unclear

Chapter 522
"Okay, okay, brothers working together can be as powerful as gold! Come and have a drink! It's a pity that Fan Ping and Fan Di are not here, otherwise the five of us brothers can have a good reunion. Fan An, tell me quickly, Didn’t I see the real owner this time when I went east, how did things go?”

The short and stocky man was very satisfied with the two people's statements. He grabbed his scarf and revealed his bald head. He took the lead and raised the wine glass and drank it down his neck. Then he touched his mouth with the back of his hand, raised his brows, and his smile immediately disappeared. His big eyes, big bald head, and face full of flesh showed a fierce look.

Fan Yongdou, whose ancestral home is in Jiexiu, Shanxi Province, is one of the largest merchants in Shanxi. He is involved in salt and tea, wood, grain, cloth, ironware, and banks. His family's businesses are spread all over the country.

Since the early Ming Dynasty, the Fan family has been doing business with the Mongols in Xuanfu Town. After seven generations, they not only created a lot of business, but also established close ties with various ethnic groups outside the Great Wall, and won a good reputation. , known as: Jia Yubiancheng, written by Xinyi.

In the beginning, the Fan family's business was to transport military supplies for the border troops. It was relatively simple. As long as they transported military rations and other supplies from the mainland to the border in accordance with the specified time and quantity, they could get banknotes and salt.

By the middle and late Ming Dynasty, the good days of Shanxi merchants had come to an end. Due to the large amount of silver imported, the imperial court adjusted its salt industry policy from the Kaizhong method to the Zese method. Any merchant could use silver to buy salt and sell it to various places. This broke the monopoly of the Shanxi merchant group and led to the rapid rise of another merchant group, the Hui merchant.

Although Huizhou merchants started late and their power in the court was not as strong as that of Shanxi merchants, they occupied a geographical advantage. They belonged to the same southern Zhili region as Suzhou and Yangzhou where the handicraft industry was most developed. It was very convenient to move around and they did not need to send merchants like foreign merchants. membership, and gradually gained the upper hand in business competition.

Faced with this unfavorable situation, Shanxi merchants had to find another way out. It may also be that he was inspired by the smuggling of merchants from Jiangsu and Zhejiang to the sea. He soon gradually shifted his attention from the south to the north, and began to secretly smuggle prohibited materials with the northern nomads in addition to normal trade.

From the beginning, they exchanged grain and iron tools for furs and mountain goods, and gradually developed into armors, weapons, and even various craftsmen. The number and types were getting larger and larger, and they were out of control.

As for why the same Mongolian tribe purchased grain and ironware continuously within a few months, and also used wild ginseng, pearls, and gold sand from Liaodong as trading goods, what was the use of the sold goods? Businessmen all know who is buying.

But if you understand, you still understand that business must be done. Normal business cannot have such high profits. There are some things that cannot be touched. They are the lowest instincts of human nature. Once touched, they will become addicted and unable to stop.

Whether it is the Fan family or the Shanxi merchants, are they related to the Ningbo merchants? Why did Lu Maolong ask if the Fan family was still there? To say that there must be a relationship, the Fan family is just a businessman and does not produce any goods except for the food in Shangtun. Whether it is food, cloth, armor, or weapons, it must be purchased from other merchants.

The furs and mountain products exchanged with the Mongolian tribes also had to be sold to other merchants to obtain profits. Ningbo merchants were among them, and they were closely related because of bank transactions.

In addition to exchanging coins and issuing usury loans, the banks of the Ming Dynasty also engaged in a not-so-unusual business of minting private money. Thanks to the poor financial system of the Ming Dynasty, the number of coins produced by Baoyuan bureaus in various places was very small, which was difficult to satisfy the market circulation, so there was a market for privately minted copper coins.

For example, smuggling merchants needed a large amount of copper coins, so Ningbo merchants and Shanxi merchants, to be precise, six Shanxi merchants including Fan, Wang, Tian, ​​and Huang had a deep cooperative relationship, or they came together to mint copper coins privately. Among them, the Tu family is the most important, and the Yang Lu and Zhang families are also involved. They used smuggling ships and commercial networks to collect small-denomination coins from all over the country. After transporting them back, they handed them over to the Fan family to transport to Shanxi for melting and casting privately.

These privately minted copper coins are no longer one-cent coins, but have become large coins with higher face values, such as 50% off or 10% off. Each family will then share the proceeds in proportion and purchase the goods on the market. Between entering and exiting, not only the capital and transportation costs are covered, but also a lot of profit.

It was with the guarantee of this relationship that when the Fan family proposed to send a ship to help pick up a batch of important goods from the sea, the four Yang, Lu, Zhang and Tu families agreed. Even after knowing what the important cargo was, he did not express much objection and only made safer suggestions for some transaction details.

Since then, the two sides have cooperated even more closely, not only smuggling artillery, but also continuously transporting pig iron, coke, grain, salt tea, and cloth to Japan via sea ships, and then changing ships to Tieshan Port. It was sold to the Koreans at twice the price. It was tacitly understood whether the Korean merchants were selling it to the Jurchens.

Then why not sell it directly to a port controlled by the Jurchens at a high price, instead of selling it through North Korean businessmen? It’s not that I don’t want to, it’s that I can’t.

Although the Jurchens occupy most of Liaodong Town, including good ports such as Gaizhouwei and Jinzhouwei, they will face strict inspections by Ming Navy patrol ships as long as they enter the Bohai Sea. Once the cargo is found to be abnormally loaded, the ship will be detained and arrested. It is difficult for anyone to pick up the cargo. The nearest safe trading port is Tieshan.

Since the Jurchens suffered a major defeat in the capital in the ninth year of Jingyang (1613), their relationship with the Koreans has become delicate. Although the two sides were still confronting each other in the Liubao area of ​​Kuandian, they secretly began to flirt with each other. Many goods were transferred to the Jurchen-controlled areas in Liaodong through North Korean merchants.

As a Ming businessman with a bureaucratic background, don't Yang Lu, Zhangtu and the Shanxi merchants involved in smuggling understand the harm of doing so? How should I put it? It may be that I really don’t understand, or it may be that I am pretending to be confused.

Youdao cannot write two words about money in one sentence. They have always been the most active in making money. Normal business is definitely not as profitable as smuggling, and not everyone can do the smuggling business. It goes against human nature to leave a lot of money without making any profit.

Besides, everyone has been doing this for hundreds of years, and no one has ever had an accident. A lie told a thousand times becomes the truth, and a bad thing told a thousand times becomes a good thing. Get used to this thing. If you do it too much, it will be difficult to change and it will be inherited.

The promotion of the New Deal has seriously damaged the interests of bureaucratic capital and Shanxi merchant groups. Normal business is not their skill. Only by monopolizing the market with policies and power can they make big money.

If farmers can make a living by growing wheat and sweet potatoes, it will be less easy for the gentry to exploit the land; if it becomes common to make profits by investing in factories, then the privileges of bureaucratic capital will be completely lost and it will lose its share in commercial activities. If you get too much bargains, you won't be able to make huge profits; if anyone can sail a boat to buy and sell goods, the smuggling business will soon be ruined.

(End of this chapter)