Lin Gao Qiming

Chapter 98 Trade Agreements

The headman took the team to an empty field outside the village and told them to rest here.This Li village is completely different from the Li villages in the large and small folk tours in Hainan that you have visited in later generations.First of all, it has no walls, and it looks like an ordinary village with a slightly larger scale. The village is surrounded by dense thorny trees, and all kinds of vines and bamboos, let alone people. Not even a rabbit can get through.This is the first time everyone has seen such a wall.

Secondly, the iconic boat-shaped house of the Li nationality that everyone learned from the folk village is nowhere to be seen here. This kind of house lives on the top and raises livestock on the bottom, which makes people look very "ethnic".The village right now is a pyramid-shaped straw house.The walls of the house are made of bamboo woven into a fence and pasted with mud, which looks very special.This Nanan Village is the "capital" of this cave.

The so-called Lidong in Hainan is roughly divided by the natural terrain, and generally consists of several villages.The cave masters have all been recognized by the government, hereditary positions, and certificates with seals and bronze medals.Li native officials such as Dongzhu and Tushe, first suppress the Li people and maintain local security and social order; second, they complete all kinds of apportionments assigned by the government on time every year. There are official taxes and private officials. "Auspicious money".Of course, their own income is indispensable-no matter how big or small the native officials are, the government does not give them salaries, and they have to collect them by themselves.In other words, as long as you pay the various official and private "partial money" that should be paid on time every year, the native officials can do whatever they want in their own territory, and they are basically a native emperor.

Those who stayed outside the village were under the unified management of Zhang Bolin. Everyone relaxed outside and tightened inside, and took the time to rest.Lu Rong, Wen Desi and Mu Min were led by the headman into the village to meet the cave master.

There are many curious people inside and outside the village, all pointing at the side of the road a little farther away. Wen Desi saw a few old ladies sitting on the roadside stones and weaving rattan.Black patterns are densely tattooed on the face, but the mouth is black, which is really scary. I thought this is the "old lady looks like a monster" in the Eighteen Monsters of Hainan.Sure enough, being famous is not as good as meeting. (Note: The facial tattoo habit of Li women did not completely disappear until the 20s. The facial tattoo is to prevent being robbed by outsiders, and the second is to represent the steadfastness of feelings. As for the color of the lips and teeth, it is purely the result of chewing betel nuts every day).If you pay a little attention, you will find that almost all women have facial tattoos, except for the undeveloped little hairy children.This completely shattered everyone's fantasies about minority women.

"This custom must be revolutionized." Wei Aiwen muttered, in his original plan, recruiting Li soldiers was only the first step, and then he would take control of the troops by serving as the commander of Li soldiers—the most important thing One part of the plan is to marry the daughter of a Li leader—the Li girl in his impression is based on the image in the movie.But the sight in front of him seriously shaken his plan.

If there really is a headman who betroths his daughter to him, do you accept it?What a headache.Moreover, the girls here get facial tattoos as soon as they reach adulthood... He just worried about the bubbles in the air for no reason.

Not to mention the leader, even ordinary Limin girls didn't take a fancy to him.To the common people of the Li nationality, these are a group of terrifying characters: they heard that these people have powerful "powder guns" (note: the Li people's name for musket guns), and they can shoot consecutively and beat people up from a long distance. die.Those who escaped said that they could only hear continuous gunshots, and that a large number of people died.

Lu Rong and his party were taken into a big house in the middle of the village.This house is taller than ordinary houses, and it is built on a foundation. Except for the corridor in the middle, there are bamboo beds on three sides of the house, which are used for sitting and sleeping.The firepit is on the back wall, with bamboo rafts hanging on it, which are used to smoke food.There are windows on the side of the roof, but the lighting is still very poor. Once you enter, you feel that your eyes are dark, and it took a while to get used to it.

Dongzhu was an old man, with graying hair and a bad complexion—they later learned that Dongzhu was in his early fifties, but by seventeenth-century standards he was old everywhere.Lu Rong presented specially prepared gifts: a bottle of Red Star Erguotou, a pack of rock sugar and two pocket knives.

Among these three things, Erguotou in a glass wine bottle attracted his attention the most - baijiu was popularized in the Ming Dynasty, but the wine packaged in a pure, colorless glass small flat bottle is very important to anyone in this time and space. It is very visually impactful.Obviously, in modern times, glass bottles that are only packaged as goods are much more valuable than wine in his eyes.

As for the two pocket knives, Dongzhu played with them for a while, and carved a few times on the wooden board, his eyes showed admiration.

"Such a good knife, you can't even buy it in the county." Dongzhu looked up at them, very surprised, "Where do you come from, Qiongshan?"

Wen Desi played his set of Australian maritime business again. Because he talked a lot, he practiced this set very well.Dongzhu doesn't know much about the outside world, he has only been to Lingao County in the Han District.The "big official" in Qiongzhou Prefecture - the magistrate - is the biggest official in his eyes.However, when he heard that they were not Ming people, but Han people from overseas, he obviously relaxed a little, and ordered people to bring wine to the guests——rice wine brewed from the glutinous rice grown by the Li people. This kind of wine developed in later generations. It has become a local famous yellow wine "Shanlan Yuye".

Shanlan wine is the simplest glutinous rice fermented wine. The brewing period is only seven days, and the alcohol content is very small, which is similar to that of later generations.All three drank a bowl.

With wine as a lubricant, it was much easier to talk about things, and I also took the opportunity to ask a lot about the local situation.The surname of the owner of the cave is Zhu, but this Zhu Ke has nothing to do with Zhu Yuanzhang. Their family is the so-called "child of plantain".Generations are the heads of the village.During the Maya riots in the Wanli year, many Lidongs in Lingao were also involved.Only his family was not involved. After the incident subsided, the neighboring villages were merged into one cave and the owner of the cave was sealed.The entire cave is composed of seven villages, with more than 2000 people, men, women, old and children. It is a large cave in Lingao.

Mu Min asked how many Li people there were in Lingao, but Zhu Dongzhu himself couldn't tell. In addition to this cave, there are more than ten caves in Lingao Shuli.The number of people can be as few as a few hundred, and as many as one or two thousand.After passing Panbao Mountain and further south is the place of Shengli.In addition to them, there is also Lidong called Jia Maoli nearby. All in all, the internal affairs of the Li people are also quite complicated, because the language and living customs are different, and there are not many contacts or even intermarriage.

As for the government, Zhu Dongzhu said that the last two county magistrates are okay to speak, and there are not many demands, so they don't have to worry about sending the regular money every year.It's just that the roads have not been peaceful in recent years, and the number of Han hawkers coming to Li District has decreased a lot. Salt was already expensive, but now the price is even higher.If the sea merchants can transport salt, they want as much as they want. They are willing to exchange animal skins, red and white vines, betel nuts and cattle.Then the talisman who was bribed by them suggested that it would be better to sell some ironware, since there is a shortage of agricultural tools and knives here.

These conditions were all expected, and Lu Rong agreed.Salt and iron can't be manufactured yet, but the production is just a recent thing, and supply is not a problem.In contrast, Li District can provide quite a lot of useful things: wood, cotton cloth, animal skins, vines, pigs and cattle, all of which they urgently need.

In terms of price, Wen Desi decided not to use the method of high price exploitation-it is true that doing business like those small traders who carry hands on their shoulders can make huge profits, but the result is that there are very few things that can be sold.Of course, in ancient times, the level of productivity was low, the transportation capacity was low, and there were risks on the road.The way of high prices and huge profits is justified.It is not suitable for those who have mastered the large-scale industrial production capacity like the crossing crowd.The price of salt is too high, and the profit is huge, but the people will reduce their salt consumption to the lowest living level, and as a result, they still cannot sell much salt.Once the price is low, people's consumption of salt will immediately rise.

Zhu Dongzhu and the headman were very satisfied with the salt price he quoted, which was only one-third of the price of the small merchant, but even at this price, Wen Desi felt that it was a profiteer.For the measurement of salt, the official dou is temporarily used as the unit of measurement-Wen Desi decided to make a batch of weighing instruments immediately after returning home, and promote the measurement units of the traversers as soon as possible through trade.As for the price of ironware, he still doesn't know the market price of pig iron in the Ming Dynasty, so he just promised that it must be lower than the traders.

After some bargaining between the two parties, they finally reached the first trade agreement with Nandong after coming to this time and space.Historically known as: "Nanan Village Trade Agreement".The agreement stipulates that the crossing people can sell all commodities to Nanandong, but each trade must bring a certain amount of salt and ironware.Nanandong is exchanged with any item needed by the traverser, but the population is not included.

The 80 kilograms of salt brought this time were exchanged for more than 70 cowhide, deerskin, and wild boar skins.Forty jumbos and a buffalo.The stuff piled up in the empty yard makes everyone feel like a profiteer. They don’t know that a peddler specializing in business in the Li district can exchange 594 or [-] catties of pigs with one catty (old catty, [-] grams) of coarse salt one head.

The Li people also feel that they have benefited: every village has a lot of animal skins, which are easy to get in their eyes; Qiongbu is spun by women for their own use, and it is not worth a lot of money.

The owner of the cave sent another twelve bolts of Gebu.Gebu was a famous product in Hainan in the Ming Dynasty. Because it absorbs moisture and dissipates heat, it is a high-grade fabric for making summer clothes.Each family of captives who were sent back gave a pig as a thank you for their release.All parties are happy.Master Zhu Dong sent a message to call Aoya from all villages to drink, and took out two arrows at the banquet. He first asked people to read the agreement aloud, then cut nine knives on the arrow, and then took out the other arrows. Give Lu Rong an arrow.

"You can cut nine knives too." Mu Min told him: This is a ceremony of cutting arrows, which means that both parties must abide by each other's regulations. If they violate the agreement, they will be fined 90 cows and [-] taels of silver.

After cutting the arrow, he drank a few more bowls of rice wine.The two sides also designated their respective contacts: Lu Rong on the side of the traverser, and Aoyafu Dayou from the village on Nandong.Wen Desi took the opportunity to propose that he hoped to stay in Nandong for a few more days to see what local products they needed.If there is, these native products can also be used to offset the price of salt and iron in the future.This request was happily granted.

(End of this chapter)