Neon Clothes and Iron Clothes

Chapter 391 Price Revolution

Chapter 391 Price Revolution
"Silver is a good thing!" Cao Sengnu laughed and said, "Although people in Tang Dynasty don't like it very much, Turks, Uighurs, Tubo people, Silla people, Nanzhao people, and Tianzhu people all like silver. You have silver , you can buy everything you want from them, and you can exchange for more good things when you ship it back. Compared with farming, it’s much faster to get rich like this!” Cao Sengnu picked up the wine while talking He filled the bottle with wine for himself and the guests, raised his glass and said with a smile, "Come, let's have a drink!"

Seeing that Chi Yu subconsciously raised the wine glass, took a sip, and then found that the taste was completely different from the rice wine he usually drank. He looked down and found that the liquid in the glass was dark red, like flowing amber , he put down his glass in surprise: "This is—"

Without waiting for Cao Sengnu to answer, Ping Liu on the side rushed to answer: "Master, this is wine. It is made from a kind of fruit called grapes. It tastes very good!"

"I don't think it's better than rice wine?" Chi Jian glared at Ping Liu, put down his wine glass, and gave Cao Sengnu a cold look. His right hand was already on the short knife at his waist, and he instinctively looked at the man in front of him. Full of vigilance, the other party knows too much about himself, but he knows nothing about the other party, this is not a good sign.

"You can also change rice wine!"

"No wine!" Chi Jian pushed away the wine glass: "Tell me! How can I get the new silver refining method of the Tang people? One thousand silver cakes?"

Cao Sengnu shook his head with a smile.

"two thousand?"

Cao Sengnu shook his head again.

"Three thousand?"

"Half!" Cao Sengnu stretched out five fingers: "We want half of the increase in silver production after your new method of refining silver!"

"No!" Chi Jian shook his head resolutely: "This is impossible!"

"Why? You don't have to pay anything, you can get half of the rest! Believe me, this is a lot of money, far beyond your imagination, enough to make your family the head of a county!" Cao Sengnu The smile is sweet, just like playing with the weeping fruit on the autumn branches.

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"That guy is just a rock, from a latrine, smelly and hard! I have been talking to him for an entire hour, but he still can only say 'no'! What a real Japanese slave!" Cao Sengnu said He drank the water in the glass in one gulp, and at this moment he was out of breath, which was in stark contrast to his usual routine.

"I don't know if he is a rock or not, but obviously you lost!" Wang Wenzuo put down the book in his hand and said with a smile, "Does he not believe in the efficacy of the 'Ash Blowing Method' you recommended to him?"

"That's not true!" Cao Sengnu shook his head: "I told him at the beginning that he could practice in front of him, and he was willing to pay for it, but he disagreed when I mentioned that I would increase the production by half. !"

"In this way, Chi Jian is not stubborn, but determined!" Wang Wenzuo laughed. He put the book back on the table and asked, "Where is he now?"

"I've already gone back!" Cao Sengnu replied, "Actually, we have another way. As long as we expose the fact that he swallowed up the Japanese king's money without permission, this guy will have no good fruit to eat!"

"That won't work!" Wang Wenzuo shook his head: "First of all, this kind of thing should be an open secret, and everyone who manages the property for the Japanese royal family should get benefits for themselves. This benefit should be regarded as theirs in the Japanese country. Even if he is stabbed out, he will not be punished; secondly, even if he is punished, we will not get any benefits from it. It is not impossible to do things that harm others, but we still do not do things that are harmful to others it is good!"

"Yes!"

Wang Wenzuo looked at Cao Sengnu who was a little frustrated: "Sengnu, it is of course a good thing to be able to intervene in the management of the Japanese Yinshan by providing ash blowing method, but it is not necessarily a bad thing if it fails. Our purpose is to obtain a stable source of silver, directly from the Of course it is good to obtain Yinshan, and it is also good to exchange it from the Japanese through trade. A strong dragon will not overwhelm a snake, no matter what, the Japanese are the masters here, and we are the guests. As long as we can cooperate, the specific method of cooperation is not important!"

"Duke Ming taught you the lesson!"

"You have worked hard all day, go back and rest first!"

"Yes!"

Wang Wenzuo returned to the case and began to open the book again. This thin booklet recorded the new silver refining method that Chi Qi wanted to exchange for three thousand silver cakes—the famous "ash blowing method".This refining method can not only obtain silver from silver ore, but also separate the gold and silver mixture.

Since silver in nature is usually symbiotic with other non-ferrous metals, such as copper, in order to separate and purify it, ancient craftsmen used the characteristics of silver-lead mutual melting to first crush silver ore and then sinter it to form honeycomb clusters shape.Then, after the lead metal is melted, the ore clusters are put in, and the silver and lead are mutually soluble, and the temperature in the furnace is raised to the point where the lead in the ore clusters (reef clusters) is melted, oxidized and sinks to form lead oxide, and then the temperature is lowered. Make it condensed to obtain crude silver and silver-lead alloy that can be further purified, then put the silver-lead alloy (crude silver) into the furnace, blow air continuously, and completely vaporize the melted lead (the boiling point of lead is higher than that of silver), and the rest is purified silver.

This refining method appeared very early in ancient China, and it was used in silver mines before the Tang Dynasty. However, the output and grade of gold and silver mines found in ancient China were far from comparable to those in Japan. This technology entered the late Tang Dynasty. After Japan, Japan soon had the reputation of the country of gold.Of course, Wang Wenzuo's attempt to introduce this technology in Japan early was not to allow Japan to have more gold and silver. His main purpose was to promote the Chinese version of the "price revolution" at that time.

According to the junior high school history and political textbooks, the main reason why China lagged behind Western countries in modern times was that its productivity was backward, and if it lagged behind, it would be beaten, and if it was beaten, it would be even more backward, and then a vicious circle. This is of course true in general. .As a result, many people on the Internet blamed it on the feudal rulers at that time, thinking that they deliberately suppressed the development of advanced productive forces, were blindly arrogant, and even thought that replacing them with a time traveler would change history. It is somewhat biased.

The reason is very simple. If you tell a Qing Dynasty person before 1840 that the productivity of Westerners is higher than that of the Qing Dynasty, that Qing Dynasty person will definitely laugh out loud and think you are crazy. This is not because the Qing Dynasty person is ignorant, but because the Qing Dynasty may It is a unique miracle in human history. A handicraft country can use industrial products such as textiles and ceramics to dump a country that has begun to industrialize, forcing the other party to have to sell drugs to stop the outflow of silver.You can't say that the supra-national productivity level is lower than the super-national productivity level, right?
Obviously, the hydraulic and steam looms in Manchester and the East End of London in the 89s were definitely more advanced than the handmade machines of the contemporary Chinese Songjiang Orito. India's handmade textile rivals, after other factors are taken into account, the labor cost in the Western European market is much higher than that in China. When industrialization first started, the improvement of technology was not enough to make up for the huge gap in labor cost. More advanced European textiles are no match for mature Chinese handicraft textiles.

This is also the reason why ancient China was unwilling to introduce advanced technology for a long time. The cost of labor is too low, there is a nearly unlimited supply of skilled labor, and the domestic and international markets are so big. The use of advanced technology will only make a large number of people unemployed and threaten social stability.Any rational ruler will be cautious about the promotion of new technologies, which has nothing to do with the ruler's moral level.

So why does this happen?In fact, before the Middle Ages, there was no big difference in labor costs between China and the West, but the discovery of the New World in the [-]th century brought massive imports of gold and silver to Western Europe, coupled with the spread of the Black Death almost at the same time, the population The drastic reduction, massive inflow of gold and silver currency, the result is a rapid increase in prices and labor wages, all kinds of machinery that can replace human labor become profitable, trade flourishes, and land rent denominated in gold and silver depreciates, thus bringing about capitalism in Western Europe of rapid development.

At the same time, China's population growth, production efficiency improved, and more and more materials on the market were originally a great thing. However, ancient China was a country that was scarce in gold, silver and copper. As a result, there was a lack of money in the market. It turned into deflation, and the rich hid good coins in the cellar, which exacerbated the money shortage in the market. Due to the lack of sufficient currency, commercial trade was also increasingly depressed, and the wages of hired workers were getting lower and lower. There are a large number of laborers who only need two meals a day without any wages. Is there any need for technological progress in this kind of society?The answer is obvious.

All this did not change until the middle of the Ming Dynasty. The arrival of Western colonists brought China into the global trade system. A large amount of gold and silver mined from large mines in America and Japan flowed into China, bringing prosperity to the southeast coast. It is the famous "germination of capitalism", but in fact these so-called sprouts of capitalism have nothing to do with the vast majority of people in China at that time. They are similar to Dongguan, Shenzhen, Shunde, Jinjiang and other places on the southeast coast today. However, hundreds of years ago, raw silk, tea, ceramics, and cloth were exported, and the bills were paid with double-pillar silver dollars, eagles, Japanese gold, and Japanese silver; today's exports are electrical appliances, LCD computers, mobile phones, clothes and shoes, and bills are paid in US dollars. Yen, Euro.They all use the surplus cheap labor force in the country to exchange hard currency from the international market. Once the demand in the international market decreases and the inflow of hard currency decreases, the domestic prosperity will immediately collapse.

This brings up a new question, why the inflow of gold and silver from the New World in the 500th century triggered the price revolution in Europe, promoted the development of capitalism, and finally allowed Europe to rule the world for nearly [-] years; Gold and silver did not bring about a price revolution in China, but did capitalism happen in China itself?

The reason is simple: in terms of size, many people like to compare ancient Western Europe with China. In fact, this comparison is inappropriate. From the perspective of population size and land area, Western Europe in the 56th century can at best be compared with a southern part of China. Comparison with Zhili Province.For example, the population of Britain in 1430 was 210 million, while in 1393 (the 26th year of Hongwu in the Ming Dynasty), the population of Suzhou Prefecture, which had just experienced the war at the end of the Yuan Dynasty, was 235 million. Obviously, the population of Suzhou Prefecture in 1430 would definitely be larger than this figure much.Under such a huge size gap, in order to achieve the same effect, the amount of gold and silver that needs to flow in is naturally much larger. The reality also proves this reasoning. The purchasing power of silver in China during the Ming and Qing dynasties was indeed declining. Moreover, China at that time had the reputation of "silver black hole".

But for Wang Wenzuo, fortunately, the population of the era he traveled through was much smaller than that of the Ming and Qing Dynasties, and there were still large areas of land in Jiangnan, Jiangxi, Fujian, and Guangdong that could be developed.In other words, both the population and the total economic volume at that time would be far lower than in the later Ming and Qing Dynasties. He only needed to control the gold and silver mines in Japan, and he could set off a price revolution in China at that time. This is what he really wanted. made.In other words, he only cares about the flow of silver into China, and he doesn't care at all whether it is stolen or exchanged, and it is even better to exchange it, because it can also develop a group of merchants, ship owners and handicraftsmen, and it will only be cheaper to rob A bunch of Qiu Ba.

"If it really doesn't work, it's better to just give this ashes to the Japanese!" Wang Wenzuo said with a smile: "Anyway, the silver they refine can only be bought in Tang Dynasty. The more silver they dig, the more money will flow into Tang Dynasty." Much, as for the process, it doesn't matter!"

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Asuka Kyo, Kawahara Palace.

"This is the condition offered by the envoy of the Tang Dynasty!" Nakatomi Kamatsu said. His memory is excellent. Although it took three days to travel from Nambatsu to Asuko, he still recounted Wang Wenzuo's words almost verbatim.

"Must all the heirs to the throne be present when submitting the credentials?" asked the eldest brother, the prince.

"Yes!" Zhongchen Lianzu said: "He also cited the example of Empress Liu and Zhuge Liang. Although Zhuge Liang is the regent, only Empress Liu can offer sacrifices to heaven and earth and receive envoys!"

"Zhuge Liang and Empress Liu?" The eldest brother, the prince, smiled wryly: "I want to be Zhuge Liang, but where is Empress Liu? No matter if it's Empress Qiyu or the Hairen ascending the throne, I'm afraid they won't let me go." !"

"Your Highness, the most important thing right now is to settle the marriage between the Hairen and Rino Sanliang as soon as possible!" Nakatomi Kamazu said in a low voice: "As long as this is settled, Princess Qitama will not be able to make any trouble!"

"You're right!" The prince nodded, "Before the envoys from the Tang Dynasty submit their credentials, we must first finalize this marriage!"

"Other than that, there's the matter of Amber Hirov!"

"Amber Hirov? Isn't he still in Tsukushi?"

"Yes!" Zhongchen Lianzu said: "The envoys of the Tang people handed over a group of people to me, all of whom were captured after the Battle of Baijiangkou. According to the Tang people, they wanted to exchange these people for Fuyu Fengzhang and escaped with him. The Baekje people of our country!"

(End of this chapter)

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