Qin Official

"Traveling around and bartering for goods is still too much trouble."

On the third day when he came to Qinying to do paperwork, Chen Ping took the team leader of the "cooking team" to buy vegetables and meat. When he came back, he told Heifu his opinion. As long as they spoke slower, the two of them could Able to communicate briefly.

"Cloth can only be used for bulk trade. Otherwise, it will be inconvenient for both buyers and sellers. Besides, there is not much cloth in the camp, so bartering with money is the long-term solution."

Heifu nodded. Most of the cloth and silk in their hands were seized from the outside world. These trophies did not need to be returned to the public, so Yang Xiong gave some to each village chief. Hei Fu didn't want to keep it for himself, so he made clothes for the soldiers who were short of summer clothes, but now there are not many left.

On the contrary, Chen Liu and Waihuang were rewarded with half a tael after the two battles, and there were still several thousand left.

So he said to Chen Ping: "I already have an idea. I just want a local to check for and fill in the gaps for me."

As he spoke, Hei Fu let Chen Ping, Zhong Ming, Li Xian and others enter, and then placed a Qin half-liang coin, a Wei "Yijin cloth coin", and a Wei "huan huán coin" into the room. On the table.

"Chen Ping, please tell me what shape these coins are in."

As a local, Chen Ping certainly knew that, and after he agreed, he started talking.

It turns out that the Wei coin system was formulated by Li Kui during the reign of Marquis Wen of Wei and completed by Bai Gui, a great businessman during the reign of King Hui of Wei. It was more complex than that of Qin in terms of types and shapes.

The most common is Yibu money, which is a kind of cloth money with flat shoulders and empty heads. There are three types of currency systems: "two Yi, one Yi, and half Yi". One Yi in Wei State is about 30 grams in later generations. About one hundred yi, which can be converted into a larger weighing unit "彽". For example, the yi cloth coin on the case was cast in Daliang. On the front, it says "Liang Zheng 100 tons of copper" in Wei characters, which means that it is worth one yi of money, and one hundred coins are equivalent to one 寽 of copper.

The most obvious sign of Wei's coins is that the characters on the front are written upright, and there is a character "Liang" on the back, which is written upside down. This is probably to prevent counterfeiting.

But in Heifu's view, although this anti-counterfeiting measure has good intentions, it is actually of no use. Because unlike the Qin State, which strictly prohibited the private coining of currency, the private coining of currency in the Wei State was rampant, so the money on the market was not entirely good or bad. Some of the empty-headed coins were clearly two coins, but in fact they were as thin as paper, and their real weight was not even half a coin. Neither can reach...

Chen Ping said helplessly: "Some bad money is not made privately by the local government. Although the Wei Kingdom is rich, the prince of Wei is extravagant. Every year, he spends a large sum of money on silk to celebrate the birthday of the King of Qin. The internal treasury is exhausted several times. Therefore, Daliang also often casts bad money for profit."

Chen Ping told them these inside stories. Except for Heifu, Li Xian felt a little incredible, because in the Qin State, those who minted bad coins privately were sentenced to be city officials, and the government was even less likely to take the lead in minting bad coins, because That would be a big credit hit.

It can be seen that Wei's economy was already on the verge of collapse.

Chen Ping also said that in addition to the empty head cloth, the Wei State also had a kind of coin, which was another coin on the case: Wan coin. It looks exactly like a half liang, but the space is a round perforation, quite like a round circle.

"The round coin is specially used for trade with the Qin State. The weight indicated is roughly half a tael, or one tael, but it is not the case..."

As soon as Chen Ping said it, everyone realized that it was not only the round coins that were mostly bad coins, but also the round coins. The round coins minted in the early years were not bad. In recent years, the round coins on the market have been minted with increasingly larger holes. This is also Meaning, the weight is getting lighter.

"In other words, originally one and a half taels of money could be exchanged for one and a half taels of Qin. In fact, two yuans of yuan are only as heavy as one and a half taels."

After Chen Ping explained this, the next work will be easier to handle. Heifu has long planned to come up with an exchange ratio between Qin money and Wei money, so that Qin money can also be used to buy things in the township market, reducing the local garrison and traders. Trouble.

It's just that when the Qin people took out half a tael, the local merchants insisted on exchanging them according to the units on the coins, half a tael for a round of money, or four and a half taels for a flat-shouldered Yi cloth weighing one Yi.

In this way, the merchant made a profit, but didn't the Qin soldiers lose?

"How about exchanging half a tael for two yuan of money, and half a tael for a piece of cloth?" Heifu said. This exchange ratio will be of great benefit to the Qin army and can save a lot of money during their garrison.

Chen Ping quickly dissuaded him: "This must not be the case."

"Wei money has different weights. If all money, regardless of lightness, is exchanged according to this method, local merchants will be greatly affected. I am afraid that by then, the market will be full of complaints, which will be detrimental to travel."

Although he was helping the Qin army, he was still a local. If something harmed the interests of the locals, Chen Ping would of course fight for it.

"Then what do you think we should do?" Li Xian was a little dissatisfied with Chen Ping's "eating everything out".

"The villain has an idea." Chen Ping thought for a moment and said to Hei Fu: "It can save the Qin army and the hometown from harm. During the period of garrison, we can trade fairly and leave benefits to those who come after..."

…

Early the next morning, at the gate of the bustling Hufuxiang City, a wooden board was nailed to the city gate. The literate people squeezed over to take a look, and saw that there was a beautiful hand-written Wei character on it. The general meaning is that after discussion by the three officials in the township, from now on Qin's half-tael coins will be circulated in the market in parallel with Wei's coins, and will be used as standard official currency, and vendors shall not refuse them!

Common items on the market, such as vegetables, meat, grain, cloth, etc., are given a standard price of half a tael, and the fluctuation should not exceed one-tenth!

Rural and market vendors don't have many complaints. Although they can't make more money by doing this, it doesn't harm them.

This was decided by Heifu when he visited Zhang's house yesterday and discussed it with the Zhang brothers according to Chen Ping's idea.

Zhang Bo was initially reluctant to agree, but was frightened by Hei Fu's words.

"This matter has been implemented by Chen Liu and Waihuang a long time ago, and it will be done sooner or later in Hufu Township. Seeing that the two monarchs have worked with me for a long time, I will secretly inform you. In a few years, not only Qin money will be popular in Wei I’m afraid even local Wei money will be banned!”

"I advise you, the two gentlemen, to exchange all the Wei money at home into Qin money as soon as possible after Daliang City is destroyed and the Wei territory is settled. Otherwise, it will be too late to regret!"

…

After offering advice to help Heifu solve the trading problem, Chen Ping also started to do his own job: writing some announcement documents for the Qin army that needed to be translated into Wei characters. The announcement in the township yesterday was written by him himself.

But first, Chen Ping had to master the Chinese character Qin. Fortunately, he was smart and learned quickly.

Speaking of which, since Prince Ping moved eastward, the world has been divided for more than five hundred years. The wars that have lasted for hundreds of years have not only brought about the fragmentation of the feudal princes, but also the culture has begun to "do their own things."

The coins that caused a lot of trouble for the Qin people in the local life a few days ago are one example. In addition, the strange characters are also a major obstacle to the lagging exchanges between countries.

The cultures of various countries develop relatively independently, with strong local colors, and the characters have strong local colors, which will inevitably lead to the prominent phenomenon of heterogeneous characters between regions, thus forming variant characters.

With the decline of public clans and the rise of scholars, the simplicity of writing and the wide application of characters also led to the simplification and sloppy writing of glyphs, thus forming provincial-bian characters. Knowledge is passed down from generation to generation, but it is always passed down with pens and slips, so it is inevitable that the wrong characters will be written, and the wrong characters will be formed when the characters are passed down incorrectly.

This is the reason for the differences in the writing of the seven countries.

Chen Ping did not have as good a family background as Zhang Cang. He did not start learning Wei characters until he was ten years old. During his study tour in neighboring counties, he came into contact with several scholars from Han and Zhao and saw the characters Zhao and Han.

In fact, the writings of these three countries are not much different, because Zhao, Wei and Han did not separate until two hundred years ago, and they all belonged to the Jin Kingdom before.

But in addition to the Three Jin scripts, there are four writing systems of Qin, Qi, Yan, and Chu. These four countries are far away from the Central Plains and are located in the corners. They are relatively independent geographically and have very different cultures. Although their origins are from the Zhou Dynasty The bronze inscriptions and seal scripts, however, have shown signs of drifting away according to different regional cultures.

People in the Central Plains can still recognize the characters "Qi" and "Yan", but they can only stare wide-eyed at the flying and phoenix-like bodies of birds and insects on Chu's silk books, unable to do anything.

However, in Chen Ping's eyes, the character Qin is very special, perhaps because Qin inherited Zong Zhou's hometown and absorbed a large amount of Zhou people's culture. Perhaps the Qin people were conservative and old-fashioned. For hundreds of years, they adhered to the orthodox character shapes of the Zhou Dynasty. Only the writing style gradually became more regular and symmetrical, transitioning to Xiaozhuan.

Therefore, it is not difficult to understand the character Qin.

Sometimes Heifu would come to inspect his work and ask Chen Ping how he was doing. When Chen Ping said that it only took him two or three days to learn the Qin characters that were different from the Wei characters, he couldn't help but Looked surprised.

"Why is it so fast?"

Chen Ping cupped his hands and said: "You don't need to be surprised. The difference between the Qin characters and the Wei characters is actually not big. About half of the hundred characters have basically the same strokes, but the writing shapes are different, and another quarter The strokes are different, but the shapes are similar. You can tell by looking at them carefully. Only a quarter of the characters that look completely different are very different variant characters and need to be learned again."

"I see."

Hei Fu nodded, but heard Chen Ping sigh with emotion: "The princes are not as unified as in the past, and they are harming themselves by evil rituals and music, and all their books have been removed...the clothes are different, the speech is different, and the writing is different. After these few days, , We know that money, speech, writing, weights and measures can actually create such a large rift and obstacle to the exchanges and trade between the two countries."

"Don't worry."

But Hei Fu burst out laughing and predicted to Chen Ping: "Just like the territories and people of the seven countries in the world will be unified under Qin. Whether it is coins, weights and measures, writing, all the above will be unified in the future. For one.”

The unification of these things was not something that the Qin Dynasty Central Committee just thought of. It was not only in Hufu Township where they were located, but also in Yangwu County, Chenliu, Waihuang, and in the occupied areas of the Qin Army. Do similar work. Because people want whatever is convenient for them. When political barriers no longer exist, these different things will lose their meaning.

Heifu guessed that in Xianyang City, while King Qin was preparing to unify Liuhe, he was probably also preparing carriages on the same track and writing on the same text with Li Si and others...

He continued to say to Chen Ping, who was in a daze: "Countries are no longer divided into frontiers, and exchanges between scholars from all over the world are no longer hindered!"

"Traveling on the same track, writing on the same page, walking on the same track!"

"This is not the fantasy and expectation of the sages, but the future that is just around the corner!"