The rise of the prince

Chapter 597 Heavy Rain (with popular science)

In the afternoon, it rained heavily.

The pouring rain kept pouring, and Gillian put on a cloak for him worriedly, and repeatedly asked him to give him the umbrella and send it to the eaves of the small courtyard. The outside was full of stagnant water. He told Gillian not to send it, otherwise the shoes and socks would be wet. better off.

Gillian was reluctant to let go, and finally nodded, Shiyu teased her in the small courtyard, "It's not a farewell, come back quickly, don't get yourself wet, it's not worth it."

"No way." Gillian argued with a reddish face, and after a while Shiyu came out with an umbrella to pick her in, and complained, "Silly girl, if you give him an umbrella, you should take two, otherwise why would you come back."

Gillian stuck out her tongue and stopped talking.
On the other side, Li Xingzhou was wearing a coir raincoat and opened an umbrella. When he walked from the inner courtyard to the outer courtyard, Yan Gu, who was in charge, took the umbrella and hurried over, and his knees were all wet.

"My lord!" Yan Gu stepped forward: "I want to report to my lord, my subordinates have something to report."

Li Xingzhou stopped and walked to the corridor with him, "What is it?"

"My lord, someone came here this morning. It was said to be from the Wu family in the middle of Shu, and he was a cousin of the lord. However, it was raining heavily at that time, and the other party seemed to be in a hurry. Hearing that the lord didn't get up, he left and left. Some gifts." Yan Gu said quickly.

Li Xingzhou nodded, a little confused: "The Wu family in the middle of Shu is the queen's family."

The queen is his own grandmother, whose real name is Wu Huaixuan, and she is the daughter of the Wu family in Shuzhong, so the Wu family in Shuzhong is indeed closely related to him.

However, he doesn't know most of the Wu family at all, so just as the palace gate is as deep as the sea, even if it is the queen, it is very difficult to visit relatives after entering the palace, not to mention the place so far away in the middle of Sichuan.
As the third generation of Empress Wu, he himself never returned to the Wu family in central Shu.

Why did the Wu family send people to the capital at this time?It must be a big deal for him to come to visit and leave in a hurry, leaving only gifts. Li Xingzhou is self-aware. Apart from his status as the emperor's grandson, he is considered one of the most powerful ministers in the court.

This person has come and left in a hurry, it must be a big event that cannot be delayed.

Yan Gu said: "My lord, the Wu family in Sichuan is not only blood relatives of the lord, but also a well-known family in Jingguo. If I say it, it is not the first but also the second."

"Oh, why?" He asked curiously as he walked out of the corridor. After Yan Shen went to the New Army, the head of the guard at home was replaced by Yan Gu. Yan Shen is much smarter.

Before that, he was responsible for helping the palace to contact Sun Banzhang, Sun Wenyan and others, because Yan Gu was an orphan, and he grew up in the capital, with a lot of knowledge and a poor mind.

"My lord, more than half of my country's taxes every year belong to the land of Shu. My lord, think about how rich the Wu family should be as the largest family in the middle of Shu. I heard people say that when the country was founded 200 years ago, it was the richest family. Shanxi merchants, Jindi is close to the capital, and the road is also easy to travel, so it is convenient to do business."

Yan Gu talked while walking, "At that time, the Shu land could not compete with the Shanxi merchants, because it was very difficult to enter and leave Sichuan and Shu, but later the Shu land merchants discovered that they could do business by water and along the river. Then The merchants in Central Shu began to do better and better. Central Sichuan was originally a land of abundance, rich in products, and quickly suppressed the merchants of Shanxi. Today, it is already a situation where one family dominates in Central Sichuan."

Li Xingzhou smiled and said, "Haha, I didn't expect you to know so much."

"Hey, thank you, my lord, for your compliment!"

Yan Gu kept sending him out the door, until he got into the carriage, he talked eloquently.

The car of the clerk of the Privy Council was in front, and the car of the Wangfu was behind. The heavy rain outside was a little bit lighter, and there was no one on the street. Who would want to go out in this weather.

But after what Yan Gu said, Li Xingzhou also remembered the legend of the Shu merchants.

The distant Spring and Autumn and Warring States period was one of the most important eras in Chinese history, when a hundred schools of thought collided, and the core values ​​of the Chinese people were determined at that time, such as self-improvement, destiny, etc., so at that time, especially in the Spring and Autumn Period, the boundaries of countries , has been used for thousands of years. The so-called Jin people generally refer to Jin, the largest country in the Spring and Autumn Period.

During the Spring and Autumn Period, the long-term hegemony of the Jin State roughly covered the entire territory of Shanxi, western and southern Hebei, western Shandong, and northwestern Henan. People in these areas can be called Jin people, and the areas of Hunan and Hubei are called Chu people. Even the later dynasties did not object. , this classification is the default for all Chinese.

The rise of Shu merchants is also very legendary. The Chengdu Plain is a land of abundance, but it is surrounded by mountains and is isolated from the world. The road is difficult, and it is difficult to go to the blue sky! Cancong and yufu, how at a loss to found a country! You are [-] years old, and you will not live with Qin Sai.” It scares my friends.

Therefore, even if the products in central Shu were rich, they could not compete with outside merchants. In addition, the economic center of gravity had always been in the north, and the Yellow River did not flood and divert, so it could be used as a long-distance river.

The rise of Shu merchants relied on ships, and the advancement of shipbuilding technology saved Shu merchants.

Maybe you can't imagine to what extent the ship technology of the Song Dynasty was developed under the promotion of its business.Let me talk about business first. The settlement currency used by many countries around the Song Dynasty is the copper coin of the Song Dynasty. In Southeast Asian countries such as Japan, the government made money at the beginning, but later found that the credibility of their currency was not as good as that of the Song Dynasty currency. They used the currency of the Song Dynasty and did not use their own currency. Slowly, they simply gave up on themselves and stopped making money. They used the copper coins of the Song Dynasty.

This also led to the existence of a very special kind of merchant in the Song Dynasty, who specialized in smuggling coins to neighboring countries and selling them for money.

The huge overseas market driven by such a prosperous business has given birth to the development of shipbuilding technology.

Today, the largest ancient sunken ship in the world was salvaged in 2007. It is code-named "Nanhai No. 6". There are more than [-] pieces of various cultural relics in it. .

This is also the largest ancient ship in the world.

This merchant ship is from the Song Dynasty. It is the scariest ship. The ship has a load of about 200 tons and a displacement of about 600 tons. This is the actual ship of the 120th or [-]th century. With a displacement of [-] tons, you can understand what terror is.

Driven by ocean trade in the Song Dynasty, the shipbuilding industry led the world for several centuries. Because of this advantage, Shu merchants changed the old method of climbing mountains to get out of Shu, and used shipping to quickly move eastward from the upper reaches of the Yangtze River, making sea trade easier and simpler. In less than a hundred years of development, it overwhelmed the Shanxi merchants in the north and did business with the whole of Asia, becoming a real land of abundance in one fell swoop.

When Sichuan and Shu were the most prosperous, two-thirds of the Song Dynasty's affiliates came from central Shu.The world's first banknote "Jiaozi" was also issued by Shu merchants, and it was only circulated internally, not issued by the state.

It shows how prosperous the middle of Shu is.

It is a pity that there were several periodic sea bans when the Yuan Dynasty was in turmoil, and the Ming Dynasty began to formally ban sea, "a piece of sail is not allowed to enter the sea."

At that time, the so-called "Japanese pirates" did not refer to the Japanese. In fact, Qi Jiguang said, "Probably three out of ten real Japanese pirates." Among the Japanese pirates, only [-]% of the Japanese wandering samurai were still employed by coastal Chinese.

The reason is very simple, if people are not allowed to go to sea to do business, I don’t know how many people will be cut off and forced to die. If they have no way to survive, they can only fight against the court.

After the great pirate Wang Zhi was ensnared by the Ming Dynasty, he said that he "seeked profit in the sea, sold goods in Zhejiang, benefited with others, defended the border for the country, what is the crime?" He also tearfully begged the Ming Dynasty government to open the sea ban and set up customs , to promote coastal trade, so that the so-called "Japanese plague" will be eliminated by itself.

However, because the Ming court wanted to monopolize political resources, it was strongly disturbed that such power as the ocean was difficult to touch unknown areas, so it just ordered him to be beheaded. As for why it was recruited to ensnare him, because the Ming Dynasty navy could not beat his fleet at all.
Later, the Ming government couldn't take it anymore, and Longqing opened and closed some sea bans in a small amount, so that the Japanese plague was alleviated.

The Qing Dynasty even intensified the implementation of the maritime ban policy. As a result, the maritime advantages accumulated in the past dynasties up to the Song Dynasty defeated the Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties.

(End of this chapter)