Daming Yuanfu

Chapter 1177 Shopping Mall Business (Part [-])
The affairs of the imperial court were done quickly because there was no distance limit. After Shen Shixing and Gao Wushi reached an agreement, it took at most one day to notify the officials of the faction to know, and then the court pushes them step by step.

In contrast, the business of the shopping mall is not done so quickly, because the main battlefield of this business war is far away in the south of the Yangtze River.

Obviously, Shen Shixing would not know that a family named Rothschild made a fortune because of the rapid information, so although he sent someone to Jiangnan to deliver the letter the next day after the meeting with Gao Wushi, he did not pay much attention to delivery. The speed of the news was such that the messenger under his door chose to take the convenient post route.

The Bianmin Post Road is the product of the reform of the post station promoted by the imperial court after the highly pragmatic "Shu Yi Road Shu" in the early years. At that time, Guo Pu was in charge of this reform, which was carried out in two stages. It took a total of eight years to fully complete it. .

The "convenience post road" is the focus of reform in the latter stage.The core of this reform of convenient post roads is to semi-commercialize post stations that originally belonged to the imperial court.

It would take too much time to explain this matter in detail, so it is good to give a general overview.To put it simply, after this reform, the post station has become a highway service area with the function of a guest house.

Court officials, official documents, and military reports, etc., are still in accordance with the previous standard (the standard after the first stage of reform), and the court and relevant yamen are responsible for their respective parts.

At the same time, post stations have also begun to open to the public. As long as the folks present relevant documents (mainly road guides), they can use the post station and enjoy related services—including but not limited to accommodation, carriages, meals, etc.

As for the price, it is a little higher than the price that can be reimbursed at public expense, but it will still be cheaper than going on your own and getting to the top, and it is more secure - because the post station charges are clearly stated and accepted at any time according to high pragmatic requirements Reported.

However, this reform caused some controversy at the beginning. Many officials said that after semi-commercialization, their original services were squeezed, and there were often cases of occupied posthouse rooms and insufficient vehicles and horses.There are also some officials who think that it is inappropriate for the officials and the people to live together, which is simply "unseemly".

However, they obviously underestimated the self-regulation ability of post stations after commercialization. Many post stations were later expanded by themselves, usually for civilian use.

Speaking of it, this reform is still a major achievement of Gao Gong, Guo Pu and Gao Yushi, because the current post station system spends very little money on the court every year, especially the post stations on several main roads, which can even be handed over to the court every year. Part of the surplus was given to the court.

If it weren't for the lack of development of the civilian system of some frontier post stations—such as Gansu and other regions that are still losing money—maybe the entire post station system can now be self-sufficient.

However, Gao Wushi believes that with the continuous advancement of reforms, Daming's commercial activity has gradually increased, and the Xinyi Station system will be profitable one day sooner or later, but the exact time is uncertain, and even he can't figure it out.

It was normal for Shen Shixing's messengers to choose convenient post roads, because most of the private travelers would choose this way at present, but he underestimated the importance that Gao Pragmatism attaches to information transmission.

High Pragmatism has two information transmission chains, land and sea. Needless to say, the sea route is definitely very fast, but sometimes there are restrictions on the sea route, such as only sending to coastal areas, if the wind direction is required, etc. (hard sailing ships can also go in the wrong direction, but the speed will decrease).On land, the advantage of high pragmatism is also very large.

Because there is no shortage of horses for high pragmatism.

As the reincarnation of Shunyi King An Da of Han Naji and Ming King Jiang III of right-wing Mongolia, Gao Wushi has long been the number one middleman in the Mongolian horse trade. To manage these border trade transactions very well, Jinghua has no shortage of good horses.

Jinghua, which has no shortage of horses, will of course leave good horses for the information transmission that Gao Pragmatic attaches great importance to, especially the letters sent from the capital to various places. Although Jinghua’s messengers also go to post stations, they all use their own horses, usually Ordinary travelers travel at more than twice the speed, which is equivalent to the six hundred miles of the imperial court.

In this way, when the news sent by Gao Pragmatic has been delivered to Shanghai Port and Ningbo Port, the messenger of Shenshihang has just passed Shandong and entered Xuzhou, almost half of the time.

At this time, Jinghua’s manager in Songjiang was Shuai Jiamo, the manager of Jinghua Seaport and the director of Shanghai Private Port—the mathematical talent who was brought here by Gao Yushi during the Huizhou silk case.

As Shuai Jiamo is a native of the south, after many years of training in Tianjin Port, he was sent to Songjiang to take charge of the construction and development of Shanghai Port. Not long ago, he was promoted by Gao Yushi and added the post of "Sea Port Co-manager" , that is to say, he has the right to intervene in all Jinghua's seaports in Daming.

There is also a director of Jinghua Seaport, but it is only in name—Gao Wujian, Gao Yushi’s fourth brother, is the director of Jinghua Seaport, but he actually stays in Jingshi and doesn’t care about his affairs.Gao Wushi is sending someone to explain to him slowly the various affairs of the seaport, and plans to let him go to Tianjin to take up the post in a year or two.

Shuai Jiamo, who received Gao Yushi's urgent secret letter, was very excited. This action was something he had been looking forward to for a long time, and Gao Yushi was very reassuring of him, and asked him to preside over the "mall business" action.

Although Shuai Jiamo estimated that it was impossible for him to improve his position in Jinghua after Gao Wujian became the director of the seaport, he also had to think about the future: the master has many younger brothers, and he heard that his wife seems to be pregnant, so The six-bedroom owner will definitely become bigger in the future.If you don't show enough ability, won't you be replaced sooner or later?

Shuai Jiamo was the chief person in charge this time, and under him was a deputy who was also an acquaintance—Wu Xun, the son of Wu Dui, who was in charge of Ningbo Port at the time.

The two of them are the principal and deputy who want to set off this huge wave of business for Jinghua.

If it was in the era of commercialization in the later generations, Jinghua, as the number one overlord in the Daming shopping mall, would have many options to choose from, such as the simplest and rude one: competition is too troublesome, then I will buy you.

But this method is not easy to use in Daming, because people at this time attach great importance to "ancestral property", and they will never sell their ancestral property unless it is absolutely necessary. The nature of digging his family's ancestral grave is similar.

So the acquisition is not a good idea, you have to find another way.

Originally Shuai Jiamo had several contingency plans, but due to the impromptu order sent by Gao Yushi to prevent him from bringing the matter to the government level, some of the contingency plans were directly aborted, and now only a few purely commercial means can be implemented. It's planned.

Fortunately, after thinking about it, Shuai Jiamo felt that business means should be enough to make the other party drink a pot.

After he notified Wu Xun in Ningbo Port by express letter, he made the first move himself.

On September 21, Jinghua Shanghai Port suddenly announced that due to the impact of the tense situation in Myanmar, Siam and other places, the Jinghua Ocean Fleet needs to mobilize a large number of ships to escort.Therefore, the convoy fleets of the local ports of Ming Dynasty will be downsized at the same time, and they will no longer accept the escort business of ships from non-Jinghua ports, and all merchant ships from non-Jinghua ports will no longer be escorted by the Jinghua and Ocean Fleets.

At the same time, for the same reason, Jinghua will take back the "Book and Sword Flag" previously issued, and merchant ships that do not sail from Jinghua's private ports will no longer be allowed to fly the "Book and Sword" flag—this means that Jinghua They are no longer protected and services such as the recovery of looted goods are no longer provided.

As a result, Jinghua's marine insurance business was also suspended at the same time. Although the merchant ships that had purchased the insurance period retained the remaining period of insurance, they suspended their services "until the situation improves."

When the news came out, businesses in the southeast coast were in an uproar.

They have been used to Jinghua's escort business for many years, but now they suddenly lost Jinghua's escort, it felt like the house collapsed while taking a shower, everyone panicked and felt like they had nowhere to hide.

Owners of private ports in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, including Xujia Private Port, quickly contacted Shuai Jiamo, Wu Xun and others, asking what happened to Nanyang, and why Jinghua suddenly came to such a hand?
Shuai Jiamo and Wu Xun's answer was of course: "I'm really sorry, the matter is confidential, and I have nothing to say."

Of course, the big merchants were not satisfied with such an answer, and they asked how to know the inside story, and the two tacitly told them that they needed to consult the capital directly.

In other words, we have to ask the boss, we two wage earners are only following orders, how do we know the details?
Of course the two of them are not in a hurry, but the big merchants have to be in a hurry.Storing goods here seems insignificant, but if you don’t sell them, you won’t get any income. Even if you store them here, it’s costly. Every day’s delay is equivalent to money flowing out. Who can bear it?

So everyone quickly reached a consensus, and immediately sent people to the capital to ask Gao Gongbao directly about the situation, and urged him to solve the problem as soon as possible and resume the escort.

Some sea merchants even discussed privately, thinking that the pirates in the outer seas have been almost wiped out by Jinghua in the past few years. Now that Jinghua has just announced the suspension of escort, the pirates must not get any news, or we will take a gamble. How about going directly to sea without Jinghua escort?
Most maritime merchants are not very optimistic about this proposal. The reason is that although the large groups of pirates in the outer seas have been cleaned up by Jinghua, many of them were temporarily dispersed by Jinghua, and now they are divided into seven parts. A small band of pirates in a mess.

Although the small group of pirates is not as fierce as the previous large group of pirates, and they dared to eat up the entire fleet when they robbed, but they still have a lot of success in taking down two or three ships at a time.

Although it is not a big problem for the sea merchants to form a team and go to sea together, losing two or three ships at a time, but the calculation is not like this.

Although they claim to be an alliance, they are not a whole family like Jinghua. Who will be responsible for the loss of these two or three ships?Does it count as the loss of the entire alliance, and everyone bears it together, or does anyone who loses it count as bad luck?

If the loss of the entire alliance is counted, not to mention whether everyone agrees or not, at least the goods on board must be announced in advance, right?
Who wants to announce it?
You must know that since the imperial court imposed tariffs only on the size of the ship, not on the size of the goods, everyone secretly made various small moves. Obviously, these small moves can only be known by themselves, and it is impossible to "share" even within the alliance.

If this is made public, you smuggled pig iron and he smuggled saltpeter, how can everyone happily call themselves a gentleman?In the future, if internal conflicts arise, or if there are traitors within the alliance, and they are reported to the government, what will happen?

So it can't be done that way.

Since we can't bear it together, we have to go out of our way, but there are problems with doing things separately.Some maritime merchants whose ships have been built for a long time and run slowly on the sea are strongly opposed-if you encounter pirates, you will run away with the new ships, leaving Lao Tzu's people to fall into the sea to feed the fish?

So the two parties broke up unhappy after arguing for a while, and the discussion was over.

Everyone had nothing to say, so they had to calm down and wait for the reply from Jinghua headquarters.

But before they got a reply, Jinghua's second wave of offensive arrived again.Jinghua suddenly announced that because of the Myanmar peace treaty, there are a large number of Yunnan trade orders that need to be dealt with quickly, so Jinghua's inland logistics system will tilt its center of gravity to the southwest.

Tilting to the southwest seems to have nothing to do with these big merchants, but what they didn't expect was that Jinghua's tilt would really affect them - because Jinghua wanted to complete the "list" in the southeast in advance, so it speeded up the previous agreement The delivery of goods, and even the goods that should have been delivered to Jiangnan in the middle of next year were delivered in advance. It is estimated that it will only take another one or two months for all to be delivered to Jiangnan.

This is going to kill me!
In the past, big merchants placed orders according to the normal delivery speed, but in this day and age, they were basically only worried about the delivery being too slow. Calculating with his fingers -- bad, the goods that arrived more than half a year earlier will cause huge pressure on their own storage, and because the current goods cannot go to sea, this pressure will be doubled!
Fuck your grandma, this is really bad luck, too many goods will kill you!So many goods have been delivered, where will I pile them up?

Everyone was so anxious that their tongues were sore, they asked each other, and found that they were all brothers and sisters.

Someone finally remembered one thing: Jinghua's port has been built with large-scale "standard warehouses", and now Jinghua's own ships can still go to sea, so don't their warehouses have a surplus?If we really can't do it, let's rent their warehouse, at least we can get through this difficulty first!

So everyone had no choice but to go to Shuai Jiamo and Wu Xun again. Whether it was Songjiang or Ningbo, the big merchants almost surrounded their two residences.

However, Shuai Jiamo and Wu Xun politely rejected their request because "Jinghua is rapidly building Dingnan City in Siam according to the contract requirements, so the warehouse is already full of cement that Jinghua Infrastructure will transfer to Siam. Supplies, I don’t have the energy to help you now, I’m really sorry.”

The merchants from Jiangsu and Zhejiang gasped, and thought to themselves: This is broken, why is it such a coincidence? ——
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(End of this chapter)