I

  Chapter 470 468 [Commercial market grows]

  Nanjing, Baoxinglong cloth line.

  Shop clerk Yu Zudeng had just removed the door panel when he saw several cloth merchants standing outside. He nodded and bowed with a smile and said, "Gentlemen, please come inside!"

   "It's easy to say, easy to say!" The cloth merchants clasped their hands and smiled.

  Yu Zudeng was at a loss for a moment, not sure why these living ancestors were polite to him.

  In the fabric sales link, the early stage is mainly divided into cloth dealers and cloth merchants.

  The cloth line is the purchaser of fabrics, which can be divided into establishment and exit.

  Zuozhuang chooses to open a shop in a town, and the women weave cotton yarn and cotton cloth for sale, and generally seldom pay in cash. The woman sells cotton yarn, and the cloth dealer gives cotton; the woman sells cotton cloth, and the cloth dealer gives cotton yarn. In this way, the cloth line can reduce the pressure on funds, and women do not need to go elsewhere to buy raw materials.

  When they leave the village, they will send staff to the villages and towns to purchase, and farmers can sell yarn and cloth without going to the city. However, the price of this kind of transaction is very low, and the unscrupulous dental firm can even lower the price by 30 to 40%.

  As for the cloth merchants, they come to the cloth shop to purchase goods wholesale, and then ship them to other places for retail.

  There is a saying: Yaxing serves cloth merchants like a prince, but fighting for cloth merchants is like a confrontation.

   That is, in front of cloth dealers, cloth merchants are like living ancestors. In order to compete for a cloth merchant, several cloth shops are fighting like a war.

  So Yu Zudeng was very puzzled today, why are the ancestors of cloth merchants so polite?

   "Xiao Yu, go and make some bowls of tea!"

  Buxing shopkeeper Zhou Ruodou came to the lobby with a smile, and gave Yu Zudeng some instructions.

   Then the shopkeeper said: "Several please sit down."

A cloth merchant just sat down, and before the tea was served, he said directly: "Don't talk about gossip, I will raise the price by 50% to get the cloth. It does not matter whether it is plain or twill, or summer cloth or starch cloth, and all prices are raised by 50%. Take as much as you want."

   "You want to get the cloth even if you raise the price by 50%? I'll raise the price by 10%!" Another cloth merchant sneered.

  The shopkeeper, Zhou Ruodou, felt complacent, and then complained: "There is a shortage of fabrics recently, and we really don't have enough. Why don't we follow the example of the Ministry of War in purchasing fabrics and make a hidden bid? The Ministry of War wins the bid with the lowest price, and we win the bid with the highest price."

   "Yes, let's do it quickly. You can't do it here, so I will go to Jiangxi and Hunan to see." A cloth merchant said impatiently.

  The little cloth shop actually invited bids to sell cloth.

  After the business was finished, the store clerk Yu Zudeng asked curiously: "Shopkeeper, why is this year's cloth so good?"

Zhou Ruodou explained with a smile: "This year Japan opened a port, and I heard that two more ports will be added. In the past, the business in Japan was dominated by Fujian maritime merchants. Now that more ports have been opened, the maritime merchants in Jiangsu and Zhejiang are asking merchants to help them get goods. Not only cotton cloth, but also tea, silk, porcelain, tobacco, candles...everything is available. Anyway, it depends on large quantity and low price. Ishijian and Shimonoseki compete for business. The cotton cloth in the south of the Yangtze River has been swept away by cloth merchants. , actually ran to Nanjing to buy goods."

  Yu Zudeng wondered: "Japan is so big, can it eat so much?"

"In addition to Japan, there are North Korea and Liaodong," Zhou Ruodou said. "Your Majesty canonized the king of North Korea, and all the ports in North Korea are open. No matter how small or poor North Korea is, it is still a country, and it is very cold. Cotton cloth must be easy to sell. This There is also Liaodong. The population of Liaodong is not large, but there are many garrisons. The military uniforms of the soldiers are distributed by the Ministry of War, but the daily clothes of the soldiers and their families have to be bought with their own money. There are also Henan, Shandong, Bei In Zhili, business is also recovering this year, and even cloth merchants under Li Zicheng’s rule come to purchase. Now that there is a shortage of goods everywhere, what are the worries of those cloth merchants? In the past, cloth merchants lowered prices and made us grandchildren. Now cloth merchants Raise the price, and we all become grandpas."

  Yu Zudeng suddenly realized: "The shopkeeper still has a broad vision, we never thought there would be such a reason."

Zhou Ruodou stroked his beard and smiled: "It's all thanks to His Majesty. Going back a few years, there were many wars in various places, and countless casualties in the north. The business of selling cloth in the south is not good. Let alone Nanjing, there are also Susongchang lakes. Some weaving workshops closed down. After His Majesty came to the throne, the business is getting better and better. The population in the south is increasing day by day, and the north is about to be stable. Many immigrants move north. Where do you need to wear clothes? And Japan, North Korea, Liaodong, It’s a big business again. You are so good at doing things, I will give my boss a few good words, and I will let you be the fourth shopkeeper of the cloth shop in two years.”

   "Thank you, shopkeeper!" Yu Zudeng was overjoyed.

  Zhou Ruodou smiled and said: "Your father saved my life, you are also smart, you can write and calculate, follow me and work hard, in short, you will not suffer."

  Yu Zudeng bent down to serve the tea ceremony: "Uncle Zhou, please drink tea!"

Zhou Ruodou used a bowl lid to skim the tea dust, and said with emotion: "We are lucky to meet a wise and wise sage. What kind of life did you live in the past few years? Ordinary people can't afford to eat, how dare they wear new clothes? Even the wealthy family , there are also people who are sewing and mending, and can’t sell much fabric throughout the year. Today’s business is getting better day by day. If His Majesty is asked to occupy the north, it will be really easy.”

   "That's right, Your Majesty is really a good emperor." Yu Zudeng said with a smile.

   Zhou Ruodou thought to himself: Your Majesty is good in everything, but he doesn't know that men are superior to women, which makes women behave perversely. In the past two years, the business has been done well, and the money is abundant. I wanted to take in a concubine, but I couldn't find a suitable one!

  The north suffered from frequent wars, natural disasters and plagues, and the population was scarce, especially women.

  When the Datong government organized immigration, female immigrants received special treatment. As long as you take the initiative to sign up, the government will give women a leave-of-home allowance that is directly doubled on the basis of male immigrants.

  Even some prostitutes on the banks of the Qinhuai River signed up to move to the north. Because they heard that once they arrived in the north, they would not worry about getting married at all. In rural areas, you can share fields, in cities you can share houses, and in counties where the population is particularly scarce, you can even share shops!

  In such a situation, who would want to be a concubine?

  I used to be a concubine for the rich. Although I was despised on the surface, I was secretly envied. Nowadays, concubines are despised no matter whether they are overt or not.

  It’s good if the husband’s family has an official status, but if it’s just an ordinary rich man who wants to marry as a concubine, he must be regarded as greedy for enjoyment and lazy.

  The shopkeeper of the cloth shop, Zhou Ruodou, asked a matchmaker to search for a year, but he couldn't even find a suitable concubine.

Zhou Ruodou sighed: "Chongzhen was so good at that time, you can take concubines with a few taels of silver. In times of famine, you don't have to pay for money, and you can get one for a few buckets of rice. This old man also took concubines before, gentle and virtuous, Unfortunately, she died in childbirth.”

Yu Zudeng was not thinking about taking concubines, he said: "The shopkeeper, I heard that there are many textile factories on the side of Changhu Lake in Susong. In the past two years, people in the east of Nanjing City have also opened textile factories. They use new textile machines, new The speed of spinning and spinning looms is faster, and the money earned is also more. How about giving advice to my master, asking him to open a textile factory in the east of the city?"

   Zhou Ruodou said in a bad mood: "We are a cloth shop, we buy cloth, not weave it ourselves. Do your job well, don't think about what you have and what you don't have."

  Yu Zudeng said: "The cloth woven by those textile factories is purchased by cloth merchants at door-to-door, so they don't have to worry about selling it at all, and they don't ask our cloth shop to help sell it."

   "That's bad manners!"

Zhou Ruodou became more angry as he talked: "Since the Jiajing period, there has been a cotton cloth guild in Jinling. At that time, the owners of the cloth shops in the city sat together and made a charter. Cloth merchants from other places can only find cloth shops to sell cloth. Which cloth merchant If you dare to break the rules, the cloth shops in the city will not sell cloth to him! Even if someone opened a textile workshop at that time, the cotton cloth woven had to be sold by the cloth shop."

  Yu Zudeng asked: "Why are there no such rules now?"

Zhou Ruodou sighed: "Oh, during the reign of Chongzhen, the cloth business was not easy to do. Those cloth merchants are living ancestors, and they have the final say on what they want to do? Now the cloth business is easy to do, but His Majesty forbids such a rule. , saying that it is the industry monopoly of Shiluoshizi."

  Yu Zudeng said with a smile: "Your Majesty has few rules, and he doesn't allow many folk rules. Earlier, without the government's permission, private merchants were not allowed to have flower houses. Now there are more and more flower houses in Nanjing."

  Hualou, the scientific name is "Zhiyun Brocade Jacquard Machine", with a total of 1924 parts.

   Yunjin is a royal tribute. The emperor's dragon robe and the queen's phoenix clothes are all made of Yunjin. Even if the imperial court's control power declined in the late Ming Dynasty, if it wanted to buy flower houses and weave brocade, it still needed to be taken care of by the government.

  Nowadays, the Datong court no longer restricts it, but instead encourages merchants to weave brocade.

  Nanjing quickly became the center of brocade weaving. In just a few years, there were three or four thousand brocade looms inside and outside the city. And it is still increasing, solving the employment problem of tens of thousands of people.

  Many wealthy people in the folk also wore brocade, after all, it used to be the material of dragon robes and phoenix clothes.

   Even the word "Yunjin" was named by Zhao Han. Because in Daming, you must enter the imperial warehouse, so it is called Kujin and Kudu.

  Japanese envoy Lin Luoshan saw Yunjin some time ago, and his eyes were already straightened.

  Lin Luoshan has seen brocades before, but Yunjin is the best among brocades. Since the Yuan Dynasty, it can only be used exclusively by the royal family, and at most it will be given to ministers who have done meritorious service.

  Because he really likes it so much, Lin Luoshan also wants to learn the technology secretly, so he went to the brocade manufacturing factory to wander around.

  But the more it turns, the more stupid it becomes, the brocade loom with 1924 parts. Not to mention stealing, even if you explain it to him carefully, it will take a month or two to understand a little bit.

The British writer Peter Mundy recorded brocade brocade in his book: "Nobles from all over Europe think that silk is a creation of gods and a rare treasure in the world. They must not understand or even imagine the existence of brocade brocade. Forgive me The vocabulary is limited, in other words, the vocabulary in English does not have an adjective that can express the beauty and nobility of brocade..."

"It is said that the machine for making Yunjin consists of tens of thousands of parts. A Chinese official told me that Yunjin was an emperor named Liu Yu in ancient times. The Northern Expedition destroyed a country called Qin, and thousands of craftsmen were captured from Chang'an. These craftsmen have integrated the textile skills of Han, Wei, Jin, and many grassland peoples (Sixteen Kingdoms). After thousands of years of improvement, this beautiful textile was finally born."

  “I was lucky enough to spend silver to make a brocade dress. The moment I put it on, I felt nobler than European emperors and kings…”

  (end of this chapter)