Elegy of Tang Dynasty

Chapter 29 The Chang'an energy crisis hidden in "The Charcoal Seller"

Let’s look at Bai Juyi’s poems first:
Sell ​​charcoal weng, cut the wood and burn charcoal in Nanshan.

His face was dusty and smoky, and his temples were grey and black with ten fingers.

Where can I get the money from selling charcoal?The clothes on the body and the food in the mouth.

Poor shirt is single, worrying about charcoal and wishing it will be cold.

A foot of snow outside the city at night, Xiao drove a charcoal car to the ice.

The days of hunger for cattle and people have been high, and they are resting in the mud outside the south gate of the city.

Who are Pian Pian Liang Qi?The yellow messenger white shirt.

Hold the clerical dictation, and return to the car to lead north.

A car of charcoal, more than a thousand catties, the imperial ambassador will not regret it.

Half a horse of red yarn, one zhang silk, tied to the cow's head and filled with charcoal straight.

The poem has three key messages:

1. The charcoal was fired in Zhongnan Mountain, more than 100 miles away from Chang'an City, and the ox cart traveled more than [-] miles to Chang'an.

2. The charcoal sold by the charcoal seller was forcibly bought by the "messenger" from the palace when he was waiting for the West Market to open. He must not have a shop in the West Market, so it can be concluded that he should be a businessman planning to sell to the West Market. .

In other words, being able to sell a cart of charcoal on Baili Road proves that the price of charcoal has turned it into a high-margin business.

3. The palace people who bought by force, of course know that this is tantamount to robbery, but they will not be punished after they go back, the reason I will talk about later.

First of all, I would like to thank Poet Bai for leaving such precious first-hand historical materials for future generations.

Now let's analyze the important key information in this poem.

First, the reason why the charcoal seller wants to cut firewood to burn the charcoal in Nanshan is because the amount of firewood needed in Chang'an is beyond the charts. It can be called insane. All kinds of people have already cut down the trees around Chang'an!There are no more trees to cut down!

This is not only proven by food records, but also some clues can be seen from Li Longji's appointment of Yang Guozhong as the "charcoal envoy" who was responsible for the supply of firewood in Chang'an.

The charcoal envoy is responsible for the public and private charcoal trade. In the future, if you cut down the charcoal at will, you will be punished.

According to conservative estimates based on relevant literature (I won’t go into details), Chang’an’s government, including the inner garden of the palace, consumes a total of 12 tons of firewood a year.The imperial court has a special agency "Goudun Department", which is responsible for the firewood needed by the government, but it can only supply less than 3 tons a year.

In other words, the firewood purchased centrally by the government was far from enough. There was a huge gap in firewood, and the palace and officials could only purchase it from the east and west cities.

I don’t know how to count folk firewood, and there are also workshops and smelting, and the number is even more uncountable.

Therefore, according to the simple principle of commodity prices, as long as there is a shortage of goods, price increases are inevitable.

Can the market price of firewood in Chang'an City be the same as the wholesale price of centralized procurement by the government?

The answer is not only different, but also very different.Those who collect salaries in the government are all mobilized in corvée, and 7000 people from Guanzhong are used to chop firewood and burn charcoal and send it to Chang'an, which is equivalent to prostitution for nothing.

During the Tianbao period, those people who called the Tang Dynasty Qianqiu Eternal Dynasty did not know if they paid attention to the government's financial expenditures.Why is the court running out of money? Where are the details? Here they are.The shortage of firewood is just the tip of the iceberg.

In addition, during this period of time, the long-term environmental damage around Chang'an City finally reached the stage of concentrated outbreak.Successive droughts and floods. Due to the lack of trees to regulate the climate, Tianbao experienced a severe drought in 13 and then it rained for [-] consecutive days.In autumn, large fields in Guanzhong failed to harvest, and the Great Famine in Chang'an began.

Second, it is shameless for the palace people to buy and sell by force, but the problem is that they can just grab it, why do they still have to "give money"?Why would they go to the trouble of things that can be done with public power?

It is impossible for the charcoal seller to retaliate against these people, and there is no way to report to the officials. The answer is that these palace people are probably not just robbing, they also have their own set of "self-consistent logic". People shudder.

This detail problem that cannot be ignored is: the prices of the things in the palace and inner gardens are out of touch with the prices in the Chang'an market.

The pricing system for "silk" in the palace is different from that of ordinary silk on the market. This is not surprising at all. It involves the issue of "depreciation" of transaction items in the Tang Dynasty and the issue of local tribute.

Ordinary silk, if it enters the inner garden of the imperial palace, it is no longer ordinary silk, these are all tributes.

They are expensive, at least when they are "in stock".

Taking the current situation as an example, how much difference is there in actual use value between a LV bag and an ordinary bag with a price of one or two hundred, if the attribute of "competitive style" is ignored?
The answer is almost the same, but the price is hundreds of times different.

Now this LV bag has been at home for many years, and the leather is aging and rotten a lot.At this time, if I want to take it out and sell it, it may only cost a few hundred yuan, because I can't buy and sell by force!
But when it comes to the palace people, they think that the "LV bag" has not been depreciated, and it was worth hundreds of pennies when it entered the palace!
Isn't it cheaper for these people to buy firewood now?
Therefore, it can be concluded that after these people return to the palace to report the matter, not only will they not be punished, but they will also be rewarded.Moreover, similar things will become a routine and an exclusive system for searching for people's wealth and wealth.

Because they got out the rotten things that were not needed in the palace, and brought back the urgently needed daily necessities.From the emperor's point of view, this kind of scavenger work must be done by someone.

It can be seen from this that Li Longji has always been called poor. He is not really poor, but under the non-commodity economic system, there are too many things in the palace that are not needed.These things are just like the utility room where ordinary people store sundries. It looks like they are all money, but they cannot be exchanged for money.

In modern colloquial terms, it is called: insufficient liquidity.

The problem reported by Bai Juyi is actually that the Tang Dynasty imperial palace had no good way to "destock", and then, under the blessing of power, used robbery to obtain livelihood materials to maintain a decent life in the palace.

There are only a few types of things in the world.

Harm yourself and benefit others, this is what parents will do.

Benefiting others and benefiting oneself is what everyone pursues.

However, the above two points are often encountered in life.

More is to take a step back and "injure others for small benefits, but give oneself big benefits."

Anything worse is harming others and benefiting oneself. This kind of people need to repair their brains, but they can be seen everywhere in the world.

In the period from the prosperous Tang Dynasty to the middle Tang Dynasty, in fact, the good, evil and deeds of a single individual are already insignificant, and it is more about the overall situation, the general trend, which forces people to take risks.

Today's update will be sent later.

(End of this chapter)