Late Tang

On the second day of the welcome banquet, White Beard found Li Jing, and personally proposed to retire on Salmon Island. Along with him, there were three hundred old pirates who left early, and they also asked to stay.Faced with this request, Li Jing pondered for a while, and finally agreed.

Lin Wei expressed some concerns about this, fearing that these old pirates would have future troubles if they stayed in Salmon Town.His main concern was the issue of identity. After all, Shamen Town was a frontier town for the officers and soldiers, and the pirates were still thieves even if they retreated.If Feng Zhang and the others find out, if this matter is brought up, there may be some unexpected things in the end.However, Li Jing also had his own ideas. In Li Jing's view, Whitebeard's request was actually a step to strengthen the relationship between Shamen Town and Zhendonghai.Now the two sides are cooperating well, but after all, one side is a soldier and the other is a thief.

Now that Whitebeard and hundreds of old pirates are staying, this is tantamount to actively keeping himself as a hostage in Shamen Town, so that Li Jing doesn't have to worry about Zhen Donghai's dissatisfaction with him.To be honest, Li Jing needs this pirate force in Zhendong Sea very much now. As for the future troubles that people like Feng Zhang and Wang Jin found out, he really doesn't care too much because he is familiar with the historical trend of the late Tang Dynasty.Immediately there will be chaos, who will take care of who, and who can control who is another matter.

After the white beards received Li Jing's consent, they immediately started to do it themselves, enclosing a large piece of land in the south of the new town, and soon set up a tent, and prepared to start building a yard of rocks and seaweed.A group of pirates were very busy collecting seaweed and rocks.

But Li Jing didn't have the time to take care of these, he now had a more important matter in front of him.

That was the batch of goods brought back from Cat Island. Half of the million-dollar goods belonged to Zhendonghai, and one belonged to Shamen Town.Although the value of these goods is very high, there is a problem, that is, these are goods, not cash.In order to realize the cash and then use it to maintain the expenses of Shamen Town, Li Jing had to find a way to sell the goods.

In a row of new warehouses on Niutuozi Island, goods are piled up like mountains.

Looking at these goods, Li Jing was both happy and worried. With so many goods, it was not easy to cash them out.Millions of goods, not many people can eat them.What's more, most of these goods are things that are going to be sold to other foreign countries.

"General, didn't we form a new caravan with King Zhao and the others, why don't we just sell the goods to our own caravan." Zhang Hong now has to come to Niutuozi Island twice a day, morning and night. Only those goods can feel at ease.Shamen Town is now spending a lot of money, building the city and training troops.The few extra money from last time have almost been distributed. Although the merchants on the island can earn a lot of money every month, it is basically only once a month. Although the income at the dock seems to be good , but compared with the current continuous expenditure in Shamen Town, it is still not worth mentioning.

"You can't put all your eggs in one basket." Li Jing shook his head. Ever since he knew that Li Rui might have rebellious intentions, he had slowly started to keep some distance from Li Rui.Although he also intends to make use of each other with Li Rui, he has never heard of any king in the late Tang Dynasty making any disturbances despite his understanding of the history of the late Tang Dynasty.That being the case, there is no need to get too close to Li Rui.

Joining the business group of Li Ruilong is still of great benefit to Li Jing, but Li Jing is not willing to let him further invest in these goods of his own.All the eggs were put into one basket, and the person who carried the basket was King Zhao, which was of no benefit to Shamen Town.

What Li Jing thought was that it would be best to hand over this batch of goods to Zhang Yingying. After all, Zhang Yingying is the queen of the sea, and her family's caravan is the most powerful among the three seas.But it's strange to say that since that farewell, he hasn't heard from Zhang Yingying again.Although I also thought about sending someone to contact, but there is no exact address in the vast sea, so where can I find it.

For the rest, Zhendonghai is a group of pirates, it's easy to let them grab things, but it's a bit embarrassing for them to sell things.Among the rest, Li Jing also knew Wang Yueying, the Xiao family, and the Han family.However, although the scale of Wang Yueying's cloth shop was not bad, they couldn't handle goods like Wanguan.For the Xiao family and the Han family, Li Jing always maintained a kind of vigilance, not wanting to get too involved with them.

"It's really not possible, let's do it ourselves and then process it." Li Jing gritted his teeth.

Zhang Hong was puzzled: "General, what is reprocessing?"

Li Jing smiled, "Old Zhang, what do you think of the Wuliangye we made last time?"

"Good wine, sweet and fragrant, I can't bear to stop drinking it." When Wuliangye was mentioned, Zhang Hong couldn't help stroking the goatee, and said with a look of aftertaste.

Seeing him like this, Li Jing couldn't help being amused. Datang's wine at this time was basically rice wine, and most of them were green wine.The wine is full of distiller's grains and other things, and the brewed wine is green so-called turbid wine. Before drinking, you need to use a wine sieve to sift the wine.Of course, there are also liquors such as Jiannan Shaochun, but they cannot be compared with Wuliangye if they are overcounted.Wuliangye is brewed with five kinds of grains, the wine is transparent and clear, and the wine has a high alcohol content, which can be said to have broken through the limits of many fine wines.Even after Zhang Hong, who shouted all day long about making wine and wasting food, drank it, now he has to drink three small cups before going to bed every day.

"Tell me, if we sell this Wuliangye to the public, do you think anyone will buy it?" Li Jing asked with a smile.

As soon as the matter of buying and selling was mentioned, Zhang Hong immediately became very energetic, with piercing eyes, "Of course there is a market for such good wine, and there will definitely be many people scrambling to buy it. In my opinion, the only wine in the world is Jiannan Shao Chunhe Sanlejiang can be compared with it, but the first two are still inferior to Wuliangye." He suddenly said with regret: "It's a pity that the brewing of wine consumes too much food, and the fermentation time of this wine is too long. Although the market is good, our food consumption is also high.”

The wine currently brewed in Shamen Town is distilled pure grain fermented wine. One catty is fermented and brewed with five kinds of grains such as glutinous rice, sorghum and wheat, and then distilled, and half a catty of Wuliangye liquor with 52% and 75% can be produced. , or [-]-degree doctor alcohol, but the only biggest disadvantage is that the fermentation and brewing time is too long.

There are many kinds of wine in Tang Dynasty, such as Tukuchun in Xingyang, Shidongchun in Fuping, Shaochun in Jiannan, Fushui wine in Yingzhou, Ruoxia wine in Wucheng, Lingxi wine in Lingnan, Jiuyi in Yicheng For wine, Chang’an has Xishiqiang wine, as well as salamander imported from Persia, and Malang wine imported from Dashi.Different wines have different prices.In Du Fu's poems, there are words about fighting wine for three hundred green coins, and Li Bai also has words about fighting wine for ten thousand coins.

Speaking of it, a famous wine like Jiannan Shaochun is almost Li Bai's Doujiu ten thousand, and a doujiu costs ten guan.And Du Fu's three hundred bronze coins for fighting wine should refer to relatively ordinary wine.A bucket of ten liters is ten catties, but one liter in the Tang Dynasty was only 600 liters in later generations, and all one bucket in the Tang Dynasty was about six catties.Calculated, one catty of Jiannan Shaochun actually costs more than [-] Wen, which is two bolts of silk.Ordinary public wine costs [-] Wen per catty.

The Wuliangye brewed in Shamen Island uses five kinds of miscellaneous grains. A catty of mixed grains of five kinds of miscellaneous grains costs about 150 Wen, but it can produce half a catty of wine.Distilled wine like Wuliangye is better than fermented wine like Jiannan Shaochun. Even if it is only priced at [-] Wen per catty, it is almost twenty times the cost of grain.This is a hugely profitable industry, and Guan Jian is able to increase production.

Shamen Town lacks a good source of financial income. Although the two largest workshops on the island, the armory workshop and the quilt workshop, are not small in scale, they can only supply the needs of civilians in a short period of time, and cannot make money from production and sales.After much deliberation, Li Jing felt that brewing wine was a good industry.

"Our Wuliangye is better than Jiannan Shaochun and Sanlejiang. People who have tasted it are full of praise. You said that Jiannan Shaochun can sell Doujiu for ten thousand. If we sell Doujiu for [-], do you think anyone will buy it? ?”

Zhang Hong looked surprised, "Twenty thousand for a bucket of wine? Isn't this the same as stealing money? We only need ten to twelve catties of grain to brew a bucket of wine, and some craftsmanship is also required, but the cost is at most two for a bucket of wine." Three guan, but sell [-] guan, isn't this a profiteer?"

"No profiteering, no business." Li Jing said with a smile, "We need money now, and we don't have normal income, we don't have enough land to farm, and we don't have the capital to do business. We finally have a special product, so we have to manage it well." Besides, if someone is willing to spend [-] yuan to buy a Dou Jiannan Shaochun, do you think he really cares about spending [-] yuan more to buy our Wuliangye? For many people, they only drink expensive ones. Instead of drinking the best. Our wine is the best, so it will also be the most expensive. Once we can determine the title of the strongest wine in the world, believe me, we will sell it for thirty thousand. A lot of people came to buy it.”

"However, brewing consumes too much food. Right now, there is a shortage of crops. The disaster situation continues, and food is getting more and more scarce. The population of our island has exceeded [-], and the food consumed every month is calculated in ten thousand stones." Zhang Hong said awkwardly. On the one hand, he was imagining the huge sums of money he could earn from selling wine, but on the other hand, he was worried that the brewing would consume the food, and the food on the island would be insufficient.

"It's not easy. We don't just collect money when we sell wine. We can change the price of wine to require half of the cash and half of the grain. A bucket of wine sells for [-], and we collect ten copper coins, or silk, and fifty buckets of rice, or It can be rice, millet, sorghum and other grains worth ten guan. Do the math, we spend more labor, one bucket of wine only consumes two buckets of grain, now we can earn back fifty buckets of grain, and we can also collect ten guan Money, don’t you think this deal is worthwhile?”

"It's a good deal, it's definitely a good deal!" Zhang Hong didn't expect that there could be such a profitable business in this world, and now he can't wait to go back and expand the workshop immediately.Even if it is to expand the workshop ten times, it is definitely worth it.

(To be continued)