Haisheng Mingdi

Chapter 405

Taizhou, Zhejiang.

At the foot of Tiantai Mountain, Zhao Gui and his family were busy picking tea leaves. At this time, the Qingming Festival had passed, but the Grain Rain had not yet passed. The former tea also has a generous and strong spring flavor.

Zhao Gui, whose ancestral home is in Shandong and has lived in the north for generations, has never planted or picked tea leaves before. His hands are usually used for writing and accounting, and processing medicinal materials. Now he carries a tea basket on his back and stands on the tea mountain to pick the fresh and tender tea buds. It looks a bit clumsy, but he is still very devoted to picking it.

This tea garden lacks management, but fortunately, it has undergone simple pruning and maintenance last autumn and winter. The tea leaves are good this year, with a little spring cold, and they look so green and noble.

It was raining and foggy on Tiantai Mountain, and it was noon before we knew it.

"Eat a meal first."

Zhao Fu from the next door came over and shouted, he has a lot of family members, and the three older daughters all married to the emperor's imperial battalion soldiers as they wished last year. However, Zhao Fu is in the same family. After all, he is just an exile from the Imperial Army Liangtai.

But he is already very satisfied, the treatment of soldiers in the imperial battalion is quite good, and being able to be a non-commissioned officer, even a corporal, is a bit higher than the salary of a senior soldier. The standard-bearers are all over.

An upper class soldier receives one and five denarii a day, which is four or two five denarii a month, while a corporal receives one denarii and six a day, a sergeant is one denarii a day, a sergeant is one denarii a day, and a sergeant is one denarii a day. The salary is very generous.

What's more, as a non-commissioned officer in the imperial camp, there are benefits such as priority in marrying a wife and buying land. If you marry a wife and pay for the imperial camp, you don't have to bear it yourself, and buying land is also done in installments with low interest.

Zhao Fu's three sons-in-law were also poor people who went out from Taizhou before, but they were young, brave and lucky. They joined His Majesty the Emperor from the Dragon Army. Those batches.

But now it is also a change, with a wife, a field and a house, and a place to live and work.

Zhao Fu himself performed well in Liangtai. Although his ability was far inferior to that of Zhao Gui, he was not officially awarded the official position of ninth rank after the year like Zhao Gui, but he was also promoted to the second rank. Now he also has The salary is five taels of silver.

"Hands are numb."

Zhao Gui stopped with a smile, walked to the tea tree and sat down.

"Yeah, I've had cramps a few times. This tea tastes good but it's hard to pick. We big men picked embroidery needles all morning, but we didn't pick much."

They picked the alpine Yunwu tea from Tiantai Mountain, and they picked the tenderest bud tips. Mingqian and Yuqian teas picked one bud and one leaf, and one bud and two leaves.

A pound of fried tea, the best Mingqian tea, needs about [-] buds, and even Yuqian tea with one bud and two leaves needs at least [-] buds.

Picking [-] buds in a row to fry a pound of tea leaves is definitely a physical effort.

Zhao Fu, Zhao Gui, and the others all suffered from hand cramps. In fact, with their current positions and income, it is okay even if they don’t pick tea, but they all went south from the Central Plains and experienced famine. It didn't come easily, and the family finally settled down in Tiantai County, Taizhou, and they didn't want to stop.

From winter to spring, they are busy rebuilding their homes, reclaiming wasteland, and working together to repair ditches. They started plowing the fields a few years ago to freeze the insect eggs in the soil to death. In the spring of the next year, they began to plow the fields again. There was a shortage of cattle. People use plows on their backs, or even dig directly with hoes.

There is no day off.

Even in rainy days, they will weave baskets and mats.

They, a group of northerners, also began to learn from the locals here, how to grow mulberry trees and raise silkworms, how to grow hemp and mulberry, and even busy with tea gardens, picking the first batch of tea leaves before Qingming with the cold spring.

Zhao Fu lit a fire on the ground to dry the wet clothes, and then set up a pot to cook a simple mountain lunch.

Boil water, cook a pot of sweet potato porridge, add a little bacon, salted fish, and a little spring bamboo shoots, and when the cooking is almost done, then throw in bracken and wild onions pulled from the mountains, and it will be a rare and delicious meal.

At this moment Zhao Fu's sons-in-law came up with a bunch of small miscellaneous fish, all of them were small fish in the mountain stream. More than a catty of fish came, and Zhao Fu's son-in-law even caught a cauliflower snake. This snake met him somehow, was caught, beheaded and skinned.

"I'm lucky today, hurry up and grill the fish."

The peeled snake meat was thrown into the porridge by Lao Zhao and cooked together.

"Come and have a rest, ready to eat." Lao Zhao shouted to the women and children who were still busy picking tea.

The children came running with cheers, and the women responded that they would come after picking the food for a while.

"This year's tea is good."

Zhao Gui looked at the tea buds he had worked so hard to pick.

Old Zhao said with a smile, "This year's tea market is also good, and the purchase price is quite high."

The Yunwu tea in Tiantai is not a famous tea, even in Zhejiang, West Lake Longjing tea in Hangzhou, white tea in Anji, Pingshui tea in Shaoxing, Putuo Buddha tea in Zhoushan, Guzhu purple bamboo shoots in Huzhou, Dongbai tea in Wuzhou, Muzhou tea, etc. Jiukeng tea and so on.

Pingshui Town in Shaoxing was a well-known distribution center for tea processing and trade as early as the Tang Dynasty, and it is now an important tea industry center in Ming Dynasty.

A large number of tea leaves from Tiantai and other places are transported to Pingshui for processing. Now there is a large tea factory run by the royal family in Pingshui. The royal tea factory adopts a new method of making pearl tea. , like pearls.

This kind of flat water pearl tea is similar in shape to Tieguanyin. Tieguanyin is a famous tea from Fujian and belongs to green tea, while flat water pearl tea is fried green tea.

Frying a pot of flat water pearl tea requires an experienced master to fry for ten hours.

The reason why the traditional green tea is made into this new type of pearl tea is also very simple. The main reason is for export trade. For a long time, the main export teas are Fujian Wuyi tea and Anhui Qimen tea. It is black tea.

The green tea Tieguanyin is also very popular with foreign businessmen. After Zhu Yihai raised his flag, he trained his troops for the Northern Expedition and opened up sea trade at the same time. Zhejiang has rich tea resources, so of course he will not miss it. He established a foreign trade tea company in Ningbo Port with his own money. Yes, another tea house was established in Pingshui, Shaoxing, and the collection of tea, production of tea and sales of tea were integrated.

This flat water pearl tea, called green pearl, is very popular.

Especially the small Japanese, they like flat water pearl tea very much. The tea store exports it at a price of 24 taels per load. The price of tea is much lower, and it still needs to go through multiple processes such as collecting tea, making tea, and transporting to the port. However, the rise of flat water pearl tea has indeed driven the tea from the mountains around Shaoxing, and the purchase price has also increased a lot. .

Generally speaking, the tea of ​​Ming Dynasty can be divided into three categories. Fujian and Anhui tea merchants have operated overseas tea trade for generations. They are mainly engaged in Wuyi black tea and Keemun black tea. The second is Shaanxi and Sichuan tea merchants. They mainly trade side tea , engage in tea horse trading, mainly marketing Kangzang.

In the past, Zhejiang, Huguang, and even Shanxi tea merchants mainly engaged in the tea trade in the inland. Among them, the Shanxi tea merchants had the strongest strength. They not only sold tea in the inland, but also sold tea to Mongolia, the Western Regions and even Russia.

Basically, Fujian tea merchants mainly sell black tea to Macau, and the buyers are mainly Dutch.Shanxi tea merchants exported tea to Russia by land.

At the end of the Ming Dynasty, most of the tea exported to the southeast was monopolized by the Zheng family, not only tea, but almost all Chinese goods exported to sea were monopolized by the Zheng family, who acted as second-hand dealers and resold them to the Dutch.

Zhu Yihai opened a port in Zhejiang, re-opened trade with Japan, North Korea, Ryukyu, etc., and even directly traded with the Dutch, Portuguese, and Spanish. The prestige of the emperor is increasing day by day, and the Zheng family can only watch the emperor share the food.

Before Hangzhou was captured, most of the tea from Zhejiang was concentrated in Pingshui Town, Shaoxing, and then left via Ningbo. Now even tea from Anhui goes to Qiantang Bay via the Xin’an River, and tea from western Zhejiang also goes to Ningbo.

Pingshui and Ningbo are now rapidly rising tea distribution centers and export ports in the southeast, robbing nearly half of the original share of export tea. The export of black tea is 26 taels per load, and green tea is 24 taels per load. The profits here are very high.

Through his own tea shop and tea house, Zhu Yihai not only supported the tea industry during the war, but also obtained high profits, and the imperial court also obtained a generous tea tax through the collection of customs duties and tea taxes.

In the late Ming Dynasty, the tea tax almost existed in name only, and during the Longqing period, it was only worth more than 1 taels of silver a year.

During the reign of Chongzhen, there was almost no tea tax. It is even said that at least one year, Zhejiang Province collected 17 taels of tea tax, while Yunnan, a place where edge tea is important, only collected [-] taels.

Although it is not known whether this rumor is accurate, but at the end of the collapsed Ming Dynasty, the tea tax did exist in name only.

It was stipulated in the early Ming Dynasty that when tea farmers sold tea, they would draw one out of every thirty tea leaves. When merchants bought tea, they would pay the officials and pay the money to Yin before allowing them to sell out of the country.Later, the tea class discounted the silver, and the tea merchants paid the silver directly.

No matter what the situation is, it is a fact that the tea tax in the late Ming Dynasty existed in name only.

After Zhu Yihai raised his troops, he reformed tea as well as salt, adopting a system similar to that of salt, abolishing tribute tea and official tea, and changing them to commercial tea, that is, the free tea market.

There are no restrictions on the status of tea merchants, but both tea farmers and tea merchants have to pay tea tax. You can grow or sell whatever you want, but you have to pay taxes for planting, and you have to pay taxes for buying and selling.

All tea growers have to register with the government to grow tea, and then pay taxes every year. Merchants buy tea the same as buying salt. Each tea is first paid with money. It must be lured, otherwise it will be trafficking and smuggling.

In this way, the government does not need to make a big deal, and does not need to let the tea farmers sell all the tea to the government, and then the government transports and stores it, which facilitates the processing and sales of tea.

In the Tang Dynasty, the tea production could reach nearly one million per year, and in the Song Dynasty, it was several million per year.

In the Ming Dynasty, the tea tax was more complicated, because there were tribute tea and official tea, such as the tea-horse trade in official tea, and the exchange of tea for horses was a relatively important national policy, which was related to important materials such as war horses.

But now Zhu Yihai has changed tea like salt, and the tax rate has also been adjusted.

Tea farmers grow tea, and the final tax is [-]% on sales, and tea merchants sell tea, and [-]% tax is charged.

For tea exported to sea, there is another tea tax at the port, which is generally a tax increase of 5.00%.Compared with the tea export tariff as high as 20.00% in the Qing Dynasty, which led to the continuous decline in the overseas market share of tea in the Qing Dynasty, Zhu Yihai's tax rate is relatively low, which also makes the business of Ningbo tea shops very good now, especially Japanese businessmen are rushing to buy .

The tea market is good, and the government has opened up the middle link. This is of course a good thing for the tea farmers.

"This year's market is so good, I want to sell some tea." Lao Zhao said bluntly, "We old men are really not suitable for picking tea on the mountain like women, and we can't pick much in a day, but we are literate and sensible, and we have also done business. experience, not to mention that there is still some official connections, if it is for tea sales, it will definitely be good."

Zhao Gui was also a little moved when he heard this. In fact, he and Lao Zhao are both on vacation now. They were busy at Nantong Wharf last year, and then went to Nanjing after the year. Start to give everyone a rest in batches.

The holiday was not long, and he returned to the rooftop where his family had placed him, reunited with his family, and was also busy with spring plowing.

In fact, he has also been thinking about whether to buy some tea these days. Although he has never sold tea before, he has done the business of medicinal materials, and he is still good at buying and selling these things.

This year's tea market is good and the price is good, but tea farmers actually work hard to pick and rough process, etc., and the income is limited, but if they sell tea, there is a lot of profit.

But it takes time and money.

After all, he is now a ninth-rank official of Liangtai. Although he is a small official, he is still an official, and his leave is limited.

Moreover, he has no capital now, and even though he has received a few months' salary, the expenses of relocating the family are not small. His children are young, and they are no match for Lao Zhao. These three daughters are all married to imperial sergeants. .

While grilling the fish, Lao Zhao said, "This is my plan. We can go to the government's household department bank to get a loan. We are officials, and my son-in-law is a non-commissioned officer. These are all eligible for the loan, especially for people who are used to make money." If you sell tea, the interest rate is still low. Let’s take out a loan, and then hire a few guys to go to the countryside to collect tea and sell it to the tea shop. Although it’s hard work, you can still earn a little, which is definitely better than picking tea. "

Zhao Gui also knows about the loan that his cousin said. Now there are branch offices opened by the Bank of the Ministry of Accounts in various prefectures and counties, and there are even sub-branches of the Royal Bank. For business, some small loans are also provided for farmers, businessmen, etc., especially officials and military officers, and there are low-interest benefits.

Originally, it was also to help and encourage various places to recover.

(End of this chapter)