Chastity Layman

  Chapter 744 The deal between young and old foxes

"Sun Jian hid the jade seal privately, and dare to swear to the sky, can you deceive the sky?" After chasing the update, Lao Fang patted his legs and said, "Sun Jian is greedy, how can one person fight against the eighth princes? It's a disaster for yourself. "

  Qin Lang recognized the pun in his words.

   "What Fang Gong said is true."

  Qin Lang handed over another list, but it was full of spices, the quantity was not much, and he was not afraid of being accused of bribery.

"what for?"

"Fang Gong, this is the list of many spices that Hu merchants have trafficked to our Datang by sea. It is basically the above. Among them, frankincense is the most abundant. Last year alone, more than 350,000 catties came with the ship dealers. , the transaction amounted to 4 million guan, and the imperial court drew one out of ten, and got more than 35,000 jin, which was transferred to the two capitals, Yanghangyi and Youjing states, and changed hands into more than 1.2 million guan... ·”

   "As for the remaining 90% over 310,000 catties, Emperor Neikubo bought 20% and Donggong Neifangbo bought 10%..."

  Fang Xuanling smiled, "Where is Sanlang, how much did your family buy? Your perfume is so famous, you should use a lot of it every year, right?"

  No one in Chang'an knows that the Qin family's perfume in small glass bottles is the favorite of ladies.

   "My family doesn't have much. The Qin family's perfumes are limited, and they don't use much."

   What Qin Lang said is actually true. The Qin family's perfume is indeed very famous, but the Qin family's perfume is a high-end product. The entire industrial chain is not mature enough, so the output is not high.

The Qin family perfume is completely different from the traditional incense habits of the entire upper class today. At this time, nobles like spices, and foreign spices are divided into several uses, such as food, medicine, and incense. Edibles such as pepper, etc., are used as medicine. There are many.

   But the most important thing is to burn incense. The most popular thing for nobles now is to taste incense.

  In daily life, it is even more inseparable from burning incense. Clothes must be incensed, and incense must be burned when eating, drinking tea, reading, and receiving guests.

  Even those rich and nobles who built houses had to purchase those precious sandalwood and agarwood from outside as pillars. There are also those who wear dipterocarp as ornaments.

  For example, Yang Shidao, the former prime minister, is a person who likes luxury and fragrance. He burns a kind of incense called Baidulu every day. Every day before dawn, his family has a dedicated smoker maid who will prepare the clothes he will wear, burn two furnaces of white incense, and cover the clothes on top to smoke.

  After Yang Shidao got up, he put on the smoked clothes and went out. He was covered with fragrance.

And this kind of incense called Bai Dulu is not cheap, one tael costs 200,000 yuan, Yang Shidao burns two incense burners every day and uses two taels of incense, which costs 400,000 yuan. house.

   It costs 400 guan for incense to smoke clothes a day, which shows how extravagant it is.

  Of course, this is not the most expensive incense. The most expensive spice is ambergris, which is said to be the incense that dragons in the sea drool when they dream.

  Actually, ambergris is just a kind of stone-like thing formed in the body of whales after eating squid, which cannot be digested.

  It is indeed more expensive than gold.

Ambergris is rare and precious. It is usually used by emperors or top nobles to make candles. Ambergris candles can release the fragrance of ambergris when burned. Candles made of this kind of ambergris are also It is extremely precious, and just one can cost tens of thousands of dollars.

The aristocratic class of the Tang Dynasty, including those high-ranking officials and powerful people, cannot do without spices in their daily life. From eating, such as adding pepper and other spices to beef and mutton, to medicinal purposes, to burning incense, they use too much , and even their incense expenses accounted for 10 to 20 percent of the nobles' daily expenses.

   And Datang is now trading overseas by sea, and spices account for half of the imported goods.

The profits of maritime trade are huge. As an advocate of maritime trade, Qin Lang naturally earned a lot of benefits from it. In just a few years, Qin Lang invested 30 million bolts of silk in the fief of Wu'an Prefecture. That's a lot of money.

Although the 30 million pieces of silk were not invested at one time, or even not all invested by him alone, but also invested by his thousands of vassals, they were invested in the overall development, but Qin Lang invested the most after all. The output and investment of the past few years have also been counted, but in fact the investment is still huge.

  The biggest source of so much money is maritime trade and foreign trade-related industries.

  Qin Lang came to find Fang Xuanling today, naturally because Fang Xuanling was an ally he could win over, and he came with sincerity, which of course was not the sixth chapter of the Three Kingdoms.

   "Fang Gong, I have an idea, would you like to hear it?"

  Old Fang glanced at the spice list, then nodded, expressing his willingness to listen.

  I had a talk with Qin Lang yesterday, and today Qin Lang took the initiative to come to the door. The purpose of the old house has been achieved, now it depends on what price Qin Lang is willing to offer.

"Maritime trade can bring tens of millions of direct taxes to the imperial court every year. This is an indisputable fact. In addition, sea trade has also provided huge orders for the handicraft industry of Datang, which has brought huge benefits. Workshops and workers benefit from this? Let’s not mention these for the time being, let’s just talk about the goods brought by Hu merchants, mainly slaves, spices and jewelry, regardless of others, slave imports can bring us sufficient labor, spices and Although jewelry can’t be eaten when hungry and cannot be worn when it’s cold, but these items are sold to the nobles in exchange for huge tax revenue and profit from the price difference. A rich man's tax, Mr. Fang agrees?"

   This is a very novel interpretation.

  But when you think about it carefully, it is true.

   Spices are very expensive, ordinary people can't touch them, and they can't afford them. Therefore, these spices are exclusively for the consumption of the rich, and the money earned by the court is of course considered a tax for the rich. As long as the people can't afford it, the tax will not actually be passed on to the people.

   Unless, as in the Song Dynasty, something like incense banknotes was made after death, and the incense banknotes were used to buy rice cloth and other materials from the people, that would be passed on to the people.

   "If the imperial court bans the sea and bans incense, it would actually be a detrimental thing, right?"

  Fang Xuanling just smiled slightly.

"However, the current foreign trade, especially the sea trade, is indeed still somewhat lacking in management. It is true that smuggling and piracy are relatively prominent, but we should not give up because of choking. My plan is to strengthen management of sea trade and build more seaports. Set up more city ship divisions to strengthen management, and each seaport should set up a special marine police navy to patrol the sea and crack down on smuggling."

   "In addition, for key importer spices, I think a monopoly system should also be implemented. You can refer to the salt tea monopoly system and formulate a spice monopoly law."

Qin Lang proposed a spice monopoly method, which is to compile a catalog of various imported spices first, and implement a monopoly system for each spice. All spices are sold directly to the imperial court at each port, and the imperial court completely buys them into warehouses and distributes them. Take out 20% first.

   After Chao Tingbo bought a position, he did not get it to sell in the market.

Instead, they issued incense and entrusted the sale of spices to the merchants. The imperial court did not restrict the sale of land boundaries, and offered tickets. As long as they wanted to sell spices, they could go to the spice bureau of the imperial court to pay the tax, and then sell the salt to receive the tickets. .

In this way, the imperial court holds the imported spices in its hands, and then invites merchants to sell the spices. The most important point is that the imperial court can control the number of spice merchants through the introduction of incense, etc., in a disguised form. The monopoly of the spice merchants.

  In essence, it is actually to redistribute the interests of the spice trade, to benefit the Guanlong Group and the Shandong gentry who are now very dissatisfied, and to appease them.

  Businessmen want to get involved and take a share, so pay taxes first.

  At the same time, in order to be able to take care of everyone's interests, Qin Lang plans to attract and sell the various imported spices listed in the catalog separately.

   How many spice merchants are recruited for each spice, how many spices are quoted, and the tax is paid according to the quotation, and then the spices are collected, and other courts do not care.

  The imperial court can break the monopoly by controlling the number of investment invitations, and the benefits are shared.

Of course, powerful forces, such as the top six surnames in Guanlong or the five surnames in Shandong, or the royal family, the prime minister’s family, etc., must be the exclusive dealers for the most imported frankincense, agarwood, pepper, etc. Some small The merchants who order it may only be able to sell some fennel, betel nut, etc.

  The key to Qin Lang's incense introduction method is that the imperial court controls the distribution power.

   More importantly, through this distribution right, the Guanlong Group, which is now very dissatisfied, will be given a share of the pie, and it will also benefit you and everyone will make a fortune together.

   In this way, it also made up for the losses caused by the decline of traditional Silk Road trade caused by the rise of sea trade.

   To put it bluntly, it was Qin Lang who wanted to take advantage of himself and the southern tycoons who made money through maritime trade in recent years to give them.

"This is a good idea. If the imperial court first buys at the Port Expo, and then issues incense and attracts incense merchants to sell, the interests of the imperial court will be guaranteed without loss." Lao Fang admired Qin Lang's quick response, but he still I want to know how this specific division is, especially how much his Fang family and the Lu family and Li family can occupy.

   "I think we can send a message first. Those who are interested in running this spice business can sign up first." Qin Lang said with a smile.

Regardless of whether it is a maritime merchant, a land silk road caravan, or these merchants operating in various places, in fact, there are basically nobles, bureaucrats, gentry, and powerful people standing behind them. It's just that the big families secretly control it.

  Don't look at some people in Chang'an who claim to have millions of dollars, but they are just managing accounts for the top nobles.

   "The interests of the saint must be guaranteed first. Of course, this time, I will definitely take good care of those friends who missed the opportunity before!"

   Obtaining this guarantee, Lao Fang smiled slightly, "Young people have quick brains, so you do it first, and I will say hello for you!"

  (end of this chapter)