transport the wood to the capital.

Immediately afterwards, in order to raise the cost of building the palace, the Ministry of Household Affairs ordered the issuance of additional salt notes in Nanzhili, and asked the Ministry of Household Affairs in Nanjing to sell these salt notes and use the money from the sale of salt notes to raise funds in Jiangnan.

The last thing is that nationwide donations are still expanding. After all the officials in the capital donated their salaries to help the great cause, the six government offices in Nanjing also took the lead in "voluntary donations". The vigorous "voluntary salary reduction" activity for the emperor to repair the palace was launched.

With the mentality of "the emperor's kindness is not enough", the officials of the Ming Dynasty "voluntarily" donated their salaries to the emperor to build the palace. The emperor was naturally very "moved" and said many times that "I am not short of this money"!

It's a pity that the ministers were too "enthusiastic", and the emperor finally accepted the donation of the voluntary salary reduction and used the money to repair the palace in order not to make the ministers "difficult".

In addition to the generosity of the ministers, the people of the capital, who were at the root of the imperial city and bathed in the emperor's kindness, also "voluntarily" joined the ranks of those who had no money to contribute.

The emperor issued a decree on February 1st to recruit 60,000 civilians to join the Beijing camp, and to accept the recruitment from the Ministry of Industry with the soldiers of the Beijing camp to build the three halls.

The people in the capital began to flee one after another. For those people who could not take the initiative to share the worries of the emperor and even fled, the yamen at all levels of the capital launched an attack, using shackles and shackles to make them repent. Pay the money obediently and get exempted from service.

But all of this has nothing to do with Su Ze who is far away in Shanghai. After Fang Ruolan got off the boat, she got on the carriage to Nanjing.

Fang Ruolan is very curious about everything in the south of the Yangtze River. From time to time, she lifts the curtain of the car to look outside. Compared with the mountains in Fujian, the endless scenery of the water network in the south of the Yangtze River is indeed very good.

When he arrived in Nanjing City, Fang Wanghai had already received the news in advance and sent a housekeeper to greet him outside Nanjing City.

After seeing the old housekeeper at home, Fang Ruolan naturally had mixed feelings. Although it has only been more than two months since she got married, Fang Ruolan felt that she had been separated from her parents for such a long time.

Fang Ruolan is already married, and if she lives in Fang Wanghai's mansion, others will say that Su Ze stepped in backwards.

Fortunately, Su Ze is not short of money now, and directly bought a new house not far from Fang Wanghai's mansion. Fang Ruolan asked Cuiping to settle his luggage, and then went to visit Fang Wanghai with Su Ze.

"The madam is waiting for the lady in the back house, my uncle, please follow the old servant to the study, the master is waiting to see you."

Being so anxious to see me, I'm afraid that my father-in-law will encounter some trouble again.

Sure enough, when I saw Fang Wanghai with an anxious face in the study, the first thing he said was:

"Ru Lin, take a look at this!"

Su Ze took it over and saw that it was an official document sent by the cabinet to the Nanjing Ministry of Household Affairs. The content was to ask the Nanjing Ministry of Household Affairs to sell Jianghuai salt to raise 50,000 taels of silver for the construction project.

"So many?" Su Ze gasped.

Fang Wanghai also frowned and said, "That's right, since the Japanese pirates ravaged Jiangbei, the Jianghuai Salt Law has been unreasonable. It is not enough to accept the salt quotations sold before, how to sell the new quotations issued by the court?"

It is no wonder that Fang Wanghai is worried, because one of the important errands of the Nanjing household department is to be in charge of the salt affairs of the entire Southern Zhili.

Salt has been recognized as a strategic resource since the Spring and Autumn and Warring States Periods. After the Han Dynasty established the policy of monopolizing salt and iron, salt tax has always been an important part of the state's finances.

After the Anshi Rebellion in the Tang Dynasty, Fifth Qi, a famous financial official in the Tang Dynasty, established a salt courtyard in Jianghuai. After the reform of salt affairs in Jiangnan, the salt tax in the entire Jiangnan area accounted for more than half of the country.

Su Ze only had a partial understanding of the salt law of the Ming Dynasty before crossing, so he asked Fang Wanghai about the situation.

"Father-in-law, how did the Jianghuai salt law blockage come into being, can you tell me about it."

Fang Wanghai also calmed down a little, and he began to talk about Daming's salt administration:

"I've forgotten that Ru Lin never managed the salt administration, so I'll talk about the Ming Dynasty's salt administration, which is the open-center system."

"The open-center system is the salt law system of the Ming Dynasty, which is different from the previous dynasties. When the open-center system was established, it was to solve the problem of food supply for the guards."

"My Ming Dynasty has a total of six salt transfer divisions and eight salt collection divisions. Among them, the salt transportation division is responsible for the storage and transportation of salt, and the salt lifting division is responsible for managing the production of salt farms."

Fang Wanghai took a breath of tea and said:

"This is roughly how China and France operate. First, the military guards from all over the country report to our Nanjing household department to clarify the food needed by the various guards, and then our Nanjing household department determines the amount of salt for each guard. This step It's 'opening'."

"Salt merchants transport the designated grains to the designated guards according to the announcements of the local salt lifting divisions. The vouchers exchanged from the guards are called 'cangchao', and this step is called 'reporting'."

"After the salt merchants have finished transporting the grain, they go to the Salt Transportation Department with the warehouse banknotes in hand to exchange the warehouse banknotes into 'Yanyin', and the stage of 'opening' is over."

"Of course, the salt transportation departments in various places cannot print Yanyin on their own. After Yanyin needs them to report the banknotes for verification, our Nanjing household department will check the account books of "opening" and "reporting" in various places, and then print them at the Nanjing household department. The salt is imported to the Salt Transport Department, and then they distribute it to the salt merchants."

"After the salt merchants get the 'salt guide', they have to go to the designated salt farm to extract salt. This step is called 'shouzhi'."

"After the salt merchants get the salt, they can only sell the salt in the designated area, so the salt has to be sent to the inspection offices in various places for verification, and can only be sold in the area after the verification is completed. This is the whole process of opening the middle school.”

After listening to Su Ze, he had some understanding of the salt affairs system of the Ming Dynasty.

In fact, to put it bluntly, the emergence of the open middle system was actually to cooperate with the Weisuo system in the early Ming Dynasty. The imperial court wanted to solve the problem of food logistics supply in the Weisuo through the open middle system.

Because of the large number of guards established in the early Ming Dynasty, the military settlements of the guards alone would definitely not be able to solve the food problem of these guards.

In the case of China and France, the imperial court outsourced grain procurement and transportation to merchants. Merchants obtained warehouse money and salt by transporting grain to remote guards, and then obtained salt, a national monopoly product, for sale, thereby gaining profits.

Su Ze also admitted that when the Kaizhong method was established, it was indeed a very subtle method. It can be regarded as a good way to solve the two problems of food supply in remote guards and the sale of imperial salt industry at the same time. It is a good way to kill two birds with one stone.

But Su Ze, who has traveled for so long, also knows that things are not that simple, and no matter how good the method is, it will change in this era.

Su Ze asked: "Then I would like to ask my father-in-law, what's wrong with the salt law now?"

New volume, ask for tickets, this chapter is 3000 words, 4000 words at 7 pm, and a new chapter will be added before 12 pm.

It's not to make up the word count, but the number of words in this chapter is just right.

This volume may be a bit conceptual. I have always believed that there is no good or bad system, only suitable or not.

The salt law is a big problem, but it is still a matter of implementation. If only a new system can solve all problems, then history will not be so complicated.

Fat Bird's writing like this is actually non-mainstream, thank you for your support!